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CHAMBERS'S
CrCLOP^DIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
A SELECTION OF THE CHOICEST PRODUCTIONS OF ENGLISH AUTHORS, FROM
THE EARLIEST TO THE PRESENT TIME ; CONNECTED BY A CRITICAL
AND BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY.
EDITED BY ROBERT CHAMBERS,
ASSISTED BV ROBERT CARRUTHER3 AND OTHER EMINENT GENTLEMEN.
Complete in two imperial octavo volumes, of more than fourteen hundred pages of douhh
column letter-press, and upwards of three hundred elegant illustrations.
Price, cloth, $5,00.
The work embraces about one thousand authors, chronologically arranged and classed as Poets, Historians, Dram-
atists, Philosophers, Metaphysicians, Divines, etc., with choice selections from their writings, connected by a IJiiv
graphical, Historical, and Critical Xairative ; thus presenting a complete view of English Literature, from the earliest
to the present time. Let the reader open where he will, he cannot fail to find matter for profit and delight. The
selections are gems — infinite riches in a little room; in the language of another, "A whole English Librakv
FUSED DOWN INTO ONE CHEAP BOOK ! "
{):5°"'^'i6 American edition of this valuable work is enriched by the addition of fine steel and mezzotint Engrav-
ings of the heads of Shakspeare, Addison, Bvron ; a full-length portrait of Dr. Johnson, and a beautiful scenic
representation of Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. These important and elegant additions, together with su-
perior paper and binding, render the American superior to all other editions.
EXTRACTS FROM COMMENDATORY NOTICES.
From W. H. Frtscott, Author of " Ferdinand and Isabella." " The plan of the work is very judicious. ... It will
put the reader in the proper point of view for surveying the whole ground over which he is travelling. . . . r^iirh
readers cannot fail to profit largely by the labors of the critic who has the talent and taste to separate what is really
beautiful and worthy of their study from what is superfluous."
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" It will be a useful and popular work, indispensable to the library of a student of English literature." — Francis
Wayland.
" We hail with peculiar pleasure the appearance '~f this work, and more especially its republication in this coun-
try at a price which places it within the reach of a great number of readers." — JVorth American. Review.
" This is the most valuable and magnificent contribution to a sound popular literature tliat this centurj- has brought
forth. It fills a place which was before a blank. Without it, English literature, to almost all of our countrjnien,
educated or uneducated, is an imperfect, broken, disjointed mass. Every intelligent man, every inquiriiis; iiiiiul,
every scholar, felt that the foundation was missing. Chambers's Cyclopedia supplies this radical defect. It bi^ins
with the beginning; and, step by step, gives to every one, who has the intellect or taste to enjoy it, a view of Eng-
lish literature in all its complete, beautiful, and perfect proportions." — Onondaga Democrat, JV. Y.
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a place in our district and other public libraries ; yet it should be the ' vade mecuin ' of ever>' scholar." — Tcuchirs'
Adoocate, Syracuse, JV. Y.
" Tlie design has been well executed by the selection and concentration of some of the best productions of Eng-
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eye with beauty, and the whole is suited to refine and elevate the taste. And we might ask, Who cai, tall ti> go
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ness.' " — Christian J\Iirrur, Portland.
" This Cyclopadia is executed with great fidelity and tact. Wc know no work which we can recommend nore
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" It is a good selection from the most renowned English writers, and has been fitly described as "o whale Eiiirii.-h
library fiLsed down into one cheap book." The Boston edition combines neatness with cheapness, engraved portraits
being given, over and above the illustrations of the English copy." — JV. Y. Commercial .Advertiser.
" Welcome ! more than welcome ! It was our good fortune some months ago to obtain a chince at this vvork, and
we have ever since looked with earnestness for its ajipearance in an American edition." — «Vea) Y(rk Recorder.
" The industr}', learning, and ability of Mr. Chambers are securities for the excellence of the work, and wo com-
mend it to every man of taste and letters as worthy of his patronage." — J\,'cw York Observer.
"This is an elegant reprint of the Edinburgh edition, and certainly presents a specimen of typograpliy and en-
graving of which we may be proud." — Ladies'' Repository, Boston.
"This publication winnows the grain from an interminable mass of literary- chaff; and. in this regard, is most
welcome to such a labor-saving age as that in wlilili ue live. No man of taste should fail of possessing a work
which is evidently a classic." Morning Signal, Cincinnati.
" It embodies a large amount of historical and biographical facts, and illustrates more pcrf.ctly than any other
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ordinary reader, it opens a store of information which be will not lie likely to obtain from any other source. We liopo
it may be widely circulated in this countrj-, and contribute something to the cultivation among our people of a tasto
for the literature of their mother tongue, and an acquaintance with ilie character of its best masters." — Protidinct
Journal.
GOULD AND LINCOLN, Pcblisueus, Bosto.v.
CHAMBERS'S MISCELLANY OF
USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING KNOWLEDGE
EDITED BY WILLIAM CHAMBERS,
EDITOR OF " Chambers's Edinburgh jourxal," etc.
Ten volumes, elegantly illustrated. Price, cloth, $10,00.
The design of Ihe Miscellany is to supply the increasing doniand for useful, instructive, and entertaining read-
iiz. and to bring all tlie aids of literature to hear on tke culticaiiun of the feelniirs and understandimr of the prujilf —
:o impress correct views on import.int moral and social questi.iiis — to furni.-li an unobtrusive friend and guide, a
iiitiy fireside companion, as far as that object can be attained througli the instniincntalit>' of bo(d<s.
This work is confidently commended to Teachers, School Committees, and all others interested in the fi.nnation
of " Schu<d Libraries," as the very best Work for this purpose. Its wide ranjie of subjects, presented in the most
[ioj.>ular ."tyle, makes it exceediniily interesting and instructive to all classes. The most flattering testimonials from
diilinfiuislied school teachers and others, expressing an earnest desire to have it introduced into all school libraries,
have been received by the publishers.
" I have examined with a pnod deal of care 'Chambers's Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Knowleiit'c,'
p.irticularly with reference to its suitableness to form parts of a library for young persons, h is, indeed, a bhrarij in
ir-p//; and one of great value, containing very choice solectivins in history, biography, natural history, poetry, art,
]]liysiol.)gy, elejiant fiction, and various departments of science, made with great taste and judgment, and with the
l.i.l:''-t m. ral and philanthropic jmrpose. It would be difficult to find any miscellany superior tjr even equal to it ;
it li' lily deserves the eiiilhcts ' useful and entertaining,' and I would recommend it veiy strongly, as extremely well
a lapled to form parts of a librarj' fir the young, or of a social or circulating library, in town or country." — Oeor^c
il. JCmer.-itin, E.ii]., Ckuirinaii of the Book Committee of the Budton iclwols.
" I am gratified to have an. opportunity to be instrumental in circulating ' Chambers's Miscellany ' among the
schools of the town for which I am Superintendent. I am vcrj' well acquainted wiih the merits of tlie work, hav-
ing a copy in my own librarj." — J. J. Clute, Toion Sitperint ndent of CadtlcUm, Richmond Co., JV. R.
" I am fully sati>fiod that it is one of the best series for our common school libraries now in circulation." — S. T.
H.inc-, Tuirn Su/ierinleiid nt of Jlucedon, W yne Co., A". Y.
" The trustees have examined it, and are well pleased with it. I have engaged the books to everj' district that had
library money." — Mites C'lajee, Town Superintendent of Concord, Erie Co., JV. Y.
" After satisfying myself, by a careful perusal, that Chambers's Miscellary are the rery brut bocks that have been
offered to our libraries, I put the volume into the hands of the trustees of the district, who, after examining it, have
asrecd to take full sets, as I did m t doubt they would. Put a volume into the hands of any intelligent tru^tee, and
it will recommend itself most effectually. Father and mother, grandpa and grandma. Hank and John, Kate and
Sup, from the oldest to the youngest member of the family that can read, all become equally cajitivated and absorbed
with reading; and one Vid ime will not satisfy them, so l.ng as others can be had ; and it gives me pleasure to add,
that, in my estiniatii;n, they are as useful as they are entertaining. I think the apparatus mania is nearly over, ai:(i
if these bcM.ks can he introduced, they will aicouipli-h whit I hive long tried lo etlect — namely, create a taste f^r
good reading." — Daniel Dowd, Town Superintemlent if Huron, IVuijne Co., JV. Y.
" I cannot resist the desire whirh [ feel to thank you for the valuable service which you have rendered to the pub-
lic by placing this admirable Wi.rk within the reach of all who have a desire to i bfain knowledge. I am m t ac-
quainted with any similar collection in the English language that can compare with it for purposes of instruction or
aiiuisement. I sh.uld rej.ice t.) see that set of books in every house in our coiintr}'. I cannot think of any method
by which a father can more materially benefit his children than by surrounding them with good books ; anil if these
ciiarming and attractive volumes can be placed in the hands of the young, they will have their tastes formed f..r
good reading. I shall labor to see the Miscellany circulated among my friends, and shall lose no opportunity to com-
luend it every where." — Rec. John 0. Choules, D. D.
" They contain an excellent selection of historical, scientific, and miscellaneous articles, in jiopular style, fn m the
best writers of the language. The work is elegantly printed and neatly illustrated, and is sold verj' cheap." — Inde-
pendrnt Dcmocr.t, Concord, JV. //.
" It is just the book to take up at the close of a busy day; and especially will it shed a new charm over autumn
and winter in-door scenes." — Ckristim World, Boston.
"The information contained in this work is surprisingly great ; and for the fire=ide, and the young particularly, it
••annot fail to prove a most valuable and entertaining companion." — JVew York Evangelist.
" \\v are glad to see an American issue of this publication, and especially in so neat and convenient a form. It
is an admirable compilation, distinguished by the good taste which has been shown in all the publications of llio
Messrs. Chambers. It unites the useful and tiie entertaining." — JV. Y. Commercial Aduertiser.
' It is an admirnble compilation, containing interesting memoirs and historical sketches, which are useful, instruc-
tive, and entertaining. Every head of a family should supply himself with a copy for the benefit of his children." —
Coming Journal.
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•' It is filled with subjects of interest, intended for the instruction of the youthful mind, such as biography, hi.-!tor)-,
anecdotes, natural philosophy, &c." — Mew O leans Bee.
" Our readers will bear us witness that we are not in the habit of 'pufling' indiscriminately the periodical and
serial publications of the day ; hut so impressed are we, from such indications as have been afforded, .md In ni Ihe
character of the editor and publishers of this .Miscellany, that it will prove a most entertaining and useful work, and
especially valuable to those who are forming their reading habits, and to parents who would cultivate a orici t
la.-.te ill their children, that we cannot refrain from thus, in advance, asking attention to it." — lalmyra Courier, JV. Y.
" Its aim is more desultory and practical than the Cyclipaedia, but if is compiled with equal judgment, and adapte:i
to the wants of the people. Its neat and convenient style, as well as its cheapness, warrant the belief that it will
be a most siicce.ssful work." — Literary IVorld.
" The character of the contents, and the reputation of the editor, will give it a wide circulation. Its design is,
' to furnish an iiiiolitrusive friend and guide, a lively fireside companion, as far as that object can be obtained through
Uie inslrumenta.'ity of books.'" Viw York Recorder.
GOULD AND LINCOLN, Puuhsiieks, Boston.
'-JarSain
iSULiXltiSli'lsi.i^ailsio
&jsro/v. Goui.!
AW JMCOJ
CTCLOPiEDIA
-ENGLISH LITERATURE
A SELECTION OF
THE CHOICEST rRODUCTIONS OF ENGLISH AUTIlOllS,
FROM THE EARLIEST TO THE TRESENT TDIE,
CONNECTED Br 1
CRITICAL AND BIOOrvAPHICAL HISTORY.
ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED.
EDITED BT
ROBERT C H A ai B E R S ,
EDITOR OF THE " EUINBURGH JOURNAL," "" IJifORMATIO.N KuB THE PEOi'LE," ETO. ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY GOULD AND LINCOLN,
5 9 WASHINGTON STREET.
1854.
PREFACE.
Tms work originated in a desire, on the part of the Publishers, to supply what they considered a defi-
ciency in the Literature addressed at the present time to the great body of the People. In the late
efforts for the improvement of the popular mind, the removal of mere ignorance has been the chief
object held in -view : attention has been mainly given to what might be expected to impart technical
knowledge ; and in the cultivation of what is certainly but a branch of the intellectual powers, it has
been thought that the great end was gained. It is not necessary here to present arguments establishing
that there are faculties for cognising the beautiful in art, thought, and feeling, as well as for perceiving
and enjoying the truths of physical science and of fact. Nor is it needful to show how elegant and
reflective literature, especially, tends to moralise, to soften, and to adorn the soul and life of man.
Assuming this as granted, we were anxious to take the aid of the press — or rather of the Printing
Machine, for by it alone could the object be accomplished — to bring the belles lettres into the list of
those agencies which are now operating for the mental advancement of the middle and humbler por-
tions of society.
It appeared that, for a first effort, nothing could be more suitable than a systematised series of
extracts from our national authors ; " a concentration" — to quote the language of the prospectus — " of
the best productions of English intellect, from Anglo-Saxon to the present times, in the various depart-
ments headed by Chaucer, Shakspeare, ^lilton — by More, Bacon, Locke — by Hooker, Taylor, Barrow —
by Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith — by Hume, Robertson, Gibbon — set in a biographical and critical history
of the literature itself." By this a double end might, it seemed, be served; as the idea of the work in-
cluded the embodiment of a distinct and valuable portion of knowledge, as well as that mass of polite
literature which was looked to for the effect above described. In the knowledge of what has been done
by English literary genius in all ages, it cannot be doubted that we have a branch of the national history,
not only in itself important, as well as interesting, but which reflects a light upon other departments of
history — for is not the Elizabethan Drama, for example, an exponent, to some extent, of the state of the
national mind at the time, and is it not equally one of the influences which may be presumed to have
modified that mind in the age which followed ? Nor is it to be overlooked, how important an end is to
be attained by training the entire people to venerate the thoughtful and eloquent of past and present
times. These gifted beings may be said to have endeared our language and institutions— our national
character, and the very scenery and artificial objects which mark our soil — to all who are acquainted
with, and can appreciate their writings. A regard for our national authors enters into and forms part
of the most sacred feelings of every educated man, and it would not be easy to estimate in what degree
it is to this sentiment that we are indebted for all of good and great that centres in the name of Eng-
land. Assuredly, in our common reverence for a Shakspeare, a Milton, a Scott, we have a social and
uniting sentiment, which not only contains in itself part of our happiness as a people, but much that
counteracts influences that tend to set us in division.
A more special utility is contemplated for this work, in its serving to introduce the young to the
Pantheon of English authors. The " Elegant Extracts" of Dr Knox, after long enjoying popularity as a
selection of poUte literature for youths between school and college, has of late years sunk out of notice, in
consequence of a change in public taste. It was almost exclusively devoted to the rhetorical literature,
elegant but artificial, which flourished during the earlier half of the eighteenth century, overlooking even
the great names of Chaucer and Spenser, as well as nearly the whole range of rich, though not faultless
productions extending between the times of Shakspeare and Dryden. Tlie time seemed to have come for
a substitute work, in which at once the revived taste for our early literature should be gratified, and due
attention be given to the authors who have lived since the time of Knox. Such a work it has been tho
humble aim of the editor to produce in that which is now laid before the public
He takes this opportunity of acknowledging that very important assistance has been rendered through-
out the Cyclopaedia of English Literature, and particularly in the jKjetical department, by Mr Kobert
Carruthers of Inverness.
#
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page
Paje
Pas*
1 niuniinalion— Monk writing,
I
Autocrraph of Sir Philip Sidney, -
232
View of St T>awTence Church,
434
' Chair iif Hede, -
3
Portrait of Kichard Hooker, -
2:i5
Portrait of Dr Robert South, -
441
! niiiniinatiDii— a Minstrel,
8
Portrait of Lord IJacon,
2.!9
View of Lslip Church,
441
' r<irtrai' of Chaucer, -
12
Autograph of liacon, -
2.39
Portrait of Uichard Baxter, -
1M
1 Cliaufor's Tomb, - - -
14
Monument of Itacon,
241
View of Ury House,
461
; Tabard Inn, SniitUwark,
14
Portrait of Sir Walter Kaleigh,
244
Portrait of John lUmyan,
4fifi
Portrait of Cmvcr,
24
Autograph of lialeigh.
?44
View of the liirthplace of Bunyan,
467
j CathLKlral of Aberdeen,
25
View of 11 ayes Farm, the Birthplace
Portrait of Lord Clarendon,
475
] View of Loclileven,
2«
ofHaleigh,
244
View of Dunkirk House, the London |
Portrait of WicUliffe, -
35
Stow's Monument in the church of
residence of Lord Clarendon,
476
Cliair of Wickliffe,
35
St Andrew under Shaft, London,
249
Portrait of Gilbert Burnet,
486
i niuniination-Early Printing-Office
36
Portrait of James Howell,
2.«
I'ortrait of Sir William Temple,
5<>l
Portrait of James I. of Scotland, -
3e
Autograph of Howell,
£;-.«
Portrait of John Locke,
»«
View of Diinkuld Catlie<lral, -
44
Portrait of William Camden, -
262
Autograph of Locke,
fjS
Portrait of Howard, Karl of Surrey,
4I>
Autograph of Camden,
262
View of the l!irthi)lace of Locke,
509
Portrait of Sir David Lyndsay,
4!!
Portrait of Thom:is .May,
264
Seal of Locke, -
510
Portrait of William Caxton, -
55
Portrait of Thomas Hobbes,
266
Portrait of the Ilonourable Robert
! Portrait of Sir Tliomas Jlore,
59
Portrait of Kobert Burton,
272
Boyle, ....
516
' AutoKrapli of Sir Tliomas More,
5!)
Tomb of Uurton, . . -
274
Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, -
521
1 Bust of John I.cland, -
C!l
Portrait of John Selden,
282
View of the Birthplace of .Newton,
521
' Portrait of William TjTidale,
-•■i
Autograph of Selden,
282
Portrait of Thomas R,niier,
527
; Portrait of Sir Jolin Chel<e,
74
View of the House of Selden, -
28.3
Portrait of Sir CJeorge Mackenzie,
5;i0
I Autoixrapli of Itoijer Ascham,
/«
Portrait of Archbishop Fsher,
2K5
Monument of Sir George Mackenzie
Illumination— Spenser introduced
Portrait of William Ch llingworth.
285
(ireyf rials Churchyard, lOdinburgl
1,530
by Sydney to Klizabctli,
7!)
Portrait of Jeremy Taylor,
2<(0
Illumination — Rape of the Lock, -
534
Portrait of Thomas Sack villa.
ijli
Portrait of Sir Thcmias IJrowne,
2<ia
Portrait of Matthew Prior,
6.35
; Portrait of Kdniund Spenser, -
m
Portrait of John Knox,
3(1.3
-A utograph of Prior,
535
i View of Kiliolman Castle,
87
View of the liirthplace of Knox,
3ll.'i
Portrait of Joseph Addison,
540
; Portrait of Micliacl Dravton, -
ai
Portrait of Archbishop Spottiswood,
3(K)
Autograph of Addi.son,
540
i Portrait of Sir Henry Wotton,
104
Ilium nation— .Milton Dictat.ng to
View of Addisim's Walk, Magdalen
■ Monumental Httigy of l)r Donne,
llll
his Daughter,
312
ColLge, Oxford,
541
j View of IVnsliui-st,
114
Portrait of Abraham Cowle}', -
312
View of Holland House,
542
■ View of Norwich Cathedral,
111.
Autograph of Cowley,
312
Portrait of Jonathan Swift,
545
Portrait of Krancis Heaumont,
119
View of the House of Cowley, -
313
Autograph of Swift,
545
Port rai t > 'f ( ; d iriie 1 1 orbert ,
131
View i>f the Poets' Corner, West-
View of tlie Tomb of Swift in Dub-
! Bust of Hubert Merrick, -
139
minster Abbey, ...
323
lin Cathe<Iral,
547
Autograpli of Uobert llcrrick.
139
Portrait of Kdniund Waller, -
325
Portrait of .Mexander Pope,
554
1 View of tlie IJirthplace of Uandnlph,
145
View of Wallers Tomb, -
32li
Autograph of Pope,
554
1 Portrait of S r William Davenant,
14(i
Portrait of John Milton,
328
View of Pope's Villa, Twickenham,
5.W
1 View of Letliin:jton Castle,
155
View of Ludlow Castle,
32!)
Portrait of John Gay,
570
i Viewof I,o,'ie Kirk,
l.-.()
View of .Milton's Cottage at Ch.il-
Autograph of Gay,
5/0
1 View of I'allilaud Palace,
157
font, - . ■ .
33(1
Portrait of Thomas Parnell,
576
View of tlie House of the Earl of
Fac-simile of Milton's Second Re-
.Autograph of S<mierville,
580
Stirling, . - - -
158
ce pt to S inmons.
a3(l
L'rn erecteil by Shcnstonc to Somer-
Portrait of Drummond of llaw-
View of the Keinains of Milton's
ville, ....
581 1
thornden.
158
House at P'orest Hill,
a^->
Portrait of Allan Ramsay,
582 j
Vie.v of llawtliomden, the seat of
Portrait of Andrew MarvcU, -
343
Autograph of Ramsay,
582
Druninioiid, ...
159
Portrait of S.imuel liutler,
345
View of Uamsiiy Lodge,
583
Portrait of Buchanan, -
Kil
View of l{o>e Street, London, in
Portrait of .Nicholas Howe.
590
AutoRiaph of liudianan, •
Kil
which llotlcr. lied,
346
Autogrnph and Seal of Vanbrugh,
597
View of Ciray'b Inn Hall,
l&i
Portrait of John Dryden,
mi
Uliimiiiation — Steele Writing the
! View of (! lobe Tlieatre, -
16.5
Autograph of John Dryden,
ajo
Tatler in a Cort'ee-Room,
602
i Bust of ShalisiMMre,
176
View of Uurlcigh House,
361
P<irtrait of Sir Richard Steele,
0U2
i Autograpli if shakspeare, -
176
Portrait of Thomas Otway,
386
View of Steele's House at Llan-
' View of the Uirthplace of Shak-
Illumination— Preacher of the Se-
gunnor, ...
605
1 speare, - - - -
177
venteenth Century, -
,396
Portrait of Daniel Defoe, -
617
1 View of Charlecote ITouse,
178
Portrait of Algernon Sidney,
405
View of Stanton Ilarcourt, Oxford-
Goblet from the Hoar's -Head
Portrait of Lady Kachel UusseU,
407
shire, ...
638
Tavern, . - - -
190
Portrait of Tliomas Fuller,
411
.\utograph of Lord Bolingbroke, -
646
Portrait of Ben Jonson,
191
View of Old St Bride's Church, .
412
I'.olingbnike's .Monument in Batter-
t
Aut(CTa[ili of lien Jonson,
191
Portrait of lza;ik ^Valtoll,
415
sea Church, . . -
647
1 View of Falcon Tavern,
193
ViewofWaltou's House, -
415
Portr.iit of Lady Mary Wortley
1 Portrait of i'letcber.
2II.3
Portrait of John F.velyn,
419
Montagu,
650
1 Portra t of I'liilip .M;iS3ingcr, •
217
View of the House of Fvelyn,
420
Portrait of the Earl of Sh;iftesbur)-,
655
j Ulinu i nation— Ualeigh writing in
I'ortrait of Sir Uoger L'F.strange,
42.1
View of Heiitley's Seat, iu Trinity
Prison, . . - -
232
Portrait of Dr Isaac Harrow, -
428
(JolU-ge ChaiK-l,
(m \
Portrait of Sir Philip Sidney,
232
I'ortrait of Archbishop Tillotson, -
434
Portr.tit of Chailes Leslie,
«i7
CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1400.
Page
Awolo-Saxov AVritkrs, .... 1
Ir<T I'.iiDii THIN OK NoR.MAV FrfVch, ... 3
The Nok.man I'ohts ok KNiii.AND, . . 4
COMSIKNCKMKNT OK TH K I'RKSKNT FoRM OP KWOI.ISH, 4
Si'EciMKvs OK Anglo-Saxon AND English 1'revious
TO l;ti(i, ...... 5
Extnict fnmi the Saxon riirnnicle, nri4, . 5
Extrai't fniiii tlie aci-diiiit nf the I'mcei'dinirsi at Arthur's
Cdiiiiiatiun, K'ven bv Layunion, ill his translation uf
Waco, exei-utoil about Ulio, ... 5
Extrat-t from a t'liarter of Tlunry III., a. d. l:?.j!!, in the
coninion langiiaffe of the time, ... 6
ThK Hh VSIINd t'HRONiri.KHS, .... 6
Tlio .Muster for the First Crusade, . . C
Tlie Sii'neiif Antioch, ..... 7
The lute- vii-w of Voitigem with Rowen, tlie beautiful
I)aui;literof llenu'i>t, .... 8
Fabulour. aecoiint of tlie first Highways in nngland, 8
Praise of <;oo(l Women, .... 8
English .Metrical Ro.MAwrES, ... 8
K.\tiaet from tlie King of Tars, . . . 9
Extract froiM the Siiuire of Low neorree, . . 10
Immediate I'liEDEcEssoRs OK Chauckr, . , 11
What is in Heaven, . . . . 11
ROKERT I.ANGLAND, ..... 11
Extracts from Pierce Plow-man, . . . 11
Geokkrkv ('hai'( er, ..... 12
Select Characters from the Canterbury Pilgrimage, l.i
Pescriptiiin of a Poor Country Widow, . . IH
The Death of Arcite, .... IH
Pepartore iif Custance, . . . . lii
The Pardoner's Tale, .... I!)
The C.o.i<I Parson, .... 22
An Ironical IJallad on the Duplicity of Women, . 2-2
Last Verses of Chaucer, written on his Deathbed, . 2.'!
John Cowkr, ..... 2.!
Episode of Rosiphele, ..... 24
The Kiivious .Man and the Miser, . . 25
JOH.v Uahboi'r, ...... 2.')
Apostrophe to Freedom, .... 2(i
Death of Sir Henry De Mohun, . . .21)
The Uattle of Uannockburn, ... 21!
Andrew Wvntou.v, ..... 28
St Scrf^ liam, .... 2H
Interview of St Serf with SatlLTnai!, . . . 2S
The Return of King David II. from Captivity, . 2.'i
Blind Hakrv, ... ... 2!)
Adventure of Wallace while fishing in Irvine Water, 2'.l
Escape of Wallace from Perth, ... 3o
The Death of Wallace, .... 31
PROSK WRITERS OF THE FOL'IITEENTII CENTURY.
Sir .John MANnEviLLR, .... 32
A .Mohanie<l.in'n Lecture on Christian Vices, . 32
The Di'\ M's Head in the \ alley Perilous, . a'J
Grokkbkv Chaucbr, ..... 34
<)n Hitlics, ...... 34
John Wu Ki.iKKK, ..... a;
TheMagnilicat, ..... 36
FROM 1400 TO 1J33.
POETS.
Paga
Kino .Taimes T. OF SroTLANi>, ... 36
James I., a Prisoner in Windsor, first sees Lady Jane
Reaufort, wlio afterwards was his Queen, . 3?
John I.vdoate, .... SJ
Descr-jition of a Sylvan Retreat, . 38
The London Lycl<i)cnny, .... 38
RORERT Henryson, .... 3g
Dinner given by the Town .Mouse to the Country Jlouse, 38
39
39
40
41
42
43
4.1
44
l>oni the .Moral
The (ianuent of fiood Ladies,
William l)f\ hah.
The .Merle and .Nightingale,
The Dance, ....
Tidini.'s fra the Ses-ion,
Of Di-eivtioo in Giving and Tailing, .
Oavin Doiiii.As,
Apostrophe to Honour, .... 44
RlcirTiing n .May, ..... 44
John Sk ELTON, ...... 43
To .Mistress .Margaret Ilussey, ... 45
Earl ok Si'krev, ..... 46
Prisoner in Windsor, he recounteth his Pleasure there
passed, ...... 46
Descri]ition and Praise of his Love Geraldine, . 47
How nil a.L'c is content witli his uwn estate, and how the
age iif eh Idren is the happiest, if they had skill to uii-
derstaiiil it, .... . 47
The .Means to att.-iin Happy Life, ... 4"
Sir Tho.mas Wvatt, .... 47
The Lover's lute cannot be blamed, though it sing of his
Lady's unKimlness, ..... 47
Tlie iv-eurcd l.nvcrexulteth in his Freedom, and voweth
til rcinain free until Death, . . 48
That Pleasure is mixed with every Pain, . , 48
The Courtier's Life, .... 48
(If the .Mean and Sure Kstate, . . .48
Thomas Ti'sSER, ..... 48
Diieetiims for Cultivating a IIop-Garden, . 48
Housewifely Physic, .... 4.')
.Moral Reflections on tlie Wind, ... 49
Sir Da viD LvNDSA V, .... 49
A Carman's Account of a Law-'Jiiit, ... 50
Suiiplication in Cnnteinptinn uf Siile Tails, 50
The liuililing of the Tower of liabel, and Confusion of
Tonuues, ...... 50
MisrEi.LANEOi's Pieces ok the Second Period, 51
A Praise of his ithe Poct'si Lady, ... 51
Amantium Ira- Amoris Redintegratij est. Ry Richard
I'.dwards. l,i2.'i-I.V«;, .... 51
Characteristic of an ICuglishman. I5y Andrew Rourd 51
The Nut-Brown .Maid, . . .52
PROSE WRITERS.
Sir ,Iohn Fortesite, .... 54
English Courage, ..... 64
What harm would come to England if the Commons
thereof were Poor, .... 54
vii
' CYCLOPEDIA OP ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Page
P-^
William Caxton, . . . • •
54
Christopher Marlow — Joshua Sylvester— Richard | |
1 Legend of St Francis, ....
55
Barnfield, ....
84
! The Deposition of King Vortigem,
65
The Passionate SI>epherd to his Love,
84
Jack Cade's Insurrection, . . . •
56
The Nympli's Reply to the Passionate Shei)herd—
Raleigh, 84
Scene in the Council-Room of the Protector Gloucester,
68
The Soul's Errand,
85
Sir Thomas Morb, . . . • •
58
Address to the Nightingale,
83
Letter to Lady More, ....
60
Edmund Spenser, ....
83
Character of Richard m., ....
60
Una and tlie Redcross Knight,
89
The Utopian Idea of Pleasure,
60
Adventure of Una with the Lion,
89
^OHN Fischer, ....••
62
The Bower of Bliss, ....
90
Cliaracter and Habits of the Coimtess of Richmond,
62
The Squire and the Dove,
91
BiR Thomas Elyot, . . . • •
64
Wedding of the Jledway and the Tbam'^s,
92
Different Kinds of Exercise, ....
64
The House of Sleep, . .
93
HcoH Latimer, .....
64
Description of Belphcebe,
93
A Yeoman of Henry VII's time,
65
Fable of the Oak and the Briar, .
94
Hasty Judgment, .....
65
From the Epithalamion, . • .
95
Cause and Effect, .....
65
Robert Southwell, . .
96
The Shepherds of Bethlehem,
66
The Image of Death, ....
96
John Fox, ......
67
Times go by Turns, . . ■
96
The Invention of Printing,
67
Love's Servile Lot, ....
96
i The Death of Queen Anne Bolej-n,
68
Scorn not the Least, . .
97
A notable History of William Hunter, a young man of
Samuel Daniel, ....
97
19 j'cars of age, pursued to death by Justice Brown for
From the Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland
97
the Gospel's sake, worthy of all young men and parents
Richard II , the Morning before his Murder in Pomfret ] |
to be read, .....
68
Castle
96
John Lkland, . .....
69
Early Love, .....
98
Georob Cavendish, ....
70
Selections from Daniel's Sonnets, . .
98
King Henrj-'s Visits to Wolsey's House,
70
Michael Drayton, ....
98
Lord Berners, .....
71
Morning in Warwickshire — Description of a Stag-Hi»nt, 99
Battle of Cressy, .....
71
Part of the Twenty-Eighth Song of the Polyolbion, 100
John Bellenden, .....
71
David and Goliah, ....
102
Part of the Story of Macbeth,
71
Edward Fairfax, ....
103
The New Maneris and the Auld, of Scottis,
72
Description of Armida and her Enchanted Girdle
, . 103
Extract from the Complaynt of Scotland,
72
Rinaldo at Mount Olivet and the Enchanted Wood, 103
Bishop Bale, .....
73
Sir John Hap.bington,
104 1
j Death of Lord Cobham, ....
73
Of Treason, .....
104
' William Tyndale, ....
73
Of Fortune, ....
104
Miles Covbrdale, .....
74
Against Writers that carp at other Men's Books,
104 i
j Passage from T>-ndale'9 Version of the Bible,
74
Of a Precise Tailor,
104 1
1 Passage from Coverdale's Version, . . .
74
Sir Henry Wotton, ....
104 <
Sir John Cheke, .....
74
To his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, .
104 1
Remonstrance with Levellers, . •
75
A Farewell to the Vanities of the World,
105
Thomas AVilson, .....
75
The Character of a Happy Life,
105
I Simplicity of Style Recommended, . . .
75
Shakspeare, .....
105
j Moral Aim of Poetry,
75
The Horse of Adonis,
106 !
1 Roger Ascham, ....••
76
Venus's Prophecy after the Death of Adonis,
106 j
Study should be relieved by Amusement,
76
Selections from Sliakspeare's Sonnets,
106 '
! The Blowing of the AVind, ....
77
Selections from Shakspeare's Songs, . .
• 107 j
Occupations should be chosen suitable to the Natural
Sir John Davies, ....
108 1
Faculties,
77
The Dancing of the Air,
108 I
Detached Observations from the Schoolmaster,
78
Reasons for the Soul's Immortality, .
109 1
Qualifications of a Historian, . . .
79
The Dignity of Man, ....
109
John Donne, .... 109
Address to Bishop Valentine, on the Day of the Marriage
C^trtr l^erfotr.
of the Elector Palatine to the Princess Elizabeth, 110
Valediction— Forbidding Mourning, . . .110
THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH, JAMES I., AND
TheWiU
111
CHARLES I. [1558 TO 1649.]
A Character from Donne's Satires, .
111
Joseph Hall, .....
113
POETS.
Selections from Hall's Satires,
112
Ben Jonson, .....
112
Thomas Sackttlle, .....
80
To Celia, .....
113
Allegorical Characters from the Mirrour for Magistrates,
80
The Sweet Neglect, ....
113
' Henry Duke of Buckmgham in the Infernal Regions,
82
Hj-mn to Diana, ....
113
John Harrinoton, ....
82
To Night, ......
113
Sonnet made on Isabella Markham, .
82
Song — (Oh do not wanton with those eyes), .
113
Sir Philip Sidney, . . . •
82
To Celia, ......
113
Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney, ....
82
Her Triumph, . . , , ,
113
[ BiR Walter Raleioh— Timothy Kendal— Nicholas
Good Life, Long Life,
114
Breton— Henry Constable,
83
Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke, .
114
The Country's Recreations— Raleigh,
83
Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H., .
114
Farewell to Town— Breton, . .
83
On my First Daughter, . . .
114
Bonnet — Constable, . . • • •
84
ToPenshurst, ....
114
riii
CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
Page
To the Memory of my Beloved Master, William
Shak-
The Votaress of Diana, , .
gpeare, and what he hath left us, .
115
William Cartwrioht, ....
On the Portrait of Shakspeare,
115
To a Lady Veiled,
Richard Corbbt, ....
116
A Valediction, .....
To Vincent Corbet, his Son,
116
To Chloe, .....
Journey to France, ....
116
The Dream, .....
Farewell to the Fairies,
117
Love inconccalable, ....
BiR John Bkaumont— Dr IIkjjry Kino,
. 117
To Cupid, ......
On my dear Son, Gervase Beaumont, .
118
Robert Herrick, . . . . .
Song— (Dry those fair, those crystal eyes).
118
To Blossoms, .....
Sic Vita,
118
To Daffodils, ......
The Dirge, .....
118
The Kiss— a Dialogue, ....
Francis Beaumont, . . .
118
To the Virgins, to make much of their Time,
Letter to Ben Jonson, . .
119
Twelfth Night, or King and Queen,
On the Tombs in Westminster,
119
The Country Life, . . . . .
An Epitaph, .....
119
Julia, ......
Thomas Carew, ....
120
Upon Julia's Recovery, . . . ,
Song— (Ask me no more where Jove bestows).
120
The Bag of tlie Bee, ....
The Compliment, ....
120
Upon a Child tliat Died
Song— (Would you know what's soft ?
120
Epitaph upon a Child, ....
A Fastoral Dialogue,
121
A Thanksgiving for his House, . . ,
Song— (Give me more love, or more disdain),
121
To Primroses, filled with Morning Deir, . .
Persuasions to Lora,
121
Delight in Disorder, . . . , .
Disdain Returned, ....
121
To find God, .....
Approach of Spring, . .
121
Cherry Ripe, ......
Phineas AND Giles Fletcher,
122
To Corinna, to go a Maying,
Happiness of the Shepherd's Life,
122
Richard Lovelace, . . . . .
Decay of Human Greatness, .
123
Song — (Why should you swear I am forsworn ?) .
Description of Parthenia, or Chastity,
125
The Rose, ......
The Rainbow, .....
123
Song — (Amarantha, sweet and fair), . .
The Sorceress of Vain Delight,
124
To Lucasta, on going to the Wars,
Georob Wither, ....
125
To Althea, from Prison, ....
The Companionship of the Muse,
125
Thomas Randolph, . • . . .
Sonnet upon a Stolen Kiss, . . .
126
To my Picture, .....
The Steadfast Shepherd, .
126
To a Lady admiring herself in a Looking-Glass, .
Madrigal— (Amaryllis I did woo), . •
. 127
Sir William Davenant, ....
Christmas, .....
127
To the Queen, ......
William Browns, ....
128
Song — (The lark now leaves his watery nest).
A Descriptive Sketch, . . .
128
Description of the Virgin Birtha,
Evening, . . . • •
128
John Cleveland, .....
Night,
129
On Phillis, Walking before Sunrise, . . .
Pastoral Employments, . . .
129
James Shirley, .....
The SjTen's Song, ....
129
Death's Final Conquest, . . . .
Francis Quarles, . • • .
129
Upon his Mistress Sad, ....
Stanzas, .....
129
Echo and Narcissus, . . . . .
The Shortness of Life,
129
Richard Crashaw, . . .
MorsTua, .....
130
Music's Duel, ......
The Vanity of the World,
130
Temperance, or the Cheap Physician, .
Delight in God only, . . .
130
HjTnn to the Name of Jesus, . . .
Decay of Life, . . • . «
130
Sir Richard Fanshawe, . . .
To Chastity, . . • .
131
A Rose, ......
Georob Herbert, . • • •
131
A Rich Fool, .....
Virtue, .....
132
Song— The Saint's Encouragement, . . .
Religion, .....
132
Song— The Royalist, ....
Stanzas, .....
132
Lady Elizabeth Carevt, . . . .
Matin Hymn, . . • . •
132
Revenge of Injuries, ....
Sunday, . . • . •
132
Mortification, .....
133
SCOTTISH POKTS.
William Habinotoh, .
133
Alexander Scot, .....
Epistle to a Friend, ....
133
Hondcl of Love, . . . . .
Description of Castara, . . .
134
To his Heart, .....
BiR John Suckling, ....
134
Sir Richard Maitland, . . . .
Song— ('Tis now, since I sat down before).
135
Satire on the To%\ti Ladies, •
A Ballad upon a Wedding,
135
Alexander BIontgomery, . . • .
Constancy, .....
136
Alexander Hume, .....
Bong— (I prithee send me back my heart).
136
Kino James VI., . . . . .
Song— (AMiy so pale and wan, fond lover ?)
136
Ane Sehort Pocme of Tj-me, . . .
The Careless Lover, ....
136
Earl OF Ancrum— Earl OF Stirling, . .
Song— (Hast thou seen the down in the air 7)
136
Sonnet in Praise of a Solitary Life, • .
Detraction Execrated,
130
William Drummond, . . . . .
John Chalkhill, ....
137
The River of Forth Feasting, . .
The Witch's Cave, ....
. 137
Epitaph on Prince Henry, ....
The Priestess of Diana, . • •
138
To his Lute, . . . • •
CYCLOP-SDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
I'age
P.^'0
The Praise of a Solitary Life,
Kill
Generosity of Ca-mr, ....
■AH
Ti)u NiKlitLngule, .....
Hill
Gref iif Aspatia for the Marriage of Aniintor and ;|
Siiiiiiets, ....••
Kill
Kvadne, .....
2i<a
BlR l{l>KKRT AVTON, ....
If.l
I'alamnn and Arcite, Captives in Greece,
■H»i
Oil Wdinan's Int-Dnstancy, ....
Kit
Disinterestedness of liiancha.
207
1 di) fiinfess thoii'it Siiumtli nnii Fair,
Kil
I'listiiial Li.ve, . . . . .
iiiH
GkoKUK UlU-HANAM— DB AbTHUK J0HW8TOII,
llil
MehinclK.ly, ....
•Mt 1
Tlie l.lTtli I'siilin, .....
Kii
S.iug — . Loiik out, bright eyes, and bless the air),
20!)
Thf Kirht of May, .....
Wi
The I'.nver of Love,
2li!»
Ou >'ua;ra, ......
m
ToSl.cp,
21 U
Soim to Fan, at the conclusion of the Faithful
Shep-
DRAMATISTS.
heriless, .....
211)
JoHV TTeywood, ......
10.1
G korok Chapman, ....
211)
Nkoi.as I'dall, .....
lti4
Thomas Dkkkkh, ....
211
John Still, ......
104
John Wkhstkr, ....
211
Thomas Sackvillb, .....
lt>4
Scene tVoni the Duchess of Malfy, .
212
nu-HAKu KUU'AKDS, .....
l(i4
Deathof the Duchess,
212
Gkurgk Whktstonk, ....
l(i4
Thomas Miuui.KToN, . . .
21.'i i
J IHN LVLV, ......
Kill
Happiness of Married Life, . . .
214
Cupid and Campaspe, . . .
KUi
Song— iConie away, come away), •
214
SoMK— 1 Vi'Uiit b.rd bo slugs, yet so does wail 7)
i«ii;
.John .Mak.ston, ....
213
Gkokuk l't:KLK, .....
Kili
KubEKT 'I'avlor- William UowLSif — Cyril
TOUR-
I'liilogue to Iving David and Fair lictlisabe, .
lli7
NKI'R, .
21.5
Thomas Kvd, .....
K.7
Scene from the Witch of Kdmonton,
21.0
Tho.ma.s Nash, ......
lliH
A Drowne<l .Soldier, ....
216
ItoilKKT ClKKKKR, .... *
KW
G KOBUK Cook K— Thomas .N'abmi^s— Nathaniki. I"
K 1. —
Content— A Sonnet, .....
llifi
John Dav— IIknuv Glapthokne— Tho.mas
liAN-
Sepliestia's Song to licr Cliild,
I(i!)
DOI.I'H — Ull'HAKD 1JKU.ME,
216
TIr- Sliepherd and his Wife,
iriii
Philip .Massinijkr, ....
21(5
Thomas Lougk, ......
l?>
A .Midnight Scene,
217 i
Heauty, ......
171
Pride i.f Sir (iiles Overreach in his Daughter,
217 1
Kosaliud's Madrigal, .....
171
Ciiinpassi.m for M.sfcirtune,
2IU
Love,
171
l')'e.|ii.il Love,
21)1 i
Christophkr Marlow, ....
171
John I'oiio, ......
219
Scenes fnmi Marlow's Faustiis,
m
A D\iug lleiiuest, ....
221!
l'iL■^saKes from tlie Jew of .Malta,
17.1
Contention ..f a liird and a Musician,
2;!()
Scene From MarloWs Kihxaul 11.,
174
Tho.MAS 11 KVWIIOI), ....
2-JI
Anthony MuNDAV — 11 knrv Ch k.ttls,
174
Song — . Pack cli.iids away, and welcome dayl.
221
Scene from Arden of Feversliam, . . .
17.'>
Shepherd's Song, ....
2l'2
1 William Shaksi'kahe, ....
17ii
Shi|n\reck by Drink,
222
( Murder (if King I iimc-an, . . • .
1111
Ja.mks Shihi.ky, ....
222
Liive Scene by .Night in a Garden,
in-j
The Prcd gal l.ady, . . ...
22.I
Description of a .Mminliglit -N.ght, with Fine Music,
1)14
.SieiiefP.m the Hall, ....
2l'4
Ghost Scene in I lamlc*. ....
1K4
.Ml SI Ki.i.ANKoi-s Pi KCKs OP the Third Pkriod,
22.)
Mark Antony over Ca'sar's Hody, . . .
IK.-,
Coiivnial Song, by llishop Still, .
225
Otlielln'„ Itelatiou of his Courtship to the Senate,
iJtIJ
My .Mind to nica Kingd.ini is.
22.7
Queen .Mab,
iKIi
S.ing— .What pleasui-e have great princes).
22.'>
1 Kn.li.f all F.artlily Glories,
1(1(1
Meditat'ou when we go to IJed,
22j
i Life and Death \\"eis;ied, ....
187
Meditation, ...
22(i
Fear of Death, .....
1»7
Tale of Argentile and Curan,
22(i
Description of Ophelia's Drowning,
I«7
Sonnet, ......
22(1
I'ci-si-verance, ......
1)17
Tlie Wo,.ilmnn's Walk,
22(1
The Deceit of Ornament or Appearances,
DC
There is a (iardeii in her Faco, . . .
22H
Mercy, .......
I}ti<
IJ.ibin ( dfell.iw
2£)
Bi'litiide preferred to a Court Life, and the Advantages
The Old aniMoiing Courtier,
22!)
; of .Adversity, .....
im
Time's Alteration, ....
2;m
' The World compared to a Stage,
lUK
Loyalty Cnnlincd, .....
Stll
Description of Ninht in a Camp, .
1)W
j The Hlessings of a Shepherd's Life, .
IHH
PROSE WRITERS. -
The Vicissitudes .if Life, ....
!HI)
Sir Philip Sidnky, ....
2.32
1 Fnlstaff'h Cowardice and Hoastine, .
Dill
A Tempest, ......
ZVi
FalstafT arrested by his Hostess Dame Quickly, .
IINl
Desei-ipMon of Arcadia, . . .
2:a
B*N .loNSON, ......
III!
A Stag Hunt, . . . .
2:i.'t
The Fall of Catiline, ....
l!l.!
Praise iil Poetry, ....
2;i4
; Aeciisiition and Death of Siliiis in the Senate-House,
I!M
liOlU) UllRI.KIOH, .....
z»
L.rve
II).'.
Choice of a Wife, ....
2,'M
A Simpleton and a Hrargadi Kill, .
uh;
I)..iiiestie I'.eonomy, ....
2.34
Biibadil's I'lan for SaviiiK the ICxpense of ;\n Array,
I!»7
iMhieation of Chil.lren, . . .
2.35
j Adv ce to a Heckless Youth, ....
I'.c
Sill et\slii|i and Horrowing, . . .
235
; The Alchemist, .....
1<I7
I!l( HARD II11OKRR, ....
SXi
TiiK CoiRT Masqi'ksok thk Sevbntes-th Cbntury,
!!«)
Siiiptiire and the La^V of Nature, .
2:16 1
' TheGohlen Age Kestored, ....
201
Zeiil anil I'ear in Religion, . .
zrj
f«»Ai«<;i8llKAUM0NT— John Fletcher, .
21)3
Deleuce of Rca-son, ... .
237
X 1
k
^ 1
. 1
COXTENTS OF FIRST VOLU^IE.
Cliiircli Music, ..... 2.'!H
LoKii Hai (IN, • . . . . ZiH
1'nivi'rr.itics, . . . . . .2-41
Libr:u-ies, . . . , . . 2-11
tioverninent, . . . . , . 2-)l
l'rii.s|KTit,v and Adversity, . , . Si I
FriciuUliip, . . . . , .241
Usf> iif Knowledge, . • . , 24.1
Hunks and tihips Compared, .... 24.')
Stmlies, ...... 24.'i
Sir Wai.tkb Ralkigh, .... 243
Tliiit the 1"1«(k1 liath nnt utterly defaced the marks of
I'aradise, nwr caused liills in the Earth, . 24fi
The Mattleof Thennojola;, . . . .247
The Strength of Kiiigs, .... 247
Tlircv Wales to be observed for the Preservation of a
.Man's Instate, ..... 248
RlCHAKI) (iKAKTO.V, ..... 2A'.I
JoHV Stow, . ..... 24f)
Simrts upon the Ice in Elizabeth's ReigTi, . . 2.j(i
Raphakl IIol/.vshkd — Wir.Li am llAkRiso.v — Joii.v
Hooker — Francis lioTKViLLK, . . S.ld
The I-aimnai-'es of Hritain, .... 2.V)
Richard IIak Li'vT, .... 2.'il
Ba.mi'kl I'ukchas, ..... 2.-.'2
The Sea, ...... 2.":.'
John Davis, ...... '2.'i-2
Itavis's V(.yage3 in Search of the North-West Passage, 2.')
Gkiihok Sandvs, ..... 2.'i4
Rloilern State of Ancient Coimtries, . . . 2."i4
AVULIA.M I.ITHOOW, . . • . . 2;"l4
Jaiuk.s liowKi.i., ...... 2.'>o
To l)r I'rancis .Mansell, .... 2.V>
To Sir William St .Jolni, Knight, . . . 2;,(i
To Captain Thomas li, .... -I'lJ
To the Kinht lion, tlie Lord Cliffe, . . . 2.W
Tales i.f Travellers, ..... 2r,ii
Bib Thomas IIkkkkrt, ..... 2iil
iJescription of St Helena, .... 2(il
William Camden, ..... 2(;i
Sir H knhv Spkl.ma.v — Sir Robkrt Cottov — John Spked
— Samukl Danikl, . . . . 2(>.i
Tncertainty of the Kaily ll'story of Nations, . 2(t)
Thomas .May — Sir .Joh\ 11a vward— Richard Knollks, 2(>4
2(H
2i;.T
•2r,:,
■2ii;
2IL-.
iir,
2(W
2lu
21,7
■21 V,
2i;.s
2(:ji
The TakiiiK of Constaiitinoiile hy the Turks,
Arthih Wilson — Sir Ku hard L;.iKhR,
Sir II KNRV WoTTON, ....
What ICdiication Knibraces, ....
Every Nature is not a Kit Stock to flraft a Scholar on,
Coninieiidation before Trial Injudicious, .
THO.MAS IluUHi:s, .....
C!od, ......
Pit\ and Indimation, .....
Kiniilatiiin and Envy, ....
Laiiuhter, ....
Love iif Knnwlcdire, ....
The Necessity of the Will, . . . .an
Lord IIkrhkrt, ..... 2i;ii
Sir ll.t.n as More's Resifni.-ition of the (Treat Seal, . 27o
TRANSLA no.V OK TH K 111 lll.K, . . . 2^0
KiNii .Iawks I., . . . . . .271
Sorcery and Witchcraft, . . . . 271
llou Witches Travel, ..... 271
Robkrt IJcrton, ..... 2/2
The Author's Abstract of Melancholy, . . 272
Milanclioly and Conlcniplation, . . . 272
Thomas Dkhker, ..... 274
A^aiiist Fine Cl.pthes, .... 274
llo« a (oillaiit should behave himself in Paul's Walks, 274
JosKi'H Hall, ...... 27.">
V\x>u the .>i>;ht of a Tree Full-bldsM.mcd, . 27.^
tlj«>i) Occasion of a lied breast coiuini; into his Chamber, -Z!')
Vpua the kindling of a Cluircoal Fire, . . 275
Upon the Sifrht of two Snails,
Ulxm llcarinir of Mils c by -NiRht,
I'lK.n the Sight of an Owl in the Twilight,
I'poii tlie Sight of a dreat Library,
Christ Crucified Afresh by Siunerg,
The Hy|Kicrite, ....
Tlie Uusy-liody, . . ,
Sir Thomas Ovbrbl'Ry,
TheTnker, ....
The Fair and Ilajipy Milkmaid, .
A I'lMTikliu, ....
John Karl k, ....
The Clown
OU-KN Fk/.THAM, .
Muileration in Orief,
Limitation of llunian Knowledge,
Against Rcailiness to Take uUciice,
Of lieing Over-valued, .
Against Detraction, .
Of .Negkct, ....
No .Man can be Giiod to All,
Meditation, ....
Pktkh Hkvi.in, . .
The Frcncli, ....
French Love of Dancinp,
Holland and its lubabilants, . .
.John Ski.dkn, ...
Hvil S|ieaking, ....
Honidity
K'ing, . . • • ,
Heresy, . ...
Lcuiiiing and Wisdom, . .
Oracles, ....
Dreams and Prophecies, . .
Scruuiiis, ....
Libels, ....
I)<-vil, in the Head,
I'lei' liic|iiiiy, ....
Jamks Ishkk.
Wri.i.iA.M Chii.i.inoworth,
.\:,'ainst the FiiiploMiient of Force in Religion,
Reason must !)e appealed to in Religious Discussion?
Against Duelling, . . • .
John Halks,
I'rivate Judgment in Religion,
Chililren Kea.ly to liel.eve.
Reverence for Ancient Opinions,
Prevalence (if an Opinion no .Argument for
JoKN I!aiukn,
I'he Various l':vents of the Civil War,
Jkrk.mv Ta vlor,
■|"he .Age of Hca.son and Discretion,
The I'ump of Death,
.Maniage,
The Frogress of Sin,
The Resurrection of Sinners, .
Sinful Pleasure, . . .
Fsi-fi.l Studies,
Comforting the AniicteU,
Real and .-Vppareiit ilappinese.
Adversity, ....
.Misrrusof .Man's Life,
On I'la.ver, ....
On Death,
The Day of .Judgment,
Rcligiiiiis Tul 'ration.
Sir Tho.mas Umnv.iiK, . .
Oblivion,
L'ght the Shadow of God, .
Toleration, . . .
Death,
Sttiily of C.ods Wor!c4,
Cihuats, ....
CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
OfMyseU
Charity, . . . • •
John Knox, ....
Assassination of Cardinal Beaton,
David Caldkrwood — Sir Jamks Mkltil, .
John Leslsv, . . . •
Character of James "V.,
Burning of Edinburgh and Leith by the English in
John Spotiswood, ....
Destruction of Religious Edifices in 1559,
James VI. and a Refractory Preacher,
Gboros Buchanan, ....
The Chamaeleon, ....
William Drummond, ....
Against Repining at Death,
Remarks on the Style of this Period, .
Origin of Newspapers, . . .
Page
302
302
303
303
304
304
305
1544, 305
30C
306
307
307
308
308
303
309
310
d^ourtj ptriotr.
THB COMMONWEALTH AND REIGNS OF CHARLES II.
AND JAMES II, [1649 TO 1689.]
POETS.
Abraham Cowley,
On the Death of Jlr Crashaw,
Heaven and Hell, . •
To PjTTha, ....
Anacreontics, . . .
The Resurrection,
The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches,
The Wish, . .
The Chronicle, ....
Lord Bacon, ....
Ode on the Death of Mr "William Harv-ey,
Epitaph on the Living Author,
Claudian's Old Man of Verona,
Henry Vaughan, . . .
Early Rising and Prayer, . .
The Rainbow, . • .
The Story of EndjToion, . .
Timber, ....
Thomas Stanley, . . •
The Tomb, ....
The Exequies, ....
The Loss, ....
Note on Anacreon, ...
Note to Moschus, . . .
BiR John Denham, . . .
The Thames and Windsor Forest,
The Reformation — Monks and Purit&ns,
On Mr Abraham Cowley, .
Song to Morpheus,
William Chamberlaynb, . .
Unhappy Love, . . . •
Bdmund Waller, . . .
On Love, . . . . •
On a Girdle, . • •
On the Marriage of the Dwarfs, .
A Paneg>Tic to the Lord Protoctor,
English Genius, . . •
The British Na^-j-.
At Penshurst, . • •
The Bud, ....
Song— (Say, Lovely Dream), .
Bong— (Go, Lovely Rose), . •
Old Age and Death, « •
John Milton, ....
Hymn on the Nativity, » «
On May Morning, • . .
.
312
314
314
314
.
315
315
Riches,
316
31fi
.
3)6
317
. 317
3J8
.
318
318
.
318
319
,
319
319
.
319
319
.
320
320
.
320
320
.
321
322
.
322
323
.
323
323
.
324
325
.
326
326
.
326
326
.
327
.
. 327
327
.
328
328
,
328
328
,
328
331
.
333
Pae«
Sonnet on his own Blindness, . . . 333
In Anticipation of the Attack of the Royalists upon tho
City
On the Massacre of the Protestants in Piedmont,
Scene from Comus, . .
Praise of Chastity, . .
The Spirit's Epilogue in Comus,
L'AUegro, ...
II Penseroso, . .
From Lycidas,
Satan's Address to the Sun,
Assembling of the Fallen Angels,
The Garden of Eden,
Eve's Account of her Creation,
Morning in Paradise, .
Evening in Paradise, . .
Expulsion from Paradise, .
Satan's Survey of Greece,
Andrew Marvell,
The Emigrants in Bermudas, .
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fa
Thoughts in a Garden,
A ANTiimsical Satire on Holland,
Samuel Butler,
Accomplishments of Hudibras,
Religion of Hudibras,
Personal Appearance of Hudibras,
The Elephant in the Moon,
Miscellaneous Thoughts, .
To his Mistress, . .
Charles Cotton, . .
The New Year, . .
Invitation to Izaak AValton, .
A Welsh Guide,
The Retirement, . .
Earl of Roscommon, .
The Jlodest Muse,
Caution against False Pride,
An Author must Feel what he Writes,
On the Day of Judgment,
Earl of Rochester,
Song— ("VMiile on those lovely looks I gaze),
Constancj' — A Song, . . .
Song— (Too late, alas ! I must confess), .
Song — (My dear mistress has a heart),
Sir Charles Sedley, . . .
Song — (Ah, Chloris ! could I now but sit).
Song — (Love still has something of the sea),
Song — (Phillis, men say that all my vows).
Duchess op Newcastle, . .
Katherine Philips, . .
Against Pleasure — An Ode, .
A Country Life, ....
John Dryden, ....
Character of Shaftesbury, .
Character of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,
Shaftesburj-'s Address to Monmouth, .
Mac-Flecknoe, ....
The Hind and Panther,
The Swallow, ....
Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew,
On Milton, .....
To my Honoured Kinsman, John Dryden, Esq. of
terton, in the County of Huntingdon, .
Alexander's Feast, ....
Theodore and Honoria, ...
The Cock and the Fox, . .
Inconveniences of Life in Rome, . .
EnjojTnent of the Present Hour Recommended,
John Philips, ....
The Splendid ShiUing,
John Pomfret, ....
Extract from The Choice, . . .
CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
Page
Page
Eakl op Dorset,
377
Of Modesty, opposed to Ambition, . .
410
Song— (Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes),
377
Thomas Fuller, ....
411
Song — (To all you ladies now at land), .
377
The Good Schoolmaster, ....
412
DUKS OF BUCKIKOHAMSHIRB, .
378
Recreation, .....
413
Kxtract from the Essay on Poetry, .
378
Books, ......
413
Education confined too much to Language, .
413
DRAMATISTS.
Rules fur Improving the Memory,
413
JohnDrydbn, ....
. 379
Terrors of a Guilty Conscience,
414
Savage Freedom, . . • .
381
Marriage, ......
414
Love and Beauty, . . . .
381
Conversation, .....
414
Slidnight Repose, ....
381
Domestic Economy, . . . .
414
Tears, .....
381
Miscellaneous Aphorisms, . . .
415
Mankind, .....
381
IzAAK Walton, . . . . .
415
Fear of Death, ....
381
The Ani;ler's Wish, ....
417
Love Anticipated after Death, .
381
Tli:uikfiilness for Worldly Blessings, .
417
Adam after the Fall, .
381
John Kvklvn, .....
419
Scene between Mark Antony and Vontidiu3,
lis general, 382
The Great Fire in London, . . .
420
Scene between Dorax and Sebastian,
38i
A Fortunate Courtier not Envied, . ,
421
Thomas Otwav,
386
Evelyn's Account of his Daughter Mary, .
422
Scenes from Venice Preserved,
3JI7
Fashions in Dress, ....
423
Parting, ....
3(KI
Sir Ror.KR L'Estrange, . . , .
423
Picture of a "Witch,
ao(i
yEscip's Invention to bring his Mistress back again
to her
Description of Morning, . .
3WI
11 u>b;in<l after she had left him.
424
Killing a Boar, ....
3!U)
The I'npish Plot, . . . . .
424
Nathaniel Leb,
3rxi
Ingratitude, .....
42i
Scene between Brutus and TItufl, Ills Son,
3;ii
Dn Ralph C'udworth, . . . .
42o
Self-Murder
392
God, though IncmuproIiensiWo, not Inooiioeivablo
428
John Crowne, ....
392
Dirl:culty of Convincing Interested Unbelievers,
427
Extract from Thyestea,
3!)2
Creatiiin, .....
. 427
Wishes for Obscurity, ...
392
Dr UlCHAnil ClIMRKRLA.VD, . . ,
427
Passions, ....
392
The Tul^' rnacle and Temple of the Jews,
427
Love in Women, ....
392
Dr I.>.AAr l!,\RKO\v, . . . . .
428
Inconstancy of the Multitude, .
392
The K.\cellency of the Chrib-tian Iteligion,
429
Warriors, .....
392
What is Wit?
43/
Thomas Shadwell— Sjr Georob Ethereqe-
— AViLLIAM
AVi.se Selection of Plca.sures, . . .
431
WvcHERLEY— Mrs Aphra Behn,
392
Grief Contmlled by \S"i.-s<ioin, . . .
431
Scene from Sir George Etherege's Comical Re
venge, 393
Honour to God, ....
43S
Bong— (Love in fantastic triumph sat).
393
The Goodness of God, ....
432
Miscellaneous Pieces of the Fourth Per
lOD, . 393
Cliarity, .....
432
Hallo my Fancy, ....
393
Concord and Discord, • . . ,
432
Alas, poor Scholar 1 whither wilt thou go 1
395
Industry, .....
433
The Fairy Queen, ....
395
John Tillotson, . . . . .
434
Advantages of Truth and Sincerity, .
434
FROSE WRITERS.
Virtue and Vice Declared by the General Vote of
Man-
Milton, .....
390
kind, ......
4,13
Milton's Literary Musings, . .
397
Evidence of a Creator in the Structure of the Worl
d, 436
Education, ....
. ,398
Sin and Holiness, ....
436
Liberty of the Press, .
399
Resolution necessary in forsaking Vice, . .
436
The Reformation, . . .
400
SinguJarity, .....
436
Truth, .....
400
Commencement of a Vicious Course, .
436
Expiration of the Roman Power In Britain,
401
The Moral Feelings Instinctive, . .
436
Abraham Cowlby, .
401
Spiritual Pride, .....
437
Of Myself
401
Education, . • . • .
437
Poetry and Poets, ....
402
Edward Stillinoflket, ....
*sr!
Of Obscurity, ....
403
True Wisdom, ....
437
Of Procrastination, . , .
403
Immoderate Self-Love, ....
438
Vision of Oliver Cromwell, . ,
403
Dr William Sherlock, . , .
438
Jamks IIarrinoton, , , ,
404
Longing after Immortality, . . ,
439
Algernon Sidney, . . .
405
Life not too Short, ....
439
Liberty and Government, . . .
406
Advantages of our Ignorance of the Timo of Death,
440
Laov Rachel Russell,
406
Dr Robert South, .....
440
To Dr Fitzwilliam— On her Sorrow,
407
The Will for the Deed,
442
To the Earl of Galway— On Friendship,
4<l7
Ill-natured and Good-natured Men, . .
443
To Dr Fitzwilliam— Domestic Misfortunes,
407
The Glory of the Clergy,
444
To Lord Cavendish— Bereavement,
408
The Pleasures of Amusement and Industry Compai
red, 444
Samuel Butlbs, ....
408
Hypocritical Sanctimony, .
444
A Small Poet, . . . . .
408
Ignorance in Power, ....
444
A Vintner, .....
409
Religion not Hostile to Pleasure, .
445
A Prater
409
Labour overcomes Apparent Impossibilities,
445
An Antiquary, ....
409
Ingratitude an Incurable Vice, . .
445
Walter Chabletov, . . , .
4rj9
Dr John Wilkins, ....
446
The Ready and Nlmbltt Wit,
409
How a Man may Fly to the Moon, . .
447
The Slow but Sure Wit,
410
Db John Pkarsok, ....
. «7
CYCLOr^DIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Page
The Hc«iiiTeofifin, ..... 477
Dr Thomas Si'HAT, ..... 448
Vii'w (if the Divine Government affordcU by Exjierinientiil
I'hiliw.l'lO.
CowU'j's l.(ive of rJetirement, . . .
Dr Thomas Hdrhkt, ....
The final ConHagratinn of the Globe,
Rebuke of Human I'liile, ....
The Dry I ieil of the Ocean, ....
Dr IIknrv Mop.k, .....
The Soul and Hody, .....
Pevout Cnntemiilation of the Works of Gnd,
Nature of the Kvidence of the Existence of God,
Richard Haxtkr, .....
Fruits of Experience of Human Character, .
Uaxter's J ud^inent of his Writings,
Desire of Approbation, ....
Change in Haxter's Estimate of his Own and other Men's
Knowledge, .....
On the Credit due to ITistory,
Characterof Sir Matthew Male, .
Observance of the Sabbath in Baxt3r'8 Youth,
Theoloiiioal Controversies, . .
John Oxvkm, . . . . •
Edmi'nd Calamy, .....
John Klavkl, .....
Against Hejiining in the Season of Want, .
Matthkw Henry, ....
Georok Fox, .....
Fox's Ill-treatment at I'lverstone,
Interview with Oliver Cromwell, . . .
ROBKRT ISaRCLAV, ....
Against Titles of Honour, ....
William I'knn, .....
Against the I'ride of Noble Birth, . .
Tenn's Advice to his Children,
Thomas Ki.i.wood, .....
Ell wood's Intercourse with Milton, .
John Uitnyan, .....
Extracts from Bimyan's Autob'ography,
Christian in the Hands of Giant Despair,
The Golden City, ....
Lord Ci.arknuon, .....
' Reception of the Liturgy at Edinburgh In 1637,
Character of Hampden, ....
Character of Falkland, .
Character of Charles I., . . . .
Escai>e of Charles H. after the Battle of AVorcester,
Character of Oliver Cromwell, . .
BULSTRODK WhiTKLOCKE, ....
CiLBKRT Itl'RNKT, ....
Death and Character of Edward VT.,
Character df Leighton, Bishop of Dumblane — His Death, 4!!a
Characterof Charles J I., .... 41i!t
The Czar I'eter in England in 108, . . Aim
Characterof William 111 491
John I)ry/)kn, ..... 4.'»2
Bhaksjjeare, ...... 4!).')
Beaumont and Fletcher, .... 4!):i
Ben Jiinson, ...... 41)3
Improved Style of Dramatic Dialogue after tho Restora-
tion, 494
Translations of the Ancient Poets, . . 494
Spenser and Milton, . . • . . 4!Hi
Lampoon, ...... 497
Dryden's Translation of Virgil, . . . 4!»7
History and ltiograi)hy, .... 4!W
Bir William Tkmplk, ..... 600
Against Excessive Grief, .... 6l>2
Right of Private Judgment in Religion, . . 504
Poetical Genius, ..... 6li4
William Whtton, . . • 506
DevliuH of Pudautry in England, . ^ C07
Paeo
Sir Matthkvv Hale, ..... Mt}
On Conversation, ..... otfj
John Lo<'KK, ...... fiiifl
Causes of Weakness in Men's UnderbtJindiiigs, . 512
Practice and Habit, ..... 512
I'rejudices, ... . , 513
Injudicious Haste in Study, .... 613
Pleasure and Pain, ... 514
Importance of Moral Education, ... 515
Fading of Ideas from the .Mind, . . , 515
History, ...... 515
Orthodoxy and Heresy, .... 615
Disputation, . . . . . . 51fi
Liberty, ...... 616
Opposition to New Doctrines, . • , , 516
Duty of I'leserving Health, . . . .516
Toleratiivn of Other Men's ()]iinion9, . . 516
The HtiNuimARLK Kohkht IJovi.b, . . . 516
The Study of Natural l'hilnsoj)liy favourable to neligir.n, 517
Reflection upon a Lanthoru and Candle, carried by on
a Windy Night, .....
UiHin the sight of Roses and Tulips growing near one
another, ......
Marriage a Lottery, ....
Some Considerations Touching the Style of the Holy
Scriptures, ......
Sir I.saac Nkwton, ....
The Prophetic Language, ....
John Hay, ......
The Study of Nature TJecommonded,
Proixirtionate Lengths of the Necks and Legs of Ani-
mals, ...... .'■.25
God's ICxhortation to Activity, . . . 525
All Things not Made for Man, . . .526
Thomas Stanley — Sir William Di'odai.e — Avthony
Wood — Elias Ashmole — John AumiKv — Thomas
Rymkr, ..... 527
Tom D'Urkey AND Tom BRo^vN, . . .527
Letter from Scarron in the Next World to Louis XIV., 528
An Exhortatory Letter to an Old Lady that Smoked
Tobacco, ..... 529
An Indian's Account of a London Gaming-Ilotisc, . 529
Laconics, or New Maxims of State and Conversation, 529
Sir George Mackenzie, .... 5.'!(>
Praise of a Country Life, .... o.'il
Against Envy, ..... 531
Fame, ....... 531
Bigotry, ...... 6;il
Virtue more Pleasant than Vice, ... 5;t2
Avarice, ...... 632
The True Path to Esteem, . . . . bP^
Nkwspai'ers in Enuland, . . . BZ3
REIGNS OF WILLIAM III., ANNE, AND GE0RG3 I.
[1689 TO 1727.]
POETS.
Matthew Prior, . . .
For my Own Monument, . .
Epitaiih Extempore, . . .
An E])itaph, . . .
The Garland, ....
Abra's Liive for Solomon, .
The Thief and the Cordelier— A Baiiad,
The Camcleon,
Protogenes and Apollcs, . .
Richard's Theory of the Mind, .
(35
636
BT6
636
636
537
633
538
639
639
CONTENTS OF FIRST A'OLU:\rE.
JOSKPH AdDISOM, . . ,
Fniir. the l.ettiT frnm Italy, .
O.le— .II..W iire thy wrviints West. O Lord I)
Ode — 'The siiacious firiiiaiucnt on high|, .
The Uattleof Ulenheiin,
Vniin the Trai;e<ly of Cuto, ...
Jonathan Su-iKT, . . .
A Iieseri)>ti'in of the Mnrnintt, . •
A Deseriptiim of a City Shower, .
Itiiiieis atiil I'hiluinim, . . .
Verx.-n oil liis < tun Death, . .
The (iniiiil Question Debated,
Alkxandkr Tope, . . .
The Messiah, ....
" Tlie Toilet, ....
Description of Bclinrla and the Svliihs,
From tlie Kpistle of Kloisa to Abelard,
Elecy on an Unfortunate L.idy,
Ilapjiine^s Dependi not on Goods, but on Virtue,
From the i'rologue to the Satires, addressed to Ar
not, .....
The .Man of Ross, ....
The DyinK Christian to his Soul,
Thomas Tick hLL, ....
Colin and I.ucy— a Ballad, . . .
Sin Sa MiKL (Iahth, ....
Sir KlI'HAKD Ml.AI'KMORE, . .
A.MnROSK I'HiLirs, ....
Epi-^tle to the Karl of Dorset,
The First I'astoral, ....
JOHVCiAY,
The Country Rallad Sineer,
Walking the Streets of London,
Song — 'Sweet woman is like the fair flower
lustrei, .....
The I'oet and the Rose,
TlveCoiirt of Death,
The Hare and .Many Friend'?,
The l.ion, tlie T;','er, and the Traveller, .
Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan.
A Hallad, .....
Thomas 1'arnell, ....
The Hermit, ....
MaTTHBW CiRREM, ....
Cures for Melancholy,
Contentment — A Wish, . . .
AnNK, Col'NTKSS OF WINCHBL3EA, .
A Noeturnal Reverie, . .
Life's I'rogress, ....
William Sojukrville, . .
Allan Ramsav, ....
Otle from Horace, ....
Song — I At setting day and rising mom),
Ti.e UiLst Tiinel ciuue o'er the Moor, .
Lnicliaber no More, ....
Rustic Courtship, ....
Dialogue on .Marriage, ...
DRAMATISTS.
Thomas Soi'therxe,
Return of Itiron, . . .
Ni<;holas Uou-k, . . .
Penitence and Death of Jane Shore,
Calista's I'assion for Lothario, .
William Lii.lo, .
Fatal Curiosity,
WlLLlA M CoSOhKVE, .
Gay Young .Men uiJon Town, .
A Swaggering Hiilly and Uoaster,
Scandal and Literatuie in High Life,
From Love for Love, .
Sir Juum Vanbhuuu, .
fi4.t
54.1
54.1
544
544
54.1
64H
54«
64«
54:t
5.-1L'
6.>;t
6.->7
5.i»
5.TH
5.1!»
51 io
SCI
5Ht
5fi4
5Ri
5«ri
5<)7
WW
mu
5r,'.i
5(<U
5711
572
573
57.3
57;t
5-4
574
574
575
575
67H
S7fi
67H
57"
57!t
5HO
5H0
SHI I
5H0
5K1
5H4
&h:,
5K.-,
5K-.
5HK
5«t;
Sflfl
BHH
5!»o
5!»li
691
5!)1
6!e
5!t:(
694
5.94
5!t.')
5!»i
6.97
I'ago
Picture of the Life of a Woman of Fashion, . 5;iH
Fahle, 598
OKOH<iK FAHQTHAn, ..... 596
lliimoriius .''^ceni \tanlnn, .... 599
From the Recruituig Ulticer, . • . 6U0
ESSAYISTS.
Sir Richard Steele — .Toski-h Apdisoh, . . 602
Agrocahle Companions and Flatierers, . . 6o6
Qiiacli -Advertisements, .... 607
Story-Telling, ..... tPlS
The I'olitical Upholsterer, .... 605
The Vision of .Mirza, .... 610
Sir Roger De Coverley's Visit to Westminster Abbey, 61 1
The Works of Creation, . . . ,612
EUSTACK lirDOKI.L, ..... 614
The Art of Growing Rich, . . . .614
JoH.v HroMKS, ..... 615
Ambition, ...... GI5
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
Dajjiel Dkfor, . . , . . 617
A True Helatinn of the .Vpparitirn of one Mrs Veal, the
ne.xt day after her Death, to one Mrs Hargrave, at
Canterbury, the eight of Seiitcmber, 17o.'>, which ap-
parition recommends the iierusal of Drelincourt s Hook
of Consolations against tlie fears of Death, . 618
The Great Plague in J.oiidi>n, . . . 621
The Troubles of a Young TIpef, . . .622
Advice to a Youth of liaiiibliiig Disposition, . 62.3
T.KKNARD .MaNDEVI LLE, .... 624
Flattery of the Great, .... 624
Society Compared to a Rowl of Punch, . . 624
Pomp and Superfluity, .... 625
A MDRKW l'"LKTrHER OK SaLTOI'N, . . . 625
Jonathan SiviKT, .... 626
Inconveniences from a Proposed .abolition of Chris-
tianity, ...... 627
Arguments for the Abolition of Christianity Treated, S"??
Ludicrous Image of Fanaticism, . . 628
A Meditation upon a Hroomst'ck, according to the
St \ le and manner of the lion. Robert lioyle's Jledi-
tations, ...... 62B
Adventures of Gulliver in Rrobdingnag, . . 629
Satire on Pretended Philosophers and Projectors, 611
Thoughts on Varoiis Subjcits, ... 6.14
Overstrained I'oliteness, or Vulgar Hospitality, . 6.34
Alexander Pope, ..... 6.13
On Sickness and Dcith, .... 613
Pope to Swift — On his Retirement, . . 6i6
Po)ie in O.xford, ..... 636
P'lpe to Lady Mary Wortlcy Montagu on the Conti-
nent, ...... 6'57
Death of Two Lovers by Lightning, . . 6'!7
Description of an Ancient Hnglish Country Seat, . 618
Pope to Gay— On his Recovery, ... giO
Sketch of A iitiinm Scenery, . . . . 6.I9
Pope to Bishop A tterbury, in the Tower, . 640
Party Zeal, ...... 640
Acknowledgment of Error, . . . 640
Disyiitation, ...... 640
Censorious People, ..... 640
Growing Virtuous in Old Ago, ... 640
Lying, ...... 610
Hostile Critics, ..... 640
Sectarian Differences, .... 640
How to be Reputed a Wise Man, . . . 640
Avarice, ...... 040
Minister Acquiring and Losing Office, • . 641
Receipt to make an Epic I'uem, ... 64i
CYCLOPiEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Page
D» John Arbuthjjot, . . . • • 642
The Ilistor}' of John BuU, .... 642
Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, . • 646
Lord Bolinobroke, ..... 646
National Partiality and Prejudice, . . . 647
Absurdity of Useless Learning, . . . 648
Unreasonableness of Complaints of the Shortness of
Ilmnan Life, ...... 648
Pleasm-es of a Patriot, .... 649
Wise, Distinguished from Cunning Ministers, . 650
liADv Marv Wortlev Montagu, • . . 650
To K. W. Montagu, Esq.— In prospect of Marriage, 651
To the Same — On Matrimonial Happiness, . 651
To Mr Pope — Eastern Manners and Language, . 651
To Mrs S. C— Inoculation for the SmaH-pox, . 652
To Lady Rich— France in 1718, . . • 653
To the Countess of Bute — Consoling her in Affliction, 653
To the Same — On Female Education, . . 6S3
METAPHYSICIANS.
Earl or Shaftesbury, . • . .654
Platonic Kepresentation of the Scale of Beauty and
Love, ...... 655
Bishop Berkeley, ..... 656
Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in
America, , . • • • 657
Industry, . . • • • .658
Prejudices and Opinions, .... 6iH
From Maxims Concerning Patriotism, . . fiA.i
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL
WRITERS.
Lawrence Echard, ..... 6.'"9
John Stryfe, ..... 659
Porter and Kennktt, .... 660
Richard Bentley, ..... 660
Authority of Reason in Religious Mattel's, . . 600
Dr Francis Atterbury, .... 6G1
Usefulness of Church Music, . . . . 6(>1
Dr Samuel Clarke, .... as
Natural and Essential Difierenee of Right and Wrong, 664
Dr William Lowth, .... . 6f>5
Dr Benjamin Hoadly, .... 665
The Kingdom of Christ not of this World, . . 665
Ironical View of Protestant Infallibility, . . 666
Charles Leslie, ..... 667
William AVhiston, .... 668
Anecdote of the Discovery of the Newtonian Philo-
sophy, ...... 668
Dr Philip Doddridge, .... 668
The Dangerous Illness of a Daughter, . . 670
Happy Devotional Feelings of Doddridge, . . 671
Vindication of Religious Opinions, . . 671
Da William Nicolson— Dr Matthevt Tindal— Dk
Udmphrby Phioeaux, . • • . (79
CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITEEATUEE.
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1400.
ANGLO-SAXON WRITERS.
-", ^ ^ ; I IHE English
' LAN-GfAGE is
essentially a
braneli of the
Teutonic, the
language spo-
ken by the
j inhabitants of
central Eu-
rope immedi-
ately before
the dawn of
historj^ and
hiLh constitutes the foun-
^^^ -ition of the modern Ger-
■^i^ min, Danish, and Dutch,
d Introduced by the Anglo-
S'lxons in the fifth century,
^'OVlit gradually spread, with the
^_^_ people who spoke it, over
neirlj the whole of England;
the Celtic, which had been
the lui^in^e ff the aboriginal people, shrinking
before it into '\^ ilcs, Cornwall, and other remote
parts of the islvnd, as the Indian tongues are now
retiring before the ad\ance of the British settlers
in Xorth America.*
From its iirst establishment, the Anglo-Saxon
tongue experienced little change for five centuries,
the chief accessions which it received being Latin
terms introduced by Christian missionaries. Dur-
ing this period, literature flourished to a much
greater extent than might be expected, wlien we
consider the generally rude condition of the people.
It was chiefly cultivated by individuals of the reli-
gious orders, a few of whom can easily be discerned,
through their obscure biography, to have been men
of no mean genius. During the eighth century,
books were multiplied immensely by the labours of
these men, and through their efforts learning de-
scended into the upper classes of lay society. This
* It is now believed that the British language was not so
immediately or entirely extinguished by the Saxons as was
generally stated by our historians down to the last age. But
certainly it is true in the main, that the Saxon succeeded the
British language in all parts of Enghuid, except Wales, Corn-
wall, and some other districts of less note.
age presents us with historical chronicles, theologi-
cal treatises, religious, political, and narrative poetry,
in great abundance, written both in Latin and in tha
native tongue.*
The earliest name in the list of Anglo-Saxon
writers is that of Gildas, generally described as a
missionary of British parentage, living in the first
half of the sixth century, and the author of a Latin
tract on early British history. Owing to the ob-
scurity of this portion of our annals, it has been the
somewhat extraordinary fate of Gildas to be repre-
sented, first as flourishing at two periods more than a
century distant from each other ; then as two differ-
ent men of the same name, living at different times ;
and finally as no man at all, for his very existence
is now doubted. Nennius is another name of this
age, which, after being long connected with a small
historical work, written, like that of Gildas, in Latin,
has latterly been pronounced supposititious. The
first unquestionably real author of distinction is
St CoLUMBANrs, a native of Ireland, and a man
of vigorous ability, wlio contributed greatly to
the advancement of Christianity in various parts of
Western Europe, and died in 615. He wrote reli-
gious treatises and Latin poetry. As yet, no edu-
cated writer composed in his vernacular tongue : it
was generally despised by the literary class, as was
the case at some later periods of our history, and
Latin was held to be the only language fit for regu-
lar composition.
The first Anglo-Saxon ■writer of note, who com-
posed in his own language, and of whom there are
any remains, is C^dmon, a monk of Whitby, who
died about 680. Caedmon was a genius of the class
headed by Burns, a poet of nature's making, sprung
from the bosom of the common people, and little
indebted to education. It appears that he at one
time acted in the capacity of a cow-herd. The cir-
cumstances under wliicli his talents were first de-
veloped, are narrated by Bede with a strong cast of
the marvellous, under which it is possible, however,
to trace a basis of natural truth. * We are told that
he was so much less instructed than most of his
equals, that he had not even learnt any poetry ; so
that he was frequently obliged to retire, in order to
hide his shame, when the harp was moved towards
him in the hall, where at supper it was customary
for each person to sing in turn. On one of thes«
* Biograpliia Britannica Literaiia : Anglo-Saxon Period. By
Thomas Wright, M.A.
FROM EARLIEST
cyclop.s:dia of
TIMES TO 1400.
occasions, it happened to be Caednion's turn to keep
guard at the stable during the night, and, overcome
■with vexation, he quitted the table and retired to
his post of dut3% where, laying himself down, he fell
into a sound slumber. In the midst of his sleep, a
stranger appeared to him, and, saluting him by his
name, said, " Caedmon, sing me something." C^d-
mon answered, " I know nothing to sing ; for my
incapacity in this respect was the cause of my leav-
ing the hall to come hither." "Nay," said the
stranger, " but thou hast something to sing." " Wliat
must I sing ?" said Cajdmon. " Sing the Creation,"
was the reply, and thereupon Casdmon began to sing
verses "which he had never heard before," and
which are said to have been as follows : —
Nu we sceolan herian*
heofon-rices weard,
metodes mihte,
and his mod-ge-thonc,
wera wuldor fasder !
swa he wundra ge-hwses,
ece dryhten,
cord onstealde.
He aerest ge-sceop
ylda beaniura
heofon to hrdfe,
halig scyppend !
tha middan-geard
mon-cynnes weard,
ece dryhten,
aefter teode,
firum foldan,
frea eelmihtig !
Now we shall praise
the guardian of heaven,
the might of the creator,
and his counsel,
the glory-father of men !
how he of all wonders,
the eternal lord,
formed the beginning.
He first created
for the children of men
heaven as a roof,
the holy creator !
then the world
the guardian of mankind,
the eternal lord,
produced afterwards,
the earth for men,
the almighty master !
CaBdmon then awoke ; and he was not only able to
repeat the lines which he had made in his sleep, but
he continued them in a strain of admirable versifica-
tion. In the morning, he hastened to the town-
reeve, or bailiff, of Whitby, who carried him before
the Abbess Hilda; and there, in the presence of
some of the learned men of the place, he told his
story, and they were aU of opinion that he had re-
ceived the gift of song from heaven. They then
expounded to him in his mother tongue a portion
of Scripture, which he was required to repeat in
verse. Casdmon went home with his task, and the
next morning he produced a poem which excelled
in beauty all that they were accustomed to hear.
He afterwards yielded to the earnest solicitations of
the Abbess Hilda, and became a monk of her house ;
ana she ordered him to transfer into verse the whole
of the sacred history. We are told that he was con-
tinually occupied in repeating to himself what he
heard, and, " like a clean animal, ruminating it, he
turned it into most sweet verse."' f Casdmon thus
composed many poems on the Bible histories, and
on miscellaneous religious subjects, and some of
these have been preserved. His account of the Fall
of Man is somewhat like that given in Paradise Lost,
and one passage in it might almost be supposed to
have been the foundation of a corresponding one in
Milton's sublime epic. It is that in which Satan is
described as reviving from the consternation of his
overthrow. A modern translation into English fol-
lows :—
[Satan's Speech.l
Boiled within him
his thought about his heart J
Hot was without him
his dire punishment.
* In our specimens of tlie Anglo-Saxon, modem letters are
■ubstituted for those peculiar characters employed in that lan-
guage to express th, dh, and w,
t Wright.
Then spake he words :
' This narrow place is most unlike
that other that we formerly knew,
high in heaven's kingdom,
which my nmster bestowed on me,
though we it, for the All-powerful,
may not possess.
We must cede our realm ;
yet hath he not done rightly,
that he hath struck ue down
to the fiery abyss
of the not hell,
bereft us of heaven's kingdom,
hath decreed
to people it
with mankind.
That is to me of sorrows the greatest,
that Adam,
who was \vTought of earth,
shall possess
my strong seat ;
that it shall be to him in delight,
and we endure this torment,
misery in this hell.
Oh ! had I the power of my hands * •
then with this host I
But around me lie
iron bonds ;
presseth this cord of chain }
I am powerless !
me have so hard
the clasps of hell
so fij-mly grasped !
Here is a vast fixe
above and underneath ;
never did I see
a loathlier landskip ;
the flame abateth not,
hot over hell.
Me hath the clasping of these rings,
this hard polished band,
impeded in my course,
debarred me from my way.
My feet are bound,
my hands manacled ;
of these hell doors are
the ways obstructed ;
so that with aught 1 cannot
from these limb-bonds escape.
About me lie
huge gratings
of hard iron,
forged with heat,
with which me God
hath fastened by the neck.
Thus perceive I that he knoweth my mind,
and that he knew also,
the Lord of hosts,
that should us through Adam
evil befall,
about the realm of heaven,
where I had power of my hands.' *
The specimen of Caedmon above given in the
original language may serve as a general one of
Anglo-Saxon poetry. It will be observed that it is
neither in measured feet, like Latin verse, nor
rhymed, but that the sole peculiarity which distin-
guishes it from prose is what Mr Wright calls a very
regular alliteration, so arranged, that in every couplet
there should be two principal words in the line be-
ginning with the same letter, which letter must also
be the initial of the first word on which the stress
of the voice falls in the second line.
A few names of inferior note — Aldhelra, abbot of
>l> Thorpe's edition of Ciedmon, 1832.
ANGLO-SAXON WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAXON CHRONICLE.
Malmsbury. Ceolfrid, abbot ofWearmouth, and Felix
of Croyland — bring down tlie list of Anglo-Saxon
writers to Bede, usuall}- calk'd the Venerable Bede,
who may be allowed to stand at the head of the class.
He seems to have spent a modest studious life, unehe-
quered by incident of any kind, at the monastery of
Weannouth, where
he died in 735.
His works, consist-
ing of Scriijtural
translations and
commentaries, reli-
gious treatises, bio-
graphies, and an
ecclesiastical his-
tory of the Anglo-
Saxons, which is
the only one useful
in the jjresent age,
were forty-four in
number ; and it is
related that he dic-
tated to his amanu-
ensis, and com-
pleted a book, on
Chair of Bede. the Very day of his
death. Almost all the writings of these men were in
Latin, which renders it less necessary to speak parti-
cularly of them in this place. Our subsequent lite-
rary history is formed of comparativelj' obscure
names, until it presents to us the enlightened and
amiable King Alfred (848-901).* in whom learning
and authorship graced the royal state, without in-
terfering with its proper duties. He translated the
historical works of Orosius and Bede, and some reli-
gious and moral treatises, perhaps also JEsop's Fables
and the Psalms nfDa vid, into the Anglo-Saxon tongue,
designing thereby to extend their utility among his
people. No original compositions certainly his have
been preserved, excepting the reflections of his own,
which he takes leave here and there to introduce
into his translations. The character of this monarch,
embracing so much gentleness, along with manh'
vigour and dignity, and displaying pure tastes, cal-
culated to be beneficial to others as well as himself,
seems as if it would have graced the most civilised
age nearly as much as it did one of the rudest.
After Alfred, the next important name is that of
Ai.FRic, archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1006.
This learned prelate was a voluminous writer, and,
like Alfred, entertained a strong wish to enlighten the
people ; he wrote much in his native tongue, particu-
larly a collection of homilies, a translation of tlie first
seven books of the Bible, and some religious treatises.
He was also the author of a grammar of the Latin
tongue, which has given him the sub-name of 'the
Grammarian.' xVlfric himself declares that he wrote
in Anglo-Saxon, and in that avoided the use of all
obscure words, in order that he might be understood
by unlettered people. As he was really successful in
writing simply, we select a specimen of Anglo-Saxon
prose from his Paschal homily, adding an interUnear
translation : —
Hsethen cild bith ge-fullod, ac hit ne brret na
{A) fuat/ien child is christinvd,yet he cdfcrcthnot
his hiw with-utan, dheah dhe hit boo with-innau
his shape without, though he be within
awend. Hit bith ge-broht sj-nfull dhurh Adames
changed. He is brought sinful through Adam's
forgaegednysse to tham fant fate. Ac hit bith athwogeii
disobedience to the font-vessel. But he is washed
* WTiere double dates are thus Riven, it will be understood
that the first is the year of the birth, and the second the year
of the death, of the individual mentioned.
fram eallum synnum with-innan, dheah dhe hit with-
from all sins inwardly, though he out-
utan his hiw ne awende. Eac swj'lce tha halige
wai-dlij his shape not change. Even so the holy
fant waiter, dhe is ge-haten lifes wyl-spring, is ge-lic
font wafer, ichich is called life's fountain, is like
on hiwe odhrum wffiterum, k is under dheod bros-
in shape (fo) other icaters, and is subject to cor-
nunge ; ac dhses halgan gastes miht
ruption; but the Holy Ghost's might
ge-nealascth tham brosnigendlicum wa?tere, dhurh
comes (to) the corruptible water ihroxigh
sacerda bletsunge, & hit maeg sythan
[the) pmests' blessing, and it may aftemards
lichaman & sawle athwean fram eallum synnum,
body and soid wash from all sin,
dhurh gastlice mihte.
through ghostly might.
Cynewulf, bishop of Winchester, "Wulfstan, arch-
bishop of York, and some others, bring down the list
of Anglo-Saxon authors to the Conquest, giving to
this portion of our literature a duration of nearly five
hundred years, or about the space between Chaucer
and our own day. During this tin<e, there were many
seats of learning in England, many writers, and many
books ; although, in the main, these have now become
matter of curiosity to the antiquary only. The litera-
ture may be said to have had a kind of protracted
existence till the breaking up of the language in the
latter part of the twelfth century ; but it was graced
by no names of distinction. We are here called upon
to advert to the historical production usually called
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which consists of a view
of earh' English history, written, it is believed, by a
series of authors, commencing soon after the time of
Alfred, and continued till the reign of Henry II.
Altogether, considering the general state of Western
Europe in the middle ages, the literature of our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers may be regarded as a
creditable feature of our national history, and as
something of which we might justly be proud, if we
did not allow ourselves to remain in such ignorance
of it.
INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN FRENCH.
The Conquest, by which a Norman government and
nobility were imposed upon Saxon England, led to a
great change in the language. Norman Frenr h, one
of the modifications of Latin which arose in the
middle ages, was now the language of education, of
the law courts, and of the upper classes generally,
while Saxon shared the degradation which the
people at large experienced under their conquerors.
Though depressed, j-et, as the speech of the great
body of the people, it could not be extinguished.
Having numbers on its side, it maintained its ground
as the substance of the popular language, the Norman
infusing only about one word for every three of the
more vulgar tongue. But it was destined, hi the
course of the twelfth century, to undergo great
grammatical changes. Its sounds were greatly
altered, syllables were cut short in the pronunciation,
and the terminations and inflections of words were
softened down until they were entirely lost. Ur
Johnson expresses his opinion, that the Normans
affected the Anglo-Saxon more in this manner than
by the introduction of ne\v words. So great was
the change, that the original Anglo-Saxon nnist
have become, in the first half of the thirteenth
century, more difficult to be understood than the
diction of Chaucer is to us. The language which
resulted was the commencement of the present Eng-
lish. Its origm wiH afterwards be traced mora
minutely.
3
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1 iOO.
THE NORMAN POETS OF ENGLAND.
The first literary productions which call for at-
tention after the Conquest, arc a class which may
be considered as in a great measure foreign to the
country and its language. Before the invasion of
England by William, poetical literature had begim
to be cultivated in France with considerable marks
of spirit and taste. The language, which from its
origin was named Romane (lingua Roniana)* was
separated into two great divisions, that of the south,
which is represented popularly by the Proven9al,
and that of the north, which was subdivided into
French and Anglo-Norman, the latter dialect being
that chiefly confined to our island. The poets of
the south were called in their dialect trobadores, or
troubadours, and those of the north were distinguished
by the same title, written in tlieir language trouveres.
In Provence, there arose a series of elegant versifiers,
who employed their talents in composing romantic
and complimentary poems, full of warlike and ama-
tory sentiment, which many of them made a busi-
ness of reciting before assemblages of the great.
Norman poets, writing with more plainness and sim-
plicity, were celebrated even before those of Pro-
ven9e ; and one, named Taillefer, was the first man
to break the English ranks at the battle of Hastings.
From the preference of the Norman kings of Eng-
land for the poets of their own country, and the
general depression of Anglo-Saxon, it results that
the distinguished literary names of the first two
centuries after the Conquest are those of Norman
Poets, men who were as frequently natives of
France as of England. Philippe de Thaun. author
of treatises on popular science in verse ; Thorold,
who wrote the fine romance of Roland ; Samson
de Nanteuil, who translated the proverbs of Solo-
mon into French verse ; GeoS'roi Gaimar, author
of a chronicle of the Anglo-Saxon kings ; and Uavid,
a trouveere of considerable eminence, whose works
are lost, were the most noted predecessors of one of
much greater celebrity, named Maistre Wage, a
native of Jersey. About 1160, Wace wrote, in his
native French, a narrative poem entitled Le Brut
D' Angleterre (Brutus of England). Tlie chief hero
was an imaginary son of iEneas of Troy, who was
represented as having founded the state of Britain
many centuries before the Christian era. This was
no creation of the fancy of the Norman poet. He
only translated a serious history, written a few years
before in Latin by a monk named Geoffrey of Mon-
mouth, in which the affiiirs of Britain were traced
with all possible gravity through a series of ima-
ginary kings, beginning with Brutiis of Troy, and
ending with Cadwallader, who was said to have
lived in the year 689 of the Christian era.
This history is a very remarkable work, on account
of its origin, and its effects on subsequent literature.
The Britons, settled in Wales, Cornwall, and lire-
tagne, were distinguished at tliis time on account of
the numberless fimciful and fabulous legends which
they possessed — a traditionary kind of literature
resembling that which has since been found amongst
the kindred peojjle of the Scottisli Iliglilands. For
centuries past, Europe had been sujjplied with tale
and fable from the teeming fountain of Bretagne, as
it now is with music from Italy, and metaphysics
from Germany. AV alter (yalenius, archdean of Ox-
ford, collected some of these of a professedly his-
* Any book written in this tongue was cited as the livre
Romant {liber Romanu.':), and most frequently as simply the
Romans : as a great portion of these were works of fiction, the
term lias since given rise to the word now in general use,
omanee.
torical kind relating to England, and communicated
tliem to Geoffrey, by whom they were put into the
form of a regular historical work, and introduced
for the first time to the learned world, as far as a
learned world then existed. As little else tlian a
bundle of incredible stories, some of which may be
slightly founded on fact, this production is of small
worth ; but it supplied a ground for Wace's poem,
and proved an unfailing resource for tlie writers of
romantic narrative for the ensuing two centuries ;
nor even in a later age was its influence exhausted ;
for from it Shaksi)eare drew the story of Lear, and
Sackville that of Ferrex and Porrex, while Drayton
reproduces much of it in his Polyolbion, and it has
given occasion to many allusions in the poems of
Milton and others.*
Maistre Wace also composed a Historj/ of the Nor-
mans, under the title of the Roman de Ro'u, that is,
the Pomance of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy,
and some other works. Henry IL, from admiration
of his writings, bestowed upon him a canonry in the
cathedral of Bayeux. Benoit, a contemporary of
Wace, and author of a History of the Dukes of Nor-
mandy; and Guernes, an ecclesiastic of Pont St
Maxence, in Picardy, who wrote a metrical life of
Thomas a Becket, are the other two Norman poets of
most eminence whose genius or whose Avritings can
be connected with the history of Englisli literature.
These writers composed most frequently in rhymed
couplets, each line containing eight syllables.!
COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT FORM OF ENGLISH.
Of the century following the Conquest, the only
other compositions that have come down to us as
the production of individuals living in, or connected
* Ellis's Metrical Romances.
t Ellis's Specimens, i., 3.5-59. A short passage from Wace's
description of the ceremonies and sports presumed to have taken
place at King Arthur's coronation, will give an iilea of the
writings of the Norman poets. It is extracted from Mr Ellis'a
work, with his notes : —
' Quant li roi-; leva del mangier,
Al^ sunt tuit esbanoier,'^
De la cit^ es champs issirent ;
A plusors gieux se despartirent.
Li uns alerent bohordcr,-
Et les ineaux^ chevalx monstrer:
Li autre alerent escremir,
Ou pierres getier, ou saillir.
Tielx i avoit qui dars lancoent,
Et tielx i avoit qui lutoent ;
Chascun del gieu s'entremetoit.
Qui entremetre se savoit.
Cil qui son compaignon vainquoit,
Et qui d'aucun gieu pris avoit,
Estoit sempres au roi niene,
Et h tons les autres monstr^ ;
Et li rois del sien li donoit,
Tant done cil liez s'en aloit.
Les dames sor les murs aloent,
■ Por esgarder ceulx qui joienl.
Qui ami avoit en la place.
Tost li tomost Toil ou la face.
Trois jorz dura la feiste ainsi ;
Quand vint au quart, au mercredi,
Li rois les bacheliers,A"e«/a*
Enors deliverez devisa,^
Lor servise a cel.x rendi.
Qui por terre I'orent servi :
Bois dona, et chasteleriez,
Et evesquiez, et abbaiez.
A ceulx qui d'autres tcrres estoient.
Qui par amor au roi venoent,
Dona coupes, dona destriers,
Dona de ses avers plus chera. &c.'
> To amuse themselves. ^Xojust. ' Fleet {isnel). *Toleap
* Fieffa, gave fiefs. • lie gave them livries of lands
A
ANGLO-SAXON WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
•with, England, are works written in Latin by .learned
ecclesiastics, the principal of whom were John of
Salisbury, Peter of Blois, Joseph of Exeter, and
Geoffrky of JloNMouTH, the last beingr the autlior
of the History of England just alluded to,' whicli is
supposed to have been written about the year 11. '38.
About 1154, according to Dr Johnson, 'the Saxon
began to take a form in which the beginning of the
present EngUsh may plaiidy be discovered.' It
does not, as already hinted, contain many Norman
words, but its grammatical structure is considerably
altered. There is a metrical Saxon or p]nglish trans-
lation, by one Layajion, a priest of Ernely, on tlie
Severn, from the Brut d'A?igleterre of Wace. Its date
is not ascertained ; but if it be, as surmised by some
writers, a composition of the latter part of the twelfth
century, we nuist consider it as throwing a valuable
light on the history of our language at perhaps the
most important period of its existence. A specimen,
in which the passage already given from Wace is
translated, is presented in the sequel. With refe-
rence to a larger extract given by Mr Ellis, of which
the other is a portion, that gentleman remarks — ' As
it does not contain any word which we are under the
necessity of referring to a French origin, we cannot
but consider it as simple and unmixed, though very
barbarous, Saxon. At the same time,' he continues,
' the orthography of this manuscript, in which we see,
for the first time, the adniission of the soft g, toge-
therwith the Saxon 5, as well as some other peculiari-
ties, seems to prove tliat the pronunciation of our lan-
guage had already undergone a considerable change.
Indeed, tlie whole stj'le of tliis composition, wliich
is broken into a series of short unconnected sentences,
and in whicli the construction is as plain and artless
as possible, and perfectly free from inversions, ap-
pears to indicate that little more tlian the substitu-
tion of a few French for the present Saxon words
was now necessary to produce a resemblance to that
Anglo-Norman, or English, of whicli we possess a
few specimens, supposed to have been written in the
early part of the thirteenth century. Layamon's
versification is also no less remarkable than his lan-
guage. Sometimes he seems anxious to imitate tlie
rhymes, and to adopt the regular number of syllables,
which he had observed in his original ; at other
times he disregards both, cither because he did not
consider the laws of metre, or the consonance of
final sounds, as essential to the gratification of his
readers ; or because he was unable to adapt them
throughout so long a work, from the want of models
in his native language on which to form his style.
The latter is perhaps the most probable supposition ;
but, at all events, it is apparent that the recurrence
of his rhymes is much too frequent to be the result
of chance; so that, upon the whole, it seems reason-
able to infer, that La3'amon's work was composed at,
or very near, the period when the Saxons and Nor-
mans in this country began to unite into one nation,
and to adopt a common language.'
SPECIMENS OF ANGLO-SAXON AND ENGLISH
PREVIOUS TO 1.300.
We have already seen short specimens of the
Anglo-Saxon prose and verse of the period prior to
the Conquest. Perhaps the best means of making
clear the transition of the language into its present
form, is to present a continuation of these specimens,
extending between the time of the Conquest and the
reign of Edward I. It is not to be expected that
these specimens will be of much use to the reader, on
account of tlie ideas which they convey ; but, con-
sidered merely as objects, or as pictures, they will
not be without their effect in illustrating the history
of our literature.
[Extract from the Saxon Chronicle, 1154.]
On this yaer waerd the King Stephen ded, and
bebyried there his wif and his sune wreron bebyried set
Tauresfeld. That ministre hi makiden. Tha the
king was ded, tha was the eorl beionde see. And ne
duiste nan man don other bute god for the micel eie
of him. Tha he to Engleland come, tha was he under-
fangeii mid micel wortscipe ; and to king bletcad in
Lundine, on the Sunnen dasi beforen mid-winter-doei.
Literally translated thus : — ' A. D. 1 1 54. In this year
was the King Stephen dead, and buried where his
wife and his son were buried, at Touresfield. That
minister they made. When the king was dead, then
was the earl beyond sea. And not durst no man do
other but good for the great awe of him. When he
to England came, then was he received with great
worship ; and to king consecrated in London, on the
Sunday before mid-winter-day (Christmas day).'
[Extract from tlie account of the Proceedings at Arthur's
Coronation, given by Layamon, in his translation of
Wace, executed about 1180.] *
Tha the kingf igeten^ hafde
And al his mon-iceorede,^
Tha bugan^ out of burhge
Theines swithen balde.
AUe tha kinges,
And heore hcrc-flwingesA
Alle tha biscopes,
And alle tha clarckes,
Alle the eorles,
And alle tha beomes.
Alle tha theines,
Alle the sweines,
Eeiix iscrudde,^
Helde geoncl felde.^
Summe heo guniierJ centen,^
Summe heo gunnen imien^
Summe heo gunnen lepen,
Summe heo gunnen sceoten^^
Summe heo Avra^stleden
And u-ither-gome makeden^^
Summe heo on velde
Plcouweden under scelde^^
Summe heo driven balles
Wide gcond the feldes.
iloni ane kunues gomen
Ther heo gunnen drinen.^^
And wha swa mihte iwenne
Wurthscipe of his gomene,^*
Iline ?«el5 ladde mide songe
At foren than leod kinge ;
And the king, for his gmnene,
Gaf him geven^^ gode.
* Tlie notes are by Mr Ellis, with corrections.
t The original of this passage, by AVace, is given in an earltet
page,
i Eaten. - JIuItitude of attendants. Sax.
3 Fled. — Then fled out of the town tlie people very quickly.
* Their throngs of servants. » Fairly dressed.
^ Held (their way) tlirough the fields.
7 Began. 8 fo discharge arrows. 9 Xo run.
'" To shoot or throw darts.
" Made, or played at, uiilher-games , Sax. (games of emula-
tion), that is, justed.
'2 Some they on field played under shield ; that is, fought
with swords.
'3 ' Many a kind of game there they gan urge.' Dringen
(Dutch), is to urge, press, or drive.
'^ And whoso might win worship by his gaming.
" ' Him they led with song before the people's king.* Me,
a word synonym<ius with the French oti.
•• Gave him givings, gifts.
5
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
Alle tha qicene^
The icumen weoren there,
And alle tha lafdies,
Leonedeu geond walles,
To bihalden tha duffe then,
And that folc ploeie.
This Haste threo dcegcs^
Swulc gomes and swidc plceghs,
Tha, at than veorthe dceie
The king gon to »pel-eni^
And agaf his gode cnihten
All hewe rihtcn ;*
He gef seolyer, he geef gold.
He gef hors, he gef lend,
Castles, and clsethes eke ;
His monnen he iqiwndefi
[Extract frmn a Charter of Henry III., a. d. 1258, in
the common language of the tlm(..'\
Henry, thurg Codes fultonie, King on Engleneloande,
Lhoaverdon Yrloand, Dukon Norman, on Acquitain,
Earl on Anjou, send I greting, to alle hise holde,
ilferde and ilewede on Huntindonnschiere. Tha?t
witen ge wel alle, thast we wlUen and unnen, thfet lire
rsedesmen alle other the moare del of heom, thast beoth
ichosen thurg us and thurg thifit loandes-folk ou ure
kineriche, habbith idon, and schullen don in the
worthnes of God, and ure treowthe, for the freme of
the loande, thurg the besigte of than toforen iseide
rcedesmen, &c.
Literal translation : — ' Henry, through God's sup-
port. King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Nor-
mandy, of Acquitain, Earl of Anjou, sends gi-eeting
to all his subjects, learned and unlearned, of Hunting-
donshire. This know ye well all, that we will and
grant, what our counsellors all, or the more part of
them, that be chosen through us and through the
land-folk of our kingdom, have done, and shall do, to
the honour of God, and our allegiance, for the good of
the land, through the determination of the before-
said counsellors,' &c,
THE RHYMING CHRONICLERS.
Layamon may be regarded as the first of a series
of writers who, about the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury, began to be conspicuous in our literary history,
■which usually recognises them under the general
appellation of the Rhyming Chroniclers. The
first, at a considerable interval after Layamon, was
a monk of Gloucester Abbey, usually called from
that circumstance Robert of Gloucester, and
■who lived during the reigns of Henry IIL and Ed-
ward L He wrote, in long rhymed lines (Alexan-
drines), a history of England from the imaginary
Brutus to his own time, using chiefly as his autho-
rity the Latin history by Geoffrey of Monmouth, of
which Wace and Layamon had already given Nor-
man French and Saxon versions.* The work is
described by Mr Warton as destitute of art and
imagination, and giving to the fabulous history, in
many parts, a less poetical air than it bears in
Geoffrey's prose. The language is full of Saxon pe-
culiarities, which might partly be the result of his
living iu so remote a province as Gloucestershire.
Another critic acknowledges that, though cold and
prosaic, Robert is not deficient in the valuable talent
of arresting the attention. ' The orations with
I ' All the queens who were come to the festival, and all the
ladies, leaned over the walls to hehold the nobles there, and
that folk play.'
* Tliis lasted three days, such games and such plays.
* Then, on the fourth day, the king went to council?
* And gave his good knights all their rights or rewards.
* He satisfied.
* RiibcifiiC:hronicle, from a particular allusion, Is supposed
to have been written, at least in part, after VHH-
which he occasionally diversifies the thread of his
story, are, in general, appropriate and dramatic,
and not only prove his good sense, but exhibit no
unfavourable specimens of his eloquence. In his
description of the first crusade, he seems to change
his usual character, and becomes not only enter-
taining, but even animated.'*
Of the language of Robert's Chronicle, the follow-
ing is a specimen, in its original spelling : —
Engelond ys a wel god lond, ich wene of eche lond
best,
Y-set in the ende of the world, as al in the west.
The see goth hym al .about, he stout as an yle.
Here fon heo durre the lasse doute, but hit be thorw
gyle
Of folc of the selve lond, as me hath y-seye -wyle.
From south to north he ys long eighte hondred myle.
This is, of course, nearly unintelligible to all except
antiquarian readers, and it is therefore judged pro-
per, in other specimens, to adopt, as far as possible,
a modern orthography.
[TJie Muster for the First Crusade.']
A good pope was thilk time at Rome, that hechtl
Urban,
That preached of the creyserie, itnd creysed mony man.
Therefore he send preachers thorough all Christendom,
And himself a-this-side the mounts^ and to France
come ;
And preached so fast, and with so great wisdom.
That about in each lond the cross fast me nome.^
In the year of grace a thousand and sixteen.
This great creyserie began, that long was i-seen.
Of so much folk nyme* the cross, ne to the holy land go,
Me ne see no time before, ne suth nathemo.^
For self women ne beleved,'' that they ne wend thither
fast,
Ne young folk [that] feeble were, the while the voy-
age y-last.
So that Robert Curthose thitherward his heart cast,
And, among other good knights, ne thought not be
the last.
He wends here to Englond for the creyserie.
And laid William his brother to wed' Normandy,
And borrowed of him thereon an hundred thousand
mark.
To wend with to the holy lond, and that was some-
deal stark. ■* ■*
The Earl Robert of Flanders mid^ him wend also.
And Eustace Earl of Boulogne, and mony good knight
thereto.
There wend the Duke Geoffrey, and the Earl Baldwin
there.
And the other Baldwin also, that noble men were,
And kings syth all three of the holy lond.
The Earl Stephen de Blois wend eke, that great power
had on bond.
And Robert's sister Curthose espoused had to wive.
There wend yet other knights, the best that were alive ;
As the Earl of St Giles, the good Raymond,
And Niel the king's brother of France, and the Earl
Beaumond,
And Tancred his nephew, and the bishop also
Of Podys, and Sir Hugh the great earl thereto ;
And folk also without tale,!' of all this west end
Of Englond and of France, thitherward gan wend.
Of Normandy, of Denmark, of Norway, of Britain,
Of Wales and of Ireland, of Gascony and of Spain,
Of Provence and of Saxony, and of Alemain,
Of Scotloud and of Greece, of Rome and Aquitain. ■* •
* Ellis.
' 'W'as called. * Passed tfie mountains — namely, tha AIp&
3 Was quickly taken up. * Take. ^ Since never more.
" Kven women did not remain. TTntixd, in pledge, in pawn.
' \Vitli. fl Hcyond reckoning.
6
RHYMING CHRONICLERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER.
[The Skge of AntiocJt.']
Tho wend forth this company, with mony a noble
man,
And won Tars with strength, and syth Toxan.
And to }Tene brig from thannen' they wend,
And our lord at last to Antioch them send,
That in the beginning of the lond of Syrie is.
Anon, upcn St Lucus' day, hither they come, i wiss,
And besieged the city, and assailed fast.
And they within again' them stalwartly cast.
So that after Christmas the Saracens rede nome,2
And the folk of Jerusalem and of Damas come.
Of Aleph, and of other londs, mid great power enow.
And to succoury Antioch fast hitherward drew.
So that the Earl of Flanders and Beaumond at last
Mid twenty thousand of men again them wend fast.
And smite an battle with them, and the shrewen^
overcome ;
And the Christian wend again, mid the prey that they
nome.
In the month of Feyerer the Saracens eftsoon
Yarked them a great host (as they were y-wont to
done).
And went toward Antioch, to help their kind blood.
The company of Christian men this well understood.
To besiege this castle their footmen they lete,
And the knights wend forth, the Saracens to meet ; * *
I-armed and a-horse well, and in sixty party ,^
Ere they went too far, they dealt their company.
Of the first Robert Curthose they chose to chiefentain,
And of the other the noble Duke Humphrey of Al-
main ;
Of the thridthe good Raymond; the ferththe good man
The Earl of Flanders they betook ; and the fifth than
They betook the bishop of Pody ; and the sixth, tho
The good Tancred and Beaumond, tho ner there namo.^
These twae had the maist host, that as standard was
there.
For to help their fellows, whan they were were.**
This Christian and this Saracens to-gather them soon
met,
And as stalwart men to-gather fast set,
And slew to ground here and there, ac the heathen side
Wax ever wersh' and wersh of folk that come wide.
So that this Christianmen were all ground ney.
Tho Beaumond with his host this great sorrow y-sey,
He and Tancred and their men, that all wer.sh were.
Smite forth as noble men into the battle there.
And stirred them so nobly, that joy it was to see ;
So that their fellows that were in point to flee,
Nome to them good heart, and fought fast enow.
Robert first Curthose his good swerd adrew.
And smote ane up the helm, and such a stroke him gave.
That the skull, and teeth, and the neck, and the
shouldren he to-clave.
The Duke Godfrey all so good on the shouldren smote
one,
And forclave him all that body to the saddle anon.
The one half fell adown anon, the other beleved still
In the saddle, theigh it wonder were, as itwasGod'swill ;
This horse bear forth this half man among his fellows
ea<:h one.
And they, for the wonder case, in dread fell anon.
"What for dread thereof, and for strength of their fon,**
More joy than there was, nas never i-see none.
In beginning of Lent this battle was y-do.
And yet soon thereafter another there come also.
For the Saracens in Paynim yarked folk enow.
And that folk, tho it gare was,!* to Antioch drew.
Tho the Christians it underget, again they wend fast.
So that they met them, and smit an battle at last.
• Thence. 2 Took counsel. •"' Shrews, cursed men.
* Six parties * Then were there no more. * Weary.
7 Fresh. * Foes. * So soon as they were prepared.
Ac the Christians cried all on God, and good earnest
nome.
And, thorough the grace of Jesus Christ, the Paynims
they overcome.
And slew to ground here and there, and the other flew
anon.
So that at a narrow brig there adrent^ mony one. * *
* * * * twelve princes there were dead.
That me cleped amirals, a fair case it was one
The Christians had of them of armour great won,
r)f gold and of silver eke, and thereafter they nome
The headen of the hext masters, and to Antioch come.
And laid them in engines, and into the city them cast :
Tho they within i-see this, sore were they aghast ;
That their masters were aslaw, they 'gun dread sore,
And held it little worth the to^vn to wardy more. * *
A master that was within, send to the Earl Beaumond,
To yielden up his ward, and ben whole and sound.
Ere his fellows were aware, he yeld him up there
The towers of the city that in his ward were.
Tho Beaumond therein was, his banner anon he let
rear ;
Tho the Saracens it i-see, they were some deal in fear,
And held them all overcome. The Christians anon
come,
And this town up this luther^ men as for nought nome,
And slew all that they found, but which so might flee.
And astored them of their treasure, as me might i-see.
Thus was the thrid day of June Antioch i-nome.
And, as all -in thilk side, the Saracens overcome.
[Description of Eohert Cwthose.']
He was William's son bastard, as I have i-said ere
i-lome,3
And well i-wox* ere his father to Englond come.
Thick man he was enow, but he nas well long.
Quarry^ he was and well i-made for to be strong.
Therefore his father in a time i-see his sturdy deed,^
The while he was young, and byhuld, and these words
said,
' By the uprising of God, Robelin, me shall i-see,
Curthose my young son stalward knight shall be.'
For he was some deal short, he cleped him Curthose,
And he ne might never eft afterward thilk name lose.
Other lack had he nought, but he was not well long ;
He was quaint of counsel and of speech, and of body
strong.
Never yet man ne might, in Christendom, ne in Pay-
nim,
In battle him bring adown of his horse none time.
In the list of Rhyming Chroniclers, Robert of
Gloucester is succeeded by Robert Maxnixg, a Gil-
bertine canon in the monastery of Brunne or Bourne,
in Lincolnshire (therefore usually called Robert de
Brunne), who flourished in the "latter part of the
reign of Edward I., and tliroughout that of Edward
II. He translated, under the name of a Handling of
Sins, a French book, entitled Manuel des Peches, the
composition of William de Wadington, in which
the seven deadly sins are illustrated by legendary
stories. He afterwards translated a French chro-
nicle of England, which had been written by Peter
de Langtoft, a contemporary of his own, and an
Augustine canon of Bridlington in Yorkshire. Man-
ning has been cliaracterised as an industrious, and,
for the time, an elegant writer, possessing, in par-
ticular, a great command of rhymes. The verse
adopted in his chronicle is shorter than that of the
Gloucester monk, making an approach to the octo-
syllabic stanza of modern times. The following is
one of the most spirited passages, in reduced spell-
ing:—
' Were drowned. « Wicked. • Frequently before
* Grown. * Square. " Seeing his sturdy doings.
7
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
\_Tke interview of Vortlgcni with Eouen, the beautiful
J)aiightcr of HengistJ]
Hengist that day did his might,
That all were glad, king and knight.
And as they were best in glading.
And well cup-shotten,i knight and king,
Of chamber Rowenen so gent,
Before the king in hall she went.
A cup with wine she had in hand,
And her attire was well farand.^
Before the king on knee set.
And in her language she him gret^
' Laverd-* king, wassail !' said she.
The king asked. What should be.
On that language the king ne couth-'
A knight her language lerid in youth,
Bregh hight that knight, born Breton,
That lerid the langiiage of Saxon.
This Bregh was the latiraer,*'
What she said told Vortiger.
' Sir,' Bregh said, ' Rowen you greets.
And king calls and lord you leets.7
This is their custom and their gest,
When they are at the ale or feast.
Ilk man that loves where him think.
Shall say, Wassail! and to him drink.
He that bids shall say. Wassail !
The tother shall say again, Drinkhail I
That says Wassail drinks of the cup,
Kissing his fellow he gives it up.
Drinkhail he says, and drinks thereof.
Kissing him in bourd and skof.'
The king said, as the knight gan ken,8
' Drinkhail,' smiling on Rowenen.
Boweii drank as her list,^
And gave the king, syne him kissed.
There was the first wassail in dede,
And that first of fame gaed.''^
Of that wassail men told great tale,
And wassail when they were at ale.
And drinkhail to them that drank,
Thus was wassail ta'en to thank.
Fell sithesi' that maiden ying
Wassailed and kissed the king.
Of body she was right avenant.
Of fair colour with sweet semblant.
Her attire full well it seemed,
Mervelik the king she queemed.l^
Of our measure was he glad.
For of that maiden he wax all mad.
Drunkenness the fiend wi-ought.
Of that paenl'! was all his thought.
A mischance that time him led,
He asked that paen for to wed.
Hengist would not draw o lite,
Bot granted him all so tite.
And Hors his brother consented soon.
Her friends said, it were to done.
They asked the king to give her Kent,
In dowcry to take of rent.
Upon that maiden his heart was cast ;
That they asked the king made fast.
I ween the kiii/ took her that day.
And wedded her on paen's lay.'^
[F(Auloxis Account of the first Hir/Invays in England.]
Belin well held his honour.
And wisely was good governor.
1 Well advanced in convivialities.
* Of Rood appearance. This plirase is still used in Scotland.
* Greeted. * Lord. '' Had no knowledge.
• Interpreter. 7 Esteems. 8 TaiiRlit liim.
• As pleased her. '" Went. " Many times.
• Pleased. '^ Pagan. '* According to Pagan law.
He loved peace at his might ;
Peaceable men he held to right.
His lond Britain he yode' throughout,
And ilk country beheld about.
Beheld the woods, water, and fen,
No passage was maked for men.
No high street through countrie
Ne to borough ne city.
Through muris, hills, and Tallies, '
He made brigs and causeways.
High street for common passage,
Brigs o'er waters did he stage.
The first he made he called it Fosse ;
Throughout the land it goes to Scoss.
It begins at Tottenness,
And ends unto Catheness.
Another street ordained he.
And goes to Wales to Saint Davy. * *
Two causeways o'er the lond o-bread,2
That men o'er-thort in passage yede.
When they were made as he chese,
He commanded till all have peace ;
All should have peace and freedame,
That in his streets yede or came.
And if were any of his
That fordid^ his franchise.
Forfeited should be all his thing,
His body taken to the king.
[Praise of Good Women.']
(From the Handling of Sins.)
Nothing is to man so dear
As woman's love in good manner.
A good woman is man's bliss.
Where her love right and stedfast is.
There is no solace under heaven.
Of all that a man may neven,*
That should a man so much glew,5
As a good woman that loveth true :
Ne dearer is none in God's hurd,6
Than a chaste woman with lovely wurd.
ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCES.
HE rise of Homantic Fic-
^ tion in Europe has been
*" I r^ traced to the most opposite
*"■= \ . quarters ; namely, to the
" \>V/ Arabians and to the Scan-
, A diiiavians. It has also
'fiiy been disputed, whether a
'J,^< jjoliter kind of poetical
"i^tTD literature was first culti-
vated in Normandy or in
Provence. Without enter-
ing into these perplex-
ing questions, it may be
that romantic fiction appears to
have been cultivated from the eleventh century
downwards, both by the troubadours of Provence
and by the Norman poets, of whom some account
has already been given. As also already hinted,
a class of persons had arisen, named Jocu/ators,
Jongleurs, or Minstrels, whose business it was to
wander about from one mansion to another, recit-
ing either their own compositions, or those of other
persons, with the acconipaniment of the harp. The
histories and chronicles, already spoken of, par-
took largely of the character of these romantic
tales, and were hawked about in the same manner.
Brutus, the supposed son of .iEneas of Troy, and
who is described in those histories as the founder
of the English state, was as much a hero of romance
' Wont. 2 Hreadthways. • Broke, destroyed.
* Know. * Delight. " Family.
8
METRICAL ROMANXES.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
METRICAL ROMANCES.
as of history. Even where a really historical- person
was adopted as a subject, such as Kollo of Normandy,
or Charlemagne, his life was so amplified with ro-
mantic adventure, that it became properly a work
of fiction. This, it must be remembered, was an age
remarkable for a fantastic military spirit ■ it was the
age of chivalry and of the crusades, when men saw
such deeds of heroism and self-devotion daily per-
formed before their eyes, that nothing which' could
be imagined of the past Avas too extravagant to ap-
pear destitute of the feasibility demanded in fiction.
As might be expected from the ignorance of the age,
no attempt was made to surround the heroes with
the circumstances proper to their time or country.
Alexander the Great, Arthur, and Roland, were all
alike depicted as knights of the time of the poet
himself, The basis of many of these metrical tales
is supposed to have been certain collections of stories
and histories compiled by the monks of the middle
ages. ' iVIaterials for the superstructure were readily
found in an age when anecdotes and apologues were
thought very necessary even to discourses from the
pulpit, and when all the fables that could be gleaned
from ancient writings, or from the relations of tra-
vellers, were collected into story books, and preserved
by the learned for that purpose.' *
It was not till the English language had risen into
some consideration, that it became a vehicle for ro-
mantic metrical tales. One composition of the kind,
entitled Sir Tristrem, published by Sir Walter Scott
in 1804, was believed by him, upon what he thought
tolerable evidence, to be the composition of Thomas
of Ercildoun, identical with a person noted in Scot-
tish tradition under the appellation of Thomas the
Rhymer, who lived at Earlston in Berwickshire, and
died shortly before 1299. If this had been the case.
Sir Tristrem must have been considered a produc-
tion of the middle or latter part of the thirteenth
century. But the soundness of Sir Walter's theory
is now generally denied. Another English romance,
the Life of Alexander the Great, was attributed by
Mr Warton to Adam Davie, marshall of Stratford-
le-Bow, who lived about 1312 ; but this, also, has
been controverted. One only, King Hum, can be
assigned with certainty to the latter part of the
thirteenth century. Mr Warton has placed some
others under that period, but by conjecture alone ;
and in fact dates and the names of authors are alike
wanting at the beginning of the history of this class
of compositions. As far as probability goes, the
reign of Edward II. (1307-27) may be set down as
the era of the earlier English metrical romances, or
rather of the earlier English versions of such works
from the French, for they were, almost without ex-
ception, of that nature.
Sir Guy, the Squire of Loio Degree, Sir Degore,
King Robert of Sicily, the King of Tars, Impomedon,
and La Mort Artur, are the names of some from
which Mr Warton gives copious extracts. Others,
probably of later date, or which at least were long
after popular, are entitled Sir Tlwpas, Sir Isenhras,
Gawan and Gologras, and Sir Bevis. In an Essay
on the Ancient Metrical Romances, in the second
volume of Dr Percy's Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry, the names of many more, with an account
of some of them, and a prose abstract of one en-
titled Sir Lihius, are given. ^Ir Ellis has also, in
his Metrical Romances, given prose abstracts of
many, with some of the more agreeable passages.
The metrical romances flourished till the close of the
fifteenth century, and their spirit affected English
literature till a still later period. Many of the bal-
lads handed down amongst the common people are
supposed to have been derived from them.
* Ellis.
\_E:ctract from the King of Tars.']
[The Soudan of Damascus, having .isked the daughter of the
king of Tarsus in marriage, receivi-s a refusal. Tlie extract
describes liis conduct on the return of the messengers with this
intelligence, and some of the subsequent transactions. The
language of this romance greatly resembles that of Kobert of
Gloucester, and it may therefore be safely referred to the be-
ginning of the fourteenth century.]
The Soudan sat at his dess,l
Y-served of the first mess ;
They comen into the hall
To-fore the prince proud in press,
Their tale they tolden withouten lees,
And on their knees 'gan fall ;
And said, ' Sire, the king of Tars
Of wicked words is not scarce,
Heathen hound he doth thee call J
And ere his daughter he give thee till
Thine heart-blood he will spill,
And thy barons all !'
When the Soudan this y-heard,
As a wood- man he fared,3
His robe he rent adown ;
He tare the hair of head and beard,
And said he would her win with swerd.
By his lord St Mahoun.
The table adown right he smote,
luto the floor foot hot,-*
He looked as a ivild lion.
All that he hit he smote downright.
Both sergeant and knight.
Earl and eke baron.
So he fared forsooth aplight.
All a day and all a night.
That no man might him chast :S
A-morron, when it was daylight,
He sent his messengers full right.
After his barons in haste,
That they comen to his parliament,
For to hearen his judgment,
Both least and maist.6
When the parliament was playner,
Thus bespake the Soudan fier',7
And said to 'em in haste :
' Lordings,' he said, ' what to rede 28
Me is done a great misdeed,
Of Tars the Christian king ;
I bade hira both loud and lede,
To have his doughter in worthy weed,
And spouse her with my ring.
And he said, withouten fail,
Erst^ he would me slay in batail.
And mony a great lording.
Ac certes'" he shall be forswore,
Or to wroth-hail that he was bore,'!
But he it thereto bring.
Therefore, lordings, I have after you sent^
For to come to my parliament.
To wit of you counsail.'
And all answered with good intent.
They would be at his comraandement
Withouten any fail.
And when they were all at his hest,12
The Soudan made a well-great feast,
For love of his batail.
' nigh seat at table. * Mad. ^ Hecamo.
* Did hit. He struck the floor with his foot.
* Chasten or check. * Both little and great.
"! Proud. 8 What do you advise. " First
"> But assuredly. "It shall be lU-fortaue to him that Ik
was bom. i> Order.
9
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPAEDIA OP
TIMES TO 1400.
The Soudan gathered a host unride,!
With Saracens of muekle pride,
The king of Tars to assail.
When the king it heard that tide,
He sent about on each a-side,
All that he might of send ;
Great war then began to ^yracK,
For the marriage ne most be take,
Of that maiden hend.2
Battle they set upon a day,
Within the third day of May,
Ne longer nold they lend.
The Soudan come with great power,
With helm bright, and fair banner,
Upon that king to wend.
The Soudan led an huge host.
And came with much pride and cost.
With the king of Tars to fight ;
With him mony a Saracen fier'.
All the fields far and near
Of helms leamed light.3
The king of Tars came also,
The Soudan battle for to do.
With mony a Christian kniglit.
Either host gan other assail.
There began a strong batail,
That grisly was of sight.
Three heathen again two Christian men,
And felled them down in the fen,
With weapons stiff and good.
The stem Saracens in that fight,
Slew our Christian men downright.
They fought as they were wood.
When the king of Tars saw that sight,
Wood he was for wrath aplight.
In hand he hent'' a spear.
And to the Soudan he rode full right,
With a dunt^ of much might,
Adown he 'gan him bear.
The Soudan nigh he had y-slaw.
But thirty thousand of heathen law,
Coraen him for to weir ;6
And brought him again upon his steed.
And holp him well in that need,
That no man might him dcr.7
When lie was brought upon his steed,
He sprung as sparkle doth of gleed,^
For wrath and for envy.
And all that he hit he made 'em bleed,
He fared as he wold a weed,
' Mahoun help !' he 'gan cry.
Mony a helm there was unweaved,
And mony a bassinet to-cleaved,
And saddles mony empty ;
Men might see upon the field,
Mony a knight dead under shield.
Of the Christian company.
When the king of Tars saw him so ride,
No longer there he wold abide,
But fleeth to liis own city.
The Saracens, that ilk tide.
Slew adown by each side,
Our Christian men so free.
The Saracens that time, sans fail,
Slew our Christians in batail.
That ruth it was to see ;
• Unreckoned.
• Gleamed with light.
» Blow. « Defend.
2 That gentle maid.
•• Took.
7 Hurt. 8 Red coal.
And on the morrow for their sake.
Truce they gan together take
A month and days three.
As the king of Tars sat in his hall,
He made full great dool withal.
For the folk that he had i-lore.'
His doughter came in rich pall.
On knees she 'gan before him fall.
And said, with sighing sore :
' Father,' she said, ' let me be his wife,
That there be no more strife,' &c.
[Extract from the Squire of Low Degree.]
[The daughter of the king of Hungary having fallen into
melancholy, in consequence of the loss of her lover, tlie squire
of low degree, her father thus endeavours to console her. The
passage is valuable, ' because,' says Warton, ' it delineates, in
lively colours, the fashionable diversions and usages of ancient
times.']
To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare ;2
And yede,3 my doughter, in a chair ;
It shall be covered with velvet red.
And cloths of fine gold all about your head,
With damask white and azure blue.
Well diapered* with lilies new.
Your pommels shall be ended with gold.
Your chains enamelled many a fold.
Your mantle of rich degree,
Purple pall and ermine free.
Jennets of Spain, that ben so wight.
Trapped to the ground with velvet bright.
Ye shall have harp, sautry, and song.
And other mirths you among.
Ye shall have Rumney and Malespine,
Both Hippocras and Vernage wine ;
Montrese and wine of Greek,
Both Algrade and despice^ eke,
Antioch and Bastard,
Pyment^ also and garnard ;
Wine of Greek and Muscadel,
Both clare', pyment, and Rochelle,
The reed your stomach to defy,
And pots of Osy set you by.
You shall have venison y-bake.
The best wild fowl that may be take ;
A leish of harehound with you to streek,7
And hart, and hind, and other like.
Ye shall be set at such a tryst,
That hart and hynd shall come to your fist.
Your disease to drive you fro.
To hear the bugles there y-blow.
Homeward thus shall ye ride.
On-hawking by the river's side.
With gosshawk and with gentle falcdn,
M'ith bugle horn and merlidn.
When you come home your menzie" among.
Ye shall have revel, dances, and song ;
Little children, great and small,
Shall sing as does the nightingale.
Then shall ye go to your even song.
With tenors and trebles among.
Threescore of copes of damask bright.
Full of pearls they shall be pight.** * ♦
Your censors shall be of gold.
Indent with azure many a fold.
Your quire nor organ song shall want.
With contre-note and descant.
The other half on organs playing,
With young children full fain singing.
Then shall ye go to your supper.
And sit in tents in green arb^r,
' Lost. * Go a hunting. ^ Qq. * Figured.
* Spiced wine. * A drink of wine, honey, and spices.
7 Course. * Household. "> Set.
10
IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
With cloth of arras pight to the ground,-
With sapphires set of dianioiul. * *
A hundred knights, trulj told,
Shall play with bowls in alleys cold,
Your disease to drive away ;
To see the fishes in pools i)lay,
To a drawbridge then shall ye,
Th' one half of stone, th' other of tree ;
A barge shall meet you full right.
With twenty-four oars full bright,
With trumpets and with clarion,
The fresh water to row up and do\vn. * *
Forty torches burning bright.
At your bridges to bring you light.
Into your chaudjer they shall you bring.
With much mirth and more liking.
Your blankets shall be of fustian,
Your sheets shall be of cloth of Ilennes.
Your head sheet shall be of pery pight,'
With diamonds set and rubies bright.
When you are laid in bed so soft,
A cage of gold shall hang aloft.
With long paper fair burning.
And cloves that be swTet smelling.
Frankincense and olibanum,
That when ye sleep the taste may come ;
And if 3'e no rest can take.
All night minstrels for you shall wake.
IMMEDTJTE PREDECESSORS OF CHAUCER.
Hitherto, we have seen English poetry only in the
for/ns of the chronicle and the romance : of its many
other forms, so familiar now, in which it is employed
to point a moral lesson, to describe natural scenery,
to convey satiric ivflections, and give expression to
refined sentiment, not a trace has as yet engaged our
attention. The dawn of miscellaneous poetry, as
these forms may be comprehensively called, is to be
faintly discovered about the middle of the thirteenth
century, when Henry HI. sat on tlie English throne,
and Alexander II. on that of Scotland. A consider-
able variety of examples wdl be found in the volumes
of which the titles are given below.* The earliest
that can be said to possess literary merit is an elegy
on the death of Edward I. (1307), written in musical
and energetic stanzas, of which one is subjoined : —
Jerusalem, thou hast i-lore 2
The flour of all chi valeric,
Nou Kyng Edward liveth na more,
Alas ! that he yet shulde deye !
He wolde ha rered up ful heyge ^
Our baners that bueth broht to grounde ;
Wei longe we mowe clepe^ and crie,
Er we such a kyng han y-founde !
The first name that occurs in this department of
our literature is that of Lawrence Minot, who,
about 1350, composed a series of short poems on tlie
victories of Edward HI., beginning with tlie battle
of Ilalidon Hill, and ending with the siege of Guines
Castle. His works were in a great measure un-
known until the beginning of tlie present century,
when they were published by Kitson, M:ho jiraised
them for the ease, variet}-, and harmony of the ver-
sification. About the same time flourished Richard
RoLLE, a hermit of the order of St Augustine, and
doctor of divinity, who lived a solitary life near the
' Inlaid with pearls.
* Eilward had intended to go on a crusade to the Holy Land.
» High. < Call.
* Mr Thomas Wright's Political Songs and Specimens of Lyric
Poetry composed in England in the reign of Edward 1. Rcliquice
Antiqua,2 Tsls.
nunnery of Hampole, four miles from Doncaster,
He wrote metrical parajihrases of certain parts of
Scripture, and an original poem of a moral and
religious nature, entitled The Pricke of Conscience;
but of tlie latter work it is not certainly known that
he composed it in English, there being some reason
for believing that, in its present form, it is a trans-
lation from a Latin original written by him. One
agreeable passage (in tlie original spelling) of this
generally duU work is subjoined : —
[ What is in Heaven.}
Ther is lyf withoute ony deth.
And ther is youthc without ony elde ;'
And ther is alle manner welthe to welde :
And ther is rest witliout ony travaille ;
And ther is pees without ony strife.
And ther is alle manner lykinge of lyf : —
And ther is bright somer ever to se,
And ther is nevere winter in that countrie : —
And ther is more worshipe and honour.
Then evere hade kynge other emperour.
And ther is grete melodic of aungeles songe,
And ther is preysing hem ainonge.
And ther is alle manner frendshipe that may be,
And ther is evere perfect love and charite ;
And ther is wisdom without folye.
And ther is honeste without vileneye.
Al these a man may joyes of hevene call :
Ac yutte the most sovereyn joye of alle
Is the sighte of Goddes bright face.
In wham resteth alle mannere grace.
ROBERT LANGLAND.
The Vision of Pierce Plouyhman, a satirical poem
of the same period, ascribed to Robert Longlande.
a secular priest, also shows very expressively the
progress which was made, about" the middle of the
fourteenth century, towards a literary style. This
poem, in many points of view, is one of the most
important works that appeared in England previous
to the invention of printing. It is tlie popular re-
presentative of the doctrines wliich were silently
bringing about the Refiirmation, and it is a peculiarly
national poem, not only as being a much purer
specimen of the English language than Chancer,
but as exhibiting the revival of the same system of
alliteration which characterised the Anglo-Saxon
poetry. It is, in fact, both in this pe. uliarity and
in its political character, characteristic of a "great
literary and political revolution, in which the lan-
guage as well as the independence of the Anglo-
Saxons had at last gained the ascendency over those
of the Normans.* Pierce is represented as falling
asleep on the Malvern liills, and as seeing, in his
sleep, a series of visions ; in describing these, he |
exposes tlie corruptions of society, but particularly |
the dissolute lives of the religious orders, with much j
bitterness. :
{^Extracts from Pierce Plowman.'] i
[Mercy and Truth are thus allegorised.]
Out of the west coast, a wench, as me thoughv,
Came walking in the way, to hell-ward she looked ;
Mercy hight that maid, a meek tiling withal,
A full benign burd,'- and buxom of speech ;
Her sister, as it seemed, came soothly walking,
Even out of the east, and westward she looked,
' Age. 2 Burd, i. e. a maiden.
* A popular edition of this poem has been recently piihlishod
by Mr Wright. The lines are there divided, as we believe jn
strictness tliey ought to be, in the middle, where a pause is
naturally made.
11
PROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
A full comely creature, truth she hight,
For the virtue that her followed afeard was she never.
When these maidens mette, Mercy and Truth,
Either axed other of this great wonder,
Of the din and of the darkness, &c.
[Covetousness is thus personified.]
And then came Covetise, can I him not descrive,
So hungrily and hollow Sir Hervey him looked ;
He was beetle-browed, and babberlipped also,
^Vith two bleared een as a blind hag.
And as a leathern purse lolled his cheeks.
Well syder than his chin,' they shriveled for eld :
And as a bondman of his bacon his beard was be-
drivelled,^
With an hood on his head and a lousy hat above.
And in a tawny tabard of twelve winter age,
Al so-torn and bandy, and full of lice creeping ;
But if that a louse could have loupen the better,
She should not have walked on the welt, it was so
threadbare.
[The existing condition of tlie rt^ligious orders is delineated
in the following allegoriciil fashion. It might be supposed that
Ihe final lines, in which the lieforniation is predicted, was an
interpolation after that event ; but this has been ascertained
Dot to have been the case.]
Ac now is Religion a rider, a roamer about,
A leader of lovedays,-' and a lond-buyer,
A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor.
An heap of hounds [behind him] as ho a lord were:
And but if his knave* kneel that shall his cope bring,
He loured on him, and asketh him who taught him
courtesy ?
Little had lords to done to give lond from her heirs
To religious, that have no ruth though it rain on her
altars.
In many places there they be parsons by hemself at
ease ;
Of the poor have they no pity : and that is her charity !
And they letten hem as lords, her lands lie so broad.
Ac there Sfliall come a King and confess you. Religious,
And beat you, as the Bible telleth, for breaking of
your rule.
And amend monials,^ monks, and canons,
And put hem to her penance —
*****
And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his
issue for ever
Have a knock of a King, and incurable ihe ivound.
GEOFFREY CUAUCER.
With these imperfect models as his only native
guides, arose our first great author, Geoffrey
Chaucer, distinctively known as the Father of
English poetry. Though our language had risen into
importance with the rise of the Connnons in the time
of Edward I., the French long kept possession of the
court and higher circles, and it required a genius
like that of Chaucer — familiar with difierent modes
of life botli at home and abroad, and openly patron-
ised by his sovereign — to give literary permanence
and consistency to the language and poetry of Eng-
land. Henceforward his native style, which Spenser
terms ' the pure well of English undefiled,' formed
a standard of composition, though the national dis-
' Hanging wider than his chin.
* As the mouth of a bondman or rural labourer is with the
bacon he eats, so was his beard beslabbered— an image still
familiar in Kngland.
2 Lovoday is a day appointed for the amicablo settlement of
•litierences.
* A. male servant. * Nuns.
tractions which followed, and the paucity of any
striking poetical genius for at least a century and a
half after his death, too truly exemplify the fine
simile of Warton, that Chaucer was like a genial
day in an P^nglish spring, when a In-illiant sun en-
livens the face of nature with unusual warmth and
lustre, but is succeeded by the redoubled horrors of
winter, ' and those tender buds and early blossoms
which were called forth by the transient gleam ot
a temporary sunshine, are nipped by frosts and
torn by tempests.'
Chaucer.
Chaucer was a man of the world as well as a
student; a soldier and courtier, employed in public
affairs of delicacy and importance, and equally ac-
quainted with the splendour of the warlike and
magnificent reign of Edward III., and with the
bitter reverses of fortune which accompanied the
subsequent troubles and convulsions. lie had par-
taken freely in all ; and was peculiarly qualified to
excel in that department of literature which alone
can be universally popular, the portraiture of real
life and genuine emotion. His genius was not, in-
deed, fully developed till he was advanced in years.
His early pieces have much of the frigid conceit and
pedantry of his age, wlien the passion of love was
erected into a sort of court, governed by statutes,
and a system of chivalrous mythology (such as the
poetical worship of the rose and the daisy) supplanted
the stateliness of the old romance. In time he threw
off these conceits —
He stoop'd to truth, and moralised his song.
Wlien about sixty, in the calm evening of a busy-
life, he composed his Canterbun/ Talcs, simple and
varied as nature itself, imbued with the results
of extensive experience and close observation, and
coloured with the genial lights of a happy tempera-
ment, that had looked on the world without austerity,
and passed through its changing scenes witiiout los-
ing tlie freshness and vivacity of youthful feeling
and imagination. The poet tells us himself (in his
Testament of Love) that he was born in London, and
the year 1328 is assigned, by the only authority we
{Ktssesa on the subject, namely, the insc'ription on
his tomb, as the date of his birth. One of his poems
19.
ENCxLISH LITERATURE.
is signed * Pliilogenet of Cambridge, Clerk,' and
hence he is supposed to liaA'e attended tlic Univer-
sity there; but ^ya^ton and other Oxonians chum
him for the rival university. It is certain that he
accompanied the army with -whicli Ed\vard III. in-
vaded France, and was made prisoner about the
year 1359, at the siege of Eetters. At this time the
poet was honoured witli tlie steady and effective
patronage of John of Gaunt, whose marriage with
Blanche, heiress of Lancaster, he commemorates in
hispoem of the Z'/eam. Chaucer and 'time-honoured
Gaunt' became closely connected. The former mar-
ried Philippa Pyckard, or I)e Rouet, daughter of a
knight of Hainault, and maid of honour to the queen,
and a sister of this lady, Catherine Swinford (widow
of Sir John Swinford) became the mistress, and ulti-
mately the wife, of John of Gaunt. The fortunes of
the poet rose and fell with those of the prince, his
patron. In 1367, he received from the crown a grant
of twenty marks, equal to about £200 of our present
money. In 1372, he was a joint envoy on a mission
to the Duke of Genoa ; and it has been conjectured
that on this occasion he made a tour of the nortliern
states of Italy, and visited Petrarch at Padua. The
only proof of this, however, is a casual allusion in
the Canterbury Tales, where tlie clerk of Oxford says
of hif tale— '
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk —
Francis Petrarch, the laurcat poet,
Ilight this clerk, whose rhetoric sweet
Enlumined all Italy of poetry.
The tale thus learned is the pathetic story of Patient
Grisilde, which, in fact, was written by Boccaccio,
and only translated into Latin by Petrarch. ' Why,'
asks Mr Godwin, ' did Cliaucer choose to confess
his obligation for it to Petrarch ratlier than to Boc-
caccio, from whose volume Petrarch confessedly
translated it? For this very natural reason — be-
cause he was eager to commemorate his interview
with this venerable patriarch of Italian letters, and
to record the pleasure he had reaped from his society.'
We fear this is mere special pleading ; but it would
be a pity that so pleasing an illusion should be dis-
pelled. Whether or not the two poets ever met, the
Italian journey of Chaucer, and the fame of Petrarch,
must have kindled his poetical ambition and refined
his taste. The Divine Comedy of Dante had shed a
glory over the literature of Italy ; Petrarch received
his crown of laurel in tlie Capitol of Rome only five
fears before Chaucer first appeared as a poet (his
Court of Love was written about the year 1346) ; and
Boccaccio (more poetical in his prose tlian his verse)
had composed that inimitable century of tales, his
Decameron, in which the charms of romance are
clothed in all the pure and sparkling graces of com-
position. These illustrious examples must have in-
spired the English traveller ; but tlie rude northern
speech with which he had to deal, formed a chilling
contrast to the musical language of Italy ! Edward
III. continued his jjatronage to tlie poet. He was
made comptroller of the customs of wine and wool
in the port of London, and had a pitcher of wine
daily from the royal table, which was afterwards
commuted into a pension of twenty marks. He was
appointed a joint envoy to France to treat of a mar-
riage between the Prince of Wales and I\Iary, the
daughter of the French king. At home, he is sup-
posed to have resided in a house granted by tlie
king, near the royal manor at Woodstock, wliere,
according to the description in his Dream, he was
gurrounded with every mark of luxury and distinc-
tion. The scenery of Woodstock Park has been
described in tlie Dreavi with some graphic and pic-
turesque touches : —
And right anon as I the day espied,
No longer would I in ray bed abide,
I went forth myself alone and boldely,
And held the way down by a brook side,
Till I came to a land of white and green,
So fair a one had I never in been.
The ground was green y-powdered with daisy,
The flowers and the groves alike high,
All green and white was nothing else seen.
The destruction of the Royal IManor at Woodstock,
and the subsequent erection of Blenheim, have
changed the appearance of this classic ground ; but
the poet's morning walk may still betraccd, and
some venerable oaks that may have waved over him,
lend poetic and historical interest to the spot. The
opening of the reign of Richard II. was unpropitious
to Chaucer. He became involved in the civil and
religious troubles of the times, and joined with the
party of John of Nortliampton, who was attached
to the doctrines of Wickliffe, in resisting tlie mea-
sures of the court. The poet fled to Hainault (the
countrj' of his wife's relations), and afterwards to
Holland. He ventured to return in 1386, but was
thrown into the Tower, and deprived of his comp-
trollership. In May 1388, he obtained leave to dis-
pose of his two patents of twenty marks each ; a
measure prompted, no doubt, liy necessity. He ob-
tained his release by impeaching his previous asso-
ciates, and confessing to his misdemeanours, offering
also to prove the truth of his information by enter-
ing the lists of combat witli the accused parties.
How far this transaction involves tlie character of
the poet, we cannot now ascertain. He has painted
his suffering and distress, tlie odium which he in-
curred, and his indignation at the bad conduct of his
former confederates, in powerful and affecting lan-
guage in his prose work, the Testament of Love. The
sunshine of royal favour was not long withheld after
this humiliating submission. In 1389, Chaucer is
registered as clerk of the works at Westminster;
and next year he was appointed to the same office at
Windsor. These were only temporary situations,
held about twenty months ; but he afterwards re-
ceived a grant of £20, and a tun of wine, per an-
num. The name of the poet does not occur again
for some years, and he is supposed to have retired
to Woodstock, and there composed his Canterbury
Tales. In 1398, a patent of protection was granted
to him by the crown ; but, from the terms of the
deed, it is difficult to say whether it is an amnesty
for political offences, or a safeguard from creditors.
In the following year, still brighter prospects opened
on the aged poet. Henry of Bolingbroke, the son
of his brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, ascended the
throne : Cliaucer's annuitj' was continued, and forty
marks additional were granted. Thomas Chaucer,
whom Mr Godwin seems to jirove to have been the
poet's son, was made chief butler, and elected Speaker
of the House of Commons. The last time that the
poet's name occurs in any public document, is in a
lease made to him by the abbot, prior and convent
of Westminster, of a tenement situate in the gar-
den of the chapel, at the yearly rent of 53s. 4d,
This is dated on the 24th of December 1399 ; and
on the 25th of October 1400, the poet died in Lon-
don, most probably in the liouse he had just leased,
which stood on the site of Henry Vll.'s chapel. He
was buried in Westminster Abbey — the first of that
illustrious file of poets whose ashes rest in the sacred
edifice.
The character of Chaucer may be seen in his
works. He was the counterpart of Sliakspeare in
clieerfulness and benignity of dispositio'i — no enemy
, to mirth and joviality, yet delighting in his books,
13
FBOM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
and shidious in tlie midst of an active life. He was
an enemy to superstition and priestly abuse, but
playful in his satire, with a keen sense of the ludi-
crous, and the richest vein of comic narrative and
delineation of character. He retained through life
a strong love of the country, and of its inspiring and
invigorating influences. No poet has dwelt more
fondly on the charms of a spring or summer morn-
ing; and the month of May seems to have been
always a carnival in his heart and fancy. His re-
tirement at Woodstock, where he had indulged the
poeticid reveries of his jouth, and where lie was
crowned with the latest treasures of his genius, was
exactly such an old age as could have been desired
for the \tnerablt founder of our national poetry
period of their sojourn ; and we have thus a hundred
stories, lively, humorous, or tender, and full of cha-
racteristic painting in clioice Italian. Chaucer seems
to have copied this design, as well as part of the
Florentine's freedom and licentiousness of detail;
but he greatly improved upon the plan. There is
something repulsive and unnatural in a party of
ladies and gentlemen meeting to tell loose tales of
successful love and licentious monks while the plague
is desolating the country around them. The tales
of Chaucer have a more pleasing origin. A com-
pany of pilgrims, consisting of twenty-nine ' sundry
folk,' meet together in fellowship at the Tabard Inn,
Southwark * all being bent on a pilgrinnge to the
■ilirint of Thomas i Betkct at Cmtcibur} ihese
j)iUimiigcs were scenes of inucli enjovment, and
L^cn mirth, for, sitisficd \Mth th^\ irting the Evil
One b\ tlie object of their mission, the de\otees did
not eonbider it neeessar^ to preser^e anj religious
Chaucer s Tomb
The principal of Chaucer's minor poems are the
Flower and Leaf, a spirited and graceful allegorical
poem, with some fine description ; and Troilus and
Cresseide, partly translated, but enriched with many
marks of his original genius. Sir riiilip Sidney
admired this pathetic poem, and it was long pi)-
pular. Warton and every subsequent critic have
quoted with just admiration the passage in which
Cresseide makes an avowal of her love : —
And as the new-abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdes tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
And after, sicker, doth her voice outring ;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,
Opened her heart, and told him her intent.
The House of Fame, afterwards so richly paraphrased
by Pope, contains some bold imagery, and the ro-
mantic machinery of Gothic fable. It is, however,
very unequal in execution, and extravagant in con-
ception. Warton has pointed out many anachron-
isms in these poems. We can readily believe that
the unities of time and place were little regarded by
the old poet. They were as much defied by Shak-
speare ; but in both we have the higher qualities of
true feeling, passion, and excitement, which blind
us to mere scholastic blemishes and defects.
The Canterbury Tales form the best and most
durable monument of Chaucer's genius. Boccaccio,
in his Decameron, supposes ten jiersons to have re-
tired from llorence during the plague of 1348, and
there, in a sequestered villa, amused themselves by
relating tales after dinner. Ten days formed the
labardlnn, Southwark.
strictness or restraint by the way. The poet him-
self is one of the party at the Tabard. They all sup
together in the large room of the hostelrie ; and after
great cheer, the landlord proposes that the}- shall
travel together to Canterbury ; and, to shorten
their way, tliat each shall tell a tale, both in going
and returning, and whoever told the best, should
have a supper at the expense of the rest. The
company assent, and ' mine host' (who was both
* bold of his speech, and wise and well taught ')
is appointed to be judge and reporter of the stories.
The characters composing this social party are
inimitably drawn and discriminated. We have a
knight, a mirror of chivalry, who had fought
against the Heathenesse in Palestine ; his son, a
gallant young squire with curled locks, ' laid in
presse' and all manner of debonair accomplishments ;
a nun, or prioress, beautifully drawn in her arch
simplicity and coy reserve ; and a jolly monk, who
boasted a dainty, well-caparisoned horse —
And when he rode men might his bridle hear
Gingling in a whistling wind as clear,
And eke as loud as doth the chapel bell.
* ' The house is supposed still to exist, or an inn built upon
the site of it, from which tlie personages of the Cavkrtnirti
Tail's set out upon their pilgrimage. The sign has been con-
verted by a confusion of speech from the Tabard — " a sleeveless
coat worn in times past by noblemen in the wars," but now
only by heralds {Spcrjlit's Glossary) — to the Talbot, a species of
liound ; and the following inscription is to be found on the
spot: — 'This is tlie inn where GeoO'rcy Chaucer and nine-and-
twenty pilgrims lodged on their journey to Canterbury in J083."
The inscription is truly observed by Mr Tyrrwhit to be moderoi
and of little authority.' — Godwin's Li/e o/Ckaucer.
14
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
A wanton friar is also of the party — full of sly and
solemn mirth, and well beloved fur his accomniodat-
ing disposition —
Full sweetly heard he confession,
And pleasant was his absolution.
We have a Pardoner from Rome, with some sacred
relics (as p.art of the Virgin Mary's veil, and part of
the sail of St Peter's ship), and who is also ' brim-
ful of pardons come from Rome all hot.' In satirical
contrast to these merry and interested churchmen,
we have a poor parson of a town, ' rich in holy
thought and work,' and a clerk of Oxford, who was
skilled in logic —
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he ham and gladly teach.
Yet, with all his learning, the clerk's coat was thread-
bare, and his horse was ' lean as is a rake.' Among
the other dramatis personce are, a doctor of physic, a
great astronomer and student, ' whose study was
but little on the Bible ;' a purse-proud merchant ; a
sergeant of law, who was always busy, yet seemed
busier than he was ; and a jolly Franklin, or free-
holder, who had been a lord of sessions, and was
fond of good eating —
"Withouten baked meat never was his house,
Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous ;
It snowed, in his house of meat and drinJc.
This character is a fine picture of the wealthy rural
Englishman, and it shows how much of enjoyment
and hospitality was even then associated with this
station of life. The Wife of Bath is another lively
national portrait : she is shrewd and witty, has
abundant means, and is always first with her offer-
ing at church. Among the humbler characters are,
a ' stout carl ' of a miller, a reve or bailifl', and a
sompnour or church apparitor, who summoned of-
fenders before the archdeacon's court, but whose
fire-red face and licentious habits contrast curiously
with the nature of his duties. A shipman, cook,
haberdasher, &c., make up the goodly company —
the whole forming such a genuine Hogarthian pic-
ture, that we may exclaim, in the eloquent language
of Campbell, ' 'SMiat an intimate scene of English
life in the fourteenth century do we enjoy in these
tales, beyond what history displays by glimpses
through the stormy atmosphere of her scenes, or the
antiquary can discover by the cold light of his re-
searches !' Chaucer's contemporaries and their suc-
cessors were justly proud of this national work.
Many copies existed in manuscript, and when the
art of printing came to England, one of the first
duties of Caxton's press was to issue an imjiression of
those tales which first gave literary permanence and
consistency to the language and poetry of England.
All the pilgrims in the Canterhury Taks do not
relate stories. Chaucer had not, like Boccaccio,
finished his design ; for he evidently intended to
have given a second series on the return of the com-
pany from Canterburj', as well as an account of the
transactions in the city when they reached the sacred
shrine. The concluding supper at the Tabard,
when the successful competitor was to be declared,
would have afforded a rich display for the poet's
pecuhar humour. The parties who do not relate
tales (as the poem has reached us) are the yeoman,
the ploughman, and the five city mechanics. The
squire's tale is the most chivalrous and romantic,
and that of the clerk, containing the popular legend
of Patient Grisilde, is deeply affecting for its pathos
and simplicity. The ' Cock and the Fox,' related
by the nun's priest, and ' January and May,' the
merchant's tale, have some minute painting of natu-
ral objects and scenery, in Chaucer's clear and simple
style. The tales of the miller and reve are coarse,
but richly humorous. Dryden and Pope have ho-
noured the Father of British verse by paraphrasing
some of these popular productions, and stripping
them equally of their antiquated style and the more
gross of their expressions, but with the sacrifice of
most that is characteristic in the elder bard. In a
volume edited by Islr R. H. Home, under the title
of Chaucer Modernised, there are specimens of the
poems altered with a much more tender regard to
the original, and in some instances with considerable
success ; but the book by which ordinary readers of
the present day, who are willing to take a little
trouble, may best become acquainted with this great
light of the fourteenth century, is one entitled the
liiches of Chaucer, by C. C. (Tlarke (two volumes,
1835), in which the best pieces are given, with only
the spelling modernised. An edition of the Can-
terbury Tales was published, with a learned commen-
tary, by Thomas Tyrwhitt, Esq. (5 vols. 1778).
The verse of Chaucer is, almost without excep-
tion, in ten-syllabled couplets, the verse in which
by fiir the largest portion of our poetry since that
time has been written, and which, as Mr Southey
has remarked, may be judged from that circum-
stance to be best adapted to the character of our
speech. The accentuation, by a license since aban-
doned, is different in many instances from that of
common speech : the poet, wherever it suits his con-
veniency, or his pleasure, makes accented syllables
short, and short syllables emphatic. This has been
not only a difficulty with ordinary readers, but a
subject of perplexity amongst commentators; but
the principle has latterly been concluded upon as of
the simple kind here stated. Another peculiarity
is the making silent e's at the end of words tell in
the metre, as in Ereuch lyrical poetry to this day :
for example —
Full well she sange the service divine.
Here ' sange ' is two syllables, while service fur-
nishes an example of a transposed accent. In pursu-
ance of the same principle, a monosyllabic noun, as
beam, becomes the dissyllable beanies in the pluraL
When these peculiarities are carefully attended to,
much of the difT5c\ilty of reading Chaucer, even in
the original spellmg, vanishes.
In the extracts which follow, we present, first, a
specimen in the original spelling; then various spe-
cimens in the reduced sjielling adopted by Mr Clarke,
but without his marks of accents and extra syllables,
except in a few instances ; and, finally, one specimen
(the Good Parson), in which, by a few shght changes,
the verse is accommodated to the present fashion.
[^Select characters from the Canterbury Pilgrimage,'}
A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the time that he first began
To rideu out, he loved chevalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre ;
And, therto, hadde he ridden, none more ferre,
As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesse. * *
Though that he was worthy he was wise ;
And of his port, as meke as is a mayde :
He never yet no vilainie ne sayde,
In all his lif, unto no manere wight,
He was a veray parfit gentil knight.
But, for to telleu you of his araie, —
His hors was good, but he nc was not gaie
Of fustian he wcrcd a gipon'
Alle besmatrcd with his habergeon,
1 A short casscck.
15
F&OM EAULIEST
CYCLOPiEDiA OP
TIMES TO 1400.
B or he was late ycome fro his riage,
And weiitc for to don his pilgrimage.
^^'ith him, ther was his sone, ayongc Squier,
A lover, and a lusty bachelor ;
With lockes cruU as they were laide in presse.
Of iwenty yere of age he was, I gesse.
Of his stature he was of even lengthe ;
And wonderly deliver, and grete of strengthe,
And he hadde be, somtime, in chcvachiel
In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie,
And borne him wel, as of so litel space,
In hope to standen in his ladies grace.
Erabrouded was he, as it were a mede
All full of freshe floures, white and rede.
Singing he was, or floyting all the day :
He was as freshe as is the moneth of May.
Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide.
Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fivyre ride,
He coude songes make, and wel endite ;
Juste and eke dance ; and wel pourtraie and -vvi-itc :
So bote he loved, that by nightertale-
He slep no more than doth the nightingale :
Curteis he was, lowly and servisfible ;
And carf before his fader at the table.
A Yeman hadde he ; and servantes no mo
At that time ; for him luste to ride so :
And he was eladde in cote and hode of grene ;
A shefe of peacock arwes bright and keue
Under his belt he bare ful thriftily ;
Wel coude he dresse his takel yemanly :
His arwes drouped not with fetheres lowe,
And in his hand he bare a mighty bowe.
A not-hed^ hadde he with a broun visage,
Of wood-craft coude he wel alle the usage.
Upon his arme, he bare a gaie bracer ;•*
And by his side, a swerd and a bokeler ;
And on that other side, a gaie daggere,
Hameised wel, and sharpe as point of spere :
A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene.
An home he bare, the baudrik was of grene.
A forster was he, sothel_y, as I gesse.
Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
That of hire smiling was full simple and coy ;
Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ;
And she was cleped^ Madame Eglcntine.
Ful wel she sange the service devine,
Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ;
And Frenche she spake ful fajTC and fetisly,"
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.
At mete was she wele ytaughte withalle ;
She lette no morsel from her lippes falle,
Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.
In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest.7
Hire over-lippe wiped she so clone,
That in hire cuppe was no ferthingS sene
Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught.
Ful seniely after hire mete she raught.''
And sikerly she was of grete disport,
And ful plesant, and amiable of port,
And peined'" hire to contrefeten'^ chero
Of court, and ben estatelich of manere,
And to ben holden digne'- of reverence.
But for to spoken of hire conscience.
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a nious
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndos hadde she, that she fcddc
> On an expedition. ^ in the niRlit-timc.
8 A head like a bullock's. * Armour for the arm.
6 Called. '' Neatly. 7 Her ple.isure.
8 Smallest spot. ^ Rose. >» Took pains.
' To imitate '* Worthy.
With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde' smerte :-
And all was conscience and tendre herte.
Ful semely hire wimple ypinchcd was ;
Hire nose tretis ;■' hire eyen grey as glas ;
Hire mouth ful smale, and thereto soft and
red ;
But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed.
It was almost a spanne brode I trowe ;
For hardily she was not undergrowe.'*
Ful fetise^ was hire cloke, as I was ware.
Of smale corall aboute hire arm she bare
A pair of bedes, gauded all with grene ;
And thereon heng a broche of gold ful shene,
On whiche was iirst ywriten a crouncd A,
And after, A7noi' rincit omnia.
Another Nonne also with hire hadde she,
That was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre.
A Monk ther was, a fayre for the maistrie,
An out-rider, that loved venerie ;
A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable ;
And when he rode, men mighte his bridel here
Gingeling, in a whistling wind, as clere
And eke as loude as doth the chapell belle,
Ther as this lord was keper of the celle.
The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Ben-iit,
Because that it was olde and somdele streit,
This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace,
And held after the newe world the trace.
He yave not of the text a pulled hen,
That saith that hunters ben not holy mm;
Ne that a monk, whan he is rekkeles.
Is like to a fish that is waterles ;
(This is to say, a monlc out of his doistre) ;
This ilke text he held not worth an oistre.
Therfore he was a prickasoure7 a right :
Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight :
Of pricking, and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust ; for no cost wolde he spare.
I saw his sieves purfiled at the bond
With gi'is,** and that the finest of the lond,
And, for to fasten his hood, under his chinne
He hadde, of gold ywrought, a curious pinne,-^
A love-knotte in the greter ende ther was.
His bed was balled, and shone as any glas,
And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point.
His eyen stepe, and rolling in his bed.
That stemed as a furneis of a led ;
His bootes souple, his hors in gret estat ;
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.
He was not pale as a forpined gost.
A fat swan loved he best of any rost.
His palfrey was as broun as is .a bery. * •
A Marchant was ther with a forked berd,
In mottelee, and highc on hors he sat,
And on his bed a Flaundri.sh bever hat.
His bootes elapsed fayre and fetisly.
His resons spake he ful solempnely,
Sonning alway the encrese of his winning.
He wold the see were kept, for .any thing,
Betwixen Middleburgh and Orowell.
Wel coud he in eschangcs shcldes" selle.
This worthy man ful wel his wit besette ;
Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette,
So stedfastly didde he in his governance,
With his bargeines, and with his chevisance.'"
Forsothe he was a worthy man withalle.
But Both to sayn, I no't how men him calle.
' Rod. ' Smartly, adv.
s Neat. " Hunting.
8 Flench crowns,
money.
s Straight, * Of low statura
7 A hard rider. 8 Fur.
10 An agreement for borrowing
16
3AUCER.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
A Clerk ther was of Oxciiforde also,
That unto logike hadde long ygo.
As lene was his hors as is a rako,
And he was not right fat I undertake ;
But looked holwe, and thereto soberly.
Ful thredbare was his overest courtcjiy,
For he hadde geten him yet no beneti(.'e,
Ho was nought worldly to have an oiiifo.
For him was lever han, at his beddes hcd,
Twenty bokos clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophic,
Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie :
But all be that he was a philosophre.
Yet hadile he but litel gold in cofre ;
But all that he might of his frendes hente,!
On bokes and on lerning he it spente ;
And besily gan for the soules praie
Of hem that yave him wherwitu to scolaie.
Of studie toke he most cure and hede.
Not a word spake he more than was node ;
And that was said in forme and reverence,
And short and quike, and full of high sentence:
Souning in moral vertue was his speche ;
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly tuclie. *
A Frankelein was in this compagnie ;
White was his herd as is the dayesie.
Of his complexion he was sanguin.
Wei loved he by the morwe- a sop in win.
To liven in delit was ever his wone.3
For he was Epicures owen sone.
That held opinion, that plein delit
Was veraily felicite parlite.
An housholder, and that a grete was he ;
Seint Julian he was in his contree.
His brede, his ale, was alway after on ;
A better envyned man was no wher non.
Withouten bake mete never was his hous,
Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous.
It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
Of alle deintees that men coud of thinke.
After the oondry sesons of the yere.
So changed he his mete and his soupere.
Ful many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe ;
And many a breme, and many a luce, in stiiwe.
Wo was his coke but if his sauce were
Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gere.
His table, dormant-* in his halle, alway
Stode redy covered alle the longe day.
At sessions ther was he lord and sire ;
Ful often time he was knight of the shire.
An anelace-5 and a iripciere'' all of silk
Hens at his girdel, white as morwe milk.
A shereve hadde he ben and a countour.
Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour.7
An Haberdasher, and a Carpenter,
A Webbe, a Dcyer, and a Tapiser,
Were alle yclothed in o^ livere
Of a solempne and grete fraternite.
Ful frcshe and newe hir gere ypiked was ;
Hir knives were ychaped not with bras,
But all with silver wrought full cleno and wel,
Hir girdeles and hir pouches, every del.
Wel semed eche of hem a fayre burgeis,
To sitten in a gild halle, on the dels.
Everich, for the wisdom that he can.
Was shapelich for to ben an alderman.
For catel haddcn they ynough, and rent.
And, eke, hir wives wolde it wel assent,
And elles certainly they were to blame.
It is full fayre to ben ycleped IVIadame —
And for to gon to vigiles all before,
And have a mantel reallich ybore. * *
1 Obtain.
* Fixed.
7 Landlord.
2 Mnming.
s Dagger.
8 One.
3 ■\Vont, custom.
6 Purse.
A good Wif was ther of beside Bathe ;
But she was som del defe, and that was scathe.
Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt,
She passed hem of Ipres, and of Gaunt.
In all the parish, ;vif ne was ther non
That to the offring before hire shulde gon—
And if ther did, certain so wroth was she.
That she was out of alle charltee.
Hire coverchiefs weren ful fine of ground,
(I dorste swere they weyeden a pound),
That on the Sonday were upon hire hede :
Hire hosen weren of fine scarlet rede,
Ful streite yteyed, and shoon ful moist and newe.
Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew.
She was a worthy woman all hire live :
Housbondes, at the chirche dore, had she had five,
Withouten other compagnie in youthe.
But thereof nedeth not to speke as nouthe.
And thries hadde she ben at Jerusaleme ;
She had passed many a strange streme :
At Rome she hadde ben, and at Boloigne,
In Galice at Seint James, and at Coloine :
She coude moche of wandring by the way,
Gat-tothed was she, sothly for to say.
Upon an ambler esily she sat,
Ywimpled wel ; and on hire hede an hat
As brode as is a bokeler, or a targe ;
A fore-mantel about hire hippes large ;
And on hire fete a pair of sporres shar])e.
In felawship, wel coude she laughe and carpe
Of remedies of love she knew perchance ;
For, of that arte, she coude the olde dance. * *
Ther was also a Reve and a Millere,
A Sompnour, and a Pardoner also,
A Manciple, and myself ; ther n'ere no mo.
The Miller was a stout carl for the nones,
Ful bigge he was of braun, and eke of bones ;
That proved wel ; for over all ther he came,
At wrastling he wold here away the ram.
He was short shuldered, brode, a thikke gnarre,^
Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre.
Or breke it at a renning with his hede.
His herd as any sowe or fox was rede,
And therto brode, as though it were a spade :
Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
A wert, and theron stode a tufte of heres,
Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres :
His nose-thirles blacke were and wide.
A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side.
His mouth as wide was as a forneis :
He was a jangler, and a goliardeis,^
And that was most of sinne and harlotries.
Wel coude he stolen come and toUen thries.
And yet he had a thomb of gold parde.
A white cote and a blew hode wered he.
A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune,
And thcrwithall he brought us out of toune. * *
The Reve was a slendre colerike man ;
His herd was shave as neighe as ever he can :
His here was by his eres round yshorne ;
His top was docked like a preest beforne :
Ful longe were his legges, and ful lene,
Ylike a staff, ther was no calf ysene.
Wel coude he kepe a gamer and a binne ;
Ther was non auditour coude on him winne.
Wel wiste he, by the drought and by the rain,
The yelding of his seed and of his grain.
His lordes shepe, his nete,^ and his deirie,*
His swine, his hors, his store, and his pultrie.
Were holly in this Reves governing ;
And by his covenant yave he rekening,
Sin that his lord were twenty ^ere of age ;
Ther coude no man brintr him in arerage.
A knot in a tree.
Dairy.
' X man of jollity. ^ Cattla
17
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMKS TO 1-100.
Ther n'as bailif, ne herde, ne other hine,
That he ne knew his sleight and his covine :^
They were adradde of him as of the deth.
His wonning was ful fayre upon an heth ;
'^^'ith greene trees yshadewed was his place.
He coude better than his lord pourchace :
Ful riche he was ystored privily.
His lord wel coude he plesen, subtilly
To yeve and lene- him of his owen good,
And have a thank, and yet a cote and hood.
In youth he lenied hadde a good mistere ;
He was a wel good ^vright, a carpentere.
The Reve sate upon a right good stot
That was all pomelee grey, and highte Scot.
A long surcote of perse upon he hade,
And by his side he bare a rusty blade.
Of Norfolk was this Reve of which I tell,
Beside a toun men clepen Baldeswell.
Tucked he was, as is a frere, aboute ;
And ever he rode the hindcrest of the route.
A Sompnour was ther with us in that place.
That hadde a fire-red cherubinnca face.
With scalled browes blake, and pilled herd :
Of his visage children were sore aferd.
Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston,
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non,
Ne ointement, that wolde dense or bite.
That him might helpen of his whelkes white,
Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes.
AVel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes,
And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood ;
Than wold he speke and crie as he were wood ;
And when that he wel dronkcn had the win.
Than wold he spoken no word but Latin.
A fewe termes coude he, two or three.
That he had lemed out of som decree ;
No wonder is, he herd it all the day :
And eke ye knowen wel how that a jay
Can clepen ^catte as well as can the pope :
But who so wolde in other thing him grope —
Than hadde he spent all his philosophie ;
Ay Questlo quid Juris? wolde he crie.
He was a gentil harlot, and a kind ;
A better felaw shulde a man not find.
And if he found o where a good felawe.
He wolde techen him, to have non awe,
In swiche a cas, of the archedekenes curse :
But if a mannes soule were in his purse,
For in his purse he shulde ypunished be.
Purse is the archedekenes hell, said he.
But, wel I wote, he lied right in dede :
Of cursing ought eche gilty man him drede ;
For curse wol sle, right as assoiling saveth,
And also ware him of a sif/nificavit.
In danger hadde he, at his owen gise,
The yonge girles of the diocise ;
And knew hir conseil and was of hir rede.
A girlond hadde he sette upon his hede.
As gret as it were for an alestake ;•'
A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake.
With him there rode a gentil Pardonere
Of Rouncevall, his frend and his compere.
That streit was comen from the court of Rome,
Ful loude he sang Come hither, lord to me :
This Sompnour bare to him a stiff burdoun,
Was never trompe of half so gret a soun.
This Pardoner had here as yclwe as wax,
Ful smothe it heng, as doth a strike of flax :
By unces heng his lokkes that he hadde.
And therwith he his shulders overspradde :
Ful thinne it lay, by culpons on and on.
But hode, for jolite, ne wered he non.
For it was trussed up in his wallet.
Him thought he rode al of the newe get ;*
• Secret contrivances.
The sign of an alehouse.
* Give and lend
* Fa&hion.
Dishevelo, sauf his cappe, he rode all bare.
Swiche glaring even hadde he as an hare.
A vcrnicle' hadde he sewed upon his cajipe.
His wallet lay beforne him, in his lappe,
Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al bote.
A vois he hadde, as smale as hath a goto :
No berd hadde he, ne never non shulde have ;
As smothe it was as it were newe shave.
But of his craft, fro Berwiko unto Ware,
Ne was ther swiche an other Pardonere ; —
For in his male- he hadde a pilwebere.
Which, as he saide, was our Ladies veil :
He saide he hadde a gobbet of the se3'l
Thatte Seint Peter had, whan tliat he went
LTpon the see till Jcsu Crist him hent :
He had a crois of laton ful of stones ;
And in a glas he hadde J)igges bones.
But with these rclikes, whanne that he fond
A poure persone dwelling upon lond.
Upon a day he gat him more moneie
Than that the persone gat in monethes tweie ;
And tluis with fained flattering and japes.
He made the persone, and the pcplc, his apes.
But trewely to tellen atte last,
He was in chirche a noble ecclesiast ;
Wel coude he rede a lesson or a storie.
But aldcrbest^ he sang an otfertorie ;
For wel he wiste, whan that song was songe.
He nmste preche and wel afile liis tonge.
To winne silver, as he right wel coude ;
Therfore he sang the merier and loude.
^Description of a Poor Country Widow.\
A poore %vidow, somedeal stoo])'n in age,
Was whilom dwelling in a narw^ cottage
Beside a grove standing in a dale.
This widow, which I tell you of my Tale,
Since thilke day that she was last a wife.
In patience led a full simple life.
For little was her cattle and her rent ;
By husbandry* of such as God her sent,
She found herself and eke her daughters two.
Three large sowcs had she, and po mo.
Three kine, and eke a sheep that hiirhte'' Mall :
Full sooty was her bower and eke her hall,
In which she ate many a slender meal ;
Of poignant sauce ne knew she never a deal ;'>
No dainty morsel passed through lier throat ;
Her diet was accordant to her cote :'
Repletion ne made her never sick ;
Attemper" diet was all her physic.
And exercise, and heartes suthsance :
The goute let-' her nothing for to dance,
Ne apoplexy shente"' not her head ;
No wine ne drank she neither white nor red ;
Her board was served most with white and Ijiuck,
?klilk and bro\Mi bread, in which she found ud lack,
Scinde" bacon, and sometime an egg or tway.
For she was as it were a manner dey.i^
\_TItc Death ofArcite.]
Swclleth the breast of Arcite, and the sore
Encreaseth at his hearte more and more.
The clottered blood for any leche-craft'^
Corrupteth, and is in his bouk'^ ylaft,
That neither veine-blood ne ventousing,J5
Ne drink of herbes may be his helping.
' A copy of the miraculous handkerchief.
2 Trunk. ^ Best of all.
■♦ Thrift, econonfy. * Called. * Not a bit. 7 Cot, cottage.
8 Teniiiorate. 9 Prevented. '"Injured. " Sin^;ed.
'- Mr Tjrwhitt supposes the word 'dey' to refer to the
management of a dairy ; and tliat it originally signified a liind.
• Manner dey' may therefore be interpreted ' a species of
hired, or day labourer.' '3 j[c,Ucal skill. '■• Hocty. '* Von-
tousing (Fr.) — cupping; hence the term ' breathing a, xeia.'
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
The virtue expulsive or animal,
From tbilke virtue cleped^ natural,
Ne may the venom voidcn ne expell ;
The pipes of his lunges 'gan to swell.
And every laccrt- in his breast adown
Is shent-* with venom and corruption.
He gaineth neltlier,-^ for to get his life,
Vomit upward ne downward laxative :
All is to-bursten thilke region ;
Nature hath now no domination :
And certainly where nature will not werche,^
Farewell phj'sic ; go bear the man to church.
This is all and some, that Arcite muste die ;
For which he sendeth after Emily,
And Palamon, that was his cousin dear ;
Then said he thus, as ye shall after liear :
' Nought may the woful spirit in mine heart
Declare one point of all my sorrows' smart
To you my lady, that I love most.
But I bequeath the service of my ghost
To }'ou aboven every creature.
Since that my life ne may no longer dure.
' Alas the woe ! alas the paines strong,
That I for you have sufiered, and so long !
Alas the death ! alas mine Emily !
Alas departing of our company !
Alas mine hearte's queen ! alas my wife !
Mine hearte's lady, ender of my life !
"What is this world ? — wliat askcn men to have ?
Now with his love, now in his colde gi-ave —
Alone — withouten any company.
Farewell my sweet — farewell mine Emily !
And softe take me in your armes tway
For love of God, and hearkeneth what I say.
' I have here with my cousin Palamon
Had strife and rancour many a day agone
For love of you, and for my jealousy ;
And Jupiter so wis'' my soule gie,7
To speaken of a servant properly,
With alle circumstances truely ;
That is to say, truth, honour, and knighthead,
"Wisdom, humbless, estate, and high kindred.
Freedom, and all that 'lougeth to that art,
So Jupiter have of my soule part.
As in this world right now ne know I none
So worthy to be loved as Palamon,
That serveth you, and will do all his life ;
And if that ever ye sliall be a wife.
Forget not Palamon, the gentle man.'
And with that word his speeche fail began ;
For from his feet up to his breast was come
The cold of death that had him overnomc f
And yet, moreover, in his armes two.
The vital strength is lost and all ago f
Only the intellect, withouten more,
That dwelled in his hearte sick and sore,
'Gan faillen when the hearte felte death ;
Dusked his eyen two, and fail'd his breath :
But on his lady yet cast he his eye ;
His laste word was, ' ^Mercy, Emily !'
[Departure of Cusfanccl
[Custance is banished from her husband, Alia, liinc; of Nor-
thumberland, in consequence of the treachery of the king's
mother. ITer behaviour in embarking at sea, in a rudderless
Bhip, is thus described.]
Weepen both young and old in all that place
"When that the king this cursed letter sent :
And Custance witli a deadly pale face
The fourthe day toward the ship she went ;
But uatheless^'J she tak'th in good intent
I Called. 2 Muscle.
■* He is able for. * W(jrk.
• Overtaken. " Agone.
3 Ruined, destroyed.
'' Surely. 7 Guide.
"' iN'everthelosa.
The will of Christ, and kneeling on the stroua,
She saide, ' Lord, aye welcome be thy sond.l
' He that me kepte from the false blame,
While I was in the land amonges j-ou.
He can me keep from harm and eke from shame
In the salt sea, although I see not how :
As strong as ever he was, he is yet now :
In him trust I, and in his mother dear.
That is to me my sail and eke my steer.'^
Her little child lay weeping in her arm ;
And kneeling piteouslj^ to him she said —
* Peace, little son, I will do thee no harm :'
With that her kerchief off her head she braid,
And over his little eyen she it laid.
And in her arm she lulleth it full fast,
And into th' heaven her eyen up she cast.
' Mother, quod she, and maiden bright, Mary !
Sotli is, that through womannes eggement,*
Alankind was Ioiti,^ and damned aye to die,
For which thy child was on a cross yreut ''
Thy blissful eyen saw all his torment ;
Then is there no comparison between
Thy woe and any woe man may sustain.
' Thou saw'st thy child yslain before thine eyen.
And yet now liveth my little child parfay :7
Now, lady bright ! to whom all woful crien,
Thou glory of womanhood, thou faire Tilay !
Thou liaven of refute,** bright star of day I
Rue^ on ray child, that of thy gentleness
Rucst on every rueful in distress.
' little child, alas ! what is thy guilt,
That never wToughtest sin as 3'et, pardt'e ?
Why will thine harde father have thee spilt ? 1"
mercy, deare Constable ! (quod she)
As let my little child dwell here with thee ;
And if thou dar'st not saven him from blame,
So kiss him ones in his father's name.'
Therewith she looketh backward to the land.
And saide, ' Farewell, husband rutheless !' ''
And up she rose, and walketh down the strand
Toward the .ship ; her followeth all the press : '2
And ever she pra3'eth her child to hold his peace.
And tak'th her leave, and with a holy' intent
She blesseth her, and into the ship she went.
Victailled was the ship, it is no drede,'3
Abundantly for her a full long space ;
And other nccessaiies that should need
She had enow, heried'-* be Goddes grace :
For wind and weather. Almighty Cxod purchase,'^
And bring her home, I can no better say.
But in the sea she driveth forth her way.
[The Pardoner's Tale.']
In Flanders whilom was a company
Of younge' folk that haunteden folly,
As liazard, riot, stew^s, and taverns,
Whereas with hai-pe's, lute's, and gittems,'^
They dance and play at dice both day and night.
And eat also and drinken o'er their might,
Through which they do the devil sacrifice.
Within the devil's temple', in curse'd wise,
By supei-fluity abominable.
Their oathes been so great and so damnable
That it is grisly'7 for to hear them swear.
Our blissful Lord^s body they to-tear ;
Them thought the Jewds rent him not enough ;
And each of them at other's sinne' laugh.
And right anon in comcn tombesteres 18
Fetis'^ and small, and younge fruitesteres,20
• Message. 2 Guide, helm. 3 Took. ■* Incitement.
5 Undone. « Torn.
9 Have pity, 'o Destroyed.
13 Houbt. "4 I'raised.
"> Guitars. '" Dreadful.
'* Well made, neat.
7 Hy my faith. * ]tefuj;&
II I'itikss. >2 Crowd.
'5 ri(]fure, provide.
'" Female dancers.
"" Female fruitsellera.
19
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOP^SEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
Singers with harpes, baiules,! waferers,^
Which be the very devil's officers,
To kindle and blow the fire of ' luxury,'
That is annexe'd unto gluttony.
The holy writ take I to my witness
That luxury' is in wine and drunkenness.
! wist a man how many maladies
FoUowen of excesse and of gluttonies,
He woulde be the mord measurable
Of his diete, sitting at his table.
Alas ! the shorte' throat, the tender mouth,
Maketh that east and west, and north and south,
In earth, in air, in water, men to swink''
To get a glutton dainty meat and drink.
A ' likerous' thing is wine, and drunkenness
Is full of striving and of wretchedness.
drunken man ! disfigur'd is thy face,
Sour is thy breath, foul art thou to embrace ;
And through thy drunken nose seemeth the soun
As though thou saidest aye Sampsoun ! Sarapsoun !
And yet. Got wot, Sampsoun drunk ne'er no wine :
Thou fallest as it were a sticke'd swine ;
Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest cure,*
For drunkenness is very sepulture
Of manues wit and his discretion.
In whom that drink hath domination
He can no counsel keep, it is no drede.'''
Now keep you from the white and from the rede,^
And namely from the whitd wine of Lcpe,7
That is to sell in Fish Street and in Cheap.
This wine of Spain creepeth subtlely
In other winds growing faste' by.
Of which there riseth such fumosity,"
That when a man hath drunken draught es three.
And weeneth-' tliat he be at home in Cheap,
He is in Spain, right at the town of Lepe,
Not at the Rochelle, or at Bordeaux to^vn,
And thenne will he say Sampsoun ! Sampsoun !
And now that I have spoke of gluttony,
Now will I you defenden'" hazardry.H
Hazard is very mother of le'asings.
And of deceits and cursed forsweariiigs.
Blaspheming of Christ, manslaughter', and waste also
Of cattle, and of time ; and furthermo
It is reproof, and contrary' of honour
For to be held a common hazardour.
And ever the higher he is of estate
The more' he is holden desolate.
If that a princd useth hazardry.
In alle governance and policy
He is, as by common opinion,
Yhold the less in reputation.
Now will I speak of oathes false and great
A word or two, as oldd bookes treat.
Great swearing is a thing abominable,
And false swearing is yet more reprovable.
The highd God forbade swearing at all.
Witness on Mathew ; but in special
Of swearing saith the holy .Icrcmio,
Thou shalt swear soth^- thine oathe's and not lie.
And swear in doom,'^ and eke in righteousness.
But idle swearing is a cursedness.
These riotoures three of which I tell,
Long erst''* ere prime rung of any bell,
Were set them in a tavern for to drink,
And iis they sat they heard a l)ellc' clink
Before a corpse was carried to his grave ;
That one of them 'gan callen to his knave ;'3
* Go bet,'i6 quod he, ' and askd readily
What corpse is this that passeth here forth by.
• Mirthful, joyous.
* Cure.
8 Fumes from drinking.
>* Forbid. " Gnming.
•* Before. " Servant lad.
* Sellers of wafer-cakes. ^ jjabour.
* Fear. ' Red. ^ A place in Spain.
8 Tliinketh, imagineth.
'2 True. '3 Judgment.
" Better go.
And look that thou report his namd well.'
' Sir,' quod this boy, ' it needeth never a deal ;1
It was me told ere ye came here two hours ;
He was parde' an old fellaw of yours.
And suddenly he was yslain to-night,
Fordrunk as he sat on his bench upright ;
There came a privy thief men clepen Death,
That in this country all the people slay'th,
And with his spear he smote his heart atwo,
And went his way withouten wordes mo.
He hath a thousand slain this pestilence ;
And, master, ere ye come in his presence,
Me thinketh that it were full necessary
For to beware of such an adversary :
Be ready for to meet him evermore ;
Thus taughtd me my dame ; I say no more.'
' By Sainte Mary,' said this tavernere,
' The child saith soth,- for he hath slain this year,
Hence over a mile, within a great village.
Both man and woman, child, and hind and page ;
I trow his habitation be there :
To be avise'd^ great wisdom it were
Ere that he did a man a dishonour.'
' Yea, Goddes armds !' quod tliis rioter,
' Is it such peril ■with him for to meet \
I shall him seek by stile and eke by street,
I make a vow by Godde's digne^ bones.
Hearkeneth, fellaws, we three been alle ones ^
Let each of us hold up his hand to other,
And each of us becomen other's brother.
And we will slay this false' traitour Death :
He shall be slain, he that so many slay'th.
By Goddes dignity, ere it be night.'
Together have these three their truthds plight
To live and dien each of them for other,
As though he were his owen boren'5 brother.
And up they start all drunken in this rage.
And forth they gone towardes that village
Of which the taverner had spoke bcforeii.
And many a grisly? oath then have they sworn,
And Christe's blessed body they to-rent,"
' Death shall be dead, if that we may him hent.'^
When they had gone not fully half a mile,
Right as they would have trodden o'er a stile.
An old man and a poore' with them met :
This olde man full meekely them gret,'"
And saidd thus : ' Now, Lorde's, God you see I'll
The proudest of these riotoure's three
Answe'r'd again : ' W^hat ? cluirl, with sorry grace,
^V'hy art thou all forwrappe'd save thy face ?
Why livest thou so long in so great age ?'
This olde' man 'gan look in his visage,
And saide' thus : ' For I ne cannot find
A man, though that I walked into Ind,
Neither in city nor in no village.
That wouldd change his youthe for mine age J
vVnd therefore must I have mine age' still
As longd time as it is Godde's will.
Ne Death, alas ! ne will not have my life :
Thus walk I, like a rcstdlcss caitifF,!-
And on the ground, which is my mother's gate,
I knocks with my staff early and late.
And say to her, " Levd'^ mother, let me in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin,
Alas ! when shall my bonds be at rest ?
Mother, vnih you would I change my chest.
That in my chamber longd time hath be.
Yea, for an hairy clout to wrap in me."
But yet to me she will not do that grace,
For which full pale and vvelked''* is my face.
' Not a wliit. 2 Truth. » Watchful, prepare*
■• Worthy. * All one, or, in unity. 8 Born.
7 Fearful. 8 Defaced. » Catch. lo Greeted.
" That is, • God preserve you in his sight.'
12 Wretch. '3 Dear. u Wrinkled.
20
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
' But, Sirs, to you it is no courtesy
To speak unto an old man villainy,
But hel trespass in ■\vord or else in deed.
In holy writ ye may yourselven read ;
" Against an old man, hoar upon his hede,
Ye should arise :" therefore 1 give you rede^
Ke do'th unto an old man none harm now.
No more than that ye would a man did you
In age, if that ye may so long abide ;
And God be with you whe'r* ye go or ride :
I must go thither as I have to go.'
' Nay, olde churl, by God thou shalt not so,'
Saide' this other hazardoui-* anon ;
' Thou partest not so lightly, by Saint John.
Thou spake right now of thilke'^ traitour Death,
That in this country all our friend^s slay'th ;
Have here my truth, as thou art his espy.
Tell where he is, or thou shalt it aby,6
By God and by the holy sacrament.
For sothly thou art one of his assent
To slay us younge' folk, thou false thief.'
' Now, Sirs,' quod he, ' if it be you so lief 7
To finden Death, turn up this crooked way ;
For in that grove I left him, by my fay,
Under a tree, and there he will abide.
Nor for your boast he will him nothing hide.
See ye that oak ? right there ye shall him find.
God save' you that bought again mankind,
And you amend !' Thus said this olde' man.
And evereach of these riotoure's ran
Till they came to the tree, and there they found
Of florins fine of gold ycoine'd round
Well nigh an eighte bushels, as them thought J
No longer then after Death they sought,
But each of them so glad was of the sight.
For that the florins been so fair and bright.
That down they set them by the precious hoard :
The worst of them he spake the firste' word.
' Brethren,' quod he, ' take keep what I shall say ;
My wit is great, though that I bourde'* and play.
This treasure hath Fortune unto us given,
In mirth and jollity our life to liven.
And lightly as it com'th so will we spend,
Ey ! Godde's precious dignity ! who ween'd^
To-day that we should have so fair a grace ?
But might this gold be carried from this place
Home to my house, or elles unto yours,
(For well I wot that all this gold is ours)
Thenne were we in high felicity ;
But tnie'ly by day it may not be ; —
Men woulden say ihat we were thieves strong,
And for our owen treasure done us hong.^**
This treasure must ycarried be by night
As wisely and as slyly as it might ;
"Wherefore I rede^l that cut^- among us all
We draw, and let see where the cut will fall ;
And he that hath the cut, with hearte blithe.
Shall runnen to the town, and that full swith,i3
And bring us bread and wine full privily ;
And two of us shall keepen subtlely
This treasure well ; and if he will not tarrien,
When it is night we will this treasure carrien
By one assent where as us thinketh best.'
That one of them the cut brought in his fist,
And bade them draw, and look where it would
fall.
And it fell on the youngest of them all ;
And forth toward the tovrn he went anon :
And all so soon as that he was agone,
That one of them spake thus imto that other ;
* Thou wottest well thou art my sworen brother,
1 T'niess he, Sec. ^ Advice. ^ WTiether. * Gamester.
» This same. " Siittei- for. ' Pleasant. 8 j„ijf.
9 Guessed. '" ll:ive us banged. ' I Advise.
i« Lot. '3 dulekly.
Thy profit will 1 tell thee right anon.
Thou wott'st well that our fellow is agone ;
And here is gold, and that full great plenty,
That shall departed be among us three ;
But nathe'less, if I can shape it so
That it departed were among us two.
Had I not done a friende's turn to thee V
That other answer'd : ' I n'ot^ how that may be :
He wot well that the gold is with us tway.
What shall we do ? what shall we to him say V
' Shall it be counsel ?' said the firste shrew,2
' And I shall tellen thee in worde's few
What shall we do, and bring it well about.'
' I gi-antd,' quod that other, ' out of doubt,
That by my truth I will thee not betraj'.'
' Now,' quod the first, ' thou wott'st well we be tvr&j ;
And tway of us shall stronger be than one.
Look, when that he is set, thou right anon
Arise, as though thou wouldest with him play.
And I shall rive him through the sid^s tway :
While that thou strugglest with him as in game ;
And with thy dagger look thou do the same ;
And then shall all this gold departed be.
My deare friend ! betwixen thee and me ;
Then may we both our lustes all fulfil,
And play at dice right at our owen will.'
And thus accorded been these shrewe's tway
To slay the third, as ye have heard me say.
This youngest, which that wente to the town,
Full oft in heart he roUeth up and do^vn
The beauty of these florins new and bright.
' Lord !' quod he, ' if so were, that I might
Have all this treasure to myself alone,
There is no man that liv'th under the throne
Of God that shoulde live so merry' as L'
And at the last, the fiend, our enemy.
Put in his thought that he should poison buy
With which he mighte slay his fellows tway :
For why ? the fiend found him in such living.
That he had leve^ to son-ow him to bring ;
For this was utterly his full intent.
To slay them both and never to repent.
And forth he go'th, no longer would he tarry.
Into the to-(vn unto a 'pothecary,
And prayed him that he him woulde sell
Some poison, that he might his ratouns'* quell ;
And eke there was a polecat in his haw5
That, as he said, his capons had yslaw ;''
And fain he would him wreaken/ if he might.
Of vermin that destroyed them by night.
The 'pothecarj' answered : ' Thou shalt have
A thing, as wisly** God my soul^ save.
In all this world there n'is no creature
That eat or drunk hath of this cdnfecture
Not but the mountance'^ of a com of wheat,
That he ne shall his life anon forlet,lt>
Yea, starve!' i^e shall, and that in lesse while
Than thou wilt go a pace not but a mile ;
This poison is so strong and violent.'
This cursed man hath in his hand yhent^^
This poison in a box, and swith'3 he ran
Into the nexte street unto a man.
And borrowed of him large' bottles three.
And in the two the poison poured he ;
The third he kept^ cleane' for his drink.
For all the night he shope him for to swink'*
In carrying of the gold out of that place.
And when this rioter with sorry grace'^
Hath filled with wine his greate' bottles three.
To his fellows again repaireth he.
' Know not. * A cursed man.
* Hats. « Fann-yard.
7 Uevonpc himself if he could.
8 Anmunting. '"Give over. "Die,
13 Iiiiusediiitely. '■• Labdur, work
3 InclinatioD.
"" Slain.
" Certainly.
'2 T.aken.
'* Evil, or misfortune.
•21
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPiEDIA OP
TIMES TO 1403.
^^'hat needeth it thereof to semion more ?
For right as they had cast his death befoiT,
Right so they have him slain, and that anon.
And when that this was done thus spake that
one :
* Now let us sit and drink, and make us merry,
Ajid afterward we will his body bury.'
And with that word it happen'd him par cics^
To take the bottle where the poison was,
And drank, and gave his fellow drink also.
For which anon they storven- bothe two.
But cert^s 1 suppose that ATicenne
Wrote never in no canon ne' in no fenne^
More wonder signe's of empoisoning
Than had these" wretches two, or their ending.
Thus ended been these homicide's two,
And eke the false empoisoner also. * *
[Tlie Good Parsmi.l
A true good man there was there of religion.
Pious and poor — the parson of a town.
But rich he was in holy thought and work ;
And thereto a right learned man ; a clerk
That Christ's pure gospel would sincerely preach.
And his parishioners devoutly teach.
Benign he was, and wondrous diligent,
And in adversity full patient,
As proven oft ; to all who lack'd a friend.
Loth for his tithes to ban or to contend.
At every need much rather was he found
Unto his poor parishioners around
Of his own substance and his dues to give :
Content on little, for himself, to live.
Wide was his cure ; the houses far asunder,
Yet never fail'd he, or for rain or thunder.
Whenever sickness or mischance might call,
The most remote to visit, great or small,
And, staff in hand, on foot, the storm to brave.
This noble ensample to his flock he gave,
That first he wrought, and afterward he tasight.
The word of life he from the gospel caught ;
And well this comment added he thereto.
If that gold rusteth what should iron do ?
And if the priest be foul on whom we trust.
What wonder if the unletter'd layman lust ?
And shame it were in him the flock should keep.
To see a sullied shepherd, and clean sheep.
For sure a priest the sample ought to give
By his ovn\ cleanness how his sheep should live.
He never set his benefice to hire.
Leaving his flock acomber'd in the mire,
And ran to London cogging at St Foul's,
To seek himself a chauntery for souls.
Or Avith a brotherhood to be enroU'd ;
But dwelt at home, and guarded well his fold.
So that it should not by the wolf miscarry.
He was a shepherd, and no mercenary.
Tho holy in himself, and virtuous.
He still to sinful men was mild and piteous :
Not of reproach imjicrious or malign ;
But in his teaching soothing and benign.
To draw them on to heaven, by reason fair
And good example, was his daily care.
But were there one pci-verse and obstinate.
Were he of lofty or of low estate.
Him would he shaqdy with reproof astound.
A better priest is no where to be found.
He waited not on ]X)mp or reverence.
Nor made himself a spiced conscience.
The lore of Christ and his apostles twelve
He taught : but, first, he followed it himselve.
' By accident.
2 Storven (perfect tense of starve) — died.
3 The title of one of the sections in Avicenne's great work,
mtitled Canun.
[An Ironical Ballad on the Duplicity of Woiaau'l
This world is full of variance
In everything, who taketh heed.
That faith and trust, and all Constance,
Exiled be, this is no drede,'
And save only in womanhead,
I can ysee no sikemess ;^
But for all that yet, as I read,
Beware alway of doubleness.
Also that the fresh summer flowers,
The white and red, the blue and green,
Be suddenly with winter showers.
Made faint and fade, withouten ween,3
That trust is none, as ye may seen.
In no thing, nor no steadfastness.
Except in women, thus I mean ;
Yet aye beware of doubleness.
The crooked moon, (this is no tale),
Some while isheen^ and bright of hue,
And after that full dark and pale.
And every moneth changeth new,
That who the very s<jthe^ knew
All thing is built on brittleness.
Save that women alway be true ;
Yet aye beware of doubleness.
The lustyG fresh^ summer's day.
And Phoebus with his beames clear,
Towarde's night they draw away.
And no longer list t' appear.
That in this present life now here
Nothing abideth in his fairness.
Save women aye be found entere,?
And devoid of all doubleness.
The sea eke with his sterne' wawes^
Each day yfloweth new again.
And by the concourse of his lawes
The ebbe floweth in certain ;
After great drought there cometh i-ain ;
That farewell here all stableness.
Save that women be whole and pleln f
Yet aye beware of doubleness.
Fortunes wheel go'th round about
A thousand time's day and night.
Whose course standeth ever in doubt
For to transmue'^ she is so light.
For which adverteth in your sight
Th' untrust of worldly fickleness.
Save women, which of kindly right"
Ne hath no touch of doubleness.
What man yftiay the wind restrain.
Or holdcn a snake by the tail ?
Who may a slipper eel constrain
That it will void withouten fail \
Or who can driven so a nail
To make sure ncwfangleness,'- ^
Save women, that can gie'3 their sail
To row their boat with doubleness ?
At every haven they can arrive
Whereas they wot is good passi'ige ;
Of innocence they cannot strive
With wawe's, nor no rock(?s rage ;
So happy is their lodemanage'-*
With needle' and stone their course to dre»s,lS
That Solomon was not so sage
To find in them no doubleness :
1 Fear. - Surety, steadfastness. ' Doubtless.
■* Shining. * Truth. * Pleasant. ' Entire, whole, sound
8 Waves. 9 Complote. '" Change.
•1 Natural right. '* Novelty, inconstancy. '3 Guide,
i« Steering, pilotage. '^ Manage.
99
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Therefore wlioso doth them accuse
Of any double intention,
Ti speake ro^^-n, other to muse,l
To pinch at- their condition,
All is but false collusion,
I dare right well the soth express,
They have no better protection.
But shroud them under doubleness.
So well fortuned is their chance,
The dice to-tumen up so down,
With sice and cinque they can advance,
And then by revolutidn
They set a fell conclusion
Of lombe's,-'' as in sothfastness,
Though clerke's maken nientidn
Their kind is fret with doubleness.
Sampson yhad experience
That women were full true yfound ;
When Dalila of innocence
With sheare's 'gan his hair to round ;^
To speak also of Rosamond,
And Cleopatra's faitlifulness,
The stories plainly will confound
Men that apeach^ their doubleness.
Single thing is not ypraise'd.
Nor of old is of no renoini,
In balance when they be ypesed,6
For lack of weight they be borne do-nii,
And for this cause of just reason
These women all of rightwisness?
Of choice and free election
Most lore exchange and doubleness.
L'Envoye.
ye women ! which be incline'd
By influence of your nature
To be as pure as gold yfine'd.
And in your ti-uth for to endure,
AiTueth yourself in strong anuure,
(Lest men assail your sikerness),'^
Set on your breast, yourself t' assure,
A mighty shield of doubleness.
[Last Verses of Chaucer, u-ritten on his Deathbed.]
Fly from the press,f> and dwell with sothfastness ;'f'
Sutfice unto thy goodie though it be small ;
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness,
Press'- hath enry, and weal is blent'^ o'er all ;
SaTOur'^ no more than thee behoven shall ;
Rede'^ well thyself, that otheifolk can'st rede.
And tnith thee shall deliver 't is no drede."'
Pain thee not each crooked to redress
In ti-ust of her that tumeth as a ball ;
Great rest standeth in little business ;
Beware also to spurn against a nalle ;'"
Strive not as doth a crocke'^ with a wall ;
Deemeth'9 thyself that deemest other's deed.
And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.
That-0 thee is sent receive in buxomness ;2I
The wi-estling of this world asketh a fall;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness ;
Forth, pilgrim, forth, beast out of thy stall ;
Look up on high, and thank thy God of all ;
' Eitlier in whispering or musing. ^ To find a flaw in.
3 ' Though clerks, or scholars, represent women to be like
lambs for their truth and sincerity, yet they are all fraught,
or filled with doubleness, or falsehood.' — Urri/.
* To round off, to cut round. ^ Impeach.
^ Ypesed, Fr. jKse — weighed. 7 JuMtice. " Security.
» Crowd. 10 Truth. ^ Be satisfied with thy wealth.
'2 Striving. '3 Prosperity has ceased. '^ Taste.
'5 Counsel. IS Without fear. '7 Nail. '" Eartlien pitcher.
<» Jud-e. -» That (which). 21 Humility, obedience.
Waiveth thy lust and let thy ghost' thee lead,
And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.
However far the genius of Chaucer transcended
that of all preceding writers, he was not the solitary-
light of his age. The national mind and the national
language appear, indeed, to have now arrived at a
certain degree of ripeness, favourable for the pro-
duction of able writers in both prose and verse.*
Heretofore, Norman French had been the language
of education, of the court, and of legal documents;
and when the Normanised Anglo-Saxon was era-
ployed by literary men, it was for the special pur-
pose, as tliey were usually very careful to mention,
of conveying instruction to the common pjeople. But
now the distinction between the conquering Normans
and subjected Anglo-Saxons was nearly lost in a
new and fraternal national feeling, which recognised
the country under the sole name of England, and the
people and language under the single appellation of
Emjlish. Edward IIL substituted the use of English
for that of French in the public acts and judiciarpro-
ceedings ; and the schoolmasters, for the first time,
in the same reign, caused their pupils to construe
tlie classical tongues into the vernacular.f The
consequence of this ripening of the national mind
and language was, that, while English heroism was
gaining the victories of Cressy and I'oitiers, English
genius was achieving milder and more beneficial tri-
umphs, in the productions of Chaucer, ofGower, and
of Wickliffe.
JOHN GOWER.
John Gower is supposed to have been born some
time about the year 1325, and to have consequently
been a few years older than Chaucer. He was "a
gentleman, possessing a considerable amount of pro-
perty in land, in the counties of Nottingham and
Suflblk. In his latter years, he appears, like Chaucer,
to have been a retainer of the Lancaster branch of
the royal family, which subsequently ascended the
throne ; and his dcatli took jilace in M08, before
which period he had become blind. Gower wrote a
poetical work in three parts, which were respectively
entitled Speculum Mcditantis, Vox Clamantis, and
Coiifessio Amantis ; the last, which is a grave dis-
cussion of the morals and metaphysics of love, being
the only part written in English. The solemn seu-
tentiousness of this work caused Chaucer, and sub-
' Spirit.
* It is always to be kept in mind that the language employed
in literary composition is apt to be difi'erent from that used by
the bulk of the people in ordinary discourse. The literary lan-
cruage of these early times was probably- nmch more refined
than the colloquial. During the fourteenth century, various
dialects of English were spoken in dififerent parts of the country,
and the mode of pronunciation also was very far from being
uniform. Trevisa, a historian who wrote about 13«U, remarks
that, ' Hit semeth a grete wonder that Englyssmen have so
grete dyversyte in their owin langage in sowne and in spekyin
of it, which is all in one ilonde." The prevalent harshness of
pronunciation is thus described by the same writer : ' Some
use straunge wlaffing, chytryng, barring, garrying, and grys-
byting. The langage of the Northumbres, and specyally at
Yorke, is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and unshape, that we
sothern men maye unneth understande that langage." Even
in the reign of Elizabeth, as we learn from Holinshed's Chro-
nick, the dialects spoken in diiTerent parts of the country were
exceedingly various.
t .'Mr Hallam mentions, on the authority of Mr Stevenson,
sub-commissioner of public records, that in England, all letters,
even of a private nature, were written in Latin till the beginning
of the reign of Edward I., .soon after 1270, when a sudden change
brought in the use of French Hallam's Inlroduction to the Lite-
rature o/ Europe in tlie n/tcent/i, sij:tccnt/t, and sfventeenlk cen-
turics, i. U3.
2.3
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPJEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
sequently Lyndsay, to denominate its author '• the
moral Gower ;" he is, however, considerably inferior
to the autlior of tlie Canterbury Tales, in idniost all
the qualifications of a true poet.
IL
Mr Warton has happily selected a few passages
from Gower, wliich convey a lively expression of
natural feeling, and give a favourable impression of
the author. Speaking of the gratification which his
passion receives from tlie sense of hearing, he says,
that to hear his lady speak is more delicious than
to feast on all the dainties that could be compounded
by a cook of Lombardy. These are not so resto-
rative
As bin the wordes of hir mouth ;
For as the wj'ndes of the south
Ben most of all deboimaire,
So when her list' to speak faire
The vertue of her goodly spcche
Is verily myne hartes leche.=^
He adds (reduced spelling) —
Full oft time it falleth so
My "ear with a good pittance^
Is fed, with reading of romance
Of Isodj'ne and Amadas,
That whilom were in my case ;
And eke of other many a score,
That loved long ere I was bore :
For when I of their loves read,
Mine ear with the tale 1 feed ;
And with the lust of their histoire
Sometime I draw into memoire,
How sorrow may not ever last,
And so hope cometh in at last.
» « »
That when her list on nights wake,*
In chamber, as to carol and dance,
Methink I may me more avance,
If I may gone upon her hond,
Than if I win a king's lond.
For when I may her hand bcclip,
With such gladness I dance and skip,
Methinketh I touch not the Hoor ;
The roe which runneth on the moor,
Is then nought so light as I.
» When she chooses. * Physician. » A dainty dish.
When she chooses to have a merry-making at niglit.
[Episode of Maiiphcle.]
[Rosiphele, princess of Armenia, a hidy of surpassing heauty,
but insensible to tlie power of love, is represented by the poet
as reduced to an obedience to Cupid, by a vision which befell her
on a Blay-day ramble. The opening of tliis episode is as fol-
lows : — ]
When come was the month of jNIay,
She would walk upon a day,
And that was ere tlie sun arist,
Of women but a few it wist ;1
And forth she went privily,
Unto a park was fast by.
All soft walkand on the grass.
Till she came there the land was.
Through which ran a great river,
It thought her fair ; and said, here
I will abide under tlie shaw f
And bade her women to withdraw :
And there slie stood alone still.
To think what was in her will,
She saw the sweet flowers spring,
She heard glad fowls sing,
She saw beasts in their kind.
The buck, the doe, the hart, the hind.
The males go with the female ;
And so began there a quarrel
Between love and her own heart,
Fro which she could not astart.
And as she cast her eye about.
She saw clad in one suit, a roufc
Of ladies, where they comen ride
Along under the woode side ;
On fiiir ambuland horse they set,
That were all white, fair, and great;
And everich one ride on side.
The saddles were of such a pride.
So rich saw she never none ;
With pearls and gold so well begone.
In kirtles and in copes rich
They were clothed all alich.
Departed even of white and blue,
With all lusts that she knew,
They were embroidered over all :
Their bodies weren long and small,
The beauty of their fair face
There may none earthly thing deface:
Crowns on tlieir heads they bare.
As each of them a queen were ;
That all the gold of Crresus' hall
The least coronal of all
Might not have bought, after the worth :
Thus comen they ridand forth.
[In the rear of this splendid troop of ladies, the princess he-
held one, mounted on a miserable steed, wretchedly adorned
in everything excepting the bridle. On questioning this
straggler why she was so imlike her companions, the visionary
lady replied that the latter were receiving tlie bright reward of
having loyed faithfully, and that slie herself was sufl'ering
punishment for cruelty to her admirers. The reason that the
bridle alone resembled those of her companions was, that for
the last fortnight she had been sincerely in love, and a change
for the better was in consequence beginning to show itself in
her accoutrements. The parting words of the dame are — ]
Now have ye heard mine answer ;
To God, madam, I you betake,
And warneth all fur my sake.
Of love that they be not idle.
And bid them think of my bridle.
[Tt is scarcely necessary to remark, that the hard heart of the
pi-incess of Armenia is duly impressed by this lesson.]
Few of her women knew of it.
* A grove.
24
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
[The Enrioits Man and the Miner.]
Of Jupiter thus 1 find y-writ,
How whilom that lie would wit,
Upou the plaints which he heard
Among the men, how it tared,
As of the wrong condition
To do justification;
And for that cause down he sent
An angel, that about went,
That he the sooth know may.
So it befel upon a day.
This angel which him should inform
Was clothed in a man's form,
And orertook, I understand.
Two men that wenten over lend ;
Through which he thought to aspy
Ilis cause, and go'th in company.
This angel with his words wise
Opposeth them in sundry wise;
Now loud words and now soft.
That made them to disputen oft;
And each his reason had.
And thus with tales he them led,
^\'ith good examination,
Till he knew the condition.
What men they were both two;
And saw well at last tho,l
That one of them was covetous.
And his fellow was envious.
And thus when he hath knowledging.
Anon he feigned departing,
And said he mote algate wend;
But hearken now what fell at end!
For than he made them understond,
That he was there of God's sond.
And said them for the kindship.
He would do them some grace again.
And bade that one of them should sain, 2
What thing is him levest to crave,-'
And he it shall of gift have.
And over that ke forth with all
He saith, that other have shall
The double of that his fellow axeth ;
And thus to them his grace he taxeth.
The Covetous was wonder glad ;
And to that other man he bade,
And saith, that he first ax should;
For he supposeth that he would
!Make his axing of world's good;
For then he knew well how it stood;
If that himsell by double weight
Shall after take, and thus by sleight
Because that he would win,
He bade his fellow first begin.
This Envious, though it be late.
When that he saw he mote, algate.
Make his axing first, he thought,
If he his worship and profit sought
It shall be double to his fere,
That he would chuse in no manner.
But then he showeth what he was
Toward en^y, and in this case.
Unto this angel thus he said.
And for his gift thus he prayed.
To make him blind on his one ee,
So that his fellow nothing see.
This word was not so soon spoke.
That his one ee anon was loke:
And his fellow forthwith also
Was blind on both his eyes two.
I Ihon. s Say.
■ What thing ho was mo t dtipo^fd tii crave.
Tho was that other glad enough :
That one wept, and that other lough.
He set his one ee at no cost.
Whereof that other two hath lost.
The lan^age at this time used in the lowland
districts of Scotland was based, like that of England,
in the Teutonic, and it had, like the contemporary
English, a Norman admixture. To account for these
circumstances, some have supposed that the language
of England, in its various sliades of improvement,
reached the north through the settlers who are
known to have flocked thither from England dur-
ing the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.
Others suggest that the great body of the Scottish
people, apart from the Highlanders, must have hccn
of Teutonic origin, and tliey point to the very jiri-
bable theory as to the Ticts having been a German
race. They further suggest, that a Norman admix-
ture might readily come to the national tongiie,
through the large intercourse between the two
countries during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries. Thus, it is presumed, ' our eonmion lan-
guage was separately formed in the two countries,
and owed its identity to its being constructed of
similar materials, b}- similar gradations, and by
nations in the same state of society.'* Whatever
might be the cause, there can be no doubt that the
language used by the first Scottish vernacular writers
in the fourteenth century, greatly resembles that
used contemporaneously in England.
JOHN BARBOUR.
Tlie first of these writers was Johk Barbour,
archdeacon of Aberdeen. The date of his birth is
unknown ; but he is found exercising the duties of
Cathedral of Aberdeen.
that office in 1357. Little is known of his persona^
history : we ma}' presume that he was a man of
political talent, from his being chosen by the bishop
of Aberdeen to act as his commissioner at Edinburgh
•when the ransom of David II. was debated ; and of
learning, from his having several times accompanied
men of rank to study at Oxford. Barbour probably
formed his taste upon the romance writers who
flourished before him in England. A lost work of
his, entitled The Brute, probably another in addition
to the many versions of the story of Brutus of Troy,
first made popular by GeofTrey of Monmouth, sug-
gests the idea of an imitiition of the romances ; and
*VMi».
25
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
bis sole remaining work, The Bruce, is altogether of
that eharactcr. It is not unlikely that, in The Brute,
Barbour adopted all the fables he could find : in
■writing The Bruce, he would, in like manner, adopt
every tradition respecting his hero, besides searching
for more authoritative materials. We must not be
surprised that, while the tirst would be valueless as
a history, the second is a most important document.
There would be the same Avish for truth, and the
same inability to distinguish it, in both cases ; but,
in the latter, it chanced that the events were of
recent occurrence, and therefore came to our metrical
historian comparatively undistorted. The Briice, in
reality, is a complete history of the memorable
transactions by which King Robert I. asserted the
independency of Scotland, and obtained its crown
for his family. At the same time, it is far from being
destitute of poetical spirit or rhythmical sweetness
and harmony. It contains many vividly descriptive
passages, and abounds in dignified and even in pathe-
tic sentiment. This poem, which was completed in
1375, is in octo-syllabic lines, forming rhymed coup-
lets, of which tliere are seven thousand. Barbour
died at an advanced age in 1396.
[ApostropJie to Freedom.]
[Barbour, contemplating the enslaved cnndition of his coun-
trj', breaks out into tlie following animated lines on the bless-
ings of liberty.— £Kw.]
A ! fredome is a nobill thing !
Fredome mayse man to haiff liking !
Fredome all solace to man gitlis :
He levj-s at ese that frely levys !
A noble hart may liaift' iiane ese,
Na ellys nocht that may him plese,
Gytf fredome fallythe : for fre liking
Is yeamyt our all othir thing
Na he, that ay base levyt fre,
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte,
The angyr, na the wrechyt dome,
That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome.
Bot gyfF he had assayit it,
Than all perquer he suld it wyt ;
And suld think fredome mar to pryse
Than all the gold in warld that is.
[Death of Sir Ilcnry De Bohuii.]
[This incident took place on the eve of the Battle of Bannock-
burn.]
And when the king wist that they were *
In hale battle, comand sae near,
His battle gart' he wcel array.
He rade upon a little palfrey,
Lawcht and joly arrayand
His battle, with an ax in hand.
And on his bassinet he bare
An hat of tyre aboon ay where ;
And, thereupon, into takin,
Aiie high crown, that he was king.
And when Cilostcr and Hereford were
With their battle approachand near.
Before them all there came ridand,
With helm on heid and spear in hand,
Sir Henry the Boon, the worthy.
That was a wicht knicht, and a hardy.
And to the Earl of Hereford cousin ;
Armed in arms gude and fine ;
Came on a steed a bowshot near,
Before all other that there were :
And knew the king, for that he saw
Him sae range his men on raw,
' Caused, ordered
* In this an<i the subsequent extract, the Linguago is as far
at poBSiblo -<iduced to modem spelling.
And by the cro^vn that was set
Also upon his bassinet.
And toward him he went in hy. 1
And the king sae apertly 2
Saw him come, forouth all his fears,
In hy till him the horse he steers.
And when Sir Henry saw the king
Come on, foroutin abasing.
Till him he rode in great hy.
He thought that he should weel lichtly
Win him, and have him at his will.
Sin' he him horsit saw sae ill.
Sprcnt they samen intill a lyng ; 3
Sir Ilcnry missed the noble king ;
And he that in his stirrups stude,
^\'ith the ax, that was hard and gude,
With sae great main, raucht"* him a dint,
That nouther hat nor helm raicht stint
The heavy dush, that he him gave.
That near the head till the harns clave.
The hand-ax shaft frushit in tway;
And he down to the yird^ gan gae
All flatlings, for him failit micht.
This was the first straik of the ficht.
That was performit douchtily.
And when the king's men sae stoutly
Saw him, richt at the first meeting,
Forouten doubt or abasing,
Have slain a knicht sae at a straik.
Sic hard'ment thereat gan they tak,
That they come on richt hardily.
When Englishmen saw them sae stoutly
Come on, they had great abasing ;
And specially for that the king
Sae smartly that gude knicht has slain,
That they withdrew them everilk ane.
And durst not ane abide to ficht :
Sae dreid they for the king's micht. * *
^^'hen that the king repairit was.
That gart his men all leave the chase.
The lordis of his company
Blamed him, as they durst, greatumly,
That he him put in aventure,
To meet sae stith a knicht, and stour.
In sic point as he then was seen.
For they said weel, it raicht have been
Ciiuse of their tynsalf" everilk ane.
The king answer has made them nane,
But mainit 7 his hand-ax shaft sat
Was with the straik broken in tway.
[27ie Battle of Bannoclchurn,'^
When this was said
The Scottismen commonally
Kneelit all doun, to God to pray.
And a short prayer there made they
To God, to help them in that ficht.
And when the English king had sicht
Of them knceland, he said, in hy,
' Yon folk kneel to ask mercy.'
Sir Ingram*' said, ' Ye say sooth now —
They ask mercy, but not of you ;
For their trespass to God they cry :
I tell you a thing sickcrly.
That yon men will all win or die ;
For doubt of deid^ they sail not flee.'
' Now be it sac then 1' said the king.
And then, but langer delaying.
They gart trump till the assembly.
On either side men micht then see
1 Haste. 2 Openly, clearly.
a Tliey sprang forward at once, against each other, in a line.
< Itfached. 6 j.^nth. * Destruction. ' Laiiientod
* Sir Ingram D'Uniphraville. ^ Fear of death.
2(i
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Monj' a wlcht man and worthy.
Ready to do chivalry.
Thus were they bound on either side ;
And Englishmen, with mickle pride,
That were intill their avaward,'
To the battle that Sir Edward-'
Governt and led, held straii^ht their way.
The horse with spurs hastened they,
And prickit upon them sturdily ;
And they met them richt hardily.
Sae that, at their assembly there,
Sic a frushing of spears were.
That far away men micht it hear,
That at that meeting forouten'' were.
Were steeds stickit mony ane ;
And mony gude man borne doun and slain ;
They dang on other with wappins sair,
Some of the horse, that stickit were,
Rushit and reelit richt rudely. * *
The gude earH thither took the way,
With his battle, in gude array,
And assemblit sae hardily,
That men micht hear had they been by,
A great frush of the spears that brast. * *
There micht men see a hard battle,
And some defend and some assail ; " *
While through the harness bui-st the bleed,
That till earth down steaming gaed.
The Earl of Murray and his men,
Sae stoutly them conteinit then.
That they wan place <ay mair and mair
On their faes ; where they were,
Ay ten for ane, or mair, perfay ;
Sae that it seemit weel that they
Were tint, amang sae gi-eat raeayk,^
As they were plungit in the sea.
And when the Englishmen has seen
The earl and all his men, bedeen,
Faucht sae stoutly, but eftraying,
Richt as they had nae abasing ;
Them pressit they with all their micht.
And they, with spears and swerds Itricht,
And axes, that richt sharply share
I'mids the visage, met them there.
There men micht see a stalwart stour,
And mony men of great valour.
With spears, niaces, and knives.
And other wappins, wisslit'' their lives :
Sae that mony fell doun all dcid.
The gi'ass waxed with the bhule all red. *
The Stewart, Walter that then was,
And the gude lord, als, of Douglas,
In a battle when that they saw
The earl, forouten dreid or awe,
Assemble with his company.
On all that folk, sae sturdily.
For till help them they held their way.
And their battle in gude array.
They assembled sae hardily,
Beside the earl, a little by.
That their faes felt their coming weel.
For, with wappins stalwart of steel,
They dang upon, with all their micht.
Their faes receivit weel, Ik hicht,''
With swerds, spears, and with mace.
The battle there sae fellon** was.
And sae richt great spilling of blude,
That on the earth the sluices stude. * *
That time thir three battles were
All side by side, fechting weel near,
The van of the English army. ^ Edwiird Bruce.
■ That were without or out of the battle.
* The Earl of .Murray.
* Lost amidst so great a multitude.
8 Exchanged. 7 I promise you. ^ Cruel.
There micht men hear mony a dinl,
And wappins upon aiTnours stint.
And see tumble knichts and steeds,
And mony rich and royal weeds
Defoullit foully under feet.
Some held on loft ; some tint the seat.
A lang time thus fechting they were ;
That men nae noise micht hear there ;
Men heard noucht but granes and dints,
That flew fire, as men flays on flints.
They foucht ilk ane sae eagerly.
That they made nae noise nor cry,
But dang on other at their micht.
With wappins that were bumist bricht. • *
All four their battles with that were
Fechting in a front halily.
Almiglity God ! how douchtily
Sir Edward the Bruce and his men
Amang their faes conteinit them than !
Fechting in sae gude covine,'
Sae hardy, worthy, and sae fine.
That their vaward frushit was. * *
Almighty God ! wha then micht see
That Stewart Walter, and his rout.
And the gude Douglas, that was sae stout,
Fechting into that stalwart stour ;
He sould say that till all honour
They were worthy. * * *
There micht men see mony a steed
Flying astray, that lord had nane. * *
There micht men hear ensenzies cry :
And Scottismen cry hardilv,
' On them ! On them ! On 'them ! They fail !'
With that sae hard they gan assail.
And slew all that they micht o'erta'.
And the Scots archers alsua-
Shot amang them sae deliverly,
Engrieving them sae gi-eatumly,
That what for them, that with them faucht,
That sae great routs to them raucht,
And pressit them full eagerly ;
And what for arrows, that fellonly
ilony great wounds gan them ma',
And slew fast oft' their horee alsua,
That they vandistS a little wee.
* « ♦ *
[The appearance of a mock host, composed of the servants of
the Scottish camp, completes the panic of the English army ;
the king flies, and Sir Giles D'Argentine is slain. The narra-
tive then proceeds.]
They were, to say sooth, sae aghast,
And fled sae fast, richt eftrayitly.
That of them a full great party
Fled to the water of Forth, and there
The maist part of them drowiiit were.
And Bannockbum, betwixt the braes,
Of men, of horse, sae steekit^ was,
That, upon drownit horse and men.
Men micht pass dry out-ower it then.
And lads, swains, and rangle,^
When they saw vanquished the battle,
Ran amang them ; and sae gan slay,
As folk that nae defence micht ma'.
« * * •
On ane side, they their faes had.
That slew them down, without mercy :
And they had, on the totlicr party,
Baimockburn, that sae cumbersome vvas,
For slike'' and deepness for to pass.
That they micht nane out-ower it ride :
Them worthies, maugre theirs, abide ;
Sae that some slain, some dro^\iiit were :
Micht nane escape that ever came there.
' Company.
* Shut up.
S Also.
5 Kabble.
3 Failed, gave way.
6 Slime, mud.
27
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
ANDREW WYNTOUN.
About the year 1420, Andrew Wyntocn, or, as
he describes himself, Androwe of Wyntoune, prior
of St Serf's Monastery in Lochleven, completed, in
eight-syllrtbled metre, an Ori/iji/nale Cromjkil of Scot-
land, including much universal histor}^ and extend-
ing down to his own time : it may be considered as
a Scottish jnember of the class of rhymed chronicles.
The genius of this author is inferior to that of Bar-
bour ; but at least his versification is easy, his lan-
guage pure, and his style often animated. His
chronicle is valuable as a picture of ancient manners,
as a repository of historical anecdotes, and as a spe-
cimen of the literary attainments of our ancestors.*
It contains a considerable number of fabulous le-
gends, such as we may suppose to have been told
beside the parlour fire of a monastery of those days,
and which convey a curious idea of the credulity of
the age. Some of these are included in the follow-
ing specimens, the first of which alone is in the
original spelling : —
[St Serf'sf Bam.l
This holy man had a ram,
That he had fed up of a lam,
And oysit him til folow ay,
Quherevir he passit in his way.
A theyf this scheppe in Achren stal,
And et hym up in pecis smalle.
Quhen Sanct Serf his ram had myst,
Quha that it stal was few that wist :
On presumpcion nevirtlieles
He that it stal arestyt was ;
And til Sanct Serf syne was he brought ;
That scheippe he said that he stal noucht,
And tharfor for to swer ane athe,
He said that he walde nocht be laythe.
Bot sone he worthit rede for schayine ;
The scheype tliar bletyt in his wayme !
Swa was he taynetyt schamfiilly,
And at Sanct Serf askyt mercy.
[Intei-view of St Serf with Sathaiuis.l
While St Serf, intil a stead,
Lay after matins in his bed,
The devil came, in foul intent
For til found him with argument,
And said, ' St Serf, by thy werk
I ken thou art a cunning clerk.'
* Dr Irving.
f St .Serf lived in the eixth century, and was tho foundor of
tho monastery of which tho author was prior.
St Serf said, ' Gif I sae be,
Foul wTctch, what is that for thee V
The devil said, 'This question
I ask in our collation —
Say where was God, wit ye oucht,
Before that heaven and erd was wroucht V
St Serf said, ' In himself steadiest
His Godhead hampered never was.'
The devil then askit, ' What cause he had
To make tlie creatures that he made V
To that St Serf answered there,
' Of creatures made he was maker.
A maker micht he never be, ^
But gif creatures made had he.'
The devil askit him, ' ^V'hy God of noucht
His werkis all full gude had wroucht.'
St Serf answered, ' That Goddis will
Was never to make his werkis ill,
And as envious he had been seen,
Gif nought but he full gude had been.'
St Serf the devil askit than,
' \\'here God made Adam, the first man V
' In I'^bron Adam formit was,'
St Serf said. And til him Sathanas,
' Where was he, eft that, for his vice.
He was put out of Paradise V
St Serf said, ' Where he was made.'
The devil askit, ' How lang he bade
In Paradise, after his sin.'
' Seven hours,' Serf said, ' bade he therein.'
' When was p]ve made ?' said Sathanas.
' In Paradise,' Serf said, ' she was.' * *
The devil askit, ' Why that ye
Men, are quite delivered free.
Through Christ's passion precious boucht,
And we devils sae are noucht V
St Serf said, ' For that ye
Fell through your a^vn iniquity ;
And through ourselves we never fell,
But through your fellon false counsell.' * *
Then saw the devil that he could noucht,
With all the wiles that he wrought,
Overcome St Serf. He said than
He kenned him for a wise man.
Forthy there he gave him quit.
For he wan at him na profit.
St Serf said, ' Thou wretch, gae
Frae this stead, and 'noy nae mae
Into this stead, I bid ye.'
Suddenly then passed he ;
Frae that stead he held his way,
And never was seen there to this day.
[The Itctwn of David II. from Captivity.']
[David II., taken prisoner by the English at the battle of
Durham, in 13-16, was at length redeemed by his countiy in
1357. The following passage from AVyntoun is curious, as illus-
trating the feelings of men in that age. The morning after his
return, when the people who had given so much for their sove-
reign, were pressing to sec or to greet him, he is guilty of a gross
outrage against them — which the poet, strange to say, justifies.]
Yet in prison was King Davy.
And when a lang time was gane by,
Frae prison and pcrplexitie
To Berwick Castle brought was he,
With the Earl of Northaniptoun,
For to treat there of his ransoun.
Some lords of Scotland come there.
And als prelates, that wisest were.
Four days or five there treated they,
But they accorded by nae way ;
For English folk all angry were,
And ay spak rudely inair and mair,
A\'hile at tlie last the Scots party.
That dred their faes' fellony,
28
WYNTOUN.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BLIND HARRY.
All privily went hame their way ;
At that time there nae mair did they.
The king to London then was had,
That there a lang time after bade.
After syne, with mediatioun
Of messengers, of his ransoun
Was treated, while a set day
Till Bermck him again brought they.
And there was treated sae, that he
Should of prison delivered be.
And freely till his lands found,
To pay ane hundred thousand pound
Of silver, intil fourteen year
And [while] the payment [paj'it] were,
To make sae lang truce took they,
And affirmed with seal and fay.
Great hostage there levedi he.
That on their a^vn dispense should be.
Therefore, while they hostage were.
Expense but number made they there.
The king was then delivered free.
And held his way till his countrie.
With him of English brought he nane,
Without a chamber-boy alane.
The whether, upon the morn, when he
Should wend till his counsel privy,
The folk, as they were wont to do,
Pressed right rudely in thereto :
But he right suddenly can arrace^
Out of a macer's hand a mace.
And said rudely, ' How do we now ?
Stand still, or the proudest of you
Shall on the head have with this mace !'
Then there was nane in all this place,
But all they gave him room in hy ;
Durst nane press further that were by ;
His council door might open stand,
That nane durst till it be pressand.
Radure^ in prince is a gude thing ;
For, but radure,4 all governing
Shall all time but despised be :
And where that men may radure see,
They shall dread to trespass, and sae
Peaceable a king his land may ma'.
Thus radure dred that gart him be.
Of Ingland but a page brought he,
And by his sturdy 'ginning
He gart them all have sic drejfSing,
That there was nane, durst nigh him near.
But wha by name that called were.
He led ynth radure sae his land.
In all time that he was regnand.
That nane durst well withstand his will.
All winning bowsome to be him till.
Wyntoun has been included in this section of
our literary history, because, although writing
after 1400, his work is one of a class, all the rest of
■which belong to the preceding period. Some other
Scottish writers who were probably or for certain of
the fifteenth century, may, for similar reasons, be
here introduced. Of one named Hutcheon, and de-
signed ' of the Awle Ryall '— tliat is, of the Hall
Royal or Palace — it is only known that he wrote a
metrical romance entitled the Gest of Arthur. An-
other, called Clerk, ' of Tranent,' was the author
of a romance entitled The Adventures of Sir Gaivain,
of wliich two cantos have been preserved. They are
written in stanzas of thirteen lines, with alternate
rhymes, and much alliteration ; and in a language
so very obsolete, as to be often quite unintelligible.
There is, however, a sort of wiklness in the narra-
tive, which is very striking.* The Hou-latc, an alle-
gorical satirical poem, by a poet named Holland, of
1 Left.
Ellis.
2 Reached. ^ Kigour. * Without rigour.
whom nothing else is known, may be classed with
the Prick of Conscience and Pierce Plowman's Vision,
English compositions of the immediately preceding
age. Thus, it appears as if literary tastes and modes
travelled northward, as more frivolous fashions do
at this day, and were always predominant in Scot-
land about the time when they were declining or
becoming extinct in England.
The last of the romantic or minstrel class of com-
positions in Scotland was The Adventures of Sir
William Wallace, written about 1460, by a wander-
ing poet usually called
BLIND HARRY.
Of the author nothing is known but that he was
blind from his infancy; that he wrote this poem,
and made a living by reciting it, or parts of it, be-
fore company. It is said by himself to be founded
on a narrative of the life of Wallace, written in
Latin by one Blair, chaplain to the Scottish hero,
and which, if it ever existed, is now lost. The chief
materials, however, have evidently been the tradi-
tionary stories told respecting Wallace in the min-
strel's own time, which was a century and a half
subsequent to that of the hero. In this respect, The
Wallace resembles The Bruce ; but the longer time
which had elapsed, the unlettered character of the
author, and the comparative humil'*- oi the class
from whom he would chiefly derive nis facts, made
it inevitable that the work should be much less of a
historical document than that of the learned arch-
deacon of Aberdeen. It is, in reality, such an ac-
count of Wallace as might be expected of Montrose
or Dundee from some unlettered but ingenious poet
of the present day, who should consult only High-
land tradition for his authority. It abounds in
marvellous stories respecting the prowess of its hero,
and in one or two places grossly outrages real his-
tory; yet its value has on this account been per-
haps understated. Within a very few years past,
several of the transactions attributed bj' the blind
minstrel to Wallace, and heretofore supposed to be
fictitious — as, for example, his expedition to France
— have been confirmed by the discovery of authentic
evidence. That the author meant only to state real
facts, must be concluded alike from the simple \m-
affectedness of the narration, and from the rarity of
deliberate imposture, in comparison with credulity,
as a faidt of the literary men of the period. Tlie
poem is in ten-syllable lines, the epic verse of a later
age, and it is not deficient in poetical effect or ele-
vated sentiment. A paraphrase of it into modern
Scotch, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, has
long been a favourite volume amongst the Scottish
peasantry : it was the study of this book which had
so great an effect in kindling the genius of Robert
Burns.*
[Adventiire of Wallace \clnle Fishinr/ in Irvine Water.']
[Wallace, near the commencement of his career, is living in
hiding with his uncle, Sir Ranald ^S'■allace of Riccarton, near
Kilmarnock. To amuse himself, he goes to fish in the rivet
Irvine, when the following adventure takes place : — ]
So on a time he desired to play.+
In Aperil the three-and-twenty day,
* See his Life by Dr Currie.
t A few couplets in the original spelling are subjoined : —
So on a tym he desyrit to play.
In Aperill the three-and-twcnty day,
Till KrewjTi wattir fysehe to tak he went,
Sic fantasye fell in his cntent.
To leide his net a child furth with him yeid :
But he, or nowne, was in a fellowne dreid.
His swerd he left, so did he neuir agayne ;
It dide him gud, supposB he sufferyt pajTio.
29
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1 4('(.'.
Till Irvine water fish to tak he went,
Sic fantasy fell in his intent.
To lead his net a child furth with him yede.^
But he, or- noon, was in a fellon dread.
His swerd he left, so did he never again ;
It did him gude, suppose he suffered pain.
Of that labour as than he was not slie,
Happy he was, took fish abundantly.
Or of the day ten hours o'er couth pass.
Ridand there came, near by where Wallace was,
The Lord Percy, was captain than of Ayr ;
Frae then' he turned, and couth to Glasgow fare.^
Part of the court had Wallace' labour seen,
Till him rade five, clad into ganand green,
And said soon, ' Scot, ^Martin's fish we wald have V
Wallace meekly again answer him gave.
' It were reason, methink, ye should have part,
Waith-* should be dealt, in all place, with free heart.'
He bade his child, ' Give them of our waithing.'
The Southron said, ' As now of thy dealing
We will not tak ; thou wald give us o'er small.'
He lighted down and frae the child took all.
Wallace said then, ' Gentlemen gif yebe,
Leave us some part, we pi'ay for charity.
Ane aged knight serves our lad}* to-day :
Gude friend, leave part, and tak not all away.'
' Thou shall have leave to fish, and tak thee mae.
All thi' ■'"'^rsooth shall in our flitting gae.
We serve a j.v.. '^ ; this fish shall till him gang.'
Wallace answered, said, ' Thou art in the \vrang.'
' Wham thous thou, Scot ? in faith thou 'serves a blaw.'
Till him he ran, and out a swerd can draw.
William was wae he had nae wappins there
But the poutstafF, the whilk in hand he bare,
Wallace with it fast on the cheek him took,
With sae gude will, while of his feet he shook.
The swerd flew frae him a fur-breid on the land.
Wallace was glad, and hint it soon in hand ;
And with the swerd awkward he him gave
Under the hat, his craig^ in sunder drave.
By that the lave" lighted about Wallace,
He had no help, only but God's grace.
On either side full fixst on him they dang,
Great peril was gif they had lasted lang.
Upon the head in great ire he strak <ane ;
The shearand swerd glade to the collar bane.
Ane other on the arm he hit so hardily.
While hand and swerd baith in the field can lie.
The tother twa fled to their horse again ;
He stickit him wiis last upon the plain.
Three slew he there, twa fled with all their might
After their lord ; but he was out of sight,
Takand the muir, or he and they couth twine.
Till him they rade anon, or they wald blin,7
And cryit, ' Lord, abide ; your men are martyred down
Right cruelly, here in this false region.
Five of our court here at the water bade,^
Fish for to bring, though it nae profit made.
We are scaped, but in field slain are three.'
The lord speirit,^ ' How mony might they be ? '
' We saw but ane that has discomfist us all.'
Then leughW he loud, and said, ' Foul mot you fall !
Sin' ane you all has put to confusion.
\A'ha meins it maist the devil of hell him drown !
This day for me, in faith, he bees not sought.'
"When ^\'allacc thus this worthy wark had wrought,
Their horse he took, and gear that left was there,
Gave ower that craft, he yede to fish nae raair.
Went till his erne, and tald him of this deed,
And he for woe well near worthit to weid,^i
> AVent. » Ere.
» He was on his way from Ayr to Glxisgow.
* Spriil taken in sport. * Neck. " Rest.
7 Ere they would stop. ^ Tarried. " Inquired.
•• Laughed. " Nearly went mad.
And said, ' Son, thir tidings sits me sore.
And, be it known, thou may tak sea 1th therefore.'
' Uncle,' he said, ' I will no langer bide,
Thir southland horse let see gif I can ride.'
Then but a child, him service for to mak,
His erne's sons he wald not with him tak.
This gude knight said, ' Dear cousin, pray I thee,
When thou wants gude, come fetch eneuch frae me.'
Silver and gold he gart on him give,
^\'allace inclines, and gudely took his leave.
[Escape of Wallace from Perth.]
[Wallace, betrayed by a woman in Perth, escapes to EIclio
P;irk, in the neighbourhood, killing two Englishmen by the
way. The English garrison of the toKTi, under Sir John Butler,
conunence a search and pursuit of the fugitive hero, by nieiing
of a bloodhound. Wallace, with sixteen men, makes his way
out of the park, and hastens to the banks of the Earn.]
As they were best arrayand Butler's route,
Betwixt parties than Wallace ischet out ;
Sixteen with him they graithit them to gae.
Of all his men he had leavit no mae.
The Englishmen has missit him, in hyl
The hound they took, and followed hastily.
At the Gask Wood full fain he wald have been ;
But this sloth-brach, whilk sicker was and keen,
On Wallace foot followed so fellon fast.
While in their sicht they 'proachit at the last.
Their horse werewicht, had sojourned weel and lang ;
To the next wood, twa mile they had to gang.
Of upwith yird ;- they yede with all their micht,
Gude hope they had, for it was near the nicht.
Fawdon tirit, and said he micht not gang.
Wallace was wae to leave him in that thrang.
He bade him gae, and said the strength was near
But he tharefore wald not faster him steir.
Wallace, in ire, on the craig can him ta'.
With his gude swerd, and strak the head him frae.
Dreldless to groimd derfly he dushit deid.
Frae him he lap, and left him in that stede.
Some deemis it to ill ; and other some to gude ;
And I say here, into thir termis rude,
Better it was he did, as thinkis me ;
First to the hound it micht great stoppin be ;
Als', Fawdon was halden at suspicion,
For he was of bruckil complexion^ —
Richt stark he wa^, and had but little gane.
Thus Wallace wist : had he been left alane.
An he were false, to enemies he wald gae ;
Gif he were true, the southron wald him slay.
]\Iicht he do oucht but tyne him as it was ?
Frae this question now shortly will I pass.
Deem as ye list, ye that best can and may,
I but rehearse, as my autoiir will say.
Stemis, by than, began for till appear.
The Englishmen were comand wonder near ;
Five hundred hail was in their chivalry.
To the next strength than Wallace couth him hy.
Stephen of Ireland, unwitting of Wallace,
And gude Kerly, bade still near hand that place,
At the muir-slde, intill a scroggy slaid.
By east Dupplin, where they this tarry made.
Fawdon was left beside them on the land ;
The power came, and suddenly him fand ;
For their sloth-hound the straight gait till him yede.
Of other trade she took as than no heed.
The sloth stoppit, at Fawdon still she stude.
Nor further she wald, frae time she fand the blude.
I'^nglishmen deemit, for als tliey could not tell.
But that the Scots had fouchten amang themsjll.
Richt wae they were that losit was their scent.
Wallace twa men amang the host in went.
■ Ascending ground.
3 Broken reput«tios>
30
BLIND HARRY.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BLIND HARHY.
Dissemblit weel, that no man sould them ken,
Richt in effeir, as they were Englishmen.
Kerly beheld on to the bauld Ileroun,
Upon Fawdon as he was lookand do\^-n,
A subtle straik upward him took that tide,
Under the cheeks the grounden swerd gart glide,
By the gude mail, baith halse and his craig bane
In sunder strak ; thus endit that Chieftain.
To ground he fell, fell folk about him thrang,
Treason ! they cried, traitors was them amang !
Kerly, with that, fled out soon at a side.
His fallow Stephen than thoucht no time to bide.
The fray was great, and fast away they yede,
Laighl toward Earn ; thus scapit thej' of dreid.
Butler for woe of weeping micht not stint,
Thus recklessly this gude knickt they tynt.
They deemit all that it was Wallace men.
Or else himself, though they could not him ken.
' He is richt near, we shall him have but^ fail,
This feeble wood may him little avail.'
Forty were passed again to Sanct-Johnstoun,
'With this dead corse, to burning made it bounc.
Parted their men, syne diverse wayis raid ;
A great power at Dupplin still there baid.
Till Dareoch the Butler passed but let ;
At sundrv' fuirds, the gait they unbeset ;
To keep the wood till it was day they thoucht.
As Wallace thus in the thick forest soucht.
For his twa men in mind he had great pain,
He wist not weel if they were ta'en or slain,
Or scapit hail by ony jeopardy :
Thretteen were left him ; no mae had he.
In the Cask hall their lodging have they ta'en ;
Fire gat they soon, but meat than had they iiaiie.
Twa sheep they took beside them aff a fauld.
Ordained to sup into that seemly hauld,
Graithit in haste some food for them to dicht :
So heard they blaw rude hornis upon heicht.
Twa sent he forth to look what it micht be ;
They baid richt lang, and no tidings heard he,
But boustous noise so brimly blew and fast,
So other twa into the wood furth passed.
Kane come again, but boustously can blaw ;
Into great ire he sent them furth on raw.
When that alane Wallace was leavit there,
The a'irful blast aboundit mickle mair.
Than trowit he weel they had his lodging seen ;
His swerd he drew, of noble metal keen ;
Syne furth he went where that he heard the horn.
^Vithout the door Fawdon was him beforn,
As till his sicht, his awn held in his hand :
A cross he made when he saw him so stand.
At Wallace in the held he svvakit there,^
And he in haste soon hynt-* it by the hair,
Syne out at him again he couth it cast —
Intill his heart he was greatly aghast.
Richt weel he trowit that was nae spreit of man,
It was seme devil, at sic malice began.
He wist no weel there langer for to bide ;
Up through the Hall thus wicht Wallace can glide
Till a close stair, the buirdis rave in t\vyne.
Fifteen foot large he lap out of that inn.
Up the water, suddenly he couth fare.
Again he blent what 'pearance he saw there,
He thoucht he saw Fawdoun, that ugly sir,
That hail hall he had set in a fire ;
A great rafter he had intill his hand.
Wallace as than no langer wald he stand,
Of his gude men full great marvel had he,
How they were tint through his fell fantasy.
Traists richt weel all this was sooth indeed,
Suppose that it no point be of the creed.
Power they had with Lucifer that fell,
The time when he parted frae heaven to hell.
1 Low. 2 Without. 3 Threw * Caught
By sic mischief gif his men micht be lost,
Dro\vnit or slain araang the English host ;
Or what it was in likeness of Fawdoun,
Whilk broucht his men to sudden confusion ;
Or gif the nuui ended in evil intent.
Some wicked spreit again for him present,
I can not speak of sic divinity ;
To clerks 1 will let all sic matters be.
But of Wallace furth I will you tell,
When he was went of that peril fell,
Richt glad was he that he had scapit sae.
But for his men great muming can he ma.
Flayt by himsell to the Maker of love,
Whj' he sufferit he sould sic painis prove.
He wist not weel if it was Goddis will,
Richt or wrang his fortune to fulfil.
Had he pleased God, he trowit it micht not be,
He sould him thole in sic perplexity.'
I?ut great courage in his mind ever drave
Of Englishmen tliirikand amends to have.
As he was thus walkald bj- him alane,
Upon Eam-side, makand a piteous mane,
Sir John Butler, to watch the fuirdis right,
Out frae his men of Wallace had a sight.
The mist was went to the mountains again ;
Till him he rade, where that he made his mane.
On loud he spcirt, ' What art you walks this gait V
' A true man, sir, though my voyage be late ;
Errands I pass frae Doune unto my lord ;
Sir John Stewart, the richt for to record.
In Doune is now, new comand frae the king.'
Than Butler said, ' This is a selcouth thing,
You lee'd all out, you have been with Wallace,
I shall you knaw, or you come off this place.'
Till him he stert the courser wonder wicht.
Drew out a swerd, so made him for to licht.
Aboon the knee gude Wallace has him ta'en
Through thie and brawn, in sunder strak the bane,
Derfly to deid the knicht foil on the land.
Wallace the horse soon seizit in his hand ;
Ane backward straik sync took him, in that steld.
His craig in twa ; thus was the Buth'r deid.
Ane Englishman saw their chieftain was slain
A spear in rest he cast with all his main,
On Wallace drave, frae the horse him to beir ;
Warly he wroucht, as worthy man in weir ;
The spear he wan, withouten mair abaid.
On horse he lap, and through a gi-eat rout raid
To Dareoch ; he knew the fords full weel ;
Before him came foil 2 stuffit in fine steel ;
He strak the first but baid in the blasoun,^
While horse and man baith flet the water doun.
Ane other syne doun frae his horse he bare,
Stampit to ground, and drounit withouten mair.
The third he hit in his harness of steel
Through out the cost, the spear it brak some deal.
The great power than after him can ride.
He saw na weel nae langer there to bide.
His bumist brand bravely in hand he bare ;
Wham he hit richt they followit him nae mair.
To stuff the chase fell frekis followit fast.
But Wallace made the gayest aye aghast.
The muir he took, and through "their power yede.
ITJie Death of Wallace.]
On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht
To martyr him, as they before had wrocht.-*
Of men in arms led him a full great rout.
With a bauld sprite guid Wallace blent about :
A priest he asked, for God that died on tree.
King Edward then commanded his clergy.
And said, ' I charge j'ou, upon loss of life,
Nane be sae bauld yon tyrant for to shrive.
' That God should allow hnii to ho in bucli perplexity.
2 .Many 3 Without sword. ■• Contrived,
31
FROM EARLIEST
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1400.
He has reigiied long in contrar my highness.'
A blyth bishop soon, present in that place ;
Of Canterbury he then was righteous lord ;
Again' the king he made this richt record,
And said, ' ^Myself shall hear his confession,
If I have miciit in contrar of thy cro^vn.
An thou tlirough force ^-ill stop me of this thing,
I TOW to God, who is my righteous king,
That all England I shall her interdite,
And make it known thou art a heretic.
The sacrament of kirk I shall him give :
Syne take thy choice, to starve l or let him live.
It were mair weil, in worship of thy crown,
To keep sic ane in life in thy bandoun,
Than all the land and good that thou hast reived.
But cowardice thee ay fra honour dreived.
Thou has thy life rougin ^ in vrrangeous deed ;
That shall be seen on thee or on thy seed.'
The king gart^ charge they should the bishop ta,
But sad lords counsellit to let him ga.
All Englishmen said that his desire was richt.
To Wallace then he rakit in their sicht
And sadly heard his confession till ane end :
Humbly to God his sprite he there commend
Lowly iiim served with hearty devotion
Upon his knees and said ane orison. * *
A psalter-book Wallace had on him ever
Fra his childheid — fra it wald nocht dissever ;
Better he trowit in wyage •* for to speed.
But then he was dispalyed of his weed.*
This grace he asked at Lord Clifford, that knicht.
To let him have his psalter-book in sicht.
He gart a priest it open before him hald,
While they till him had done all that they wald.
Stedfast he read for ought they did him there ;
Fell " Southrons said that Wallace felt na sair.
Guid devotion, sae, was his beginning,
Conteined therewith, and lair was his ending.
While speech and sprite at anis all can fare
To lasting bliss, we trow, for evermair.
PROSE WRITERS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
In the general history of literature, poetry takes
precedence of prose. At first, wlien the memory
was the chief means of preserving literature, men
seem to have found it necessary that composition
should take a form different from ordinary discourse
— a form involving certain measures, breaks, and
pauses — not onl}' as appropriate to its being some-
thing higher and finer than common speech, but in
order that it might be the more easily remembered.
Hence, while we cannot trace poetry to its origin,
we know that the first prose dates from the sixth
century before the Christian era, Avhen it was as-
sumed, in Greece, as the form of certain narratives
differing from poetry in scarcely any other respect.
In England, as in all other countries, prose was a
form of composition scarce!}' practised for several
centuries, during which poetry was comparatively
much cultivated. TliG first specimens of it, en-
titled to any consideration, date from the reign of
Edward IIL
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.
Sir John Mandeville is usually held as the first
English prose writer. lie was born at St Albans in
the year 13U0, and received the liberal education
requisite for the profession of medicine. During the
' The nece3<iary consequence of an interdict.
i Spent. ^ (':mhed.
■* JCxpedition — his jounie.v to the other world.
» Clothes. * Alany.
thirty-four years previous to 1356, he travelled in
eastern countries, and on his return to England, wrote
an account of all he had seen, mixed up witli innu-
merable fables, derived from preceding historians
and romancers, as well as from hearsay. His book
was originally written in Latin, then translated into
French, and finally into English, ' that every man
of my nacionn may undirstonde it.' It is of little
use as a description of foreign climes, but valuable
as a monument of the language, and of the imper-
fect learning and reason, and homely ideas, of the
age which produced it. The name of the author has
become identified with our idea of a mendacious
babbler ; but this is in a great measure an injustice.
Mandeville, with the credulity of the age, embodied
in his work every wild grandam tale and monkish
fiction which came in liis way ; but it has been
found, that where he quotes preceding authors, or
writes from his own observation, he makes no effort
at either embellishment or exaggeration. Hence it
is not uncommon to find him in one page giving a
sensible account of something which he saw, and in
the next repeating witli equal seriousness the story
of Gog and IMagog, the tale of men with tails, or the
account of the Madagascar bird which could carry
elephants through the air. He gives, upon the
Avhole, a pleasing and interesting account of the
Mohamedan nations amongst Avhom lie sojourned.
Considering the exasperation which was likely to
have been occasioned by the recent crusades, those
nations appear to have treated the Christian tra-
veller with surprising liberality and kindness. He
is himself of a much more liberal spirit than many
pious persons of more recent times, and dwells with
pleasure upon the numerous Christian sects who
lived peaceably under the Saracen dominion. ' And
ye shall understand,' says he, ' that uf all these
countries, and of all these isles, and of all these
diverse folk, that I have spoken of before, and of
diverse laws and of diverse beliefs that they ban
[have] ; yet there is none of them all but that they
han some reason witliin them and understanding,
but gif it be the fewer ; and that they han certain
articles of our faith and some good points of our
belief; and that they believen in God, that formed all
things and made the world, and clepen him God of
Nature. * * But yet they can not speken per-
feytly (for there is no man to techen them) ; but
only that they can devise by their natural wit.'
Further, in reference to the superior moral conduct
of the Mohamedan nations, he relates a conversa-
tion with the Sultan of Egypt, which may be here
given, not only as a specimen of his language, but
with the view of turning this writer of the four-
teenth century to some account in instructing the
nineteenth : —
[A Mulmmedaii's Lecture on Christian Vices.']
lOriffinnl Spcllinp. — And therfore I shalle telle you what the
Soudan tolde me upon a day, in his clianibre. lie Icet voyden
out of his clLimbre alle nianer of men, lordes and othere ; for
he wolde spake with me in conseille. And there he asked me,
how the Cristene men governed hem in oure contree. And I
seyde him, righte wel, thonked be God. And he seyde, treulyche
nay ; for ye Cristene men ne rccthen rishte noghte how ua-
trewly to serve God. Ye scholde geven ensaniple, A:c.]
And therefore I shall tell you what the Soud.an told
me upon a day, in his chamber. lie let voiden out of
his chamber all manner of men, lords, and other ;
for he would speak with me in counsel. And there he
asked me how the Christian men governed 'em in our
country. And I said [to] him, ' Right well, thonked
be God.' And he said [to] me, ' Truly nay, for ye
Christian men ne reckon right not how untruly to
serve God. Ye should given ensample to the lewed
32
MANDEVILLE.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MANDEVILLE.
people for to do well, and je given 'em ensawple to
don evil. For the commons, upon festival days, ^yhc^n
they shoulden go to church to serve (ifJ, then gon
they to taverns, and ben there in gluttony all the day
and all night, and eaten and drinken, as beasts that
have no reason, and wit not w^eri they have enow.
And therewithal they ben so proud, that they knowen
not how to ben clothed ; pow long, now short, now
strait, now large, now sworded, now daggered, and in
all manner guises. TJiey shoulden ben simple, meek,
and true, and full oT alms-deed, as Jesu was, in whom
they trow ; but they hen all the contrary, and ever
inclined to the evil, and to don evil. And they ben
so covetous, that for a little silver they sellen 'eir
daughters, 'eir sisters, and 'eir ovni wives, to putten
'em to lechery. And one withdraweth the wife of an-
other ; and none of 'em holdeth faith to another, but
they defoulen 'eir law, that Jesu Christ betook 'em
keep for 'eir salvation. And thus for 'eir sins, ban
[have] they lost all this lond that we holdcn. For 'eir
sins here. Lath God taken 'em in our bonds, not only
by strength of ourself, but for 'eir sins. For we
knowen well in very sooth, that when ye serve God,
God will help you ; and when he is with you, no man
may be against you. And that know we well by our
prophecies, that Christian men shall winnen this lond
again out of our bonds, when they serven God more
devoutly. But as long as they ben of foul and un-
clean living (as they ben now), we have no dread of
'em in no kind ; for here God will not helpen 'em in
no wise.'
And then I asked him how he knew the state of
Christian men. And he answered me, that he knew
all the state of the commons also by his messengers,
that he sent to all lends, in manner as they were mer-
chants of precious stones, of cloths of gold, and of
other things, for to knowen the manner of every
country amongs Christian men. And then he let
clepe' in all the lords that he made voiden first out of
his chamber ; and there he showed me four that were
great lords in the country, that tolden me of my
countrj', and of many other Christian countries, as well
as if they had been of the same country ; and they spak
French right well, and the Soudan also, whereof I had
great marvel. Alas, that it is great slander to our
faith and to our laws, when folk that ben withouten
law shall reproven us, and undememen- us of our sins.
And they that shoulden ben converted to Christ and
to the law of Jesu, by our good example and by our
acceptable life to God, ben through our wickedness
and evil living, far fro us ; and strangers fro the holy
and verj'3 belief shall thus appellcn us and holden us
for wicked levirs and cursed. And truly they say
sooth. For the Saracens ben good and faithful. For
they keepen entirely the commandment of the holy
book Alcoran, that God sent 'em by his messager
Mahomet ; to the- which, as they sayen, St Gabriel,
the angel, oftentime told the will of God.
[The DeviVs Head in the Valley Pcrilm'^.']
Beside that isle of Mistorak, upon the left side,
nigh to the river Phison, is a man'ellous thing.
There is a vale between the mountains, that dureth
nigh a four mile. And some clepen-* it the Vale En-
chanted, some clepen it the Vale of Devils, and some
clepen it the Vale Perilous ; in that vale hearen^ men
oftentime great tempests and thunders, and great
munnurs and noises, all day and nights ; and great
noise as it were sound of tabors and of nakeres'' and
trumps, as though it were of a great feast. This vale
is all full of devils, and hath been always. And men
Bay there, that it is one of the entries of hell. In that
' Call. « Remind. » True. * Call. « }Iear.
' Nakeres — Nacara CDu Cange), a kind of brazen drum used
in the cavalry.
vale is plenty of gold and silver ; wherefore many
misbelieving men, and many Christian men also, gon^
in often time, for to have of the treasure that there is,
but few comen again ; and namely, of the misbelieving
men, ne of the Christian men nouther ;- for they ben
anon strangled of devils. And in mid place of that
vale, under a rock, is an head of the visage of a devil
bodily, full horrible and dreadful to see ; and it
showeth not but the head, to the shoulders. But there
is no man in the world so hardy. Christian man ne
other, but that he would ben adrad'^ for to behold it ;
and that it would seemen him to die for dread ; so is
it hideous for to behold. For he beholdeth every
man so sharply with dreadful eyen^ that ben evenuore
moving and sparkling as fire, and changeth and
steereth so often in divers manner, with so horrible
countenance, that no man dare not nighen^ towards
him. And iro^ him cometh smoke and stink, and
fire, and so much abomination, that unethe" no man
may there endure. But the good Christian men, that
ben stable in the faith, entren well withouten peril :
for they will first shriven 'em,« and marken hem with
the token of the Holy Cross ; so that the fiends ne ban
no" power over 'em. But albeit that they ben with-
outen peril, zit natheles'" ne ben they not withouten
dread, when that they seen the devils visibly and bodily
all about 'em, t^at maken full many divers assauts'l
and menaces in air and in earth, and agasten'2 'em
with strokes of thunder-blasts and of tempests. And
the most dread is, that God will taken vengeance then,
of that men han misdone again'3 his will. And ye
should understand, that when my fellows and I weren
in that vale, we weren in great thought whether that
we dursten putten our bodies in aventure, to gon in or
non, in the protection of God. And some of our fel-
lows accordedeni'i to enter, and some noght.15 So there
were with us two worthy men, friars minors that were
of Lombardy, that said, that if any man would enter,
they would go in with us. And when they had said
so, upon the gracious trust of God and of 'em,''^ we let
sing mass ; and made everj' man to be shriven and
houseld ;17 and then we entered fourteen persons ; but
at our going out, we were but nine. And so we wisten'^
never, whether that our fellows were lost, or elles'9
turned again for dread ; but we ne saw them never
after ; and tho^" were two men of Greece and three of
Spain ; and our other fellows that would not go in with
us, they went by another coast to ben before us, and
so they were. And thus we passed that perilous vale,
and found therein gold and silver, and precious stones,
and rich jewels great plenty, both here and there, as
us seemed ; but whether that it was, as us seemed, I
wot nere ;2i for I touched none, because that the devils
be so subtle to make a thing to seem otherwise than
it is, for to deceive mankind ; and therefore I touched
none ; and also because that I would not be put out
of my devotion : for I was more devout than ever I
was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends,
that I saw in divers figures ; and also for the great
multitude of dead bodies that I saw there lying by
the way, by all the vale, as though there had been a
battle between two kings, and the mightiest of the
country, and that the greater part had been discom-
fitted and slain. And I trow--' that unethe should any
country have so much people within him, as lay slain
in that vale, as us thought ; the which was an hideous
sight to seen.-3 And I mar\-elled much, that there
» Go. 2 Neither.
6 Approach. ^ From.
8 Confess themselves.
'" Yet nevertheless.
'3 Against. '* Agreed.
* Afraid. 4 Eyea.
7 Scarcely.
9 Have no.
"'Assaults. '^TerriFj
1^ Not. "J Tliemselves.
17 To be confessed, and to have the Lord's Supper administered
to him. '8 Knew. '9 Else. -» They
=" I never knew. 22 Uelieve. 23 gge.
33
\;\«\l KAlll.IKST
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TIMES TO 1-fjO.
were so many, and the bodies all whole withouten
rotting. But I trow that ticnds made them seem to
be so whole, withouten rotting. But that might not
be to my avys,l that so many should b.ave entered
so newly, ne' so many newly slain, without stinking
and rotting. And many of them were in habit of
Christian men ; but I trowe well, that it were of such
that went in for covetyse^ of the treasure that was
there, and had overmuch feebleness in faith ; so that
their hearts ne might not endure in the belief for
dread. And therefore were we the more devout a
great deal ; and yet we were cast dowTi, and beaten
down many times to the hard earth, by winds and
thunders, and tempests ; but evenmr-re, God, of his
grace, helped us. And so we passed that perilous vale,
without peril, and without incumbrance. Thanked be
Almighty God.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
Chaucer, though eminent chiefly as a poet, de-
serves to be mentioned also as a prose writer.
His longest unversified production is an allegorical
and meditative work called T/ie Tentament of Love,
written chiefly for the purpose of defending his cha-
racter against certain imputations whicli had been
cast upon it. Two of tlie Canterbia-y Tales are in
prose ; and from the first, entitled th& Tale of Meli-
beus, is extracted the following passage, not less re-
markable for the great amount of ancient wisdom
which it contains, than for the clearness and sim-
plicity of the diction : —
[On niches.^
When Prudence had heard her husband avaunt him-
self of his riches and of his money, dispreising the power
of his adversaries, she spake and said in this wise :
Certes, dear sir, I grant you that ye ben rich and
mighty, and that riches ben good to 'em that han well
ygetten 'em, and that well can usen 'em ; for, right
as the body of a man may not liven withouten soul,
no more may it liven withouten temporal goods, and
by riches may a man get him great friends ; and
therefore saith Pamphilus, If a neatherd's daughter
be rich, she may chese of a thousand men which she wol
take to her husband ; for of a thousand men one wol
not forsaken her ne refusen her. And this Pamphilus
Baith also. If thou be right happy, that is to snya, if
thou be right rich, thou shalt find a great number of
fellows and friends ; and if thy fortune change, that
thou wax poor, farewell friendship and fellowship, for
thou shalt be all alone withouten any company, but
iP it be the company of poor folk. And yet saith
this Pamphilus, moreover, that they that ben bond
and thrall of llniage shuln be made worthy and noble
by riches. And right so as by riches there comen
many goods, right so by poverty come there many
harms and evils ; and therefore clepeth Cassiodore,
poverty the mother of ruin, that is to sayn, the mother
of overthrowing or falling down ; and therefore saith
Piers Alfonse, One of the greatest adversities of the
world is when a free man by kind, or of birth, is con-
strained by poverty to eaten the alms of his enemy.
And the same saith Innocent in one of his books ; he
saith that sorro\vful and mishappy is the condition of
a poor beggar, for if he ax not his meat he dieth of
hunger, and if he ax he dieth for shame ; and algates
necessity constraineth him to ax ; and therefore saith
Solomon, That better it is to die than for to have such
poverty ; and, as the same Solomon saith. Better it is
to die of bitter death, than for to liven in such wise. By
these reasons that I have said unto you, and by many
other reasons that I could say, I grant you that riches
ben good to 'em that well gcten 'em, and to him that
well usen tho' riches ; and therefore wol I show you
• Advice, understanding. * Covetousness. * Except.
how ye shulen behave you in gathering of j'our
riches, and in what manner yc shulen usen 'em.
First, ye shulen geten 'em withouten great desire, by
good leisure, sokuigly, and not over hastily, for a man
that is too desiring w get riches abandoueth him first
to theft and to all other evils ; and therefore saith
Solomon, He that hastetli him too busily to wax rich,
he shall be non innocent : he saith also, that the
riches that hastily cometh to a man, soon and lightly
goeth and passeth from a man, liut that riches that
cometh little and little, waxeth alway and multiplieth.
And, sir, ye shulen get riches by your rdt and by your
travail, unto your profit, and that withouten wroug or
harm doing to any other person ; for the law saith,
There maketh no nuin himself rich, if he do harm to
another wight ; that is to say, that Nature dettndeth
and forbiddeth by right, that no man make himself
rich unto the harm of another person. And TuUius
saith, That no sorrow, ne no dread of death, ne no-
thing that may fall unto a man, is so rauckle agaiiis
nature as a man to increase his own profit to harm of
another man. And though the great men and the
mighty men geten riches more lightly than thou, 3'et
shalt thou not ben idle ne slow to do thy profit, for
thou shalt in all wise flee idleness ; for Solomon saith,
That idleness teacheth a man to do many evils ; and
the same Solomon saith, That he that travailcth and
busieth himself to tillen his lond, shall eat bread, but
he that is idle, and casteth him to no business ne oc-
cupation, shall fall into poverty, and die for hunger.
And he that is idle and slow can never find coven-
able time for to do his profit ; for there is a versifier
saith, that the idle man excuseth him in winter be-
cause of the great cold, and in summer then by en-
chcson of the heat. For these causes, saith Caton,
waketh and inclineth you not over muckle to sleep,
for over muckle rest nourisheth and causeth many
vices ; and therefore saith St .Jerome, Doeth some
good deeds, that the devil, which is our enemy, ne
find you not unoccupied, for the devil he taketh not
lightly unto his werking such as he fiudeth occupied
in good works.
Then thus in getting riches ye musten flee idleness ;
and afterward ye shulen usen the riches which ye han
geten by your wit and by your travail, in such man-
ner, than men hold you not too scarce, ne too sparing,
ne fool-large, that is to say, over large a spender ; for
right as men blamen an avaritious man because of his
scarcity and chinchery, in the same wise he is to blame
that spendeth over largely ; and therefore saith Caton,
use (he saith) the riches that thou hast ygeten in such
manner, that men have no matter ne cauSe to call
thee nother wretch ne chinch, for it is a great shame
to a man to have a poor heart and a rich purse : he
saith also. The goods that thou hast ygeten, use 'em
by measure, that is to sayen, spend measureably, for
they that solily wasten and despendeu the goods that
they han, when they han no more proper of 'eir own,
that they shapen 'em to take the goods of another
man. I say, then, that ye shulen flee avarice, using
your riches in such manner, that men sayen not that
your riches ben yburied, but that ye have 'em in your
might and in your wielding ; for n, wise man reproveth
the avaritious man, and saith thus in two verse,
Whereto and why burieth a man his goods by his
great avarice, and knowcth well that needs must he
die, for death is the end of every man as in this pre-
sent life ? And for what cause or encheson joineth
he him, or knitteth he him so fast unto his goods, that
all his ^vits mowen not disseveren him or departen
him fro his goods, and knoweth well, or ought to know,
that when he is dead he shall nothing bear with him
out of this world ? and therefore saith St Augustine,
that the avaritious man is likened unto hell, that the
more it swalloweth the more desire it hath to swallow
and devour. And as well as yc wold eschew to be
M
WICKI.IFFE.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WICKLIFFE.
called an avaritious man or an chinch, as well should
ye keep you and govern j-ou in such wise, that men
call you not fool-large ; therefore, saith TuUius, Tlie
goods of thine house ne should not ben hid ne kept
so close, but that they might ben opened by pity and
debonnairety, that is to sayen, to give 'em part that
ban great need ; ne they goods shoulden not ben so
open to be every man's goods.
Afterward, in getting of your riches, and in using
of 'em, ye shulen alway have three things in your
heart, that is to say, our Lord God, conscience, and
good name. First j'e shulen have Cod in your heart,
and for no riches ye shulen do nothing which may in
any manner displease God that is your creator and
maker ; for, after the word of Solomon, it is better to
have a little good, with love of God, than to have
muckle good and lese the love of his Lord God ; and
the prophet saith, that better it is to ben a good man
and have little good and treasure, than to be holden
a shrew and have great riches. And yet I say fur-
thermore, that ye shulden alwa3's do 3'our business to
get your riches, so that ye get 'em with a good con-
science. And the apostle saith, that there nis thing
in this world, of which we shulden have so great joy,
as when our conscience beareth us good witness ; and
the wise man saith. The substance of a man is full
good when sin is not in a man's conscience. After-
ward, in getting of your riches and in using of 'em,
ye must have great business and great diligence that
your good name be alway kept and conseiTed ; fot
Solomon saith, that better it is and more it availeth
a man to have a good name than for to have great
riches ; and therefore he saith in another place. Do
great diligence (saith he) in keeping of thy friends
and of thy good name, for it shall longer abide with
thee than any treasure, be it never so precious ; and
certainly he should not be called a gentleman that,
after God and good conscience all things left, ne doth
his diligence and business to keepen his good name ;
and Cassiodore saith, that it is a sign of a gentle
heart, when a man loveth and desireth to have a good
name. * * And he that trusteth him so muckle in
his good conscience, that he despiseth or setteth at
nought his good name or los, and recketh not though
he kept not his good name, nis but a cruel churl.
JOHN WICKLIFFE.
JoHX "WiCKLiFFE [1324-L384] was a learned
ecclesiastic and professor of theology in Baliol Col-
lege, Oxford, wliere, soon after the year 1372, lie
began to challenge certain doctrines and practices
of the Romish church, which for ages had lield un-
questioned sway in England. The mental capacitj'
and vigour requisite for this purpose, must have been
of a very uncommon kind ; and Wickliffe will ever,
accordingly, be considered as one of the greatest
names in our history. In contending against the
Romish doctrines and the papal power, and in de-
fending himself against the vengeance of the eccle-
siastical courts, he produced many controversial
■works, some of whicli were in English. But his
greatest work, and that which was qualified to be
most effectual in reforming the faith of his country-
men, was a translation of the Old and New Testa-
ments, which he executed in his hitter years, with
the assistance of a few friends, and whicli, though
taken from the Latin medium, instead of the origi-
nal Hebrew and Greek, and tliough performed in a
timid spirit with regard to idioms, is a valuable
relic of the age, both in a literary and theological
view.* Wickliffe was several times cited for heresy,
* Wickliffc's translation of the New Testament has been
twice printed, by Mr Lewis in 1731, and Mr Hiiber in 181(1.
Bis version of the Old Testament still remains in manuscript ;
and brought into great personal danger ; but, partly
through accidental circumstances, and partly through
the friendship of the Duke of Lancaster (the friend
of Chaucer, and probably also of Gower), he escaped
every danger, and at last died in a quiet country
rectory, thougli not before he had been compelled
Chair of Wickliffe.
to retract some of his reputed heresies. Upwards of
forty years after his death, in consequence of a de-
but the announcement has been made, that Mr Forshall and
Mr M.idilen, botli of the IJritish Museum, are now engaged in
preparing an edition, which is to issue from the University
press of Oxford. Mr Raher, after much research, has come to
the conclusion, that no Knglish translation of the entire Bible
preceded that of Wickliffe. (See ' Historical Account of the
Saxon and English versions of the Scriptures previous to the
opening of the fifteenth century," iircfi.xed by Mr Huber to
his edition of the New Testiiment, p. l.wiii. ) Portions of it
had, however, been translated at Tarious times.
36
I?R0M 1400
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO lc»58.
cree of tlie Council of Constance, his bones were
disinterred and burnt, and the ashes thrown into a
brook. ' This brook,' says Fuller, the church his-
torian, in a passage which brings quaintness tothe
borders of sublimity, ' hath conveyed his ashes into
Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow
seas, thev into tlie main ocean : and thus the ashes
of Wickfiffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which
is now dispersed all the world over.'
As a specimen of the language of "Wickliffe, his
translation of that portion of Scripture which con-
tains the Mayiiificut, may be presented —
[The MaomficatJ]
And Marye seyde, My soul niagiiifieth the Lord.
And my spiryt hath gladid iu Uod myn helthe.
For he hath behulden the raekenesse of his hand-
mayden : for lo for this alle generatiouns schulen seye
that I am blessid.
For he that is niighti hath don to me grcte thingis,
and his name is holy.
And his mercy is fro kyndrede into kyndredis to
men that dreden him.
He hatli made myght in his arm, he scatteride
proude men with the thoughte of his herte.
He sette doun myghty men fro seete, and enhaun-
side meke men. lie hath fulfiUid hungry men with
goodis, and he has left riche men voide.
He heuynge mynde of his mercy took up Israel
his child.
As he hath spokun to oure fadris, to Abraham, and
to his seed into worlds.
FROM 1400 TO 1558.
iL
POETS.
HILE such
minds as
( li a u c e r ' s
t ike shape, in
some meas-
111 e, from the
''t xte of learn-
ing and civili-
s ition wliich
may jireviiil in
their time, it
s ■^ery clear
tliat tliey arc
never altoge-
ther created or brought into exercise by such cir-
cumstances. The rise of such men is the accident
of nature, and wliole ages maj' pass Avithout jiroduc-
ing them. From the deatli of Chaucer in 1400,
nearly two hundred years elapsed in England, before
any poet comparable to him arose, and yet those
two centuries were more enlightened than the times
of Chaucer. Tliis long period, liowcver, produced
several poets not destitute of merit.
JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.
Among these was James I. of Scotland, whose
mind and its productions, notwithstanding his being
a native of tliat country, must be considered as of
Englisli growth. James had been taken prisoner in
his boyhood by Henry IV. of England, and spent tlie
nineteen years preceding 1424 in that country, wliere
he was instructed in all the learning and polite ac-
complishments of the age, and appears, in particular,
to have carefully st .died the writings of Chaucer.
The only certain pr eduction of this young sovereign
is a long poem, called The Kimjs Quhair, or Book,
in wliich he describes the circumstances of an attach-
ment wh ,ch he forn.ed, while a j)risoner in Windsor
Castle, t< a young English princess whom he saw
walking in the adjacent garden. This lady, a daugh-
ter of the Earl of Somerset, was afterwards married
to the young king, whom she accompanied to Scot-
James I. of Scotland.
land. While in possession of his kingdom, he is
said to have written several poems descriptive of
humorous rustic scenes ; but these cannot be cer-
tainly traced to him. He was assassinated at Perth
in the year 1437, aged forty-two.
The King's Quhair contains poetry superior tc
.36
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
any besides that of Chaucer, produced in England
before the reign of Elizabetli — as will be testified by
the following verses : —
{_James I., a Prisoner in Windsor, firH sees Lady Jane
Beaufort, who aftcncards vxis his Qii£enJ]
Bewailing in my chamber, thus alone,
Despaired of all joy and remedj',
For-tired of my thought, and woe-begone,
And to the window gan I walk in hy'
To see the world and folk that went forhye, ^
As, for the time, though I of luirtliis food
Might have no more, to look it did me good.
Now was there made, fast by the towris wall,
A garden fair ; and in the corners set
Ane ai'bour green, with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with trees set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyf was none walking there forhyc.
That might within scarce any wight espy
So thick the boughis and the leavis green
Beshaded all the alleys that there were,
And niids of eveiy arbour might be seen
The sharpe greene sweete juniper.
Growing so fair with branches here and there,
That as it seemed to a \yi without.
The boughis spread the arbour all about.
And on the smalle greene twistis^ sat.
The little sweete nightingale, and sung
So loud and clear, the hymnis consecrat
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
That hW the gardens and the wallis rung
Right of their song. * *
■ — Cast I down mine eyes again,
Where as I saw, walking under the tower.
Full secretly, new comen here to plain.
The fairist or the freshest youiige flower
That ever I saw, methought, before that hour,
For which sudden abate, anon astart,'*
The blood of all my body to my heart.
And though I stood abasit tho a lite,^
No wonder was ; for why ? my wittis all
Were so overcome with pleasance and delight,
Only through letting of my ej'cn fall,
That suddenly my heart became her thrall.
For ever of free will, — for of menace
There was no token in her sweete face.
And in my head I drew right hastily.
And eftesoons I leant it out again.
And saw her walk that very womanly,
With no wight mo', but only women twain.
Then gan I study in myself, and sayn,''
' Ah, sweet ! are ye a worldly creature.
Or heavenly thing in likeness of nature 1
Or are ye god Cupidis own princess.
And comin are to loose me out of band ?
Or are ye rei-y Nature the goddess.
That have dcpainted with your heavenly hand.
This garden full of flowers cis they stand ?
What shivll I think, alas ! what reverence
Shall I mister? unto j'our excellence ?
If 3'e a goddess be, and that ye like
To do me pain, I may it not astart :^
If ye be warldly wight, that doth me sike,!'
Why list "^' God make you so, my dearest heart.
To do a seely ^ prisoner this smart.
That loves you all, and wot of nought but wo ?
And therefore mercy, sweet ! sin' it is so.' * '•'
' Haste. 2 Past. 3 Twigg.
* Confoimied for a little while.
* FJy » Makes me sigh.
* Went and came.
« Say. 7 Minister.
'0 I'leased. '» Wretchal.
Of her array the form if I shall write.
Towards her golden hair and rich attire.
In fretvvise couchit' with pearlis white
And great balas- learning' as the fire,
With mony ane emeraut and fair sapphire;
And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue.
Of plumis parted red, and white, and blue.
Full of quaking spangis bright as gold.
Forged of shape like to the amorets,
So new, so fresh, so pleasant to behold.
The plumis eke like to the flower jonets,*
And other of shape, like to the flower jonets J
And above all this, there was, well I wot,
Beauty enough to make a ivorld to doat.
About her neck, white as the fire amail,^
A goodly chain of small orfevory,"
Whereby there hung a ruby, without fail.
Like to ane heart shapen verily.
That as a spark of low,7 so wantonly
Seemed burning upon her white throat.
Now if there was good party,** God it wot.
And for to walk that fresh May's morrow,
Ane hook she had upon her tissue white.
That goodlier had not been seen to-forow,9
As I suppose ; and girt she was alite,"'
Thus halflings loose for haste, to such delight
It was to see her j'outh in goodlihede.
That for rudeness to speak thereof I dread.
In her was j'outh, beauty, with humble aport,
Bounty, richess, and womanly feature,
God better wot than my pen can report :
Wisdom, largess, estate, and cunning '^ sure,
In every point so guided her measure,
In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance.
That nature might no more her child avance 1
* * *
And when she walked had a little thraw
Under the sweete greene boughis bent,
Her fair fresh face, as white as any snaw.
She turned has, and furth her wayis went ;
But tho began mine aches and torment.
To see her part and follow I na might ;
Methought the day was turned into night.
JOHN I.YDGATE.
John the Chaplaix, Thojias Occleve, a lawyer,
and John Lydgate, were the chief immediate fol-
lowers of Chaucer and Gower. The performances
of tlie two first are of little account. Lydgate, who
was a monk of Bury, flourished aliout the year 1430.
His poetical compositions range over a great variety
of styles. ' His muse,' saj's Warton, ' was of uni-
versal access ; and he was not only the poet of the
monastery, but of tlie world in general. If a dis-
guising was intended by the company of goldsmiths,
a mask before lii.s majesty at Elthara, a Maygame
for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming
before the Lord Mayor, a procession of pageants
from the Creation for the festival of Corpus Christi,
or a caroi for the Coronation, Lydgate was consulted,
and gave the ix)etry.' The principal works of this
versatile writer are entitled. The History of TheUs,
The Fall of Princes, and The Destruction of Troy. He
had travelled in France and Italy, and studied the
poetry of those countries ; and though his own writ-
1 Inlaid like fretwork. * A kind of precious stone.
s Glittering. ■• A kind of lily. It is conjectured thai
the royal poet may here allude covertly to the name of his mis-
tress, which, in the diminutive, was Janet or Jonet. — Thom-
son's Edition of Kind's Quhair. Ayr, 1(124.
^ Enamel " Oold work. ' Flame. « Match.
9 Before. '" Slightly. "Knowledge.
87
FROM 1400
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1 558,
iiigs contain only a few good passages, he is allowed
to have improved the poetical language of the coun-
try. He at one time kept a school in his monastery,
for the instruction of young persons of the upper
ranks in the art of versification ; a fact which proves
that poetry had become a favourite study among the
few wlio acquired any tincture of letters in that age.
In the words of ^Ir Wai-ton, " there is great soft-
ness and facility" in the following passage of Lyd-
gate's Destruction of Troy : —
[Description of a Sylvan Retreat.']
Till at the last, among the bowes glade,
Of adventure, I caught a pleasant shade ;
Full smooth, and plain, and lusty for to seen,
And soft as velvet was the yonge green :
Where from my horse I did alight as fast,
And on the bow aloft his reine cast.
So faint and mate of weariness I was.
That I me laid adorni upon the grass,
Upon a brinke, shortly for to tell,
Beside the river of a crystal well ;
And the water, as I relierse can.
Like quicke silver in his streams y-ran.
Of which the gravel and the brighte stone.
As any gold, against the sun y-shone.
A fugitive poem of Lydgate, called the London Lyck-
penny, is curious for the particulars it gives resf)ect-
ing the city of London in the early part of the
fifteenth century. - The poet has come to town in
search of legal redress for some wi-ong, and visits, in
succession, the King's Bench, the Court of Common
Pleas, the Court of Chancery, and Westminster
HaU.
27ie London Lyckpmny.
Within the hall, neither rich, nor yet poor
Would do for me ought, although I should die :
Which seeing, I gat me out of the door,
Where Flemings began on me for to cry,
* Master, what will you copen' or buy ?
Fine felt hats ? or spectacles to read ?
Lay down your silver, and here you may speed.'
Then to Westminster gate I presently went.
When the sun was at high prime :
Cooks to me they took good intent, -
And proffered me bread, with ale, and wine,
Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine ;
A fair cloth they gan for to spread,
But, wanting money, I might not be sped.
Then unto London I did me hie,
Of ail the land it beareth the price ;
' Hot peascods !' one began to cry,
' Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise V^
One bade me come near and buy some spice ;
Pepper, and saffron they gan me beed ■^
But, for lack of money, I might not speed.
Then to the Cheap I gan me dra\VTi,
Where much people I saw for to stand ;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn,
Another he taketh me by the hand,
' Here is Paris thread, tlie finest in the laud !'
I never was used to such things, indeed ;
And, wanting money, I might not speed.
Then went I forth by London Stone,^
Througliout all Canwick Street :
Drapers much cloth me oifered anon ;
Then conies me one cried ' hot sheep's feet ;'
One cried mackerel, rushes green, another gan greet,''
' Knopen, (Flem. ) is to buy. * Took notice ; paid attention.
• On the twig. ■• Offer. * A fragment of
t.on<lon stone is still preserved in Cannon Street, formerly
rolled Canwick, or Candlowick Street <* Cry.
One bade me buy a hood to cover my head ;
But, for want of money, I might not be sped.
Then I hied me unto East-Cheap,
One cries ribs of beef, and many a pie ;
Pewter pots they clattered on a heap ;
There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy ;
Yea by cock ! nay by cock ! some began cry ;
Some sung of Jenkin and Julian for their meed ;
But, for lack of money, I might not speed.
Then into Comhill anon I yode,
^^'here was much stolen gear among ;
I saw where himg mine owne hood,
That I had lost among the throng ;
To buy my own hood I thought it wrong :
I knew it well, as I did my creed ;
But, for lack of money, I could not speed.
The tavemer took me by the sleeve,
' Sir,' saith he, ' will you our wine assay V
I answered, ' That can not much me grieve,
A penny can do no more than it may ;'
I drank a pint, and for it did pay ;
Yet, sore a-hungered from thence I yede,
And, wanting money, I could not speed, &c.
The reigns of Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry
VII., extending between the years 1461 and 1.509,
were barren of true poetry, though there was no
lack of obscure versifiers. It is remarkable, tliat
this period produced in Scotland a race of genuine
poets, who, in tlie words of Mr Warton, ' displayed
a degree of sentiment and spirit, a command of phra-
seology, and a fertility of imagination, not to be
found in any English poet since Chaucer and Lyd-
gate.' Perhaps the explanation of this seeming
mystery is, that the influences whicli operated upon
Chaucer a century before, were only now coming
with their full foi'ce upon the less favourably situ-
ated nation which dwelt north of the Tweed. Over-
looking some obscurer names, those of Henryson,
Dunbar, and Douglas, are to be mentioned with
peculiar respect.
ROBERT HENRYSON.
Of this poet there are no personal memorials,
except tliat he was a schoolmaster at Dunfermline,
and died some time before 1.508. His principal poem
is The Testament of Cresscid, being a sequel to
Chaucer's romantic poem, Troylus and Crcsselde.
He wrote a series of fables, thirteen in number, and
some miscellaneous poems, chiefly of a moral cha-
racter. One of his fables is the common story of
the Town Mouse and Country Mouse, whicli he treats
with much humour and characteristic description,
and concludes with a beautifully expressed moral.
{^Dinner given, by the Town Mouse to the Country Mou^e.']
* * their harboury was tane
Intill a spence, where victual was plenty,
Baith cheese and butter on lang shelves richt hie,
With fish and flesh enough, baith fresh and salt,
And pockis full of groats, baith meal and muk.
After, when they disposit were to dine,
Withouten grace they wuish' and went to meat,
On every dish that cookmen can divine,
Mutton and beef stricken out in telyies grit ;
Ane lordis fare thus can they counterfeit.
Except ane thing — they drank the water clear
Instead of wine, but yet they made gude cheer.
\\'ith blyth upcast and merry countenance,
The elder sister then spier'd at her guest,
Gif that she thoucht by reason difference
Betwixt that chalmer and her sairy- nest.
' Yea, dame,' quoth sho, ' but how lang will this last I'
•Washed.
• Sorry.
38
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
' For evermair, I wait,' and langer too ;'
' Gif that be true, ye are at ease,' quoth sho.
To eik the cheer, in plenty furth they broueht
A plate of groatis and a dish of meal,
A threif^ of cakes, I trow slio spared them noucht,
Abundantly about her for to deal.
Furm.age full tine sho broucht instead of jeil,
A white candle out of a cofler stavv,
Instead of spice, to creish their teeth witha'.
Thus made they merry, while tliey niicht nae mair,
And, ' Hail Yule, hail !' they cryit up on hie ;
But after joy aftentimes comes care,
And trouble after grit prosperity.
Thus as they sat in all tlieir solity,
The Spenser cam with keyis in liis hand.
Opened the door, and them at dinner fand.
They tarried not to wash, as 1 su]>i)ose,
But on to gae, wha micht the foremost win ;
The burgess had a hole and in sho goes,
Her sister had nae place to hide lier in ;
To see that silly mouse it was great sin,
Sae desolate and wild of all gude rede.
For very fear sho fell in swoon, near dead.
Then as God wald it fell in happy case,
The Spenser had nae leisure for to bide,
Nowther to force, to seek, nor scare, nor chase,
But on he went and cast the door up-wide.
This burgess mouse his passage weel has spied.
Out of her hole sho cam and cried on hie,
• How, fair sister, cry peep, where'er thou be.'
The rural mouse lay flatlings on the ground,
And for the deid sho was full dreadand,'*
For till her heart strake mony waeful stound,
As in a fever trembling foot and hand ;
And when her sister in sic plight her fand,
For very pity sho began to greet.
Syne comfort gave, with words as honey sweet.
' Why lie ye thus 1 Rise up, my sister dear.
Come to your meat, this peril is o'erpast.'
The other answered with a heavy clicer,
I may nought eat, sae sair I am aghast.
Lever* I had this forty dayis fast,
With water kail, and green beans and peas.
Then all your feast with this dread and disease.
With fair 'treaty, yet gart she her rise ;
To board they went, and on together sat.
But scantly had they drunken anes or twice.
When in cam Gib Hunter, our jolly cat.
And bade God speed. The burgess up then ,!:iit,
And till her hole she fled as fire of flint ;
Bawdrons the other by the back has hent.
Frae foot to foot he cast her to and frae.
While up, while down, as cant as only kid ;
While wald he let her run under the strae
While wald he wink and play with her buik-hid ;
Thus to the silly mouse great harm he did ;
While at the last, through fair fortune and haji,
Betwixt the dresser and the wall she crap.
Syne up in haste behind the paneling,
Sae hie sho clam, that Gilbert might not get her,
And by the cluiks craftily can hing.
Till he was gane, her cheer was all the better :
Sj-ne do^vn sho lap, when there was nane to let her ;
Then on the burgess mouth loud couth sho C17,
' Fareweel sister, here I thy feast defy.
Thy mangery is minget^ all with care.
Thy guise is gude, thy gane-full sour as gall ;
The fashion of thy feris is but fair,
So shall thou find hereafterward may fall.
I thank yon curtain, and yon parjianc wall,
' Suppose. 2 A set of twenty-four.
» She was in fear of immediate death. * Kather. * Mixed
Of my defence now frae yon cruel beast ;
Almighty God, keep me fra sic a feast !
Were I into the place that I cam frae.
For weel nor wae I should ne'er come again.'
With that sho took her leave, and forth can gae,
While through the corn, while through the ]ilain.
When she was furth and free she was right fain,
And merrily linkit unto the muir,
I cannot tell how afterward sho fure.
But I heard syne she passit to her den,
As warm as woo', suppose it was not grit,
Full beinly stuflnt was baith butt and ben,
With peas and nuts, and beans, and rye and wheat ;
Whene'er sho liked, sho had enough of meat.
In quiet and ease, withouten [ony] dread.
But till her sister's feast nae mair sho gaed.
[Fro7n the 31 oral.]
Blissed be simple life, withouten dreid ;
Blissed be sober feast in quiets ;
Wha has eneuch of no more has he neid,
Though it be little into quantity.
Grit abundance, and blind prosperity,
Oft timis make ane evil conclusion ;
The sweetest life, theirfor, in this country,
Is of sickemess, with small possession.
The Garment of vfood Ladies.
Would my good lady love me best,
And work after my will,
I should a garment goodliest
Gar make her body till.l
Of high honour should be her hood.
Upon her liead to wear,
Garnish'd with governance, so good
Na deeming should her deir.^
Her sark3 should be her body next,
Of chastity so white :
With shame and dread together mixt,
The same should be perfyte.''
Her kirtle should be of clean constanfte,
Lacit with lesum^ love ;
The mailies'' of continuance,
For never to remove.
Her gown should be of goodliness,
Well ribbon'd with renown ;
PurfiU'd 7 with pleasure in ilk** place,
Furrit with fine fashioiiu.
Her belt should be of benignity,
About her middle m.eet ;
Her mantle of humility.
To thole " both wind and weit. W
Her hat should be of fair having,
And her tippet of truth ;
Her patelet of good pansing,' '
Her hals-ribbon of ruth.'-
Her sleeves should be of esperano9.
To keep her fra despair :
Her glovis of good governance.
To hide her fingers fair.
Her shoen should be of sickemess,
In sign that she not slide ;
Her hose of honesty, I guess,
I should for her provide.
' Cause to be made to her shape,
injure her. '^ Shift. * Perfect.
8 Eyelet-hnles for lacing her Ijirtle.
fring(Kl, or bordered. * Each.
2 No opinion shoula
5 Lawful.
7 Parfile (French),
9 Endure. "> Wet
11 Thinking.
12 Her neck-ribbon of pity.
39
FROM 1400,
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO I55t
\Vould she put on this garment gay,
I durst swear by my seill,l
That she wore never green nor gray
That set'^ her half so weel.
■WILLIAM DUNBAR.
William Duxbar, ' a poet,' says Sir "Walter
Scott, ' unrivalled by any that Scotland lias ever
produced,' flourished at the court of James IV., at
the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the six-
teenth centuries. Ilis works, with tlie exception of
one or two pieces, were confined, lor above two cen-
turies, to an obscure manuscript, from which they
were only rescued when tlieir language had become
so antiquated, as to render the world insensible in a
great measure to their man}- excellencies. To no other
circumstance can we attribute the little justice that
is dune by popular fame to this highly-gifted poet,
who was alike master of every kind of verse, the
solemn, the descriptive, the sublime, the comic, and
the satirical. Having received his education at the
university of St Andrews, where, in 1479, he took
the degree of master of arts, Dunbar became a friar
of the Franciscan order (Grey Friars), in which ca-
pacity he travelled for some years not only in Scot-
land, but also in England and France, preaching, as
was the custom of the order, and living by the alms
of the pious, a mode of life which he himself acknow-
ledges to have involved a constant exercise of false-
hood, deceit, and flattery. In time, he had the grace,
or was enabled by circumstances, to renounce this
sordid profession. It is supposed, from various al-
lusions in his writings, that, from about the year
1491 to 1500, he was occasionally employed by the
king (James IV.) in some subordinate, but not un-
important capacity, in connexion with various fo-
reign embassies, and that he thus visited Germany,
Italy, Spain, and France, besides England and Ire-
land. He could not. in such a life, fail to acquire
much of that knowledge of mankind which forms so
important a part of the education of the poet. In
1.500, he received from the king a pension of ten
pounds, afterwards increased to twenty, and finally
to eighty. He is supposed to have been employed
by James in some of the negotiations preparatory to
his marriage with the Princess Margaret, daughter
of Henry VII., which took place in 1503. For. some
j-ears ensuing, he seems to have lived at court, re-
galing his royal master with his poetical composi-
tions, and probably also his conversation, the charms
of which, judging from his writings, must have been
very great. It is sad to relate of one who possessed
so buoyant and mirthful a spirit, that his life was
not, as far as we can judge, a happy one. He ap-
pears to have repined greatly at the servile court-
life which he was condemned to lead, and to have
longed anxiously for some independent source of in-
come. Amongst his poems, are many containing
nothing but expressions of solicitude on this subject.
He survived the j'ear 1517, and is supposed to have
died about 1520, at the age of sixty; but whether
he ultimately succeeded in obtaining preferment, is
not known. His writings, with scarcely any excep-
tion, remained in the obscurity of manuscript till tlie
beginnmg of the last century ; but his fame has
been gradually rising since then, and it was at
length, in 1834, so great as to justify a complete
edition of his works, by Mr David Laing.
The poems of Dunbar may be said to be of three
classes, the Allegorical, the Moral, and the Comic ;
besides which there is a vast number of ])roductions
composed on occasions affecting himself, and whicli
may therefore be called personal poems. His chief
' Balvition.
* Became.
allegorical poems are the Thistle and the Rose (a
triumphant nuptial song for the union of James and
tlie Princess Margaret), the Dance, and the Golden
Terge ; but allegory abounds in many others, which
do not strictly fall within this class. Perhaps the
most remarkable of all his poems is one of those
here enumerated, the Dance. It describes a proces-
sion of the seven deadly sins in the infernal regions,
and for strength and vividness of painting, would
stand a comparison with anj' poem in the language.
The most solemn and impressive of the more ex-
clusively moral poems of Dunbar, is one in which he
represents a thrush and nightingale taking opposite
sides in a debate on earthly and spiritual affections,
the thrush ending every speech or stanza with a
recommendation of ' a lusty life in Love's service,'
and the nightingale with the more melodious decla-
ration, ' AH Love is lost but upon God alone.'
There is, however, something more touching to com-
mon feelings in the less laboured verses in which he
moralises on the brevity of existence, the shortness
and uncertainty of all ordinary enjoyments, and the
wickedness and woes of mankind.
This wavering warld's wretchedness
The failing and fruitless business,
The misspent time, the service vain,
For to consider is ane pain.
The sliding joy, the gladness short,
The feigned love, the false comfort.
The sweir abade,' the slightful train,*
For to consider is ane pain.
The suggared mouths, with minds therefra,
The tigured speech, with faces tway ;
The pleasing tongues, with hearts unplain,
For to consider is ane pain.
Or, in another poem —
Evermair unto this warld's joy.
As nearest heir, succeeds annoy ;
Therefore when joy may not remain,
His very heir, succeede's Pain.
He is, at the same time, by no means disposed habitu-
ally to take gloomy or desponding views of life. He
has one poem, of which each stanza ends with ' For
to be blyth methink it best.' In another, he advises,
since life is so uncertain, that the good things of this
world should be rationally enjoj-ed while it is yet
possible. ' Thine awn gude spend,' says he, ' while
thou has space.' There is yet another, in which
these Horatian maxims are still more pointedly
enforced, and from this we shall select a few
stanzas : —
Be merry, man, and tak not sair in mind
The wavering of this wretched world of sorrow •
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind.
And with thy neighbours gladly lend and borrow ;
His chance to-night, it may be thine to-morrow;
Be blyth in hearte for my aventure,
For oft with wise men it has been said aforow,
Without Gladness availes no Treasure.
jMake thee gude cheer of it that God thee sends.
For warld's wrak but welfare^ nought avails ;
Nae gude is thine save only that thou spends,
Reiiianant all thou bruikes but with bails j*
Seek to solace when sadness thee assails ;
In dolour lanr/ thy life may not endure,
Wherefore of comfort set up all thy sails ;
Without Gladness availes no Treasure.
I Delay. » Snare.
* Injuries.
* ^^'o^ld■8 trash without health.
40
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Follow on pity, flee trouble and debate,
With famous folkis Laid thy company ;
Be charitable and hum'le in thine estate,
For warldly honour lastes but a crv.
For trouble in earth tak no melancholy ;
Be rich in patience, if thou in gudcs be poor;
Who lives merrily he lives mightily ;
Without Gladness availes no Treasure.
The philosophy of these lines is excellent.
Dunbar was as great in the comic as in the solemn
strain, but not so pure. His Tu-a Married Women
and the Widow is a conversational piece, in ■which
three gay ladies discuss, in no very delicate terms,
the merits of their husbands, and the means by
which wives may best advance their own interests.
The Friars of Berwick (not certainly his) is a clever
but licentious tale. There is one piece of peculiar
humour, descriptive of an imaginary tournament
between a tailor and a shoemaker, in the same low
region where he places the dance of the seven deadly
Bins. It is in a style of the broadest farce, and full
of very offensive language, yet as droll as anything
in Scarron or Smollett.
The Merle and Niylitingale.
In May, as that Aurora did upspring.
With cr}stal een chasing the cluddes sable,
I heard a ^lerle with merry notis sing
A sang of love, with voice right comfortable,
Again' the orient beamis, amiable.
Upon a blissful branch of laurel green ;
This was her sentence, sweet and delectable,
A lusty life in Lovis service been.
Under this branch ran down a river bright.
Of balmy liquor, crystalline of hue.
Again' the heavenh- azure skyis light.
Where did upon the tother side pursue
A. Nightingale, with sugared notis new.
Whose angel feathers as the peacock shone ;
This was her song, and of a sentence true,
All love is lost but upon God alone.
With notis glad, and glorious harmony.
This joyful merle, so salust she the day.
While rung the woodis of her melody,
Saying, Awake, ye lovers of this jSIay ;
Lo, fresh Flora has flourished every spray,
As nature has her taught, the noble queen.
The field been clothit in a new array ;
A lusty life in Lovis service been.
Ne'er sweeter noise was heard with living man,
Na made this merry gentle nightingale ;
Her sound went with the river as it ran.
Out through the fresh and flourished lusty vale ;
Merle ! quoth she, fool ! stint of thy tale.
For in thy song good sentence is there none.
For both is tint, the time and the travail
Of every love but upon God alone.
Cease, quoth the Merle, thy preaching. Nightingale :
Shall folk their youth spend into holiness ?
()f young Sanctis, grows auld feindis, but fable ;
Fye, hypocrite, in yeiris tenderness.
Again' the law of kind thou goes express,
That crookit age makes one with youth serene,
Whom nature of conditions made diverse :
A lusty life in Lovis sen'ice been.
The Nightingale said, Fool, remember thee,
That both in youth and eild,' and every hour.
The love of God most dear to man suld be ;
That him, of nought, wrought like his own figour,
1 Age.
And died himself, fro' dead him to succour ;
O, whether was kythit' there true love or none I
He is most true and stedfast paramour.
And love is lost but upon him alone.
The Merle said. Why put God so great beauty
In ladies, with sic womanly having.
But gif he would that they suld lovit be ?
To love eke nature gave them inclining.
And He of nature that worker was and king,
^A'ould nothing frustir put, nor let be seen,
Into his creature of his o^vn making ;
A lusty life in Lovis service been.
The Nightingale said. Not to that behoof
Put God sic beauty in a lady's face.
That she suld have the thank therefor or luve,
But He, the worker, that put in her sic grace ;
Of beauty, bounty, riches, time, or space.
And every gudeness that been to come or gone
The thank redounds to him in everj- place :
All love is lost, but upon God alone.
Nightingale ! it were a story nice.
That love suld not depend on charity ;
And, gif that virtue contrar be to vice.
Then love maun be a virtue, as thinks me ;
For, aye, to love envy maun contrar be :
God bade eke love thy neighbour fro the spleen ;'
And who than ladies sweeter neighbours be ?
A lusty life in Lovis sen-ice been.
The Nightingale said, Bird, why does thou rave \
'^Izm may take in his lady sic delight,
Him to forget that her sic virtue gave,
And for his heaven receive her colour white :
Her golden tressit hairis redomite, ^
Like to Apollo's beamis tho' they shone,
Suld not him blind fro' love that is perfite ;
All love is lost but upon God alone.
The Merle said, Love is cause of honour aye,
Love makis cowards manhood to purch.tse.
Love makis knichtis hardy at essay,
Love makis ■oTctches full of large'ness.
Love makis sweir-* folks full of business,
Love makis sluggards fresh and well be seoi;,
Love changes vice in virtuous nobleness ;
A lusty life in Lovis senice been.
The Nightingale said. True is the contrary ,
Sic frustis love it bliudis men so far.
Into their minds it makis them to vary ;
In false vain glory they so drunken are,
Their wit is went, of woe they are not waui,
While that all worship away be fro' them gone.
Fame, goods, an.d strength ; wherefore well say I daui.
All love is lost but upon God alone.
Then said the I\Ierlc, Mine error I confess :
This frustis love is all but vanity :
Blind ignorance me gave sic hardiness.
To argue so again' the verity ;
Wherefore I counsel every man that he
With love not in the feindis net be tone, 5
But love the love that did for his love die :
All love is lost but upon God alone.
Then sang they both with voices loud and clear.
The Merle sang, Man, love God that has thee wrought.
The Nightingale sang, Man, love the Lord most dear
That thee and all this world made of nought.
The Merle said. Love him that thy love has sought
Fro' heaven to earth, and here took flesh and bone.
The Nightingale sang, And with his dead thee bought:
All love is lost, but upon him alone.
I Shown. * Equivalent to the modem -phrase, from tht
heart. » Bound, encircled. * Slothful. ' Ta'en ; taken.
41
FROM 1400
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 15fi8.
Then flew thir birdis o'er the boughis sheen,
Singing of love amang the leavis small ;
Whose eidant plead vet made inv thoughtis grein,'
Both sleeping, waking, in rest and iu travail :
Me to recomfort most it does avail,
Again for love, when love I can find none,
To think how sung this ^lerle and Nightingale ;
All love is lost but upon God alone.
Tlie Dance*
Of Febniar the fifteenth nicht.
Full lang before the dayis licht,
I lay intill a trance ;
And then I saw baith heaven and hell :
Methocht amangs the fiendis fell,
jMahoun- gart cry ane Dance
Of shrewis that were never shriven,^
Agains the fast of Eastern's Even,^
To mak their observance
lie bade gallands gae graith a guise,^
And cast up gamondsti \^ tlie skies,
As varlots does in France.
Heillie" harlots, haughten-wise, 8
Came in with mony sundry guise.
But yet leuch never I^Iahoun ;
While preests came in with bare shaven necks,
Then all the fiends leuch and made geeks.
Black-belly and Bausv-broun.'^
Let see, quoth he, who now begins.
With that the foul Seven Deadly Sins
Begoud to leap at anes.
And first in all the Dance was Pridk,
With hair wiled back, and bonnet on side.
Like to mak vaistie wanes ;'0
And round about him, as a wheel.
Hang all in rumplesii to the heel
His kethat'- for tlie nanes.'3
Mony proiid trumpour with him trippit ;
Through scaldand fire aye as they skippit.
They grinned with hideous granes.
Then Ire came in with sturt and strife ;
His hand was aye upon his knife.
He brandished like a bear ;
Boasters, braggarts, and bargainers.
After him, passit in to paii-s.
All boden in 'feir of weir,l*
In jacks, and scrips, and bonnets of steel ;
Their legs were chained do^vn to the heel ;
Froward was their effeir :
Some upon other with brands beft,!^
Some jaggit others, to the heft.
With knives that sharp could shear.
' Whose close disputation yet moved my thoughts.
2 The Devil. ' Accursed men, who had never heen
absolved in the other world. ■• The eve of Lent.
5 Prepare a miisque. ^ Gambols. " Proud.
* Haughtily. ^ The names of popular spirits in Scotland,
w Something touching pufled up manners appears to be hinted
at in this obscure line. " Large folds. 12 Uobe.
'3 For the occasion. '♦ Arrayed in the accoutrements of war.
'S Gave blows.
* ' Dunbar is a poet of a high order. * * I lis Dance of the
Seven Deadly Sins, though it would be absurd to compare it
with the beauty and refinement of the celebrated Ode on the
Passions, has yet an animated picturesqueness not unlike that
of Collins. The effect of both pieces shows how much more
potent allegorical figures become, by being made to fleet sud-
denly before the imagination, than by being detained in its
view by prolonged description. Dunbar conjures up the per-
sonified sins, as Collins does the passions, to rise, to strike, to
iisappear. " They como like shadows, so depart." ' — Camp-
Nest in the Dance followed E.wy,
Filled full of feid and felony,
Hid malice and despite :
For privy hatred that traitor trembled ;
Him followed mony freik' dissembled.
With feigned wordis white :
And flatterers into men's faces ;
And backbiters in secret places.
To lee that had delight ;
And rouners of fals lesings,
Alas ! that courts of noble kings.
Of them can never be quit.
« • •
Next him in Dance came Covetice,
Root of all evil and grund of vice,
That never could be content :
CaitiflTs, wretches, and ockerars,^
Hood-pykes,3 hoarders, and gatherers,
All with that warlock went :
Out of their throats they shot on other
Het molten gold, methought, a fother,*
As fire-flaught maist fervent ;
Ay as they toomit them of shot,
Fiends filled them new up to the throat
With gold of all kind prent.^
Syne Sweirxess,^ at the second bidding.
Came like a sow out of a midden,
Full sleepy was his grunyie ;7
Mony sweir bumbard belly-huddron,^
Mony slute daw, and sleepy duddron,!*
Him servit ay with sunyie.'o
He drew them furth intill a chenyie,
And Belial with a bridle reinyie
Ever lashed them on the lunyie :'*
In dance they were sae slaw of feet,
They gave them in the fire a heat.
And made them quicker of counyie.**
• * «
Then the foul monster Gluttonj,
Of wame insatiable and greedy.
To dance he did him dress :
Him followed mony foul drunkart,
With can and collop, caup and quart,
In surfeit and excess ;
Full mony a waistful wally-drag.
With wames unweildable, did forth wag.
In creish that did incress.
Drink ! ay they cried, ivith mony a gapo ;
The Fiends gave them het lead to lap.
Their levery'3 vras nae less.
• • •
Nae menstrals playit to them, but doubt,
For gleemen there were balden out.
By day and eke by nicht ;l^
Except a menstral that slew a man,
Sae till his heritage he wan.
And entered by brief of richt.
Then cried Mahoun for a Hieland padian '^
S}Tie ran a fiend to fetch iMacfadyan,
Far northward in a nook :
By he the coronach had done shout,
Erschemen so gathered him about.
In hell great room they took :
Thae termagants, with tag and tatter.
Full loud in Ersche begond to clatter.
And roop like raven and rook.
' Many contentious persons. * Usurers.
• Misers. * Great quantity. ' Every coinage,
^ Laziness. 7 Visage. ^ Dirty, lazy tipplers.
" Slow and sleepy drabs. •" gjcuse. "Loins.
'2 Circulation, as of coin. '3 Reward.
'^ A compliment, obviously, to the poetical profession.
'* Pageant. In this stanza Dunbar satirises the outLondiak
habits and language of the Uighlanders.
42
i
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
The Devil sae dcavit was with their yell,
That in the deepest pot of liell,
lie smoorit them with smook.
Tidings fra ilie Scsmon.
[A conversation between two rustics, designed to satiri>e tlie
proceedings in the supreme civil law court ot Scotland.]
Ane muirlaiid man, of upland inak,
At haine thus to liis neighbour spak,
What tidings, gossip, peace oi weir I
The tether rounit' in his ear,
I tell you under this confession,
But lately lichtit off my meare,
I come of Edinburgh fra the Session.
AVhat tidings heard you there, I pra}' you 1
The tother answerit, I sail say you :
Keep well this secret, gentle brother ;
Is na man there that trusts another :
Ane common doer of transgression,
Of innocent folk preveens a futher :^
Sic tidings heard I at the Session.
Some with his fallow rouns him to please,
That wald for envy bite aft" his ntse ;■'
His fa' some by the oxter* leads ;
Some patters with his mouth on bead-".
That has his mind all on oppression ;
Some becks full law and shaws bare heads.
Wad look full heigh were not the Session.
Some, bydand the law, lays land in wed ;5
Some, super-expended, goes to bed'*
Some speeds, for he in court has means ;
Some of partiality' compleens,
How feld'' and favour flemis? discretion ;
Some speaks full fair, and falsely feigns :
Sic tidings heard I at the Session.
Some castis summons, and some excepts ;
Some stand beside and skailed law kejips ;
Some is continued ; some wins ; some tynes ;
Some maks him merry at the wines ;
Some is put out of his possession ;
Some berried, and on credence dines :
Sic tidings heard I at the Session.
Some swears, and some forsakes God,
Some in ane lamb-skin is ane tod ;^
Some in his tongue his kindness turses ;^
Some cuts throats, and some pykes purses ;
Some goes to gallows with procession ;
Some sains the seat, and some them curses :
Sic tidings heard I at the Session.
Religious men of diverse places
Comes there to woo and see fair faces ;
» « « *
And are unmindful of their profession.
The younger at the elder leers :
Sic tidings heard I at the Session.
Of Dincretton in Giving.
To speak of gifts and almos deeds :
Some gives for merit, and some for meeds ;
Some, wardly honour to uphie ;
Some gives to them that nothing needs ;
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some gives for pride and glory vain ;
Some gives with grudging and with pain ;
Some gives on prattick for supplie ;
Some gives for twice as gude again :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
' Whispered. 2 ig advanced before a great number.
• Nose. * Armpit. * Pledge. * Hostility.
T Banishes. * Fox ^ Carries.
Some gives for thank, and fonie for threat',
Some gives money, and some gives meat ;
Some givis wordis fair and slie ;
And gifts fra some may na man treit :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some is for gift sae lang required,
While that the craver be so tired.
That ere the gift delivered be.
The thank is frustrate and expired :
In Givirig sould Discretion be.
Some gives so little full \vretchedly,
That all his gifts are not set by,l
And for a hood-pick halden is he,
That all the warld cries on him, Fye 1
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some in his giving is so large.
That all o'er-laden is his barge ;
Then vice and prodigalitie.
There of his honour does discharge :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some to the rich gives his gear.
That might his giftis weel forbear ;
And, though the poor for fault^ sould die.
His cry not enters in his ear:
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some gives to strangers with faces new.
That yesterday fra Flanders flew ; 3
And to auld sen-ants list not see.
Were they never of sae great virtu e :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some gives to them can ask and pleinyie,'*
Some gives to them can flatter and feignie ;
Some gives to men of honestie.
And balds all janglers at disdenyie :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some gettis gifts and rich arrays.
To swear all that his master says.
Though all the contrair weel knaws he ;
Are mony sic now in thir days :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some gives to gude men for their thews ;
Some gives to trumpouri. and to shrews ;
Some gives to knaw his authoritie.
But in their oflice gude fund in few is :
In Giving sould Discretion be.
Some givis parochines full wide.
Kirks of St Bernard and St Bride,
The people to teach and to o'ersee,
Though he nae wit has thim to guide :
In Giving sould Discrttion be.
Of Discretion in Taicing.
After Giving I speak of Taking,
But little of ony gude forsaking ;
Some takes o'er little authoritie.
And some o'er mickle, and that is glaiking :*
In Taking sould Discretion be.
The clerks takes benefices with brawls.
Some of St Peter and some of St Paul's ;
Tak he the rents, no care has he.
Suppose the devil tak all their sauls :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Barons taks fra the tenants puir
All fruit that growis on the fur.
In mails and gersoms'^ raislt o'er hie ,
And gars them beg fra door to door :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
1 Appreciated. * Starvation.
3 A large proportion of the strangers who visited Scotland at
this early period were probably from Flanders. * Complain
5 Foolish. s Rents and fines of entry.
43
fROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OP
ro 1558
Some merchands taks unleesome' wine,
Whilk inaks their packs oft time full thin,
By their succession, as ye may see,
That ill-won gear 'riches not the kin :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Some taks other niennis tacks,2
And on the puir oppression maks,
And never remembers that ho maun die,
Till that the gallows gars him rax :■''
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Some taks by sea, and some by land.
And never fra taking can hald their hand,
Till he be tyit up to ane tree ;
And syne they gar him understand,
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Some wald tak all his neighbour's gear ;
Had he of man as little fear
As he has dread that God him see ;
To tak then sould he never forbear :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Some wald tak all this warld on breid ;■*
And yet not satisfied of their need,
Through heart unsatiable and grecdie ;
Some wald tak little, and can not speed :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
Great men for taking and oppression,
Are set full famous at the Session,^
And puir takers are hangit hie,
Shawit for ever, and their succession :
In Taking sould Discretion be.
GAVIN DOUGLAS.
Gavin Douglas, born about the year 1474, a
younger son of Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, was
DunkeW Cathedral.
educated for the church, and rose through a variety of
inferior offices to be bishop of Dunkeld. After occu-
' Unlawful. 2 Leases. ^ Till the gallows stretches him.
* In its whole breadth. * Get high places in the supreme
court of law.
pying a prominent place in the history of his coim-
tr3% he died of the plague in London in the year
1.522. Douglas shines as an allegorical and descrip-
tive poet. He wants the vigorous sense, and also
the graphic force, of Dunbar; while the latter is
always close and nervous, Douglas is soft and ver-
bose. The genius of Dunbar is so powerful, that
manner sinks beneath it; that of Douglas is so much
matter of culture, that manner is its most striking
peculiarity. This manner is essentially scholarly.
He employs an immense number of words derived
from the Latin, as yet comparatively a novelty in
English composition. And even his descriptions of
nature involve many ideas, very beautiful in them-
selves, and very beautifully expressed, but inappro-
priate to the situation, and obviously introduced
merely in accordance with literary fashion.
The principal original composition of Douglas is
a long poem, entitled The Palace of Honour. It was
designed as an apologue for the conduct of a king,
and therefore addressed to James IV. The poet
represents himself as seeing, in a vision, a large
company travelling towards the Palace of Honour.
He joins them, and narrates the particulars of the
pilgrimage. The well-known Pilyrim's Progress
bears so strong a resemblance to tliis poem, that
Bunyan could scarcely have been ignorant of it.
King Hart, the only other long poem of Douglas,
presents a metaphorical view of human life. But
the most remarkable production of this author was
a translation of Virgil's ^neid into Scottish verse,
which he executed in the year 1513, being the first
version of a Latin classic into any British tongue.
It is generally allowed to be a masterly performance,
though in too obsolete a language ever to regain its
popularity. The original poems, styled prologues,
which the translator affixes to each book, are
esteemed amongst his happiest pieces.
\_A2)ostro23he to Ilonour.]
(Original Spelling.)
hie honour, sweit heuinlie flour digest,
Gem verteuous, niaist precious, gudliest,
For hie honour thou art guerdoun conding,'
()f worschip kend the glorious end and rest,
r>ut Avhoine in riclit na worthie wicht may lest,
Thy greit puissance may maist auanee all thing.
And pouerall to meikall auail sone bring,
1 the require sen thow but peir- art best,
That eftir this in thy hie blis we ring.
[Morning in May.*]
As fresh Aurore, to mighty Tithon spouse,
Ished of her saffron bed and ivor house,
In cram'sy clad and grained violate,
With sanguine cape, and selvage purpurate,
Unshet'* the windows of her large hall.
Spread all with roses, and full of balm royal,
And eke the heavenly portis chrystalline
Unwarps braid, the warld till illumine;
The twinkling streamers of the orient
Shed purpour spraiiigs, with gold and azure nK4it^
Eous, the steed, with ruby harness red,
Above the seas liftis furtli his head,
Of colour sore,'' and somedeal brown as berry,
For to alichten and glad our emispery;
The flame out-bursten at the neisthirls,7
So fast Phaeton with the whip him whirls. * *
While .shortly, with the bleezand torch of day,
Abulyit in his lemand" fresh array,
' Worthy reward. 2 Without equal.
* Issued from. * Opened.
* Purple streaks mingled with gold and azure.
'' Yellowish brown. 7 Nostrils. 8 Glittering.
* Part of the prologue to the lath book of the iliueicl,
44
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Furtli of his palace royal ishit Phoebus,
With golden crown and visage gloriou.^,
Crisp hairs, bricht as chrysolite or topaz;
For vvhase hue micht nana bchald his face. * *
The auriate vanes of his throne soverai.e
With glitterand glance o'crspread the oceanc;'
The large fludes, leniand all of licht,
But with ane blink of liis su])ernal sicht.
For to behald, it was ane glore to see
The stabled windis, and the calmed sea,
The solt season, the finnanient serene,
The loune illuminate air and firth aniene. * *
And lusty Flora did her bloomis spread
Under the feet of Phrebus' sulyart- steed ;
The swarded soil embrode with selcouth-' hues,
Wood and forest, obnumbrate with bews.-* * *
Towers, turrets, kirnals,^ and pinnacles hie,
Of kirks, castles, and ilk fair citie,
Stude painted, every fane, phiol," and stage,7
Upon the plain ground by their awn umbrage.
Of Eolus' north blasts havand no drcid.
The soil spread her braid bosom on-breid;
The corn crops and the beir new-braird
With gladsome garment revesting the yerd.*' * *
The prai-' besprent with springand sprouts dispers
For caller humours'" on the dewy nicht
Rendering some place the gerse-pilcs their licht;
As far as cattle the lang summer's day
Had in their pasture eat and nip away;
And blissful blossoms in the bloomed yerd.
Submits their heids to the young sun's safeguard.
Ivy leaves rank o'erspread the bamikin wall;
The bloomed hawthorn clad his pikis all ;
Furth of fresh bourgeons" the wine grapes ying''-
Endland the trellis did on twistis lung ;
The loukit buttons on the gemmed trees
O'ersprcadand leaves of nature's tapestries ;
Soft grassy verdure after Imlmy shouirs.
On curland stalkis smiland to their flouirs. * *
The daisy did on-breid her cro^vnal small.
And every flouer unlappit in the dale. * *
Sere do^^niis small on dentilion sprang,
The young green bloomed strawberry leaves amang ;
Jimp jeryilouirs thereon leaves unshet,
JVesh primrose and the purpour violet ; * *
Heavenly lillies, with lockerand toppis white,
Opened and shew their crestis rcdemite. * *
Ane paradise it seemed to draw near
Thir galyard gardens and each green herbere
Maist amiable wax the emeraut meads ;
Swarmis souchis through out the respand reeds.
Over the lochis and the fludis gi'ay,
Searchand by kind ane place where they should lay.
Phoebus' red fowl, '3 his cural crest can steer,
Oft streikand furth his heckle, crawand cleer.
Amid the wortisand the rutis gent
Pickand his meat in alleys where he went.
His wivis Toppa and Partolet him by —
A bird all-time that hauntis bigamy.
The painted povme''* pacand with plumes gym,
Kest up his tail ane proud plesand whecl-rim,
Ishrouded in his feathering bright and sheen,
Shapand the prent of Argus' hundred een.
Amang the bowis of the olive twists,
Sere small fowls, workand crafty nests,
Endlang the hedges thick, and on rank aika
Ilk bird rejoicand with their mirthful makes.
In comers and clear fenestres of glass.
Full busily Arachne weavand was.
To knit her nettis and her wobbis slie.
Therewith to catch the little midge or file.
' Ocean. 2 gujtry. 8 TTncommon. * Bmishs.
* Battlements. ^ Ciipnla. ? Storey.
* Earth. 9 Meadow. i" t'ool vapours. ''Sprouts.
n Young, IS The cock. '* The peacock.
So dusty powder upstoursi in every street,
While corby gaspit for the fervent heat.
Under the bowis bene in lufely vales.
Within fermance and parkis close of pale.**,
The busteous buckis rakis furth on raw,
Herdis of hertis through the thick wood-shaw.
The young fawns followand the dun daes.
Kids, skippand through, runnis after raes.
In leisurs and on leyis, little lambs
Full tait and trig socht bletand to their dams.
On salt streams wolk- Dorida and Thetis,
By rinnand strandis, Nymphis and Naiadis,
Sic as we clepe wenches and damysels, '
In gersy graves^ wanderand by spring wells ;
Of bloomed branches and flowers white and red,
Plettand their lusty chaplets for their head.
Some sang ring-songes, dances, leids,* and rounds.
With voices shrill, while all the dale resounds.
Whereso they walk into their caroling.
For amorous lays does all the rockis ring.
Ane sang, ' The ship sails over the salt faem.
Will bring the merchants and my leman hame.'*
Some other sings, ' I will be blythe and licht.
My heart is lent upon so goodly wicht.'^
And thoughtful lovers rounis(> to and fro.
To leis7 their pain, and plein their jolly woe.
After their guise, now singand, now in sorrow,
With heartis pensive the lang summer's morrow.
Some ballads list indite of his lady ;
Some livis in hope ; and some all utterly
Despairit is, and sae quite out of grace.
His purgatory he finds in every place. * *
Dame Nature's menstrals, on that other part,
Their blissful lay intoning every art, * *
And all small fowl is singis on the spray.
Welcome the lord of licht, and lampe of day,
Welcome fosterer of tender herbis green.
Welcome quickener of flourist flouirs sheen.
Welcome support of every rute and vein.
Welcome comfort of all kind fruit and grain,
Welcome the birdis beild" upon the brier,
Welcome master and ruler of the year.
Welcome weelfare of husbands at the plows,
Welcome repairer of woods, trees, and bews.
Welcome depainter of the bloomit meads.
Welcome the life of every thing that spreads
Welcome storer of all kind bestial,
Welcome be thy bricht beamis, gladdand all. * *
JOHN SKELTON.
John Skelton flourished as a poet in the earlier
part of the reign of Henry VIII. He was rector of
Dysse, in Norfolk, and chiefly wrote satires upon his
own order, for which he was at one time compelled
to fly from his charge. Tiie pasquils of Skelton are
copious and careless effusions of coarse humour, dis-
playing a certain share of imagination, and much
rancour ; but he could also assume a more amiable
and poetical manner, as in the following canzonet: —
To Mistress Margaret Hiissey.
Merry Margaret,
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon.
Or hawk of the tower;
With solace and gladness.
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness ;
So joyously,
So maidenly,
So womanly.
Her demeaning,
' Rises 5n clouds. « Walked. « Grassy groves. « lA^ii
6 Songs then popular. « Whisper. 7 BeUeve. 8 Shelter
45
FBOU 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1558.
In everything,
Far, far passing
That I can indite,
Or suffice to write,
Of merry ilargaret.
As midsimmer flower.
Gentle as falcon
Or hawk of the tower ;
As patient and as still,
And as full of goodwill,
As fair Isiphil,
Coliander,
Sweet Pomander,
Good Cassander ;
Stedfast of thought,
AVell made, well wrought
Far may be sought,
Ere you can find
So courteous, so kind,
As merry Margaret,
This midsimmer flower.
Gentle as falcon,
Or hawk of the tower.
EARL OF SURREY.
From Chaucer, or at least from James I., the
•writers of verse in England had displayed little of
the grace and elevation of true poetry. At length
a worthy successor of those poets appeared in
Thomas Howard, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk,
and usually denominated the Earl of Surrey.
This nobleman was born in 1516. He was educated
at Windsor, in company with a natural son of the
lii^^W '*^"^
Iloward, Earl of Surrey.
king, and in early life became accomplished, not only
in the learning of the time, but in all kinds of courtlj'
and chiviilrous exercises. Having travelled into
Italy, he became a devoted student of the poets of
that country — Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ari-
osto — and formed his own poeticid stj'le upon theins.
His poetry is chiefly amorous, and, notwithstanding
his having been married in early life, much of it con-
sists of tlie praises of a lady whom he names Geral-
dine, supposed to have been a daughter of the Earl
of Kildare. Surrey was a gallant soldier as well as
a poet, and conducted an important expedition, in
1542, for the devastation of the Scottish borders.
He finally fell under the displeasure of Henry VHI.,
and was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1547. The
poetrji^ of Surrey is remarkable for a flowing melody,
correctness of style, and purity of expression ; he
w^as the first to introduce the sonnet and blank verse
into English poetrv. The gentle and melancholy
pathos of his style is well exemplified in the verse's
which he wrote during his captivity in Windsor
Castle, when about to yield his life a sacrifice to
tyrannical caprice : —
Prisoner in Windsor, he recounteth his Pleasure there
passed.
So cruel prison how could betide, alas !
As proud Windsor ? where I, in lust and joy.
With a king's son, my childish years did pass.
In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy :
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour !
The large green courts where we were wont to hove»
With eyes cast up into the Maiden Tower,
And easy sighs such as folk draw in love.
The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue ;
The dances short, long tales of great delight,
With words and looks that tigers could but rue,
Where each of us did plead the other's right.
The palm-play, where, despoiled. for the game;
With dazed eyes oft we by gleains of love,
Have missed the ball and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The gravel ground, with sleeves tied on the helm
Of foaming horse,- with swords and friendly hearts!
With cheer, as though one should another wlielm,
Where we have fought, and chased oft with darts ;
With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length :
The secret groves which oft we made resound.
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise.
Recording oft what grace each one had found.
What hope of speed what dread of long delays :
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green,
With reins availed^ and swift ybreathed horse;
AMth cr>' of hounds and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.
Tlie wide vales, eke, that harboured us each night.
Wherewith, alas, reviveth in my breast,
The sweet accord such sleeps as yet delight.
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest :
The secret thoughts imparted with such trust,
The wanton talk, the divers change of play,
Tlu- friendship sworn, each promise kept so just ;
Wherewith we passed the winter night away. |
And with this thought, the blood forsakes the fac9, j
The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue.
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas,
Upsupped have, thus I my plaint renew:
place of bliss ! renewer of my woes.
Give me accounts, where is my noble fere;*
Whom in thy walls thou dost each night enclosa ;
To other leef,^ but unto me most dear :
Echo, alas ! that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint,
And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.
• Hover ; loiter.
2 A lover tied the sleeve of his mistress on the head of hk
horse. ^ Reins dropped. * Companion. * Agreeable.
46
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS WYA^T.
Description and Praise of his Love Geraldine. .
From Tuscan' came my lady's worthy race ;
Fair P^lorence was some time their ancient seat ;
The western isle, whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Camber's cliffs, did give her lively heat :
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast ;
Her sire, an earl ; her dame of princes' blood :
From tender years, in Britain she doth rest
With king's child, where she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to mine een :
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight :
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine :
And Windsor, alas, doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind, her virtues from above ;
Happy is he that can obtain her love !
How no- age is content with his own estate, and how
the age of children is the happiest, if they had skill to
understand it.
Laid in my quiet bed,
In study as I were,
I saw within my troubled head,
A heap of thoughts appear.
And every thought did show
So lively in mine eyes.
That now I sighed, and then I smiled,
As cause of thoughts did rise.
I saw the little boy,
In thought how oft that he
Did wish of God, to scape the rod,
A tall young man to be.
The young man eke that feels
His bones with pains opprest.
How he would be a rich old man,
To live and lie at rest :
The rich old man that sees
His end draw on so sore,
How he would be a boy again,
To live so much the more.
Whereat full oft I smiled,
To see how all these three,
Vrom boy to man, from man to boy,
Would chop and change degree :
And musing thus, I think,
The case is very strange.
That man from wealth, to live in woe.
Doth ever seek to change.
Thus thoughtful as I lay,
I saw my withered skin,
How it doth show my dented thws.
The flesh was worn so thin ;
And eke my toothless chaps.
The gates of my right way.
That opes and shuts as I do speak,
Do thus unto me say :
The white and hoarish hairs.
The messengers of age.
That show, like lines of true belief.
That this life doth assuage ;
Bids thee lay hand, and feel
Them hanging on my chin.
The which do write two ages past,
The third now coming in.
Hang up, therefore, the bit
Of thy young wanton time;
And thou that therein beaten axt^
The happiest life define :
Whereat I sighed, and said.
Farewell my wonted joy.
Truss up thy pack, and trudge from me.
To every little boy ;
And tell them tlius from me.
Their time most happy is.
If to their time they reason had.
To know the truth of this.
T7ie Means to attain Happy lAft,
Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life, 1>e these, I find,
The riches left, not got with pain ;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind.
The equal frend ; no grudge, no strife ;
No charge of rule, nor governance ;
W^ithout disease, the healthful life ;
The household of continuance :
The mean diet, no delicate fare ;
True wiscdom joined with simpleness ;
The night discharged of all care ;
Where wine the wit may not oppress.
The faithful wife, without debate ;
Such sleeps as maA beguile the night ;
Contented with thint j-mi estate,
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.
SIR THOMAS "WYATT.
In amorous poetry, which maybe said to ha^e
taken its rise in this age, Surrey had a fellow-la-
bourer in Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1541), another
distinguished figure in the court of Henry VIII.
Wyatt was a man highly educated for his age, a
great traveller, and generally accomplished. He
died of a fever caught by riding too fast on a hot
day from Falmouth, while engaged on a mission to
conduct the ambassador of the emperor, Charles V.,
to court. The songs and sonnets of this autlior, in
praise of his mistress, and expressive of the various
feelings he experienced wliile under the influence of
the tender passion, though conceited, are not with-
out refinement, and some share of poetical feeling.
TJie lover's lute cannot he llamed, though it sing
of his kuhfs unkindness.
Blame not my Lute ! for he must sjund
Of this or that as liketh me ;
For lack of wit the Lute is bound
To give such tunes as pleaseth me ;
Though my songs be somewhat strange.
And speak such words as touch my change.
Blame not my Lute !
My Lute, alas ! doth not offend.
Though that per force he must agree
To sound such tunes as I intend.
To sing to them that heareth me ;
Then though my songs be somewhat plain.
And toucheth some that use to feign.
Blame not my Lute !
My Lute and strings may not deny.
But as I strike they must obey ;
Break not them then so wrongfully,
But wreak thyself some other way ,
And though the songs which I indite.
Do quit thy change with rightful spite.
Blame not my Lute !
Spite asketh spite, and changing change,
And falsed faith, must needs be known ;
The faults so great, the case so strange ;
Of right it must abroad be blofl-n :
Then since that by thine own desert
My songs do tell how true thou art,
Blame not my Lute !
47
FBOM 1400
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1568.
Blame but thyself that hast niisdonc,
And well deserved to have blame ;
Change thou thy way, so evil begone,
And then my Lute shall sound that same ;
But if till then my fingers play,
By thy desert their wonted way.
Blame not my Lute !
Farewell ! unknown ; for though thou break
My strings in spite with great disdain,
Yet have I found out for thy sake,
Strings for to string my Lute again :
And if perchance this silly rhj-nie,
Do make thee blush at any time,
Blame not my Lute.
STie re-cured Lover exultcth in Ms Freedom, and
voweth to remain free tintil Death.
I am as I am, and so will I be ;
But how that I am none knoweth truly.
Be it ill, be it well, be I bond, be I free,
I am as 1 am, and so will I be.
I lead ray life indifferently ;
I mean nothing but honesty ;
And though folks judge full diversely,
I am as I am, and so vAW I die.
I do not rejoice, nor yet complain,
Both mirth and sadness I do refrain,
And use the means since folks will feign ;
Yet I am as I am, be it pleasant or puiii.
Divers do judge as they do trow.
Some of pleasure and some of woe.
Yet for all that nothing they know ;
But I am as I am, wheresoever I go.
But since judgers do thus decay.
Let every man his judgment say ;
I will it take in sport and play.
For I am as I am, whosoever say nay.
■\Mio judgeth well, well God them send ;
Who judgeth evil, God them amend ;
To judge the best therefore intend.
For I am as I am, and so will I end.
Yet some there be that take delight,
To judge folk's thought for envy and spite ;
But whether they judge me ^vrong or right,
1 am as I am, and so do I -write.
Praying you all that this do read,
To trust it as you do your creed ;
And not to think I change my weed,
For I am as I am, however I speed.
But how that is I leave to you ;
Judge as ye list, false or true.
Ye know no more than afore ye knew,
Yet I am as I am, whatever ensue.
And from this mind I will not flee.
But to you all that misjudge me,
I do protest, as ye may see.
That I am as 1 am, and so will be.
That Pleasure is mixed with every Pain.
Venomous thorns that are so sharp and keen
Bear flowers, we see, full fresh and fair of hue.
Poison is also put in medicine,
And unto man his health doth oft renew.
The fire that all things eke consumeth clean.
May hurt and heal : then if that this be true,
I trust some time my harm may be my health,
Sin'^p nvery woe is joined with some wealth.
L_,
The Courtier^s Life.
In court to serve decked with fresh array,
Of sugared meats feeling the sweet repast.
The life in banquets and sundry kinds of play ;
Amid the press the worldly looks to waste ;
Hath with it joined oft times such bitter taste,
That whoso joys such kind of life to hold,
In prison joys, fettered with chains of gold.
Of the Mean and Sure Estate.
Stand whoso lists upon the slipper' wheel,
Of high estate, and let me here rejoice.
And use my life in quietness each deal.
Unknown in court that hath the wanton joys.
In hidden place my time shall slowly pass,
And when my years be passed without annoy,
Let me die old after the common trace.
For grips of death do he too hardly pass
That kno\\'n is to all, but to himself, alas !
He dieth unknown, dased with dreadful face.
THOMAS TUSSER.
Amongst the poets dating towards the conclusion
of the present period, may be ranked Thomas Tds-
SER, author of the first didactic poem in the lan-
guage. He was born about 1523, of an ancient
family ; had a good education ; and commenced life
at court, under the patronage of Lord Paget. After-
wards he practised farming successively at Katwood
in Sussex, Ipswich, Fairsted in Essex, Norwich, and
othsr places ; but not succeeding in that walk, he
betook liimsclf to other occupations, amongst which
were those of a chorister, and, it is said, a fiddler.
As might be expected of one so inconstant, he did
not prosper in the world, but died poor in London,
in 1530.
Tusser's poem, entitled a Hondreth Good Points of
Hushandrie, which was first published in 1557, is a
series of practical directions for farming, expressed
in simple and inelegant, but not always dull verse.
It was afterwards expanded by other writers, and
publislied under the title of Five Hundreth Points of
Good Husbandrie : the last of a considerable number
of editions appeared in 1710.
\_Direct ions for Ctdtivating a B'op-Gardai.']
^Miora fancy persuadeth, among other crops.
To have for his spending sufficient of hops,
Must willingly follow, of choices to choose.
Such lessons approved, as skilful do use.
Ground gravelly, sandy, and mixed with clay,
Is naughty for hops, any manner of way.
Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,
For dryness and barrenness let it alone.
Choose soil for the hop of the rottenest mould.
Well dunged and wrought, as a garden-plot should ;
Not far from the water, but not overflown.
This lesson, well noted, is meet to be kno^\'n.
The sun in the south, or else southly and west,
Is joy to the hop, as a welcomed guest ;
But wind in the north, or else northerly east.
To the hop is as ill as a fay in a feast.
Meet plot for a hop-yard once found as is told,
Make thereof account, as of jewel of gold ;
Now dig it, and leave it, the sun for to bum,
And afterwards fence it, to serve for that turn.
The hop for his profit I tlms do exalt,
It strengtheneth drink, and it favoureth mdlt ;
And being well brewed, long kept it will last.
And drawing abide— if ye draw not too fast.
48
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
sin DAVID LYNDSAY.
[Housamfchj Physic]
Good huswife prorides, ere a sickness do come,
Of sundry good things in her house to have some.
Good aqua composita, and vinegar tart,
Uose-water, and treacle, to comfort thine heart.
Cold herbs in her garden, for agues that burn.
That over-strong heat to good temper may turn.
White endive, and succory, with spinach enow ;
All such with good pot-herbs, should follow the
plough.
Get water of fumitory, liver to cool,
And others the like, or else lie like a fool.
Conserves of barbary, quinces, and such,
With sirops, that easeth the sickly so much.
Ask Medini.s' counsel, ere medicine ye take,
And honour that man for necessity's sake.
Though thousands hate physic, because of the cost,
Yet thousands it helpeth, that else should be lost.
Ciood broth, and good keeping, do much now and than :
Good diet, with wisdom, best comforteth man.
In health, to be stirring shall profit thee best ;
In sickness, liate trouble ; seek quiet and rest.
Remember thy soul ; let no fancy prevail ;
JIake ready to God-ward ; let faith never quail :
The sooner thyself thou subniittest to God,
The sooner he ceaseth to scourge with his rod.
[Moral Reflections on the Wind.']
Though winds do rage, as winds were wood,l
And cause spring-tides to raise great flood ;
And lofty ships leave anchor in mud,
Bereaving many of life and of blood ;
Yet, true it is, as cow chews cud.
And trees, at spring, doth yield forth bud.
Except wind stands as never it stood,
It is an ill wind turns none to good.
SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.
WHiile Surrey and Wyatt Avcre imparting fresh
beauties to English poetry, Dunbar and his contem-
Sir David Lj-ndsay.
poraries were succeeded in Scotland by several poets
of considerable talent, whose improvements, however,
1 Jla<L
fell far short of those cftected in the literature of
their southern neighbours. The most eminent of
these writers was Sir David Lyndsay, born about
1490, wlio, after serving King James V., when that
monarch was a boy, as sewer, carver, cup-bearer,
purse-master, chief cubicular ; in short, everytliing
— bearing him as an infant upon his back, and
dancing antics for his amusement as a boy — was
appointed to the important office of Lord Lyon King
at Arms, and died about the year 1555. He chiefly
slione as a satirical and humorous writer, and his great
fault is an efitire absence of that spirit of refinement
which graced the contemporary literature of Eng-
land. The principal objects of Lyndsay's vitupera-
tions were the clergy, whose habits at this period
(just before the Reformation) were such as to afford
unusuaOy ample scope for the pen of the satirist.
Our poet, also, although a state officer, aud long a
servant to the king, uses little delicacy in exposing
the abuses of the court. His chief poems are placed
in the following succession by his editor, Mr George
Chalmers: — The Dreme, written about 1528; The
Complm/nt, 1529; Tlie Comphnpit of the King's
Papingo (Peacock), 1530; The 'Plat/ (or Satire) oj
the Three Estates, 1535; Kitteis Confession, 1541;
The History of Squire Meldrum, 1550; The Mo-
narchie, 1553. The threl^ first of these poems are
moralisings upon the state and government of the
kingdom, during two of its dismal minorities. The
I'lay is an extraordinary performance, a satire upon
the whole of the three political orders — monarch,
barons, and clergy — full of humour and grossness,
and curiously illustrative of the taste of the times.
Nutwithstanding its satiric pungency, and, what is
apt to be now more surprising, notwithstanding the
introduction of indecencies not fit to be described,
the Satire of the Three Estates was acted in pre-
sence of the court, both at Cupar and Edinburgh,
the stage being in the open air. Kitteis Confession
is a satire on one of the practices of Roman Catho-
lics. B\- his various burlesques of that party, he is
said to have largely contributed to the progress of
the Reformation in Scotland. The History of Squire
Meldrum is perhaps the most pleasing of all this
author's works. It is considered the last poem that
in any degree partakes of the character of the
metrical romance.
Of the dexterity with which Lyndsay could point
a satirical remark on an error of state policj', we
may judge from tlie following very brief passage of
his Complaynt, which relates to the too early com-
mittal of the government to James V. It is given
in the original spelling.
Imprudently, like witles fules,
Thay tuke the young prince from the scuk'%,
Quhere he, under obedience.
Was leaniand vertcw and science,
And ha.5tilie pat in his hand
The governance of all Scotland :
As quha wald, in ane stormie blast,
Quheii marinaris been all agast.
Throw danger of the seis rage,
'Wald tak ane child of tender age,
Quliilk never had bin on the sey.
And gar his bidding all obey,
Geving him liail tlic governall.
To ship, inarchand, and raarinall.
For dreid of roc'sis and foir land,
To put the ruthir in his hand. * *
I give them to ,
Quhilk first devisit that counscll ;
I will nocht say that it was tressoun,
But I dar sweir it was na ressoun.
I jiray God hit me never see ring
Into this realme sa young ane king.
49
PROM 1400
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO '.55t
l_A Carman's Account of a Lau--suit.'\
Many, I lent my gossip my mare, to fetch hame coals,
And he her drounit into the quarry holes ;
And I ran to the consistory, for to pleinyie,
And there I happenit araang ane greedie raeinyie.l
They gave me first ane thing they call citatulum;
Within ancht days I gat but libeUandiun;
Within ane month I gat ad opponemlum ;
In half ane year I gat inter-hquendum,
And syne I gat — how call ye it ? — ad repllcanchun ;
Bet I could never ane word yet understand him :
And then they gart me cast out mony placks,
And gart me pay for four-and-twenty acts.
Bot or they came half gate to concludendum,
The fiend ane plack was left for to defend him.
Thus they postponed me twa year with their train,
Syne, hodie ad octo, bade me come again :
And then thir rooks they rowpit wonder fast
For sentence, silver, they eryit at the last.
Of pronunciaiidum they made me wonder fain,
Bot I gat nevei' my gude grey mare again.
SujypliccUion in Contemption of Side Tails?
(1538.)
Sovereign, I mean^ of thir side tails,
WTiilk through the dust and dubs trails,
Three quarters lang behind their heels,
Express again' all commonweals.
Though bishops, in their pontificals,
Have men for to bear up their tails.
For dignity of their ofiice ;
Richt so ane queen or ane emprice ,
Howbeit they use sic gravity,
Conformand to their majesty.
Though their robe-royals be upborne,
I think it is ane very scorn,
That every lady of the land
Should have her tail so side trailand ;
Howbeit they been of high estate.
The queen they should not counterfeit.
Wherever they go it may be seen
How kirk and causay they soop clean.
The images into the kirk
May think of their side tails irk ; ■*
For when the weather been maist fair.
The dust flies highest into the air.
And all their faces does begarv,
Gif they could speak, they wald them wary. * *
But I have maist into despite
Poor claggocks» clad in Raploch white,
Whilk has scant twa merks for their fees,
Will have twa ells beneath their knees.
Kittock that cleckit** was yestreen,
The morn, will counterfeit the queen. * •
In bam nor byre she will not bide.
Without her kirtle tail be side.
In burghs, wanton burgess wives
Wha may have sidest tails strives,
Weel bordered with velvet fine,
But followand them it is ane pyne :
In summer, when the streets dries,
They raise the dust aboon the skies ;
Nane may gae near them at their ease.
Without they cover mouth and neese. * *
I think maist pane after ane rain.
To see them tuckit uj) again ;
Then when they step furth through the street.
Their fauldings flaps about their feet ;
They waste mair claith, within few years.
Nor wald cleld fifty score of freirs. * *
' Company. « The over-long skirts of the ladies' dreeacs
of those days. 3 Complain. * May feel annoyed.
* Draggle-tails. * Bom.
Of tails I will no more indite,
For dread some duddron^ me despite ;
Notwithstanding, I will conclude.
That of side tails can come nae gude,
Sider nor may their ankles hide,
The remanent proceeds of pride,
And pride proceeds of the devil,
Thus alway they proceed of evil.
Ane other fault. Sir, may be seen.
They hide their face all bot the een ;
When gentlemen bid them gude day,
^^'ithout reverence they slide awav. * *
Without their faults be soon amended,
^ly flyting,2 Sir, shall never be ended ;
But wald your grace my counsel tak,
.\ne proclamation ye should mak,
Baith through the land and burrowstouns,
To shaw their face and cut their gomis.
Women will say, this is nae bourds,'''
To write sic vile and filthy words ;
But wald they clenge their filthy tails,
"Whilk over the mires and middings trails,
Then should my writing clengit be.
None other mends they get of me.
Quoth Lindsay, in contempt of the side tails.
That duddrons and duntibours through the dubs traiU
\_Tlie Building of the Toica- of Balel, aitd
Confusion of Tongiies.}
(From the Sfonarchie.)
Their great fortress then did they found,
And cast till they gat sure ground.
All fell to work both man aiid child,
Some howkit clay, some burnt the tyld.
Nimron, that curious champion.
Deviser was of that dungeon.
Nathing they spared their labours.
Like busy bees upon the flowers,
Or emmets travelling into June ;
Some under wrocht, and some aboon,
AMth Strang ingenious masonry,
L'pward their wark did fortify"; * *
The land about was fair and plain.
And it rase like ane heich montane.
Those fulish people did intend.
That till the heaven it should ascend:
Sae great ane strength was never seen
Into the warld with men's eon.
The wallis of that wark they made,
Twa and fifty fathom braid":
Ane fathom then, as some men says,
Micht been twa fathom in our days ;
Ane man was then of mair stature
Nor twa be now, of this be sui-e.
The translator of Orosius
Intil his chronicle wi-ites thus ;
That when the sun is at the hicht,
At noon, when it doth shine maist bricht,
The shadow of that hideous strength
Sax mile and mair it is of length :
Thus may ye judge into your thocht,
Gif Babylon be heich, ornocht.
Then the great God omnipotent,
To whom all things been present, ♦ *
lie seeand the ambition,
And the prideful presumption.
How thir proud people did pretend,
t.'p through the heavens till ascend, * *
Sic languages on them he laid.
That nane wist what ane other said ;
Where was but ane language afore,
God send them languages three score ;
' Sent
' Scolding.
»Jc8t
50
potrs
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ANDREW BOUUI/
Afore that time all spak Hebrew,
Tlien some began for to speak Grew,
Some Dutch, some language Saracen,
And some began to speak Latin.
The maister men gan to ga wild,
Cryand for trees, they brocht them tylJ.
Some said. Bring mortar here at ance,
Then brocht they to them stocks and stanes ;
And Nimrod, their great champion,
Ran ragand like ane wild lion,
^lenacing them with words rude.
But never ane word they understood. * *
for final conclusion.
Constrained were they for till depart,
Ilk company in ane sundry airt. * *
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES OF THE PERIOD 1400-1558.
A few pieces of the reigns of Henry VIII. and
Edward VI., some of which are by uncertain authors,
may be added, as further illustrative of the literary
history of that period. The first two are amongst
the earliest verses in which the metaphysical re-
finements, so notable in the subsequent period, are
observable.
A Praise of his {the Poefs) Lady.
Give place, you ladies, and be gone.
Boast not yourselves at all !
Fur here at hand approacheth one,
Whose face will stain you all !
The virtue of her lively looks
Excels the precious stone :
I wish to have none other books
To read or look upon.
In each of her two crystal eyes
Smileth a naked boy :
It would you all in heart suffice
To see that lamp of joy.
I think Nature hath lost the mould.
Where she her shape did take ;
Or else I doubt if Nature could
So fair a creature make.
She may be well compared
Unto the phoenix kind,
Whose like was never seen nor heard,
That any man can find.
In life she is Diana chaste,
In troth Penelope,
In word and eke in deed steadfast :
What will you more we say ?
* « * *
Her roseal colour comes and goes
With such a comely grace.
More ruddier too than doth the rose.
Within her lively face.
At Bacchus' feast none shall her meet,
Ne at no wanton play ;
Nor gazing in an open street.
Nor gadding as a stray.
The modest mirth that she doth use
Is mix'd with shamefac'dness ;
All vice she doth wholly refuse.
And hateth idleness.
Lord, it is a world to see
How virtue can repair,
And deck in her such honesty
Whom Nature made so fair 1
Truly she doth as far exceed
Our women now-a-days.
As doth the gilly flower a weed,
And more a thousand ways.
How might 1 do to get a graff
Of tliis unspotted tree?
For all the rest are plain but chaff
Which seem good corn to be.
This gift alone I shall her give :
When Death doth what he can,
Her honest fame shall ever live
Within the mouth of man.
Amaniium Irm amor is red integr alio est.
[By Richard Edwards, a court musician and poet, 1523-1566.]
In going to my naked bed, as one that would have
slept,
I heard a wife sing to her child, that long before had
wept.
She sighed sore, and sang full sweet, to bring the
babe to rest.
That would not cease, but cried still, in sucking at
her breast.
She was full weary of her watch, and grieved with
her child.
She rocked it, and rated it, until on her it smil'd ;
Then did she say, ' Now have I found the proverb true
to prove.
The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of
love.'
Then took I paper, pen, and ink, this proverb for to
^vrite,
In register for to remain of such a worthy "vigat.
As she proceeded thus in song unto her litt.e brat,
Much matter utter'd she of weight in place whereas
she sat ;
And proved plain, there was no beast, nor « reature
bearing life.
Could well be known to live in love without discord
and strife :
Then kissed she her little babe, and sware by God
above,
'The falling out of faithful friends renewing is ot
love.'
* * * *
' I marvel much, pardie,' quoth she, ' for to behold
the rout.
To see man, woman, boy, and beast, to tos,j the world
about ;
Some kneel, some crouch, some beck, some check, and
some can smoothly smile,
And some embrace others in arms, and there think
many a wile.
Some stand aloof at cap and knee, some humble, and
some stout,
Yet are they never friends indeed until they once fall
out.'
Thus ended she her song, and said, before she did
remove,
' The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of
love.'
[Characteristic of an Enf/Ushman.l
[By Andrew Bourd, physician to Henry VIII. The lines
form an inscription under tlie picture of an Englisliman, naked,
witli a roll of cloth in one hand, and a pair of scissors in the
other.]
I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here.
Musing in my mind what garment I shall wear.
For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that,
Now I will wear I cannot tell what :
All new fashions be i)leasant to nie,
I will have them whether I thrive or thee :
Now I am a fisher, all men on me look
What should I do but set cock on the hoop?
What do I care if all the world mc fail,
I will have a garment reach to my tail.
£1
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO ISM
Then I am a minion, for I wear the new guise,
The next year after I hope to he wise —
Not only in wearing my gorgeous array,
For I will go to learning a whole summer's day ;
1 will learn Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and French,
And I will learn Dutch sitting on my bench.
I do fear no man, each man feareth me ;
I overcome my adversaries by land and by sea ;
I had no peer if to myself I were true ;
Because I am not so diverse times do I rue :
Yet I lack nothing, I have all things at will.
If I were wise and would hold myself still,
And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining.
But ever to be true to God and my king.
But I have such matters rolling in my pate,
That I will and do — I cannot tell what.
No man shall let me, but I will have my mind.
And to father, mother, and friend, I'll be unkind.
I will follow mine own mind and mine old trade :
'SVho shall let me ? The devil's nails are unpared.
Yet above all things new fashions I love well.
And to wear them my thi-ift I will sell.
In all this world I shall have but a time :
Hold the cup, good fellow, here is thine and mine !
7%e Nut-Broxcn Maid.
[Eegarding the date and author of this piece no certainty
exists. Prior, who founded his Henry and Emma upon it,
fixes its date about 1400 ; but others, judging from the compa-
ratively modern language of it, suppose it to have been com-
posed subsequently to the time of Surrey. The poem opens
■with a declaration of the author, that the faith of woman
is stronger than is generally alleged, in proof of which he pro-
poses to relate the trial to which the ' >'ot-Browne Mayde' was
exposed by her lover. What follows consists of a dialogue
between the pair.]
He. — It standeth so ; a deed is do',
"VATiereof great harm shall grow :
My destiny is for to die
A shameful death, I trow;
Or else to flee : the one must be.
None other way I know,
But to withdraw as an outlaw,
And take me to my bow.
'V\'herefore adieu, my o^vn heart true !
None other rede I can :
For I must to the green wood go.
Alone, a banished man.
She. — Lord, what is this world's bliss,
That changeth as the moon !
My summer's day in lusty May
Is darked before the noon.
I hear you say. Farewell : Nay, nay,
We depart not so soon.
Why say ye so ? whither will ye go ?
Alas ! what have ye done ?
All my welfare to sorrow and care
Should change if ye were gone ;
For in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — I can believe, it shall you grieve.
And somewhat you distrain :
But afterward, j'our paines hard
Within a day or twain
Shall soon aslake ; and ye shall take
Comfort to you again.
Why should ye ought, for to make thought ?
Your labour were in vain.
And thus I do, and pray to you,
As heartily as I can ;
For I must to the green wood go.
Alone, a banished man.
She. — Now sith that ye have showed to ma
The secret of your mind,
I shall be plain to you again,
Like as yc shall me find.
Sith it is so that ye Tvill go,
I vrill not live behind ;
Shall never be said, the Nut-Brown Maid
Was to her love unkind :
Make you ready, for so am I,
Although it were anon ;
For in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — I counsel you, remember how
It is no maiden's law
Nothing to doubt, but to run out
To wood with an outlaw ;
For ye must there in your hand bear
A bow, ready to draw ;
And as a thief, thus must you live,
Ever in dread and awe.
'N^'hereb}' to you great harm might grow :
Yet had I lever than.
That I had to the green wood go.
Alone, a banished man.
She. — I think not nay, but, as ye say,
It is no maiden's lore :
But love may juake me for your sake.
As I have said before.
To come on foot, to hunt and shoot
To get us meat in store ;
For so that I your company
IMay have, I ask no more :
From which to part it makes my heart
As cold as any stone ;
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — Yet take good heed, for ever I dread
That ye could not sustain
The thorny ways, the deep valleys.
The snow, the frost, the rain,
The cold, the heat ; for, diy or weet.
We must lodge on the plain ;
And us above, none other roof
But a brake bush or twain :
^Miich soon should grieve you, I beliere.
And ye would gladly than
That I had to the greenwood go.
Alone, a banished man.
She. — Sith I have here been partinfer
With you of joy and bliss,
I must also part of your wo
Endure, as reason is.
Yet I am sure of one pleasure,
And, shortly, it is this,
That, wliere ye be, me seemelh, pardie,
I could not fare amiss.
Without more speech, I you beseech
That ye were soon agone,
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — If ye go thither, ye must consider,
When ye have list to dine.
There shall no meat be for you gete,
Nor drink, beer, ale, nor wine,
No sheetes clean, to lie between.
Made of thread and twine ;
None other house but leaves and boughs,
To cover your head and mine.
Oh mine heart sweet, this evil diet,
Should make you pale and wan ;
Wherefore I will to the green wood go»
Alone, a banished man.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
NUT-BROWN HAin.
She. — Among the wild deer, such au archer,
As men say that ye be,
Ye may not fail of good vittall,
Where is so great plentie.
And water clear of the rive'r,
Shall be full sweet to me.
With which in heal, I shall right weel
Endure, as ye shall see ;
And, ere we go, a bed or two
I can provide anone ;
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — Lo yet before, ye must do more,
If ye will go with me ;
As cut your hair up by your ear,
Your kirtle to the knee ;
With bow in hand, for to withstand
Your enemies, if need be ;
And this same night, before day-light,
To wood-ward will I flee.
If that ye will all this fulfill,
Do't shortly as ye can :
Else will I to the green wood go,
Alone, a banished man.
She. — I shall, as now, do more for you,
Than 'longeth to womanheed,
To short my hair, a bow to bear,
To shoot in time of need.
Oh, my sweet mother, before all other
For you I have most dread ;
But now adieu ! I must ensue
Where fortune doth me lead.
All this make ye : Now let us flee ;
The day comes fast upon :
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — Nay, nay, not so ; ye shall not go.
And I shall tell you why :
Your appetite ' is to be light
Of love, I weel espy :
For like as ye have said to me,
In like wise, hardily,
Ye would answe'r whoever it were.
In way of company.
It is said of old, soon hot, soon cold ;
And so is a woman.
Wherefore I to the wood will go.
Alone, a banished man.
She. — If ye take heed, it is no need
Such words to say by me ;
For oft ye prayed and me assayed,
Ere I loved you, pardie :
And though that 1, of ancestry,
A baron's daughter be.
Yet have you proved how I you loTcd,
A squire of low degree ;
And ever shall, whatso befal ;
To die therefore anon ;
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — A baron's child to be beguiled,
It were a cursed deed !
To be fellaw with an outlaw.
Almighty God forbid !
It better were, the poor squier
Alone to forest yede.
Than I should say, another day,
That, by my cursed deed.
We were betrayed : wherefore, good maid,
The best rede that I can.
Is, that I to the greenwood go,
Alone, £ banished man.
I Disposition.
She. — Whatever befall, I never shall.
Of this thing you upbraid ;
But, if ye go, and leave me so.
Than have ye me betrayed.
Remember weel, how that you deal ;
For if ye, as ye said.
Be so unkind to leave behind.
Your love, the Nut-Bro'vvn ]\Iaid,
Trust me truly, that 1 shall die
Soon after ye be gone ;
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone-
He. — If that ye went, ye should repent ;
For in the forest now
I have purveyed me of a maid.
Whom I love more than j'ou ;
Aiother fairer than ever ye were,
I dare it weel avow,
And of you both each should be wi'oth
With oihei-, as I trow :
It were mine ease to live in peace ;
So will I, if I can ;
Wherefore I to the wood will go,
Alone, a hanished. man.
She. — ^Tliough in the wood I understooa
Ye had a paramour.
Aid this may not remove ray thought.
But tliat I will be your.
And she shall find me soft and kind
And courteous everv hour ;
Gla/J to fulfill all that she will
Command me to my power.
For had ye, lo, an hundi-ed mo.
Of them I woiild be on€ ;
For, in m}' mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — ^line own dear love, I see thee prove
That ye l^e kind and true ;
Of maid and ^vife, in all my life.
The best that ever I knew.
Be meiTV and glad ; no more be sad ;
The case is changed now ;
For it were ruth, that, for your truth,
Ye should have cause to rue.
Be Tiot dismayed ; whatever I said
To you, when I began ;
I will not to the greenv.'ood go :
I am no uanished man.
She. — ^These tidings tie more glad to me,
Than to be made a queen.
If I were sure they would eadare :
But it is often seen.
When men will break promise, they speak
The wordes on the spleen.
Ye shape some wiie me to beguile.
And steal from me, I ween :
Than were the case worse than it was,
And I more woo-begone :
For, in my mind, of ail mankind
I love but you alone.
He. — Ye shall not neeil further to dread :
I will not disparage,
You (God defend !) sitli ye descend
Of so great a lineage.
Now understand ; to Westmoreland,
^Vhich is mine heritage,
I will 3'ou bring ; and with a ring,
By waj' of marriage,
I will 3'oa take, and Lady make.
As shortly as I can :
Thus have you won an earl's son.
And not a banished man.
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
10 I tod.
PROSE WRITERS.
SIR JOHN FORTESCCE.
Not long after the time of Lydgate, our attention
is called to a prose writer of eminence, the first
since the time of Chaucer and Wickliffe. This was
Sir John Fortescce, Chief Justice of the King's
Bench under Henry VI., and a constant adherent of
the fortunes of that monarch. He flourished be-
tween the years 1430 and 1470. Besides several Latin
tracts. Chief Justice Fortescue wrote one in tlie
common language, entitled. The Difference between an
Absolute and Limited Monarchy, as it more particularly
regards the English Constitution, in which he draws a
striking, thougli perhaps exaggerated, contrast be-
tween the condition of the French under an arbi-
trary monarch, and that of his own countrymen,
who even then possessed considerable privileges as
subjects. The following extracts convey at once an
idea of the literary style, and of the manner of
thinking, of that age.
[English, Courage.']
{^Original spelling. — ^It is cowardise and lack of hartes and
corage, that kepith the Frenchmen from rj'sjTig, and not po-
^ertye ; which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English
man. It hath ben often seen in Englond that iij or iv thefes,
for povertie, hath sett upon vij or viij true men, and robbyd
them al. But it hath not ben seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij
thefe3 have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherfor
it is right seld that French men be hangyd for robberye, for
that thay have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be
therfor mo men hangyd in Englond, in a yere, for robberye
and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such
cause of crime in vij yers, &c.]
It is cowardice and lack of hearts and courage, that
keepeth the Frenchmen from rising, and not poverty ;
which courage no French man hath like to the
English man. It hath been often seen in England
that three or four thieves, for poverty, hath set upon
seven or eight true men, and robbed them all. I3ut
it hath not been seen in France, that seven or eight
thieves have been hardy to rob three or four true men.
Wherefore it is right seld' that Frenchmen be hanged
for robbery, for that they have no hearts to do so
terrible an act. There be therefore mo men hanged
in England, in a year, for robbery and manslaughter,
than there be hanged in France for such cause of
crime in seven years. There is no man hiinged in
Scotland in seven years together for robbery, and yet
they be often times hanged for larceny, and stealing
of goods in the absence of the owner thereof ; but
their hearts serve them not to take a man's goods
while he is present and will defend it ; which manner
of taking is called robbery. But the English man be
of another courage ; for if he be poor, and see another
man having riches which may be taken from him by
might, he wol not spare to do so, but if- that poor man
be right true. Wherefore it is not povertj', but it is
lack of heart and cowardice, that keepeth the French
men from rising.
What harm Kould come to England if the Commons
thereof tcere Poor,
Some men have said that it were good for the king
that the commons of England were made poor, as be
the commons of France. For then they would not
rebel, as now they done often times, which the com-
mons of France do not, nor may do ; for they have no
weapon, nor armour, nor good to buy it withall. To
these manner of men may be said, with the philoso-
pher, A d parva resp>j:iaUes, de facili enunciant j that
• Sddom. 2 But if— unlaas.
is to say, they that seen few things woU soon say their
advice. Forsooth those folks consideren little the
good of the realm, whereof the might most stondeth
upon archers, which be no rich men. And if they
were made poorer than they be, they should not have
wherewith to buy them bows, arrows, jacks, or any
other annour of defence, whereby they might be able
to resist our enemies when they list to come upon us,
which they may do on ever)' side, considering that we
be an island ; and, as it is said before, we may not
have soon succours of any other realm. Wherefore
we should be a prey to all other enemies, but if we be
mighty of ourself, which might stondeth most upon
our poor archers ; and therefore they needen not only
to have such habiliments as now is spoken of, but also
they needen to be much exercised in shooting, which
may not be done without right great expenses, as
eveiy man expert therein knoweth right well. Where-
fore the making poor of the commons, which is the
making poor of our archers, should be the destructii'ii
of the greatest might of our realm. Item, if poor iii-u
may not lightly rise, as is the opinion of those mi>ii,
which for that cause would have the commons poo^- ;
how then, if a mighty man made a rising, should he
be repressed, when all the commons be so poor, tJiat
after such opinion they may not fight, and by tliat
reason not help the king with fighting ? And why
maketh the king the commons to be every year mus-
tered, sithen it was good they had no harness, nor
were able to fight ? Oh, how unwise is the opinion of
these men ; for it may not be maintained by any
reason ! Item, when any rising hath been made Lu
this land, before these days by commons, the poorest
men thereof hath been the greatest causers and doers
therein. And thrifty men have been loth thereto, for
dread of losing of their goods, yet often times they
have gone with them through menaces, or else the
same poor men would have taken their goods ; wherein
it seemeth that poverty hath been the whole and chief
cause of all such rising. The poor man hath been
stirred thereto by occasion of his poverty for to get
good ; and the rich men have gone with them because
they wold not be poor by losing of their goods. What
then would fall, if all the commons were poor !
■WILLIAM CAXTON.
The next writer of note was "William Caxton,
tlie celebrated printer ; a man of plain tinderstand-
ing, but great enthusiasm in the cause of literature.
While acting as an agent for English merclumts in
Holland, he made himself master of the art of print-
ing, then recentl.v introduced on the Continent ; and,
having translated a French book styled. The Recuycll
of the Histories of Troye, he printed it at Ghent, in
1471, being the first book in the English language
ever put to the press.'* Afterwards he established
a printing-office at Westminster, and in 1474, pro-
duced The Game of Chess, which was the first book
printed in Britain. Caxton translated or wrote about
sixty different books, all of which went through his
own press before his death in 1491. As a specimen
of his manner of writing, and of the literarj- langmge
of this age, a passage is here extracted, in modem
* In a note to this publication, Caxton says — 'Forasmuch
as age creepeth on me daily, and fcebleth all the bodie, and also
because I have promised divers gentlemen, and to my friends,
to address to them, as hastily as I might, this said book, there-
fore I have practised and learned, at my great charge and dis-
I>enee, to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and
form as ye may here see, and is not written with pen and ink,
as other books ben, to the end that all men may have them at
once, for iill the books of this story, named The Kecule of the
Ilistoreys of Troyes, thus emprinted, as ye here see, were begiuj
in one day, and also finished in one day.'
54
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITER ATUKE.
ROBERT FABIAN.
spelling, from the conclusion of his translation of
f'he Golden Legend.
William Caxton.
[Legend of St Francis.']
\ Francis, serrant and friend of Almighty God, was
bom in the city of Assyse, and was made a merchant
unto the 2,5th year of his age, and wasted his time by
living xainly, whom our Lord coiTected by the scourge
of sickness, and suddenly changed him into another
man ; so that he began to shine by the spirit of pro-
phecy. For on a time, he, with other men of Peruse,
Was taken prisoner, and were put in a cruel prison,
where all the other wailed and sorrowed, and he only
was glad and enjoyed. And when they had repreved'
him thereof, he answered, ' Know ye,' said he, ' that I
am joyful : for I shall be worshipped as a saint
throughout all the world.' * * *
On a time as this holy man was in prayer, the devil
called him thrice by his ovra. name. And when the
holy man had answered him, he said, none in this
world is so great a sinner, but if he convert him, our
Lord would pardon him ; but who that sleeth himself
with hard penance, shall never find mercy. And anon,
this holy man knew by revelation the fallacy and
deceit of the fiend, how he would have withdrawn him
fro to do well. And when the devil saw that he
might not prevail against him, he tempted him by
grievous temptation of the flesh. And when this holy
sen-ant of God felt that, he despoiled- his cloaths, and
beat himself right hard with an hard cord, saying,
'Thus, brother ass, it behoveth thee to remain and
to be beaten.' And when the temptation departed
not, he went out and plunged himself in the snow, all
liaked, and made seven great balls of snow, and pur-
posed to have taken them into^ his body, and said.
This greatest is thy wife ; and these four, two ben
ihy daughters, and two thy sons ; and the other twain,
that one thy chambrere, and that other thy varlet or
yeman ; haste and clothe them : for they all die for
cold. And if thy business that thou hast about them,
grieve ye sore, then sene our I^ord perfectly.' And
anon, the devil departed from him all confused ; and
St Francis returned again unto his cell glorifying
God. • * *
He was enobled in his life by many miracles * *
and the very death, which is to all men horrible and
hateful, he admonished them to praise it. And also
he warned and admonished death to come to him, and
•aid ' Death, my sister, welcome be you.' And when
' Reproved.
* Took off.
3 Unto
he came at the last hour, he slept in our Lord ; of
whom a friar saw the soul, in manner of a star, like
to the moon in quantity, and the sun in clearness.
Prose history may be said to have taken its rise
in the reigns of Henry VIL and VIIL ; but its first
examples are of a very homely character. Kobert
Fabian and Edward Hall may be regarded as the
first writers in this department of our national lite-
rature. They aimed at no literary excellence, nor at
any arrangement calculated to make their writings
more useful. Their sole object was to narrate
nimuteh-, and as far as their opportunities allowed,
faithfully, the events of the history of their country.
Written in a dull and tedious manner, without any
exercise of taste or judgment, with an absolute want
of discrimination as to tlie comparative importance of
facts, and no attempt to penetrate the motives of the
actors, or to describe more than the external features
of even the greatest of transactions, the Chronicles,
as the}' are called, form masses of matter which only
a modern reader of a peculiar taste, curiosity, or
a writer in quest of materials, woidd now willingly
peruse. Yet it must be admitted, that to tlieir
minuteness and indiscrimination we are indebted for
the preservation of many curious facts and illustra-
tions of manners, which would have otherwise been
lost.
Fabian, who was an alderman and sheriff of Lon-
don, and died in 1512, wrote a general chronicle of
English history, which he called The Co7icordu7ice of
Stories, and which has been several times printed,
the last time in 1811, under the care of Sir Henry
Ellis. It is particularly minute with regard to what
would probably appear the most important of all
things to the worthy alderman, the succession of
officers of all kinds serving in the city of London ;
and amongst other events of the reign of Henry V.,
the author does not omit to note that a new weather-
cock was placed on the top of St Paul's steeple.
Fabian repeats all the fabulous stories of early Eng-
lish history, which had first been circulated by
Geoffrey of ilonmouth.
[The Deposition of King Yortigern.']
[Vortigem had lost much of the afi'ections f his
people by marriage with Queen Rowena.] Over that,
an heresy, called Arian's heresy, began then to spring
up in Britain. For the which, two holy bishops,
named Gernianus and Lupus, as of Gaufryde is wit-
nessed, came into Britain to reform the king, and
all other that erred from the way of truth.
Of this holy man, St Germain, Vincent Historial
saith, that upon au evening when the weather was
passing cold, and the snow fell very fast, he axed
lodging of the king of Britain, for him and his com-
peers, which was denied. Then he, after sitting under
a bush in the field, the king's herdman passed by,
and seeing this bishop with his company sitting in
the weather, desired him to his house to take there
such poor lodging as he had. Whereof the bishop
being glad and fain, yode' unto the house of the said
herdman, the which received him with glad cheer.
And for him and his company, willed his wife to kill
his only calf, and to dress it for his guest's supper ;
the which was also done. When the holy man had
supped, he called to him his hostess, willing and de-
siring her, that she should diligently gather together
all the bones of the dead calf ; and them so gathered,
to wrap together within the skin of the said calf. And
then it lay in the stall before the rack near unto the
dame. Which done according to the commandment
of the holy man, shortly after the calf was restored
> Went.
•'ROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 155&
to life ; ivnd forthwith ate hay with the dam at the
rack. At which marvel all the house was greatly
astonished, and yielded thanking unto Almighty God,
and to that holy bishop.
Upon the morrow, this holy bishop took with him
the herdman, and yode unto the presence of the king,
and axed of him in sharp wise, why that over-night
he had denied to him lodging. Wherewith the king
was so abashed, that he had no power to give unto
the holy man answer. Then, St Germain said to him :
* charire thee, in the name of the Lord God, that thou
and thine depart from this palace, and resign it and
the rule of thy land to him that is more worthy this
room than thou art. The which all thing by power
divine was observed and done ; and the said herdman,
by the holv bishop's authority, was set into the same
dignity ; of whom after descended all the kings of
Britain.
[Jaclc Cade's Inauircction.']
[Original Spelling. And in tho mnneth of Juny this yere,
the comons of Kent assembly^ tbem in prete imiltytiide, and
chase to them a capita\-ne, and named hym !M(irtymer, and
cosyn to the Duke of Yorke; but of nioste he was named
Jack Cade. This kepte tlie people wondrouslie togader, and
made such ordenaunces anionge theyni, that he brought a
grete nombreof people of theyni vnto the Blak Heth, where he
deuyse<i a bylle of petycions to the kyuge and his coun-
Bayll, &c.]
And in the month of June this year (14.50), the
commons of Kent assembled them in great multitude,
and chase to them a Captain, and named him IVIorti-
mer, and cousin to the Duke of York; but of most he
was named Jack Cade. This kept the people won-
drously together, and made such ordinances among
them, that he brought a great number of people of
them unto the Black Heath, where he devised a bill
of petitions to the king and his council, and showed
therein what injuries and oppressions the poor com-
mons suffered by such as were about the king, a iev!
persons in number, and all under colour to come to
his above. The king's council, seeing this bill, dis-
allowed it, and counselled the king, which by the
7th day of June had gathered to him a strong host of
people, to go again' his rebels, and to give unto them
battle. Then the king, after the said rebels had
holdcn their field upon Black Heath seven days,
made toward them. Whereof hearing, the Captain
drew back with his people to a village called Seven-
oaks, and there embattled.
Then it was agreed by the king's council, that Sir
Humphrey Stafford, knight, with William his brother,
and other certain gentlemen should follow the chase,
and the king with his lords should return unto Green-
wich, weening to them that the rebels were fled and
gone. But, as before I have showed, when Sir Hum-
phrey with his company drew near unto Sevenoaks,
he was warned of the Captain, that there abode with
his people. And when he had counselled with the
other gentlemen, he, like a manful knight, set upon
the rebels and fought with them long ; but in the
end the Captain slew him and his brother, with many
other, and caviscd the rest to give back. All which
season, the king's host lay still upon Black Heath,
being among them sundry opinions ; so that some and
many favoured the Captain. But, finally, when word
came of the overthrow of the Staffords, they .said
plainly and boldly, that, except the Lord Saye and
other before rehearsed were committed to ward, they
Would take the Cajitain's party. For the appeasing of
which rumour the Lord Save was yat into the Tower ;
but that other as then were not at hand. Then the
king having knowledge of the scomfiture of his men
%nd also of the rumour of his hosting people, removed
from Greenwich to London, and there with his host
rested him a while.
And so soon as Jack Cade had thus overcome the
StafTords, he anon apparelled him with the knight's
ap])arel, and did on him his bryganders set with gilt
nails, and his salet and gilt spurs ; and after he had
refreshed his people, he returned again to Black
Heath, and there pight' again his field, as heretofore
he had done, and lay there from the iOth day of
June, being St Peter's day, till the first day of
July. In which season came unto him the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and the Duke of Buckingham,
with whom they had long communication, and found
him right discreet in his answers : how be it they
could not cause him to lay down his people, and to
submit him unto the king's grace.
In this while, the king and the queen, hearing of
the increasing of his rebels, and also the lords fearing
their own servants, lest they would take the Captain's
party, removed from Loudon to Killingworth, leaving
the city without aid, except only the Lord Scales,
which was left to keep the Tower, and with him a numly
and warly man named IMatthew Go^-th. Then the
Captain of Kent thus hoving- at Blackheath, to the
end to blind the more the people, and to bring him in
fame that he kept good justice, beheaded there a petty
Captain of his, named Paris, for so much as he had
offended again' such ordinance as he had stablished
in his host. And hearing that the king and all his
lords were thus departed, drew him near unto the city,
so that upon the first day of July he entered the burgh
of Southwark, being then Wednesday, and lodged him
there that night, for he might not be suffered to enter
that city.
And upon the same day the commons of Essex, in
great number, pight them a field upon the plain at
Miles End. Upon the second day of the said month,
the mayor called a common council at the Guildhall,
for to purvey the withstanding of these rebels, and
other matters, in which assembled were divers opinions,
so that some thought good that the said rebels should
be received into the city, and some otherwise ; among
the which, Robert Home, stock -fishmonger, then being
an alderman, spake sore again' them that would have
them enter. For the which sayings, the commons
were so amoved again' him, that they ceased not till
they had him committed to ward.
And the same afternoon, about five of the clock, the
Captain with his people entered by the bridge ; and
when he came upon the drawbridge, he hewed the
ropes that drew the bridge in sunder with his sword,
and so passed into the city, and made in sundry places
thereof proclamations in the king's name, that no man,
upon pain of death, should rob or take anything per
force without paying therefor. By reason whereof he
won many hearts of the commons of the city ; but all
was done to beguile the people, as after shall evidently
appear. He rode through divers streets of the city,
and as he came by London Stone, he strake it with
his sword and said, * Now is iMortimer lord of this
city.' And when he had thus showed himself in
divers places of the city, and showed his mind to the
mayor for the ordering of his people, he returned into
Southwark, and there abode as he before had done,
his people coming and going at la'wful hours when
they would. Then upon the mom, being the third
day of July and Friday, the said Captain entered iigaiu
the city, and caused the Lord Saye to be fettc^ from
the Tower, and led into the (iuildhall, where he wiis
arraigned before the mayor and other of the king's
justices. In which pastime he intended to have
brought before the said justices the foresaid Robert
Home ; but his wife an<l friends made to him such
instant labour, that finally, fur five hundred marks, he
' Hovering.
3 Fetched.
i'SOSE WRITERS.
EXGLISH LITERATURE.
EDWARD HAIx
was set at his liberty. Theu the Lord Save, being as
before is said, at Guildhall, desired that he might be
judged by his peers. AVhereof hearing, the Captain
sent a company of his unto the hall, the which per
force took him from his officers, and so brought him
unto the standard in Cheap, where, or^ he were half
shriven, they strake off his head ; and that done,
pight it upon a long pole, and so bare it about with
them.
In this time and season had the Captain caused a
gentleman to be taken, named 'William Crowmer,
which before had b?en sheriff of Kent, and used, as
they said, some extortions. For which cause, or for
he had favoured the Lord Save, by reason that he had
married his daughter, he was hurried to Miles End,
and there, in the Captain's presence, beheaded. And
the same time was theie also beheaded another man,
called Baillie, the cause of whose death was this, as I
have heard some men report. This Baillie was of the
familiar and old acquaintance of Jack Cade, where-
fore, so soon as he espied him coming to him-ward, he
cast in his mind that he would discover his living and
old manners, and show off his vile kin and lineage.
Wherefore, knowing that the said Baillie used to bear
screws,- and prophesy about him, showing to his com-
pany that he was an enchanter and of ill disposition,
and that they should well know by such books as he
bare upon him, and bade them search, and if thej'
found not as he said, that then they should put him
to death, which all was done according to his com-
mandment.
"When they had thus beheaded these two men, they
took the head of Crowmer and pight it upon a pole,
and so entered again the city with the heads of the
Lords Saye and of Crowmer ; and as they passed the
streets, joined the poles together, and caused either
dead mouth to kiss other diverse and many times.
And the Captain the self-same day went unto the
house of Philip ^lalpas, draper and alderman, and
robbed and spoiled his house, and took thence a great
substance ; but he was before warned, and therebj'
conveyed much of his money and plate, or else he had
been undone. At which spoiling were present many
poor men of the city, which at such times been ever
ready in all places to do harm, when such riots been
done.
Then toward night he returned into Southwark, and
upon the mom re-entered the city, and dined that day
at a place in St Margaret PatjTi parish, called Gherstis
House ; and when he had dined, like an uncurteous
guest, robbed him, as the day before he had Malpas.
For which two robberies, albeit that the porail and needy
people drew unto him, and were partners of that ill,
the honest and thrifty commoners cast in their minds
the sequel of this matter, and feared lest they should
be dealt with in like manner, by means whereof he
lost the people's favour and hearts. For it was to be
thought, if he had not executed that robben', he might
have gone fair and brought his purpose to good effect,
if he had intended well ; but it is to deem and pre-
suppose that the intent of him was not good, where-
fore it might not come to any good conclusion. Then
the mayor and aldermen, with assistance of the wor-
shipful commoners, seeing this misdemeanour of the
Captain, in safeguarding of themself and of the city,
took their counsels, how they might drive the Captain
and his adherents from the city, wherein their fear
was the more, for so much as the king and his lords
with their powers were far from them. But yet in
avoiding of apparent peril, they condescended that
they would withstand his any more entry into the
city. For the performance whereof, the mayor sent
unto the Lord Scales and Matthew Gowth, then having
the Tower in guiding, and had of them assent to per-
form the same.
lEre.
8 Serollfl of paper.
Then upon the oth day of Jul>, the Captain being
in Southwark, caused a man to be beheaded, for cause
of dis])lcasure to him done, as the fame went ; and so
he kej)t him in Southwark all that day ; how be it he
might have entered the city if he had wold.
And when night was coming, the mayor and citizens,
with ^latthew Gowth, like to their former apjioint-
nient, kept the passage of the bridge, being Sunday,
and defended the Kentishmen, which made great
force to re-enter the city. Then the Captain, seeing
this bickering begun, yode to harness, and called
his people about him, and set so fiercely upon the
citizens, that he drave them back from the stulpes
in Southwark, or bridge foot, unto the drawVtridge.
Then the Kentishmen set fire upon the drawbridge. In
defending whereof many a man was drowned and
slain, among the which, of men of name was .John
Sutton, alderman, Matthew Gowth, gentleman, and
Roger Heysand, citizen. And thus continued this
skirmish all night, till 9 of the clock upon the morn ;
so that sometime the citizens had the better, anil tlius
soon the Kentishmen were upon the better sitic ; but
ever they kejjt them upon the bridge, so tl.at the
citizens passed never much the bulwark at the bridge
foot, nor the Kentishmen much farther than the draw-
bridge. Thus continuing this cruel fight, to the de-
struction of much people on both sides ; lastly, after
the Kentishmen were put to the worse, a trev,-' wiis
agi-eed for certain hours ' during the which trew, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, 'hen chancellor of F.ngland,
sent a general pardon to the Captain for himself, and
another for his people : by reason whereof he aiid his
company departed the same night out of Southwark,
and so returned every man to his own.
But it was not long after that the Captain with his
company was thus departed, that proclamations were
made in divers places of Kent, of Sussex, and Sow-
therey, that who might take the foresaid .Tack Cade,
either alive or dead, should have a thousand mark for
his travail. After which proclamation thus published,
a gentleman of Kent, named Alexander Iden, awaited
so his time, that he took him in a garden in Sussex,
where in the taking of him the said Jack wa,? slain :
and so being dead, was brought into Soulh^l•ark the
day of the month of September, and then left in the
King's Bench for that night. And upon the morrow
the dead corpse was dra^vn through the high streets of
the city unto Newgate, and there headed and (Hiar-
tered, whose head was then sent to London Bridge,
and his four quarters were sent to four sundry towns
of Kent.
And this done, the king sent his commissions into
Kent, and rode after himself, and caused enquiry to
be made of this riot in Canterbury ; wherefore the
same eight m.en were judged and put to death ; and in
other good tov\'ns of Kent and Susses, divers other
were put in execution for the same riot.
Hall, who was a la^vye^ and a judge in the sherifTs
court of London, and died at an advanced age in
1547, compiled a copious chronicle of Englisli liis-
tor_v during the reigns of the houses of Lancaster
and York, and those of Henry VII. and Henry VIII,
which was first printed by Grafton in 1548, under
tlie title of The Union of the two Noble and Illiislre
Families of Lancastre and Yorhc, with all the Actes done
in both the ti/mes of the Princes both of the one linaye and
the other, &c. Hall is very minute in his notices of
the fashions of the time : altogether, his work is of a
superior character to that of Fabian, as might per-
haps be expected from his better education and condi-
tion in life. Considered .as the oidy compilations of
English liistory at the command of the wits of Eliza-
betli's reign, and as furnisliing tlie foundations of
many scenes and even whole plays by one of the
1 Truce.
57
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1558
most illustrious , f these, the Chronicles have a value
in our ej'es beyond that which properlj- belongs to
tliem. in the following extract, the matter of a re-
markable scene in Kichard 111. is found, and it is
worthy of notice, how well the .prose narration reads
beside the poetical one.
{_Scen€ in the Council-Room of the Protector Gloucester.]
The Lord Protector caused a council to be set at
the Tower, on Friday the thirteen day of June,
where there was much communing for the honourable
solemnity of the coronation, of the which the time
appointed approached so near, that the pageants were
a making day and night at "\^'estminster, and victual
killed, which afterward was cast away.
These lords thus sitting, communing of this matter,
i the Protector came in among them, about nine of the
clock, saluting them courteously, excusing himself that
he had been from them so long, saying men-ily that
he had been a sleeper that day. And after a little
talking with him, he said to the Bishop of Ely, ' My
Lord, you have very good strawberries in your garden
at Holborn ; I require you let us have a mess of them.'
' Gladly, my Lord,' quoth he ; ' I would I had some
better thing, as ready to your pleasure as that ;' and
with that in all haste he sent his servant for a dish
of strawberries. The Protector set the lords fast in
comnmning, and thereupon prayed them to spare him
a little ; and so he departed, and came again between
ten and eleven of the clock in to the chamber, all
changed, with a sour angry countenance, knitting the
brows, frowning and fretting, and gnawing on his
lips ; and so set him down in his place. All the lords
were dismayed, and sore marvelled of this manner
and sudden change, and what thing should him ail.
"When he had sitten a while, thus he began : ' What
were they worthy to have, that compass and imagine
the destruction of me, being so near of blood to the
king, and protector of this his royal realm ?' At which
question, all the lords sat sore astonished, musing
much by whom the question should be meant, of which
every man knew himself clear.
Then the Lord Hastings, as he that, for the fami-
liarity that was between them, thought he might be
boldest with him, answered and said, that they were
worthy to be punished as heinous traitors, whatsoever
they were ; and all the other affirmed the same. ' That
is,' quoth he, ' yonder sorceress, my brother's wife,
and other with her ;' meaning the queen. jNIany of
the lords were sore abashed which favoured her ; but
the Lord Hastings was better content in his mind,
that it was moved by her than by any other that he
loved better ; albeit his heart grudged that he was
not afore made of counsel of this matter, as well as
he was of the taking of her kindred, and of their put-
ting to death, which were by his assent before devised
to be beheaded at Pomfret, this self same day ; in the
•vhich he was not ware, that it was by other devised
that he himself should the same day be beheaded at
London. ' Then,' said the Protector, ' in what wise
that sorceress and other of her counsel, as Shore's wife,
with her affinity, have by their sorcery and witchcraft
thus wa.sted my body !' and therewith plucked up
his doublet sleeve to his elbow, on his left arm, where
he showed a very withered arm, and small, as it was
never other.' And thereupon every man's mind mis-
gave them, well perceiving that this matter was but
a quarrel ; for well they wist that the queen was
both too wise to go about any such follj', and also, if
she would, yet would she of all folk make Shore's wife
least of her counsel, whom of all women she most
hated, as that concubine whom the king, her husband,
most loved.
Also, there was no man there, but knew that his
arm was ever such, eith the day of his birth. Never-
theless, the Lord Hastings, which from the death of
King Edward kept Shore's wife, his heart somewhat
grudged to have her whom he loved so highly ac-
cused, and that as he knew well untruly ; there-
fore he answered and said, * Certainly, my Lord,
if they have so done, they be worthy of heinous
punishment.' ' What !' quoth the Protector, ' thou
servest me, I ween, with if and -n-ith and ; I tell
thee, they have done it, and that will I make good
on thy body, traitor !' And therewith, as in a great
anger, he clapped his fist on the board a great rap,
at which token given, one cried treason without the
chamber, and therewith a door clapped, and in came
rushing men in harness, as many as the chamber could
hold. And anon the Protector said to the Lord
Hastings, ' 1 arrest thee, traitor !' ' What ! me ! my
Lord,' quoth he. ' Yea, the traitor,' quoth the Pro-
tector. And one let fly at the Lord Stanley, which
shrunk at the stroke, and fell under the table, or else
his head had been cleft to the teeth ; for as shortly
as he shrunk, yet ran the blood about his ears. Then
was the Archbishop of York, and Doctor ]Morton,
Bishop of Ely, and the Lord Stanley taken, and divers
others which were bestowed in divers chambers, save
the Lord Hastings, whom the Protector commanded
to speed and shrive him apace. ' For, by Saint Poule,'
quoth he, ' I will not dine till I see thy head off.'
It booted him not to ask why, but heavily he took it,
priest at a venture, and made a short shrift, for a
longer would not be suffered, the Protector made so
much haste to his dinner, which might not go to it
till this murder were done, for saving of his ungra-
cious oath. So was he brought forth into the green,
beside the chapel within the Tower, and his head laid
down on a log of timber, that lay there for building
of the chapel, and there tyrannously stricken off, and
after his body and head were interred at Windsor, by
his master, King Edward the Fourth ; whose souls
Jesu pardon. Amen.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
Passing over Fortescue, the first prose-Avriter who
mingled just and striking thought with his Language,
and was entitled to the appellation of a man of
genius, was unquestionably the celebrated chancellor
of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas Mork (1480-1535).
Born the son of a judge of the King's Bench, and
educated at Oxford, iMore entered life with all ex-
ternal advantages, and soon reached a distinguished
situation in the law and in state employments.
He was appointed Lord Chancellor m 1529, being
the first layman who ever held the oflSce. At all
periods of his life, he was a zealous professor of the
Catholic faith, insomuch that he was at one time
with difficulty restrained from becoming a monk.
When Henry wished to divorce Catherine, he was
opposed by the conscientious More, who accordingly
incurred his displeasure, and perished on the scaffold
The cheerful, or rather mirthful, disposition of the
learned chancellor forsook him not at the last, and
he jested even when about to lay his head upon the
block. The character of More was most benignants
as the letter to his wife, who was ill-tempered,
written after the burning of some of his property,
expressively shows, at the same time that it is a
good specimen of his English prose. The domestic
circle at his house in Chelsea, where the profoundly
learned statesman at once paid reverence to his
parents and sported with his children, has been
made the subject of an interesting picture by the
great artist of that age, Holbein.
The literary productions of IMore are partly in
Latin and partly in English : lie adopted the former
language probably from taste, the latter for the pur-
38
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS MOBE.
pose of reaching the conrKnalty.* Besides some
ecistles and other minor writings, he wrote, in Latin,
^iUjo.f^
v&.
a curious philosophical work under the title of
Utopia, which, describing an imaginary pattern
country and people, has added a word to the Eng-
lish language, every scheme of natioual improve-
* The following is a specimen of Sir Thoraa* More's juvenile
roetrj -
He that hath lafte the hosier's crafte,
And fallth to makyng shone ;
The smyth that shall to painting fall.
His thrift is well nigh done.
A black draper with whyte paper.
To goe to writing scole,
An old butler become a cutler
I wene shall prove a fole.
And an old trot, that can God wot.
Nothing but kyss the cup,
With her physicke will kepe one sicke.
Till she hath soused hym up.
A man of law that never sawe
Tlie wayes to buy and sell
Wenyng to ryse by raerchandyse,
I pray God spede him well !
A merchaunt eke, that will go seke
By all the meanes he may,
To fall in sute tiU he dispute
His money cleane away ;
Pletyng the lawe for every stray
Shall prove a thrifty man,
With bate and strife, but by my life
I cannot tell you wlian.
■^INTian an hatter will smatter
In philosophy.
Or a pedlar waxe a medlar
In theology, &c.
nient founded on theoretical views being since then
termed Utopian. The most of tlie Eiiglisli writings
of ^More are pamphlets on the religious controversies
of his day, and the only one which is now of value
is A History of Edward V., and of his Brotlier, and
of Richard III., which Mr Hallam considers as the
first English prose work free of vulgarisms and
pedantry.
The intention of Sir Thomas More in his Utopia
is to set forth his idea of those social arrangements
whereby the happiness and improvement of the
people may be secured to the utmost extent of which
human nature is susceptible ; though, probably, he
has pictured more than he really conceived it possible
to effect. Experience proves that many of his sug-
gestions are indeed Utopian. In his imaginary island,
for instance, all are contented with the necessaries of
life; all are employed in useful labour; no man de-
sires, in clothing, any other quality besides durabi-
lit}'; and since wants are few, and every individual
engages in labour, there is no need for working more
than six hours a-day. Neither laziness nor avarice
finds a i)lace in tliis happy region ; for why should the
people be indolent when they have so little toil, or
greedj' when tlicy know that there is abundance for
each ? All this, it is evident, is incompatible with
qualities inherent in human nature : man requires
the stimulus of self-interest to render him indus-
trious and persevering ; he loves not utility merely,
but ornament ; he possesses a spirit of emulation
which makes him endeavour to outstrip his fellows,
and a desire to accumulate property even for its
own sake. With much tliat is Utopian, however, tlie
work contains manj- sound suggestions. Thus, in-
stead of severe punishment of theft, the autlior
would improve the morals and condition of tlie
people, so as to take away the temptation to crime ;
for, says he, * if you suffer your people to be ill-
educated, and their manners to be corrupted from
their infancy, and then punish t)iem for those crimes
to which their first education disposed them, what
else is to be concluded from this, but that you first
make thieves, and tlien punish them ?' In Utopia,
we are told, Mar is never entered on but for some
gross injury done to themselves, or, more especially,
to their alhes ; and the glory of a general is in pro-
portion, not to the number, but to the fewness of
the enemies, whom he slays in gaining a victory.
Criminals are generally punished with slavery, even
for the greatest misdeeds, since servitude is no less
terrible than death itself; and, by making slaves oi
malefactors, not only does the public get the benefit
of their labour, but the continual sight of their
misery is more effectual than their de.ath to deter
other men from crime. It is one of the oldest laws of
the Utopians, that no man ought to be punished for
his religion ; ' it being a fundamental opinion among
them, that a man cannot make himself believe any-
thing he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble
their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not
tempted to lie or disguise their opinions among
them ; which, being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by
the Utopians.' Every man may endeavour to con-
vert others to his views by the force of amicable and
modest argument, , without bitterness against those
of other opinions ; but whoever adds reproach and
violence to persuasion, is to be condemned to banish-
ment or slaver}'. Such tolerant views were ex-
tremely rare in the days of Sir Tliomas More, and
in later life were lamentably departed from by him-
self in practice ; for in persecuting the Protestants,
he displayed a degree of intolerance and severity
which were strangely at variance both with the
opinions of his youth and the general mildness of
his disposition.
5S
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
ro l5hV
[Letter to Lady Jfore.]
[Returning from the negotiations at Cambray, Sir Thomas
More heard that his bams and some of those of his neiRhboiirs
had been burnt dowTi ; he consequently -WTote the following
letter to his wife. Its gentleness to a sour-tempered woman,
and the benevolent feelings expressed about the property of his
neighbours, have been much admired.]
Mistress Alice, in my most lieartvTvise I recommend
me to you. And whereas I am informed by my son
Heron of the loss of our barns and our neighbours'
also, with all the corn that was therein ; albeit (sav-
ing God's pleasure) it is great pity of so much good
com lost ; yet since it has liked him to send us such
a chance, we must and are bounden, not only to be
content, but also to be glad of his visitation. He sent
us all that we have lost ; and since he hath by such a
chance taken it awa}' again, his pleasure be fulfilled !
Let us never grudge thereat, but take it in good
worth, and heartily thank him, as well for adversity
as for prosperity. And peradventure we have more
cause to thank him for our loss than for our winning,
for his wisdom better secth what is good for us than
we do ourselves. Therefore, I pray you be of good
cheer, and take all the household with you to church,
and there thank God, both for that he has given us,
and for that he has taken from us, and for that he
hath left us ; which, if it please him, he can increase
when he will, and if it please him to leave us yet less,
at his pleasure be it !
I pray you to make some good onsearch what my
poor neighbours have lost, and bid them take no
thought therefore ; for, if I should not leave mj'self a
spoon, there shall no poor neighbour of mine bear no
loss by my chance, happened in my house. I pray
you be, with my children and your household, merry
in God ; and devise somewhat with your friends what
way were best to take, for provision to be made for
corn for our household, and for seed this year coming,
if we think it good that we keep the ground still in
our hands. And whether we think it good that we
so shall do or not, j'et I think it were not best sud-
denly thus to leave it all up, and to put away our
folk from our farm, till we have somewhat advised us
thereon. Ilowbeit, if we have more now than ye shall
need, and which can get them other masters, ye may
then discharge us of them. But I would not that any
man were suddenly sent away, he wot not whither.
At my coming hither, I perceived none other but
that I should tarry still with the king's grace. But
now I shall, I think, because of this chance, get leave
this next week to come home and see you, and then
shall we ftirther devise together upon all things, what
order shall be best to take.
And thus as heartily fare you well, with all our
children, as ye can wish. At Woodstock, the third
day of September, by the hand of Thomas ;More.
[CJiaracter of Richard ILL.]
[Sir Thomas's account of Richard III. has been followed by
Shakspeare.]
Richard, the third son, of whom we now entreat,
was in wit and courage egal ' with either of them ; in
body and prowess, far under them both ; little of
Btature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left
shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured
of visage. He was malicious, wrathful, envious, and
from afore his birth ever froward. It is for truth
reported, that the duchess his mother had so much
ado in her travail, that she could not be delivered of
tim uncut ; and that he came into the world with the
feet forward, as men be borne outward ; and (as the
fiime runneth) also not untoothed (whether men of
J Equal.
hatred report above the truth, or else that nature
changed her course in his beginning, which, in the
course of his life, many things unnaturally com-
mitted.)
None evil captain was he in the war, as to which
his disposition was more meetly than for peace.
Sundry victories had he, and sometime overthrows,
but never in default for his own person, either of
hardiness or politic order. Free was he called of dis-
pense, and somewhat above his power liberal. With
large gifts he get him unstcadfast friendship, for
which he was fain to pil and spoil in other places, and
get him stedfast hatred. He was close and secret ;
a deep dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of
heart ; outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly
hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill ;
dispitious and cruel, not for evil will alway, but
oftener for ambition, and either for the surety and
increase of his estate. Friend and foe was indiffer-
ent, where his advantage grew; he spared no man's
death whose life withstood his purpose. He slew with
his own hands king Henry VL, being prisoner in the
Tower.
[Tlie Utopian Ldea of Pleasure.']
(From Bishop Burnet's translation of the Utopia.)
They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a
man to pursue his own advantages as far as the laws
allow it. They account it piety to prefer the public
good to one's private concerns. But they think it
unjust for a man to seek for his own pleasure, by
snatching another man's pleasures from him. And,
on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and
good soul, for a man to dispense with his own advan-
tage for the good of others ; and that, by so doing, a
good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts
with another ; for, as he may expect the like from
others when he may come to need it, so, if that should
fail him, yd the sense of a good action, and the re-
flections that one makes on the love and gratitude of
those whom he has so obliged, gives the mind more
pleasure than the body could have found in that from
which it had restrained itself. They are also per-
suaded that God will make up the loss of those small
pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which reli-
gion does easily convince <a good soul. Thus, upon an
inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all
our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in
pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness ;
and they call every motion or state, either of body or
mind, in which nature teaches us to delight, a plea-
sure. And thus they cautiously limit pleasure only
to those appetites to which nature leads us ; for they
reckon that nature leads us only to those delights to
which reason as well as sense carries us, and by which
we neither injure any other person, nor let go greater
pleasures for it, and which do not draw troubles on us
after them ; but they look upon those delights which •
men, by a foolish though common mistake, call plea-
sure, as if they could change the nature of things, as
well as the use of words, as things that not only do
not advance our happiness, but do rather obstruct it
very much, because they do so entirely possess the
minds of those that once go into them with a false
notion of pleasure, that there is no room left for truer
and j)urer pleasures.
There are many things that in themselves have
nothing that is truly delighting : on the contrary,
they have a good deal of bitterness in them ; and yet
by our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are
not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made
even tlie greatest designs of life. Among those who
pursue these sophisticated pleasures, they reckon those
whom I mentioned before, who think themselves
GO
PEOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS MORB,
really the better for haying fine clothes, in which they
think they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion
that they have of their clothes, and in the opinion
that they have of themselves ; for if you consider the
use of clothes, why should a fine thread be thought
better than a coarse one ? And yet that sort of men,
as if they had some real advantages beyond others,
and did not owe it wholly to their mistakes, look big,
and seem to fancy themselves to be the more valuable
on that account, and imagine that a respect is due to
them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they
would not have pretended if they had been more
meanly clothed ; and they resent it as an affront, if
that respect is not paid them. It is also a great folly
to be taken with these outward marks of respect,
which signify nothing ; for what true or real pleasure
can one find in this, that another man stands bare, or
makes legs to him 2 Will the bending another man's
thighs give you any ease ? And will his head's being
bare cure the madness of yours ] And yet it is vi-on-
deiful to see how this false notion of pleasure bewitches
many, who delight themselves with the fancy of their
nobility, and are pleased with this conceit, that they
are descended from ancestors who have been held for
some successions rich, and that they have had gi-eat
possessions ; for this is all that makes nobility at
present ; yet they do not think themselves a whit the
less noble, though their immediate parents have left
none of this wealth to them ; or though they them-
selves have squandered it all away. The Utopians
have no better opinion of those who are much taken
with gems .ind precious stones, and who account it a
degree of happiness next to a divine one, if they can
purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if
it be of that sort of stones that is then in greatest re-
quest ; for the same sort is not at all times of the
same value with all sorts of people ; nor will men buy
it, unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold.
And then the jeweller is made to give good security,
and required solemnly to swear that the stone is true,
that by such an exact caution, a false one may not be
bought instead of a true ; whereas if you were to
examine it, your eye could find po diflference between
that which is counterfeit and that which is true ; so
that they are all one to you, as nmch as if j^ou were
blind. And can it be thought that they who heap up
an useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is
to bring them, but merely to please themselves with
the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it I
The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy.
Those are no better whose error is somewhat difl^ereut
from the fonner, and who hide it, out of the fear of
losing it ; for what other name can fit the hiding it in
the earth, or rather the restoring it to it again, it
being thus cut off from being useful, either to its
owner or to the rest of mankind ? And yet the o^vner
having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he
is now sure of it. And in case one should come to
steal it, the owner, though he might live j)erhaps ten
years after that, would all that while after the theft,
of which he knew nothing, find no difference between
his having it or losing it, for both ways it was equally
useless to him.
Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure, they
reckon all those that delight in hunting, or birding
or gaming : of whose madness they have only heard,
for they have no such things among them. * *
Thus though the rabble of mankind looks upon
these, and all other things of this kind which are in-
deed innumerable, as pleasures ; the Utopians, on the
contrarj', observing that there is nothing in the nature
of them that is truly pleasant, conclude that they are
not to be reckoned among pleasures. For though these
things may create some tickling in the senses (wliich
seems to be a true notion of pleasure), yet they reckon
that this does not arise from the thing itself, but
from a depraved custom, which may so vitiate a man's
taste, that bitter things may pass for sweet ; as preg-
nant women think pitch or tallow tastes sweeter than
honey ; but as a man's sense when corrupted, either
by a disease or some ill habit, does not change the
nature of other things, so neither can it change the
nature of pleasure.
They reckon up several sorts of these pleasures,
which they call true ones ; some belong to the body,
and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind
lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the con-
templation of truth carries with it ; to which they
add the joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the
assured hopes of a future happiness. They divide the
pleasures of the body into two sorts ; the one is that
which gives our senses some real delight, and is per-
formed, either by the recruiting of nature, and sup-
plying those parts on which the internal heat of life
feeds ; and that is done by eating or drinking : Or
when nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses
it. There is another kind of this sort of pleasure, that
neither gives us anything that our bodies require,
nor frees us from anything with which we are over-
charged ; and yet it excites our senses by a secret
unseen virtue, and by a generous impression, it so
tickles and affects them, that it turns them inwardly
upon themselves ; and this is the pleasure begot by
music.
Another sort of bodily pleasure is, that which con-
sists in a quiet and good constitution of body, by
which there is an entire healthiness spread over all
the parts of the body not allayed with any disease.
This, when it is free from all mixture of pain, gives
an inward pleasure of itself, even though it should not
be excited by any external and delighting object ; and
although this pleasure does not so vigorously affect
the sense, nor act so strongly upon it, yet, as it is the
greatest of all pleasures, so almost all the Utopians
reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other
joys of life ; since this alone makes one's state of life
to be easy and desirable ; and when this is wanting,
a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They
look upon indolence and freedom from pain, if it does
not rise from a perfect health, to be a state of stupi-
dity rather than of pleasure. There has been a con-
troversy in this matter very narrowly canyassed among
them ; whether a firm and entire health could be
called a pleasure or not ? Some have thought that
there was no pleasure but that which was excited by
some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion
has been long ago run down among them, so that now
they do almost all agree in this. That health is the
greatest of all bodily pleasures ; and that, as there is
a pain in sickness, which is as opposite in its nature to
pleasure, as sickness itself is to health, so they hold
that health carries a pleasure along with it. And if
any should say that sickness is not really a pain, but
that it only carries a pain along with, they look upon
that as a fetch of subtility that does not' much alter
the matter. So they think it is all one, whether it be
said, that health is in itself a pleasure, or that it be-
gets a pleasure, as fire gives heat ; so it be granted,
that all those whose health is entire have a true plea-
sure in it : and they reason thus. What is the plea-
sure of eating, but that a man's health which had been
weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away
hunger, and so recruiting itself, recovers its former
vigour ? And being thus refreshed, it finds a pleasure
in that conflict. And if the conflict is pleasure, the
victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we
will fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has
obtained that whicli it pursued, and so does neither
know nor rejoice in its own welfare. If it is said that
health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny that ; for
what man is in health that does not perceive it when
he is awake ? I9 there any man that is so dull and
61
J
FROM 1400
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1558
stupid, as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight
in health ? And what is delight but another name
for pleasure ?
But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be the
most valuable that lie in the mind ; and the chief of
these are those that arise out of true virtue, and the
■witness of a good conscience. They account health
the chief pleasure that belongs to the body ; for they
think that the pleasure of eating and drinking, and
all the other delights of the body, are only so far de-
sirable as they give or maintain health. But they
are not pleasant in themselves, otherwise than as they
resist those impressions that our natural infirmity is
still making upon us ; and, as a wise man desires
rather to avoid diseases than to take physic, and to
be freed from pain rather than to find ease by reme-
dies, so it were a more desirable state not to need this
sort of pleasure, than to be obliged to indulge it. And
if any man imagines that there is a real happiness in
this pleasure, he must then confess that he would be
the happiest of all men, if he were to lead his life in
a perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and by conse-
quence in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching
himself, which, any one may easily see, would be not
only a base but a miserable state of life. These are,
indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and the least pure ;
for we can never relish them but when they are mixed
with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must
give us the pleasure of eating ; and here the pain out-
balances the pleasure ; and, as the pain is more vehe-
ment, so it lasts much longer ; for, as it is upon us
before the pleasure comes, so it does not cease, but
with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and that goes
off' with it ; so that they think none of those pleasures
are to be valued, but as they are necessary. Yet they
rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge
the tenderness of the great author of nature, who has
planted in us appetites, by which those things that
are necessary for our preservation are likewise made
pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life
be, if those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to
be carried off" by such bitter drugs, as we must use for
those diseases that return seldomer upon us ! And
thus these pleasant, as well as proper gifts of nature,
do maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our
bodies.
They do also entertain themselves with the other
delights that they let in at their eyes, their ears, and
their nostrils, as the pleasant relishes and seasonings
of life, which nature seems to have marked out pecu-
liarly for man ; since no other sort of animals con-
templates the figure and beauty of the universe, nor
is delighted with smells, but as they distinguish meats
by them ; nor do they apprehend the concords or dis-
cords of sounds ; yet in all pleasures whatsoever, they
observe this temper, that a lesser joy may not hinder
a greater, and that pleasure may never breed pain,
which they think does always follow dishonest plea-
sures. But they think it a madness for a man to wear
out the beauty of his face, or the force of his natural
strength, and to corrupt the sprightliness of his body
by sloth and laziness, or to waste his body by fasting,
and so to weaken the strength of his constitution, and
reject the other delights of life ; unless, by renouncing
his own satisfaction, he can either serve the public, or
promote the happiness of others, for which he expects
a greater recompense from God ; so that they look on
such a course of life, as a mark of a mind that is both
cruel to itself, and ingrateful to the author of nature,
as if we would not be beholden to him for his favours,
and therefore would reject all his blessings, and should
afflict hii:i;elf for the empty shadow of virtue ; or for
BO better end than to render himself capable to bear
' aose misfortunes which possibly will never happen.
Contemporary with Sir Thomas More, though
infinitely beneath him in intellect, was Alexander
Barclay, a clergyman of England, but supposed to
have been a native of Scotland. Besides a curious
work in prose and verse, entitled. The Ship of Fooles,
(1509), in which is described a great variety of
human absurdities, he translated many Latin and
otlier books, including Sallust's History of the Jugur-
thine war, which was among the earliest English
versions of classical authors produced in England.
john fischer.
Fischer, Bishop of Eochester, (1459-1535),
was chiefly distinguished in his lifetime by pamph-
lets in Latin against the Lutheran doctrines : these
have long been in oblivion, but his name still calls
for a place in our literary history, as one of the
fathers of English prose. He was a steadfast ad-
lierent of the church of Rome, and his name is tar-
nished with some severities to the reforming party ;
but -we hare the testimony of Erasmus, confirmed
by the acts of his life, that he possessed many of the
best points of human character. He steadily refused
translation to a more valuable bishopric, and he
finally laid doAvn his life, along with Sir Thomas
More, in a conscientious adherence to the principle
of the validity of the nuptials of Queen Catherine.
While in the Tower on account of that assumed
oflfence, the pope acknowledged his worth and con-
sistency by the gift of a cardinal's hat ; which drew
from Henry the brutal remark, ' Well^ let the pope
send him a hat when he will ; mother of God ! he
shall wear it on his shoulders then, for I will leave
him never a head to set it on !' The English writ-
ings of Bishop Fischer consist of sermons and a
few small tracts on pious subjects, printed in one
volume at "Wurzburg in 1595. One of the sermons
was a funeral one, preached in 1509, in honour of the
Countess of Eichmond (mother of Henry VII.),
whose chaplam he had been. In it he presents a
remarkable portraiture of a pious lady of rank of that
age, with a curious detail of the habits then thought
essential to a religious gentlewoman.
[Character and ffabUs of the Cowiitess of Rvchmmd.']
[In allusion to Martha, the subject of the text,]
First, 1 say, the comparison of them two may be made
in four things ; in nobleness of person ; in "discipline
of their bodies ; in ordering of their souls to God ; in
hospitalities keeping and charitable dealing to their
neighbours. In which four, the noble woman Martha
(as say the doctors, entreating this gospel and her life)
was singularly to be commended and praised ; where-
fore let us consider likewise, wliether in this noble
countess may any thing like be found.
First, the blessed ]\Iartha was a woman of noble
blood, to whom by inheritance belonged the castle of
Bethany ; and this nobleness of blood they have which
descended of noble lineage. Beside this, there is a
nobleness of manners, withouten which the nobleness
of blood is much defiiced ; for as Boethius saith. If
ought be good in the nobleness of blood, it is for that
thereby the noble men and women should be ashamed
to go out of kind, from the virtuous manners of their
ancestry before. Yet also there is another nobleness
which ariseth in every person, by the goodness of
nature, whereby full often such as come of right poor
and unnoble father and mother, have gi-eat abilities
of nature to noble deeds. Above all the same there
is a four manner of nobleness, which may be called
an cncreased nobleness ; as, by marriage and affinity
of more noble persons, such as were of less condition
may increase in higher degree of nobleness.
In every of these I suppose this countess was noble.
62
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN FISCHER.
First, she came of noble blood, lineally descending
of King Edward III. within the four degree of the
same. Her father was John, Duke of Somerset ; her
mother was called Margaret, right noble as well in
manners as in blood, to whom she was a very daughter
in all noble manners : for she was bounteous and
liberal to every person of her knowledge or acquaint-
ance. Avarice and covetyse she most hated, and sor-
rowed it full much in all persons, but specially in any
that belonged unto her. She was also of singular
easiness to be spoken unto, and full courteous answer
she would make to all that came unto her. Of mar-
vellous gentleness she was unto all folks, but specially
unto her own, whom she trusted and loved right ten-
derly. Unkind she would not be unto no creature, ne
forgetful of any kindness or service done to her before ;
which is no little part of very nobleness. She was not
vengeable ne cruel, but ready anon to forget and to
forgive injuries done unto her, at the least desire or
motion made unto her for the same. Merciful also
and piteous she was unto such as was grieved and
wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in poverty
or sickness, or any other misery.
To God and to the church full obedient and tract-
able, searching his honour and pleasure full busily. A
wareness of herself she had alway to eschew every
thing that might dishonest any noblewoman, or dis-
tain her honour in any condition. Frivolous things
that were little to be regarded, she would let pass by,
but the other that were of weight and substance,
wherein she might profit, she would not let,l for any
pain or labour, to take upon hand. These and many
other such noble conditions, left unto her by her an-
cestors, she kept and increased therein with a great
diligence.
The third nobleness also she wanted not, which I
said was the nobleness of nature. She had in a man-
ner all that was praisable in a woman, either in soul
or body. J'irst, she was of singular wisdom, far pass-
ing the common rate of women. She was good in re-
membrance and of holding memory ; a ready wit she
had also to conceive all things, albeit they were right
dark. Right studious she was in books, which she
had in great number, both in P^nglish and in French ;
and for her exercise and for the profit of others, she
did translate divers matters of devotion, out of the
French into English. Full often she complained that
in her youth she had not given her to the under-
standing of Latin, wherein she had a little perceiving,
specially of the Hubryske of the Chxlinal, for the say-
ing of her seiTice, which she did well understand.
Hereunto in favour, in words, in gesture, in every
demeanour of herself, so great nobleness did appear,
that what she spake or did, it marvellously became
her.
The four noblejiess, which we named a nobleness
gotten or increased, she had also. For albeit she of
her lineage were right noble, yet nevertheless by
marriage adjoining of other blood, it took some en-
creasement. For in her tender age, she being endued
with so great towardness of nature and likelihood of
inheritance, many sued to have had her to marriage.
The Duke of Suffolk, which then was a man of great
experience, most diligently procured to have had her
for his son and heir. Of the contrary part. King
Henry VL did make means for Edmund his brother,
then the Earl of Richmond. She, which as then was
not fully nine years old, doubtful in her mind what
she were best to do, asked counsel of an old gentle-
woman, whom she much loved and trusted, which did
advise her to commend herself to St Nicholas, the
patron and helper of all true maidens, and to beseech
him to put in her mind what she were best to do !
This counsel she followed, and made her prayer so
full often, but specially that night, when she should
1 Kefrain.
the morrow after make answer of her mind detenni-
nately. A marvellous thing ! — the same niglit, as I
have heard her tell many a time, as she lay in j)raycr,
calling upon St Nicholas, whether sleeping or waking
she could not assure, but about four of the clfck in
the morning, one appeared unto her, an-ayed Ake a
bishop, ami naming unto her Edmund, "bade take
him unto her husband. And so by this means she
did incline her mind unto Edmund, the king's brother,
and Earl of Richmond, by whom she was made mother
of the king that dead is (whose soul God pardon),
and grand-dame to our sovereign lord King Henr/
VIIL, which now, by the grace of God, govemeth thp
realm. So what Ijy lineage, what by affinity, she had
thirty kings and queens within the four degree of
marriage unto her, besides earls, marquisses, dukes,
and princes. And thus much we have spoken of her
nobleness. * *
Her sober temperance in meats and drinks was
known to all them that were converflant with her,
wherein she lay in as great weight of herself as any
person might, keeping alway her strait measure, and
offending as little as any creature might : eschewing
banquets, rere-suppers,i juiceries betwixt meals. As
for fasting, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not
bound, yet those days that by the church were ap-
pointed, she kept them diligently and seriously, and
in especial the holy Lent throughout, that she re-
strained her appetite, till one meal of fish on the day;
besides her other peculiar fasts of devotion, as St
Anthony, St jMaiy Magdalene, St Catharine, with
other ; and theroweout all the year, the Friday and
Saturday she full truly observed. As to hard clothes
wearing, she had her shirts and girdles of ^air, which,
when she was in health, every week she failed not
certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime
the other, that full often her skin, as I heard her say,
was pierced therewith. * *
In prayer, every day at her uprising, which com-
monly was not long after five of the clock, she began
certain devotions, and so after them, with one of her
gentlewomen, the matins of our lady, which kept her
to- — then she came into her closet, where then with
her chaplain, she said also matins of the day ; and
after that daily heard four or five masses upon her
knees ; so continuing in her prayers and devotions
unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day, was
ten of the clock, and upon the fasting day eleven.
After dinner full truly she would go her stations to
three altars daily ; daily her dirges and commenda-
tions she would say, and her even songs before supper,
both of the day and of our lady, beside many other
prayers and psalters of David throughout the year ;
and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to
resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an
hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all
this lonj; time her kneeling was to her painful, and
so painful that many times it caused in her back pain
and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily when she
was in health, she failed not to say the crown of our
lady, which after the manner of Rome, containeth
sixty and three aves, and at every ave, to make .a
kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books
in French, wherewith slie would occupy herself when
she was weary of prayer, ^^'he^efore divers she did
translate out of the French into English. Her mar-
vellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here
before have heard her confession, which be divers and
many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every
third day. Can also record the same tho that were
present at any time when she was houshilde,^ which
' Second suppers. AVlien supper took place at four or firo
o'clock, it was not uncommon, on festive occasions, to have \
second served up at a later hour.
2 There is an omission here.
3 Received the sacrament of the Lord's supper.
63
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1558.
was full nigh a dozen times every year, what floods of
tears there issued forth of her eyes 1
SIR THOMAS ELTOT.
Sir Thomas Eltot, an eminent physician of the
reign of Henry YIII., by whom he was employed
in several embassies, was the author of a popular
professional work, entitled The Castle of Health, in
which many sound precepts are delivered with re-
spect to diet and regimen. Of his other productions,
it is unnecessary to mention any but that entitled
The Governor, devoted chiefly to the subject of edu-
cation. He recommends, as Montaigne and Locke
have subsequently done, that children be taught
to speak Latin from their infancy ; and he depre-
cates * cruel and yrous i schoolmasters, by Avhom
the wits of children be dulled, whereof we need no
better author to witness than daily experience.'
Mr Hallam observes, in reference to tliis passage,
that ' all testimonies concur to this savage ill-treat-
ment of boys in the schools of tliis period. The
fierceness of the Tudor government, the religious
intolerance, the polemical brutality, tlie rigorous
justice, when justice it was, of our laws, seem to
have engendered a hardness of character, which
displayed itself in severity of discipline, when it did
not even reach tlie point of arbitrary or malignant
cruelty.'* Sir Thomas Elyot lived on terms of in-
timacy with Leland, the antiquary, and Sir Thomas
More. He died in 1546.
The following passage in The Castle of Ileahh in-
dicates the great attention which was paid to the
strengthening of the body by exercise, before the
use of fire-arms had become universal in war : —
[Different Kinds of Exercise.]
The quality of exercise is the diversity thereof, for
as much as therein be many differences in moving,
and also some exercise moveth more one part of the
body, some another. In difference of moving, some
is slow or soft, some is swift or fast, some is strong or
violent, some be mixed with strength and swiftness.
Strong or violent exercises be these ; delving (spe-
cially in tough clay and heavy), bearing or sustaining
of heavy burdens, climbing or walking against a steep
upright hill, holding a rope and climbing up thereby,
hanging by the hands on any thing above a man's
reach, that his feet touch not the ground, standing
and holding up or spreading the arms, with the hands
fast closed, and abiding so a long time. Also to hold
the arms stedfast, causing another man to essay to
pull them out, and notwithstanding he keepeth his
arm stedfast, enforcing thereunto the sinews and mus-
cles. Wrestling also with the arms and legs, if the
persons be equal in strength, it doth exercise the one
and the other ; if the one be stronger, then is [it] to
the weaker a more violent exercise. All these kinds
of exercises and other like them do augment strength,
and therefore they serve only for young men which
be inclined or be apt to the wars. Swift exercise
without violence is running, playing with weapons,
tennis or throwing of the ball, trotting a space of
ground forward and backward, going on the toes and
holding up the hands ; also, stining up and down his
arms without plummets. Vehement exercise is com-
pound of violent exercise and swift, when they are
joined together at one time, as dancing or galiards,
throwing of the ball and running after it ; foot-ball
play may be in the number tliereof, throwing of the
long dart and continuing it many times, running in
' Irascible.
* Introduction to the Literature of the Fifteenth, Siitcenth,
and Seventeenth Centuries, i. 554.
harness, and other like. The moderate exercise ifc
long walking or going a journey. The parts of the
body have sundry exercises appropried unto them ;
as running and going is the most proper for the legs ;
moving of the anus up and down, or stretching them
out and playing with weapons, serveth most for the
arms and shoulders ; stooping and rising often times,
or lifting great weights, taking up plummets or other
like poises on the ends of staves, and in likewise lift-
ing up in every hand a spear or morrispike by the ends,
specially crossing the hands, and to lay them down
again in their places ; these do exercise the back anc
loins. Of the bulk [chest] and lungs, the proper exer
cise is moving of the breath in singing or crying. The
entrails, which be underneath the midriff, be exercised
by blowing either by constraint or playing on shalms
or sackbuts, or other like instruments which do re-
quire much wind. The muscles are best exercised
with holding of the breath in a long time, so that he
which doth exercise hath well digested his meat, and
is not troubled with much wind in his body. Finally,
loud reading, counterfeit battle, tennis or throwing
the ball, running, walking, adde[d] to shooting,
which, in mine opinion, exceeds all the other, do ex-
ercise the body commodiously. Alwaj- remember that
the end of violent exercise is difBculty in fetching of
the breath ; of moderate exercise alteration of breath
only, or the beginning of sweat, iloreover, in winter,
running and wrestling is convenient ; in summer,
wrestling a little, but not nmning ; in very cold wea-
ther, much walking ; in hot weather rest is more ex-
pedient. They which seem to have moist bodies, and
live in idleness, they have need of violent exercise.
They which are lean and choleric must walk softl)-,
and exercise themself very temperately. The plum-
mets, called of Galen altercs, which are now much
used with great men, being of equal weight and ac-
cording to the strength of him that exerciseth, are
very good to be used.
HUGH LATIMER.
At this period Hugh Latimer distinguished him-
self as a zealous reformer, not less than Sir Thomas
More did on the opposite side. He was educated
in the Eomish faith, but afterwards becoming ac-
quainted with Thomas BOnej', a celebrated defender
of the doctrines of Luther, he saw reason to alter
liis opinions, and boldly maintained in the pulpit the
views of the Protestant party. His jireaching at
Cambridge gave great offence to tlie Catholic clergy,
at whose instigation Cardinal "Wolsey instituted a
court of bishops and deacons to execute the laws
against heretics. Before this court Bilney and
Latimer were simimoncd, when the recantation of
the former, who was considered the princip;d man,
caused both to be set at liberty. Bilney afterwards
disclaimed his abjuration, and was burnt lliis,
however, nowise abated the boldness of Latimer,
who continued to preach openly, and even write a
letter to Henry VIIL, remonstrating against the
prohibition of the use of the Bible in Englisli. This,
although it failed to produce the desired result,
seems to have given no offence to Henry, who sooa
afterwards presented Latimer to a living in Wilt-
sliire, and in 1535 appointed liim bishop of Worcester.
After the fall of Anne Boleyn, the passing in par-
liament of the six articles estabhshiug the doctrines
of popery, induced him to resign liis bishopric.
During the latter part of Henry's reign, he suffered
imprisonment ; but being liberated after the acces-
sion of Edward VI., lie became popular at court as
a preacher, but never could be prevailed on to re-
sume his episcopal functions. In Mary's reign,
when measures were taken for the restoration of
64
FAOSE wniTEKS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
HCGIT LATIMER.
popery, Latimer was summoned before the council,
and, though allowed an opportunity of escape,
readily obeyed the citation, exclaiming, as he passed
through Smithfield, ' This place has long groaned
for me.' After a tedious imprisonment, he persisted
in refusing to subscribe certain articles -which Avere
submitted to him, and suffered at the stake in 1555,
exclaiming to liis fellow-martyr. Bishop Ridley,
' Be of good comfort, Doctor Ridley, and play the
man : we shall this day light such a candle, by
God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be
put out.' His sermons, a collection of which was
published in 1570, are remarkable for a familiarity
and drollery of style, which, though it would now
be reckoned very singular in tlie pulpit, was highly
popular in his own time, and produced a wonderful
impression on his hearers. Cranmer and lie were
instrumental in effecting a great improvement in
the quality of clerical discourses, by substituting
topics connected with moral duties for what was then
the common subject-matter of sermons; namely,
incredible and often ridiculous legendary tales of
saints and martyrs, and accounts of miracles wrought
for the confirmation of doctrines of the Catholic
church. The following extracts from Latimer's
sermons will give au idea of his style and peculiar
manner : —
{A Yeoman of Hairy YIPs time.']
My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his
own, only he had a farm of £'i or £-1 by year at the
uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept
half a dozen men. He had walk for au hundred sheep,
and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able,
and did find the king a harness, with himself and liis
horse, while he came to the place that he should
receive the kng's wages. I can remember that I
buckled his harness when he went to Blackheath field.
He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to
have preached before the king's majesty now. He
married my sisters with £5 or "20 nobles a-piece, so
that he brought them up in godliness and fear of
God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours.
And some alms he gave to the poor, and all this did
he of the said farm. Where he that now hath it,
payeth £16 by the year, or more, and is not able to
do any thing for his prince, for himself, nor for his
children, or give a cup of drink to the poor.
In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach
me to shoot, as to learn me any other thing, and so I
think other men did their children : he taught me
how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not
to draw with strength of arms as divers other nations
do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows
I bought me according to my age and strength ; as I
increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and
bigger, for men shall never shoot well, except they be
brought up in it : it is a worthy game, a wholesome
kind of exercise, and much commended in physic.
[Hasty Judgment.']
Here I have occasion to tell you a story which hap-
pened at Cambridge, blaster JMlney, or rather Saint
Bilney, that suti'ered death for God's word's sake, the
same Bilney was the instniment whereby God called
rae to knowledge, for I may thank him, next to God,
for that knowledge that I have in the word of God.
For I was as obstinate a papist as any was in England,
insomuch that, when I should be made Bachelor of
Divinity, my whole oration went against Philip Me-
lancthon and against his opinions. Bilney heard me
at that time, and perceived that I was zealous without
knowledge ; he canwj to me afterward in my study.
and desired me for God's sake to hear his confession ;
I did so ; and, to say tlie very truth, by his confession
I learned more than before in many years ; so from
that time forward I began to smell the word of God,
and forsook the school-doctors and such fooleries.
Now after I had been acquainted witli him, 1 went
with him to visit the prisoners in the towei at Cam-
bridge, for he was ever visiting prisoners and sick fidk.
So we went together, and exhorted them as well as we
were able to do ; minding them to patience, and to
acknowledge their faults. Among other prisoners,
there was a woman which was accused that she had
killed her child, which act she plainly and steadfastly
denied, and could not be brought to confess the act ;
which denying gave us occasion to search for the mat-
ter, and so we did ; and at length we found that hel
husband loved her not, and therefore he sought means
to make her out of the way. The matter was thus : —
A child of hers had been sick by the space of a year,
and so decayed, as it were, in a consumption. At
length it died in harvest time ; she went to her neigh-
bours and other friends to desii'e their help to prepare
the child for burial ; but there was nobody at home,
every man was in the field. The woman, in a heavi-
ness and trouble of sjiirit, went, and being herself
alone, prepared the child for burial. Her husband
coming home, not having great love towards her, ac-
cused her of the murder, and so she was taken and
brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I could
learn, through earnest inquisition, I thought in my
conscience the woman was not guilty, all the circum-
stances well considered.
Immediately after this, I was called to preach before
the king, which was my first sermon that I made be-
fore his majesty, and it was done at Windsor ; where
his majesty, after the sermon was done, did most fami-
liarly talk with me in a gallery. Now, when I saw
my time, I kneeled do^Ti before his majesty, opening
the whole matter, and afterwards most humbly desired
his majesty to pardon that woman. For I thought in
my conscience she w,as not guilty, or else I would not
for all the world sue for a murderer. The king most
graciously heard my humble request, insomuch that
I had a pardon ready for her at my returning home-
ward. In the mean season, that woman was delivered
of a child in the tower of Cambridge, whose godfather
I was, and Mistress Cheek was godmother. But all
that time I hid my pardon, and told her nothing of
it, only exhorting her to confess the truth. At length
the time came when she looked to sutler ; I came as
I was wont to do, to instruct her ; she made gi-eat
moan to me. So we travailed with this woman till
we brought her to a good opinion ; and at length
showed her the king's pardon, and let her go.
This tale I told j-ou by this occasion, that though
some women be very unnatural, and forget their chil-
dren, yet when we hear any body so report, we should
not be too hasty in believing the tale, but rather sus-
pend our judgments till we know the truth.
[Cause and Effect.]
Here now I remember an argument of Master
More's, which he bringeth in a book that lie made
against Bilney, and here, by the way, I will tell you
a merry toy. Master JNI-ore was once sent in commis-
sion into Kent, to help to try out, if it might be,
what was the cause of Goodwin sands and the shelf
that stopped up Sandwich haven. Thither conieth
Master More, and calleth the country before liini,
such as were thought to be men of experience, and
men that could of likelihood best certify him of that
matter concerning the stoi)ping of Sandwicli haven.
Among others came in before him an old man with a
white head, and one tliat was thought to be little less
than a hundred years old. When blaster ilorc saw
FHOM 1400.
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1.558.
this aged iii.-.n, he thou,;:lit it expedient to hear him
say his mind in this matter, for, being so old a man,
it was likely that he knew most of any man in that
presence and company. So :^[aster ^More called this
old aged man unto him, and said, father, tell me, if
ye can, what is the cause of this great rising of the
sands and shelves here about this haven, the which
stop it up, so that no ships can arrive here ? Ye are
the eldest man that I can espy in all this company,
so that if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of like-
lihood can say most of it, or, at leastwise, more than
any man here assembled. Yea, forsooth, good master,
quoth this old man, for I am well nigh a hundred
Tcai-s old, and no man here in this company anything
near unto my age. "Well, then, quoth Master ilore,
how say you in this matter ? What think ye to be
the cause of these shelves and flats that stop up Sand-
wich haven ? Forsooth, Sir, quoth he, I am an old
man ; I think that Tenderden-steeple is the cause of
Goodwin sands ; for I am an old man. Sir, quoth he,
and I may remember the building of Tenderden-
steeple, and I may remember when there was no
steeple at all there. And before that Tenderden-
steeple was in building, there was no manner of speak-
ing of any flats or sands that stopped the haven, and
therefore I think that Tenderden-steeple is the cause
of the destroying and decay of Sandwich haven. And
so to my purpose, preaching of God's word is the
cause of rebellion, as Tenderden-steeple was the cause
that Sandwich haven is decayed.
[Tlie Shepha-ds of Bethlehem.]
I pray you to whom was the nativity of Christ first
opened 1 To the bishops or great lords which were at
that time at Bethlehem ? Ortothose jolly damsels with
their fardingales, with their round-abouts, or with their
bracelets 1 No, no, they had too many lets to trim
and dress themselves, so that they could have no time
to hear of the nativity of Christ ; their minds were so
occupied otherwise, that they were not allowed to hear
of him. But his nativity was revealed first to the
shepherds, and it was revealed unto them in the night-
time, ivhen every bod)' was at rest ; then they heard
this joyful tidings of the saviour of the world ; for
these shepherds were keeping their sheep in the night
season from the wolf and other beasts, and from the
fox ; for the sheep in that country do lamb two times
in the year, and therefore it was needful for the sheep
to have a shepherd to keep them. And here note the
diligence of these shepherds ; for whether the sheep
were theixown,orwhether they were servants, I cannot
tell, for It is not expressed in the book ; but it is most
like they were servants, and their masters had put
theni in trust to keep their sheep. Now, if these shep-
herds had been deceitful fellows, that when their
masters had put them in trust to keep their sheep,
they had been drinking in the alehouse all night, as
some of our servants do now-a-days, surely the ano-el
had not appeared unto them to have told them this
great joy and good tidings. And here all servants
may learn by these snepherds, to serve truly and dili-
gently unto their masters ; in what business soever
they are set to do, let them be painful and diligent,
like as Jacob was unto his master Laban. O what a
painful, faithful, and trusty man was he ! lie was
day and night at Iiis work, keejjing his sheep truly,
aa he was put in trust to do ; and when any chance
happened that any thing was lost, he made it good
and restored it again of his own. So likewise was
Eleazarus a painful man, a faithful and trusty ser-
vant. Such a serrant was .Joseph in Kgj'pt to his
master Potiphar. So likewise was Daniel unto his
master the king. But I pray you where are these ser-
vants now-a-days ? Indeed, I fear me there be but
Teiy *sw of such faithful sen'ants.
Now these .shepherds, I say, they watch the wliolc
night, they attend, upon their vocation, they do ac-
cording to their calling, they keep their sheep, they
run not hither and thither, spending the time in vain,
and neglecting their office and calling. No, they did
not so. Here bj' these sheplierds men may learn to
attend upon their oflices, and callings : I would wish
that clergymen, the curates, parsons, and vicars, the
bishops and all other spiritual persons, would learn
this lesson by these poor shepherds ; which is this,
to abide by their flocks, and by their sheep, to tany
amongst tliem, to be careful over them, not to run
hither and thither after their o^^•n pleasure, but to
tarry by their benefices and feed their sheep with the
food of God's word and to keep hospitality, and so to
feed them both soul and body. For I tell you, these
poor unlearned shepherds shall condemn many a stout
and great learned clerk ; for these sliepherdshad but
the care and charge over brute beasts, and vet were
diligent to keep them, and to feed them, and the other
have the cure over God's lambs which he bought with
the death of his son, and yet they are so careless, so
negligent, so slothful over them ; yea, and the most
part intendeth not to feed the slieep, but tliey lon^
to be fed of the sheep ; they seek only their own pas-
times, they care for no more. But what said Christ
to Peter ? What said he ? Pef)-c, ama^ me ? {Peter,
lovest thou me ?) Peter made answer, yes. Then feed
my sheep. And so the third time he commanded Peter
to feed his sheep. But our clergymen do declare
plainly that they love not Christ, because they feed
not his flock. If they had earnest love to Christ, no
doubt they would show their love, they would feed
his sheep. * *
' And the shei)herds returned lauding and praisino
God, for all the things that they had heard and seen,'
&c. They were not made religious men, but returned
again to their business and to their occupation. Here
we learn ever)' man to follow his occupation and vo-
cation, and not to leave the same, except God call
him from it to another, for God would have every
man to live in that order that he hath ordained for
him. And no doubt the man tliat ])lieth his occu-
pation truly, without any fraud or deceit, the same is
acceptable to God, and he shall have everlastiii"
life.
We read a pretty storj' of St Anthony, which beiu''
in the wilderness, led there a veiy hard and strait
life, in so much as none at that time did the like ; to
whom came a voice from heaven saj'insr : Aiitiiduv,
thou art not so perfect as is a cobbler that dwdleth at
Alexandria. Anthony, hearing this, rose up forthwith,
and took his staff and went till he came to Alexan-
dria, where he found the cobbler. The cobbler v.as
astonished to see so reverend a father come to liis
house. Then Anthony said unto him, come and t.!l
me thy whole conversation, and how thou spendest
thy time ? Sir, said the cobbler, as for me, good woiks
have I none ; for my life is but simple and slender.
I am but a poor cobbler ; in the morning, when I ri— ,
I pray for the whole city wherein I dwell, specially
for all such neighbours and poor friends as I have.
After, 1 set me at my labour, when I spend the whole
day in getting my "living, and I keep me from all
falsehood, for I hate nothing so much as I do deceit-
fulness : wherefore, when I make to any man a pro-
mise, I keep it, and perform it truly, and'thus I spend
my time poorly, with my wife and children, whom I
teach and instruct, as far as my wit will serve me, to
fear and dread God. And this is the sum of my
simple life.
In this story, you .see how God loveth those that
follow their vocation and live uprightly, without any
falsehood in their dealing. This Anthony was a great
holy m.in, 3'et this cobbler was as much esteemed
before God as he.
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN FOX.
JOHN FOX.
John Fox, another of the theologians of this time,
whose adoption of the reformed opinions brought
them into trouble, was born at Boston in 1517. He
studied at Oxford, where he applied himself with
extreme industry and ardour to the study of divi-
nity, and in particular to the investigation of those
controverted points which were then engaging so
much of the public attention. So close was his
application to his studies, that he entirely withdrew
from company, and often sat up during the greater
part of the night. Becoming convinced of the errors
of popery, he avowed his conA-ersion when examined
on a charge of heresy in 1545, and was, in conse-
quence, expelled from his college. After this, being
deserted by his friends, he was reduced to great
poverty, till a Warwickshire knight engaged him
as tutor to his fami]}'. Towards the end of the reign
of Henry VIII., he went to London, where he might
have perished for want, had not relief been admi-
nistered to him by some imknown person, who seems
to have been struck with his wretched appearance
when sitting in St Paul's Cathedral. Soon after,
he was fortunate enough to obtain employment as
tutor in the Duchess of Richmond's family at Rj'e-
gate, in Surrey, where he continued till the persecu-
tions of ]\Iary's reign made him flee for safety to
the continent. Proceeding through Antwerp and
Strasburg to Basle, he there supported himself by
correcting the press for Oporinus, a celebrated printer.
At the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he returned
to England, and was kindly received and provided
for by the Duke of Norfolk, who had been his pupil
at Ryegate. Through other powerful friends, he
might now have obtained considerable preferment ;
but, entertaining conscientious scruples as to the
articles whicli it was necessary to subscribe, and
disapproving of some of the ceremonies of the church,
he declined the offers made to him, except that of
a prebend in the church of Salisbury, which he
accepted with some reluctance. He died in 1587,
much respected for the piety, modesty, humanity,
and conscientiousness of his character, as well as
his extensive acquirements in ecclesiastical anti-
quities, and other branches of learning. Fox was
the author of a number of Latin treatises, chiefly
on theological subjects ; but the work on which his
fame rests, is his History of the Acts and Monuments
of the Church, popularly denominated Fox's Book
of MartjTS. This celebrated production, on which
the author laboured for eleven years, was published
in 156-3, under the title of ' Acts and ilonuments
of these latter perilious Days, touching matters of
the Church, wherein are comprehended and de-
scribed the great Persecutions and horrible Troubles
that have been wrought and practised by the Romish
Prelates, specially in this Realm of England and
Scotland, from the year of our Lord a thousand,
unto the Time now present,' &c. It was received
with great favour by the Protestants, but, of course,
occasioned much exasperation among the opposite
party, who did all in their power to undermine its
credit. That the author has frequently erred, and,
like other controversial writers of the time, some-
times lost his temper, and sullied his pages with
coarse language, cannot be denied ; but that mis-
takes have been wilfully or malignantly committed,
no one has been able to prove. As to wliat lie
derived from written documents. Bishop Burnet, in
the preface to his History of the Reformation,
bears strong testimony in his f^xvour, by declaring
that, ' having compared those Acts and Monuments
with the records, he had never been able to discover
any en-ors or prevarications in them, but the utmost
fidelity and exactness.'
[The Invention of Print inr/.l
What man soever was the instrument [whereby this
invention was made], without all doubt God himself
was the ordainer and disposer thereof, no otherwise
than he was of the gift of tongues, and that for a
similar purpose. And well may this gift of printing
be resembled to the gift of tongues : for like as God
then spake with many tongues, and yet all that would
not turn the Jews ; so now, when the Holy Ghost
speakcth to the adversaries in innumerable sorts of
books, yet they will not be converted, nor turn to the
gospel.
Now to consider to what end and purpose the Lord
hath given this gift of printing to the earth, and to
what great utility and necessity it servetli, it is not
hard to judge, who so wisely perpendeth both the
time of the sending, and the sequel which thereof
ensueth.
And first, touching the time of this faculty given
to the use of man, this is to be marked : that when
as the bishop of Rome with all and full the consent of
the cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, abbots,
priors, lawyers, doctors, provoses, deans, archdeacons,
assembled together in the Council of Constance, had
condemned poor John Huss and Hierome of Prague to
death for heresy, notwithstanding they were no here-
tics ; and after they had subdued the Bohemians, and
all the whole world under the supreme authority of
the Romish see ; and had made all Christian people
obedienciaries and vassals unto the same, having (as
one would say) all the world at their will, so that the
matter now was past not only the power of all men,
but the hope also of any man to be recovered : in this
very time so dangerous and desperate, when man's
power could do no more, there the blessed wisdom and
omnipotent power of the Lord began to work for his
church, not with sword and target to subdue his
exalted adversaiy, but with printing, writing, and
reading to convince darkness by light, error by truth,
ignorance by learning. So that by this means of
printing, the secret operation of God hath heaped
upon that proud kingdom a double confusi.m. For
whereas the bishop of Rome had burned John Huss
before, and Hierome of Prague, who neither denied
his transubstantiation, nor his supremacy, nor yet his
popish mass, but said mass, and heard mass them-
selves ; neither spake against his purgatory, nor any
other great matter of his popish doctrine, but onl}'
exclaimed against his excessive and pompous pride,
his unchristian or rather antichristian abomination of
life : thus while he could not abide his wickedness
only of life to be touched, but made it heresy, or at
least matter of death, whatsoever was spoken against
his detestable conversation and manners, God of his
secret judgment, seeing time to help his church, hath
found a way by this faculty of printing, not only to
confound his life and conversation, which before ho
could not abide to be touched, but also to cast down
the foundation of his standing, that is, to examine,
confute, and detect his doctrine, laws, and institutions
most detestable, in such sort, that though his life were
never so pure, yet his doctrine standing as it doth, no
man is so blind but may see, that either the pope is
antichrist, or else that antichrist is near cousin to the
pope : and all this doth, and will hereafter more and
more, appear by printing.
The reason whereof is this : for that hereby tongues
are known, knowledge groweth, judgment encreaseth,
books are dispersed, the scripture is seen, the doctors
be read, stories be opened, times compared, truth
discerned, falsehood detected, and with finger pointed,
and all (as I said) tlirough the benefit of printing.
Wherefore I supj)use, that either the pope must abolish
jirinting, or he must seek a new world to reign over :
for else, aa the world standeth, printing doubtless will
67
FROM 1400
CYCLOP-^DIA OF
TO 1558.
abolish him. But the pope, and all his college of car-
dinals, must this understand, that through the light
of printing, the world beginneth now to have eyes to
see, and heads to judge. He cannot walk so invisible
in a net, but he will be spied. .'Vnd although, through
might, he stopped the mouth of John Huss before, and
of Hierome, that they might not preach, thinking to
make his kingdom sure ; yet, in stead of John Huss and
other, God hath opened the press to preach, whose
Toice the pope is never able to stop with all the
puissance of his triple crown. By this printing, as by
the gift of tongues, and as by the singular organ of the
Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the gospel soundeth to all
nations and countries under heaven : and what God
revealeth to one man, is dispersed to many ; and what
is known in one nation, is opened to all.
[The Death of Queen Anne Boleyn.']
In certain records thus we find, that the king being
in his justs at Greenwich, suddenly, with a few per-
sons, departed to Westminster, and the next day after
Queen Anne his wife was had to the Tower, with the
Lord Rochford, her brother, and certain other ; and the
nineteenth day after was beheaded. The words of this
worthy and Christian lady at her death were these :
* Good Christian people, I am come hither to die ; for,
according to the law, and by the law, I am judged to
death, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I
am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak any thing
of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die ;
but I pray God save the king, and send hira long to
reign over you, for a gentler, or a more merciful prince
was there never ; and to me he was a very good, a
gentle, and a sovereign lord. And if any person will
meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best.
And thus I take my leave of the world, and of you
all, and I heartily desire you all to jn-ay for me.
The Lord have mercy on me ; to God I recommend
my soul.' And so she kneeled down, saying, ' to
Christ I commend my soul ; Jesus, receive my soul ;'
repeating the same divers times, till at length the
stroke was given, and her head was stricken otf.
And this was the end of that godly lady and queen.
Godly I call her, for sundry respects, whatsoever the
cause was, or quarrel objected against her. First, her
last words spoken at her death declared no less, her sin-
cere faith and trust in Christ, than did her quiet modesty
utter forth the goodness of the cause and matter, what-
soever it was. Besides that, to such as wisely can judge
upon cases occurrent, this also may seem to give a great
clearing unto her, that the king, the third day after,
was married in his whites unto another. Certain this
was, that for the rare and singular gifts of her mind,
so well instructed, and given toward God, with such
a fervent desire unto the truth, and setting forth of
sincere religion, joined with like gentleness, modesty,
and pity toward all men, there have not many such
queens before her borne the crowii of England. Prin-
cipally, this one commendation she left behind her,
that during her life, the religion of Christ most hap-
pily flourished, and had a right prosperous course.
Many things might be written more of the mani-
fold virtues, and the quiet moderation of her mild
nature ; how lowly she would bear, not only to be
admonished, but also of her own accord, would re-
quire her chaplains, plainly and freely to tell what-
soever they saw in her amiss. Also, how bountiful
she was to the poor, passing not only the i)oor example
of other queens, but also the revenues almost of her
estate : insomuch, that the alms wliich she gave in
three quarters of a year, in distribution, is summed
to the number of fourteen or fifteen thousand pounds ;
besides the great piece of money, whicli her Grace
intended to impart into four sundry quarters of the
realm, as for a stock, there to be employed to the behoof
of poor artificers and occupiers. Again, what a zealous
defender she was of Christ's gospel, all the world doth
know, and her acts do and will declare to the world's
end. Amongst which other her acts, this is one, that
she placed ;Master Hugh Latimer in the bishopric of
Worcester, and also preferred Doctor Sharton to his
bishopric, being then accounted a good man. Further-
more, what a true faith she bore unto the Lord, this one
example may stand for many : for that, when King
Henry was with her at Woodstock, and there being
afraid of an old blind prophecy, for the which, neither
he nor other kings before him, durst hunt in the said
park of Woodstock, nor enter into the town of Oxford,
at last, through the Christian, and faithfiil counsel
of that queen, he was so armed against all infidelity,
that both he hunted in the foresaid park, and also
entered into the town of Oxford, and had no harm.
But, because touching the memorable virtues of this
worthy queen, partly we have said something before,
partly because more also is promised to be declared
of her virtuous life (the Lord so permitting), by other
who then were about her, I will cease in this matter
further to proceed.
A notable History of WiUiam Hxmttr, a young man of
19 years, pursued to death hy Justice Brown for tlib
Gospel's sake, vjorthy of all young men and imrents to
le read.
[In the first year of Queen Marj', ■VN'illiam Hunter, appren-
tice to <a silk weaver in London, was discharged from his
master's employment, in consequence of his refusing to attend
mass. Having returned to the house of his father at Brunt-
wood, he attracted the attention of the spiritual authorities by
his reading a copy of the Scriptures. He was finally condemned
to die for heresy.]
In the mean time William's father and mother
came to him, and desired heartily of God that he
might continue to the end, in that good way which he
had begun, and his mother said to him, that she was
glad that ever she was so happy to bear such a child,
which could find in his heart to lose his life for
Christ's name's sake.
Then \A'illiam said to his mother, ' For my little
pain which I shall sutler, which is but a short braid,
Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown
of joj' : may you not be glad of that, mother?' AVith
that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying,
' I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end :
yea, I think thee as well-bestowed as any child that
ever I bare.'
At the which words, Master Higbed took her in his
arms, saying, ' I rejoice (and so said the others) to see
you in this mind, and you have a good cause to re-
joice.' And his father and mother both said, that
they were never of other mind, but prayed for him,
that, as he had begim to confess Christ before men, he
likewise might so continue to the end. William's
father said, ' I was afraid of nothing, but that my
son should have been killed in the prison for hunger
and cold, the bishop was so hard to him.' But AA'illiam
confessed, after a month that his fatlier was charged
with his board, tliat he lacked nothing, but had meat
and clothing enough, yea, even out of the court, both
money, meat, clothes, wood, and coals, and all things
necessary.
Thus they continued in their inn, being the Swan
in Bruntwood, in a parlour, whither resorted many
people of the country to see those good men which
were there ; and many of William's acquaintance
came to him, and reasoned with him, and he with
tliom, exhorting them to come away from the abomi-
nation of Popish superstition and idolatry.
Thus passing .away Saturday, .Sunday, and Monday,
0)1 Monday at night it happened, that William liad a
dream about two of the clock in the morning, which
G8
PROSE WRtTKRS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN LELAND.
was this : how that he was at the place where the
stake was pight, where he should be burned, which
(as he thought in his dream) was at the to^vn's end
where the butts' stood, which was so indeed ; and also
he dreamed that he met with his father, as he went
to the stake, and also that there was a priest at the
stake, which went about to have him recant. To
whom he said (as he thought in his dream), how that
he bade hira away false prophet, and how that he
exhorted the people to beware of him and such as he
was, which things came to pass indeed. It happened
that William made a noise to himself in his dream,
which caused M. Higbed and the others to awake him
out of his sleep, to know what he lacked. When he
awaked, he told them his dream in order as is said.
Now when it was day, the sheriff, M. Brocket called
on to set forward to the burning of William Hunter.
Then came the sheriff's son to ^^'illiam Hunter, and
embraced him in his right arm, saying, ' William, be
not afraid of these men, which are here present with
bows, bills, and weapons, ready prepared to bring you
to the place, where you shall be burned.' To whom
William answered, ' I thank God I am not afraid ;
for I have cast my count, what it will cost me, al-
ready.' Then the sheriff's son could speak no more to
him for weeping.
Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and
stepped over the parlour grounsel, and went forward
cheerfully, the sheriff's servant taking him by one
arm, and his brother by another ; and thus going in
the way, he met with his father according to his
dream, and he spake to his son, weeping, and saying,
' God le with thee, son William ;' and William said,
*God be with you, good father, and be of good com-
fort, for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be
merry.' His father said, ' I hope so, William,' and so
departed. So William went to the place where the
stake stood, even according to his dream, whereas
all things were very unready. Then William took a
wet broom faggot, and kneeled down thereon, and read
the 51st psalm, till he came to these words, ' The sa-
crifice of God is a contrite spirit ; a contrite and a
broken heart, God, thou wilt not despise.'
Then said Master Tyrell of the Bratches, called
William Tyrell, ' Thou liest,' said he ; ' thou readest
false, for the words are, " an humble spirit." ' But
William said, ' The translation saith " a contrite
heart." ' ' Yea,' quoth ilr Tyrell, ' the translation is
false ; ye translate books as ye list yourselves, like
heretics.' 'Well,' quoth William, 'there is no great
difference in those words.' Then said the sheriff, ' Here
is a letter from the queen : if thou wilt recant, thou
shalt live ; if not, thou shalt be burned.' ' No,' quoth
William, ' I will not recant, God willing.' Then
William rose, and went to the stake, and stood up-
right to it. Then came one Richard Pond, a bailiff,
and made fast the chain about William.
Then said blaster Bro^Ti, ' Here is not wood enough
to bum a leg of him.' Then said William, ' Good
people, pray for me ; and make speed, and dispatch
quickly ; and pray for me while ye see me alive,
good people, and I will pray for you likewise.' ' How !'
quoth Master Brown, 'pray for thee ? I will pray no
more for thee than I will pray for a dog.' To whom
William answered, ' Master Brown, now you have
that which you sought for, and I pray God it be not
laid to your charge in the last day ; howbeit, I forgive
you.' Then said Master Brown, ' I ask no forgiveness
of thee.' ' Well,' said William, ' if God forgive you
not, I shall require my blood at your hands.'
Then said William, 'Son of God, shine upon me !'
and immediately the sun in the element shone out of
a dark cloud so full in his face, that he was con-
strained to look another way, whereat the people
mused, because it was so dark a little time afore.
1 Archerj- butts.
Then William took up a faggot of broom and em-
bra^'ed it in his arms.
Then this priest which William dreamed of, came
to his brother Robert with a pojiish book to carry
to William, that he might recant, which book his
brother would not meddle withal. Then William,
seeing the priest, and perceiving how he would have
showed him the book, said, ' Away, thou false pro-
phet ! Beware of them, good people, and come away
from their abominations, lest that 30U be partakers of
their plagues.' Then, quoth the priest, ' Look how
thou burnest here, so shalt thou bum in hell.'
William answered, 'Thou liest, thou false prophet!
Awa}', thou false prophet ! away !'
Then there was a gentleman which said, ' I pray
God have mercy upon his soul.' The people said,
' Amen, Amen.'
Immediately fire was made. Then William cast
his psalter right into his brother's hand, who said,
' William, think on the holy passion of Christ, and
be not afraid of death.' And William answered, ' I
am not afraid.' Then lift he up his hands to heaven,
and said, ' Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit !.' And
casting dovm his head again into the smothering
smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it
with his blood to the praise of God.
JOHN LELAND.
In this age arose the first English antiquarian
writer, in the person of John Leland. He was
born in London, and received his education at St
Paul's school in his native city, at Cambridge and
John Leland.
Oxford, completing it by a residence of consider-
able duration at Paris, where he enjoyed the friend-
ship of many learned men. Leland was one of the
earliest Greek scholars in England, was acquainted
with French, Italian, and Spanish, and studied, wliat
few then gave any attention to, the Welsh and Saxon.
Henry VHI. made him one of his chaplains, and be-
stowed sundry benefices upon him. Having a strong
natural bent to antiquities, he obtained from the king
a commission to inspect records, wlierever jjlaced,
and, armed with this, he proceeded upon a tour of
the whole kingdom, at once to visit the remains of
ancient buildings, tumuli, and other objects surviv-
69
FROM 1400
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO loof)
ing from an early age, and to make researches in the
libraries of colleges, abbeys, and catliedrals. In six
j-ears, he collected an immense mass of valuable
matters, some of which he deposited in the king's
library. The writings which he subsequently com-
posed, with reference to his favourite pursuits, con-
vey a most respectful impression of his diligence,
and of the value of his labours ; but they present
little attraction, except to readers of peculiar taste.
ISome are in Latin ;* but the most important is in
English, namely his Itinerary, — an account of his
travels, and of the ancient remains which he visited,
together with a catalogue of English writers. Le-
land was for the two last years of his life insane,
probably from enthusiastic application to his favou-
rite study, and died in Loudon in 1552.
GEORGE CAVE^^D1SH.
At this time lived George Cavendish, gentle-
man-usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and afterwards em-
ployed in the same capacity by Henry VIII. To the
former he was strongly attached, and after the
prelate's fall, he continued to serve him faitlifuUy till
his death. Cavendish himself died in 1557, leav-
ing, in manuscript, a Life of Cardinal Wolsey, in
which, while he admits the arrogant disposition of
his old master, he highly extols his general charac-
ter.f Mr S. W. Singer has printed, for the first time,
Metrical Visions by Cavendish, concerning the for-
tunes and fall of some of the most eminent per-
sons of his time. Respecting the Life of Wolsey,
he observes : — ' There is a sincere and impartial
adherence to truth, a reality, in Cavendish's narra-
tive, which bespeaks the confidence of his reader,
and very much increases his pleasure. It is a
work without pretension, but full of natural elo-
quence, devoid of the formality of a set rhetorical
composition, unspoiled by the affectation of that
classical manner in which all biography and history
of old time was prescribed to be Avritten, and which
often divests such records of the attraction to be
found in the conversational style of Cavendish. * *
Our great poet has literally followed him in several
passages of his King Henry VIII., merely putting
his language into verse. Add to this the historical
importance of the work, as the only sure and authen-
tic source of information upon many of the most
interesting events of that reign ; and from which
all liistorians have largely drawn (through the secon-
dary medium of Holinshed and Stow, who adopted
Cavendish's narrative), and its intrinsic value need
not be more fully expressed.'
[King Jlenrt/s Visits to Wokey^s House.}
And when it pleased the king's majesty, for his re-
freation, to repair unto the cardinal's house, as he did
* I. Assertio Inclptissitni Arturii, Regis Britannia. London:
1543. 4to.
3. Commenlarii df Scriptoribus Britannids. Oxford: 1709.
3. De Rebus Britannicis Collectatiea. Oxford: 1715.
t This work did not appear in print till VAX, when it was
published under the title of * The Negociations of Thomas
Wolsey ;■ but iis the chief object of sending it forth was to re-
concile the nation to tlie death of Archbisliop Laud, by draw-
ing a parallel between the two prelates, the manuscript, before
it went to the press, was greatly mutilated by abridgment and
Interpolation. A correct copy was, however, published in 1810
by IJr Wordsworth, in the first volume of his ' Ecclesiastical
Biography ;' and it has since been reprinted seiiarately in laa,";,
by Mr Samuel Weller Singer, along with a dissertation by the
Rev. Joseph Hunter, proving the author to have been George
Cavendish, and not bis brother Sir William, as stated in tlie
Biographia Uritannica, and later publications.
divers times in the year, at which time there wanted
no preparations, or goodly furniture, with viands of
the finest sort that might be provided for money or
friendship ; such pleasures were then devised for the
king's comfort and consolation, as might be invented,
or by man's wit imagined. The banquets were set
forth with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a
sort and costly manner, that it was a heaven to behold.
There wanted no dames or damsels, meet or apt to
dance with the maskers, or to garnish the place for
the time with other goodly disports. Then was there
all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excel-
lent voices both of men and children. I have seen
the king suddenly come in thither in a mask, with a
dozen of other maskers, all in garments like shepherds,
made of fine cloth of gold, and fine crimson satin
paned, and caps of the same, with visors of good pro-
portion of visnomy ; their hairs, and beards, either of
fine gold wire, or else of silver, and some being of
black silk ; having sixteen torch bearers, besides their
drums, and other persons attending upon them, with
visors, and clothed all in satin, of the same colours.
And at his coming, and before he came into the hall,
ye shall understand that he came by water to the
Watergate, without any noise, where, against his com-
ing, were laid charged many chambers,! and at his
landing they were all shot off, which made such a
rumble in the air, that it was like thunder. It made
all the noblemen, ladies, and gentlewomen, to muse
what it should mean coming so suddenly, they sitting
quietly at a solemn banquet. « * * Then, imme-
diately after this great shot of guns, the cardinal de-
sired the lord chamberlain and comptroller to look
what this sudden shot should mean, as though he
knew nothing of the matter. They thereupon looking
out of the windows into Thames, returned again, and
showed him, that it seemed to them there should be
some noblemen and strangers arrived at his bridge, as
ambassadors from some foreign prince. * * »
Then quoth the cardinal to my lord chamberlain, ' I
pray you,' quoth he, ' show them that it seemeth me
that there should be among them some noblemen,
whom I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to
sit and occupy this room and place than I ; to whom
I would most gladly, if I knew him, suiTender my
place according to my duty.' Then spake my lord
chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my lord
cardinal's mind ; and they rounding^ him again in
the ear, my lord chamberlain said to my lord cardi-
nal, ' Sir, they confess,' quoth he, ' that among them
there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace
can appoint him from the other, he is contented to
disclose himself, and to accept your place most
worthily.' With that the cardinal, taking a good
advisement anions them, at the last, quoth he, ' Me
seemeth the gentleman with the black beard should
be even he.' And with that he arose out of his chair,
and offered the same to the gentleman in the black
beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom
he ottered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a
comely knight of a goodly personage, that much more
resembled the king's person in that mask than any
other. The king, hearing and perceiving the cardinal
so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not
forbear laughing ; but plucked down his visor, and
Master Neville's also, and dashed out with such a
pleasant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates''
there assembled, seeing the king to be there amongst
them, rejoiced very much. The cardinal eftsoons'^ de-
sired his highness to take the place of estate, to whom
the king answered, that he would go first and shift his
apparel ; and so departed, and went straight into my
' Short guns, or cannon, without carriages ; chiefly used foi
festive occasions.
2 Whispering. 3 Persons of rank. * Immediately.
70
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN BELLENDEN.
lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and
I)rci)arcd for him, and there new apparelled him with
rich and princely garments. And in the time of the
king's absence, the dishes of the banquet were clean
taken up, and the table spread again with new and
sweet perfumed cloths ; every man sitting still until
the king and his maskers came in among them again,
every man being newly apparelled. Then the king
took his seat under the cloth of estate, commanding
no man to remove, but sit still, as they did before.
Then in came a new banquet before the king's ma-
jesty, and to all the rest through the tables, wherein,
I suppose, were served two hundred dishes, or above,
of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly de-
vised. Thus passed they forth the whole night with
banquetting, dancing, and other triumphant devices,
to tlie great comfort of the king, and pleasant regard
< f the nobility there assembled.
LORD BERNERS.
Lord Berners, another favourite of Henry VIH.,
under whom he was chancellor of the exchequer, and
g;overnor of Calais, is known chiefly as the author
of a translation of the French chronicler, Froissart.
His version of tliat fascinating narrative of contem-
porary events in England, France, Flanders, Scot-
land, and other countries,* was executed by the
king's command, and apjieared in l.'iiS. It is an
excellent sample of the English language of that
period, being remarkable for the purity and nervous-
ness of its style. f Lord Berners wrote also The
History of the Most Noble and Valiant Knight, Ar-
thur of Little Britain, and other works, translated
from the French and Spanish ; he was likewise the
author of a book on The Duties of the Inliahitants
of Calais. From his translation of Froissart (which
was reprinted in 1812), we extract the following
passages : —
[Battle of Creasy.]
When the French king saw the Englishmen, his
blood changed, and (he) said to his marshalls, ' Alake
the Genoese go on before, and begin the battle in the
name of God and St Denis.' There were of the
Cienoese cross-bows about a fifteen thousand, but they
were so weary of going a-foot that day, a six leagues,
armed with their cross-bows, that they said to their
constables, ' We be not well ordered to fight this day,
for we be not in the case to do any great deed of arms ;
we have more need of rest.' These words came to the
Earl of Alencon, who said, ' A man is well at ease to
be charged with such a sort of rascals, to be faint and
fail now at most need.' Also, the same season, there
fell a great rain and an eclipse, with a terrible thun-
der ; and before the rain, there came flying over the
battles a great number of crows for fear of the tempest
coming. Then anon the air began to wax clear, and
the sun to shine fair and bright, the which was right
in the Frenchmens' eyen, and on the Englishmens'
back. When the Genoese were assembled together,
and began to approach, they made a great leap and
cry, to abash the Englishmen ; but they stood still,
and stin-ed not for all that. Then the Genoese again
» Froissart resided in England as secretary to tlio queen of
Edward III., from 1361 to 13(iC, and again visited that country
in 1395. On the former occasion, he paid a visit to Scotland,
where he was entertained by the Earl of Douglas. His histoi-y,
which extends from 1.326 to 14()0, is valued chiefly for the view
which it gives of the manners of the times, and the state of the
countries and their inhabitants.
t There is a translation of Froissart in modern English — the
work (if Mr Johnes of Hafod ; but that of Lord Berners is
deemed its superior, not only in vigorous characteristic e.xpres-
Kion, but, what is more surprising, in correctness.
the second time made another leap and a fell cry,
and stepped forward a little ; and the f'nglishmen re-
moved not one foot. Thirdly again, they leaped and
cried, and went forth till they came within shot ; then
they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the
English archers stepped forth one pace, and let fly
their arrows so wholly and thick that it seemed snow.
When the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through
heads and arms and breasts, many of them cast down
their cross-bows, and did cut their strings, and re-
turned discomfited. When the French king saw tlicm
flee away, he said, ' Slay these rascals, for they shall
let and trouble us without reason.' Then ye should
have seen the men-at-arms dash in among them,
and killed a great number of them, and ever still the
Englishmen shot whereas they saw the thickest press ;
the sharp arrows ran into the men-at-arms and into
their horses ; and many fell horse and men anions
the Genoese ; and when they were down, they could
not relieve again ; the press was so thick that one over-
threw another. And also, among the Englishmen,
there were certain rascals that went on foot with great
knives, and they went in among the men-at-arms, and
murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls,
barons, knights, and squires, whereof the King of Eng-
land was after displeased, for he had rather they had
been taken prisoners.
JOHN BELLENDEN.
Contemporary with Lord Berners was John Bel-
LENDEN, archdean of Moray, a favourite of James
V. of Scotland, and one of tlie lords of session in the
reign of Queen Mary. Besides writing a topograpliy
of Scotland, epistles to James V., and some poems,
he translated, by the king's command, Hector Boece's
History of Scotland, and the first five books of Livy.
The translation of Boece was published in l.'iSe, and
constitutes the earliest existing specimen of Scot-
tish literary prose. The first original work in that
language was one entitled The Cumplaynt of Scotland,
whicli was published at St Andrews in 1.548, by an
unknown author, and consists of a meditation on the
distracted state of the kingdom. The difference be-
tween the language of these works and that em-
ployed by the English writers of the preceding cen-
tury is not great. Bellendcn's translation of Boece
is rather a free one, and additions are sometimes
made by the translator.* Anotlier translation, pub-
lished by Holinshed, an English Chronicler, in the
reign of Elizabeth, was the source from which
Sluikspeare derived the historical materials of his
tragedy of Macbeth. Two extracts from Bellendcn's
version, in the original spelling, are here subjoined:
[Part of the Story of Macbeth.]
Nocht lang eftir, hapnit ane uncouth and wounder-
fuU thing, be quhilk foUowit, sone, ane gret altera-
tion in the realme. Be aventure, JMakbeth and Ban-
quho wer passand to Fores, quhair King Dimcane
hapnit to be for the time, and met be the gait thre
women, clothit in elrage and uncouth weid. Thay
wer jugit, be the pepill, to be weird sisteris. The first
of thaim said to Makbeth, ' Hale, Thane of Glammis !'
the second said, ' Hale, Thane of Cawder !' and the
third said, 'Hale, King of Scotland!' Than said
Banquho, ' Quhat wemen be ye, sa unmercifuU to me,
and sa favorable to my comjianyeon 1 For ye galf
to him nocht onlie landis and gret rentis, bot gret
lordschippis <and kingdomes ; and gevis nic nocht.' To
this, answcrit the first of thir weird sisteris, ' We
schaw more felicito apparing to thee than to him ; for
* An excellent reprint of it, .along with an edition of the
translation of Livy, appeared in Edinburgh in 18^1.
71
FROM 1400
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO l.loJl.
thoucht he happin to be ane king, his empire sail end
unhappelie, and nane of his blude sail eftir him suc-
ceid ; he contrar, thow sail nevir be king, bot of the
sal cum mony kingis, quhilkis, with lang progressioun,
sail rejose the croun of Scotland.' Als sone as thir
wourdis wer said, thay suddanlie eranist out of sicht.
This prophecy and divinatioun wes haldin iiiony dayis
in derision to Banqulio and Makbeth. For sum time,
Banquho wald call Makbeth, King of Scottis, for dc-
risioun ; and he, on the samin maner, wald call Ban-
quho the fader of inony kingis. Yit, becaus al thingis
succcdit as thirwemen devinit, the pepill traistit and
jugit tliaim to be weird sisteris. Not lang eftir, it
hapnit that the Tliane of Cawder wes disherist and
forfaltit of his landis, for certane crimes of lese ma-
jeste ; and his landis wer gevin be King Duncane to
Makbeth. It hapuit in the next nicht, that Banquho
and ^lakbeth wer sportand togiddir at thair supper.
Than said Banquho, ' Thow hes gottin all that the
first two weird sisteris hecht. Restis nocht bot the
croun, quhilk wer» hecht be the thrid sister.' Makbeth,
revolving all thingis as thay wer said be thir weird
sisteris, began to covat the croun ; and yit he con-
cludit to abide quhil he saw the time ganand thairto,
femielie televing that the thrid weird suld cum, as
the first two did afoie.
In the mene time, King Duncane maid his son Mal-
colme Prince of Cumbir, to signify that he suld
regiie eftir him. Quhilk wes gret displeseir to Mak-
beth ; for it maid plane derogatioun to the thrid weird,
promittit afore to him be thir weird sisteris. Xoch-
theles, he thocht, gif Duncane wer slane, he had maist
richt to the croun, becaus he wes nerest of blud thair-
to, be tennour of the auld lawis maid eftir the deith
of King Fergus, ' Quhen young children wer unabil
to govern the croun, the nerrest of thair blude sail
regne.' Als, the respons of thir weird sisteris put
him in beleif, that the thrid weird suld cum als weill
as the first two. Attour, his wife, impacient of lang
tarj', a-s all wemen ar, specially quhare thay ar de-
sirus of ony purpos, gaif him gret artation to per-
sew the thrid weird, that scho micht be ane quene ;
calland him, ofttimis, febil cowart, and nocht desirus
of honouris ; sen he durst not assailye the thing with
manheid and curage, quhilk is offerit to him be beni-
volence of fortoun ; howbeit sindry otherishes assailyeit
sic thingis afore, Avith maift terribil jeopardyis, quhen
thay had not sic sickernes to sueceid in the end of
thair laubouris as he had.
^[akbeth, be persuasion of his wife, gaderit his
freindis to ane counsall at Innernes, quhare King
Duncane happinit to be for the time. And because
he fand sufficient oportunite, V>e support of Banquho
and otheris his freindis, he slew King Duncane, the
vii ycir of his regne. His body was burj'it in Elgin,
and eftir tane up and brocht to Colmekill, quhare it
remanis yit, amang the sepulturis of uthir kingis ; fra
our redemption, mxlvi yeris.
The New Manons ami the Avid, of Scottis.
Our eldaris howbeit thay war richt virtewis baith
in weir and peace, war maist exereit with temperance ;
for it is the fontane of all virtew. Thay disjunitl airly
in the morning with smal refectioun, and sustenit thair
liffis tliairwith quhil- thetime of sowper ; throw quhilk
thair stomok was nevir surfetly chargit, to cmpesche
thaim of uthir besines. At the sow-par thay war mair
large ; howbeit thay had bot ane cours. Thay eit, for
common, flesche half raw ; for the saup is maist nuri-
sand in that maner. All dronkatis, srlutonis, and con-
sumers of vittalis, mair nor was neco^sar to the sus-
tentation of men, war tane, and first commandit to
?welly thair fowth^ of qiihat drink thay plesit, and
^ Breakfasted.
* Until.
3 FuU quantity, or fill.
incontinent thairefter was drownit in ane fresche rever.
* * Now I belief nane hes sic eloquence, nor fouth
of langage, that can sufficientlie declare, how far we,
in thir present dayis, ar different fra the virtew and
temperance of our eldaris. For quhare our eldaris
had sobriete, we have ebriete and dronkines ; quhare
thay had j)lente with sutiicence, we have immoderat
cursis [courses] with su])erfluite ; as lie war maist
noble and honest, that culd devore and sHelly maist ;
and, be extreme diligence, serchis sa mony deligat
coursis, that thay provoke the stomok to ressave mair
than it may sufficientlie degest. And nocht allenarlie'
may surfet deniiur and sowper suffice us, above the
temperance of oure eldaris, bot als to contincw our
schamefuU and immoderit voracite with duble den-
naris and sowparis. Na fishe in the se, nor foul
in the aire, nor best in the wod, may have rest,
but socht heir and thair, to satisfy the hungry ap-
petit of glutonis. Nocht allenarly ar winis socht
in France, bot in Spainye, Italy, and Grece ; and,
sumtime, baith Aphiik and Asia socht, for new de-
licius metis and winis, to the samin effect. Thus
is the warld sa utterly socht, that all maner of drog-
gis and electuaris, that may nuris the lust and inso-
lence of pepill, ar brocht in Scotland, with maist
sumptuus price, to na les dammage than perdition
of the pepill thereof: for, throw the immoderat glut-
ony, our wit and reason ar sa blindit within the pre-
soun of the body, that it may have no knawledge of
hevinly thingis ; for the body is involvit with sic
clowdis of fatnes, that, howbeit it be of gud coin-
plexioun be nature, it is sa ojjprcst with superfleu
metis and drinkis, that it may nothir weild, nor yit
ouir- the self; bot, confessand the self vincust, gevis
place to all infirmiteis, quhill it be miserably de-
stroyit.
[^Extract fivm the Complaynt of Scotland.'\
There eftir I heard the rumour of rammaschc^
foulis and of bej'stis that made grite beir,-* quhilk
past beside bumis and boggis on green bankis to seek
their sustentation. Their brutal sound did rcdond tc
the high skyis, quhil the deep hou^ eauernis of cleuchisfi
and rotche craggis ansuert vitht ane high note of that
saniyn sound as thay beystis hed blauen. It apeiit
be jiresumyng and presuposing, that blaberand eccho
had been hid in ane hou hole, cryand hyr half ansueir,
quhen Narcissus rycht sorry socht for his saruandis,
quhen he was in ane forrest, far fra ony folkis, and
there cfter for love of eccho he drounit in ane drau
vel. Nou to tel treutht of the beystis that maid sic
beir, and of the d^ii that the foulis did, ther syndry
soundis hed nothir temperance nor tune. For fyrst
furtht on the fresche fieldis the nolt maid noyis vitht
mony loud lou. Baytht horse and meyris did fast
nee, and the folis neckyr. The bullis began to bullir,
quhen the scheip began to blait, because the calfis
began till mo, quhen the doggis berkit. Than the
suyne began to quhryne quhen thai herd the asse rair,
quhilk gart" the hennis kekkyl quhen the cokis creu.
The chek}7is began to peu when the gled quhissillit.
The fox follouit the fed geise and gart them cry claik.
The gayslingis crj'it quhilk quhilk, and the dukis
cryit quaik. The ropeen of the rauynis gart the eras
crope. The huddit crauis cryit varrok varrok, quhen
the suannis murnit, because the gray goul mau pro-
nosticat ane storme. The turtil began for to gieit,
quhen the cuschet zoulit. The titlene followit the
goilk,** and gart hyr sing guk guk. The dou^ croutit
hyr sad sang that soundit lyik sorrou. Robeen and
' Not only. » Oversee, rule.
3 Sinpinp, (Fr. ramage).
* A shrill noise. * Hollow. ' Cloughs, deep vnlleye
or ravines in the bills. 7 Forced, caused. 8 Cuckoo. * Dove.
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM TTNDALE.
the litil oran var hamely in vyiitir. The jargoh'ne of
the suallou gart the jay aiigil,' than tlie ineveis- maid
myrtht, for to mok the merle. The hiverok maid
melody up hie in the skyis. The nychtingal al the
nycht sang sueit notis. The tuechitis^ cryit theuis
nek, quhen the piettis clattrit. The garruliiig of the
Etirlene gait the sparrou cheip. The lyiitquhit sang
counterpoint quhen the oszil zelpit. The grene serene
Bang sueit, quhen the gold spynk chantit. The rede
schank"* cryit my fut my fut, and the oxee^ cryit
tueit. The herrons gaif ane yyild skrech as the kyl
bed bene in fyir, qubilk gart the quhapis for flevitnes
fle far fra hame.
Bale, Bishop of Ossory in Ireland (1495-1563),
must be esteemed as one of the most notable prose
writers of this era. He was the author of many
severe and intemperate tracts against Popery,
both in Latin and English ; but his most celebrated
production is a Latin Accoimt of the Lives of Emi-
nent Writers of Great Britain, extending, as the title
expresses it, from Japhet, one of the sons of Xoah,
to the year 1557. Bale left also many curious
metrical productions in the English language, in-
cluding several dramatic pieces on sacred subjects,
which, to a modern taste, appear utterly burlesque.
Among these are plaj-s on Jolm the Baptist's preach-
ing ; on the childhood, temptation, passion, and
resurrection of Christ ; on the Lord's Supper, and
washing the disciples' feet, &c. All these pieces
were doubtless performed in a grave and devout
spirit; for Bale himself mentions that the first of
them (which may be seen in the Ilarleian Miscel-
lany), and his tragedy of GocTs Promises, were acted
by 3'oung men at the market-cross of Kilkenny upon
a Sunda}'. In 1544, he published ^4 Brefe Chroni/cle
concernynge the Examinacyon and Death of the Blessed
Martyr of Christ, Sir Johan Oldecastdl the Lorde Cob-
ham, from which we extract the account of Cob-
ham's death. He suffered in 1417, for supporting the
doctrines of Wickliife, and was the first martyr
among the English nobility.
\^Death of Lord Colham.']
Upon the day appointed, he was brought out of
the Tower with his arms bound behind him, hav-
ing a very cheerful countenance. Then was he hud
upon an hurdle, as though he had been a most
heinous traitor to the cro^vn, and so drawn forth
into Saint Giles' Field, where as they had set up a
new pair of gallows. As he was coming to the
place of execution, and was taken from the hurdle, he
fell down devo.utly upon his knees, desiring Al-
mighty God to forgive his enemies. Than stood he
up and beheld the multitude, exhorting them in most
godly manner to follow the laws of God wi'itten in
the scriptures, and in any wise to beware of such
teachers as they see contrary to Christ in their con-
versation and living, with many other special counsels.
Then he was hanged up there by the middle in chains
of iron, and so consumed alive in the fire, praising the
name of God, so long as his life lasted. In the end
he commended his soul into the hand of God, and so
departed hence most Christenly, his body resolved into
tubes.
WILLIAM TYNDALE.
The Reformation caused the publication of several
versions of tlie Bible, which were perluqts the most
i important literary efforts of the reign of Henry VHI.
' Jangle. ^ Thrush. ^ Lapwing.
* Fieldfare. * Small hedge sparrow.
The first part of tlie Scriptures printed in an English
form was the New Testament, of which a translation
was published in 1325 by William Tyndale, born in
William Tyndale.
Gloucestershire, about the year 1477, a clergyman of
great piety, learning, and gentleness of disposition.
In the course of his labours he endured such persecu-
tion, that, in 152.3, he found it necessary to quit Eng-
land, and retire into Germany. He there visited Lu-
ther, M-ho encouraged him in his laborious and hazar-
dous undertaking. Wittemburg was the place where
Tyndale's translation of tlie New Testament was first
printed. It was speedily circulated, and eagerly pe-
rused in England, notwithstanding the severe perse-
cution to which its possessors were exposed. Sir
Thomas IMore distinguished himself as a most viru-
lent opponent of Tyndale, against whom he published
seven volumes of controversy, where such violent lan-
guage as the following is employed : — ' Our Saviour
will say to Tyndale, Thou art accursed, Tyndale, the
son of the devil ; for neither flesli nor blood hath
taught thee these heresies, but thine own father, the
devil, that is in hell.' — ' Tliere sliould have been
more burned by a great many than there have been
within this seven year last past. The lack whereof, I
fear me, will make more [be] burned within this seven
year next coming, than else sliould have needed to
have been burned in seven score. Ah, blasphemous
beast, to whose roaring and lowing no good Christian
man can without heaviness of heart give ear !' Tyn-
dale translated also the first five books of the Old
Testament, the publication of which was completed iu
15.30. Efforts were made by King Henry, Wolsey,
and More, to allure him back to England, where
the}' hoped to destroy him ; but he was too cautious
to trust himself there. His friend, John Frith, "ho
had assisted him in translating, was more credulous
of their promises of safety, and returning to London,
was apprehended and burnt. Tyndale remained at
Antwerp, till entrapped by an agent of Henry, who
procured at Brussels a warrant to apprehend him
for heresy. After some further proceedings, he was
strangled and burnt for that crime at Vilvoord, near
Antwerp, in September 1536, exclaiming at the
stake, ' Lord, open the king of England's eyes !'
Tyndale's translation of the Ne»' Testament is,
on tlie whole, admirable both for style and accuracy
and indeed our present authorised version ha^
73
FBUM 1400
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO ]55!>.
throughout, very closely followed it. To use the
words" of a profound modern scholar, ' It is astonish-
ing how little obsolete the language of it is, even at
this day ; and, in point of perspicuity and noble
simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style,
no English version has yet surpassed it.'* A
beautiful edition of it has lately been published.!
The following are Tyndale's translations of the ]Mag-
nificat arid Lord's Prayer, in the spelliug of the ori-
ginal edition : —
And jSIarj' sayde, My scale magnifieth the Lorde,
and my sprete reioyseth in God ray Savioure.
For he hath loked on the povre degre off his honde
mayden. Beholde nowe from hens forthe shall all
generacions call me blessed.
For he that is myghty hath done to me greate
thinges, and blessed ys his name :
And hys mercy is always on them that feare him
thorow oute all generacions.
He hath shewed strengthe with his arme ; he hath
scattered them that are proude in the ymaginacion of
their hertes.
He hath putt doune the myghty from their seates,
and hath exalted them of lowe degrs.
He hath filled the hongry with, goode thinges, and
hath sent away the r_vche empty.
He hath rememhred mercy, and hath holpen his
Berraunt Israhel.
Even as he promised to cure fathers, Abraham and
to his seed for ever.
Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy
name. Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyll be ful-
filled, as well in erth, as hit ys in heven. Geve vs
this daye oure dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure
treaspases, even as we forgeve them which treaspas
T8. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs
from yvell. Amen.
SriLES COVERDALE.
In translating the Pentateuch, Tyndale was
assisted by SIiles Coverdai,e, who, in 1.5.35, pub-
lished the first English translation of the whole Scrip-
tures, with this title : Biblia, the Bible ; That is, the
Hohj Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, fa ith-
fidly and newly translated out of the Doutche and Latyn
into English. Coverdale was made bishop of Exeter
in 1,)51, but retired to the Continent during the reign
of Mary. Wlien Elizabeth ascended the throne, he
returned to England, and remained there till his
death. His translation of the Bible has lateh' been
reprinted in London. The extent of its variation
from that of Tyndale will appear by contrasting the
following verse, as rendered by each translator:
[Tyndale's Version.']
■NMien the Lorde sawe that Lea was despised, he
made her fratefuU, but Rahel was baren. And Lea
conceaved and bare a sonne and called his name
Ruben, for she sayde : the Lorde hath lokeed upon
my tribulation. And now my husbonde will love me.
[Coverdale's Version.']
Bnt when the Lorde sawe that Lea was nothin<'e
regarded, he made her fruteful and Rachel baiTen.
And Lea conceaved and bare a sonne whom she called
Ruben, and sayde : the Lorde hath loked upon mine
adversitie. Now ^vyll my*husbande love me. — Gen.
yxix. 32.
* Dr Geddes's Prospectus to a New Translation of the Scrip-
tires, p. 89.
• Edited by Mr George Offer. London : 1836.
These translations were speedih' followed by
others, so that the desire of the people for scriptural
knowledge was amply gratified. The dissemination
of so many copies of the sacred volume, where neither
the Bible nor any considerable number of other books
had formerly been in use, produced very retuarkable
effects. The versions first used, having been formed
in some measure from the Latin translation, called
the Vulgate, contained many words from that lan-
guage, which had hardly before been considered as
English ; such as perdition, consolation, reconcilia-
tion, sanctification, immortality, frustrate, inexcus-
able, transfigure, and many others requisite for the
expression of compound and abstract ideas, which
had never occurred to our Saxon ancestors, and
therefore were not represented by any terms in that
language. These words, in the course of time, be-
came part of ordinary discourse, and thus the lan-
guage was enriched. In tlie Book of Common Prayer,
compiled in tlie subsequent reign of Edward VI.,
and which aS'ords many beautiful specimens of the
English of that time, the efforts of the learned to
make such words familiar, are perceptible in many
places ; where a Latin term is often given with a
Saxon word of the same or nearly tlie same mean-
ing following it, as ' humble and lowly,' ' assemble
and meet together.' Another effect proceeded from
the freedom with which the people were allowed to
judge of the doctrines, and canvass the texts, of the
sacred writings. Tlie keen interest with which they
now perused the Bible, hitherto a closed book to the
most of them, is allowed to have given the first im-
pulse to the practice of reading in both parts of the
island, and to have been one of the causes of the
flourishing literary era which followed.
SIR JOHN CHEKE.
Among the great men of this age. a high place is
due to Sir John Cheke, (1514-1557), professor of
Greek at Cambridge, and one of the preceptors of
Sir John Cheke.
the prince, afterwards Edward VI. He is chiefly
distinguished for his exertions in introducing tiie
study of the Greek language and literature into
England. Having dictated to his pupils an iinj)n)vcil
mode of pronouncing Greek words, lie was vioifctl,
assailed on that account by Bishop Gardiner, tlun
74
PROSii WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS WILSON.
chancellor of the university ; but, notwithstanding
the fiihninations of this severe prelate, the system
of Cheke prevailed, and still prevails. At his death,
•which was supposed to be occasioned by remorse for
recanting Protestantism under the terror of the
Marian persecution, he left several works in manu-
script, amongst which was a translation of Matthew's
Gospel, intended to exemplify a plan which he had
conceived of reforming the English language by
eradicating all words except those derived from
Saxon roots. He also contemplated a reform in the
spelling of English, an idea which has occurred to
several learned men, but seems to be amongst the
most hopeless ever entertained by the learned. The
only original work of Cheke in English is a pamphlet,
published in 1549, under the title of Tlie Hurt of
Sedition, how grievous it is to a Commonirealth, being
designed to admonisli the people who had risen under
Ket the tanner. Of this, a specimen is subjoined.
[Remonstrance with Zevcllers.']
Yi'. pretend to a commonwealth. How amend ye
it by killing of gentlemen, by spoiling of gentlemen,
by imprisoning of gentlemen ? A marvellous tanned^
eomraonwealth. "NVhy should ye hate them for their
riches, or for their rule ? Rule, they never took so
much in hand as ye do now. They never resisted the
king, neier withstood his council, he faithful at this
day, when ye be faithless, not only to the king, whose
subjects ye be, but also to your lords, whose tenants
ye be. Is this your true duty — in some of homage,
in most of fealty, in all of allegiance — to leave your
duties, go hack from your promises, fall from your
faith, and contrary to law and truth, to make unlavs-ful
assemblies, ungodly companies, wicked and detestable
camps, to disobey your betters, and to obey your
tanners, to change your obedience from a king to a
Ket, to submit j-ourselves to traitors, and break your
faith to your true king and lords ? * *
If riches offend you, because ye would have the
like, then think that to be no commonwealth, but
envy to the commonwealth. Envy it is to appair-
another man's estate, without the amendment of your
own ; and to have no gentlemen, because ye be none-
yourselves, is to bring down an estate, and to mend
none. Would ye have all alike rich ? That is the
overthrow of all labour, and utter decay of work in
this realm. For, who will labour more, if, when he
hath gotten more, the idle shall by lust, without right,
take what him list from him, under pretence of
equality with him 1 This is the bringing in of idle-
ness, which destroyeth the commonwealth, and not
the amendment of labour, which maintaineth the
commonwealth. If there should be such equality,
then ye take all hope away from j'ours, to come to any
better estate than you now leave them. And as
many mean men's children come honestly up, and
are great succour to all their stock, so should none
be hereafter holpen by you. But because you seek
equality, whereby all cannot be rich, ye would that
belike, whereby every man should be poor. And
think beside, that riches and inheritance be God's
providence, and given to whom of his wisdom he
thinketh good.
THOMAS WILSON.
Thomas Wn-sov, originally a fellow of King's
College, Cambridge, and who rose to be Dean of
Durham, and to various high state employments
under Elizabeth, may be considered as the first
critical writer upon the English language.* He pub-
' Alluding to tlie profession of the ringleader.
* Burnett. Specimens of English Proso Writers.
' Inipnir.
lished, in 1553, a St/stem of lihetoric and uf Logic, in
which the principles of eloquence and composition
are laid down with considerable ability. He strongly
advocates, in this treatise, simjtlicit}' of language,
and condemns those writers who disturb the natural
arrangement of their Avords, and reject familiar and
appropriate phrases for the sake of others more
refined and curious. So great and dangerous an
innovation were his doctrines considered, that,
happening to visit Rome, he was imprisoned as a
heretic. Amongst other false styles censured by
Wilson is that of alliteration, of which he gives the
following caricatured example: — ■' Pitiful poverty
prayeth for a penny, but puffed presumption passeth
not a point, pampering his paunch with pestilent
pleasure, procuring his passport to post it to hell-pit,
there to be punished with pains perpetual.' Wilson
died in 1581. There is mucli good sense in the
following passages of his Art of Rhetoric : —
[Simplicity of Style Recommended.']
Among other lessons, this should first be learned,
that we never affect any strange inkhorn terms, but
to speak as is commonly received ; neither seeking to
be over fine, nor yet living over careless ; using our
speech as most men do, and ordering our wits as the
fewest have doen. Some seek so far for outlandish
English, that they forget altogether their mother's
language. And I dare swear this, if some of their
mothers were alive, they were not able to tell what
they say, and yet these fine English clerks will say
they speak in their mother tongue, if a man should
charge them with counterfeiting the king's English.
Some far jouniied gentlemen, at their return home,
like as they love to go in foreign apparel, so they will
ponder their talk with over-sea language. He that
Cometh lately out of France will talk French English,
and never blush at the matter. Another chops in with
English Italianated, and applieth the Italian phrase
to our English speaking ; the which is, as if an ora-
tion that professeth to utter his mind in plain Latin,
would needs speak poetry, and far-fetched colours of
strange antiquity. The lawyer will store his stomach
with the prating of pedlars. The auditor in making
his account and reckoning, cometh in with sise sould,
et cater dencre, for 6s. and 4d. The fine courtier will
talk nothing but Chaucer. The mystical wise men,
and poetical clerks, will speak nothing but quaint pro-
verbs and blind allegories ; delighting much in their
own darkness, especially when none can tell what
they do say. The unlearned or foolish fantastical,
that smells but of learning (such fellows as have seen
learned men in their days), will so Latin their
tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at thnr
talk, and think surely they speak by some revelation.
I know them, that think rhetoric to stand wholly upon
dark words ; and he that can catch an inkhorn term
by the tail, him they count to be a fine Englishman
and a good rhetorician.
[Moral Aim of Poetry. 1
The saying of poets, and all their fables, are not U
be forgotten. For by them we may talk at large, and
win men by persuasion, if we declare bL-forehand, that
these tales were not feigned of such wise men without
cause, neither yet continued until this time and kept
in memory, without good consideration ; and there-
upon declare the true meaning of all such writing.
For undoubtedly, there is no one tale among all the
poets, but under the same is comprehended soinething
that pertaineth either to the amendment of manner.-,
to the knowledge of truth, to the settingforth nature'.^
work, or else to the understanding of some notable
FROM 1400
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1558.
thing doen. For what other is the painful travail of
Ulvsses, described so largely by Homer, but a lively
picture of man's misery in this life I And as Plutarch
saith, and likewise Basilius Magnus, in the Iliads are
described strength and valiautness of body : in Odyssea
is set forth a lively pattern of the mind. The poets are
wise men, and wished in heart the redress of things ;
the which when for fear they durst not openly rebuke,
thev did in colours paint them out, and told men by
shadows what they should do in good sothe : or else,
because the wicked were unworthy to hear the truth,
they spake so that none might understand but those
unto whom they please to utter their meaning, and
knew them to be of honest conversation.
ROGER ASCHAM.
A still more distinguished instructive writer of
this age was Koger Ascham, university orator at
Cambridge, at one time preceptor, and ultimately
Latin secretary, to Queen Elizabeth. lie must be
-^^v yjJChimirS'.
considered as the first writer on education in our
language, and it is remarkable that many of his
views "on this subject accord with the most en-
lightened of modern times. His writings themselves
furnished an improved example of .style, and they
abound in sound sense and excellent instructions.
We are the more called on to admire them, when we
reflect on the tendency of learned men in that age
to waste their talents and acquirements on profitless
controversy — which was so strong a passion, that,
whenever Sir John Cheke was temporarily absent
from Cambridge, his associates immediatc-U' forsook
the elesrant studies to which he had tempted them,
and fell into disputes about predestination, original
sin, &c. Ascham died in 1568, and Elizabeth did
him the honour to remark, that she would rather
have given ten thousand pounds than lost him. His
principal work. The !>rhodmastcr, printed by his
widow, contains, besides the good general views of
education aliove alluded to, what Johnson has ac-
knowledged to be ' perhaps the best advice that ever
was given for the study of languages.' It also pre-
sents judicious characters of ancient authors. An-
other work, eiititlv;! Tduophi'iis, pui'lislii'd in 1544, is
a dialogue on the art of Archery, designed to promote
an elfgant and useful mode of recreation among
those M'ho, like himself, gave most of their time to
study, and also to exemplifj' a style of composition
more purely English, than what was generally prac-
tised. Ascham also wrote a discourse on the aflairs
of Germany, where he had spent three years in at-
tendance on the English ambassador during the reign
of Edward VI. The following extracts from Ascham's
writings show generally an intellect much in advance
of liis age : —
\_Studi/ should he Relieved by Amusement. 1
[The following is from the opening of the Toxophilus. It m.iy
be remarked, that what wag good sense and sound philosophy in
Ascham's time is so still, and at the present time the lesson is
not less required than it was then.]
• * Pldhlogus. — How much in this matter is to
be given to the authority of Aristotle or TuUy, 1
cannot tcU, seeing sad men may well enough speak
merrily for a mere matter ; this I am sure, which
thing this fair wheat (God save it) maketh me re-
member, that those husbandmen which rise earliest,
and come latest home, and are content to have their
dinner and other drinkings brought into the field to
them, for fear of losing of time, have fatter bani?
in the harvest, than they which will either sleep at
noontime of the day, or else make merry with their
neighbours at the ale. And so a scholar, that pur-
poseth to be a good husband, and desireth to reap
and enjoy much fruit of learning, must till and sow
thereafter. Our best seed time, which be scholars, as
it is very timely, and when we be young ; so it en-
dureth not over long, and therefore it may not be let
slip one hour ; our ground is very hard and full of
weeds, our horse wherewith we be drawn verj' wild, as
Plato saith. And infinite other mo lets, which will
make a thrifty scholar take heed how he spendeth his
time in sport and play. Toj-oph ;7h,s.— That A ristotle and
Tully spake earnestly, and as they thought, the earnest
matter which they entreat upon, doth plainly prove.
And as for 3"0ur hu.sbandry, it was more probably told
with apt words, proper to the thing, than thoroughly
proved with reasons belonging to our matter. For,
contrarywise, I heard myself a good husband at his
book once say, that to omit study for some time of the
day, and some time of the year, made as much for the
increase of learning, as to let the land lie some time
fallow, maketh for the better increase of corn. This
we see, if the land be ploughed everj' year, the com
Cometh thin iip ; the ear is short, the grain is small,
and when it is brought into the bam and threshed,
giveth very evil faule. So those which never leave
poring on their books, have oftentimes as thin inven-
tion, as other poor men have, and as small wit and
weight in it as in other men's. And thus your hus-
bandr}', methink, is more like the life of a covetous
snudge, that oft very evil proves, than the labour of a
good husband, that knoweth well what he doth. And
surely the best wits to learning must needs have much
recreation, and ceasing from their book, or else they
mar themselves ; when base and dumpish wits can
never be hurt with continual studj' ; as ye see in lut-
ing, that a treble minikin string must always be let
down, but at such time as when a man must needs
play, when the base and dull string needeth never to
be moved out of his place. The same reason I find
true in two bows that I have, whereof the one is quick
of cast, trig and trim, both for pleasure and profit ;
the other is a lugge slow of cast, following the string,
more sure for to last than pleasant for to use. Now,
Sir, it chanced this other night, one in my chamber
would needs bend them to prove their strength, but
(I cannot tell how) they were both left bent till the
next day after dinner ; and when 1 came to them,
purposing to have gone on shooting, I found my good
bow clean cast on the one »>de, and as weak as water,
that surely, if I were a rich man, I had rather have
spent a crown ; and as for my lugge, it was not one
whit the worse, but shot by and by as well and as far
as ever it did. And even so, I am sure that good wits,
except they be let do\vn like a treble string, and \m-
bent like a good casting bow, they will never last and
be able to continue in study. And I know where 1
speak this, Philologe, for I would not say thus much
afore young men, for they will take soon occasion to
.study little enough. But I say it, therefore, because
I know, as little study getteth little learning, or none
at all, so the most study getteth not the most learning
of all. For a man's wit, fore-occupied in earnest
stuily, must be as well recreated with some honest
pastime, as the body, fore-laboured, must be refreshed
with sleep and quietness, or else it caimot endure very
long, as the noble poet saith : —
' WTiat thing wants quiet and merry rest, endures but a smjUl
while."
76
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROGER ASCHAM.
[The Bloiving of the Wind.^
[In the Toxophilus, Ascham has occasion to treat very mi-
nutely the difficulties which the archer experiences from the
blowing of the wind. His own experience of these difficulties
in the course of his sport, seems to have made him a natural
philosopher to that extent, before tlie proper time.]
To see the wind with a man's eyes, it is impossible,
the nature of it is so fine and subtle ; yet this expe-
rience of the wind had I once myself, and that was in
the great snow which fell four years ago. I rode
in the high way betwixt TopclifF upon Swale and
Boroughbridge, the way being somewhat trodden afore
by wayfaring men ; the fields on both sides were
plrin, and lay almost yard deep with snow ; the night
before had been a little frost, so that the snow was
hard and crusted above ; that morning the sun shone
bright and clear, the wind was whistling aloft, and
sharp, according to the time of the year ; the snow in
the highway lay loose and trodden with horse feet ;
so as the wind blew, it took the loose snow with it,
and made it so slide upon the snow in the field, which
was hard and crusted by reason of the frost overnight,
that thereby I might see very well the whole nature
of the wind as it blew that day. And 1 had a great
delight and pleasure to mark it, which maketh me
now far better to remember it. Sometime the wind
would be not past two yards broad, and so it would
carry the snow as far as I could see. Another time
the snow would blow over half the field at once. Some-
time the snow would tumble softlj^ bye and bye it
would fly wonderful fast. And this I perceived also,
that the wind goeth by streams and not whole to-
gether. For I should see one stream within a score
on me, then the space of two score, no snow would stir,
but, after so much quantity of ground, another stream
of snow, at the same very time, should be carried
likewise, but not equally; for the one would stand still,
when the other flew apace, and so continue sometime
swiftlier, sometime slowlier, sometime broader, some-
time narrower, as far as I could see. Nor it flew not
straight, but sometime it crooked this way, sometime
that way, and sometime it ran round about in a com-
pass. And sometime the snow would be lift clean
from the ground up to the air, and bye and bye it
■would be all clapt to the ground, as though there had
been no wind at all ; straightway it would rise and fly
again. And that which was the most marvel of all,
at one time two drifts of snow flew, the one out of the
west into the east, the other out of the north into the
east. And I saw two winds, by reason of the snow,
the one cross over the other, as it had been two high-
ways. And again, I should hear the wind blow in
the air, when nothing was stirred at the ground. And
when all was still vrhere I rode, not very far from me
the snow should be lifted wonderfully. This experi-
ence made me more marvel at the nature of the wind,
than it made me cunning in the knowledge of the
wind ; but yet thereby I learned perfectly that it is
no marvel at all, though men in wind lose their length
in shooting, seeing so many ways the wind is so va-
iable in blowing.
[Occupations should he chosen suitable to the Natural
Faculties.'^
If men would go about matters which they should
do, and be fit for, and not such things which wilfully
they desire, and yet be unfit for, verily greater matters
in the commonwealth than shooting should be in
better case than they be. This ignorance in men
which know not for what time, and to what thing they
be fit, causeth some wish to be rich, for whom it were
better a great deal to be poor ; other to be meddling
in every man's matter, for whom it were more honesty
to be quiet ani still; some to desire to be in the
court, which be born and be fitter rather for the cart ;
some to be masters and rule other, which never yet
began to rule themselves ; some always to jangle
and talk, which rather should hear and keep silence ;
some to teach, which rather should learn ; some to
be priests, which were fitter to be clerks. And this
perverse judgment of the world, when men measure
themselves amiss, bringeth much disorder and great
unseemliness to the whole body of the commonwealth,
as if a man should wear his hose upon his head, or
a woman go with a sword and a buckler, every man
would take it as a great uncomeliness, although it be
but a trifle in respect of the other.
This perverse judgement of men hindereth nothing
so much as learning, because commonly those that
be unfittest for learning, be chiefly .set to learning.
As if a man now-a-days have two sons, the one impo-
tent, weak, sickly, lisping, stuttering, and stammering,
or having any mis-shape in his body ; what doth the
father of such one commonly say ! This boy is fit
for nothing else, but to set to learning and make a
priest of, as who would say, the outcasts of the world,
having neither countenance, tongue, nor wit (for of a
perverse body cometh commonly a perverse mind), be
good enough to make those men of, which shall be
appointed to preach God's holy word, and ministei
his blessed sacraments, besides other most weighty
matters in the commonwealth ; put oft times, and
worthily, to learned men's discretion and charge ; when
rather such an office so high in dignity, so goodly in
administration, should be committed to no man, which
should not have a countenance full of comeliness, to
allure good men, a body full of manly authority to
fear ill men, a wit apt for all learning, with tongue
and voice able to persuade all men. And although
few such men as these can be found in a common-
wealth, yet surely a goodly disposed man will both
in his mind think fit, and with all his study labour
to get such men as I speak of, or rather better, if
better can be gotten, for such an high administration,
which is most properly appointed to God's own mat-
ters and businesses.
This perverse judgment of fathers, as concerning
the fitness and unfitness of their children, causeth the
commonwealth have many unfit ministers : and seeing
that ministers be, as a man would say, instruments
wheremth the commonwealth doth work all her mat-
ters withal, I marvel how it chaiiceth that a poor shoe-
maker hath so much wit, that he will prepare no
instrument for his science, neither knife nor awl, nor
nothing else, which is not veiy fit for him. The com-
monwealth can be content to take at a fond father's
hand the riffraff" of the world, to make those instru-
ments of wherewithal she should work the highest
mattei-s under heaven. And surely an awl of lead is
not so unprofitable in a shoemaker's shop, as an unfit
minister made of gross metal is unseemly in the com-
monwealth. Fathers in old time, among the noble
Persians, might not do with their children as they
thought good, but as the judgment of the common-
wealth always thought best. This fault of fathers
bringeth many a blot with it, to the great deformity
of the commonwealth : and here surely I can praise
gentlewomen, which have always at hand their glasses,
to see if any thing be amiss, and so will amend it ;
yet the commonwealth, having the glass of knowledge
in every man's hand, doth see such uncomeliness in
it, and yet winketh at it. This fault, and many such
like, might be soon wiped away, if fathers would be-
stow their children always on that thing, whereunto
nature hath ordained them most apt and fit. For if
youth be grafted straight and not awry, the whole
commonwealth will flourish thereafter. When this
is done, then must eveiy man begin to be more ready
to amend himself, than to check another, measuring
their matters with that wise proverb of Apollo, Know
V
FROM 1100
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1558.
thyself : that is to say, learn to know what thou art
able, fit, and apt unto, and follow that.
[^Detached Observations from the ScJwolmastcr.']
It is pity that commonly more care is had, and
that among very wise men, to find out rather a cun-
ning man for their horse, than a cunning man for
their children. To the one they will gladly give a
stipend of '200 crowns by the year, and loth to offer
the other "200 shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven,
laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their
liberality as it should ; for he suffereth them to have
tame and well ordered horse, but wild and unfor-
tunate children.
One example, whether love or fear doth work more
in a child for virtue and learning, I will gladly report ;
which may be heard with some pleasure, and followed
with more profit. Before I went into Germany, I
came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave
of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceed-
ing much beholden. Her parents, the duke and the
duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentle-
women, were hunting in the park. I found her in her
chamber, reading Phcedon Platonis in Greek, and that
with as much delight, as some gentlemen would read
a merry tale in Bocace. After salutation and duty
done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she
would lose such pastime in the park ? Smiling, she
answered me, ' I wiss, all their sport in the park is but
a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas !
good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.'
' And how came you, jMadam,' quoth I, ' to this deep
knowledge of pleasure 1 And what did chiefly allure
you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few
men, have attained thereunto?' 'I will tell you,'
quoth she, ' and tell you a truth which, perchance, ye
will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever
God gave me, is, that he sent me so shai-p and severe
parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I
am in presence either of father or mother, whether I
speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be
merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing
anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight,
measure, and number, even so perfectly as God made
the world, or else I cam so sharply taunted, so cruelly
threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches,
nips, and bubs, and other ways, which 1 will not
name for the honour I bear them, so witliout measure
misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come
that I must go to Mr Elmer ; who teacheth me so
gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to
learning, that 1 think all the time nothing, whiles I
am with him. And when I am called from him, I
fall on weeping, because, whatever I do else, but learn-
ing, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking
unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my
pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and
more, that, in respect of it, all other pleasures, in
very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me.'
Learning teacheth more in one year than experience
in twenty ; and learning teacheth safely when expe-
rience maketh mo miserable than wise. lie hazardeth
sore that waxeth wise by experience. An unhappy
master he is, that is made cunning by many sliip-
wrecks ; a miserable merchant, that is neither rich
nor wise but after some bankrouts. It is costly
wisdom that is bought by experience. "We know by
experience itself, that it is a marvelous pain, to find
out but a short way by long wandering. And surely,
he that would prove wise by experience, he may be
witty indeed, but even like a swift runner, that run-
neth fast out of his way, and upon the night, he
knoweth not whither. And verily they be fewest in
number that be happy or wise by unlearned expe-
lience And look well upon the former life of those
few, whether your example be old or young, who with-
out learning have gathered, by long experience a little
wisdom, and some happiness ; and when you do con-
sider what mischief they have committed, what dan-
gers they have escaped (and yet twenty for one do
perish in the adventure), then think well with your-
self, whether ye would that your o^\ti son should
come to wisdom and happiness by the way of such
experience or no.
It is a notable tale, that old Sir Roger Chamloo,
sometime chief justice would tell of himself. When
he was Ancient in inn of court certain young gentle-
men were brought before him to be corrected for cer-
tain niisorders ; and one of the lustiest said, ' Sir, we
be young gentlemen ; and wise men before us have
proved all fashions, and yet those have done full
well.' This they said, because it was well known.
Sir Roger had been a good fellow in his youth. But
he answered them very wisely. ' Indeed,' saith he, ' in
youth I was as you are now : and I had twelve fellows
"like unto myself, but not one of them came to a good
end. And therefore, follow not my example in youth,
but follow my counsel in age, if ever ye think to
come to this place, or to these years, that I am come
unto ; less ye meet either with poverty or Tyburn in
the way.'
Thus, experience of all fashions in youth, being in
proof always dangerous, in issue seldom lucky, is a
way indeed to overmuch knowledge ; yet used com-
monly of such men, which be either carried by some
curious affection of mind, or driven by some hard
necessity of life, to hazard the trial of overmany peri-
lous adventures.
[In favour of the learning of more languages than
one] — I have been a looker on in the cockpit of learn-
ing these many years ; and one cock only have I
known, which, with one wing, even at this day, doth
pass all other, in mine opinion, that ever I saw in
any pit in England, though they had two wings. Yet
nevertheless, to fly well with one w'ing, to run fast
with one leg, be rather rare masteries, much to be
marvelled at, than sure examples, safely to be fol-
lowed. A bishop that now liveth a good man, whose
judgment in religion I better like, than his opinion
in perfectness in other learning, said once unto me ;
' We have no need now of the Greek tongue, when all
things be translated into Latin.' But the good man
understood not, that even the best translation, is for
mere necessity but an evil imped wing to fly withal,
or a heavy stump leg of wood to go withal. Such,
the higher they fly, the sooner they falter and fail :
the faster they run the ofter they stumble and sorer
they fall. Such as will needs so fly, may fly at a
pye and catch a daw : and such runners, as commonly
the}', shove and shoulder, to stand foremost, yet in
the" end they come behind others, and deserve but
the hopshackleSj'if the masters of the game be right
judgers.
[With reference to what took place at the univer-
sities on the accession of Mary] — And what good could
chance then to the universities, when some of the
greatest, though not of the wisest, nor best learned,
nor best men neither of that side, did labour to per-
suade, ' that ignorance was better than knowledge,'
which they meant, not for the laity only, but also for
the greatest rabble of their spirituality, what other
pretence openly soever they made. And therefore
did some of them at Cambridge (whom I will not
name openly) cause hedge priests fettel out of the
country, to be made fellows in the university ; saying
in their talk privily, and declaring by their deeds
openly, ' that he was fellow good enough for their
time, if he could wear a gown and a tippet comely, and
have his crown shorn fair and rouudly ; and could
1 Fetched.
7b
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
turn his porteus and pie' readily.' Which I speak
not to reproye any order either of apparel, or other
duty, that may be well and inditlerently used ; but
to note the misery of that time, when the benefits
provided for learning were so foully misused.
And what was the fruit of this seed ? Verily, judg-
ment in doctrine was wholly altered ; order in disci-
pline very sore changed ; the love of good learning
began suddenly to wax cold ; the knowledge of the
tongues (in spite of some that therein had flourished)
was manifestly contemned : and so, the way of right
study purposely perverted ; the choice of good authors,
of malice confounded ; old sophistry, I say not well,
not old, but that new rotten sophistry, began to beard,
and shoulder logic in her own tongue : yea, I know
that heads were cast together, and counsel devised,
that Duns, with all the rabble of barbarous ques-
tionists, should have dispossessed of their place and
room, Aristotle, Plato, Tully, and Demosthenes, whom
good M. Redman, and those two worthy stars of that
university, 1\I. Cheke and M. Smith, with their scho-
lars, had brought to flourish as notably in Cambridge,
as ever they did in Greece and in Italy ; and for the
doctrine of those four, the four pillars of learning, Cam-
bridge then giving no place to no university, neither
in PVance, Spain, Ciermany, nor Italy. Also, in out-
ward behaviour, then began simplicity in apparel to
be laid aside, courtly gallantness to be taken up ;
frugality in diet was privately misliked, town going to
good cheer openly used ; honest pastimes, joined with
labour, left off in the fields ; unthrifty and idle games
haunted comers, and occupied the nights : contention
In youth nowhere for learning ; factions in the elders
everywhere for trifles.
All which miseries at length, by God's providence,
had their end 16th November 1558.* Since which
time, the young spring hath shot up so fair as now
there be in Cambridge again many good plants.
[Qual'tficatioiis of an Historian.']
[From the Discourse on the Affairs of Germany. The MTiter
is addressing Iiis friend John Astely.]
When you and I read Livy together (if you do re-
member), after some reasoning we concluded both
what was in our opinion to be looked for at his hand,
that would well and advisedly write an history. First
point was, to write nothing false ; next, to be bold to
say any truth : whereby is avoided two great faults — •
flattery and hatred. For which two points, Cajsar is
read to his great praise ; and Jovius the Italian to
his just reproach. Then to mark diligently the causes,
counsels, acts, and issues, in all great attempts : and
in causes, what is just or unjust ; in counsels, what is
purposed wisely or rashly ; in acts, what is done
courageously or faintly ; and of every issue, to note
some general lesson of wisdom and wariness for like
matters in time to come, wherein Polybius in Greek,
and Philip Comines in French, have done the duties
of wise and worthy writers. Diligence also must be
used in keeping truly the order of time, and describ-
ing lively both the site of places and nature of per-
sons, not only for the outward shape of the body, but
also for the inward disposition of the mind, as Thucy-
dides doth in many places very trimly ; and Homer
everywhere, and that always most excellently ; which
observation is chiefly to be marked in him. And our
Chaucer doth the same, very praiseworthily : mark
him well, and confer him with any other that ^n•iteth
in our time in their proudest tongue, whosoever list.
The style must be always plain and open ; yet some
time higher and lower, as matters do rise and fall.
For if proper and natural words, in well-joined sen-
tences, do lively express the matter, be it troublesome,
quiet, angry, or pleasant, a man shall think not to be
reading, but present in doing of the same. And
herein Livy of all other in any tongue, by mine opi-
nion, carrieth away the praise.
After the publication of Ascham's works, it
became more usual for learned men to compose
in English, more particularly when they aimed
at influencing public opinion. But as religious
controversy was wliat then chiefly agitated the
minds of men, it follows that the great bulk of
the English works of that age are now of little
interest.
CjarH Periioili*
THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH, JAMES I., AND CHARLES I. [1553 TO 1649.]
POETS.
N the preced-
ing sections, the
history of Eng-
lish literature is
brought to a pe-
riod when its in-
fancy may be said
to cease, and its
manhood to com-
mence. In the
earlier half of
' the sixteenth cen-
tury, it was sen-
sibly affected by
a variety of in-
fluences, which,
for an age be-
fore, had operated
powerfully in ex-
panding the intellect of European nations. The
' Breviary. * The date of the accession of Queen Elizabeth.
study of classical literature, the invention oi prmt-
ing, the freedom with which religion was dis-
cussed, together with the general substitution of
the philosophy of Plato for that of Aristotle, had
everywhere given activity and strengtli to the
minds of men. The immediate effects of these no-
velties upon English literature, were the enrich-
ment of the language, as already mentioned, by
a great variety of words from tlie classic tongues,
the establishment of better models of thought and
style, and the allowance of greater freedom to the
fancy and powers of observation in the exercise
of the literary calling. Not only the Greek and
Roman writers, but those of modern Italy and
France, Avhere letters experienced an earlier revival,
were now translated into English, .and being libe-
mWy diffused by the i)ress, served to excite a taste
for elegant reading in lower branches of .society
than had ever before felt the genial influence of
letters. The dissemination of the Scri[)tures in
the vulgar tongue, while it greatly affected the
language and ideas of the people, was also of no
small avail in giving new direction to the thoughts
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1645.
of literary men, to -whom these antique Oriental com-
positions presented numberless incidents, images,
,ind sentiments, unknown before, and of the ricliest
and most interesting kind.
Among other circumstances favourable to litera-
ture at this period, must be reckoned the encourage-
ment given to it by Queen Elizabeth, who was herself
very learned and' addicted to poetical composition,
and" had the art of filling her court with men qualified
to sliine in almost every department of intellectual
exertion. Her successors, James and Charles, re-
sembled her in some of these respects, and during
their reigns, the impulse which she had given to
literature experienced rather an increase than a
decline. There was, indeed, something in the polic)',
as well as in the personal character of all these sove-
reigns, which proved favourable to literature. The
study of the belles lettres was in some measure
identified with the courtly and arbitrary principles
of the time, not perhaps so much from any enlight-
ened spirit in those who supported such principles,
as from a desire of opposing the puritans, and other
malcontents, whose religious doctrines taught them
to despise some departments of elegant literature, and
utterly to condemn others. There can be no doubt
that the drama, for instance, chiefly owed that en-
couragement which it received under Elizabeth and
her successors, to a spirit of hostility to the puritans,
wlio, not unjustly, repudiated it for its immorality.
"We must at tlie same time allow mucli to the in-
fluence which such a court as that of England, during
these three reigns, was calculated to have among
men of literary tendencies. Almost all the poets,
and many of the other writers, were either courtiers
themselves, or under the immediate protection of
courtiers, and were constantly experiencing the
smiles, and occasionally the solid benefactions, of
royalty. Whatever, then, was refined, or gay, or
sentimental, in this country and at this time, came
with its full influence upon literature.
The works brought forth under these circum-
stances have been very aptly compared to the pro-
ductions of a soil for the first time broken up, when
' all indigenous plants spring up at once with a rank
and irrepressible fertility, and display whatever is
peculiar and excellent in their nature, on a scale the
most conspicuous and magnificent.'* The ability to
write having been, as it were, suddenly created, the
whole world of character, imagery, and sentiment,
as well as of information and pliilosophj', lay ready
for the use of those who possessed the gift, and
was appropriated accordingly. As might be ex-
pected, where there was less ride of art than opu-
lence of materials, the productions of these writers
are often deficient in taste, and contain much that
is totally aside from the purpose. To pursue the
simile above quoted, the crops are not so clean as if
they had been reared under systematic cultivation.
On this account, the refined taste of the eighteenth
century condemned most of the productions of the
sixteenth and seventeenth to oblivion, and it is only
of late that they have once more obtained their de-
served reputation. After every proper deduction
has been made, enough remains to fix this era as
'by far the mightiest in the history of English lite-
rature, or indeed of human intellect and capacity.
There never was anything,' says the writer above
quoted, 'like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed
from the middle of J^lizabcth's reign, to the period
of the Kestoration. In point of real force and origi-
nality of genius, neither the age of Tericles, nor the
age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., nor of
Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison j for in
♦ Edinburgh Review, xviii. 275.
that short period, we shall find the names of almost
all the very great men that this nation has ever pro-
duced, the names of Sluiks]>care, and Bacon, and
Spenser, and Sydne}', and Hooker, and Taylor, and
Barrow, and Raleigh, and Napier, and Ilobbes, and
many others ; men, all of them, not merely of great
talents and accomplishments, but of vast compass
and reach of understanding, and of minds truly
creative and original ; not perfecting art by the
delicacy of their taste, or digesting knowledge by the
justness of their reasonings, but making vast and
substantial additions to the materials upon which
taste and reason must hereafter be emjjloyed, and
enlarging to an incredible and unparalleled extent
both the stores and the resources of the human
faculties.'
THOMAS SACKVILLE.
In the reign of Elizabeth, some poetical names of
importance precede that of Spenser. The first is
Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), ultimately Earl
Tuomas SackviUe.
of Dorset and Lord High Treasurer of England, and
who will again come before us in the character of a
dramatic writer. In 1557, Sackville formed the de-
sign of a poem, entitled The Mirrour for Magistrates,
of which he wrote only the 'Induction,' and one legend
on the life of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.
In imitation of Dante and some other of his prede-
cessors, he lays the scene of his poem in the infernal
regions, to which lie descends under the guidance
of an allegorical personage named Sorrow. It was
his object to make all the great persons of English
history, from the Conquest downwards, pass here in
review, and each tell his own story, as a warning to
existing statesmen ; but other duties compelled the
poet, after he had written what has been stated, to
break off, and commit the completion of the work to
two poets of inferior note, Richard Baldwyne and
George Ferrers. The whole poem is one of a very
remarkable kind for the age, and the part exetnited
by Sackville exhibits in some parts a strength of
description and a power of drawing allegorical cha-
racters, scarcely inferior to Spenser.
[A llegorical characters from tJie Miiroivrfor Magistrates.^
And first, within the porch and jaws of hell.
Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent
With tears ; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wn;tchcdness, and, cursing, never stent
To sob and sigh, but ever thus lament
80
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS SACKVILLE.
With thoughtful care ; as she that, all in vain,
Would wear and waste continually in pain :
Iler eyes unstedfast, rolling here and there,
Whiri'd on each place, .as place that Tcngeance
So was her mind continually in fear, [brought,
Tost and tormented with the tedious thought
Ofrthose detested crimes which she had wrought ;
With dreadful cheer, and looks thrown to the sky,
Wishing for death, and yet she could not die.
Next, saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook.
With foot uncertain, profer'd here and there ;
Benumb'd with speech ; and, with a ghastly look,
Searched every place, all pale and dead for fear.
His cap born up with staring of his hair ;
'Stoin'd and amazed at his own shade for dread.
And fearing greater dangers than was need.
And, next, within the entry of this lake.
Sat fell Revenge, gnashing her teeth for ire ;
Devising means how she may vengeance take ;
Never in rest, 'till she have her desire ;
But frets within so far forth with the fire
Of wreaking flames, that now determines she
To die by death, or 'veng'd by death to be.
When fell Revenge, with bloody foul pretence,
Had show'd herself, as next in order set.
With trembling limbs we softly parted thence,
'Till in our eyes another sight we met ;
When fro my heart a sigh forthwith I fet,
Ruing, alas, upon the woeful plight
Of Misery, that next appear'd in sight :
His face was lean, and some-deal pin'd away.
And eke his hands consumed to the bone ;
But, what his body was, I cannot say,
For on his carcase raiment had he none,
Save clouts and patches pieced one by one ;
With staff in hand, and scrip on shoulders cast,
His chief defence against the winter's blast :
His food, for most, was wild fruits of the tree,
Unless sometime some crumbs fell to his share.
Which in his wallet long, God wot, kept he.
As on the which full daint'ly would he fare ;
His drink, the running stream, his cup, the bare
Of his palm closed ; his bed, the hard cold ground :
To this poor life was Misery ybound.
Whose wretched state when we had well behold.
With tender ruth on him, and on his feers.
In thoughtful cares forth then our pace we held ;
And, by and by, another shape appears
Of greedy Care, still brushing up the briers ;
His knuckles knob'd, his flesh deep dinted in,
With tawed hands, and hard ytanued skin :
The morrow grey no sooner hath begun
To spread his light e'en peeping in our eyes.
But he is up, and to his work yrun ;
But let tlie night's black misty mantles rise.
And with foul dark never so much disguise
The fair bright day, yet ceaseth he no while.
But hath his candles to prolong his toil.
By him lay hea^-y Sleep, the cousin of Death,
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath ;
Small keep took he, whom fortune frowned on.
Or whom she lifted up into the throne
Of high renown, but, as a living death,
So dead alive, of life he drew the breath :
The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travel's ease, the still night's feer was he,
And of our life in earth the better part ;
Iliever of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that [tyde] and oft that never be;
Without respect, esteem[ing] equally
King Croesus' pomp and Irus' poverty.
And next in order sad, Old-Age we foutid :
His beard all hoar, his eyes liollow and blind ;
With drooping cheer still poring on the ground.
As on the place where nature him assign'd
To rest, when that the sisters had untwin'd
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast declining life :
There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint
Rue with himself liis end approaching f;ist.
And all for nought his wretched mind torment
With sweet remembrance of his pleasures jiast.
And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste ;
Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek.
And to be young again of Jove beseek !
But, an the cruel fates so fixed be
That time forepast cannot return again.
This one request of Jove yet i)rayed he, —
That, in such wither'd plight, and wretclied pain,
As eld, accompany'd with her loathsome train.
Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief
He might a while yet linger forth his life.
And not so soon descend into the pit ;
Where Death, when he the mortal corpse hath slain.
With reckless hand in grave doth cover it :
Thereafter never to enjoy again
The gladsome light, but, in the ground ylain,
In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought,
As he had ne'er into the world been brought :
But who had seen him sobbing how he stood
Unto himself, and how he would bemoan
His youth forepast — as though it wrought him good
To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone —
He would have mused, and marvel'd much whereon
This wretched Age should life desire so fain.
And knows full well life doth but length his pain :
Crook -back'd he was, too';Ii-shaken, and blear-eyed ;
Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four ;
With old lame bones, thit rattled by his side ;
His scalp all pil'd, and he with eld forelore.
His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door ;
Fumbling, and driveling, as he draws his breath ;
For brief, the shape and messenger of Death.
And fast by him pale Malady was placed :
Sore sick in bed, her colour all foregone ;
Bereft of stomach, savour, and of taste,
Ne could she brook no meat but broths alone ;
Her breath corrupt ; her keepers every one
Abhorring her ; her sickness past rccure.
Detesting physic, and all physic's cure.
But, oh, the doleful sight that then we see !
We turn'd our look, and on the other side
A grisly shape of Famine mought we see :
With greedy looks, and gaping mouth, that cried
And roar'd for meat, as she should there have died ;
Her body thin and bare as any bone,
Whereto was left nought but the case alone.
And that, alas, was gnawen every where.
All full of holes ; that I ne mought refrain
From tears, to see how she her arms could tear,
And with her teeth gnash on the bones in vain.
When, all for nought, she fain would so sustain
Her starven corpse, that rather seem'd a shiido
Than any substance of a creature made :
Great was her force, whom stone-wall could not stay
Her tearing nails snatching at all she saw ;
With gaping jaws, that by no means ymay
Be satisfy'd from hunger of her maw.
But cats herself as she that liath no law ;
Gnawing, alas, her carcase all in vain.
Where you may count each sinew, bone, and vein.
81
FROM 1558.
CYCLOPJEDIA OF
TO 1649.
On her while ive thus firmly fix'd our eyes,
That bled for ruth of such a dreary sight,
Lo, suddenly she shrick'd in so huge wise
As made hell gates to shiver with the might ;
"Wherewith, a dart wp saw, how it did light
Right on her breast, and, therewithal, pale Death
Enlhirling it, to rieve her of her breal J :
And, by and by, a dumb dead corpse we saw,
Heavy, and cold, the shape of Death aright,
That daunts all earthly creatures to his law,
Against whose force in vain it is to fight ;
Ne peers, ne princes, nor no mortal wight,
No toAvns, ne realms, cities, ne strongest tower,
But all, perforce, must yield unto his power :
His dart, anon, out of the corpse he took.
And in his hand (a dreadful sight to see)
With great triumph eftsoons the same he shook.
That most of all my fears afFrayed me ;
His body dight with nought but bones, pardy ;
The naked shape of man there saw I plain,
All save the flesh, the sinew, and the vein.
Lastly, stood ^Var, in glittering arms yclad.
With visage grim, stem look, and blackly hued :
In his right hand a naked sword he had.
That to the hilts was .all with blood imbrued ;
And in his left (that kings and kingdoms rued)
Famine and fire he held, and therewithal
He razed towns and threw do^vn towers and all :
Cities he sack'd, and realms (that whilom flower'd
In honour, glory, and rule, above the rest)
He overwhelm'd, and all their fame devour'd,
Consum'd, destroy'd, wasted, and never ceas'd,
'Till he their wealth, their name, and all oppress'd :
His face forehew'd with wounds ; and by his side
There hung his targe, with gashes deep and wide.
\_Henry Dvke of JBiickingham in the Infernal Regions.']
[The description of the Duke of Buckingham — the Bucking-
ham, it must be recollected, of Richard III.— has been mucli
kdmired, as an impersonation of extreme wretchedness.]
Then first came Henry Duke of Buckingham,
His cloak of black all piled, and quite forlorn,
Wringing his hands, and Fortune oft doth blame,
Which of a duke had made him now her scorn ;
With ghastly looks, as one in manner lorn,
Oft spread his arms, stretched hands he joins as fast,
With rueful cheer, and vapoured eyes upca-st.
His cloak he rent, his manly breast he beat ;
His hair all torn, about the place it lain :
My heart so molt to see his grief so great.
As feelingly, methought, it dropped away :
His eyes they whirled about withouten stay :
With stormy sighs the place did so complain,
As if his heart at each had burst in twain.
Thrice he began to tell his doleful tale.
And thrice the sighs did swallow up his voice ;
At each of which he shrieked so withal.
As though the heavens ryved with the noise ;
Till at the last, recovering of his voice.
Supping the tears that all his breast berained.
On cruel Fortune weeping thus he plained.
JOHN HARRINGTON,
Some pleasing amatory verses (exhibiting a re-
markable polish for the time in which they were
written) by John Harrington (1534 — 1.')82) have
been published in the Nugee Antiqua. This jjoet
was imprisoned in the Tower by Queen Mary for
holding correspondence with Elizabeth, aad the
hitter, on her accession to the throne, rewarded him |
with many favours. He must have been a man of !
taste and refined feelings, as the following specimen
of his poetry will suffice tO'Show : —
So7in€t made on Isabella MarkJiam, wlien I first \
thought her fair, as she stood at the priiircss^s window, j
in goodly attire, and talked to divers in the court-yard. \
I5t)4.
Whence comes my love ? Oh heart, disclose ;
It was from cheeks that shamed the rose,
From lips that spoil the ruby's praise,
From eyes that mock the diamond's blaze :
Whence comes my woe 1 as freely owa ;
Ah me ! 'twas from a heart like stone.
The blushing cheek speaks modest mind,
The lips befitting words most kind,
The eye does tempt to love's desire,
And seems to say 'tis Cupid's fire ;
Yet all so fair but speak my moan,
Sith nought doth say the heart of stone.
Why thus, my love, so kind bespeak
Sweet eye, sweet lip, sweet blushing cheek-
Yet not a heart to save my pain ;
Oh Venus, take thy gifts again !
Make not so fair to cause our moan,
Or make a heart that's like our ovvn.
SIR PHILIP SIDNET.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) takes his rank in
English literary history rather as a prose writer than
as a poet. His poetry, indeed, has long been laid
aside on account of the cold and afiei'tud style in
which he wrote. It has been justly reuiarked, th:it,
' if he had looked into his own noble heart, aad
written directly from that, instead of from his soine-
wliat too metaphysico-philosopliical head, his jioe'ry
would have been excellent.' Yet in some pieces he
has fortunately failed in extinguishing the natural
sentiment which inspired him. The following are
admired specimens of his sonnets : —
[Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney.]
Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company,
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry
To them that would make speech of speech arise.
They deem, and of their doom the ramour tiies.
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie
So in my swelling breast, that only I
F'awn on myself, and others do despise.
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess.
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass :
But one worse fault Ambition I confess.
That makes me oft my best friends overpass.
Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace.
With how sad steps, Moon ! thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ?
Sure, if that long with love acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ;
I read it in thy looks, thy languish'd grace
To me that feel the like thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, Moon, tell me.
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit!
Are beauties there as proud as here they be ?
Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess!
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness? „,,
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe.
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release.
The indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease*
Of those fierce darts, Despair at me doth throw ;
make in me those civil wars to cease :
1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed ;
A chamber, deaf to noise, and blind to light ;
A rosy garland, and & weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right.
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.
Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize.
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemy France ;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ;
Townfolks my strength ; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise ;
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ;
Others, because of both sides I do take
My blood from them who did excel in this,
Think nature me a man of arms did make.
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is,
Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.
In martial sports I had my cunning tried.
And yet to break more staves did me address ;
While with the people's shouts, I must confess.
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with
pride.
When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
' What now. Sir Fool,' said he, ' I would no less.
Look here, I saj-.' I look'd, and Stella spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ;
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to light ;
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries ;
My foe came on, and beat the air for me,
Till that her blush taught me my shame to see.
Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward named Fourth as first in praise I name ;
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain.
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame :
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain.
And, gain'd by Mars, could yet mad JNIars so tame.
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain :
Nor that he made the Flower-de-luce so fraid,
Though strongly hedg'd of bloody Lion's paws.
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause —
But only for this worthy knight durst prove
To lose his cro^vn, rather than fail his love.
happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear!
1 saw thee with full many a smiling line
I^pon thy cheerful face joy's livery wear.
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine.
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear ;
While wanton winds, with beauties so divine
Eavish'd, staid not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine:
And fain those OSol's youth there would their stay
Have made ; but, forced by Nature still to fly.
First did with puffing kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd. From window I,
Wir,h sight thereof, cried out, ' fair disgrace ;
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place.'
' Press, throng.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH — TIMOTHY KENDAL — NICSOLAS
BRETON — HENRY CONSTABLE.
Sir Walter Raleigh, to whose merits as a prose
writer justice is done in the sequel, deserves to be
ranked amongst the minor poets of Elizabeth's reign.
Timothy Kendal is only known for having pub-
lished, in 1577, a ycAnme entitled Hours of Epigrams.
Nicholas Breton (1555-1624) wrote some pastoral
poems, and a volume called the Works of a Young
Wit. Henry Constable was a popular writer of
sonnets, though strangely conceited and unnatural
in his style. In most of the works of these inferior
poets, happy thoughts and imagery may be found,
mixed up with affectations, forced analogies, and
conceits. It is worthy of remark, that this was the
age when collections of fugitive and miscellaneous
poems first became common. Several volumes of
this kind, published in the reign of Elizivbeth, con-
tain poetry of high merit, without any author's
name.
The Country^s Recreatiom.
[From a poem by Raleigh, bearing the above title, the following
verses are extracted.]
Heart-tearing cares and quiv'ring fears,
Anxious sighs, untimely tears,
Fly, fly to courts.
Fly to fond worldling's sports ;
Where strained sardonic smiles are glozing still.
And Grief is forced to laugh against her will ;
Where mirth's but mummery,
And sorrows only real be.
Fly from our country pastimes, fly,
Sad troop of human misery !
Come, serene looks.
Clear as the crj'stal brooks,
Or the pure azur'd heaven that smiles to see
The rich attendance of our poverty.
Peace and a secure mind.
Which all men seek, we only find.
Abused mortals, did you know
Where joy, heart's ease, and comforts grow,
You'd scorn proud towers.
And seek them in these bowers ;
Where winds perhaps our woods may sometimes sLakw^
But blustering care could never tempest make,
Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us,
Savtng of fountains that glide by us.
* ♦ *
Blest silent groves ! may ye be
For ever mirth's best nursery !
May pure contents
For ever pitch their tents
Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these
mountains,
And peace still slumber by these purling fountains,
Which we may every year
Find when we come a-fishing here.
[Farncdl to Town, hy Breton.']
* * *
Thou gallant court, to thee farewell !
For froward fortune me denies
Now longer near to thee to dwell.
I must go live, I wot not where.
Nor how to live when I come there.
And next, adieu you gallant dames.
The chief of noble youth's delight !
Untoward Fortune now so frames.
That I am banish'd from your sight.
And, in your stead, against my will,
I must go live with country Jill.
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1646
Now next, my gullant youths, farewell ;
My lads that oft have cheered my heart !
My grief of mind no tongue can tell.
To think that I must from you part.
I now must leave you all, alas.
And live with some old lobcock ass !
And now farewell thou gallant lute,
With instruments of music's sounds !
Recorder, citem, harp, and flute,
And heavenly descants on sweet grounds.
I now must Iccave you all, indeed,
And make some music on a reed !
And now, you stately stamping steeds.
And gallant geldings fair, adieu !
My heavy heart for sorrow bleeds.
To think that I must part with you :
And on a strawen pannel sit.
And ride some country carting tit !
And now farewell both spear and shield,
Caliver pistol, arquebuss.
See, see, what sighs my heart doth yield
To think that I must leave you thus ;
And lay aside my rapier blade.
And take in hand a ditching spade !
And you farewell, all gallant games,
Primero, and Imperial,
Wherewith I us'd, with courtly dames,
To pass away the time withal :
I now must learn some country plays
For ale and cakes on holidays !
And now farewell each dainty dish,
With sundry sorts of sugar'd wine !
Farewell, I say, fine flesh and fish.
To please this dainty mouth of mine I
I now, alas, must leave all these.
And make good cheer with bread and cheese !
And now, all orders due, farewell !
My table laid when it was noon ;
My heavy heart it irks to tell
My dainty dinners all are done :
With leeks and onions, whig and whey,
I must content me as I may.
And farewell all gay garments now.
With jewels rich, of rare device !
Like Robin Hood, I wot not how,
I must go range in woodman's wise J
Clad in a coat of green, or grey,
And glad to get it if I may.
What shall I say, but bid adieu
To every dream of sweet delight.
In place where pleasure never grew,
In dungeon deep of foul despite,
I must, ah me ! wretch as I may.
Go sing the song of welaway !
[Sonnet ly Constahle.']
[From his ' Diana :' 1594.]
To live in hell, and heaven to behold.
To welcome life, and die a living death.
To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold.
To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath.
To tread a maze that never shall have end,
To bum in sighs, and starve in daily tears.
To climb a hill, and never to descend.
Giants to kill, and quake at childish fears.
To pine for food, and watch th' Hesperian tree,
To thirst for drink, and nectar still to draw.
To live accurs'd, whom men hold blest to be.
And weep those vtrongs, which never creature saw J
^f this be love, if love in these be founded,
M7 heart is lore, for these in it are grounded.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOW JOSHCA SYLVESTER —
RICHARD BARNFIELD.
Christopher Marlow, so highly eminent as a
dramatic writer, would probably have been over-
looked in the department of miscellaneous poetry, but
for his beautiful piece, rendered familiar by its being
transferred into Walton's 'Angler' — The Passionatt
Shepherd to his Love. Joshua Sylvester, who died in
1618, at the age of 55, and who was the author of a
large volume of poems of very unequal merit, claims
notice as the now generally received author of an im-
pressive piece, long ascribed to Raleigh — The SouVs
Errand. Another fugitive poem of great beauty, but
in a diiferent style, and Avhich has often been attri-
buted to Shakspeare, is now given to Richard Barn-
field, author of several poetical volumes published
between 1594 and 1598. These three remarkable
poems are here subjoined : —
The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.
Come live with me, and be my love.
And we will all the pleasures prove
That vallies, groves, and hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks.
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks.
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies ;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle,
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle :
A gown made of the finest wool,
^^^hich from our pretty lambs we pull ;
Fair lined slippers for the cold.
With buckles of the purest gold :
A belt of straw and ivy buds.
With coral clasps and amber studs ;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing,
For thy delight, each May-morning :
If these delights thy mind may move
Then live with me, and be my love.
[Tlie NympK's Reply to the Passionate Shepherdm
By Ralci(jh.'\
If all the world and love were young.
And truth in every shepherd's tongue.
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold.
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold ;
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complain of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields ;
A honey tongue — a heart of gall.
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses.
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies.
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten.
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds.
Thy coral clasps and amber studs ;
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
84
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMUND SPENSim.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
TJie SouVs EiTuivd.
Go, soul, the body's guest.
Upon a thankless errand !
Fear not to touch the best.
The truth shall be thy warrant ;
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Go, tell the court it glows,
And shines like rotten wood ;
Go, tell the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good i
If church and court reply.
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others actions,
Not lov'd unless they give,
Not strong but by their factioM.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition
That rule affairs of state.
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.
And if they once reply.
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most.
They beg for more by spending,
Who in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it lacks devotion.
Tell love it is but lust.
Tell time it is but motion.
Tell flesh it is but dust ;
And wish them not reply.
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth,
Tell honour how it alters.
Tell beauty how she blasteth.
Tell favour how she falters.
And as they shall reply.
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness :
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness.
And when they do reply.
Straight give them both the li*.
Tell physic of her boldness.
Tell skill it is pretension,
Tell charity of coldness.
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply.
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness,
Tell nature of decay,
Tell friendship of unkindness,
Tell justice of delay.
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness.
But vary by esteeming.
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply.
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it'a lied the city.
Tell how the country erreth.
Tell, manhood shakes off pity.
Tell, virtue least preferreth.
And if they do reply.
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing :
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stab at thee who will.
No stab the soul can kill.
[Address to the Nightingak.']
As it fell upon a day.
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made ;
Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants did spring ;
Everything did banish moan.
Save the nightiugale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-tlU a thorn ;
And there sung the dolefuU'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry ;
Teru, teru, by and by ;
That, to hear her so complain.
Scarce I could from tears refrain ;
For her griefs, so lively shown.
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah ! (thought I) thou mourn'st in vain ,
None takes pity on thy pain :
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless bears they will not cheer thee •
King Pandion he is dead ;
All thy friends are lapp'd in lead ;
All thy fellow-birds do sing.
Careless of thy sorrowing !
Whilst as fickle Fortune smil'd,
Thou and I were both beguil'd.
Every one that flatters thee
Is no friend in misery.
Words are easy, like the wind ;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
Every man will be th}' friend
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spand f
But, if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal.
Bountiful they will him call ;
And with such-like flattering,
' Pity but he were a king.'
If he be addict to vice.
Quickly him they will entice ;
But if fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown :
They that fawn'd on him before
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed.
He will help thee in thy need ;
If thou sorrow, he will weep.
If thou wake he cannot sleep :
Thus, of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.
EDMUND SPENSER.
These writers brinjr us to Edmund Spenser,
whose genius is one of tlie peculiar glories of the
romantic reign of Elizabeth. 'It is easy,' says
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FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164».
Pope, ' to mark out tlie general course of our poetry ;
Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great
landmarks for it.' We can now add Cowper and
Wordsworth ; but, in Pope's generation, the list he
has given was accurate and complete. Spenser was,
like Chaucer, a native of London, and like him, also,
he has recorded the circumstance in his poetry :—
Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native source,
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of ancient fame.
Prolhaltimhn.
He was born at East Smithfield, near the Tower,
about the year 1553. The rank of his parents, or
the degree of his affinity with the ancient house of
Spenser, is not known. Gibbon says truly, that the
noble family of Spenser should consider the Faer^
Queen as the most precious jewel in their coronet.*
The poet was entered a sizer (one of the humblest
class of students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge,
in May 1569, and continued to attend college for
seven years, taking his degree of M.A. in June
1576. While Spenser was at Pembroke, Gabriel
Harvey, the future astrologer, was at Christ's Col-
lege, and an intimacy was formed between them,
which lasted during the poet's life. Harvey was
learned and pedantic, full of assumption and con-
ceit, and in his ' Venetian velvet and pantofles of
pride,' formed a peculiarly happy subject for the
satire of Nash, who assailed him with every species
of coarse and contemptuous ridicule. Harvey, how-
•Ter, was of service to Spenser. The latter, on re-
tiring from the University, lived with some friends
in the north of England ; probably those Spensers
of Hurstwood, to whose family he is said to have
belonged. Harvey induced the poet to repair to
London, and there he introduced him to Sir Philip
Sidney, ' one of the very diamonds of lier majesty's
court.' In 1579, the poet publislicd his Shepherd's
Calendar, dedicated to Sidney, who afterwards pa-
tronised him, and recommended him to his uncle,
the powerful Earl of Leicester. Tlie Shepherd's
Calendar is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues,
one for each month, but without strict keeping
as to natural description or rustic character, and
* It was lately announced, that the family to which the poet's
father belonged h;i9 been ascertained as one settled at llurst-
wor.d, near Burnley, in Lancashire, where it flourished till
690
deformed by a number of obsolete uncouth phrases
(the Chaucerisms of Spenser, as Dryden designated
them), yet containing traces of a superior original
genius. The fable of the Oak and Briar is finely
told; and in verses like the following, we see the
germs of that tuneful harmony and pensive reflection
in which Spenser excelled : —
You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost,
Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower,
And now are clothed with moss and hoary frost,
Instead of blossoms wherewith your buds did flower :
1 see your tears that from your boughs do rain,
Whose drops in dreary icicles remain.
All so my lustful life is dry and sere,
My timely buds with wailing all are wasted ;
The blossom which my branch of youth did hear,
With breathed sighs is blown away and blasted.
And from mine eyes the drizzling tears descend,
As on your boughs the icicles depend.
These lines form part of the first eclogue, in which
the shepherd boy (Colin Clout) laments the issue of
his love for a 'country lass,' named Rosalind — a
happy female name, which Thomas Lodge, and, fol-
lowing him, Shakspeare, subsequently connected
with love and poetry. Spenser is here supposed to
have depicted a real passion of his own for a lady in
tlie north, who at last preferred a rival, thougit, as
Gabriel Harvey says, ' the gentle Mistress Rosalind'
once reported the rejected suitor ' to have all the
intelligences at command, and another time chris-
tened him Signior Pegaso.' Spenser makes his
shepherds discourse of polemics as well as love, and
they draw characters of good and bad pastors, and
institute comparisons between Popery and Protes-
tantism. Sonie allusions to Archbishop Grindal
(' Algrind' in the poem) and Bishop Aylmer are
said to have given offence to Lord Burleigh ; but the
patronage of Leicester and Essex nmst have made
Burleigh look with distaste on the new poet. For
ten years we hear little of Spenser. He is found
corresponding with Harvey on a literary innovation
contemplated by that learned person, and even by
Sir Philip Sidney. This was no less than banishing
rhymes and introducing the Latin prosody into
English verse. Spenser seems to have assented to
it, ' fondly overcome with Sidnei/s charm ;' he sus-
pended the Faery Queen, which he had then begun,
and tried English hexameters, forgetting, to use the
witty words of Nash, that ' the hexameter, though
a gentleman of an ancient house, was not likely to
thrive in this clime of ours, the soil being too craggy
for him to set his plough in.' Fortunately, he did
not persevere in the conceit ; he could not hav6
gained over his contemporaries to it (for there wert
then too many poets, and too much real poetry in
the land), and if he had made the attempt, Shak
speare would soon have blown the whole away. As
a dependent on Leicester, and a suitor for court
favour, Spenser is supposed to have experienced
many reverses. The following lines in Mother Hub
bard's Talc, though not printed till 1581, seem tO'
belong to this period of his life: —
Full little knowest thou that hast not tried.
What hell it is in suing long to bide ;
To lose good days that might be better spent ;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent ;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ;
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers' ;
To have thy asking, yet wait many years ;
To fret tlry soul with crosses and with cares ;
To eat tliy heart through comfortless despairs ;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run.
To spend, to give, to wuit, to be undone ! gg
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMr:*!) Sl-ENSER.
Strong feeling has here banished all antique and
affected expression : there is no fancy in tliis gloomy
painting. It appears, from recently-discovered do-
cuments, that Spenser -was sometimes emjiloyed in
inferior state missions, a task tlicn often devolved
on poets and dramatists. At length an important
appointment came. Lord Grey of Wilton was sent
to Ireland as lord-deputy, and Spenser accompanied
him in the capacity of secretary. They remained
there two years, wlien the deputy was recalled, and
the poet also returned to England. In June 1 586,
Spenser obtained from the crown a grant of .30-28
acres in the county of Corlv, out of the forfeited lands
of the Earl of Desmond, of which Sir Walter Raleigli
had previous!}-, for his military services in Ireland,
obtained 12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to
reside on his estate, as tliis was one of tliQ c<inditions
of tlie grant, and he accordingly repaired to Ireland,
and took up Ids abode in Kilcolman Castle, near
Doneraile, which had been one of tlie ancient strong-
holds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The
poet's castle stood in the midst of a large plain, by
the side of a lake ; the river JNIuUa ran through his
grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance
EUooIinan Castle.
seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here
he wrote most of the Faery Queen, and received the
visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled ' the
Shepherd of the Ocean ;' and liere he brought home
his M'ife, the ' Ehzabeth' of his sonnets, welcom-
ing her with that noble strain of pure and fervent
passion, which he has styled tlie Epithahmium, and
which forms the most magnificent ' spousal verse'
in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin ;
its towers almost level with the ground ; but the spot
must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's
visit was made in 1589, and, according to the figu-
rative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends,
while reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen,
eat
' Amongst the coolly shade
Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore.'
We may conceive the transports of delight with
winch Raleigh perused or listened to tliose strains
of chivalry and gorgeous description, whicli revealed
to him a land still brighter tlian any he had seen in
his distant wanderings, or could liave been present
even to his romantic imagination ! Tlie guest warndy
approved of his friend's poem ; and lie persuaded
Spenser, when lie had comjileted the tliree first books,
to accompany liim to England, and arrange for their
publication. Tlie Faery Queen appeared in January
1589-90, dedicated to her majesty, in that strain of
adulation whicli was then the fasliion of the age.
To tlie volume was appended a letter to Raleiy:h,
explaining the nature of tlie work, wliicli the author
said was ' a continued allegory, or dark conceit.'
He states his object to be to fashion a gentleman,
or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline,
and that he had chosen I'rince Arthur for his hero.
He conceives that prince to have beheld the Faery
Queen in a dream, and been so enamoured of the
vision, that, on awaking, he resolved to setfortli and
seek her in Faery Land. The poet furtlier 'de-
vises' that the Faery Queen shall keep Iser annual
feast twelve days, twelve several adventures hap-
pening in that time, and each of tliem being under-
taken by a knight. Tlie adventures were also to
express the same number of moral virtues. The
first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing
Holiness : the second Sir Guyon, or Temperance ;
and the third, Britomartis, 'a lady knight,' repre-
senting Cliastity. There was thus a blending of
chivalry and religion in the design of the Faery
Queen. Sjienser had inibilied (i)robably from Sid-
ney) a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which over-
flows in Milton's Comus. and he looked on chivalry
as a sage and serious tiling.* Besides his personi-
fication of the abstract virtues, the poet made his
allegorical personages and their adventures repre-
sent historical characters and events. Tlie queen,
Gloriana, and the huntress Belphoebe, are both sym-
bolical of Queen Elizabeth ; the adventures of tlie
Redcross Kniglit shadow forth the history of the
Church of England ; the distressed knight is Henry
IV. ; and Envy is intended to glance at tlio un-
fortunate ]\Iary. Queen of Scots. The stanza of
Spenser is tlie Italian ottaca rima, now familiar in
English poetry ; but he added an Alexandrine, or
long line, which gives a full and sweeping close to
the verse. The poet's diction is rich and abundant.
He introduced, however, a number of obsolete ex-
pressions, 'new grafts of old and withered words,'
for wliich he was censured by his contemporaries
and their successors, and in wliich he was certainly
not copied by Shakspeare. His • Gothic subject
* The Platonisni of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hjTnns
on Love and Beauty, whicli are among the most passionate and
exquisite of his productions. His account of the spiiit of love
is not unlike Ovid's description of the creation of man : the
soul, just severed from the sky, retains part of its heavenly
power —
' And frames her house, in which she wiU be placed,
Fit for herself.'
But he speculates further —
' So every spirit, as it is most pure.
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight ;
For of the soul the body form doth take (
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Spenser afterwards wrote two religious hjinns, to counteract
the effect of those on love and beauty, but though he spiritual-
ises his passion, he does not abandon his early belief, that tha
fairest body encloses the fairest mind : he still says —
' For all that's good is beautiful and fair.'
The Grecian philosophy was curiously united with Puritanism
in both Spenser and Milton. Ourpoet took the fable of his great
poem from the style of the Gothic romance, but the deep sensa
of beauty wliich pervades it is of chissical origin, elevated and
purified by strong religious feeling.
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FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO lfi43.
and storj'' had probably, as Mr Campbell conjec-
tures, ' made him lean towards words of the olden
time,' and his antiquated expression, as the same
critic finely remarks, ' is beautiful in its antiquity,
and, like the moss and ivy on some majestic build-
ing, covers the fabric of his language with romantic
and venerable associations.' The Faery Queen was
enthusiastically received. It could scarcelj% indeed,
be otherwise, considering how well it was adapted
to the coiu-t and times of the Virgin Queen, where
gallantry and chivalry were so strangely mingled
with the religious gravity and earnestness induced
by the Reformation, and considering the intrinsic
beauty and excellence of the poem. The few first
stanzas, descriptive of Una, were of themselves suf-
ficient to place Spenser above the whole hundred
poets that then offered incense to Flizabeth.
The queen settled a pension of £50 per aimum on
Spenser, and he returned to Ireland. His smaller
poems were next published — The Tears of the Muses,
Mother Hubbard, Sec, in 1591 ; Daphnaid'a, 1592; and
Amoretti and the Epithalamium (relating his court-
ship and marriage) in 1595. His Elegy of Astrophel,
on the death of the lamented Sidney, appeared
about this time. In 1596, Spenser was again in
London to publish the fourth, fifth, and sixth books
of the Faery Queen. These contain the legend of
Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship ; Artegal, or
Justice ; and Sir Caledore, or Courtesy. The double
allegory is continued in these cantos as in the pre-
vious ones : Artegal is the poet's friend and patron.
Lord Grey, and various historical events are re-
lated in the knight's adventures. Half of the ori-
ginal design was thus finished ; six of the twelve
adventures and moral virtues were produced ; but
unfortunately the world saw only some fragments
more of the work. It has been said that the remain-
ing half was lost, through the ' disorder and abuse'
of a servant sent forward with it to England. This
is highly improbable. Spenser, who came to London
himself with each of the former portions, would not
have ventured the largest part witli a careless ser-
vant. But he had not time to complete his poetical
and moral gallery. There was an interval of six
years between his two publications, and he lived
only three years after the second. During that
period, too, Ireland was convidsed with rebellion.
The English settlers, or ' undertakers,' of the crown
lands, were unpopular with the conquered natives
of Ireland. They were often harsh and oppressive ;
and even Spenser is accused, on the authority of
existing legal documents, of having sought imjustly
to add to his possessions. He was also in oflice over
the Irish (clerk of the council of Munster) ; he had
been recommended by the queen (1598) for the
office of sheriff" of Cork ; and he was a strenuous
advocate for arbitrary power, as is proved by a poli-
tical treatise on the state of Ireland, written by him
in 1596 for the government of Elizabeth, but not
printed till the reign of Charles I. The poet was,
therefore, a conspicuous object for the fury of the
irritated and barbarous natives, with whom ' revenge
was virtue.' The storm soon burst forth. In Oc-
tober 1598, an insurrection was organised in Mun-
ster, following Tyrone's rebellion, which had raged
for some years in the province of Ulster. The in-
surgents attacked Kilcolman, and having robbed
and plundered, set fire to the castle. Spenser and his
wife escaped ; but either in the confusion incidental
to such a calamity, or from inability to render as-
sistance, an infant child of the poet ('new-born,'
according to Ben Jonson) was left behind, and
perished in the flames. The poet, impoverished and
broken-hearted, reached London, and died in about
thrc^ months, in King Street, Wcitminster, on the
16th January 1599. He was buried near the tomb
of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, tlie Earl of
Essex defraying the expense of the funeral, and his
hearse attended (as Camden relates) by his brother
poets, who threw ' mournful elegies' into his grave.
A monument was erected over his remains thirty
years afterwards by Anne, countess of Dorset. His
widow, the fair Elizabeth, whose bridal bower at
Kilcolman he had decked witli such ' gay garlands'
of song, probably remained in Ireland, where two
sons of the unfortunate poet long resided.
Spenser is the most luxuriant and melodious of
all our descriptive poets. His creation of scenes
and objects is infinite, and in free and sonorous
versification he has not yet been surpassed. His
' lofty rhyme' has a swell and cadence, and a con-
tinuous sweetness, that we can find nowhere else.
In richness of fancy and invention he can scarcely
be ranked below Shakspeare, and he is fully as ori-
ginal. His obligations to the Italian poets (Ariosto
supplying a wild Gothic and chivalrous model for
the Faery Queen, and Tasso furnishing the texture
of some of its most delicious embellishments) still
leave him the merit of his great moral design — the
conception of his allegorical characters— his exube-
rance of language and illustration — and that original
structure of verse, powerful and harmonious, which
he was the first to adopt, and which must ever bear
his name. His faults arose out of the fulness of his
riches. His inexhaustible powers of circumstantial
description betrayed him into a tedious minuteness,
which sometimes, in the delineation of his personified
passions, becomes repulsive, and in the painting of
natural objects led him to group together trees and
plants, and assemble sounds and instruments, which
were never seen or heard in miison out of Faery
Land. The ingenuity and subtlety of his intellect
tempted him to sow dark meanings and obscure
allusions across the bright and obvious path of his
allegory. This peculiarity of his genius was early
displayed in his Shepherd's Calendar ; and if Bur-
leigh's displeasure could have cured the poet of the
habit, the statesman might be half forgiven his illi-
berality. His command of musical language led
him to protract his narrative to too great a length,
till the attention becomes exhausted, even with its
very melody, and indifTerence succeeds to languor.
Had Spenser lived to finish his poem, it is doubtfid
whether he would not have diminished the number
of his readers. His own fancy had evidentlj' begun
to give way, for the last three books have not the
same rich unity of design, or plenitude of imagina-
tion, which fills the earlier cantos with so many in-
teresting, lofty, and ethereal conceptions, and tteeps
them in such a flood of ideal and poetical beauty.
The two first books (of Holiness and Temperance)
are, like the two first of Paradise Lost, works of con-
summate taste and genius, and superior to all the
others. We agree with Mr Hazlitt, that the alle-
gory of Spenser is in reality no bar to the enjo;y';uent
of the poem. The reader may safely disregard the
symbolical applications. We may allow the poet,
like his own Archimago, to divide his characters
into ' double parts,' while one only is visible at a
time. While we see Una, with her heavenly looks,
That made a sunshine in the shady place,
or Eelphojbe flying through the woods, or Britomart
seated amidst the young warriors, we need not stop
to recollect that the first is designed to represent the
true church, the second Queen Elizabeth, or the third
an abstract personification of Chastity. They are ex-
quisite representations of female loveliness and truth,
unmatched save in the dramas of Shakspeare. The
allegory of Spenser leaves his wild enchantments,
88
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMUND SPENSER.
his picturesque situations, his shady groves and lofty
trees,
(Not pierceable by power of any star),
his Masque of Cupid, and Bower of Bliss, and all the
witcheries of his gardens and wildernesses, without
the slightest ambiguity or indistinctness. There is
no haze over his finest pictures. We seem to walk
in the green alley's of his broad forests, to hear the
stream tinkle and the fountain fall, to enter his
caves of Mammon and Despair, to gaze on his
knights and ladies, or to join in his fierce combats
and crowded allegorical processions. There is no
perplexity, no intercepted lights, in those fine images
and personifications. They may be sometimes fan-
tastic, but thej' are alwaj's brilliant and distinct.
When Spenser fails to interest, it is when our coarser
taste becomes palled with his sweetness, and when we
feel that his scenes want the support of common pro-
bability and human passions. We surrender our-
selves up for a time to the power of the enchanter,
and witness with wonder and delight his marvellous
achievements ; but we wish to return again to the
world, and to mingle with our fellow-mortals in its
bus\' and passionate pursuits. It is liere that Shaks-
peare eclipses Spenser ; here that he builds upon his
beautiful groundwork of fancy — the high and durable
structure of conscious dramatic truth and living
reality. Spenser's mind was as purely poetical, and
embraced a vast range of imaginary creation. The
interest of real life alone is wanting. Spenser's is an
ideal world, remote and abstract, yet affording, in its
multiplied scenes, scope for those nobler feelings and
heroic virtues which we love to see even in transient
connexion with human nature. The romantic cha-
racter of his poetry is its most essential and per-
manent feature. We may tire of his allegory and
' dark conceit,' but the general impression remains ;
we never think of the Faery Queen without recalling
its wondrous scenes of enchantment and beauty, and
feeling ourselves lulled, as it were, by the recol-
lected music of the poet's verse, and the endless flow
and profusion of his fancy.
{^Utia and the Redcross Knight.']
A gentle knight was pricking on the plain,
Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield,
Wherein old dints of deep wounds did remain,
The cruel marks of many a bloody field ;
Yet arms till that time did he never wield :
His angry steed did chide his foaming bit,
As much disdaining to the curb to yield :
Full jolly knight he seem'd, and fair did sit,
As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit.
And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead (as living) ever him adored :
Upon his shield the like was also scored.
For sovereign hope, which in his help he had :
Right faithful true he was in deed and word ;
But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad :
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
Upon a great adventure he was bound.
That greatest Gloriana to him gave,
(That greatest glorious queen of fairy lond,)
To win him worship, and her grace to have,
Which of all earthly things he most did crave ;
And ever as he rode his heart did yearn
To prove his puissance in battle brave
Upon his foe, and his new force to learn ;
Upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stern.
A lovely lady rode him fair beside,
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow ;
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide
Under a veil that wimpled was full low,
And over all a black stole she aid throw.
As one that inly mourii'd : so was she sad,
And heavy sat upon her palfrey slow ;
Seemed in heart some hidden care she had.
And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she led.
So pure and innocent, as that same lamb,
She was in life and every virtuous lore.
And by descent from royal lineage came
Of ancient kings and queens, that had of yore
Their sceptres stretcht from east to western shore.
And all the world in their subjection held ;
Till that infernal fiend with foul uproar
Forewasted all tlieir land and them expell'd :
Whom to avenge, she had this knight from far com
pell'd.
Behind her far away a dwarf did laj^,
That lazy seem'd in being ever last.
Or wearied with bearing of her bag
Of needments at his back. Thus as they past
The day with clouds was sudden cvwcast.
And angry Jove an hideous storm of rain
Did pour into his leman's lap so fast,
That every wight to shroud it did constrain.
And this fair couple eke to shroud themselves were fain.
Enforced to seek some covert nigh at hand,
A shady grove not far away they spied.
That promised aid the tempest to withstand ;
Whose lofty trees, yclad with summer's pride.
Did spread so broad, that heaven's light did hide.
Nor pierceable with power of any star :
And all within were paths and alleys wide,
With footing worn, and leadiug inward far :
Fair harbour, that them seems ; so in they entered are.
And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led,
Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony,
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dread,
Seem'd in their song to scorn the cruel sky.
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,
The sailing Pine, the Cedar proud and tall.
The vine-prop Elm, the Poplar never drj'.
The builder Oak, sole king of forests all,
The Aspin good for staves, the Cypress funeral
The Laurel, meed of mighty conquerors
And poets sage, the Fir that weepeth still.
The Willow, worn of forlorn paramours.
The Yew obedient to the bender's will,
The Birch for shafts, the Sallow for the mill.
The Myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound.
The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,
The fruitful Olive, and the Plantain round.
The carver Holme, the Maple seldom inward sound
Led with delight, they thus beguile the way.
Until the blustering storm is overblo^vn.
When, weening to return, whence they did stray.
They cannot find that path which first was shown.
But wander to and fro in ways unknown,
Furthest from end then, when they nearest ween.
That makes them doubt their wits be not their owe •.
So many paths, so many turnings seen.
That which of them to take, in divers doubt they bet*
[Adventure of Una with the Lion,}
Yet she, most faithful lady, all this while
Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid.
Far from all people's prease, as in exile.
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed.
To seek her knight ; who, subtily betrayed
89
FROM 15o8
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164t
Through that late vision which th' enchanter ■WTOught,
Had her abandoned ; she of nought afraid
Through woods and wasteness wide him daily sought ;
Yet wished tidings none of him unto her brought.
One day, nigh weary of the irksome way,
From her unhasty beast she did alight ;
And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay,
In secret shadow, far from all men's sight ;
From her fair head her fillet she undight,
And laid her stole aside : her angel's face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shined bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place ;
Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.
It fortuned, out of the thickest wood
A ramping lion rushed suddenly.
Hunting full greedy after savage blood :
Soon as the royal virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have at once devour'd her tender corse :
But to the prey when as he drew more nigh.
His bloody rage assuaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazed forgat his furious
force.
Instead thereof he kiss'd her weary feet.
And lick'd her lily hands with fa^vning tongue ;
As he her wronged innocence did weet.
how can beauty master the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging ivrong !
Whose yielded pride and proud submission,
Still dreading death, when she had marked long.
Her heart gan melt in great compassion.
And drizzling tears did shed for pure affection.
' The lion, lord of every beast in field,'
Quoth she, ' his princely puissance doth abate.
And mighty proud to humble weak does yield,
Forgetful of the hungry rage, which late
Him prick'd, in pity of my sad estate :
But he, my lion, and my noble lord,
How does he find in cruel heart to hate
Her that him loved, and ever most adored,
As the God of my life 3 why hath he me abhorred !'
Redounding tears did choke th' end of her plaint.
Which softly echoed from the neighbour wood ;
And, sad to see her sorro^^"ful constraint,
The kingly beast upon her gazing stood :
With pity calm'd down fell his angr\' mood.
At last, in close heart shutting up her pain,
Arose the virgin bom of heav'nly brood,
And to her snowy palfrey got again.
To seek her strayed champion if she might attain.
The lion would not leave her desolate,
But with her went along, as a strong guard
Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate
Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard :
Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward ;
And when she waked, he waited diligent,
With humble service to her will prepared ;
From her fair eyes he took commande'ment.
And ever by her looks conceived her intent.
iThe Bower of Bliss."]
There the most dainty paradise on ground
Itself doth offer to his sober eye.
In which all pleasures plenteously abound,
And none does others happiness envy ;
The painted flowers, the trees upshooting high,
The dales for shade, the hills for breathing spacv\
Tlie trembling groves, the crystal running by ;
And that which all fair works doth most aggrace.
The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place.
One would have thought (so cunningly the ude
And scorned parts were mingled with the fine)
That nature had for wantonness ensued
Art, and that art at nature did re])ine ;
So striving each th' other to undermine,
Each did the other's work more beautify ;
So differing both in wills, agreed in fine:
So all agreed through sweet diversity.
This garden to adorn with all variety.
And in the midst of all a fountain stood
C)f richest substance that on earth might be.
So pure and shiny, that the silver flood
Through every' channel running one might see ;
Most goodly it with curious imagery
^^'as overwrought, and shapes of naked boys.
Of which some seem'd with lively jollity
To fly about, playing their wanton toys.
While others did embaye themselves in liquid joys.
And over all, of purest gold, was spread
A trail of ivy in his native hue :
P^or, the rich metal was so coloured,
That wight, who did not well advis'd it view,
Would surely deem it to be ivy true :
Low his lascivious arms adown did creep.
That themselves dipping in the silver dew
Their fleecy flowers they fearfully did steep
Which drops of crystal seem'd for wantonness to weep.
Infinite streams continually did well
Out of this fountain, sweet and fixir to see.
The which into an ample laver fell.
And shortly grew to so great quantity.
That like a little lake it seem'd to be ;
Whose depth exceeded not three cubits height.
That through the waves one might the bottom see.
All pav'd beneath with jasper shining bright.
That seem'd the fountain in that sea did sail upright.
And all the margin round about was set
With shady laurel trees, thence to defend
The sunny beams, which on the billows beat.
And those which therein bathed might offend.
* « •
Eftsoons they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that might delight a dainty ear.
Such as at once might not on living ground.
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere :
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,
To read what manner music that might be :
For all that pleasing is to living ear,
Was there consorted in one harmony ;
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.
The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade.
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet ;
Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the water's fall :
The water's fall with difference discreet.
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call :
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
The while, some one did chaunt this lovely lay ;
' Ah see, whoso fair thing thou dost fain to see,
In springing flower the image of thy day ;
Ah see the virgin rose, how sweetly she
Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,
That fairer seems, the less ye see her may ;
Lo, see soon after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosom she doth broad display ;
Lo, see soon after, how she fades and fiills away !
So passeth, in the passing of a day.
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.
Nor more doth flourish after first decay.
That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower
Of many a lady, and many a paramour
ENGLISH LITKllATURE.
F.DMLXD SPF.NSEa.
Gather therefore the rose, while yet is prime,
For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower :
Oathi.r the rose of love, while yet is time,
WhiL* loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.'
[The Squirt and the Dove.]
Well said the wise man, now prov'd true by this,
A'hich to this gentle squire did happen late ;
That the di.^pleasure of the mighty is
Than death itself more dread and desperate :
For nought the same may calm, nor mitigate,
Till time the tempest do thereof allay
With sufferance soft, which rigour can abate.
And have the stern remembrance wip'd away
Of bitter thoughts, which deep therein infixed lay.
Like as it fell to this unhappy boy.
Whose tender heart the fair Belphoebe had
With one stern look so daunted, that no joy
In all his life, which afterwards he lad.
He ever tasted ; but with penance sad,
And pensive sorrow, pin'd and wore away,
Nor ever laugh'd, nor once show'd countenance glad ;
But always wept and wailed night and day.
As blasted blossom, through heat, doth languish and
decay ;
Till on a day (as in his wonted wise
His dole he made) there chanc'd a turtle-dove
To come, where he his dolours did devise.
That likewise late had lost her dearest love ;
Which loss her made like passion also prove.
Who seeing h'-s sad plight, her tender heart
With dear compassion deeply did emmove.
That she gan moan his underserved smart.
And with her doleful accent, bear with him a part.
She, sitting by him, as on ground he lay,
Her mournful notes full piteously did frame,
And thereof made i lamentable lay.
So sensibly compiled, that in the same
Him seemed oft he heard his own right name.
With that, he forth would pour so plenteous tears,
And beat his breast unworthy of such blame.
And knock his head, and rend his rugged hairs.
That could have pierc'd the hearts of tigers and of
bears.
Thus long this gentle bird to him did use,
Withouten dread of peril to repair
Unto his wonne ; and with her mournful muse
Him to recomfort in his greatest care.
That much did ease his mourning and misfare :
And every day, for guerdon of her song.
He part of his small feast to her would share ;
That, at the last, of all his woe and wrong.
Companion she became, and so continued long.
Upon a day, as she him sate beside.
By chance he certain miniments forth drew.
Which yet with him as relics did abide
Of all the bounty which Belphoebe threw
On him, while goodly grace she did him shew :
Amongst the rest, a jewel rich he found,
That was a ruby of right perfect hue,
Shap'd like a heart, yet bleeding of the wound,
And with a little golden chain about it bound.
The same he took, and with a ribbon new
(In which his lady's colours were) did bind
About the turtle's neck, that with the view
Did greatly solace his engrieved mind.
All unawares the bird, when she did find
Herself so deck'd, her nimble wings display'd.
And flew away, as lightly as the wind :
Which sudden accident him much dismay'd.
And looking after long, did mark which way she stray 'd.
But, when as long he looked had in vain.
Yet saw her fonvard still to make her flight,
His weary eye return'd to him ag:iln.
Full of discomfort and disquiet i)llght,
That both his jewel he had lost so light.
And eke his dear companion of his care.
But that sweet bird departing, flew forth right
Through the wide region of the wasteful air.
Until she came where wonned his Belphoebe fail
There found she her (as then it did betide)
Sitting in covert shade of arbors sweet.
After late weary toil, which she had tried
In savage chace, to rest as seem'd her meet.
There she alighting, fell before her feet.
And gan to her, her mournful plaint to make,
As was her wont : thinking to let her weet
The great tormenting grief, that for her sake
Her gentle squire through her displeasure did pa: take
She, her beholding with attentive eye.
At length did mark about her purple breast
That precious jewel, which she formerlv
Had known right well, with colour'd ribbon drest ;
Therewith she rose in haste, and her addrest
\\"ith ready hand it to have reft away.
But the swift bird obcy'd not her behest,
But swerv'd aside, and there again did stay ;
She follow'd her, and thought again it to assay.
And ever when she nigh approach'd, the dove
Would flit a little forward, and then stay
Till she drew near, and then again remove ;
So tempting her still to pursue the prey,
And still from her escaping soft away :
Till that at length, into that forest wide
She drew her far, and led with slow delay.
In the end, she her unto that place did guide,
Whereas that woful man in languor did abide.
lie her beholding, at her feet down fell.
And kiss'd the ground on which her sole did trea !,
And wash'd the same with water, which did well
From his moist eyes, and like two streams proceed ;
Yet spake no word, whereby she might aread
What mister wight he was, or whathe meant ;
But as one daunted with her presence dread.
Only few rueful looks unto her sent,
As messengers of his true meaning and intent.
Yet nathemore his meaning she ared,
But wondered much at his so uncouth case ;
And by his person's secret seemlihed
Well ween'd, that he had been some man of place,
Before misfortune did his hue deface :
That being moved with ruth she thus bespake.
Ah ! woful man, what heaven's hard disgrace.
Or wrath of cruel wight on thee ywrake.
Or self-disliked life, doth thee thus wretched makt ?
If heaven, then none may it redress or blame,
Since to his power we all are subject born :
If >yrathful wight, then foul rebuke and shame
Be theirs, that have so cruel thee forlorn ;
But if through inward grief, or wilful scorn
Of life it be, then better do avise.
For, he whose days in wilful woe are worn,
The grace of his Creator doth despise.
That will not use his gifts for thankless niggardise.
When so he heard her say, eftsoons he brake
His sudden silence, which he long had pent.
And sighing inly deep, her thus bespake ;
Then have they all themselves against me bent :
For heaven (first author of my languishment)
Knvying my too great felicity.
Did closely with a cruel one consent,
To cloud my days in doleful misery.
And make me loath this life, still longing for to die.
9]
FROM 15.i8
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
Nor any but yourself, dearest dread,
Ilatli done this wrong ; to wreak on worthless wight
Your high displeasure, through misdeeming bred :
That when your pleasure is to deem aright,
Ye mav redress, and me restore to light.
Which" sorry words, her mighty heart did mate
With raild'regard, to see his rueful plight,
That her in-burning wrath she gan abate.
And him received again to former favour's state.
[^Weddincf of the Mcdway and the Thaynes.]
[This piece is a remarkable specimen of the allegorical man-
uer of the poet. Natural objects are here personified in an abun-
dance, and with a facility which almost bewilders the reader.]
It fortun'd then a solemn feast was there.
To all the sea-gods and their fruitful seed,
In honour of the spousals which then were
Betwixt the Medway and the Thames agreed.
Long had the Thames (as we in records read)
Before that day her wooed to his bed.
But the proud nymph would for no wordly meed,
Nor no entreaty, to his love be led.
Till now at last relenting, she to him was wed.
So both agreed that this, their bridal feast.
Should for the gods in Proteus' house be made.
To which they all repair'd, both most and least,
As well which in the mighty ocean trade
As that in rivers swim, or brooks do wade ;
All which not if an hundred tongues to tell.
And hundred mouths, and voice of brass, I had.
And endless memory, that mote excell.
In order as they came could I recount them well.
Help, therefore, thou sacred imp of Jove !
The nursling of dame memory, his dear,
To whom those rolls, laid up in heaven above,
And records of antiquity appear.
To which no wit of man may comen near ;
Help me to tell the names of all those floods.
And all those nymphs, which then assembled were
To that great banquet of the watery gods.
And all their sundry kinds, and all their hid
abodes.
I'irst came great Neptune, with his threeforkt mace.
That rules the seas, and makes thera rise or fall ;
His dewy locks did drop with brine apace
Under his diadem imperial ;
And by his side his queen with coronal.
Fair Amphitrite, most divinely fair.
Whose ivory shoulders weren cover'd all.
As with a robe, with her own silver hair,
And deck'd with pearls which the Indian seas for her
prepare.
These marched far afore the other crew.
And all the way before them, as they went,
Triton his trumpet shrill before them blew,
For OTodly triumph and great jollyment.
That made the rocks to roar as they were rent ;
And after them the royal issue came.
Which of them sprung by lineal descent ;
First the sea-gods, which to themselves do claim
The power to rule the billows, and the waves to
tame.
Next came the aged ocean and his dame,
Old Tethya, th' oldest two of all the rest,
For all the rest of those two parents came,
Which afterward both sea and land possest.
Of all which Nereus, th' eldest and the best.
Did first proceed, than which none more upright,
Ne more sincere in word and deed profest,
Most void of guile, most free from foul desiiite.
Doing himself, and tcadiiug others to do ritfht.
And after him the famous rivers came
Which do the earth enrich and beautify ;
The fertile Nile, which creatures now doth frame ;
Long Rhodanus, whose course springs from the sky ;
Fair Ister, flowing from the mountains high ;
Divine Scamander, purpled yet with blood
Of Greeks and Trojans, which therein did die ;
Pactolus, glistering with his golden flood.
And Tigris fierce, whose streams of none maybe with-
stood.
Great Ganges, and immortal Euphrates ;
Deep Indus, and Meander intricate ;
Slow Peneus, and tempestuous Phasides ;
Swift Rhine and Alpheus still immaculate ;
Ooraxes, feared for great Cyrus' fate ;
Tybris, renowned for the Roman's fame ;
Rich Oranochy, though but knowen late ;
And that huge river which doth bear his name
Of warlike Amazons, which do possess the same.
Then was there heard a most celestial sound
Of dainty music, which did next ensue
Before the spouse, that was Arion crown'd.
Who playing on his harp, unto him drew
The ears and hearts of all that godly crew :
That even j'et the dolphin which him bore
Through the Egean seas from pirate's view.
Stood still by him, astonish'd at his lore.
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.
So went he playing on the watery plain ;
Soon after whom the lovely bridegroom came,
The noble Thames, with all his goodly train ;
But him before there went, as best became,
His ancient parents, namely th' ancient Thame ;
But much more aged was his wife than he.
The Ouse, whom men do I sis rightly name ; ]
Full weak, and crooked creature seemed she.
And almost blind through eld, that scarce her way
could see.
Therefore on either side she was sustain'd j
Of two small grooms, which by their names were hight
The Churn and Charwell, two small streams which
Themselves her footing to direct aright, [pain'd i
Which failed oft through faint and feeble plight ; |
But Thame was stronger, and of better stay,
Yet seem'd full aged by his outward sight.
With head all hoary and his beard all gray.
Dewed with silver drops that trickled down alway :
And eke somewhat seemed to stoop afore
With bowed back, by reason of the load
And ancient heavy burden which he bore
C)f that fair city, wherein make abode
So many learned imps, that shoot abroad.
And with their branches spread all Britany,
No less than do her elder sister's brood :
Joy to you both, ye double nursery
Of arts, but Oxford ! thine doth Thame most glorify
But he their son full fresh and jolly was,
All decked in a robe of watchet hue.
On which the waves, glittering like crystal glass,
So cunningly inwoven were, that few
Could weenen whether they were false or true ;
And on his head like to a coronet
He wore, that seemed strange to common view.
In which were many towers and castles set.
That it encompass'd round as with a golden fret.
Like as the mother of the gods they say,
In her great iron chariot wonts to ride,
\\'hen to love's palace she doth take her way.
Old Cybele, array'd with pompous pride.
Wearing a diadem embattled wide
A\'ith hundred turrets, like a turribant ;
\\'ith such an one was Thamis beautified,
That was to weet the famous Troynovanc,
In which her kingdom's throne is chiefly resiant.
0-2
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMUND SPENSER.
And round about him many a pretty page
Attended duly, ready to obey ;
All little rivers which owe vassalage
To him, as to their lord, and tribute pay ;
The chalky Kennet, and the Thetis gray ;
The moorish Cole, and the soft-sliding Brcane ;
The wanton Lee, that oft doth lose his way,
And the still Darent in whose waters clean,
Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.
Then came his neighbour floods which nigh him dwell,
And water all the English soil throughout ;
They all on him this day attended well.
And with meet service waited him about,
Ne none disdained low to him to lout ;
No, not the stately Severn grudg'd at all,
Ne storming Humber, though he looked stout,
But both him honor'd as their principal,
And let their swelling waters low before him fall.
There was the speedy Tamar, which divides
The Cornish and the Devonish confines,
Through both whose borders swiftly down it glidea.
And meeting Plim, to Plymouth thence declines ;
And Dart, nigh chok'd with sands of tinny mines ;
But Avon marched in more stately path.
Proud of his adamants with which he shines
And glisters wide, as als' of wondrous Bath,
And Bristow fair, which on his waves he builded hath.
Next there came Tyne, along whose stony bank
That Roman monarch built a brazen wall,
Which mote the feebled Britons strongly flank
Against the Picts, that swarmed over all.
Which yet thereof Gualsever they do call ;
And Tweed, the limit betwixt Logris' land
And Albany ; and Eden, though but small.
Yet often staii\'d with blood of many a band
Of Scots and Ei\glish both, that tyned on his strand.
These after came the stony shallow Lone,
That to old Loncaster his name doth lend,
And following Dee, which Britons long ygone,
Did call divine, that doth by Chester tend ;
And Conway, which out of his stream doth send
Plenty of pearls to deck his dames withal ;
And Lindus, that his pikes doth most commend.
Of which the ancient Lincoln men do call :
All these together marched toward Proteus' hall.
Then came the bride, the lovely Medua came.
Clad in a vesture of unknowen gear.
And uncouth fashion, yet her well became.
That seem'd like silver sprinkled here and there,
With glittering spangs that did like stars appear,
And wav'd upon like water chamelot.
To hide the metal, which yet everywhere
Bevrray'd itself, to let men plainly wot,
It was no mortal work, that seem'd and yet was not.
Her goodly locks adown her back did flow
Unto her waist, with flowers bescattered,
The which ambrosial odours forth did throw
To all about, and all her shoulders spread.
As a new spring ; and likewise on her head
A chapelet of sundry flowers she wore.
From under which the dewy humour shed
Did trickle down her hair, like to the hoar
Congealed little drops, which do the mom adore.
On her two pretty handmaids did attend.
One call'd the Theise, the other call'd the Crane,
Which on her waited, things amiss to mend.
And both behind upheld her spreading train,
Under the which her feet appeared plain.
Her silver feet, fair wash'd against this day :
And her before there paced pages twain.
Both clad in colours like, and like array
The i)c)un and eke the Frith, both which prepared her
w»7.
In the above extracts from the Faery Queen, we
have, for the sake of perspicuity, modernised the
spelliner, without changing a word of tlie original
The following two higlily poetical descriptions are
given in the poet's own orthography : —
[The Hov^e of Sleep. "]
He making speedy way through spersed ayre,
And through the world of waters wide and deepe,
To Morpheus' house doth hastily repaire.
Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe.
And low, where dawning day doth never pcujie,
His dwelling is, there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe,
In silver deaw, his ever drouping hed.
Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth
spred.
Whose double gates he findeth locked fast,
The one fayre fram'd of bumisht yvorj-.
The other all with silver overcast ;
And wakeful dogges before them farre doe lye,
Watching to banish Care their enimy,
Who oft is wont to trouble gentle sleepe.
By them the sprite doth passe in quietly,
And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowiied decpe
In drowsie fit he findes ; of nothing he takes kcepe.
And more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowue
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne.
Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternal silence farre from enimyes.
[Description of Bilphmhe.']
In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame.
Kindled above at th' heavenly Maker's light,
And darted fyrie beames out of the same.
So passing persant, and so wondrous bright.
That quite bereav'd the rash beholders sight:
In them the blinded god his lustfull fyre
To kindle oft assayd, but had no might ;
For, with dredd majestic and a\vfull jre,
She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desyre.
Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave.
Like a broad table did itselfe dispred.
For Love his loftie triumphes to engrave,
And write the battailes of his great godhed :
All good and honour might therein be red ;
For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake,
Sweete wordes, like dropping honey, she did shed ;
And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake
A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make.
Upon her eyelids many Graces sate.
Under the shadow of her even browes.
Working belgardes and amorous retrate ;
And everie one her with a grace endowes.
And everie one with meekeuesse to her bowes :
So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace.
And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes.
How shall frayle pen descrive her heavenly face.
For feare, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace 1
So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire,
She seemd, when she presented was to sight ;
And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire.
All in a silken Camus lily white,
Purfled upon with many a folded plight,
Which all above besprinckled was throughout
With golden aygulets.
99
PROM 1558
cyclop>s:dia of
TO 1649.
And in her hand a sharj>e bore-speare she held,
And at her backe a bow, and quiver gay
Stuft with steel-headed dartes, wherewith she queld
The salvage beastes in her victorious play,
Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay
Athwart her sno-n-y brest, and did divide
Her daintie paps ; which, like young fruit in ^lay.
Now little gan to swell, and being tide
Through her thin weed their places only signifide.
Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed.
And, when the winde eraongst them did inspyre,
They waved like a penon wj-de despred,
And low behinde her backe were scattered :
And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap,
As through the flouring forrest rash she fled,
In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap.
And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap.
[^Fahle of the Oak and the Briar.']
There grew an aged tree on the green,
A goodly Oak sometime had it been.
With arms full strong and largely display'd,
But of their leaves they were disaray'd :
The body big and mightily pight.
Throughly rooted, and of wondrous height ;
Whilom had been the king of the field,
And mochel mast to the husband did yield.
And with his nuts larded many swine,
But now the gray moss marred his rine.
His bared boughs were beaten with storms,
His top was bald, and wasted with worms,
His honour decay'd, his branches sere.
Hard by his side grew a bragging Briere,
Which proudly thrust into th' element.
And seemed to threat the firmament :
It was embcUisht with blossoms fair.
And thereto aye wonted to repair
The shepherd's daughters to gather flowres,
To paint their garlands with his colowres,
And in his small bushes used to shroud.
The sweet nightingale singing so loud.
Which made this foolish Briere wex so bold.
That on a time he cast him to scold.
And sneb the good Oak, for he Avas old.
Why stands there (quoth he) thou brutish block ?
Nor for fruit nor for shadow serves thy stock ;
Seest how fresh my flowres been spread,
Died in lilj' white and crimson red,
With leaves engrained in lusty green.
Colours meet to cloath a maiden queen 1
Thy waste bigness but cumbers the ground.
And dirks the beauty of my blossoms round :
The mouldy moss, which thee accloyeth.
My cinnamon smell too much annoyeth :
Wherefore soon I rede thee hence remove,
Lest thou the price of my displeasure prove.
So spake this bold Briere with great disdain,
Little him answer'd the Oak again,
But yielded, with shame and grief adaw'd,
That of a weed he was over-craw'd.
It chanced after upon a day.
The husband-man's self to come that way,
Of custom to sur»'iew his ground.
And his trees of st<ate in compass round :
Him when the spiteful Briere had espyed,
Causeless complained, and loudly crj-cd
Unto his lord, stirring up stem strife :
my liege Lord ! the god of my life.
Please you ponder your suppliant's plaint.
Caused of >vrong and cruel constraint.
Which I your poor vassal daily endure ;
And but your goodness the same recure.
And like for desperate dole to die,
Through felonous force of mine enemy.
Greatly aghast with this pittous plea,
Him rested the good man on the lea,
And bade the Briere in his plaint proceed.
With painted words then gan this proud weed
(As most usen ambitious folk)
His colour'd crime with craft to cloke.
Ah, my Sovereign ! lord of creatures all,
Thou placer of plants both humble and tall.
Was not I planted of thine own hand.
To be the primrose of all thy land.
With flow'ring blossoms to furnish the prime,
And scarlet berries in sommer-time ?
How falls it then that this faded Oak,
^^"hose body is sere, whose branches broke,
Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire.
Unto such tyranny doth aspire,
Hindring with his shade my lovely light.
And robbing me of the sweet sun's sight ?
So beat his old boughs my tender side,
That oft the blood springeth from wounds wide,
Untimely my flowers forced to fall.
That been the honour of your coronal ;
And oft he lets his canker-worms light
Upon my branches, to work me more spight ;
And of his hoary locks do^vn doth cast.
Wherewith my fresh flowrets been defast ;
For this, and many more such outrage,
Craving your godlyhead to assuage
The rancorous rigour of his might ;
Nought ask I but only to hold my right,
Submitting me to your good sufferance.
And praying to be guarded from grievance.
To this this Oak cast him to reply
Well as he couth ; but his enemy
Had kindled such coals of displeasure,
That the good man nould stay his leisure,
But home him hasted with furious heat,
Encreasing his ivrath with many a threat ;
His harmful hatchet he bent in hand,
(Alas ! that it so ready should stand !)
And to the field alone he speedeth,
(Aye little help to harm there needeth)
Anger nould let him speak to the tree,
Enaunter his rage might cooled be.
But to the root bent his sturdy stroke.
And made many wounds in the waste O&k.
The axe's edge did oft turn again.
As half unwilling to cut the grain,
Seemed the senseless iron did fear.
Or to wi'ong holy eld did forbear ;
For it had been an ancient tree,
Sacred with many a mA'stery,
And often crost with the priests' crew,
And often hallowed with holy-water dew ;
But like fancies weren foolery.
And broughten this Oak to this miseiy ;
For nought might they quitten him from decay,
For fiercely the good man at him did lay.
The block oft groaned under his blow,
And sighed to see his near overthrow.
In fine, the steel had pierced his pith.
Then down to the ground he fell forthwith.
His wondrous weight made the ground to quake,
Th' earth shrunk under him, and seem'd to sliake ;
There lieth the Oak ))itied of none.
Now stands the Briere like a lord alone,
Puff"'d up with pride and vain pleasance ;
But all this glee had no continuance :
For eftsoons winter 'gan to approach.
The blustering Boreas did encroach,
And beat upon the solitary Briere,
For now no succour was seen him near.
Now 'gan he repent his pride too late.
For naked left and disconsolate.
The biting frost nipt his stalk dead.
The watry wet weighed down his head,
94
ENGLISH LITERATURE
EDMUND SPENSEB.
And heap'd snow burdned him so sore,
That now upright he can stand no more ;
And being down is trod in the dirt
Of cattle, and bronzed, and sorely hurt.
Such was th' end of this ambitious Bricre,
For scorning eld.'
{^From the Epithalam'wn.']
Wake now, my lore, awake ; for it is time ;
The rosy mom long since left Tithon's bed,
All ready to her silver coach to climb ;
And Phoebus 'gins to show his glorious head.
Hark ! now the cheerful birds do chant their lays,
And carol of Love's praise.
The merry lark her matins sings aloft ;
The thrush replies ; the mavis descant plays ;
The ouzel shrills ; the ruddock warbles soft ;
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,
To this day's merriment.
Ah ! my dear love, why do you sleep thus long.
When meeter were that you should now awake,
T' await the coming of your joyous make,
And hearken to the birds' love-learned song,
The dewy leaves among !
P'or they of joy and pleasance to you sing.
That all the woods them answer and their echo ring.
My love is now awake out of her dream,
And her fair eyes, like stars that dimmed were
With darksome cloud, now show their goodly beams
More bright than Hesperus his head doth rear.
Come now, ye damsels, daughters of delight,
Help quickly her to dight :
But first come, ye fair Hours, which were begot,
In Jove's sweet paradise, of Day and Niglit ;
Which do the seasons of the A'ear allot.
And nil, that ever in this world is fair,
Do make and still repair ;
And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen,
The which do still adorn her beauties' pride,
Help to adorn my beautifuUest bride :
And, as ye her array, still throw between
Some graces to be seen ;
And, as ye use to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shall answer, and your echo ring.
Now is my love all ready forth to come :
Let all the virgins therefore well await ;
And ye, fresh boys, that teud upon her groom.
Prepare yourselves, for he is coming straight.
Set all your things in seemly good array,
Fit for so joyful day :
The joyfuU'st day that ever sun did see.
Fair Sun ! show forth thy favourable ray.
And let thy lifeful heat not fervent be.
For fear of burning her sunshiny face,
Her beauty to disgrace.
fairest Phoebus ! father of the Muse !
If ever I did honour thee aright.
Or sing the thing that might thy mind delight.
Do not thy serv^ant's simple boon refuse.
But let this day, let this one day be mine ;
Let all the rest be thine.
Then I thy sovereign praises loud will sing.
That all the woods shall answer, and their echo ring.
Lo ! where she comes along with portly pace.
Like Phoebe, from her chamber of the east.
Arising forth to run her mighty race,
Clad all in white, that seems a virgin best.
So well it her beseems, that ye would ween
Some angel she had been.
Her long loose yellow locks, like golden wire.
Sprinkled with pearl, and pearling flowers atween,
Do like a golden mantle her attire ;
And being crowned with a garland green,
Seem like some maiden queen.
Her modest eyes, abashed to behold
So many gazers as on her do stare.
Upon the lowly ground affixed are ;
Ne dare lift up her countenance too bold,
But blush to hear her praises sung so loud,
So ftir from being proud.
Nathless do ye still loud her praises sing.
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.
Tell me, ye merchants' daughters, did ye see
So fair a creature in your town before ?
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she.
Adorned with beauty's grace, and virtue's store ;
Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright.
Her forehead ivory white.
Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips like cherries charming men to bite.
Her breast like to a bowl of cream uncrudded.
Why stand ye still, ye virgins in amaze.
Upon her so to gaze.
Whiles ye forget your former lay to sing.
To which the woods did answer, and your echo ring {
But if ye saw that which no eyes can see.
The inward beauty of her lively sp'rit.
Garnished with heavenly gifts of high degi'ee.
Much more then would ye wonder at tliat sight,
And stand astonished like to those which read
Medusa's mazeful head.
There dwells sweet Love, and cc' ritrijit Chastity,
Unspotted Faith, and comely Womanhood,
Regard of Honour, and mild Modesty ;
There Virtue reigjis as queen in royal throne.
And giveth laws alone.
The which the base affections do obey.
And yield their services unto her will ;
Ne thought of things uncomely ever may
Thereto approach to tempt her mind to ill.
Had ye once seen these her celestial treasures.
And unrevealed pleasures.
Then would ye wonder and her praises sing,
That all the woods would answer, and your echorinjp,
Open the temple gates unto my love.
Open them wide that she may enter in.
And all the posts adorn as doth behove.
And all the pillars deck with garlands trim.
For to receive this saint with honour due.
That cometh in to you.
With trembling steps, and humble reverence,
She cometh in, before the Almighty's view :
Of her, ye virgins, learn obedience.
When so ye come into those holy places,
To humble your proud faces :
Bring her up to the high altar, that she may
The sacred ceremonies there partake.
The which do endless matrimony make ;
And let the roaring organs loudly play
The praises of the Lord in lively notes ;
The whiles, with hollow throats.
The choristers the jo^-ous anthem sing.
That all the woods may answer, and their echo ring.
Behold, while she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks.
And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,
Like crimson dyed in grain ;
That even the angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service and about her fly.
Oft peeping in her face, that seems more f lir.
The more they on it stare.
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the grounrl.
Are governed with goodly modesty.
That suffers not a look to glance a\vry.
Which may let in a little thought unsound.
96
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164&
Why blush you, lore, to give to me your hand,
The pledge of all our band ?
Sing, ye sweet angels, alleluya sing,
That all the -woods may answer, and your echo ring.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL.
A distinguished place anoong the secondary poeti-
cal lights of the reign of Elizabeth is due to Robert
SouTHWKLL, who Is also remarkable as a victim of
the religious contentions of the period. He was born
in 1560, at St Faiths, Norfolk, of lloman Catholic
parents, who sent him, when very young, to be
educated at the English college at Douay, in Flan-
ders, and from thence to Rome, where, at sixteen
years of age, he entered the society of the Jesuits.
In 1584, he returned to his native country, as a mis-
sionary, notwithstanding a law which threatened all
members of his profession found in England with
death. For eight years he appears to have mini-
stered secretly but zealously to the scattered adhe-
rents of his creed, without, as far as is known, doing
anything to disturb the peace of society, when, in
1592, he was apprehended in a gentleman's house at
Uxenden in Middlesex, and committed to a dungeon
in the Tower, so noisome and filthy, that, when he
was brought out for examination, his clothes were
covered with vermin. Upon this his father, a man
of good family, presented a petition to Queen Eliza-
beth, begging, that if his son had committed any-
thing for which, by the laws, he had deserved
death, he might suffer death ; if not, as he was a
gentleman, he hoped her majesty would be pleased
to order him to be treated as a gentleman. South-
well was, after this, somewhat better lodged, but
an imprisonment of three years, with ten inflic-
tions of the rack, wore out his patience, and he
intreated to be brought to trial. Cecil is said to
have made the brutal remark, that ' if he was in
so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly
have his desire.' Being at this trial found guilty,
upon his own confession, of being a Romish priest,
he was condemned to death, and executed at
Tyburn accordingly, with all the horrible circum-
stances dictated by the old treason laws of Eng-
land. Throughout all these scenes, he behaved
with a mild fortitude which nothing but a highly
regulated mind and satisfied conscience could have
prompted.
The life of Southwell, though short, was full of
grief. The prevailing tone of his poetry is therefore
that of a religious resignation to severe evils. His
two longest poems, St Peter's Complaint, and Mary
Maydalene's Funeral Tears, were, like many other
works o^ which the world has been proud, written
in prison. It is remarkable that, though composed
while suffering under persecution, no trace of angry
feeling against any human being or any human insti-
tution, occurs in these poems. After experiencing
great popularity in their own time, insomuch that
eleven editions were printed between 1593 and 1600,
the poems of Southwell fell, like most of the otlier
productions of that age, into a long-enduring neglect.
Their merits having been again acknowledged in
our own day, a complete reprint of them appeared
in 1818, imder the editorial care of Mr W. Joseph
Walter.
The Image of Death.
Before my face the picture hangs,
That daily should put me in mind
.Of those cold names and bitter pangs
That shortly I am like to find ;
But yet, alas ! full little I
Do think hereon, that I must die.
I often look upon a face
Most ugly, grisly, bare, and thin ;
I often view the hollow place
Where eyes and nose had sometime been ;
I see the bones across that lie.
Yet little think that I must die.
I read the label underneath,
That telleth me whereto I must ;
I see the sentence too, that saitli,
' Remember, man, thou art but dust.'
But yet, alas ! how seldom I
Do think, indeed, that I must die !
Continually at my bed's head
A hearse doth hang, which dotb me tell
That I ere morning may be dead.
Though now I feel myself fuil well ;
But yet, alas ! for all this, I
Have little mind that I must die !
The goivn which I am used to wear.
The knife wherewith I cut my meat ;
And eke that old and ancient chair,
Which is my only usual seat ;
All these do tell me I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.
My ancestors are tum'd to clay,
And many of ray mates are gone J
My youngers daily drop away,
And can I think to 'scape alone ?
No, no ; I know that I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.
» » »
If none can 'scape Death's dreadful dart ;
If rich and poor his beck obey ;
If strong, if wise, if all do smart,
Then I to 'scape shall have no way :
Then grant me grace, God ! that I
My life may mend, since I must die.
Times go ly Twns.
The lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower ;
The sorriest wight may find release of pain.
The driest soil suck in some moistening shower:
Time goes by turns, and chances change by coui'se.
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow ;
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb :
Iler tides have equal times to come and go ;
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web :
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.
Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
Not endless night, yet not eternal day :
The saddest birds a season find to sing.
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.
A chance may win that by mischance was lost ;
That net that holds no great, takes little fish ;
In some things all, in all things none are cross'd ;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmingled joys here to no man befall ;
Who least, hath some ; who most, hath never alL
Xot'e's Servile Lot,
She shroudeth vice in virtue's ml.
Pretending good in ill ;
She ofi'ereth joy, but bringcth grief;
A kiss — where she doth kill.
96
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAMUEL DWIEL.
A honey shower rains from her lips,
Sweet lights shine in her face ;
She hath the blush of virgin mind,
The mind of viper's race.
She makes thee seek, yet fear to find ;
To find, but nought enjoy ;
In many frowns, some passing smiles
She yields to more aimoy.
She letteth fall some luring baits,
For fools to gather up ;
Now sweet, now sour, for every taste
She tempereth her cup.
Her watery eyes have burning force.
Her floods and flames conspire ;
Tears kindle sparks — sobs fuel are,
And sighs but fan the fire.
May never was the month of love,
For May is full of flowers ;
But rather April, wet by kind,
For love is full of showers.
With soothing words enthralled souls
She chains in servile bands ;
Her eye, in silence, hath a speech
' Which eye best understands.
Her little sweet hath many sours ;
Short hap immortal harms ;
Her loving looks are murdering darts.
Her songs, bewitching charms.
Like winter rose and summer ice.
Her joys are still untimely ;
Before her hope, behind remorse,
Fair first — in fine unkindly.
Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,
Leave off your idle pain ;
Seek other mistress for your minds —
Love's service is in vain.
Scorn not the Least.
Where words are weak, and foes encount'ring strong.
Where mightier do assault than do defend,
The feebler part puts up enforced wrong.
And silent sees, that speech could not amend :
Yet higher powers must think, though they repine,
When sun is set the little stars will shine.
While pike doth range, the silly tench doth fly.
And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish ;
Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by.
These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish ;
There is a time even for the worms to creep,
And suck the dew while all their foes do sleep.
The merlin cannot ever soar on high.
Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase ;
The tender lark will find a time to fly.
And fearful hare to run a quiet race.
He that high growth on cedars did bestow.
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.
In Haman's pomp poor Mardocheus wept.
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe.
The Lazar piu'd, while Dives' feast was kept.
Yet he to heaven — to hell did Dives go.
We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May ;
Yet grass is green, when flowers do fade away.
BASItTEL DANIEt.
Samuel Daxiee was the son of a music-master.
He was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somerset-
shire, and seems to liave been educated under the
patronage of the Pembroke family. In 1579, he was
entered a commoner of Magdalen Ilall, Oxford,
where he chiefly devoted himself to the study of
poetry and history; at tlie end of three years, he
quitted the university, witliout taking a degree, and
•was appointed tutor to Anne CliflTord, daughter of tlie
Earl of Cumljerland. After the death of Spenser,
Daniel became what Jlr Campbell calls ' voluntarj'
laureate' to the court, but he was soon superseded
by Ben Jonson. In tlie reign of James (1603), he
was appointed Master of the Queen's Revel's, and
inspector of the pla^-s to be represented by the
juvenile performers. He was also preferred to be a
Gentleman-Extraordinar}' and Groom of the Cham-
ber to Queen Anne. Towards the close of his life,
he retired to a farm at Beekington, in Somersetshire,
Avhere he died in October 1619.
The works of Daniel fill two considerable volumes ;
but most of them are extremely dull. Of this nature
is, in particular, his History of the Civil War (be-
tween the houses of York and Lancaster), which
occupied him for several years, but is not in the
least superior to tlie most sober of prose narratives.
His Complaint of Rosamond IS-, in like manner, ratlier
a piece of versified history tlian a poem. His two
tragedies, Cleopatra and Philotas, and two pastoral
tragi-comedies, Hijmens Triumph and The Queen's
Arcadia, are not less deficient in poetical effect. In
all of these productions, the historical taste of the
author seems to have altogether suppressed the poet-
ical. It is only by virtue of his minor pieces and
sonnets, that Daniel continues to maintain his place
amongst the English poets. His Epistle to the Coun-
tess of Cumberland is a fine effusion of meditative
thought.
\_From the Epistle to the Countess of Cuvtlerland.\
He that of such a height hatli built his mind.
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong.
As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers ; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb tlie same :
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey !
And with how free an eye doth he look do'mi
Upon these lower regions of turmoil.
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood ! where honour, power, reuovni,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth ; and only great doth seem
To little minds who do it so esteem.
He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars,
But only as on stately robberies ;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right : tlie ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails :
Justice he sees, as if reduced, still
Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill
* * *
He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man ;
Who puts it in all colours, all attires.
To ."lerve his ends, and makes his courses hold.
He sees that, let deceit work what it can.
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires ;
That the all-guiding Prov'idence doth yet
All disaj)point and mocks this smoke of wit.
» • •
97
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
{Ekhard II., the Morning before lih Mtirdcr in
Pomfret Castle.']
Whether the soul receives intelligence,
By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin whereto it doth tend ;
Or whether nature else hath conference
"With profound sleep, and so doth warning send,
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near.
And o^ives the heavy careful heart to fear :
However, so it is, the now sad king,
Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound,
Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering
Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground ;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering ;
Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound ;
His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick,
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.
The morning of that day which was his last,
After a weary rest, rising to pain.
Out at a little grate his eyes he cast
Upon those bordering hills and open plain,
Where other's liberty make him complain
The more his own, and grieves his soul the more.
Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.
happy man, salth he, that lo I see.
Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields,
If he but knew his good. How blessed he
That feels not what affliction greatness yields !
Other than what he is he would not be.
Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields.
Thine, thine is that true life : that is to live,
To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.
Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire.
And hear'st jf other's harms, but fearest none :
And there chou tell'st of kings, and who aspire.
Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan.
Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost enquire
Of my restraint, why here I live alone,
And pitiest this my miserable fall ;
For pity must have part — envy not all.
Thrice happy you that look as from the shore,
And have no venture in the wreck you see ;
No interest, no occasion to deplore
Other men's travels, while yourselves sit free.
How much doth your sweet rest make us the more
To see our misery and what we be :
Whose blinded greatness, ever in turmoil,
Still seeking happy life, makes life a toil.
\_Early Love."]
Ah, I remember well (and how can I
But evermore remember well) when first
'Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was
The flame we felt ; when as we sat and sigh'd
And look'd upon each other, and conceiv'd
Not what we ail'd, yet something we did ail,
And yet were well, and yet we were not well.
And what was our disease we could not tell.
Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look : and thus
In that first garden of our simpleness
We spent our childhood. But when years began
To reap the fruit of knowledge ; ah, how then
Would she with stenier looks, with graver brow.
Check my presumption and my forwardness !
Yet still would give me flowers, still would show
\Miat she would have me, yet not have me know.
\_Sclections fivm DanieVs Sonnets.']
I must not grieve, my love, whose eyes would read
Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile ;
Flowers have time before they come to seed.
And she is young, and now must sport the while.
And sport, sweet maid, in season of these years,
And learn to gather flowers before they wither ;
And where the .sweetest blossom first appears.
Let love and youth conduct thy pleasures thither,
Lighten forth smiles to clear the clouded air.
And calm the tempest which my sighs do raise :
Pity and smiles do best become the fair ;
Pity and smiles must only yield thee praise.
jMake me to say, when all my griefs are gone,
Happy the heart that sigh'd for such a one.
Fair is ray love, and cruel as she's fair ;
Her brow shades frown, altho' her eyes are sunnv ;
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair ;
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of lionour.
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love ;
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her :
Sacred on earth ; design'd a saint above ;
Chastity and Beauty, which are deadly foes.
Live reconciled friends within her brow ;
And had she Pity to conjoin with those.
Then who had heard the plaints 1 utter now ?
For had she not been fair, and thus unkind.
My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.
Relieve my anguish, and restore the light.
With dark forgetting of my care, return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth ;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torments of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of to-morrow ;
Never let the rising sun prove you liars.
To add more grief, to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain.
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
MICHAEL DRAYTON.
IVIicHAKL Draytov, bom, it is supposed, at Ather-
ston, in Warwicksliire, about the year 1.563, and the
son of a butcher, discovered in his earliest years
such proofs of a superior mind, that, at the age of
ten. he was made page to a person of quality — a
situation which was not in that age thought too
humble for the sons of gentlemen. He is said, upon
dubious authority, to have been for some time a
student at Oxford. It is certain that, in early life,
he was highly esteemed and strongh' patronised by
several persons of consequence ; particularly by Sir
Henry Goodere. Sir Walter Aston, and the Countess
of Bedford : to the first he was indebted for great ]>nrt
of his education, and for recommending him to the
countess ; the second supported him for severnl
years. In 1;VJ3, Drayton published a collection of
his pastorals, and soon after gave to the world his
more elaborate poems of The Baron's Wars and
England's Heroical Epistles. In these latter jiro-
ductions, as in the History of the Civil War by
Daniel, we see symptoms of that taste for poetised
history (as it may be called) which marked the age
■ — which is first seen in Sackville's design of the
IMirrour for Magistrates, and was now (levcloping
itself strongly in the historical ]ila\-s of Shakspeare,
Marlow, and others. On the accession of James I.
99
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MICHAEL DRAYTON.
in 1603, Drayton acted as an esquire to his patron,
Sir Walter Aston, in the ceremony of his installa-
tion as a Kniglit of the Bath. Tlie poet expecteil
some patronage from the new sovereign, but was
disappointed. He publislied the first part of liis
most elaborate work, the Pvh/ul/noii, in 1612, and the
second in 1622, the whole forming a poetical de-
scription of England, in thirty songs, or books.
Michael Drayton.
The Polyolbion is a work entirely unlike any
other in English poetry, both in its subject and the
manner in which it is written. It is full of topo-
graphical and antiquarian details, with innumerable
allusions to remarkable events and persons, as con-
nected with various localities; yet such is the
poetical genius of the author, so happily does he
idealise almost everything he touches on, and so
lively is the flow of liis verse, that we do not readily
tire in perusing this vast mass of information. He
seems to have followed the manner of Spenser in his
unceasing personifications of natural objects, such as
hills, rivers, and woods. The information contained
in this work is in general so accurate, that it is
quoted as an authority by Ilearne and Wood.
In 1627, Drayton published a volume containing
The Battle of Aghicourt, The Court of Faerie, and
otlier poems. Three years later appeared anotlier
volume, entitled The Muses' Eli/sium, from which it
appears that he had found a final shelter in the
family of the Earl of Dorset. On his deatli in 1 631,
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a
monument, containing an inscription in letters of
gold, was raised to his memory by the wife of that
nobleman, the justly celebrated Lady Anne Clifford,
subsequently Countess of Pembroke and ilont-
gomerv.
Drayton, throughout the whole of his writings,
voluminous as tliey are, shows the fancy and feeling
of the true poet. According to IMr Ileadley — 'He
possessed a very considerable fertility of mind, which
enabled him to distinguish himself in almost every
species of poetry, from a trifling sonnet to a long
tcpographical poem. If he anywhere sinks below
himself, it is in his attempts at satire. In a most
pedantic era, he was unaffected, and seldom exhibits
his learning at the expense of his judgment.'
l^Moniing in Wai'icicJcshirc — Description of a
Stag- Hunt.']
When Phojbus lifts his head out of the winter's
wave,
No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave,
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant
spring,
Hut hunts-up to the morn the featli'red sylvans sing :
And in the lower grove, as on the rising knole,
Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole,
Those quiristers are perch't, with many a speckled
breast,
Then from her bumisht gate the goodly glitt'ring
east
Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's
si<:ht ;
On which the mirthful quires, with their clear open
throats,
T'nto the joyful mom so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and vallies ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds, about them everywhere.
The throstle, with shrill shar])s ; as purposely he song
T' awake the listless sun ; or chiding, that so long
He was in coming forth, that should the thickets
thrill ;
The ouzel near at hand, that hath a golden bill,
As nature him had markt of purpose, t' let us see
That from all other birds his tunes should different be :
For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant
May;
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle • doth only play.
When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by
In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply.
As though the other birds she to her tunes would
draw.
And, but that nature (by her all-constraining law)
Each bird to her own kind this season doth invite,
Thev else, alone to hear that charmer of the night,
(The more to use their ears,) their voices sure would
spare,
That moduleth her tunes so admirably rare,
As man to set in parts at first had learn'd of her.
To Philomel the next, the linnet we prefer ;
And by that warbling bird, the wood-lark place we
then.
The red-sparrow, the nope, the red -breast, and the wren.
The yellow-pate ; which though she hurt the blooming
tree,
Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she.
And of these chaunting fowls, the goldfi.ich not be-
hind.
That hath so many sorts descending from her kind.
The tydy for her notes as delicate as they,
The laughing hecco, then the counterfeiting jay.
The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves,
Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves)
Thus sing away the morn, until the mounting sun.
Through thick'exhaled fogs his golden head hath run,
And through the twisted tops of our close covert
creeps
To kiss the gentle shade, this while that sweetly
sleeps.
And near to these our thicks, the wild and frightful
herds.
Not hearing other noise but this of chattering birds,
Feed fairly on the laAvns ; both sorts of seasoned deer :
Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there :
The bucks and lusty stags amongst the rascals strew'd,
As sometime gallant spirits amongst the multitude.
Of all the beasts which we for our vf-nerial- name,
The hart among the rest, the hunter's noblest game :
1 Of all birds, only the lilaclibird whistleth.
I Of luintint', or chase.
S9
PBOM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1G49.
Of which most princely chase sith none did e'er report,
Or by description touch, t' express that wondrous sport
(Yet might have well beseem'd the ancients' nobler
songs)
To our old Arden here, most fitly it belongs :
Yet shall she not invoke the muses to her aid ;
But thee, Diana bright, a goddess and a maid :
In many a huge-grown wood, and many a shady grove,
Which oft hast borne thy bow, great huntress, used to
rove
At many a cruel beast, and with thy darts to pierce
The lion, panther, ounce, the bear, and tiger fierce ;
And following thy fleet game, chaste mighty forest's
queen.
With thy dishevel'd nymphs attired in youthful green,
About the lawns hast scowr'd, and wastes both far
and near,
Brave huntress ; but no beast shall prove thy quarries
here ;
Save those the best of chase, the tall and lusty red,
The stag for goodly shape, and stateliuess of head.
Is fitt'st to hunt at force. For whom, when with his
hounds
The labouring hunter tufts the thick unbarbedgrounda.
Where harbour'd is the hart ; there often from his feed
The dogs of him do find ; or thorough skilful heed.
The huntsman by his slot,l or breaking earth, per-
ceives,
Or ent'ring of the thick by pressing of the greaves.
Where he had gone to lodge. Now when the hart
doth hear
The often-bellowing hounds to vent his secret lair,
He rousing rusheth out, and through the brakes doth
drive,
As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive.
And through the cumb'rous thicks, as fearfully he
makes.
He with his branched head the tender saplings shakes.
That sprinkling their moist pearl do seem for him to
weep ;
When after goes the cry, with yellings loud and deep.
That all the forest rings, and every neighbouring
place :
And there is not a hound but falleth to the chase.
Rechating^ with his horn, which then the hunter
cheers,
Whilst still the lusty stag his high-palm'd head up-
bears.
His body showing state, with unbent knees upright,
Expressing from all beasts, his courage in his flight.
But when th' approaching foes still following he per-
ceives,
That he his speed must trust, his usual walk he leaves :
And o'er the champain flies ; which when the as-
sembly find.
Each follows, as his horse were footed with the wind.
But being then imbost, the noble stately deer
When he hath gotten ground (the kennel cast arrear)
Doth beat the brooks and ponds for sweet refreshing
soil ;
That serving not, then proves if he his scent can foil,
And makes amongst the herds, and flocks of shag-
wool'd sheep.
Them frighting from the guard of those who had their
keep.
But when as all his shifts his safety still denies.
Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries ;
Whom when the ploughman meets, his teem he letteth
stand,
T' assail him with his goad : so with his hook in hand.
The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hallow :
^Vhen, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and hunts-
men follow ;
' The track of the foot.
One of the nie;is.iiieM in winctinij the horn.
Until the noble deer, through toil bereav'J of strength.
His long and sinev\-y legs then failing him at length.
The villages attempts, enraged, not gi^ ing way
To anything he meets now at his sad decay.
The cruel ravenous hounds and bloody hunters near,
This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear,
Some bank or quick-set finds ; to which his haunch
opposed.
He turns upon his foes, that soon have him inclosed.
The churlish-throated hounds then holding him at
bay.
And as their cruel fangs on his harsh skin they lay.
With his sharp-pointed bead he dealeth deadly
wounds. ..
The hunter, coming in to help his wearied hounds,
He desperately assails ; until opprest by force,
He who the mounier is to his own dying corse.
Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets fall'
To forests that belon<rs. « * «
{_Part of the Tivmty-eighth Song of the Poh/olbion.]
But, Muse, return at last, attend the princely Trent,
Who straining on in state, the north's imperious flood,
The third of England call'd, with maiiy a dainty wood.
Being crown'd to Burton comes, to Needwood where
she shows
Herself in all her pomp ; and as from thence she flows.
She takes into her train rich Dove, and Darwin clear,
Dannn, whose font and fall are both in Derbyshire ;
And of those thirty floods, that wait the Trent upon.
Doth stand without compare, the very paragon.
Thus wand'ring at her will, as uncontroU'd she
ranges,
Her often varying form, as variously and changes ;
First En\-ash, and then Lyne, sweet Sherwood sends
her in ;
Then looking wide, as one that newly wak'd had been,
Saluted from the north, with Nottingham's proud
height.
So strongly is surpris'd, and taken with the sight,
That she from running wild, but hardly can refrain,
To view in how great state, as she along doth strain,
That brave exalted seat beholdeth her in pride.
As how the large-spread meads upon the other side.
All flourishing in flowers, and rich embroideries
dress'd.
In which she sees herself above her neighbours bless'd.
As wrap'd with the delights, that her this prospect
brings,
In her peculiar praise, lo thus the river sings :
' What should I care at all, from what my name I
take.
That thirty doth import, that thirty rivere make ;
My greatness what it is, or thirty abbeys great,
That on my fruitful banks, times formerly did seav ;
Or thirty kinds of fish that in m)' streams do live,
To me this name of Trent, did from that number give I
What reck I ? let great Thames, since by his fortune he
Is sovereign of us all that here in Britain be ;
From Isis and old Tame his pedigree derive ;
And for the second place, proud Severn that doth
strive,
Fetch her descent from Wales, from that proud moun-
tain sprung,
Plinillimon, whose praise is frequent them among.
As of that princely maid, whose name she boasts to
bear.
Bright Sabrin, whom she holds as her undoubted heir,
Let these imperious floods draw down their long de-
scent
From these so famous stocks, and only say of Trent,
' The hart weejteth at his dying ; iiis tears are held to be pre-
cious in medicine.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MICHAEL DRaTTOI^.
That IMoreland's barren earth me first to lijrht did
bring.
Which though she be but browTi , my clear coinplcxion'd
spring
Gaiii'd with the nymphs such grace, that when I first
did rise.
The Naiads on my brim danc'd wanton hydagies.
And on her spacious breast (with heaths that doth
abound)
Encircled my fair fount with many a lilsty round :
And of the British floods, though but the third I be,
Yet Thames and Severn both in this come short of me,
For that I am the mere of P-ngland, that divides
The north part from the south, on my so either sides.
That reckoning how these tracts in compass be extent.
Men bound them on the north, or ou the south of
Trent ;
Their banks are barren sands, if but compar'd with
mine.
Through my perspicuous breast, the pearly pebbles
shine :
I throw my crystal arms along the flow'ry valleys.
Which lying sleek and smooth as any garden alleys,
Do give me leave to play, whilst they do court my
stream.
And crown my winding banks with many an anadem ;
My silver-scaled sculls about my streams do swee]>.
Now in the shallow fords, now in the falling deep :
So that of every kind, the new spawn'd numerous fry
Seem in me as the sands that on my shore do lie.
The barbel, than which fish a braver doth not swim.
Nor greater for the ford within my spacious brim,
Nor (newly taken) more the curious taste doth please ;
The grayling, whose great spawn is big as any pease ;
The perch with pricking fins, against the pike pre-
par'd.
As nature had thereon bestow'd this stronger guard,
His daintiness to keep (each curious palate's proof)
From his vile ravenous foe : next him I name the
ruff;
His very near ally, and both for scale and fin.
In taste, and for his bait (indeed) his next of kin,
The pretty slender dare, of many call'd the dace.
Within my liquid glass, when Phoebus looks his face,
Oft swiftly as he swims, his silver belly shows,
But with such nimble flight, that ere ye can disclose
His shape, out of your sight like lightning he is shot ;
The trout by nature mark'd with many a crimson spot.
As though she curious were in him above the rest.
And of fresh-water fish, did note him for the best ;
The roach whose common kind to every flood doth fall ;
The chub (whose neater name which some a chevin
call)
Food to the tyrant pike (most being in his power).
Who for their numerous store he most doth them
devour ;
The lusty salmon then, from Neptune's wat'ry realm,
When as his season serves, stemming my tideful
stream,
Then being in his kind, in me his pleasure takes,
(For whom the fisher then all other game forsakes)
Which bending of himself to th' fashion of a riTig,
Above the forced wears, himself doth nimbly fling.
And often when the net hath drag'd him safe to land,
Is seen by natural force to 'scape his nmrderer's hand ;
Whose grain doth rise in flakes, with fatness inter-
larded.
Of many a liquorish lip, that highly is regarded.
And Humber, to whose waste I pay my wat'ry store,
Ale of her sturgeons sends, that I thereby the more
Should have my beauties grac'd with something from
hlrn sent ;
Not Ancum's silver'd eel excelleth that of Trent ;
Though the sweet smelling smelt be more in Thames
than me,
The lamprey, and his lesse, in Severn general be ;
The flounder smooth and flat, in other rivers caught,
Perhai)s in greater store, yet better are not thought :
The daiutv gudgeon, loche, the minnow, and the
bleak,"
Since they but little are, I little need to speak
Of them, nor doth it fit me much of those to reck.
Which everywhere are found in every little beck ;
Nor of the crayfish here, which creeps amongst my
stones.
From all the rest alone, whose shell is all his bones :
For carp, the tench, and bream, my other store
among.
To lakes and standing pools that chiefly do belong.
Here scouring in my fords, feed in ray waters clear.
Are muddy fish in ponds to that which they are
here.'
From Nottingham, near which this river first begun
This song, she the meanwhile, bv Newark having run,
Receiving little Synte, from Bever's bat'ning grounds,
At Gainsborough goes out, where the Lincolnian
bounds.
Yet Sherwood all this while, not satisfied to show
Her love to princely Trent, as downward she doth
flow,
Her Meden and her Man, she down from Mansfield
sends
To Iddle for her aid, by whom she recommends
Her love to that brave quern of waters, her to meet,
When she tow'rds Huwtber conies, do humbly kis!, her
feet.
And clip her till she grace great Humber with her
fall.
When Sherwood somewhat back the forward Muse
doth call ;
For she was let to know, tliat Soare had in her song
So chanted Charnwood's worth, the riiers that along.
Amongst the neighbouring nymphs there was no other
lays.
But those which seem'd to sound of Charnwood, and
her praise :
Which Sherwood took to heart, and very much diB-
dain'd,
(As one that had both long, and worthily maintain'd
The title of the great'st and bravest of her kind)
To fall so fiir below one wretchedly confined
Within a furlong's si»ace, to her large skirts com-
pared :
^^^lerefore she, as a nymph that neither fear'd nor
cared
For ought to her might chance, by others love or
hate,
With resolution arm'd against the power of fate.
All self-praise set apart, determineth to sing
That lusty Robin Hood, who long time like a king
Within her compass lived, and when he list to range
For some rich booty set, or else his air to change.
To Sherwood sitill retired, his only standing court.
Whose praise the Forest thus doth pleasantly report :
' The merry pranks he j)lay'd, w<mld ask an age to tell,
And the adventures strange that Robin Hood befel,
When Mansfield many a tin;e for Robin hath been
laid.
How he hath cousen'd them, that him would have
betray 'd ;
How often he hath come to Nottingham disguised,
And cunningly escaped, being set to be surjiriscd.
In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one.
But he hath heanl some talk of him and I,ittlc .'olm ;
And to the end of time, the tales shall ne'er be done,
Of Searlock,Gcorge-a-('ireen,aiMl .Much tiic miller's .--on.
Of Tuck the merry friar, which many n sei'mon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade.
An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood,
Still ready at his call, that Ix/wmaii were right good.
All clad in Lincoln green, witii c.ips of icd and Idue,
His fellow's winded horn, not one of tiiem but knew,
lUl
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
When setting to their lips their little beugles shrill
The warbling echoes waked from eveij dale and hill :
Their bauldricks set with studs, athwart their shoul-
ders cast,
To which under their arms their sheafs were buckled
fast,
A short sword at their belt, a buckler scarce a span,
Who struck below the knee, not counted then a man :
All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wond'rous
strong ;
They not an arrow drew, but was a cloth yard long.
Of archery they had the very perfect craft,
With broad-arrow, or but, or prick, or roving shaft.
At marks full forty score, they used to prick, and rove.
Yet higher than the breast, for compass never strove ;
Yet at the farthest mark a foot could hardly win :
At long-buts, short, and hoyles, each one could cleave
the pin :
Their arrows finely pair'd, for timber, and for feather.
With birch and brazil pieced, to fly in any weather ;
And shot they with the round, the square, or forked
pile.
The loose gave such a twang, as might be heard a mile.
And of these archers brave, there was not any one,
But he could kill a deer his swiftest speed upon.
Which they did boil and roast, in many a mighty
wood,
Sharp hunger the fine sauce to their more kingly food.
Then taking them to rest, his merry men and he
Slept many a summer's night under the greenwood
tree.
From wealthy abbots' chests, and churls' abundant
store,
What oftentimes he took, he shared amongst the poor :
No lordly bishop came in lusty Robin's way.
To him before he went, but for his pass must pay :
The widow in distress he graciously relieved,
And remedied the wrongs of many a virgin grieved ;
He from the husband's bed no married woman wan.
But to his mistress dear, his loved Marian,
Was ever constant known, which wheresoe'er she
came,
Was sovereign of the woods, chief lady of the game :
Her clothes tuck'd to the knee, and dainty braided
hair.
With bow and quiver arm'd, she wander'd here and
there
Amongst the forests wild ; Diana never knew
Such pleasures, nor such harts as Mariana slew.' "" *
[David and GoliaJi.']
And now before young David could come in,
The host of Israel somewhat doth begin
To rouse itself ; some climb the nearest tree.
And some the tops of tents, whence they might see
How this unanned youth himself would bear
Against the all-armed giant (which they fear) ;
Some get up to the fronts of easy hills ;
That by their motion a vast nmrmur fills
The neighbouring valleys, that the enemy thoug'it
Something would by the Israelites be wrought
They had not heard of, and they longed to see
What strange and warlike stratagem, 't should be.
AVhen soon they saw a goodly youth descend,
IHmself alone, none after to .attend,
That at his need witli arms might him supply,
As merely careless of his enemy :
His head uncovered, and his locks of hair
As he came on being played with by the air.
Tossed to and fro, did with such pleasure move.
As they had been provocatives for love :
His sleeves .strii)t up above his elbows were.
And in liis hand a stiff short staff did bear.
Which by the leather to it, and the string,
Tbej easily might discern to be a sling.
Suiting to these he wore a shepherd's scrip.
Which from his side hung down upon liis hip.
Those for a champion that did him disdain,
Cast with themselves what such a thing should mean ;
Some seeing him so wonderously fair
(As in their eyes he stood beyond compare).
Their verdict gave that they had sent him sure
As a choice bait their champion to allure ;
Others again, of judgment more precise.
Said they had sent him for a sacrifice.
And though he seemed thus to be very young,
Yet was he well proportioned and strong.
And with a comely and undaunted giace,
Holding a steady and most even pace.
This way nor that way, never stood to gaze ;
But like a man that death could not amaze,
Came close up to Goliah, and so near
As he might easily reach him with his spear.
Which when Goliah saw, ' Why, boy,' quoth he,
' Thou desperate youth, thou tak'st me sure to be
Some dog, I think, and under thy command.
That thus art come to beat me with a wand :
The kites and ravens are not far away.
Nor beasts of ravine, that shall make a prey
Of a poor corpse, which they from me sliall have,
And their foul bowels shall be all thy grave.'
' Uncircumcised slave,' quoth David then,
* That for thy shape, the monster art of men ;
Thou thus in brass comest arm''d into the field,
And thy huge spear of brass, of brass thy shield :
I in the name of Israel's God alone.
That more than mighty, that eternal One,
Am come to meet thee, who bids not to fear.
Nor once respect the arms that thou dost bear.
Slave, mark the earth whereon thou now dost stand,
I'll make thy length to measure so much land.
As thou liest grov'ling, and within this hour
The birds and beasts thy carcase shall devour.'
In meantime David looking in his face.
Between his temples, saw how large a space
He was to hit, steps back a j'ard or two :
The giant wond'ring what the youth would do :
Whose nimble hand out of his scrip doth bring
A pebble-stone and puts it in his sling ;
At which the giant openly doth jeer.
And as in scorn, stands leaning on his spear.
Which gives young David much content to see.
And to himself thus secretly saith he :
' Stand but one minute still, stand but so fast,
And have at all Philistia at a cast.'
Then with such sleight the shot away be sent.
That from his sling as 't had been lightning went ;
And him so full upon the forehead smit,
Wliich gave a crack, when his thick scalp it hit,
As't had be«n thrown against some rock or post,
That the shrill clap was heard through either host.
Staggering awhile upon his spear he leant.
Till on a sudden he began to faint ;
When down he came, like an old o'ergrown oak.
His huge root heyni up by the labourers' stroke,
That with his very weight he shook the ground ;
His brazen armour gave a jarring sound
Like a crack'd bell, or vessel chanced to fall
From some high place, which did like death ajijjal
The proud Philistines (hopeless that remain),
To see their champion, great Goliah, slain :
When such a shout the host of Israel gave.
As cleft the clouds ; and like to men that rave
(O'ercome with comfort) cry, ' The boy, the boy I
the brave David, Israel's only joy !
God's chosen champion ! most wondrous thug !
The great Goliah slain with a poor sling !'
Tlicmselves encompass, nor can they contain ;
Now are they silent, then they shout again.
Of which no notice David seems to take,
But towards the body of the dead doth mak^
J 02
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDWARD FAIRFAX.
With a fair comely gait ; nor doth he run,
As though he gloried in what he had done ;
' But treading on the uncircumcised dead,
With his foot strikes the helmet from his head ;
^ Which with the sword ta'en from the giant's side,
He from the body quickly doth divide.
Now the Philistines, at this fearful sight,
Learing their arms, betake themselves to fliglit,
Quitting their tents, nor dare a minute stay ;
Time wants to carry any thing away.
Being strongly routed with a general fear ;
Yet in pursuit Saul's army strikes the rear
To Ekron walls, and slew them as they fled.
That Sharam's plains lay cover'd with the dead :
And having put the Philistines to foil.
Back to the tents retire and take the spoil
Of what they left ; and ransacking, they cry,
' A David, David, and the victory !'
When straightway Saul his general, Abner, sent
For valiant David, that incontinent
He should repair to court ; at whose command
He comes along, and beareth in his hand
The giant's head, by the long hair of his cro'wn.
Which by his active knee hung dangling do«Ti.
And through the army as he comes along,
To gaze upon him the glad soldiers throng :
Some do instyle him Israel's only light.
And other some the valiant Bethlemite.
With congees all salute him as he past.
And upon him their gracious glances cast :
He was thought base of him that did not boast.
Nothing but David, David, through the host.
The virgins to their timbrels frame their lays
Of him ; till Saul grew jealous of his praise.
EDWARD FAIRFAX.
The celebrated translation of Tasso's Jerusalem,
by Edward Fairfax, was made in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and dedicated to that princess,
who was proud of patronising learning, but not very
lavish in its support. The poetical beauty and free-
dom of Fairfax's version has been the theme of
almost universal praise. Dryden ranked him with
Spenser as a master of our language, and Waller
said he derived from him the harmony of his num-
bers. Collins has finely alluded to his poetical and
imaginative genius —
Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung !
The date of Fairfiix's birth is unknown. lie was
the natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton, in
Yorksliire, and spent his life at Fuystone, in the
forest of Knaresborough, in the enjoyment of many
blessings which rarely befall the poetical race — com-
petence, ease, rural scenes, and an ample comnnind
of the means of study. He wrote a work on Demon-
ologi/, which is still in manuscripit, and in the pre-
face to it he states, that in religion he was ' neither
a fantastic Puritan, nor a superstitious Pa])ist.' He
also wrote a series of eclogues, one of wliicli was
published in 1741, in Cooper's Muses' Library, but it
is puerile and absurd. Fairfax was living in 1631,
but the time of his death has not been recorded.
[Desaiption of Amiida and her Enchanted Girdle.}
.\nd with that word she smiled, and ne'erthelcss
Her love-toys still she used, and pleasures bold :
Her hair (that done) she twisted up intrass,
And looser locks in silken laces roll'd ;
Her curls, garland-wise, she did up dress.
Wherein, like rich enamel laid on gold,
The twisted flow'rets smil'd, and her white breast
The lilies there that spring with roses drest.
The jolly peacock spreads not half so fair
The eyed feathers of his pompous train ;
Nor golden Iris so bends in the air
Her twenty-coloured bow, through clouds of rain :
Yet all her ornaments, strange, rich, and rare.
Her girdle did in price and beauty stain ;
Not that, with scorn, which Tuscan Guilla lost,
Nor Venus' cestus could match this for cost.
Of mild denays, of tender scorns, of sweet
Repulses, war, peace, hope, despair, joy, fear ;
Of smiles, jests, rnirth, woe, grief, and sad regret _
Sighs, sorrows, tears, embracements, kisses dear.
That, mixed first, by weight and measures meet ;
Then, at an easy fire, attempered were ;
This wondrous girdle did Armida frame.
And, when she would be loved, wore the same.
[Rinaldo at Mount Olivet and the Enchanted Wood.}
It was the time, when 'gainst the breaking day,
Rebellious night yet strove, and still repined,
For in the east appear'd the morning grey.
And yet some lamps in .Jove's high palace shined.
When to Blount Olivet he took his way.
And saw, as round about his eyes he twined.
Night's shadows hence, from thence the morning's shine,
This bright, that dark ; that earthly, this divine.
Thus to himself he thouirht : how many bright
And 'splendent lamps shine in heaven'ii temple high !
Day hath his golden sun, her moon the night,
Her fix'd and wand'ring stars the azure sky ;
So framed all by their Creator's might.
That still they live and shine, and ne'er will dip,
Till in a moment, witli the last day's brand
They bum, and with them burn sea, air, and '«id.
Thus as he mused, to the top he went.
And there kneel'd down with reverence and feai ;
His eyes upon heaven's eastern fiice he bent ;
His thoughts above all heavens uplifted were —
The sins and errors which I now repent.
Of my unbridled youth, Father dear.
Remember not, but let thy mercy fall
And purge my faults and my otiences all.
Thus prayed he ; with purple wings up-flcw,
In golden weed, the morning's lusty queen,
Begilding with the radiant beams she threw.
His helm, the harness, and the mountain green :
Upon his breast and forehead gently blow
The air, that balm and nardus breath'd unseen ;
And o'er his head, let down from clearest skies,
A cloud of pure and precious dew there flies.
The heavenly dew was on his garments spread.
To which compar'd, his clothes pale ashes seem.
And sprinkled so that all that paleness iled.
And thence of purest white briglit rays outstream :
So cheered are the flowei-s, late withered.
With the sweet comfort of the morning beam ;
And so retum'd to youth, a serjient old
Adorns herself in new and native gold.
The lovely whiteness of his changed weed
The prince perceived well and long admired ;
Toward the forest march'd he on with speed,
Resolv'd, as such adventures great required :
Thither he came, whence, shrinking back for dreatl
Of that strange desert's sight, the first retired ;
But not to him fearful or loathsome made
That forest was,'but sweet with pleasant shade
Forward he pass'd, and in the grove before.
He heard a sound, that strange, sweet, pleasing was ;
There roll'd a crystal brook with gentle roar,
There sigh'd the winds, as through the leaves they yn-^i ,
There sang the swan, and singing died, alas !
There lute, harp, cittern, human voice he heard.
And all these sounds one sound right well declared.
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDlA OF
TO 10"49.
A dreadful thunder-chip at last he heard,
The aged trees and plants well nigh, that rent,
Yet heard the n3'mphs and syrens afterward,
Birds, winds, and waters sing with sweet consent ;
^Vhereat amazed, he stay'd and well prepar'd
For his defence, heedful and slow forth-went,
Nor in his way his passage ought withstood,
Hxcept a quiet, still, transparent flood :
On the green banks, which that fair stream inbound,
Flowers and odours sweetly smil'd and smell'd,
Which reaching out his stretched arms around,
All the large desert in his bosom held,
And through the grove one channel passage found ;
This in the wood, that in the forest dwell'd :
Trees clad the streams, streams green those trees ave
made,
And so exchang'd their moisture and their shade.
SIR JOHN HARRINGTON.
The first translator of Ariosto into English was
Sir John Harrington, a courtier of the reign of
Elizabeth, and also god-son of the queen. He was
the son of John Harrington, Esq., the poet already
noticed. Sir John wrote a collection of e})igrams,
and a Brief Vieiv of the Church, in which he repro-
bates the marriage of bishops. He is supposed to
have died about tlie year 1612. The translation
from Ariosto is poor and prosaic, but some of his
epigrams are pointed.
Of Treason.
Treason doth never prosper ; what's the reason ?
For if it prosper none dare call it treason.
Of Fortune.
Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many.
But yet she never gave enough to any.
Against Writers that carp at other Men's Books.
The readers and the hearers like my books.
Hut yet some writers cannot them digest ;
Rirt what care I ? for when I make a feast
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.
Of a Precise Tailor.
A tailor, thought a man of upright dealing —
True, but for lying— honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wondrous trance ;
The fiends of hell nmstering in fearful manner,
()f sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wisli'd, as they did tell,
■fhat he might find it all one day in hell.
Tlic man, atfrighted with this apparition,
L'jion recover}' grew a great precisian :
lie bought a bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation ;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly.
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly ;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,
.\;id in his speech he used no oath but truly ;
And zealously to keep the Siibbath's rest,
liis meat for that day on the eve was drcst ;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
MiLdit cause him sometimes to forget his zeal.
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large.
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.
This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)
A captain of a ship came three days after,
And brought three yards of velvet and three quarters.
To make Venetians down below the garters.
He, that precisely knew what was enough.
Soon slipt aside three quarters of the stuff;
His man, espying it, said in derision.
Master, remember how you saw the vision !
Peace, knave ! quoth he, I did not see one rag
Of such a colour'd silk in all the flag.
SIR henry ■wotton.
Sir Henry Wotton, less famed as a poet than as
a political character in the reigns of Elizabetli and
James I., was born at Bocton Hall, the seat of liis
ancestors, in Kent, in 1568. After receiving his
education at Winchester and Oxford, and travelling
for some years on the continent, he attaclied himseK
Sir Henry Wotton.
to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite o<
EHzabeth, but had the sagacity to foresee the fate of
that nobleman, and to elude its consequences by
withdrawing in time from the kingdom. Having
afterwards gained the friendship of King James, by
conmiunicating the secret of a conspiracy formed
against him, while j'et only king of Scotland, he
was employed by that raonarcli, when he ascended
the English throne, as ambassador to ^'enice. A
versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an
eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of
whicli we have his own idea in the well-known pun-
ning expression, in wliich he defines an ambassador
to be ' an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for
tlie good of liis country.' He uhimatcly took orders,
to qualify himself to be i)rovost of Eton, in which
situation he died in 1G39, in the seventy-second
year of liis age. His writings were published in
1651, under the title of lieliquice Wotton iance ; and a
memoir of his verj* curious life has been published
by Izaak Walton.
To his Mistress, the Qneen of Bohemia.
Yiiu meaner beauties of the night,
'I bat poorly satisfy our eyes
Ml. re by your number than your light !
\'ou common people of the skies !
What are you, wnen the sun shall rise !
You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth dame Nature's lays.
Thinking your voices understood
Hy your weak accents ! what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise \
104
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPEARK.
You violets that first appear,
Bj your pure purple mantles knowTi,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own !
What are you, when the rose is blown ?
So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind ;
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen !
Tell me, if she were not design'd
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind ?
A Farewell to the Vanities of the World.
Farewell, 3'e gilded follies, pleasing troubles ;
Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles !
Fame's but a hollow echo ; gold pure clay ;
Honour the darling but of one short day ;
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin ;
State but a golden prison to live in.
And torture free-born minds ; embroider'd trains
Merel}' but pageants for proud swelling 'eins ;
And blood allied to greatness, is alone
Inherited, not purchased, nor our own :
Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth,
Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.
• * * *
Welcome, pure thoughts, welcome, ye silent groves.
These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves ;
Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring :
A prayer-book now shall be my looking-glass,
In which I will adore sweet Virtue's face.
Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares,
No broken tows dwell here, nor pale-faced fears :
Then here I'll sigh, and sigh my hot love folly,
And learn t' affect an holy melancholy ;
And if Contentment be a stranger then,
I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven again.
The CharcKter of a Happy Life.
How happy is he bom and taught,
That serveth not another's will ;
'Wliose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill !
Whose passions not his masters are,
"\^'hose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the worldly care
Of public fame, or private breath ;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice ; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise ;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good :
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat ;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great ;
Who God doth late and early pray.
More of his grace than gifts to lend ;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend ;
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall ;
Lord of himself, though not of lands ;
And having nothing, yet hath all.
SHAKSPEARE.
Shakspeare, as a writer of miscellaneous poetry,
claims now to be noticed, and, with the exception of
the Faery Queen, there are no poems of the reign
of Elizabeth equal to those productions to which
the great dramatist affixed his name. In 1593,
when the poet was in his twenty-ninth j'eas^ ap-
peared his Venus and Adonis, and in the following
year his JRape of Lucrece, both dedicated to Uenry
Wriotliesley, Earl of Soutlianipton. ' I know not,'
says the modest poet, in his first dedication, ' how
I shall i)flcnd in dedicating my unpolished lines to
your lonisliip, nor how the world will censure me
for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a
burthen ; only, if your honour seem but pleased, I
account myself highly praised, and vow to take ad-
vantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you
with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my
invention i)rove deformed, I shall be sorry it liad so
noble a godfather, and never after ear [till] so
barren a hind.' The allusion to ' idle hours' seems
to point to the author's profession of an actor, in
which capacity he had probably attracted the atten-
tion of the Earl of Southampton; but it is not so
easy to understand how the Venus and Adonis M-as
tlie 'first heir of his invention,' imless we believe
tliat it had been written in early life, or that his
dramatic hibours had then been confined to tlie
adaptation of old plays, not the writing of new oms,
for the stage. There is a tradition, that the Earl of
Southampton on one occasion presented Shaksiieare
with L.IOOO, to complete a purchase which he
wished to make. The gift M-as munificent, but tlie
sum has probably been exaggerated. Tlie Venus
and Adonis is a glowing and essentially dramatic
version of the well-known mythological story, full
of fine descriptive passages, but objectionable on the
score of licentiousness. Warton has shown that it
gave oflfence, at the time of its publication, on ac-
count of the excessive warmth of its cohiuring. Tlie
Rape of Lucrece is less animated, and is perhaps an
inferior poem, though, from the boldness of its figu-
rative expressions, and its tone of dignified pathos
and reflection, it is more like the hasty sketch of a
great poet.
The sonnets of Sliakspeare were first printed in
1G09, by Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller and publislier
of the day, who prefixed to tlie volume the following
enigmatical dedication : — ' To the only begetter of
these ensuing sonnets, Mr W. H., all happiness and
that eternity promised by our ever-living poet,
wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting
forth, T. T.' The sonnets are 154 in number. They
are, with the exception of twenty-eight, addressed
to some male object, whom the poet addresses in a
st\-le of affection, love, and idolatry, remarkable, even
in the reign of Elizabeth, for its extravagant and
enthusiastic character. Though printed continu-
ousU% it is obviiius that the sonnets were written at
different times, with long intervals between the
dates of composition ; and we know that, previous to
1598, Shaksjicare had tried this species of composi-
tion, for Meres in that year alludes to his ' sugared
sonnets among his private friends.' We almost wish,
with :\Ir liailam, that Shakspeare had not written
these sonnets, beautiful as many of them are in
language and imagery. They represent him in a
character foreign to that in which we love to regard
him, as modest, virtuous, self-confiding, and inde-
pendent. His excessive and elaborate praise of
youthful beauty in a man seems derogatory to liis
genius, and savours of adulation ; and when' we find
him excuse this friend for robbing him of his mis-
tress — a married female — and subjecting his noble
spirit to all the pangs of jealousy, of guilty love, and
blind misplaced .-ittachment, itis painful and diffi-
cult to believe tliat all this weakness and folly can
be associated with the name of Shakspeare. and still
more, that he should record it in verse which he be-
lieved would descend to future ages^
Not marble, not the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
Some of the sonnets may be written in a feigned
character, and merely dramatic in expression; but
105
FROM 1558.
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1(U9.
in otliers, the poet alludes to his profession of an
actor, and all bear the impress of strong passion and
deep sincerity. A feelin;; of premature age seems
to have crept on Shakspeare —
That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west.
Which by and by black night doth take away.
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such lire.
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consura'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
He laments his errors with deep and penitential
sorrow, summoning up things past ' to the sessions
of sweet silent thought,' and exhibiting the depths
of a spirit ' solitary in the very vastness of its sj^m-
pathies.' The ' W. H.' alluded to by Thorpe, the
publisher, has been recently conjectured to be
William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who
(as appears from the dedication of the first folio of
1623) was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This con-
jecture has received the assent of ilr Hallam and
others ; and the author of an ingenious work on the
sonnets, Mr C. Armitage Brown, has supported
it with much plausibility. Herbert was in his
eighteenth year, when !Meres first notices the son-
nets in 1598 ; he was learned, of literary taste, and
gallant character, but of licentious life. The son-
nets convey the idea, that the person to whom they
were addressed was of high rank, as well as personal
beauty and accomplishments. We know of only one
objection to this theor}' — the improbabilitj- that the
publisher would address William Ilerljert, then Earl
of Pembroke, and a Knight of the Garter, as ' J/r
W. H.' Herbert succeeded his father in the earl-
dom in 1601, while the sonnets, as published by
Thorpe, bear the date, as already stated, of 1609.
The composition of these mysterious productions
evinces Shakspeare's great facility in versification
of a difiicult order, and they display more intense
feeling and passion than either of his classical
poems. They have the conceits and quaint turns of
expression, then common, particularly in the sonnet;
but they rise to fer higher flights of genuine poetry
than will be found in any other poet of the dny, and
thc}^ contain many traces of his philosophical and
reflective spirit.
[The JTorse of AJoim.}
Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In linming out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed :
So did this horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.
Round-hoofd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong.
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide :
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack.
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.
Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares ;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.
To bid the wind a base' he now prepares,
And whc'r he run, or fly, they know not whether.
' To bid the tcind a base: i.e. to cli.iUenge the wind to con-
tend with him in speed : base — prison-base, or piison-bart, was
% rustic game, consisting chiefly in running.
For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings.
[FeTiw/s Prophecy after the Death of Adonis.']
Since thou art dead, lo ! here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend ;
It shall be waited on with jealousy.
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end.
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low :
That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.
It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud,
Bud and be blasted in a breathing while.
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile.
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.
It shall be sparing, and too full of riot.
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures ;
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet.
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures ;
It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
!Make the young old, the old become a child.
It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear ;
It shall not fear, where it should most mistrust ;
It shall be merciful, and too severe.
And most deceiving when it seems most just :
Perverse it shall be, when it seems most toward,
Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.
It shall be cause of war, and dire events.
And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire :
Subject and servile to all discontents,
As dry combustious matter is to fire.
Sith in his prime, death doth my love destroy.
They that love best, their love shall not enjoy.
[Selections from Shakspeare's Sonnets.]
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state.
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.
And look upon myself, and curse ray fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope.
With what I most enjoy contented least ;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee — and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ;
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings.
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there.
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine omti thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.
Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely ; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth.
And worst essays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end :
^Nline appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A God in love, to whom I am confined.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best.
E'en to thy pure and most most loving breast.
for my sake do thou with fortune chide.
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds.
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners lireeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd :
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIIAKSPEAKK.
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell,! 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I Avill bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction.
Pity nie then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
E'en that your pity is enough to cure me.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste :
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow.
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh lore's long-since-cancell'd woe.
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I rew pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend.
All losses are restored, and soitows end.
how much more doth beauty beauteous seem.
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give !
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
j Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses ;
But, for their virtue only is their show.
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade ;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made ;
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth.
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world, that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell !
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it : for I love you so.
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse ;
But let your love even with my life decay :
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
Aiid mock you with me after I am gone.
Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now ;
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross.
Join with the spite of fortune, make Jne bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss ;
Ah ! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe ;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last.
When other petty griefs have done their spite.
But in the onset come ; so shall I taste
At first the very worst of Fortune's might ;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe.
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim.
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and Itap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue.
Could make me any summer's story tell.
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew :
1 Vinegar.
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white.
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away.
As with your shadow I with these did play.
!My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear :
That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming
The oviTier's tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays ;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing.
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days :
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometimes hold my tongue.
Because I would not dull you with my song.
Let nie not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when It alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove :
no ! it is an ever-fixed mark.
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ;
It is the star to every wandering bark.
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle'* compass come ;
Love alters not with his brier hours and weeks,
But bears it out e'en to the edge of dooiii.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
1 never writ, nor no man ever loved.
[_Selcct ions from Shal'speare's SongsJ]
[From ' As you like it.']
Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind.
As man's ingratitude !
Thy tooth is not so keen.
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh, ho ! sing heigh ho ! unto the green holly,
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere foUj,
Then heigh, ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky.
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot !
Tliough thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As frien I remember'd not.
Heigh, ho ! kc. kc.
[At the end of ' Love's Liibour Lost*]
When icicles hang by the wall.
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail.
And Tom bears logs into the hall.
And milk comes frozen home in pail ;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul.
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whoo !
Tu-whit ! tu-whoo ! a merry note,
\\'hile greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
AV'hen all aloud the wind doth blow.
And coughing drowns the pai-son's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow.
And Marion's nose looks red and raw ;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.
Then nightly sings the staring owl.
Tu-whoo !
Tu-whit ! tu-whoo ! a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot .«,
ruoM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1646.
[In ' JIuch Ado about Nothing.']
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more ;
Men were deceivers ever ;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never :
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny ;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into, Hey nouny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps .so dull and heavy ;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, &c.
[In * Cjinbeline.']
Fear no more the heat o' th' sun.
Nor the furious winter's rages ;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages :
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o' th' great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke ;
Care no more to clothe and eat,
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, nmst
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor th' all-dreaded thunder stono ;
Fear not slander, censure rash.
Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exerciser harm thee !
Nor no witchcraft charm thee !
Ghost unlaid forbear thee !
Nothing ill come near thee !
Quiet consummation have.
And reno^vned be thy grave !
[From ' As you Like it.']
Under the green-wood tree
AVho loves to lie with me.
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's threat.
Come hither, come hither, come hither ;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
M'ho doth ambition shun.
And loves to live i' the sun ;
Seeking the food he eats.
And pleas'd with what he gets.
Come hither, come hither, come hither ;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
SIR JOHN DAVIKS.
Sir John Davies (1.570-1626), an English bar-
rister, at one time Speaker of the Irish House of
Commons, was the author of a long philo-soidiical
poem. On the Soul of Man and the Immurtality thereof,
supposed to have been written in l.'igs, and. one of
the earliest poems of that kind in our language.
Davies is a profound thinker and close reasoner :
' in the happier parts of his poem,' says Campbell,
'we come to logical truths so well illustrated by in-
genious similes, that we know not whetiier to call
the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just.
The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the
imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly
from the surrounding shades of abstraction.' The
versification of the poem (long quatrains) 'Tas
afterwards copied by Davenant and Dryden. Mr
Southey has remarked that ' Sir John Davies and
Sir William Davenant, avoidingequally the opposite
faults of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote
in numbers which, for precision, and clearness, and
felicity, and strengtli, have never been surpassed.'
The compact structure of Davies's verse is indeed
remarkable for his times. In another production,
entitled Orchestra, or a Poem of Danciny, in a Dia-
logue between Penelope and One of her Wooers, he is
much more fanciful. He there rejiresents Penelope
as declining to dance with Antinous, and the latter
as proceeding to lecture her upon the antiquity of
that elegant exercise, the merits of which he de-
scribes in verses partaking, as has been justly re-
marked, of the flexibility and grace of the subject.
The following is one of the most imaginative pas-
sages : —
\_T/ie Dancing of the Air.']
And now behold your tender nurse, the air,
And conmion neighbour, that aye runs around,
How many pictures and impressions fair
Within her empty regions are there found,
Which to your senses dancing do propound ;
For what are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds,
But dancings of the air in sundry kinds ?
For when you breathe, the air in order moves,
Now in, now out, in time and measure true ;
And when you speak, so well she dancing loves.
That doubling oft, and oft redoubling new.
With thousand forms she doth herself endue :
For all the words that from your lips repair.
Are nought but tricks and turnings of the air.
Hence is her prattling daughter, Echo, bom.
That dances to all voices she can hear :
There is no sound so harsh that shg doth scorn,
Nor any time wherein she will forbear
The air}- pavement with her feet to wear :
And yet her hearing sense is nothing quick.
For after time she endeth ev'ry trick.
And thou, sweet Music, dancing's only life.
The ear's sole happiness, the air's best speech,
Loadstone of fellowship, charming rod of strife.
The soft mind's paradise, the sick mind's leech.
With thine o\vn tongue thou trees and stones fan
teach,
That when the air doth dance her finest measure.
Then art thou born, the gods' and men's sweet
pleasure.
Lastly, where keep the Winds their revelry.
Their violent turnings, and wild whirling hays,
But in the air's translucent gallery ?
Where she her.'ielf is turn'd a hundred ways.
While with those maskers wantonly she plays.
Yet in this misrule, they such rule embrace.
As two at once encumber not the place.
Afterwards, the jwet alludes to the tidal influence of
the moon, and the passage is highly poetical in ex-
pression : —
For lo, the sea that fleets about the land.
And like a girdle clips her solid waist.
Music and measure both doth understand :
For his great crystal e^ye is always cast
Up to the moon, and on her fixed fast :
And as she danceth in her pallid .spheres
So danceth he about the centre here.
108
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DONNE.
Sometimes his proud green waves in order set,
One after other flow into the shore,
Which >vhen they have with many kisses wet,
They ebb away in order as before ;
And to make known his courtly love the more,
He oft doth lay aside his three-fork'd mace,
And with his arms the timorous earth embrace.
The poem on Dancing is said to have been written
in fifteen days. It was published in 1596. The
A'osce Teipsum, or Toem on the Immortality of the
8oul, bears the date (as appears from the dediJation
to the Queen) of 1602. The fame of these works
introduced Sir John Davies to James I., who made
him successively solicitor-general and attorney-ge-
neral for Ireland. He was also a judge of assize,
and was knighted by the king in 1607. The first
Reports of Law Cases, published in Ireland, were
made by this able and accomplished man, and his
preface to the volume is considered ' the best that
was ever prefixed to a law-book.'
[Reasons for the Sours Immortal it y.'\
Again, how can she but immortal be,
When, with the motions of both will and wit,
She still aspireth to eternity.
And never rests till she attain to it ?
All moving things to other things do move
Of the same kind, which shows their nature such ;
So earth falls down, and fire doth mount above.
Till both their proper elements do touch.
And as the moisture which the thirsty earth
Sucks from the sea to fill her empty veins,
From out her womb at last doth take a birth.
And runs a lymph along the grassy plains,
Long doth she stay, as loath to leave the land.
From whose soft side she first did issue make ;
She tastes all places, turns to every hand.
Her flowery banks unwilling to forsake.
Yet nature so her streams doth lead and carry
As that her course doth make no final stay.
Till she herself unto the sea doth marry.
Within whose wat'ry bosom first she lay.
E'en so the soul, which, in this earthly mould.
The spirit of God doth secretly infuse.
Because at first she doth the earth behold.
And only this material world she views.
At first her mother earth she holdeth dear.
And doth embrace the world and worldly things ;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here.
And mounts not up with her celestial wings :
Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught
That vv'ith her heavenly nature doth agree ;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.
For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth.
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find ?
Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health,
Or, having wisdom, was not vex'd in mind ?
Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall,
Which seem sweet flow'rs, with lustre fresh and gay.
She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,
But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away.
So, when the soul finds here no true content.
And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,
She doth return from whence she first was sent.
And flies to him that first her wings did make.
[The D if/nil;/ of 3 fan.]
Oh ! what is man, great Maker of mankind !
That thou to him so great respect dost bear ;
That thou adorn'st him with so bright a mind,
Mak'st him a king, and even an angel's peer 1
Oh ! what a lively life, what heav'nly pow'r.
What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire,
How great, how plentiful, how rich a dow'r
Dost thou within this dying flesh inspire 1
Thou leav'st thy print in other works of thine,
But thy whole image thou in man h.ast writ ;
There cannot be a creature more divine.
Except, like thee, it should be infinite :
But it exceeds man's thought, to think how high
God hath rais'd man, since God a man became ;
The angels do admire this mystery.
And are astonish'd when they view the same :
Nor hath he given these blessings for a day.
Nor made them on the body's life depend ;
The soul, though made in time, survives for aye ;
And though it hath beginning, sees no end.
JOHN DONNE.
John Donne was born in London in 1573, of a
Catholic family ; through his mother lie was re-
lated to Sir Thomas More and Ileywood the epi-
grammatist. He was educated partly at Oxford
and partly at Cambridge, and was designed for tlie
law, but relinquished the study in his nineteenth
year. About this period of his life, having carefully
considered the controversies between the Catholics
and Protestants, he became convinced that the latter
were right, and became a member of the established
church. The great abilities and amiable character
of Donne were early distinguished. The Earl of
Essex, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, and Sir Robert
Drury% successively befriended and employed him ;
and a saying of the second of these eminent persons
respecting him is recorded by liis biographers — that
he was fitter to serve a king than a subject. He
fell, nevertheless, into trouble, in consequence of
secretly marrying the daughter of Sir George IMoore,
lord lieutenant of tlie Tower. This step kept him for
several years in poverty, and by the death of his
wife, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth
child, he was plunged into tlie greatest grief. At
the age of forty-two, Donne became a clergyman,
and soon attaining distinction as a preacher, he was
preferred by James I. to the deanery of St Paul's ;
in which benefice he continued till his death in 1631,
when he was buried honourably in Westminster
Abbey.
The works of Donne consist of sa,tires, elegies,
religious poems, complimentary verses, and epi-
grams : they were first collected into one volum(/
by Tonson in 1719. His reputation as a poet, great
in his own day, low during the latter part of the
seventeentli, and the whole of the eighteenth cen-
turies, has latterly in some degree revived. In its
days of abasement, critics spoke of his liarsh and
rugged versification, and his leaving nature for con-
ceit : Dryden even hints at the necessity of trans-
lating him into inimbers and English. It seems
to be now acknowledged that, amidst nuicli rubbish,
t'nere is much real poetry, and that of a high order,
in Donne. He is described by a recent critic as
' imbued to saturation with the learning of his age,'
endowed ' with a most active and piercing intellect
—an imagination, if not grasping and comprehen-
sive, most subtle and far-darting — a fancy, rich,
109
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
vivid, and picturesque — a mode of expression terse,
simple, and condensed — and a wit admirable, as well
for its caustic severity, as for its playful quickness
— and as only wanting sufficient sensibility and taste
to preserve liim from the vices of style which seem
Monumental Effigy of Dr Donne.
to have beset him. Donne is usually considered as
the first of a series of poets of the seventeenth cen-
tury, who, under the name of the Metaphj'sical
Poets, fill a conspicuous place in English literary
nistory. The directness of thought, the naturalness
of description, the rich abundance of genuine poeti-
cal feeling and imagery, which distinguish the poets
of Elizabeth's reign, now begin to give way to cold
and forced conceits, mere vain workings of the in-
tellect, a kind of poetry as unlike the former as
punning is unlike genuine wit. To give an idea of
these conceits — Donne writes a poem on a familiar
popular subject, a broken heart. Here he does not
advert to the miseries or distractions whicli are pre-
sumed to be tlie causes of broken hearts, but starts
off into a play of conceit upon the phrase. He
entered a room, he says, where his mistress was
present, and
love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it [his heart] as glass.
Then, forcing on his mind to discover by what means
the idea of a heart broken to pieces, like glass, can
be turned to account in making out sometliing that
will gingle on the reader's imagination, he proceeds
thus :
Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite.
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they do not unite :
And now, as hrokcn glasses shoio
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of 7i cart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love can love no more.
There is here, certainly, analogy, but then it is
an analogy which altogether fails to please or move :
it is a mere conceit. Perliaps we sliould not be far
from the truth, if we were to re])rescnt this style as
the natural symptoms of the decline of the brilliant
school of Sackville, Spenser, and Sliakspeare. All
the recognised modes, subjects, and jihrases of poetry,
introduced by then: and their contemporaries, were
now in some degree exhausted, and it was neces-
sary to seek for something new. This was found,
not in a new vein of equally rich ore, but in a con-
tinuation of the workings through adjoining veins
of spurious metal.
It is at the same time to be borne in mind, that
the quality above described did not characterise the
wliole of the writings of Donne and his followers.
These men are often direct, natural, and truly poeti-
cal — in spite, as it were, of themselves. Donne, it
may be here stated, is usually considered as the first
writer of that kind of satire which Pope and
Churchill carried to such perfection. But his satires,
to use the words of a writer already quoted, are
rough and rugged as the unliewn stones that have
just been blasted from the quarry.
The specimens which follow are designed only to
exemplify the merits of Donne, not his defects : —
Address to Bishop Vcdentiiie, on the day of the mari'iagt
of the Elector Pcdatlne to the Princess Elizabeth,
Hail Bishop Valentine ! whose day this is,
All the air is thy diocese.
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners :
Thou marryest, every year.
The lyric lark and tlic grave whispering dove J
The sparrow that neglects his life for love.
The household bird with his red stomacher ;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon,
As doth the goldfinch or the kaleyon ;
This day more cheerfully than ever shine ;
This day which might inflame thyself, old Valentine!
Valediction — Forbidding Mouniing.
As virtuous men pass mildly away.
And whisper to their souls to go ;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now — and some say, no ;
So let us melt, and make no noise.
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Jloving of th' earth brings harms and fears.
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull, sublunary lover's love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which alimented it.
But we're by love so much refined.
That ourselves know not what it is ;1
Inter-assured of the mind.
Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls, therefore (which are one)
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to eary thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other dr.
1 That is, absence.
110
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN noxms.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam.
It leans, and hearkens after it.
And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circles just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Tlie Will.
Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies : I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ;
If they be blind, then. Love, I give them thee ;
, My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
To women, or the sea, my tears ;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore.
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none but such as had too much
before.
My constancy I to the planets give ;
Aly truth to them who at the court do live ;
Mine ingenuity and openness
To Jesuits ; to Buffoons my pensiveness ;
My silence to any who abroad have been ;
My money to a Capuchin.
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be.
Only to give to such as have no good capacity.
My faith I give to Roman Catholics ;
All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam ; my best civility
And courtship to an university ;
Jly modesty I give to soldiers bare ;
Jly patience let gamesters share ;
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
I give my reputation to those
"Which were my friends ; mine industry to foes ;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness ;
My sickness to physicians, or excess ;
To Nature all that I in rhyme have uTtt/
And to my company my wit :
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her who begot this love in me before,
Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but
restore.
To him for whom the passing bell next tolls
I give my physic books ; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give ;
My brazen medals, unto them which live
In want of bread ; to them which pass among
All foreigners, my English tongue :
Thou, Love, by making me love one
"Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.
Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth,
And all your graces no more use shall have
Than a sun-dial in a grave.
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee.
To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all
three.
[A Character from Donne's Satii-es.']
Towards me did run
A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun
E er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came ;
A thing which would have posed Adam to name.
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies —
Than Afric monsters — Guiana's rarities-
Stranger than strangers. One who for a Dane
In the Danes' massacre had sure been slain.
If he had lived then ; and without help dies
When next the 'prentices 'gainst strangers rise.
One whom the watch at noon scarce lets go by ;
One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry,
' Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are ?'
His clothes were strange, though coarse — and black,
though bare ;
Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been
Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen)
Become tuff-tafFety ; and our children shall
See it plain rash awhile, tlien not at all.
The thing hath travell'd, and saith, speaks all tongues ;
And only knoweth what to all states belongs.
Made of the accents and best phrase of these,
lie speaks one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force niy taste ;
But pedants' motley tongue, soldiers' bombast,
iNlountebanks' drug-tongue, nor the terms of law.
Are strong enough preparatives to draw
]\Ie to bear this. Yet I must be content
With his tongue, in /(w tongue called compliment.
* » *
He names me, and comes to me. I whisper, God I
How have I sinn'd, that thy wrath's fuiious rod,
(This fellow) chooseth me ? He saith, ' Sir,
I love your judgment — whom do you prefer
For the best linguist V And I sillily
Said, that I thought, Calepine's Dictionary.
' Nay, but of men, most sweet sir ?' — Beza then.
Some Jesuits, and two reverend men
Of our two academies, I named. Here
He stopt me, and said — ' Nay, your apostles w^t
Pretty good linguists, and so Panurge was.
Yet a poor gentleman. All these mav pass
By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold
His tongue, he prais'd it, and such wonders told,
That I was fain to say — ' If you had liv'd. Sir,
Time enough to have been interpreter
To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood '
He adds, ' If of court-life you knew the good.
You would leave loneness.' I said, ' Not alone
My loneness is, but Spartans' fasliion.
To teach by painting drunkards doth not last
Now ; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste ;
No more can prince's courts (though there be few
Better pictures of vice) teach me virtue.'
He, like a high-stretch'd lutestring, squeak'd, '0, Sir,
'Tis sweet to talk of kings !' ' At Westminster,
(Said I) the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs,
And, for his price, doth, with whoever comes.
Of all our Harrv's and our Edwards talk,
From king to king, and all their kin can walk.
Your ears shall hear nought but kings — your eyes meet
Kings only — the way to it is King street V
He smack'd and cry'd — ' He's base, mechanic, coarse,
So are all your Englishmen in their discourse.
Are not your Frenchmen neat ? ^Minc ? — as you sec,
I have but one. Sir — look, he follows me.
Certes, they are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am,
Your only wearing is your grogoram.'
' Not so. Sir. I have more.' tinder this pitch
He would not fly. I chaf'd him. But as itch
Scratch'd into smart — and as blunt iron ground
Into an edge hurts worse — so I (fool !) found
Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness
He to another key his style doth dress,
And asks. What news ? I tell him of new plays ;
lie takes my hands, and as a still whicli stays
A semibreve 'twixt each drop, he (niggardly.
As loath to enrich me so) tells many a lie —
More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowed —
Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows
111
r
FROM 1S58
CYCL0P.a5DIA OF
TO 1649.
When the queen frown'd or sinilM, and he knows what
A subtle statesman may gather from that.
lie knows who lores whom ; and who by poison
Hastes to an office's reversion.
He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg
A licence, old iron, boots, shoes, and egg-
shells to transport. Shortly boys shall not play
At spancounter, or blow point, but shall pay
Toll to some courtier. And (wiser than all ua)
He knows what lady is not painted.
JOSEPH HALL.
Joseph Hall, born at BristowPark, in Leicester-
shire, in 1574, and who rose through various church
preferments to be bishop of Norwich, is more dis-
tinguished as a prose writer than as a poet : he is,
however, allowed to have been the first to write
satirical verse with any degree of elegance. His
satires, which were published under the title of
Virgidemiarum, in 1597-9, refer to general objects,
and present some just pictures of the more remark-
able anomalies in human character: they are also
■written in a style of greater polish and volubility
than most of the compositions of this age. Bishop
Hall, of whom a more particular notice is given
elsewhere, died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two.
\_Selections from Hall's Satires.l
A gentle squire would gladly entertain
Into his house some trencher-chapelain :
Some willing man that might instruct his sons,
And that would stand to good conditions.
First that he lie upon the truckle-bed.
While his young master lieth o'er his head.
Second, that he do, on no default,
Ever presume to sit above the salt.
Third, that he never change his trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common cou»tesies ;
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master beat,
But he must ask his mother to define,
How many jerks he would his breech should line.
All these observed, he could contented be.
To give five marks and winter livery.
Scest thou how gaily my young master goes,*
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes ;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side ;
And ])icks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide ?
'Tis Ruffio : Trow'st thou where he dined to-day 1
Li sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humphrey.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier ;
An open house, haunted vrith great resort ;
Long service niixt with musical disport. f
Many fair younker with a feather'd crest.
Chooses nmch rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost.
Than stake his twelvepcncc to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touch'd no meat of all this live-long day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess.
His eyes aeem'd sunk for very hollowncss,
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much upon his back ?
* This is the portrait of a poor Rallant of the days of Elizabeth.
In St Paul's Cathedral, then an open public place, there was a
tomb erroneously supposed to be that of Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester, which was the resort of gentlemen U])on town in
that day, who had occasion to look out for a dinner. When
unsuccessful in getting an invitation, they were said to dine
with Duke Humphrey.
t An allusion to the church service to be heard near Duke
Humphrey's tomb.
L'
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt,
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Secst thou how side' it hangs beneath his hipl
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The imns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from fiirthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain ?
Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore.
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock amazon-like dishevelled,
As if he meant to wear a native cord.
If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin.
Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin ;
His linen collar labyrinthiivn set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met :
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings.
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below.
What monster meets mine eyes in huniiin show I
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin.
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield.
Or, if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.
BEN JONSON.
In 1616, Ben Jonson collected the plaj's he had
then written, and published them in one volume,
folio, adding, at the same time, a book of epi-
grams, and a number of poems, which he entitled
The Forest, and The Underwood. The whole were
comprised ii^ one folio volume, which .Jonson digni-
fied with the title of his Worhs, a circ\imstance
which exposed him to the ridicule of some of his
contemporaries.* It is only with the minor poetry
of Jonson that we liave to deal at present, as the
dramatic productions of this stern old master of the
manly school of English comedy will be afterwards
described. There is much delicacy of fancy, fine
feeling, and sentiment, in some of Jonson's lyrical
and descriptive effusions. He grafted a classic grace
and musical expression on parts of his masques and
interludes, which could hardly have been expected
from his massive and ponderous hand. In some of
his songs he equals Carew and Ilerrick in pictu-
resque images, and in portraying the fascinations of
love. A taste for nature is strong!}' displayed in his
fine lines on Penshurst, that ancient seat of the
Sidneys. It has been justly remarked by one of
his critics, that Jonson's dramas ' do not lead us to
value highly enough his admirable taste and feeling
in poetry ; and when we consider how manj' other
intellectual excellences distinguished him — wit, ob-
servation, judgment, memory, learning — we must
acknowledge that the inscription on his tomb, "
rare Ben Jonson 1" is not more pithy than it is
true.'
' Long, or low.
* An epigram addressed to him on the subject is as follows ;
I'ray tell us, Ben, where does the mystery lurk,
AVliat others call a play you call a uvrkf
On behalf of Jonson an answer was returned, which seems to
glance at the labour which Jonson bestowed on all his proiluo-
tions—
The author's friend thus for the author says-
Ben's plays are works, while others' works are plays.
11-2
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEN JONSOR.
To Cclia.
[From ' The Forest.']
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine ;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst, that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine ;
But might 1 of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
J sent thee late a rosy wreath.
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not wither'd he.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me ;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of 'tself, but thee.
The Sweet Neglect.
[From ' The Silent Woman.']
Still to he noat, still to be drest.
As you wetp going to a feast ;
Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd :
Lady, it is to be presum'd.
Though art's hid causes are not found.
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace ;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free ;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art :
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
Hymn to Diana.
[From ' Cynthia's Revels.*]
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair.
Now the sun is laid to sleep ;
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep.
Hesperus intreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright !
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose ;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close ;
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright !
Lay thy bow of pearl ap«urt,
And thy crystal shining quiver :
Give unto the flying hart.
Space to breathe, how short soever ;
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright !
To Night.
[From ' The Vision of Delight.']
Break, Phantasy, from thy cave of cloud,
AiiA spread thy purple wings ;
Now all thy figures are allow'd,
And various shapes of things ;
Create of airy forms a stream.
It must have blood, and nought of phlegm ;
And though it be a waking dream.
Yet, let it like an odour rise
To all the senses here.
And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
Or music in their ear.
Song.
[From ' The Forest.']
Oh do not wanton with those eyes.
Lest I be sick with seeing ;
Nor cast them dowii, but let them rise,
Lest shame destroy their being.
Oh be not angry with those fires.
For then their threats will kill me;
Nor look too kind on my desires.
For then my hopes will spill me.
Oh do not steep them in thy tears.
For so will sorrow slay me ;
Nor spread them as distraught with fears ;
Mine own enough betray me.
To Cella.
[From the same.]
Kiss me, sweet ! the wary lover
Can your favours keep and cover,
When the common courting jay
All your bounties will betray.
Kiss again ; no creature comes ;
Kiss, and score up wealthy sums
On my lips, thus hardly sunder'd
While you breathe. Urst give a hundred,
Then a thousand, then another
Hundred, then unto the other
Add a thousand, and so more.
Till you equal with the store,
All the grass that Romney yields,
Or the sands in Chelsea fields,
Or the drops in silver Thames,
Or the stars that gild his streams
In the silent summer nights,
When youths ply their stol'n delighta ;
That the curious may not know
How to tell them as they flow.
And the envious when they find
What their number is, be pined.
Jlcr Triumph.
See the chariot at hand here of love.
Wherein my lady rideth !
Each that draws is a swan or a dove.
And well the car love guideth.
As she goes all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty ;
And enamour'd do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight.
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that love's world compriseth .'
Do but look on her, she is bright
As love's star when it riseth !
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
Than words that soothe her !
And from her arch'd brows, such a grace
Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs "to the life
All the gain, all the good of the elements' strue.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow.
Before rude hands have touch'd it ?
Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow.
Before the soil hath smutch'd it ?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver.
Or swan's down ever ?
Or have smell'd of the bud o' the brier ?
Or the 'nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee ?
so white ! so soft ! so sweet is she I
113
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164tf
Good Life, Long Life.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth ni^ake man better be,
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year.
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear.
A lily of a day
Is fairer far, in ]May,
Although it fall and die that night.
It was the plant and flower of light !
In small proportions we just beauties see :
And in short measures life may perfect be.
Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke.
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all Terse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ;
Death ! ere thou hast slain another,
Leam'd and fair, and good as she.
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. R.
Would'st thou hear what man say
In a little ? — reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die ;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault.
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
The other let it sleep with death :
Fitter, where it died, to tell.
Than that it lived at all. Farewell 1
On my First Daughkr.
Here lies to each her parents ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth :
Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months' end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence ;
Whose soul heaven's queen (whose name she bears)
In comfort of her mother's tears.
Hath placed among her virgin train :
Where, while that sever'd doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth,
Which cover lightly, gentle earth.
To Penshirst.*
[From ' The Forest']
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble ; nor canst boast a row
Of polish'd pillars, or a roof of gold :
Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told ;
Or stair, or courts ; but stand'st an ancient pile,
■ And these grudg'd at, are reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks of soil and air,
' Of wood, of water ; therein thou art fair.
* Penshurst is situated in Kent, near Tunbridse, in a wide and
rich valley. The grey walls and turrets of the old mansion ; its
liigh-peaked and red roofs, and the new buildings of fresh stone,
mingled with the ancient fabric, present a very striking and
: venerable aspect. It is a fitting abode for the noble Sidneys.
The park contains trees of enormous growth, and others to
which past events and characters have given an everlasting
interest; as Sir Philip Sidney's Oak, Sacch.arissa's Walk, Ca-
rnage'* Bower, &c. The ancient massy oak tables remain ; and
' from Jonson's description of the hospitality of the family, they
must often have ' groined with the weight of the feast.' Mr
■William Ilowitt has given an interesting account of Penshurst
la his Visits to Remarkable Places, 1840.
Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport ;
Thy mount to which the drj'ads do resort.
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts Lave made
Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade ;
That taller tree which of a nut was set
At his great birth where all the Muses met.
PenshuTBt.
There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names
Of many a Sylvan token with liis flames.
And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke
The lighter Fauns to reach thy Ladies' Oak.
Thy copse, too, named of Ganiage, thou hast here
That never fails, to serve thee, season'd deer.
When thou would'st feast or exercise thy friends.
The lower land that to the river bends.
Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed :
The middle ground thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies, and the tops
Fertile of wood. Ashore, and Sidney's copse.
To crown thy open table doth provide
The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side :
The painted partridge lies in every field.
And, for thy mess, is willing to be kill'd.
And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish.
Thou hast thy ponds that pay thee tribute fish.
Fat, aged carps that run into thy net.
And pikes, now wearv' their own kind to eat,
As loath the second draught or cast to stav,
Ofiiciously, at first, themselves betray.
Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land,
Before the fisher, or into his hand.
Thou hast thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers.
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry with the later plum.
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come ;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone.
They're rear'd with no man's ruin, no man's groan ;
There's none that dwell about them wish them down {
But all come in, the farmer and the clown.
And no one empty handed, to salute
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake.
Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they uiake
iu
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEN JONSON.
The better cheeses, bring them, or else send
By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend
This way to husbands ; and whose baskets bear
An emblem of themselves, in plum or pear.
But what can this (more than express their love)
Add to thy free provisions, far above
The need of such ? whose liberal board doth flow
With all that hospitality doth knowi
Where comes no guest but is allow'd to eat
Without his fear, and of thy lord's own meat:
Where the same beer, and bread, and self-same wino
That is his lordship's shall be also mine.
And I not fain to sit (as some this day
At great race's tables) and yet dine away.
Here no man tells my cups ; nor, standing by,
A waiter doth my gluttony envy :
But gives me what I call, and lets me eat ;
He knows below he shall find plenty of meat ;
Thy tables hoard not up for the next day,
Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray
For fire, or lights, or livery ; all is there.
As if thou, then, wert mine, or I reign'd here.
There's nothing I can wish, for which I stay.
This found King James, when hunting late this way
With his brave son, the Prince ; they saw thy fires
Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires
Of thy Penates had been set on flame
To entertain them ; or the country came,
With all their zeal, to warm their welcome here.
What (great, I will not say, but) sudden cheer
Did'st thou then make them ! and what praise was
heap'd
On thy good lady then, who therein reap'd
The just reward of her high housewifery ;
To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh,
^^'hen she was far ; and not a room but drest
As if it had expected such a guest !
These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all ;
Thy lady's noble, fruitful, chaste withal.
His children * * «
* * have been taught religion ; thence
Their gentler spirits have suck'd innocence.
Each mom and even they are taught to pray,
AMth the whole household, and may, every day.
Read, in their virtuous parents' noble parts,
The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.
Now, Peushurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
Alay say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.
To the Memory of my idoved Master, William Shcd:-
spcare, and what he hath left its.
To draw no en-^-y, Shakspeare, on thy name.
Am 1 thus ample to thy book and fame ;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suflVage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise ;
For silliest ignorance on these would light.
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right ;
Or blind afl^ection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urges all by chance ;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise.
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin : Soul of the age !
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage !
My Shakspeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further off, to make thee room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb.
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great but disproportion'd Muses :
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers.
And tell how far thou didst our Lvly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou had small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I will not seek
For names ; but call forth thund'riug Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead.
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on.
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their prime.
When, like Apollo, he came forth to wann
Our ears, or like a Mercury, to charm !
Nature herself was proud of his designs.
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit.
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ;
But antiquated and deserted lie.
As they were not of nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all ; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be.
His art doth give the fashion ; and, that he
Who casts to vrrite a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same.
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn ;
For a good poet's made as well as bom.
And such wert thou ! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines '
In his well turned and true filed lines :
In each of which he seems to shake a lance.
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James ! <
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there !
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage.
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage,
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like
night.
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light !
On Hie Portrait of Shakspeare.
[Under the frontispiece to the first edition of his works : 16^1.]
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
\\'ith nature, to outdo the life :
could he but have dra^\•n his wit,
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face ; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture but his book.*
* This attestation of Ben Jonson to the first engraved poi-
trait of Sli:ikspeare, seems to prove its fidelity as a likenesg.
The portrait corresponds with the monumental eltiey at Strat-
ford, but both represent a heavy and somewhat inelegant
115
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OP
TO 1649
RICHARD CORBET.
Richard Corbet (1582-1635) was the son of a
mail who, though only a gardener, must have pos-
Bessed superior qualities, as he obtained the hearty
commendations, in verse, of Ben Jonson. The son
was educated at Westminster and Oxford, and hav-
ing taken orders, he became successively bishop of
Oxford and bishop of Norwich. The social quail-
Norwich Cathedral.
ties of witty Bishop Corbet, and his never-failing
vivacity, joined to a moderate share of dislike to
the Puritans, recommended him to the patronage of
Kii^g James, by whom he was raised to the mitre.
His habits were rather too convivial for the dignity
of his office, if we may credit some of the anecdotes
which have been related of him. Meeting a ballad-
singer one market-day at Abingdon, and the man
complaining that lie could get no custom, the jolly
doctor put off his gown, and arrayed himself in the
leathern jacket of the itinerant A-ocalist, and being
a handsome man, with a dear full voice, he presently
vended the stock of ballads. One time, as he wa's
confirming, the country people pressing in to see
the ceremony, Corbet exclaimed — 'Bear off there,
or ril confirm ye with my staff.' The bishop and
his chaplain, Dr Lushington, it is said, would some-
times repair to the wine-cellar together, and Corbet
used to put off his episcopal hood, saying, ' There
lies the doctor;' tlien he put off his gown, saying,
* There lies the bishop ;' then the toast went round,
• Here's to thee, Corbet ;' ' Here's to thee, Lusliing-
ton.' Jovialities like these seem more like those of
figure. There is, 'jowevcr, a placid good humour in the ex-
pression of the features, and much sweetness in the mouth and
lips. The upper part of the lieaii is bald, and the lofly fore-
bead is conspicuous in both, as in the Chandos and other pic-
tures. The general resemblance we have no doubt is correct,
but considerable allowance must bo made for the defective state
of Eoiilish art at this period.
tlie jolly Friar of Copmanhurst than the acts of a
Protestant bishop, but Corbet had higher qualities;
his toleration, solid sense, and lively talents, pro-
cured him deserved esteem and respect. His poems
were first collected and published in 1647. They
are of a miscellaneous character, the best known
being a Journey into France, written in a light easy
strain of descriptive humour. The Farewell to tfu
Fairies is equally lively, and more poeticaL
[To Vincent Corbet, his Son.l
What I shall leave thee none can tell.
But all shall say I wish thee well :
I wish thee, Yin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health ;
Nor too much wealth, nor wit come to thee.
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning not for show,
Enough for to instruct and know ;
Not such as gentlemen require
To prate at table or at fire.
I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court
Not to build on, but support ;
To keep thee not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
1 wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days ;
And, when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art.
[Journey to France.^
I went from England into France,
Nor yet to learn to cringe nor dance,
Nor yet to ride nor fence :
* ♦ «
But I to Paris rode along,
Much like John Dory* in the song.
Upon a holy tide.
I on an ambling nag did get,
(I trust he is not paid for yet),
And spurr'd him on each side.
And to Saint Dennis fast we came.
To see the sights of Notre Dame,
(The man that shows them snufiles).
Where who is apt for to believe.
May see our Lady's right-arm sleeve,
And eke her old pantofles ;
Her breast, her milk, her very gown
That she did wear in Bethlehem town.
When in the inn she lay.
Yet all the world knows that's a fable,
For so good clothes ne'er lay in stable,
Upon a lock of hay.
There is one of the cross's nulls,
Which, whoso sees, his bonnet vails.
And, if he will, may kneel.
Some say 'twas false, 'twas never so.
Yet, feeling it, thus much 1 know,
It is as true as steel.
* This alludes to one of the most celebrated of the old Kmtliah
ballads. It was the favourite performance of the English min-
strels, as lately as the reign of Charles II., and Dryden allude*
to it as to the most hacknicd thing of the time —
But Sunderland, Go<loIphin, Lory,
These will appear such chits in story,
'Twill turn all politics to jests.
To be repeated like John Dory,
When fiddlers sing at feasts.
Ritson't Ancient Songt, p. 16&
116
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR JOHN BEACMOMX.
There is a lanthorn which the Jews,
When Judas led them forth, did use,
It weighs my weight downright :
But, to believe it, you must think
The Jews did put a candle in't,
And then 'twas very light.
There's one saint there hath lost his nose :
Another 's head, but not his toes,
His elbow and his thumb.
But when that we had seen the rags,
We went to th' inn and took our nags,
And so away did come.
We came to Paris on the Seine,
*Tis wondrous fair, 'tis nothing clean,
'Tis Europe's greatest town.
How strong it is, I need not tell it.
For all the world may easily smell it,
That walk it up and down.
There many strange things are to see,
The palace and great gallery.
The Place Royal doth excel :
The new bridge, and the statues there,
At Notre Dame, Saint Q. Pater,
The steeple bears the bell.
For learning, th' University ;
And, for old clothes, the Frippery ;
The house the Queen did build.
Saint Innocents, whose earth devours
Dead corps in four-and-twenty hours,
And there the King was killed :
The Bastille, and Saint Dennis Street,
The Shaffleuist, like Loudon Fleet,
The arsenal no voj.
But if you'll see the prettiest thing,
Go to the court and see the king,
0, 'tis a hopeful boy.*
He is, of all his dukes and peers,
Reverenc'd for much wit at 's years,
Nor must you think it much :
For he with little switch doth play.
And make fine dirty pies of claj',
never king made sucL »
Farewell to the Fairies,
Farewell rewards and fairies.
Good housewives now may say.
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do.
Yet who of late, for cleanliness,
Finds sixpence in her shoe ?
Lament, lament, old Abbeys,
The fairies lost command ;
They did but change priests' babies.
But some have changed your land ;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans ;
Who live as changelings ever since.
For love of your domains.
At morning and at evening both,
"V'ou merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had ;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Cis to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabor,
And nimbly went their toes.
* Louis XIII.
Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain.
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
C)n many a grassy plain ;
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later, James came in.
They never danc'J on any heath
As when the time hath been.
By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession.
Their songs were Ave-Maries,
Their dances were procession :
But now, aliis ! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas ;
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease.
A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure,
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth, was punish'd sure ;
It was a just and Christian deed,
To pinch such black and blue :
how the commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you !
SIR JOHN BEAUMONT — DR HENRY KING.
Among the numerous minor poets who flourished,
or rather composed, in the reign of James, were Sir
John Beaumont (1582-1628) and Dr Henry King,
bishop of Chichester (1591-1669). The former was
the elder brother of tlie celebrated dramatist. En-
joying the family estate of Grace Dieu, in Leicester-
shire, Sir John dedicated part of his leisure hours to
the service of the Muses. He wrote a poem on Bos-
worth Field in tlie heroic couplet, which, though
generally cold and unimpassioned, exiiibits correct
and forcible versification. As a specimen, we subjoin
Richard's animated address to his troops on the eve
of the decisive battle : —
My fellow soldiers ! though your swords
Are sharp, and need not whetting by my v ords.
Yet call to mind the many glorious days
In which we treasured up immortal praise.
If, when I served, I ever fled from foe,
Fly ye from mine — let me be punish'd so !
But if my father, when at first he tried
How all his sons could shining blades abide.
Found me an eagle whose undazzled eyes
Aff"ront the beams that from the steel arise ,
And if I now in action teach the same.
Know, then, ye have but changed your general's
name.
Be still yourselves ! Ye fight against the dross
Of those who oft have run from you with loss.
How many Somersets (distension's brands)
Have felt the force of our revengeful hands ?
From whom this youth, as from a princely flood,
Derives his best but not untainted blood.
Have our assaults made Lancaster to droop ?
And shall this Welshman with his ragged troop.
Subdue the Norman and the Saxon line.
That only Merlin may be thought divine?
See what a guide these fugitives have chose !
Who, bred among the French, our ancient foes.
Forgets the English language and the ground,
And knows not what our drums and trumpets sound !
Sir John Beaumont wrote the heroic couj)let with
great ease and correctness. In a poem t';' the me-
mory of Ferdinando Pulton, Esq., are the following
excellent verses : —
Why should vain sorrow follow him with tears,
Who shakes off burdens of decliuiug years 2
117
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
10 16i».
'^Vhose thread exceeds the usual bounds of life,
And feels no stroke of any fatal knife ?
The destinies enjoin their wheels to run,
Until the length of his whole course be spun.
No envious clouds obscure his struggling light,
Which sets contented at the point of night :
Yet this large time no greater profit brings.
Than every little moment whence it springs ;
Unless employ'd in works deserving praise,
Must wear out many years and live few da.js.
Time flows from instants, and of these each one
Should be esteem'd as if it were alone
The shortest space, which we so lightly prize
When it is coming, and before our eyes :
Let it but slide into the eternal main.
No realms, no worlds, can purchase it again :
Remembrance only makes the footsteps last.
When winged time, which fixed the prints, is past.
Sir John also wrote an epitaph on his brother, the
dramatist, but it is inferior to the following : —
On my dear S<y>i, Gervase Beaumont.
Can I, who have for others oft compiled
The songs of death, forget my sweetest child.
Which like a fiow'r crush'd with a blast, is dead.
And ere full time hangs down his smiling head,
Expecting with clear hope to live anew.
Among the angels fed with heavenly dew ?
We have this sign of joy, that many days.
While on the earth his struggling spirit stays,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His only food, his sleep, his ease from pains.
may that sound be rooted in my mind.
Of which in him such strong effect I find !
Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, far above
The course of nature, or his tender age ;
Whose looks could all my bitter griefs assuage :
Let his pure soul — ordain'd seven years to be
In that frail body, which was part of me —
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this port at every step I go.
Dr Henry King, who was chaplain to James L,
and did honour to the church preferment which was
bestowed upon him, was best known as a religious
poet. His language and imagery are chaste and
refined. Of his lighter verse, the following song
may suffice : —
Song.
Dry those fair, those crystal eyes.
Which, like growing fountains, rise.
To drown their banks: grief's sullen brooks
Would better flow in furrow'd looks ;
Thy lovely face was never meant
To be the shore of discontent.
Then clear those waterish stars again,
Which else portend a lasting rain j
Lest the clouds which settle there.
Prolong my winter all the j-ear,
And thy example others make
In lore with sorrow for thy sake.
Sic Vita.
Like to the falling of a star.
Or as the flights of eagles are ;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue.
Or silver drops of morning dew ;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Oi bubbles which on water stood :
Ev'n such is man, whose borrow'd light
''<) rtraight Cf-l'd in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies ;
The spring entomb'd in autunm lies ;
The dew dries up, the star is shot ;
The flight is past — and man forgot.
The Dirge.
^\'hat is the existence of man's life,
But open war, or slumber'd strife ;
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements ;
And never feels a perfect peace
Till Death's cold hand signs his release!
It is a storm — where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood ;
And each loose passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind.
Which beats his bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.
It is a flower — which buds, and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose ;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep.
Like fits of waking before sleep ;
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enroU'd.
It is a dream — whose seeming truth
Is moralis'd in age and youth ;
Where all the comforts he can share,
As wandering as his fancies are ;
Till in a mist of dark decay.
The dreamer vanish quite away.
It is a dial — which points out
The sun-set, as it moves about ;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of Time's flight ;
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid
His body in perpetual shade.
It is a weary interlude —
Which doth short joys, long woes, include;
The world the stage, the prologue tears.
The acts vain hopes and varied fears ;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath.
And leaves no epilogue but death.
FRANCIS BEAUMONT.
Francis Beaumont (1585-1616), whose name is
most conspicuous as a dramatist, in union with that
of Fletcher, wrote a small number of miscellaneous
pieces, which his brother published after his death.
Some of these youthful effusions are witty and
amusing ; others possess a IjTical sweetness ; and
a few are grave and moralising. The most cele-
brated is the letter to Ben Jonson, which was ori-
ginally published at the 'end of the play ' Nice
Valour,' with the following title : ' Mr Francis
Beaumont's letter to Ben Jonson, written before he
and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of
the precedent comedies then not finished, which de-
ferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.' Not-
withstanding the admiration of Beaumont for ' Rare
Ben.' he copied Shakspeare in the style of liis dramas.
Fletcher, however, was still more Shakspearian than
his associate. Hazlitt says finely of the premature
death of Beaumont and liis more poetical friend —
'The bees were said to have come and built their
liive in the mouth of Plato when a child ; and the
fable niiglit be transferred to the sweeter accents of
Beaumont and Fletcher. Beaumont died at the age
of five-and-twenty [thirty]. One of tliese writers
makes Bellario, the l>age, say to Philaster, who
threatens to take his life —
'Tis not a life.
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.
118
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
FRANCIS BEAUMONT.
But here ^vas jouth, genius, aspiring hope, growing
reputation, cut off hl<e a flower in its summer pride,
0' like " the hly ou its stalk green," which makes us
Francis Beaumont.
repine at fortune, and ahnost at nature, that seem
to set so httle store by their greatest favourites.
The life of poets is, or ought to be (judging of it
from the light it lends to ours), a golden dream, full
of brightness and sweetness, lapt in Elysium ; and
it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid
yision, by which they are attended in their path of
glor}', fade like a vapour, and tlieir sacred heads
laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals
has run out. Fletcher, too, was prematurely cut
off by the plague.'*
^Letter to Ben Joiison.'\
The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know, they see, however absent) is
Here, our best haymaker (forgive me this,
It is our country's style) in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mix'd with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain,
<\'ith fustian metaphors to stuff the brain,
So mixed, that, given to the thirstiest one,
'Twill not prove alms, unless he have the stone.
I think, with one draught man's invention fades :
Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Illades.
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliff's wit,
Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet ;
Fill'd with such moisture in most grievous qualms.
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms ;
And so must I do this : And yet I think
It is a potion sent us down to drink,
By special Providence, keeps us from fights,
Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights.
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,
A medicine to obey our magistrates :
For we do live more free than you ; no hate,
No en^-y at one another's happy state.
Moves us ; we are all equal : every whit
Of land that God gives men here is their wit.
If we consider fully, for our best
And gravest men will with his main house-jest
* Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth &c., p. 227.
Scarce please you ; we want subtilty to do
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too :
Here are none that can bear a painted show.
Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow ;
Who, like mills, set the right way for to grind,
Can make their gains alike with every wind ;
Only some fellows with the subtlest jiate.
Amongst us, may perchance equivocate
At selling of a horse, and that's the most.
^rethinks the little wit I hud is lost
Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best.
With the best gamesters : what things have we seeu
Done at the Mermaid ; heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame.
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life : then when there had been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the to«-n
For three days past ; wit that niii:ht warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
Right witty ; though but downright fools were wise.
When I remember this, * *
* * * I needs must cry ;
I see my days of ballading grow nigh ;
I can already riddle, and can sing
Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring
Myself to speak the hardest words I find
Over as oft as any with one wind.
That takes no medicines, but thought of thee
;Makes me remember all these things to be
The wit of our young men, fellows that show
No part of good, yet utter all they know.
Who, like trees of the garden, have growing souls.
Only strong Destiny, which all controls,
I hope hath left a better fate in store
For me, thy friend, than to live ever poor.
Banish 'd unto this home : Fate once again
Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plain
The way of knowledge for me ; and then I,
Who have no good but in thy company.
Protest it will ray greatest comfort be.
To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee,
Ben ; when these scenes are perfect, we'll taste wine;
I'll drink thy nmse's health, Ihou shalt quaff mine.
On the Tombs in Westinintter.
Mortality, behold and fear,
AA'hat a charge of flesh is here !
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heap of stones :
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
AVho now want strength to stir their hands ;
'Where, from their pulpits seal'd with dust,
They preach — in greatness is no trust.
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal'st seed.
That the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin :
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died ;
Here are wands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings.
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.
An Epitaph,
Here she lies, whose spotless fame
Invites a stone to learn her name :
The riirid .Spartan that denied
An epitaph to all that died, ..-
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
ro 1649.
Uuless for war, in charity
Would here vouchsafe an elegy.
She died a^ wife, but yet her mind,
Beyond virginity refined.
From lawless fire remain'd as free
As now from heat her ashes be :
Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest ;
Till it be call'd for let it rest ;
For while this jewel here is set,
The grave is like a cabinet.
THOMAS CAREW.
Thomas Carew (1589-1639) was the precursor
and representative of a numerous class of poets —
courtiers of a gay and gallant school, who to personal
accomplishments, rank, and education, united a taste
and talent for the conventional poetry then most
popular and cultivated. Their influence may he seen
even in Cowley and Dryden : Carew and Waller
were perhaps the best of the class : Rochester was
undoubtedly the most debased. Their visions of
fame were in general bounded by the circle of the
court and the nobility. To live in future generations,
or to sound the depths of the human heart, seems not
to have entered into their contemplations. A loyal
panegyric was the epic strain of their ambition ; a
' rosy cheek or coral lip' formed their ordinary
theme. The court applauded ; tlie lady was flattered
or appeased by the compliment ; and the poet was
praised for his wit and gallantry ; while all the time
the heart had as little to do with the poetical homage
thus tendered and accepted, as with the cold abstrac-
tions and 'rare poesies' on wax or ivory. A foul
taint of immorality and irreligion often lurked under
the flowery surfiice, and insidiously made itself
known and felt. Carew sometimes went beyond this
strain of heartless frivolity, and is graceful in sen-
timent as well as style — ' piling up stones of lustre
from the brook ;' but he was capable of far higher
things ; and in him, as in Suckling and Sedley, we see
only glimpses of a genius which might have been
ripened into permanent and beneficial excellence.
Carew was descended from an ancient Gloucester-
shire family. He was educated at Oxford, then tra-
velled abroad, and on his return, obtained the notice
and patronage of Charles I. He was appointed gen-
tleman of the privy chamber, and sewer in ordinary
to the king. His after life was that of a courtier —
witty, affable, and accomplished — without reflection ;
and in a strain of loose revelry which, according to
Clarendon, the poet deeply repented in his latter
daj's. ' He died,' says the state historian, ' with the
greatest remorse for that license, and with the great-
est manifestation of Christianity, that his best friends
could desire.'
The poems of Carew are short and occasional
flis longest is a masque, written by command of the
king, entitled Caelum Britannicum. It is partly in
prose ; and the lyrical pieces were set to music by
Dr Henry Lawes, the poetical musician of that age.*
The short amatory pieces and songs of Carew were
exceedingly popular, and are now the only produc-
tions of his which are read. They are often inde-
licate, but rich in expression. Thirty or forty years
later, he would have fallen into the frigid style of the
court poets after the Ilestoration ; but at the time he
wrote, the passionate and imaginative vein of tlie
Elizabethan period was not wholly exhausted. The
'genial and warm tints' of the elder muse still
coloured the landscape, and were reflected back in
some measure by Carew. He abounded, however,
* Of the peculiar composition called the masque, an account
(8 given in the sequeL
in tasteless conceits, even on grave elegiac subjects
In his epitaph on the daughter of Sir Thomas Went-
worth, he says —
And here the precious dust is laid,
Whose purely-tempered clay was made
So fine that it the guest betray'd.
Else the soul grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sin.
And so was hatch'd a cherubin !
Song.
Ask me no more where Jove bestows.
When June is past, the fading rose ;
For in your beauties, orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day ;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past ;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest ;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragi'ant bosom dies !
The Covipliment.
I do not love thee for that fair
Rich fan of thy most curious hair ;
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than the threads of lawn,
And are softer than the leaves
On which the subtle spider weaves.
I do not love thee for those flowers
Growing on thj' cheeks (love's bowers) ;
Though such cunning them hath spread.
None can paint them white and red :
Love's golden arrows thence are shot,
Yet for them I love thee not.
I do not love thee for those soft
Red coral lips I've kiss'd so oft ;
Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard
To speech, whence music still is heard ;
Though from those lips a kiss being taken,
[Might tyrants melt, and death awaken.
I do not love thee, oh ! my fairest.
For that richest, for that rarest
Silver pillar, which stands under
Thy sound head, that globe of wonder ;
Tho' that neck be whiter far
Than towers of polish'd ivory are.
Song.
Would you know what's soft ? I dare
Not bring you to the dowii or air ;
Nor to stars to show what's bright,
Nor to snow to teach you white.
Nor, if you would music hear,
Call the orbs to take your ear ;
Nor to please your sense bring forth
Bruised nard or what's more worth.
Or on food were your thoughts plac'd.
Bring you nectar, for a taste :
\^'ould you have all these in one.
Name my mistress, and 'tis done.
12C
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS CAREW.
A Pastoral Dialorjuc.
Shepherd, yt/mph, Chorut.
Shep. This mossy bank they press'd. Xt/mph. That
aged oak
Did canopy the happy pair
All night from the damp air.
Cho. Here let us sit and sing tlie words they spoke,
Till the day breaking, their embraces broke.
Shep. See, love, the blushes of the mom appear,
And now she hangs her pearly store,
(Robb'd from the eastern shore,)
I' th' cowslip's bell, and rose's ear :
Sweet, I must stay no longer here.
Nymph. Those streaks of doubtful light usher not day.
But show my sun must set ; no mom
Shall shine till thou return ;
The yellow planets, and the gray
Da'mi, shall attend thee on thy way.
Shep. If thine ej-es gild my paths, they may forbear
Their useless shine. Ki/mj^h. My tears will quite
Extinguish their faint light.
Shep. Those drops will make their beams more clear.
Love's flames will shine in ev'rj' tear.
CJto. They kiss'd and wept ; andfrom their lips and eyes.
In a mix'd dew of briny sweet.
Their joys and sorrows meet ;
But she cries out. Nymph. Shepherd, arise,
The sun betrays us else to spies.
Cho. The winged hours fly fast, whilst we embrace ;
But when we want their help to meet.
They move with leaden feet.
Nymph. Then let us pinion time, and chase
The day for ever from this place.
Shep. Hark ! Nymph. Ay, me, stay ! Shep. For ever.
Nymph. No, arise.
We must be gone. Shep. My nest of spice.
Nymph. ISIy soul. Shep. My paradise.
Cho. Neither could say farewell, but through their eyes
Grief interrupted speech with tears' supplies.
Song.
Mediocrity in Love Rejected,
Give me more love, or more disdain ;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain.
The temperate affords me none ;
Either extreme of love or hate
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Give me a storm ; if it be love,
Like Danae in that golden shower,
I swim in pleasure ; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture hopes ; and he's possess'd
Of heaven that's but from hell releas'd ;
Then cro\vn my joys or cure my pain ;
Give me more love or more disdain.
Persuasions to Love.
Think not, 'cause men flatt'ring say,
Y'are fresh as April, sweet as May,
Bright as is the morning star,
That you are so ; or, though you are.
Be not therefore proud, and deem
All men unworthy your esteem ;
Nor let brittle beauty make
You your wiser thoughts forsake :
For that lovely face will fail ;
Beauty's sweet, but beauty's frail !
'Tis sooner past, 'tis sooner done.
Than summer's rain or winter's sun ;
]\rost fleeting when it is most dear ;
'Tis gone while we but say — 'tis here.
These curious locks, so aptly twin'd.
Whose every hair a soul doth bind,
Will change their auburn hue, and grow
^\'hite and cold as winter's snow.
That eye, which now is Cupid's nest,
^Mll prove his grave, and all the rest
Will follow ; in the cheek, chin, nose,
Nor lily shall be found, nor rose ;
And what will then become of all
Those whom now you servants call ?
Like swallows, when your summer's done.
They'll fly, and seek some warmer sun.
Then wisely choose one to your friend
AVhose love may (when your beauties end)
Remain still firm ; be provident.
And think, before the summer's spent.
Of following winter ; like the ant.
In plenty hoard for time of scant.
For when the storms of Time have moved
Waves on that cheek which was beloved ;
When a fair lady's face is pined.
And yellow spread where red once sliin'd ;
^^'hen beauty, youth, and all sweets leave her.
Love may return, but lovers never :
And old folks say there are no pains
Like itch of love in aged veins.
love me then, and now begin it.
Let us not lose this present minute ;
For time and age will work that wrack
Which time or age shall ne'er call back.
The snake each year fresh skin resumes,
And eagles change their aged plumes ;
The faded rose, each spring, receives
A fresh red tincture on her leaves :
But if your beauties once decay.
You never know a second ilay.
Oh, then, be wise, and whilst your season
Afibrds you days for sport, do reason ;
Spend not in vain your life's short hour.
But crop in time your beauties' flower.
Which will away, and doth together
Both bud and fade, both blow and witner.
Disdain Retuiiied.
He that loves a rosy cheek.
Or a coral lip admires,
Or froiu star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires ;
As old Time makes these decay.
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires ;
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes !
No tears, Celia, now shall win
My resolv'd heart to return ;
I have search'd thy soul within.
And find nought but pride and scorn ;
I have learn'd thy arts, and now
Can disdain as much as thou.
Some power, in my revenge, convey
That love to her 1 cast away.
[Approach of Spring.'\
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the gross, or calls an icy cream
Upon the silver lake, or crystal stream ;
12J
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO I64!»
But the warm sun thaws the benumb'd earth,
And makes it tender ; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow ; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble bee ;
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,
Welcome the coming of the long'd for May.
Xow all things smile.
PHINEAS AND GILES FLKTCHER.
These brother poets were sons of Dr Giles Fletcher,
and cousins of Fletcher the dramatist ; both were
cler£rymen, whose lives afibrded but little variety of
incident. Phineas was born in 1584, educated at
Eton and Cambridge, and became rector of Hilgay,
in Xorfolk, where he died in 1650. Giles was younger
than his brother, but the date of his birth has not
been ascertained. He was rector of Alderton, in
Suffolk, where he died, it is supposed, some years
before his brother.
The works of Phineas Fletcher consist of the
Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, Piscatory Eclogues,
and miscellaneous poems. The Purple Island was
published in 1633, but written much earlier, as ap-
pears from some allusions in it to the Earl of Essex.
The name of the poem conjures up images of poeti-
cal and romantic beauty, such as we may suppose a
youthful admirer and follower of Spenser to have
drawn. A perusal of the work, however, dispels
this illusion. The Purple Island of Fletcher is no
sunny spot ' amid the melancholy main,' but is an
elaborate and anatomical description of the body and
mind of man. He begins with the veins, arteries,
bones, and muscles of the human frame, picturing
them as hills, dales, streams, and rivers, and describ-
ing with great minuteness their different meander-
ings, elevations, and appearances. It is admitted
that the poet was well skilled in anatomy, and the
first part of his work is a sort of lecture fitted for
the dissecting room. Having in five cantos ex-
hausted his phj'sical phenomena, Fletcher proceeds
to describe the complex nature and operations of the
mind. Intellect is the prince of the Isle of jMan, and
he is furnished with eight counsellors, Fancy, Me-
mory, the Common Sense, and five external senses.
The Human Fortress, thus garrisoned, is assailed by
the Vices, and a fierce contest ensues for the posses-
sion of the human soul. At length an angel inter-
poses, and insures victory to the Virtues, the angel
being King James I., on whom the poet condescended
to heaj) this fulsome adulation. From this sketch
of Fletcher's poem, it will be apparent that its worth
must rest, not upon plot, but upon isolated passages
and particular descriptions. Some of his stanzas
have all the easy flow and mellifluous sweetness of
Spenser's Faery Queen ; but others are marred by
affectation and quaintness, and by the tediousness
inseparable from long-protracted allegory. His fancy
was luxuriant, and, if better disciplined by taste and
judgment, might have rivalled the softer scenes of
Spenser.
Giles Fletcher published only one poetical
production of any length — a sacred poem, entitled
Christ's Victory and Triumph. It apj)eared at Cam-
bridge in 1610, and met with such indifferent suc-
cess, that a second edition was not called for till
twenty j'ears afterwards. Tliere is a massive gran-
deur and earnestness about ' Christ's Victory' which
strikes the imagination. The materials of the poem
are better fused together, and more harmoniously
linked in connexion, than those of the Purple Island.
Both of these brothers,' says Mr Hallam, ' are
deserving of much praise ; they were endowed with
minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagi-
nation to any of their contemporaries. But an in-
judicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style
which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of
allegorical personification, prevented their powers
from being effectively displayed,' Mr Campbell
remarks, ' They were both the disciples of Spenser,
and, with his diction gently modernised, retained
much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles,
inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be
figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of con-
nexion in our poetry between these congenial spirits,
for he reminds us of both, and evidenth' gave hints
to the latter in a poem on the same subject with
Paradise Regained.' These hints are indeed very
plain and obvious. The appearance of Satan as an
aged sire ' slowly footing' in the silent wilderness,
the temptation of our Saviour in the 'goodly garden,'
and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines
which Milton adopted and filled up in his second
epic, ■with a classic grace and force of style un-
known to the Fletchers. To the latter, however,
belong the merit of original invention, copiousness
of fancy, melodious numbers, and language at times
rich, ornate, and highly poetical. If Spenser had
not previously written his Bower of Bliss, Giles
Fletcher's Bower of Vain Delight would have been
unequalled in the poetry of that day ; but probably,
like his master Spenser, he copied from Tasso.
Happiness of the Shepherd^ s Life, .
[From the Purple Island.]
Thrice, oh thrice happy, shepherd's life and state !
When courts are happiness' unhappy pawns !
His cottage low and safely humble gate
Shuts out proud Fortune with her scorns and fawns :
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep.
Singing all day, his Aoc'ks he learns to keep ;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.
No Syrian worms he knows, that with their thread
Draw out their silken lives : nor silken pride :
His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed :
No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright ;
Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite :
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.
Instead of music, and base flattering tongues.
Which wait to first salute my lord's uprise ;
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes :
In country plays is all the strife he uses ;
Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses ;
And but in music's sports all difference refuses.
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets, and rich content :
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide rage is spent ;
His life is neither toss'd in boist'rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease :
Pleas'd and full, blest he lives, when he his God ran
please.
His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps.
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place ;
His little son into his bosom creeps.
The lively picture of his father's face :
Never his humble house nor state torment him :
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him ;
And when he dies, green turfs, with grassy tomb, con«
tent him.
12-2
ENGLISH LITEBATURE.
PHINEAS AND GILES FLETCHER.
\^Decay of Human Greatness.']
[From the same.]
Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found !
For all our good we hold from heav'n by lease,
With many forfeits and conditions bound ;
Nor can we pay the fine, and rentage due :
Though now but writ, and seal'd, and giv'n anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.
Why shouldst thou here look for perpetual good,
At ev'ry loss 'gainst heaven's face repining ?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood.
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining ;
There now the hart fearless of greyhound feeds,
And loving pelican in fancy breeds :
There screeching satyrs fill the people's empty stedes.l
Where is the Assyrian lion's golden hide,
That all the east once grasp'd in lordly paw ?
Where that great Persian bear, whose swelling pride
The lion's self tore out with rav'nous jaw ?
Or he which 'twixt a lion and a pard.
Through all the world with nimble pinions far'd,
And to his greedy whelps his couquer'd kingdoms
shared.
Hardly the place of such antiquity,
Or note of these great monarchies we find :
Only a fading verbal memory,
And empty name in writ is left behind :
But when this second life and glory fades,
And sinks at length in time's obscurer shade-?,
A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.
That monstrous beast, which, nurs'd in Tiber's fen.
Did all the world with hideous shape affray ;
That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping den,
And trode down all the rest to dust and clay :
His batt'ring horns, pull'd out by civil hands
And iron teeth, lie scatter'd on the sands ;
Back'd, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked
stands.
And that black vulture.^ which with deathful wing
O'ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight
Frighten'd the Muses from their native spring.
Already stoops, and flags with weary flight :
Who then shall look for happiness beneath ?
Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and
death,
And life itself 's as flit as is the air we breathe.
[Description of Partlienia, or Chastity.']
With her, her sister went, a warlike maid,
Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms ;
In needle's stead, a mighty spear she sway'd,
With which in bloody fields and fierce alanns,
The boldest champion she down would bear,
And like a thunderbolt wide passage tear.
Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear.
Her goodly armour seem'd a garden green.
Where thousand spotless lilies freshly blew ;
And on her shield the lone bird might be seen,
Th' Arabian bird, shining in colours new ;
Itself unto itself was only mate ;
Ever the same, but new in newer date :
And underneath was writ ' Such is chaste singl* state.'
Thus hid in arms she seem'd a goodly knight.
And fit for any warlike exercise :
But when she list lay do^vn her armour bright.
And back resume her peaceful maiden's guise ;
The fairest maid she was, that ever yet
Prison'd her locks within a golden net.
Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset.
• Places.
2 Tho Turk.
Choice nymph ! the crown of chaste Diana's train.
Thou beauty's lily, set in heavenly earth ;
Thy fairs, unpattern'd, all perfection stain :
Sure Heaven with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew :
It is a strong verse here to ^v^itc, but true.
Hyperboles in others are but half thy due.
Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying :
And in the midst himself full proudly sits,
Himself in awful majesty arraying :
Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow.
And ready shafts ; deadly those weapons show ;
Yet sweet the death appear'd, lovely that deadly blow.
» * *
A bed of lilies flow'r upon her cheek,
And in the midst was set a circling rose ;
Whose sweet aspe'ct would force Narcissus seek
New liveries, and fresher colours choose
To deck his beauteous head in snowy 'tire ;
But all in vain : for who can hope t' aspire
To such a fair, which none attain, but all admire 1
Her ruby lips lock up from gazing sight
A troop of pearls, which march in goodly row :
But when she deigns those precious bones undight.
Soon heavenly notes from those divisions flow.
And with rare music charm the ravish'd ears.
Daunting bold thoughts, but cheering modest fears :
The spheres so only sing, so only charm the spheres.
Yet all these stars which deck this beauteous skv
By force of th' inward jun both shine and move ;
Thron'd in her heart sits love's high majesty;
In highest majesty the highest love.
As when a taper shines in glassy frame,
The sparkling crystal burns in glittering flame,
So does that brightest love brighten this lovely dame,
[The Rainhow.']
[From the ' Temptation and Victory of Christ. By Giles
Fletcher.]
High in the airy element there hung
Another cloudy sea, that did disdain.
As though his purer waves from heaven sprung,
To crawl on earth, as doth the sluggish main :
But it the earth would water with his rain.
That ebb'd and flow'd as wind and season would ;
And oft the sun would cleave the limber mould
To alabaster rocks, that in the liquid roU'd.
Beneath those sunny banks a darker cloud.
Dropping with thicker dew, did melt apace.
And bent itself into a hollow shroud.
On which, if Mercy did but cast her face,
A thousand colours did the bow enchase.
That wonder was to see the silk distain'd
With the resplendence from he.- beauty gain'd,
And Iris paint her locks with beams so lively ff gc'd
About her head a cypress heaven she wore.
Spread like a veil, upheld witli silver wire,
In which the stars so burnt in golden ore.
As seem'd the azure web was all on fire :
But hastily, to quench their sparkling ire,
A flood of milk came rolling up the shore,
That on his curded wave swift Argus wore,
And the immortal swan, that did her life deplore.
Yet strange it was so many stars to see.
Without a sun to give their tapers light ;
Yet strange it was not that it so should be ;
For, where the sun centres himself by right.
Her face and locks did flame, that at the sight
The heavenly veil, that else should nimbly move.
Forgot his flight, and all incensed with love.
With wonder and amazement, did her beautv prova
'l23
FROM 15oK
cyclop.IlDia of
TO 1649
Over her hung a canopy of state,
Not of rich tissue nor of spangled gold,
But of a substance, though not animate,
Yet of a heavenly and spiritual mould,
That only eyes of spirits might behold :
Such light as from main rocks of diamond.
Shooting their sparks at Phoebus, would rebound.
And little angels, holding hands, danced all around.
[T7te Sorcaxss of Vain DdiglU,']
[From the same.]
The garden like a lady fair was cut.
That lay as if she slumber'd in delight.
And to the open skies her eyes did shut :
The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light :
The flowers-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew
That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew
Like twinkling stars, that sparkle in the evening blue.
Upon a hilly bank her head she cast.
On which the bower of Vain Delight was built.
White and red roses for her face were plac'd,
And for her tresses marigolds were spilt :
Them broadly she display'd, like flaming gilt,
Till in the ocean the glad day was drown'd :
Then up again her yellow locks she wound,
And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound.
What should I here depaint her lily hand,
Her veins of violets, her ermine breast.
Which there in orient colours living stand :
Or how her gown with silken leaves is drest.
Or how her watchman, ann'd with boughy crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears
Shaking at every wind their leafy spears.
While she supinely sleeps, nor to be waked fears.
Orer the hedge depends the graping elm,
Whose greener head, empurpuled in wine,
Seemed to wonder at his bloody helm.
And half suspect the bunches of the vine.
Lest they, perhaps, his wit should undermine ;
For well he knew such fruit he never bore :
But her weak arms embraced him the more.
And she with ruby grapes laugh'd at her paramour.
* * *
The roof thick clouds did paint, from which three boys,
Three gaping mermaids with their ew'rs did feed,
Whose breasts let fall the stream, with sleepy noise.
To lions' mouths, from whence it leap'd with speed ;
And in the rosy laver seem'd to bleed ;
The naked boys unto the water's fall
Their stony nightingales had taught to call.
When Zephyr breath'd into their watery interall.
And all about, embayed in soft sleep,
A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread,
Which the fair witch in golden chains did keep.
And them in willing bondage fettered :
Once men they liv'd, but now the men were dead.
And tuni'd to beasts ; so fabled Homer old.
That Circe with her potion, chann'd in gold.
Used manly souls in beastly bodies to inuuould.
Through this false Eden, to his leman's bower,
(Whom thousand souls devoutly idolise)
Our first destroyer led our Saviour ;
There, in the lower room, in solemn wise,
They danc'd a round and pour'd their sacrifice
To plump Lyaeus, and among the rest.
The jolly priest, in ivy garlands drest,
"Ihanted wild oigials, in honour of the feast.
High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne.
In her bright turret, all of crystal wrought.
Like Phoebus' lamp, in midst of heaven, shone :
Whose starry top, with pride infernal fraught,
Self-arching columns to uphold were taught,
In which her image still reflected was
By the smooth crystal, that, most like her glass
In beauty and in frailty did all others pass.
A silver wand the sorceress did sway.
And, for a crown of gold, her hair she wore ;
Only a garland of rose-buds did play
About her locks, and in her hand she bore
A hollow globe of glass, that long before
She full of emptiness had bladdered.
And all the world therein depictured :
Yv'hose colours, like the rainbow, ever vanished.
Such watery orbicles young boys do blow
Out from their soapy shells, and much admire
The swimming world, which tenderl)' they row
^^'ith easy breath till it be raised higher ;
But if they chance but roughly once aspire,
The painted bubble instantly doth fall.
Here when she came she 'gan for music call,
And sung this wooing song to welcome him withal
' Love is the blossom where there blows
Everything that lives or grows :
Love doth make the heavens to move,
And the sun doth bum in love ;
Like the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak ;
Under whose shadows lions wild
Soften'd by love grow tame and mild :
Love no medicine can appease.
He burns the fishes in the seas ;
Not all the skill his wounds can stench,!
Not all the sea his fire can quench J
Love did make the bloody spear
Once a leafy coat to wear.
While in his leaves there shrouded lay
Sweet birds, for love, that sing and play :
And of all love's joj-ful flame
I the bud and blossom am.
Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be.
• See, see, the flowers that below
Now as fresh as morning blow,
And of all the virgin rose.
That as bright Aurora shows :
How they all unleaved lie
Losing their virginity ;
Like unto a summer shade,
But now bom and now they fade.
Everything doth pass away.
There is danger in delay ;
Come, come, gather then the rose.
Gather it, or it you lose.
All the sands of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore :
All the valleys' swimming com
To my house is yearly borne ;
Every grape of every vine
Is gladly bruis'd to make me wine ;
While ten thousand kings as proud
To carry up my train have bow'd.
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me ;
All the stars in heaven that shine.
And ten thousand more are mine :
Only bend thy knee to me.
Thy wooing shall thy winning be.*
> Staunch.
1-24
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
OEORGE WITHER.
Thus sought the dire enchantress in his mind
Her guileful bait to have embosomed :
But he her charms dispersed into wind,
And her of insolence admonished,
And all her optic glasses shattered.
So with her sire to hell she took her flight
(The starting air flew from the damned sprite),
■VVhere deeply both aggriey'd plunged themselves in
night.
But to their Lord, now musing in his thought,
A heavenly volley of light angels flew.
And from his father him a banquet brought
Through the fine element, for well they knew.
After his Lenten fast, he hungry grew :
And as he fed, the holy choirs combine
To sing a hymn of the celestial Trine ;
All thought to pass, and each was past all thought
divine.
The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joys,
Attemper'd to the lays angelical ;
And to the birds the winds attune their noise ;
And to the winds the waters hoarsely call,
And echo back again revoiced all ;
That the whole valley rung with victory.
But now our Lord to rest doth homewards fly :
See how the night comes stealing from the mountains
high.
GEORGE WITHER.
George "Wither (1588 — 1667) was a voluminous
author, in the midst of disasters and sufferings that
would have damped the spirit of any but the most
adventurous and untiring enthusiast. Some of his
happiest strains were composed in prison : his
limbs were incarcerated within stone walls and iron
bars, but his fancy was among the hills and plains,
with shepherds hunting, or loitering with Poesy, by
rustling boughs and murmuring springs. There is
a freshness and natural vivacity in the poetry of
Wither, that render his early works a ' perpetual
feast.' We cannot say that it is a feast ' •where no
crude surfeit reigns,' for he is often harsh, obscure,
and affected ; but he has an endless diversity of
style and subjects, and true poetical feeling and ex-
pression. Wither was a native of Hampshire,
and received his education at Magdalen College,
Oxford. He first appeared as an author in the year
1613, when he published a satire, entitled Abuses
Stnpt and Whipt. Tor this he was thrown into the
Marshalsea, where he composed his fine poem, Tlie
Shepherds' Hunting. When the abuses satirised by
the poet had accumulated and brought on the civil
5var, Wither took the popular side, and sold his
1 aternal estate to raise a troop of horse for the par-
liament. He rose to the rank of a major, and in
1642 was made governor of Farnham Castle, after-
wards held by Denham. Wither was accused of
deserting his appointment, and the castle was ceded
the same year to Sir William Waller. During the
struggles of that period, the poet was made prisoner
by the royalists, and stood in danger of capital
punishment, when Denham interfered for his brother
bard, alleging, that as long as Wither lived, he (Den-
ham) would not be considered the worst poet in
England. The joke was a good one, if it saved
Wither's life ; but George was not frightened from
the perilous contentions of the times. He was after-
wards one of Cromwell's majors general, and kept
watch and ward over the royalists of Surrey. From
the sequestrated estates of these gentlemen, W ther
obtained a considerable fortune ; but the Kestoration
came, and he was stript of all his possessions. He
remonstrated loudly and angrily; his remonstrances
■were voted libels, and the unlucky poet was again
thrown into prison. He published various treatises,
satires, and poems, during this period, though he was
treated with great rigour. He was released, under
bond "for good behaviour, in 1663, and survived
nearly four years afterwards, dying in London on
the 2d of May 1667.
Wither's fame as a poet is derived chiefly from his
early productions, written before he had imbibed the
sectarian gloom of the Puritans, or become em-
broiled in the struggles of the civil war. A col-
lection of his poems was published by himself in
1622,^with the title, Mistress of Phi/arete ; his Shep-
herds' Hunting, being certain Eclogues written
during the time of the author's imprisonment in the
Marshalsea, appeared in 1633. His Collection of
Emblems, ancient and modern. Quickened with Me-
trical Illustrations, made their appearance in 1635.
His satirical and controversial works were nume-
rous, but are now forgotten. Some authors of our
own day (Mr Southey in particular) have helped
to popularise Wither, by frequent quotation and
eulogy ; but Mr Ellis, in his Specimens of Early Eng-
lish Poets, was the first to point out ' that playful
fancy, pure taste, and artless delicacy of sentiment,
which distinguish the poetry of his early youth.'
His poem on Christmas affords a lively picture of
the manners of the times. His Address to Poetry,
the sole yet cheering companion of his prison soli-
tude, is Avorthy of the theme, and superior to most
of the eflfusions of that period. The pleasure with
which he recounts the various charms and the
' divine skill' of his Muse, that had derived nourish-
ment and delight from the ' meanest objects' of ex-
ternal nature— a daisy, a bush, or a tree ; and which,
when these picturesque and beloved scenes of the
country were denied him, could gladden even the
vaults and shades of a prison, is one of the richest
offerings that has yet been made to the pure and
hallowed shrine of poesy. The superiority of in-
tellectual pursuits over the gratifications of sense,
and all the malice of fortune, has never been more
touchingly or finely illustrated.
[The Companionship of the Mtise.}
CFrom the Shepherds' Hunting.]
See'st thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs cloud heaven's rays ,
And the vapours that do breathe
From the earth's gross womb beneath.
Seem they not with their black steams
To pollute the sun's bright beams,
And yet vanish into air.
Leaving it, unblemish'd, fair?
So, my Willy, shall it be
With Detraction's breath and thee
It shall never rise so high.
As to stain thy poesy.
As that sun doth oft exhale
Vapours from each rotten vale ;
Poesy so sometime drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains ,
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
'Twixt men's judgments and her ligbt:
But so much her power may do,
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower.
As she makes wing she gets power ;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more:
Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then .she rests with fame at last:
Let nought therefore thee atlVight,
But make forward in thy flight;
125
VBOM i558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649
For, if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb ;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reach'd eternity.
But, alas ! ray muse is slow ;
For thy page she flags too low :
Yea, tiie more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipt of late :
And poor I, her fortune rueing,
Am myself put up a mewing :
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly where I never did :
And though for her sake I'm crost.
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double :
I should love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.
For, though banish'd from my flocks,
And confin'd within these rocks.
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night,
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flowery fields,
With those sweets the springtide yields.
Though I may not see those groves,
Where the shepherds chant their loves.
And the lasses more excel
Than the sweet-voiced Philomel.
Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last.
But Remembrance, poor relief,
That more makes than mends my gi-ief :
She's my mind's companion still,
Maugre Envy's evil will.
(Whence she would be driven, too,
Were't in mortal's power to do.)
She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow :
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace ;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
Her divine skill taught me this.
That from everything I saw,
I could some invention draw :
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sight.
By the murmur of a spring.
Or the least bough's rustleing.
By a daisy, whose leaves spread.
Shut when Titan goes to bed ;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me.
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladness.
In the very gall of sadness.
The dull loneness, the black shade,
That these hanging vaults have made ;
The strange music of the waves.
Beating on these hollow caves ;
This black den which rocks emboss.
Overgrown with eldest moss :
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight :
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect.
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To iraw comfort and delight.
Therefore, thou best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this.
Poesy, thou sweet'st content
That e'er heaven to mortals lent :
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee.
Though thou be to them a scorn.
That to nought but earth are b«m,
Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee.
Though our wise ones call thee madness.
Let me never taste of gladness,
If I love not thy madd'st fits
Above all their greatest wits.
And though some, too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn
What make knaves and fools of them.
Sonnet upon a Stolen Kiss.
Now gentle sleep hath closed up those eyes
Which, waking, kept my boldest thoughts in awe 5
And free access unto that sweet lip lies,
From whence I long the rosy breath to draw.
Methinks no wrong it were, if I should steal
From those two melting rubies, one poor kiss ;
None sees the theft that would the theft reveal.
Nor rob I her of ought what she can miss :
Nay should I twenty kisses take away,
There would be little sign I would do so ;
Why then should I this robbery delay ?
Oh ! she may wake, and therewith angry grow !
Well, if she do, I'll back restore that one.
And twenty hundred thousand more for loan.
Tlie Stedfast Shepherd.
Hence away, thou Syren, leave me.
Pish ! unclasp these wanton arms ;
Sugar'd words can ne'er deceive me,
(Though thou prove a thousand charms).
Fie, fie, forbear ;
No common snare
Can ever m\' affection chain :
Thy painted baits.
And poor deceits.
Are all bestowed on me in vain.
I'm no slave to such as you be ;
Neither shall that snowy breart,
Rolling eye, and lip of ruby.
Ever rob me of my rest ;
Go, go, display
Thy beauty's ray
To some more-soon enamour'd swain :
Those common wiles,
Of sighs and smiles,
Are all bestowed on me in vain.
I have elsewhere vow'd a duty ;
Turn away thy tempting eye :
Show not me a painted beauty.
These impostures I defy :
My spirit loathes
Where gaudy clothes
And feigned oaths may love obtain :
I love her so
Whose look swears no.
That all your labours will be vain..
Can he prize the tainted posies,
Whicli on every breast are worn ;
That may pluck the virgin roses
From their never-touched thorn !
I can go rest
On her sweet breast,
126
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE WlTHltS.
That is the pride of Cynthia's train ;
Then stay thy tongue ;
Thy mermaid song
Is all bestow'd on me in vain.
He's a fool, that basely dallies,
^^'he^e each peasant mates with him :
Shall I haunt the thronged valleys.
Whilst there's noble hills to climb ?
No, no, though clowns
Are scar'd with frowns,
I know the best can but disdain :
And those I'll prove,
So will thy love
Be all bestow'd on me in Tain.
I do scorn to tow a duty.
Where each lustful lad may woo ;
GItc me her, whose sun-like beauty,
Buzzards dare not soar unto :
She, she, it is
Affords that bliss,
For which I would refuse no pain ;
But such as you.
Fond fools, adieu.
You seek to captive me in vain.
Leave me, then, thou Sj'ren, leave me;
Seek no more to work my harms ;
Crafty wiles cannot deceive me,
Who am proof against your charms :
You labour may
To lead astray
The heart, that constant shall remain ;
And I the while
Will sit and smile
To see you spend your time in Tain.
Madrigal.
Amaryllis I did woo.
And I courted Phillis too ;
Daphne for her love I chose,
Chloris, for that damask rose
In her cheek, I held so dear.
Yea, a thousand lik'd well near ;
And, in love with all together,
Feared the enjoying either :
'Cause to be of one possess'd,
Barr'd the hope of all the rest.
Christmas.
So now is come our joyful'st feast ;
Let every man be jolly ;
Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands t'lvine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.
Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke.
And Christmas blocks are burning ;
Their ovens they with baked meat ehoke,
And all their spits are turning.
Without the door let sorrow lie ;
And if for cold it hap to die,
We'll bury't in a Christmas pie,
And evermore be merry.
Now every lad is wond'rous trim.
And no man minds his labour ;
Our lasses have provided them
A bagpipe and a tabor ;
Young men and maids, and girls and boys,
Give life to one another's joys ;
And you anon shall by their noise
Perceive that they are merry.
Rank misers now do sparing shun ;
Their hall of music soundeth ;
And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things there aboundeth.
The country folks, themselves advan «,
With crowdy-muttons out of France ;
And Jack shall pipe and Gill shall dance,
And all the town be merry.
Ned Squash hath fetcht his bands from pawu.
And all his best apparel ;
Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn
With dropping of the barrel.
And those that hardly all the year
Had bread to eat, or rags to wear,
Will have both clothes and dainty fare,
And all the day be merry.
Now poor men to the justices
With capons make their errants ;
And if they hap to fail of these.
They plague them with their warrants :
But now they feed them with good ciieer,
And what they want they take in beer.
For Christmas comes but once a year,
And then they shall be merrj-.
Good farmers in the country nurse
The poor, that else were undone ;
Some landlords spend their money worse,
On lust and pride at London.
There the rovsters they do play.
Drab and dice their lands away.
Which may be ours another day,
And therefore let's be merry.
The client now his suit forbears,
The prisoner's heart is eased ;
The debtor drinks away his cares.
And for the time is pleased.
Though others' purses be more %i.
Why should we pine, or grieve at that?
Hang sorrow ! care will kill a cat.
And therefore let's be merry.
Hark ! now the wags abroad do call,
Each other forth to rambling ;
. Anon you'll see them in the hall,
For nuts and apples scrambling.
Hark ! how the roofs with laughter sound,
Anon they'll think the house goes round,
For they the cellar's depth have found,
And there they will be merry.
The wenches with their wassail bowls
About the streets are singing ;
The boys are come to catch the owls,
The wild mare in is bringing.
Our kitchen boy hath broke his box.
And to the dealing of the ox.
Our honest neighbours come by flocks.
And here they will be merry.
Now kings and queens poor sheepcotes haTO,
And mate witli even' body ;
The honest now may play the knave,
And wise men play tlie noddy.
Some youths will now a mumming go,
Some others play at Rowland-bo, "
And twenty other game boys mo.
Because they will be merry.
Then, wherefore, in these merry days,
Should we, I prsy, be duller ?
No, let us sing some roundelays.
To make our mirth the fuller :
And, while we thus inspired sing.
Let all the streets with echoes ring;
Woods and hills, and everything,
Bear witness we are merry.
12/
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OP
TO 1649.
■WILUAM BROWNE.
William Browne (1590-1645) was a pastoral
and descriptive pcet, who, like Phineas and Giles
Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a
native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful
scenery of his native county seems to have inspired
his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and
true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of
Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the
battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patron-
age and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke.
In this situation he realised a competency, and,
according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died
at Ottery-St-Mary (the birth-place of Coleridge) in
1645. Browne's works consist oi Britanriia's Pasto-
rals, the Grst part of which was published in 1613,
the second part in 1616. He wrote, also, a pastoral
poem of inferior merit, entitled. The Shepherd's Pipe.
In 1620, a masque by Browne was produced at
court, called The Inner Temple Masqxie; but it was
not printed till a hundred and twenty years after
the autlior's death, transcribed from a manuscript
in the Bodleian Library. As all the poems of
Browne were produced before he was thirty years of
age, and the best when he was little more than
twenty, we need not be surprised at their containing
marks of juvenility, and frequent traces of resem-
blance to previous poets, especially Spenser, whom
he warmly admired. His pastorals obtained the
approbation of Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben
Jonson. Britannia's Pastorals are written in the
heroic couplet, and contain much beautiful descrip-
tive poetry. Browne had great facility of expression,
and an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena
of inanimate nature, and the characteristic features
of the English landscape. Why he has failed in
maintaining his ground among his contemporaries,
must be attributed to the want of vigour and con-
densation in his works, and the almost total absence
of human interest. His shepherds and shepherdesses
have nearly as little character as the ' silly sheep '
they tend ; whilst pure description, that ' takes the
place of sense,' can never permanently interest any
large number of readers. So completely had some
of the poems of Browne vanished from the public
view and recollection, that, had it not been for a
single copy of them possessed by the Rev. Thomas
Warton, and which that poetical student and anti-
quary lent to be transcribed, it is supposed there
would have remained little of those works which
their author fondly hoped would
Keep his name enroll'd past his that shines
In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves.
Warton cites the following lines of Browne, as con-
taining an assemblage of the same images as the
morning picture in tlie L' Allegro of Milton : —
By this had chanticleer, the village cock,
Bidden the goodwifc for her maids to knock ;
And the swart i)loughnian for his breakfast stayed,
That he might till those lands were fallow laiil ;
The hills and valleys here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound ;
Each shepherd's daughter with her cleanly pail
Was come a-field to milk the morning's nical ;
And ere the sun had climb'd the eastern hills,
To gild the muttering bourns and pretty rills,
Before the labouring bee had left the hive,
And nimble fishes, which in rivers dive.
Began to leap <and catch the drowned fly,
I rose from rest, not infelicity.
Browne celebrated the death of a friend under the
name of Philarete in a pastoral poem ; and Milton is
supposed to have copied his i)lan in Lycidas. There
is also a faint similarity in some of the sentiments
and images. Browne has a very fine illustration of a
rose : —
Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth
Betrays her beauties to th' enamour'd morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious north
Kills the sweet bud that was but newly bom ;
Or else her rarest smells, delighting,
Make herself betray
Some white and curious hand, inviting
To pluck her thence away.
[A Descriptive Sketch."]
what a rapture have I gotten now !
That age of gold, this of the lovely brow.
Have drawn me from my song ! 1 onward run
(Clean from the end to which I first begun).
But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the virtues and the graces rest,
Pardon ! that I have run astray so long.
And grow so tedious in so rude a song.
If you yourselves should come to add one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place.
Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge.
There in a pond, the trimming of the sedge ;
Here the fine setting of well-shaded trees.
The walks there mounting up by snuill degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye :
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds, and herbs of price,
(As if it were another paradise).
So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to tuni and walk agaii
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats :
For in her face a many dimples show.
And often skips as it did dancing go :
Here further do>vn an over-arched alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake.
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear.
And makes you think none blest but who live there
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Invite your hand to crop them from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them :
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers.
Then to the birds, and to the clear spring thcjice,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense :
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'tb,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth.
[Evening.']
As in an evening, when the gentle air
Breathes to the sullen night a soft repair,
I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank, to hear
My friend with his sweet touch to charm mine ear:
When he hath play'd (as well he can) some strain,
That likes me, straight I ask the same again.
And he, as gladly granting, strikes it o'er
With some sweet relish was forgot before :
128
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
FRANCIS QUARLB8.
I would hare been content if lie would play,
In that one strain, to pass the night away ;
But, fearing much to do his patience wrong,
Unwillingly have ask'd some other song :
So, in this diif 'ring key, though I could well
A many hours, but as few minutes tell.
Yet, lest mine own delight might injure you,
(Though loath so soon) I take my song anew.
The sable mantle of the silent night
Shut from the world the ever-joysome light.
Care fled away, and softest slumbers please
To leave the court for lowly cottages.
Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills,
And sleightful otters left the purling rills ;
Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung.
And with their spread wings shield their naked younj
When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir,
And terror frights the lonely passenger ;
When nought was heard but now and then the howl
Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl.
[Pastoral Employments.^
But since her stay was long : for fear the sun
Should find '.hem idle, some of them begun
To leap and >vrestle, others threw the bar,
Some from the company removed are
To meditate the songs they meant to play,
Or make a new round for next holiday ;
Some, tales of love their love-sick fellows told ;
Others were seeking stakes to pitch their fold.
This, all alone, was mending of his pipe ;
That, for his lass, sought fruits, most sweet, most ripe.
Here (from the rest), a lovely shepherd's boy
Sits piping on a hill, as if his joy
Would still endure, or else that age's frost
Should never make him think what he had lost,
Yonder a shepherdess knits by the springs,
Her hands still keeping time to what she sings ;
Or seeming, by her song, those fairest hands
Were comforted in working. Near the sands
Of some sweet river, sits a musing lad,
That moans the loss of what he sometime had,
His love by death bereft : when fast by him
An aged swain takes place, as near the brim
Of 's grave as of the river.
[The Syren's Song.]
[From the • Inner Temple Masque.']
Steer hither, steer your winged pines.
All beaten mariners.
Here lie undiscover'd mines
A prey to passengers ;
Perfumes far sweeter than the best
Which make the phoenix urn and nest ;
Fear not your ships,
Nor any to oppose you save our lips ;
But come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
For swelling waves our panting breasts,
Where never storms arise.
Exchange ; and be awhile our guests ;
For stars, gaze on our eyes.
The compass, love shall hourly sing,
And as he goes about the ring,
We will not miss
I'd tell each point he nameth with a kiss.
FRANCIS QUARLES.
The writings of Francis Quarles (1592-1644)
are more like those of a divine, or contemplative
recluse, than of a busy man of the world, who held
various public situations, and died at the age ol
fifty-two. Quarles was a native of Essex, educated
at Cambridge, and afterwards a student of Lincoln's
Inn. He was successively cup- bearer to Elizabeth,
Queen of Bohemia, secretary to Archbishop Usher,
and chronologer to the city of London. He espoused
the cause of Charles I., and was so harassed by the
opposite party, who injured his property, and plun-
dered him of his books and rare manuscripts, tha(
his death was attributed to the affliction and ill
health caused by these disasters. Notwithstanding
his loyalty, the works of Quarles have a tinge of
Puritanism and ascetic piety that might have mol-
lified the rage of his persecutors. His poems con-
sist of various pieces — Job Militant, Sion's Elegies,
The History of Queen Esther, Argali/s and Farthenia,
The Morning Mxtse, The Feast of Worms, and The
Divine Emblems. The latter were published in 1645,
and were so popular, that Phillips, Milton's nephew,
styles Quarles 'the darling of our plebeian judg-
ments.' The eulogium still holds good to some ex-
tent, for the Divine Emblems, with their quaint and
grotesque illustrations, are still found in the cottages
of our peasants. After the Restoration, when every-
thing sacred and serious was either neglected or
made the subject of ribald jests, Quarles seems to
have been entirely lost to the public. Even Pope,
who, had he read him, must have relished his lively
fancy and poetical expression, notices only his
bathos and absurdity. The better and more tolerant
taste of modern times has admitted the divine em-
blemist into the ' laurelled fraternity of poets,' where,
if he does not occupy a conspicuous place, he is at
least sure of his due measure of homage and atten-
tion. Emblems, or the union of the graphic and
poetic arts, to inculcate lessons of morality and re-
ligion, had been tried with success by Peacham and
Wither. Quarles, however, made Herman Hugo, a
Jesuit, his model, and from the ' Pia Desideria' of this
author, copied a great part of his prints and mottoes.
His style is that of his age — studded with conceits,
often extravagant in conception, and presenting the
most outre and ridiculous combinations. There is
strength, however, amidst his contortions, and true
wit mixed up with the false. His epigrammatic
point, uniting wit and devotion, has been considered
the precursor of Young's Night Thoughts.
Stanzas,
As when a lady, walking Flora's bu^ver.
Picks here a pink, and there a gilly-flower.
Now plucks a violet from her pui-ple bed.
And then a primrose, the year's maidenhead.
There nips the brier, here the lover's pansy,
Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy.
This on her arms, and that she lists to wear
Upon the borders of her curious hair ;
At length a rose-bud (passing ftll the rest)
She plucks, and bosoms in her lily breast.
The Shortmss of Life.
And what's a life ? — a weary pilgrimage,
Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage
With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.
And what's a life ? — the flourishing .array
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow haj.
129
10
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO \ti4i).
Read on this dial, how the shades devour
My short-lived winter's day ! hour eats up hour ;
Alas ! the total's but from eight to four.
Behold these lilies, which thy hands have made,
Fair copies of my life, and open laid
To view, how soon they droop, how soon they fade !
Shade not that dial, night will blind too soon ;
My non-aged day already points to noon ;
How simple is my suit ! — how small my boon !
Nor do I beg this slender inch to wile
The time away, or falsely to beguile
My thoughts with joy : here's nothing worth a smile.
Mors Tua,
Can he be fair, that withers at a blast 1
Or he be strong, that airy breath can cast ?
Can he be wise, that knows not how to live ?
Or he be rich, that nothing hath to give ?
Can he be young, that's feeble, weak, and wan 1
So fair, strong, wise, so rich, so young is man.
So fair is man, that death (a parting blast)
Blasts his fair flower, and makes him earth at last ;
So strong is man, that with a gasping breath
He totters, and bequeaths his strength to death ;
So wise is man, that if with death he strive.
His wisdom cannot teach him how to live ;
So rich is man, that (all his debts being paid)
His wealth's the winding-sheet wherein he's laid ;
So young is man, that, broke with care and sorrow,
He's old enough to-day, to die to-morrow :
Why bragg'st thou then, thou worm of five feet long ?
Thou'rt neither fair, nor strong, nor wise, nor rich, nor
young.
The Vanity of the World.
False world, thou ly'st : thou canst not lend
The least delight :
Thy favours cannot gain a friend,
They are so slight :
Thy morning pleasures make an end
To please at night :
Poor are the wants that thou supply'st,
And yet thou raunt'st, and yet thou vy'st
With heaven ; fond earth, thou boasts ; false world,
thou ly'st.
Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales
Of endless treasure ;
Thy bounty offers easy sales
Of lasting pleasure ;
Thou ask'st the conscience what she ails,
And swear'st to ease her :
There's none can want where thou supply'st :
There's none can give where thou deny'st.
Alas ! fond world, thou boasts ; false world, thou ly'st.
What well-advised ear regards
What earth can say ?
Thy words are gold, but thy rewards
Are painted clay :
Thy cunning can but pack the cards.
Thou canst not play :
Thy game at weakest, still thou vy'st ;
If seen, and then revy'd, deny'st :
Thou art not what thou seem'st ; false world, thou ly'st.
Thy tinsel bosom seems a mint
Of new-coin'd treasure ;
A paradise, that has no stint,
No change, no measure ;
A painted cask, but nothing in't,
Nor wealth, nor pleasure :
Vain earth ! that falsely thus coniply'st
With man ; vain man ! that thou rely'st
On eaith; vain man, thou dot'st; vain earth, thou ly'st.
What mean dull souls, in this high measure.
To haberdash
In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure
Is dross and trash !
The height of whose enchanting pleasure
Is but a flash ?
Are these the goods that thou supply'st
Us mortals with ? Are these the high'st 1
Can these bring cordial peace 1 false world, thou ly'st.
Delight in God Only.
I love (and have some cause to love) the earth j
She is my ^laker's creature ; therefore good :
She is my mother, for she gave me birth ;
She is my tender nurse — she gives me food ;
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee !
Or what's my mother, or m^ nurse to me ?
I love the air : her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite nic ;
Her shrill-mouth'd quire sustains me with their flesh,
And with their polyphonian notes delight mc :
But what's the air or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee ?
I love the sea : she is my fellow-creature.
My careful purveyor ; she provides me store :
She walls me round ; she makes my diet greater;
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore :
But, Lord of oceans, when compared with thee,
What is the ocean, or her wealth to me \
To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye ;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky :
But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee f
Without thy presence heaven 's no heaven to me.
Without thy presence earth gives no refection ;
Without thy presence sea aflbrds no treasure ;
Without thy presence air 's a rank infection ;
Without thy presence heaven itself no pleasure :
If not possess'd, if not enjoy'd in thco,
\\'hat's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me ?
The highest honours that the world can boast.
Are subjects far too low for my desire ;
The brightest beams of glory are (at most)
But dying sparkles of thy living fire :
The loudest flames that earth can kindle, be
But nightly glow-worms, if compared to tlice.
Without thy presence wealth is bags of cares ;
Wisdom but folly ; joy disquiet — sadness :
Friendship is treason, and delights are snares ;
Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madness ,
Without thee, Lord, things be not what tliey he,
Nor have they being, when compared with thee.
In having all things, and not thee, what have 1 !
Not having thee, what have my labours got ?
Let me enjoy but thee, what further crave I ?
And having thee alone, what have I not \
I wish nor sea nor land ; nor would I be
Possess'd of heaven, heaven unpossess'd of thee.
Decay of Life.
The day grows old, the low-pitch'd lamp hath n)a<l0
No less than treble shade.
And the descending damp doth now prepare
To uncurl bright Titan's hair ;
Whose western wardrobe now begins to unfold
Her purples, fringed with gold.
To clothe his evening glory, when the alanns
Of rest shall call to rest in restless Thetis' arms.
130
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Nature now calls to supper, to refresh.
The spirits of all flesh ;
The toiling ploughman drives his thirsty teams,
To taste the slipp'ry streams :
The droiling swineherd knocks away, and feasts
His hungry whining guests :
The boxbill ouzle, and the dappled thrush,
Like hungry rivals meet at their beloved bush.
And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
To cobweb every green ;
And by the low-shorn rowans doth appear
The fast-declining year :
The sapless 43ranches doff their summer suits,
And wain their winter fruits ;
And stormy blasts have forced the quaking trees
To wrap their trembling limbs in suits of mossy frieze.
Our wasted taper now hath brought her light
To the next door to night ;
Her sprightless flame grown with great snufF, doth turn
Sad as her neighb'ring urn :
Her slender inch, that yet unspent remains,
Lights but to further pains.
And in a silent language bids her guest
Prepare his weary limbs to take eternal rest.
Now careful age hath pitch'd her painful plough
Upon the furrow'd brow ;
And snowy blasts of discontented care
Have blanch 'd the falling hair ;
Suspicious envy mix'd with jealous spite
Disturbs his weary night :
He threatens youth with age ; and now, alas !
He owns not what he is, but vaunts the man he was.
Grey hairs peruse thy days, and let thy past
Read lectures to thy last :
Those hasty wings that hurried them away
"Will give these days no day :
The constant wheels of nature scorn to tire
Until her works expire :
That blast that nipp'd thy youth will ruin thee ;
That hand that shook the branch will quickly strike
the tree.
To Chastity.
Oh, Chastity !— the flower of the soul.
How is thy perfect fairness turn'd to foul !
How are thy blossoms blasted all to dust,
By sudden light'ning of untamed lust !
How hast thou thus defil'd thy ev'ry feet,
Thy sweetness that was once, how far from sweet !
Where are thy maiden smiles, thy blushing cheek —
Thy lamb-like countenance, so fair, so meek 1
Where is that spotless flower, that while-ere
Within thy lily bosom thou did'st wear ?
Has wanton Cupid snatched it ? hath his dart
Sent courtly tokens to thy simple heart ?
Where dost thou bide? the country half disclaims thee ;
The city wonders when a body names thee :
Or have the rural woods engrost thee there.
And thus forestall'd our empty markets here ?
Sure thou ar- not ; or kept where no man shows thee ;
Or chang'd so much scarce man or woman knows thee.
GEORGE HERBERT.
George Herbert (1593-1632) was of noble birth,
though chiefly known as a pious country clergy-
man — ' holy George Herbert,' who
The lowliest duties on himself did lay.
His father was descended from the earls of Pembroke,
and lived in Montgomery Castle, Wales, where the
poet was fcorn. His elder brother was the celebrated
Lord Herbert of Clierbury. George was educated
at Cambridge, and in the year 1GI9 was chosen
orator for the university. Ilerbert was the intimate
friend of Sir Henry Wotton and Dr Donne ; and
Lord Bacon is said to have entertained such a high
regard for his learning and judgment, that he sub-
George Herbert.
mitted his works to hini before publicatijd. The
poet was also in favour with King James, who gave
him a sinecure office wnrtli £120 per annum, wYiich
Queen Elizabetli had formerly given to Sir Pliilip
Sidney. 'With this,' says "izaak Walton, 'and
his annuity, and the advantages of his college, and
of his oratorship, he enjoyed his genteel humour fur
clothes and court-like company, and seldom looked
towards Cambridge unless tne king were there, but,
then he never failed.' The death of the king and
of two powerful friends, the Duke of Richmond and
Marquis of Hamilton, destroyed Herbert's court
hopes, and he entered into sacred orders. He was
first prebend of Layton Ecclesia (the church of
which he rebuilt), and afterwards was made rector
of Bemerton, in Wiltshire, where he passed the re-
mainder of his life.* After describing the poet's
marriage on the third day after his first interview
with tiie lady, old Izaak Walton relates, with cha-
racteristic simplicity and minuteness, a matrimonial
scene preparatory to their removal to Bemerton : —
' The third day after he was made rector of Bemer-
ton, and had changed his sword and silk clothes into
a canonical habit (he had probably never done duty
regularly at Layton Ecclesia), he returned so habited
M-ith his friend Mr Woodnot to Sainton ; and im-
mediately after he had seen and saluted his wife, he
said to her, " You are now a minister's wife, and
must now so far forget your father's house as not to
claim a precedence of any of your parishioners • for
you are to know that a piicst's wife can challenge
no precedence or place but that which she purchases
by her obliging humility ; and I am sure i)laces so
purchased do best become them. And let me tell
you, I am so good a herald as to assure you that this
is truth." And she was so meek a wife, as to assure
him it -was no vexing news to her, and that he
should see her observe it with a clieerful willingness.'
Ilerbert discharged his clerical duties with saim,-
* The rectory of Remerton is now held by another poet, th«
Rev. W. Lisle Bowles.
131
FBOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
like zeal and purity, but his strength was not equnl
to his self-imposed tasks, and he died at the early
age of thirty-nine. His principal production is
entitled, The Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations. It was not printed till the year after
his death, but was so weU received, that Walton says
twenty thousand copies were sold in a few years
after the first impression. The lines on Virtue —
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
are the best in the collection ; but even in them we
find, what mars all the poetry of Herbert, ridiculous
conceits or coarse unpleasant similes. His taste
was very inferior to his genius. The most sacred
subject could not repress his love of fantastic imagery,
or keep him for half a dozen verses in a serious and
natural strain. Herbert was a musician, and sang
his own hymns to the lute or viol ; and indications
of this may be found in his poems, which have
sometimes a musical flow and harmonious cadence.
It may be safely said, however, that Herbert's
poetry alone would not have preserved his name,
and that he is indebted for the reputation he enjoys,
to his excellent and amiable character, embalmed in
the pages of good old Walton, to his prose work,
the Country Parson, and to the warm and fervent
piety which gave a charm to his life and breathes
through all his writings.
Virtue.
Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright.
The bridal of the earth and sky ;
The dews shall weep thy fall to-night ;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose ! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye ;
Thy root is ever in its grave ;
And thou must die.
Sweet spring ! full of sweet days and roses ;
A box where sweets compacted lie ;
Thy music shows ye have your closes ;
And all must die.
Only a sweet and \'irtuou3 soul,
Like season'd timber never gives ;
But, though the whole world turn to coal.
Then chiefly lives.
Religion.
All may of thee partake ;
Nothing can be so mean.
Which, with this tincture, for thy sake,
Will not grow bright and clean.
This is the famous stone
That tumeth all to gold.
For that which God doth touch and own,
Caimot for less be told.
{Stanzas.']
[Oddly called by Herbert ' The Pulley .'_'
■VNTien God at first made man.
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
* Let us,' said he, ' pour on him all we can ;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.' ,
So strength first made away ;
Then beauty flow'd; then wisdom, honour,
pleasure ;
When almost all was out, God made a stay ;
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
' For if I should,' said he,
' Bestow this jewel also on my creature.
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of nature —
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest —
But keep them, with repining restlessness —
Let him be rich and weary ; that, at least.
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.'
Matin Hymn.
I cannot ope mine eyes
But thou art ready there to catch
My mourning soul and sacrifice.
Then we must needs for that day make a Viatdk
My God, what is a heart ?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone.
Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one ?
My God, what is a heart !
That thou should'st it so eye and woo,
Pouring upon it all thy art.
As if that thou hadst nothing else to do J
Indeed, man's whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee ;
Ke did not heaven and earth create.
Yet studies them, not him by whom they bo.
Teach me thy love to know ;
That this new light which now I see
May both the work and workman show ;
Then by a sunbeam I will climb to thee.
Sunday.
day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this the next world's bud,
The indorsement of supreme delight.
Writ by a Friend, and with his blood ;
The couch of time, care's balm and bay :
The week were dark, but for thy light ;
Thy torch doth show the way.
The other days and thou
Make up one man ; whose face tliou art.
Knocking at heaven with thy brow :
The workydays are the back -part ;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,
Till thy release appear.
Man had straight forward gone
To endless death : but thou dost pull
And turn us round, to look on one.
Whom, if we were not very dull.
We could not choose but look on still ;
Since there is no place so alone.
The which he doth not fill.
Sundaj's the pillars are,
On which heaven's palace arched lies:
The other days fill up the spare
And hollow room with vanities.
They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden : that is bare,
Which parts their ranks and orders.
The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on Time's string.
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.
On Sunday heaven's gate stands op© ;
Blessings are plentiful and rife —
More plentiful than hope.
132
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM HABINGTOH.
This day my Saviour rose.
And did enclose this light for his ;
That, as each beast his manger knows,
Man might not of his fodder miss.
Christ hath took in this piece of ground,
And made a garden there for those
Who want herbs for their wound.
The rest of our creation
Our great Redeemer did remove
With the same shake, which at his passion
Did the earth and all things with it move.
As Sampson bore the doors away,
Christ's hands, though nail'd, ■wrought our
salvation,
And did unhinge that day.
The brightness of that day
We sullied by our foul offence :
Wherefore that robe we cast away,
Having a new at his expense,
Whose drops of blood paid the full price.
That was required to make us gay.
And fit for paradise.
Thou art a day of mirth :
And where the week-days trail on ground,
Thy flight is higher, as thy birth :
let me take thee at the bound,
Leaping with thee from seven to seven,
Till that we both, being toss'd from earth,
Fly hand in hand to heaven !
Mortification.
How soon doth man decay !
When clothes are taken from a chest of sweets
To swaddle infants, whose young breath
Scarce knows the way :
They are like little winding-sheets,
Which, do consign and send them unto death.
When boys go first to bed.
They step into their voluntary graves ;
Sleep binds them fast ; only their breath
Makes them not dead :
Successive nights, like rolling waves,
Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.
When youth is frank and free.
And calls for music, while his veins do swell,
All day exchanging mirth and breath
In company ;
That music summons to the knell.
Which shall befriend him at the house of death.
When man grows staid and wise.
Getting a houso and home, where he may move
Within the circle of his breath.
Schooling his eyes ;
That dumb enclosure raaketh love
Unto the coffin, that attends his death.
When age grows low and weak.
Marking his grave, and thawing ev'ry year.
Till all do melt, and drown his breath
When he would speak ;
A chair or litter shows the bier,
■Which shall convey him to the house of death.
Man, ere he is aware,
Hath put together a solemnity.
And dress'd his hearse, while he hath breath
As yet to spare.
Yet, Lord, instrjct us so to die.
That all these dyicg^ may be life in death.
WILLIAM HABINGTON.
William Habington (1605-1654) had all the
vices of the metaphysical school, excepting its occa-
sional and frequently studied licentiousness. He
tells us himself (in his preface) that, ' if the inno-
cency of a chaste muse shall be more acceptable,
and weigh heavier in the balance of esteem, than a
fame begot in adultery of study, I doubt I shall leave
no hope of competition.' And of a pure attach-
ment, he says finely, that ' when love builds upon
the rock of chastity, it may safely contemn the bat-
ter\' of the waves and threatenings of the wind ;
since time, tliat makes a mockery of the firmest
structures, shall itself be ruinated before that be
demolished.' Ilabington's life presents few inci-
dents, though he came of a plotting family. His
father was implicated in Babington's conspiracy ;
his uncle suffered death for his share in the same
transaction. The poet's mother atoned, in some
measure, for these disloyal intrigues ; for she is said
to have been the writer of the famous letter to Lord
IVIonteagle, which averted the execution of the Gun-
powder Plot. The poet was educated at St Onier's,
but declined to become a Jesuit. He married Lucia,
daughter of the first Lord Powis, whom he had cele-
brated under the name of Castara. Twenty years
before his death, he published his poems, consisting
of The Mistress, The Wife, and The Holy Man. These
titles include each several copies of verses, and the
same design was afterwards adopted by Cowley.
The life of the poet seems to have glided quietly
away, cheered by the society and affection of his
Castara. He had no stormy passions to agitate him,
and no unruly imagination to control or subdue.
Ilis poetry is of the same unruffled description —
placid, tender, and often elegant — but studded with
conceits to show his wit and fancy. When he talks
of meadows wearing a ' green plush,' of the fire of
mutual love being able to purify the air of an in-
fected city, and of a luxurious feast being so rich
that heaven must have rained showers of sweet-
meats, as if
Heaven were
Blackfriars, and each star a confectioner —
we are astonished to find one who could ridicule Ihe
' madness of quaint oaths,' and the ' fine rhetoric of
clothes,' in the gallants of his day, and whose sen-
timents on love were so pure and noble, fall into
such absurd and tasteless puerilities.
[^Epistle to a Friend.]
[Addressed ' to his noblest friend, J. C, Esq. 1
I hate the country's dirt and manners, yet
I love the silence ; I embrace the wit
And courtship, flowing here in a full tide,
But loathe the expense, the vanity and prido.
No place each way is happy. Here I hold
Commerce with some, who to my care unfold
(After a due oath ministred) the height
And greatness of each star shines in the state,
The brightness, the eclipse, the influence.
With others I commune, who tell me whence
The torrent doth of foreign discord flow ;
Relate each skirmish, battle, overtlnow.
Soon as they happen; and by rote can tell
Those German towns, even puzzle me to .s[iell.
The cross, or prosperous fate, of princes, they
Ascribe to rashness, cunning, or delay ;
And on each action comment, witli more skill
Than upon Livy did old Machiavel.
O busy folly ! Why do I my brain
Perplex with the dull policies of Spain,
FSOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO r64b
Or quick designs of France ! Why not repair
To the pure innocence o' th' country air,
And neighbour thee, dear friend i who so dost give
Thy thoughts to worth and virtue, that to live
Blest, is to trace thy ways. There might not we
Arm against passion with philosophy ;
And, by the aid of leisure, so control
Whate'er is earth in us, to gi-ow all soul ?
Knowledge doth ignorance engender, when
We study mysteries of other men,
And foreign plots. Do but in thy own shade
(Thy head upon some flow'ry pillow laid.
Kind nature's housewifery) contemplate all
His stratagems, who labours to enthral
The world to his great master, and you'll find
Ambition mocks itself, and grasps the wind.
Not conquest makes us great. Blood is too dear
A price for glory : Honoirr doth appear
To statesmen like a vision in the night.
And, juggler-like, works o' th' deluded sight.
Th' unbusied only wise : for no respect
Endangers them to error ; they affect
Truth in her naked beauty, and behold
Man with an equal eye, not bright in gold
Or tall in title ; so much him they weigh
As virtue raiseth him above his clay.
Thus let us value things : and since we find
Time bend us toward earth, let's in our mind
Create new youth ; and arm against the rude
Assaults of age ; that no dull solitude
0' th' country dead our thoughts, nor busy care
0' th' town make us to think, where now we are
And whither we are bound. Time ne'er forgot
His journey, though his steps we number*d not.
Desmjatian of Castara.
Like the violet which, alone,
Prospers in some happy shade.
My Castara lives unknown,
To no looser eye betray'd.
For she's to herself untrue,
Who delights i' th' public view.
Such is her beauty, as no arts
Have enrich'd with borrow'd grace ;
Her high birth no pride imparts,
For she blushes in her place.
Folly boasts a glorious blood,
She is noblest, being good.
Cautious, she knew never yet
What a wanton courtship meant ;
Nor speaks loud, to boast her wit ;
In her silence eloquent :
Of herself survey she takes,
But 'tween men no difference makes.
She obeys with speedy will
Her grave parents' wise commands ;
And so innocent, that ill
She nor acts, nor understands :
Women's feet run still astray,
If once to ill they know the way.
She sails by that rock, the court.
Where oft honour splits her mast ;
And retir'dncss thinks the port,
Where her fame may anchor cast :
^'irtue safely cannot sit.
Whore vice is enthron'd for wit.
She holds that day's pleasure best.
Where sin waits not on delight ;
Without masque, or ball, or feast,
Sweetly spends a winter's night :
O'er that darkness, whence is thrust
Prayer in d sleep, oft governs lust.
She her throne makes reason climb.
While wild passions captive lie :
And, each article of time.
Her pure thoughts to heaven fly :
All her vows religious be,
And her love she vows to me.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING.
Sir John Suckling (1608-1641) possessed such
a natural liveliness of fancy, and exuberance of ani-
mal spirits, that he often broke through the arti-
ficial restraints imposed by the literary taste of his
times, but he never rose into the poetry of passion
and imagination. He is a delightful writer of what
have been called ' occasional poems.' His polished
wit, playful fancy, and knowledge of life and society,
enabled him to give interest to trifles, and to clothe
familiar thoughts in the garb of poetry. His own
life seems to have been one summer-day —
Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm.
He dreamt of enjoyment, not of fame. The father
of Suckling was secretary of state to James I., and
comptroller of the household to Charles I. The
poet was distinguished almost from his infancy ; and
at sixteen he had entered on public life ! His first
appearance was as a soldier under the celebrated
Gustavus Adolphus, with whom he served one cam-
paign. On his return, he entered warmly into the
cause of Charles I., and raised a troop of horse in
his support. He intrigued with his brother cava-
liers to rescue the Earl of StrafTord, and was im-
peached by the House of Commons. To evade a
trial, he fled to France, but a fatal accident took place
by the way. His servant having robbed him at an
inn, Suckling, learning the circumstance, drew ou
his boots hurriedly, to pursue him ; a rusty nail, or
(according to another account) the blade of a knife,
had been concealed in the boot, which wounded
him, and produced mortification, of which he died.
The works of Suckling consist of miscellaneous
poems, five plays, and some private letters. His
poems are all short, and the best of them are dedi-
cated to love and gallantry. With the freedom of a
cavalier. Suckling has greater purity of expression
tlian most of his contemporaries. His sentiments
are sometimes too voluptuous, but are rarely coarse ;
and tliere is so mucli elasticity and vivacity in liis
verses, that he never becomes tedious. His Ballad
upon a Wedding is inimitable for witty levity and
choice beauty of expression. It has touches of
graphic description and liveliness equal to the pic-
tures of Chaucer. One well-known verse has never
been excelled —
Her feet beneath her petticoat.
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they fear'd the light ;
But oh ! she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight !*
* Herriek, who had nn occasion to steal, has taken this image
from Suckling, and spoiled it in the theft —
Her pretty feet, like snails, ilid creep
A little out.
Like Sir Fretful Plagiary, ITerrick had not skill to steal with
taste. Wj chcrley also purloined Herriek 's simile for one of his
plays. The allusion to Easter-day is founded upon a beautiful
old superstition of the English peasantry, that the sun dauoea
upon that morning.
134
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR JOHN SUCKLIMO.
[Song. — ^Tis now, since I sat dovm before.']
'Tis now, since I sat down before
That foolish fort, a heart,
(Tiii.e strangely spent !) a year, and more ;
And still I did my pai-t, —
Made my approaches, from her hand
Unto her lip did rise ;
And did already understand
The language of her eyes ;
Proceeded on with no less art.
My tongue was engineer ;
T thought to undermine the heart
By whispering in the ear.
When this did nothing, I brought down
Great cannon-oaths, and shot
A thousand thousand to the town,
And still it yielded not.
I then rcsolv'd to starve the place
By cutting off all kisses,
Praising and gazing on her face,
And all such little blisses.
To draw her out, and from her strength,
I drew all batteries in :
And brought myself to lie at length,
As if no siege had been.
When I had done what man could do,
And thought the place mine own,
The enemy lay quiet too.
And smil'd at all was done.
I lent to know from whence, and where,
These hopes, and this relief?
A spy inform'd, Honour was there,
And did command in chief.
lii?ch, march (quoth I) ; the word straight give.
Let's lose no time, but leave her ;
That giant upon air will live,
And hold it out for ever.
To such a place our camp remove
As will no siege abide ;
I hate a fool that starves for love.
Only to feed her pride.
A Ballad upon a Wedding.
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been,
Where I the rarest things have seen ;
Oh, things without compare !
Such sights again cannot be found
In any place on English ground,
Be it at wake or fair.
At Charing Cross, hard by the way
Where we (thou know'st) do sell our hay,
There is a house with stairs ;
And there did I see coming down
Such folk as are not in our to?ra,
Vorty at least, in pairs.
Amongst the rest, one pest'lent fine,
(His beard no bigger, though, than thine)
Walk'd on before the rest :
Our landlord looks like nothing to him :
The king, God bless him, 'twould undo him.
Should he go still so drest.
* * *
But wot you what 1 the youth was going
To make an end of all his wooing ;
The parson for him staid :
Yet by his leave, for all his haste,
He did not so much wish all past,
Perchance, as did the maid.
The maid, and thereby hangs a tale.
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale'
Could ever 3'et produce :
No grape that's kindly ripe could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she.
Nor half so full of juice.
Her finger was so small, the ring
Would not stay on which they did bring j
It was too wide a peck :
And, to say truth (for out it must),
It look'd like the great collar (just)
About our young colt's neck.
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out.
As if they fear'd the light :
But oh ! she dances such a way !
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
♦ » »
Her cheeks so i-are a white was on.
No daisy makes comparison ;
Who sees them is undone ;
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Cath'rine pear.
The side that's next the sun.
Her lips were red ; and one was thin,
Compar'd to that was next her chin.
Some bee had stung it newly ;
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze.
Than on the sun in July.
Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break.
That they might passage get :
But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours, or better,
And are not spent a whit.
» « «
Passion, oh me ! how I run on .
There's that that would be thought upon,
I trow, besides the bride :
The bus'ness of the kitchen's great.
For it is fit that men should eat ;
Nor was it there denied.
Just in the nick, the cook knock'd thrice.
And all the waiters in a trice
His summons did obey ;
Each serving-man, with dish In hand,
March'd boldly up, like our train'd-band.
Presented, and away.
When all the meat was on the table.
What man of knife, or teeth, was able
To stay to be intreated ]
And this the very reason was,
Before the parson could say grace,
The company were seated.
Now hats fly off, and youths carouse ;
Healths first go round, and then the house,
The bride's came thick and thick ;
And when 'twas nam'd another's health.
Perhaps he made it her's by stealth,
And who could help it, Dick ?
0' th' sudden up they rise and dance ;
Then sit again, and sigh, and glance :
Then dance again, and kiss.
Thus sev'ral ways the time did pass.
Till ev'ry woman wish'd her place,
And ev'ry man wish'd his.
' Whitsun-ales were festive assemblies of the people of whole
parishes at Whitsunday.
135
FBOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
By this time all were stol'n aside
To counsel and undress the bride :
But that he must not know :
But yet 'twas thought he guess'd her mind,
And did not mean to stay behind
Above an hour or so.
ConstaTwy.
Out upon it, I have lov'd
Three whole days together ;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me ;
Love with me had made no stays.
Had it any been but she.
Had it any been but she
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen in her place.
Song,
I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I can not have thine.
For if from yours you will not part.
Why then should'st thou have mine \
Yet now I think on't, let it lie,
To find it were in vain ;
For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.
Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together ?
Oh love ! where is thy sympathy.
If thus our breasts thou sever ?
But love is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out ;
For when I think I'm best resolv'd,
I then am in most doubt.
Then farewell care, and farewell woe,
I will no longer pine ;
For I'll believe I have her heart
As much as she has mine.
Song.
Why so pale and wan, fond lover t
Prithee, why so pale ?
Will, when looking well can't move her.
Looking ill prevail 1
Prithee, why so pale ?
Why 80 dull and mute, young sinner ?
Prithee, why so mute \
W^ill, when speaking well can't win her.
Saying nothing do't ?
Prithee, why so mute 1
Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her ;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her :
The devil take her.
The Careless Lover.
Never believe me if I love,
Or know what 'tis, or mean to prove ;
And yet in faith I lie, I do.
And she's extremely handsome too ;
She's fair, she's wond'rous fair,
But I care not who knows it,
E'er I'll die for love,
I fairly will forego it.
This heat of hope, or cold of fear.
My foolish heart could never bear :
One sigh imprison'd ruins more
Than earthquakes have done heretofore :
She's fair, &c.
When I am hungry I do eat.
And cut no fingers 'stead of meat ;
Nor with much gazing on her face,
Do e'er rise hungry from the place :
She's fair, &c.
A gentle round fill'd to the brink.
To this and t'other friend I drink ;
And if 'tis nam'd another's health,
I never make it her's by stealth :
She's fair, &c.
Blackfriars to me, and old Whitehall,
Is even as much as is the fall
Of fountains or a pathless grove,
And nourishes as much as love :
She's fair, &c.
I visit, talk, do business, play.
And for a need laugh out a day ;
Who does not thus in Cupid's school.
He makes not love, but plays the fool :
She's fair, &c.
Song.
Hast thou seen the down in the air,
When wanton blasts have tost it ?
Or the ship on the sea.
When ruder winds have crost it 1
Hast thou mark'd the crocodiles weeping.
Or the foxes sleeping ?
Or hast thou view'd the peacock in his pride,
Or the dove by his bride,
Oh ! 80 fickle ; oh ! so vain ; oh ! so false, so false is she !
Detraction Execrated.
Thou vermin slander, bred in abject minds,
Of thoughts impure, by vile tongues animate,
Canker of conversation ! could'st thou find
Nought but our love whereon to show thy hate 1
Thou never wert, when we two were alone ;
What canst thou witness then ? thou, base dull aid.
Wast useless in our conversation.
Where each meant more than could by both be said.
Whence hadst thou thy intelligence — from earth i
That part of us ne'er knew that we did love :
Or, from the air ? our gentle sighs had birth
From such sweet raptures as to joy did move ;
Our thoughts, as pure as the chaste morning's breath,
When from the night's cold arms it creeps away,
Were clothed in words, and maiden's blush, that hath
More purity, more innocence than they.
Nor from the water could'st thou have this tale ;
No briny tear has furrowed her smooth cheek ;
And I was pleas'd : I pray what should he ail,
That had her love ; for what else could he seek ?
We shorten'd days to moments by love's art.
Whilst our two souls in amorous ecstacy
Percelv'd no passing time, as if a part
Our love had been of still eternity.
188
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN CHALKHILL.
Much less could'st haye it from the purer fire ;
Our heat exhales no vapour from coarse sense,
Such as are hopes, or fears, or fond desire :
Our mutual love itself did recompense.
Thou hast no correspondence had in heaven,
•And th' elemental world, thou see'st, is free.
Whence hadst thou, then, this, talking monster ? even
From hell, a harbour fit for it and thee.
Curst be th' oflicious tongue that did address
Thee to her ears, to ruin my content :
May it one minute taste such happiness,
Deserving lost unpitied it lament !
I must forbear her sight, and so repay
In grief, those hours' joy short'ned to a dream ;
Each minute I will lengthen to a day,
And in one year outlive Methusalem.
JOHN CHALKHILL.
A pastoral romance, entitled Thealma and Clear-
chus, was published by Izaak Walton in 1683, with
a title-page stating it to have been ' ^v^itten long
since by John Chalkhill, Esq., an acquaintant
and friend of Edmund Spenser.' AValton tells us of
the author, ' that he was in his time a man generally
known, and as well beloved ; for he was humble and
obliging in his behaviour ; a gentleman, a scholar,
very innocent and prudent ; and, indeed, his whole
life was useful, quiet, and virtuous.' ' Thealma and
Clearchus' was reprinted by Mr Singer, who ex-
pressed an opinion that, as Walton had been silent
upon the life of Chalkhill, he might be altogether a
fictitious personage, and the poem be actually the
composition of Walton himself. A critic in the
Retrospective Review,* after investigating the cir-
cumstances, and comparing the Thealma with the
acknowledged productions of Walton, comes to the
same conclusion. Sir John Hawkins, the editor of
Walton, seeks to overturn the hypothesis of Singer,
by the following statement : — ' Unfortunately, John
Chalkhill's tomb of black marble is still to be seen
on the walls of Winchester cathedral, by which it
appears he died in Iklay 1679, at the age of eighty.
Walton's preface speaks of him as dead in May
1678 ; but as the book was not published till 1683,
when Walton was ninety years old, it is probably an
error of memory.' The tomb in Winchester cannot
be that of the author of Thealma, unless Walton
committed a further error in styling Chalkhill an
'acquaintant and friend' of Spenser. Spenser died
in 1599, the very year in which John Chalkhill, in-
terred in Winchester cathedral, must have been born.
We should be happy to think that the Thealma was
the composition of Walton, thus adding another
laurel to his venerable brow ; but the internal evi-
dence seems to us to be wholly against such a sup-
position. The poetry is of a cast far too high for
the muse of Izaak, which dwelt only by the side of
trouting streams, and among quiet meadows. The
nomme de guerre of Chalkliill must also have be*en an
old one with Walton, if he wrote Thealma; for, thirty
years before its publication, he had inserted in his
'Complete Angler' two songs, signed 'Jo. Chalkhill.'
The disguise is altogether very unlike Izaak Walton,
then ninety years of age, and remarkable for his un-
assuming worth, probity, and piety. We have no
doubt, therefore, that Tiiealma is a genuine poem of
the days of Charles or James I. The scene of this
pastoral is laid in Arcadia, and the author, like the
ancient poets, describes the golden age and all its
charms, which were succeeded by an age of iron, on
the introduction of ambition, avarice, and tyranny.
* Retrospective Review, vol. iv., page 230. The article ap-
pears to have been \vTitten by Sir Egerton Brjdges, who con-
tributed largely to that work.
The plot is complicated and obscure, and the charac-
ters are deficient in individuality. It must be read,
like the Faer\' Queen, for its romantic descriptions,
and its occasional felicity of language. The versi-
fication is that of the heroic couplet, varied, like
Milton's Lycidas, by breaks and pauses in the middle
of the line.
[Tlie Witch's Cave.']
Her cell was hewn out of the marble rock,
By more than human art ; she need not knock ;
The door stood alwaj's open, large and wide,
Gro\vii o'er -with woolly moss on either side,
And interwove with i\'j''s flattering twines.
Through which the carbuncle and diamond shinefl.
Not set by Art, but there by Nature sown
At the world's birth, .so star-like bright they shiae.
They serv'd instead of tapers, to give lighi
To the dark entry, where perpetual night.
Friend to black deeds, and sire of ignorance.
Shuts out all knowledge, lest her eye by chance
Might bring to light her follies : in they went.
The ground was strew'd with flowers, whose sweet scent,
Mix'd with the choice perfumes from India brought,
Intoxicates his brain, and quickly caught
His credulous sense ; the walls were gilt, and set
With precious stones, and all the roof was fret
With a gold vine, whose straggling branches spread
All o'er the arch ; the swelling grapes were red ;
This, Art had made of rubies, cluster'd so.
To the quick'st eye they more than seem'd to grow ;
About the walls lascivious pictures hung,
Such as were of loose Ovid sometimes sung.
On either side a crew of dwarfish elves
Held waxen tapers, taller than themselves :
Yet so well-shap'd unto their little stature.
So angel-like in face, so sweet in feature ;
Their rich attire so dlfFring ; yet so well
Becoming her that wore it, none could tell
Which was the fairest, which the handsomest deck'i.
Or which of them desire would soon'st atfect.
After a low salute, they all 'gan sing,
And circle in the stranger in a ring.
Orandra to her charms was stepp'd aside,
Leaving her guest half won and wanton-ey'd ■
He had forgot his herb : cunning delight
Had so bewitch'd his ears, and blear'd his s'i.ht,
And captivated all his senses so.
That he was not himself: nor did he know
What place he was in, or how he came there.
But greedily he feeds his eye and ear
With what would ruin him.
* * *
Next unto his view
She represents a banquet, usher'd in
By such a shape, as she was sure would win
His appetite to taste ; so like she was
To his Clarlnda, both in shape and face.
So voic'd, so habited, of the same gait
And comely gesture ; on her brow in state
Sat such a princely majesty, as he
Had noted in Clarinda ; save that she
Had a more wanton eye, that here and there
Roll'd up and down, not settling any where.
Down on the ground she falls his hands to kiss.
And with her tears bedews it ; cold as ice
He felt her lips, that yet iuflam'd him so,
That he was all on fire the truth to know,
\\'hether she was the same she did appear.
Or whether some fantastic form it were,
Fashlon'd in his imagination
By his still working thoughts ; so fix'd upon
His lov'd Clarinda, that his fancy strove,
Even with her shadow, to express his love.
137
VBOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
[The Priestess of Diana.]
Within a little silent grove hard by,
Upon a small ascent he might espy
A stately chapel, richly gilt without,
Beset with shady sycamores about :
And ever and anon he might well hear
A 6ound of music steal in at his ear
As the wind gave it being : — so sweet an air
Would strike a syren mute.
* * *
A hundred virgins there he might espy
Prostrate before a marble deity.
Which, by its portraiture, appear'd to be
The image of Diana : — on their knee
They tender'd their devotions : with sweet airs,
Off'riug the incense of their praise and prayers.
Their garments all alike ; beneath their paps
Buckled together with a silver claps ;
And cross their sno^vy silken robes, they wore
An azure scarf, \vith stars embroider'd o'er.
Their hair in curious tresses was knit up,
Crown'd with a silver crescent on the top.
A silver bow their left hand held ; their right,
For their defence, held a sharp-headed flight,
Drawn from their 'broider'd quiver, neatly tied
In silken cords, and fasten'd to their side.
Under their vestments, something short before,
White buskins, lac'd with ribanding, they wore.
It was a catching sight for a young eye.
That love had fir'd before : — he might espy
One, whom the rest had sphere-like circled round,
Whose head was with a golden chaplet crown'd.
He could not see her face, only his ear
Was blest with the sweet words that came from her.
[The Votaress of Diana.]
Clarinda came at last
With all her train, who, as along she pass'd
Thorough the inward court, did make a lane,
Opening their ranks, and closing them again
As she went forward, with obsequious gesture,
Doing their reverence. Her upward vesture
Was of blue silk, glistering with stars of gold.
Girt to her waist by serpents, that enfold
And wrap themselves together, so well ■wrought
And fashion'd to the life, one would have thought
They had been real. Underneath she wore
A coat of silver tinsel, short before,
And fring'd about with gold : white buskins hide
The naked of her leg ; they were loose tied
With azure ribands, on whose knots were seen
Most costly gems, fit only for a queen.
Her hair bound up like to a coronet.
With diamonds, rubies, and rich sapphires set ;
And on the top a silver crescent plac'd.
And all the lustre by such beauty grac'd.
As her reflection made them seem more fair ;
One would have thought Diana's self were there ;
For in her hand a silver bow she held,
And at her back there hung a quiver fill'd
With turtle-feather'd arrows.
•WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT.
William Cartwricht (1611-1643) was one of
Ben Jonson's adopted sons of the muses, and of his
works Jonson rcm.arked — ' My son Cartwright writes
all like a man.' Cartwright was a favourite witli
his contemporaries, who loved him living, and
deplored his early death. This poet was the son of
an innkeeper at Cirencester, wlio had squandered
away a patrimonial estate. In 1638, after complet-
ing his education at Oxford, Cartwright entered
into holy orders. He was a zealous royalist, and
was imprisoned by the parliamentary forces when
they arrived in Oxford in 1642. In 1643, he was
chosen junior proctor of the university, and was also
reader in metaphysics. At this time, the poet is
said to have studied sixteen hours a day ! Towards
the close of the same year, Cartwright caught
malignant fever, called the camp disease, then prt-
valent at Oxford, and died December 23, 1643. The
king, who was then at Oxford, went into mourning
for Cartwright's death ; and when his works were
published in 1651, no less than fifty copies of en-
comiastic verses were prefixed to them by the wits
and scholars of the time. It is difficult to conceive,
from the perusal of Cartwright's poems, why he
should have obtained such extraordinary applause
and reputation. His pieces are mostly short, occa-
sional productions, addresses to ladies and noblemen,
or to Ills brother poets, Fletcher and Jonson, or
slight amatory effusions not distinguished for ele-
gance or fancy. His youthful virtues, his learning,
loyalty, and admiration of genius, seem to have
mainly contributed to his popularity, and his prema-
ture death would renew and deepen the impression
of his worth and talents. Cartwright must have
cultivated poetry in his youth : he was only twenty-
six when Ben Jonson died, and the compliment
quoted above seems to prove that he had then
been busy with his pen. He mourned the loss of
his poetical father in one of his best eflfusions, in
which he thus eulogises Jonson's dramatic powers : —
But thou still puts true passion on ; dost write
With the same courage that tried captains fight ;
Giv'st the right blush and colour unto things ;
Low without creeping, high without loss of wings ;
Smooth yet not weak, and, by a thorough care,
Big without swelling, without painting fair.
To a Lady Veiled.
So Love appear'd, when, breaking out his way
From the dark chaos, he first shed the day ;
Newly awak'd out of the bud, so shows
The half seen, half hid glory of the rose.
As you do through your veils ; and I may swear,
Viewing you so, that beauty doth bide there.
So Truth lay under fables, that the eye
Might reverence the mystery, not descry ;
Light being so proportion'd, that no more
Was seen, but what might cause men to adore :
Thus is your dress so order'd, so contrived.
As 'tis but only poetry revived.
Such doubtful light had sacred groves, where rods
And twigs at last did shoot up into gods ;
Where, then, a shade darkeneth the beauteous face,
May I not pay a reverence to the place ?
So, under water, glimmering stars appear,
As tliose (but nearer stars) your eyes do here ;
So deities darkened sit, that we may find
A better way to see them in our mind.
No bold Ixion, then, be here allow'd.
Where Juno dares herself be in the cloud.
Methinks the first age comes again, and we
See a retrieval of simplicity.
Thus looks the country virgin, whose brown hue
Hoods her, and makes her show even veil'd as you.
Blest mean, that checks our hope, and spurs our feai
Whiles all doth not lie hid, nor all appear :
fear ye no assaults from bolder men ;
When they assail, be this your armour then.
A silken helmet may defend those parts,
Where softer kisses are the only darts !
138
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBEUT HERAICV
A Valediction.
Bid me not go where neither suns nor showers
Uo make or cherish ;
Where discontented things in sadness lie,
And nature grieves as I ;
"When I am parted from those eyes
From which my better day doth rise.
Though some propitious power
Should plant me in a bower,
Where, amongst happy lovers, I might see
How showers and sunbeams bring
One everlasting spring ;
Nor would those fixll, nor these shine forth to me.
Nature herself to him is lost,
Who loseth her he honours most.
Then, fairest, to my parting view display
Your gi'aces all in one full day ;
Whose blessed shapes I'll snatch and keep, till
when
I do return and view again :
So by this art, fancy shall fortune cross,
And lovers live by thinking on their loss.
To Cldoe,
Who wished herself young enough for me.
Chloe, why wish you that your years
Would backwards run, till they met mins ?
That perfect likeness, which endears
Things unto things, might us combine.
Our ages so in date agree.
That twins do dilier more than we.
There are two births ; the one when light
First strikes the new awakened sense ;
The other when two souls unite ;
And we must count our life from thence :
When you lov'd me, and I lov'd you,
Then both of us were bom anew.
Love then to us did new souls give,
And in those souls did plant new pow'rs :
Since when another life we live.
The breath we breathe is his, not ours ;
Love makes those young whom age doth chill.
And whom he finds young keeps young still.
Love, like that angel that shall call
Our bodies from the silent grave,
Unto one age doth raise us all ;
None too much, none too little have ;
Nay, that the difference may be none,
He makes two not alike, but one.
And now since you and I are such.
Tell me what's yours, and what is mine ?
Our eyes, our ears, our taste, smell, touch,
Do, like our souls, in one combine ;
So, by this, I as well may be
Too old for you, as you for me.
27te Dream.
I dream'd I saw myself lie dead,
And that my bed my coffin grew ,
Silence and sleep this strange sight bred,
But, waked, I found I liv'd anew.
Looking next mom on your bright face.
Mine eyes bequeath'd mine heart fresh pain ;
A dart rush'd in with every grace.
And so I kill'd myself again :
eyes, what shall distressed lovers do.
If open you can kill, if shut you view I
Love Inconcealable.
Who can hide fire 1 If 't be uncover'd, light ;
If cover'd, smoke betrays it to the sight :
Love is that fire, which still some sign affords ;
If hid, they are sighs j if open, they are words.
To Ctipid.
Thou, who didst never see the light.
Nor know'st the pleasure of the sight,
But always blinded, canst not say,
Now it is night, or now 'tis day ;
So captivate her sense, so blind her eye,
That still she love me, yet she ne'er know whj.
Thou who dost wound us with such art,
We see no blood drop from the heart,
And, subt'ly cruel, leav'st no sign
To tell the blow or hand was thine ;
gently, gently wound my fair, that she
May thence believe the wound did come from
thee !
ROBERT HERRICK.
One of the most exquisite of our early Ijrrical poets
was Robert Herrick, born in Cheapside, London,
in 1591. He studied at Cambridge, and having
entered into holy orders, was presented by Charles L,
%/.rl^^^
in 1629, to the vicarage of Dean Trior in Devonsliire.
After about twenty years' residence in this rural
parish, Herrick was ejected from his living by the
storms of the civil war, which, as Jeremy Taylor
says, ' dashed the vessel of the churcli and state all
in pieces.' Whatever regret the poet may liave felt
on being turned adrift on the workl, he could liavc
experienced little on parting with his parishioners,
for he describes them in much the same way as
Crabbe portrayed the natives of Suflblk. among
whom he was cast in early life, as a 'wild amphi-
bious race,' rude ' almost as salvages,' and ' churlish
139
VBOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164S.
as the seas.' Herrick gives us a glimpse of his own
character —
Bom I was to meet with age,
And to walk life's pilgrimage :
Much, I know, of time is spent ;
Tell I can't what's resident.
Howsoever, cares adieu !
I'll have nought to say to you ;
But I'll spend my coming hours
Drinking wine and crown'd with flowers.
This light and genial temperament would enable the
poet to ride out the storm in composure. About the
time that he lost his vicarage, Herrick appears to
have published his works. His Noble Numbers, or
Pious Pieces, are dated 1647 ; his Hesperides, or the
' Works both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick,
Esquire,' in 1648. The clerical prefix to his name
seems now to have been abandoned by tlie poet,
and there are certainly many pieces in his second
volume which would not become one ministering at
the altar, or belonging to the sacred profession.
Herrick lived in Westminster, and was supported
or assisted by the wealthy royalists. He associated
with the jovial spirits of the age. He ' quaffed the
mighty bowl' with Ben Jonson, but could not, he
tells us, ' thrive in frenzy,' like rare Ben, who seems
to have excelled all his fellow-compotators in sallies
of wild wit and high imaginations. The recollec-
tion of these 'brave translunary scenes' of the
poets inspired the muse of Herrick in the following
Btrain : —
Ah Ben !
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun ;
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad ?
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.
My Ben !
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus,
I?ut teach us yet
Wisely to husband it ;
Lest we that talent spend ;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock, the store
Of iuch a wit, the world should have no more.
After the Eestoration, Herrick was replaced in his
Devonshire vicarage. How he was received by the
• rude salvages' of Dean Prior, or how he felt on
quitting the gaieties of the metropolis, to resume his
clerical duties and seclusion, is not recorded. He
was now about seventy years of age, and was pro-
bably tired of canary sack and tavern jollities. He
had an undoubted taste for the pleasures of a country
life, if we may judge from his works, and the fond-
ness with which he dwells on old English festivals
and rural customs. Though his rhymes were some-
times wild, he says his life was chaste, and he re-
peoted of his errors :— .
For these my unbaptised rhymes,
Writ in my wild unhallowed times,
For every sentence, clause, and word,
That's not inlaid with thoc, Lord !
Forgive me, God, and blot each line
Out of my book that is not thine ;
But if, 'mongst all thou findest one
Worthy thy benediction,
That one of all the rest shall be
The glory of my work and me.
The poet should belter have evinced the sincerity
and depth of his contrition, by blotting out the un-
baptised rliymes himself, or not reprinting them ;
but the vanity of the author probably triumphed
over the penitence of the Christian. Gaiety was the
natural element of Herrick. His muse was a god-
dess fair and free, that did not move happily in
serious numbers. The time of the poet's death has
not been ascertained, but he must have arrived at a
ripe old age.
The poetical works of Herrick lay neglected for
many years after his death. They are now again in
esteem, especially his shorter lyrics, some of which
have been set to music, and are sung and quoted by
all lovers of song. His verses. Cherry Jiipe, and
Gather the liose-buds while ye may (though the senti-
ment and many of the expressions of the latter are
taken from Spenser), possess a delicious mixture of
playful fancy and natural feeling. Those To Blos-
soms, To Daffodils, and To Primroses, have a tinge
of patlios that wins its way to the heart. They
abound, like all Herrick's poems, in lively imagery
and conceits ; but the pensive moral feeling predo-
minates, and we feel that the poet's smUes might as
well be tears. Shakspeare and Jonson had scattered
such delicate fancies and snatches of lyrical melody
among tlieir plays and masques — IMUton's Cotnus
and the Arcades had also been published — Carew
and Suckling were before him — Herrick was, there
fore, not without models of the highest excellence in
this species of composition. There is, however, in
his songs and anacreontics, an unforced gaiety and
natural tenderness, that show he wrote chiefly from
the impulses of his own cheerful and happy nature.
The select beauty and picturesqueness of Herrick's
language, wlien he is in his happiest vein, is worthy
of his fine conceptions ; and his versification is har-
mony itself. His verses bound and flow like some
exquisite lively melody-, that eclioes nature, by wood
and deU, and presents new beauties at every turn
and winding. The strain is short, and sometimes
fantastic ; but the notes long linger in the mind, and
take their place for ever in tlie memory. One or
two words, such as ' gather the rose-buds,' call up
a summer landscape, with youth, beauty, flowers,
and music. This is, and ever must be, true poetry.
To Blossoms.
Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
'\\'hy do you fall so fast I
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here a whiles
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.
What ! were ye born to be
An hour or halfs delight,
And so to bid good-night 1
'Tis pity nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth.
And lose you quite.
But you are lovely leaves, where we
May rea<l how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave :
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you a while, they glide
Into the grave.
140
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBERT UERRICK.
To Daffodils.
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon ;
As yet the early-rising sun
•Has not attain'd his noon :
Stay, stay,
Until the hast'ning day
Has run
But to the even-song ;
Ajid having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along !
We hare short time to stay as you ;
We have as short a spring ;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you or anything :
We die,
As your hours do ; and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew
Ne'er to be found again.
The Kiss — a Dialogue.
\. Among thy fancies tell me this :
What is the thing we call a kiss ? —
2. I shall resolve ye what it is :
It is a creature bom, and bred
Between the lips, all cherry red ;
By love and warm desires fed ;
CJior, — And makes more soft the bridal bed :
2. It is an active flame, that flies
First to the babies of the eyes.
And channs them there with lullabies ;
Chor. — And stills the bride too when she cries :
2. Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear,
It frisks, and flies : now here, now there ;
'Tis now far off, and then 'tis near ;
Chor. — And here, and there, and everywhere.
1. Has it a speaking virtue? — 2. Yea.
1. How speaks it, say? — 2. Do you but this.
Part your join'd lips, then speaks your kiss ;
Chor. — And this love's sweetest language is.
\. Has it a body ? — 2. Ay, and wings.
With thousand rare encolourings ;
And as it flies, it gently sings,
Chor. — Love honey yields, but never stings.
To the Virgins, to make much of their Time.
Gather the rose-buds, while ye may.
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first.
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But, being spent, the worse, and worst
Time shall succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry ;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
Twelfth Nig^, or King and Qiicen.
Now, now the mirth comes,l
With the cake full of plums,
Where bean's the king of the sport here ;
Beside, we must know.
The pea also
Must revel as queen in the court here.
Begin then to choose.
This night, as ye use,
Who shall for the present delight here ;
Be a king by the lot.
And who shall not
Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.
Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake ;
And let not a man then be seen here,
Who unurged will not drink.
To the base from the brink,
A health to the king and the queen here.
Next crown the bowl full
With gentle lamb's-wool;2
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale, too ;
And thus ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
Give them to the king
And queen wassailing ;
And though with ale ye be wet here ;
Yet part ye from hence.
As free from offence,
As when ye innocent met here.
T/ie Counti-y Life.
Sweet country life, to such unknovni.
Whose lives are others', not their own t
But, serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'd the ocean's foam,
To seek and bring rough pepper home ;
Nor to the eastern Ind dost rove,
To bring from thence the scorched clove ;
Nor, with the loss of thy lov'd rest,
Bring'st home the ingot from the west.
No ; thy ambition's master-piece
Flies no thought higher than a fleece ;
Or how to pay tky hinds,3 and clear
All scores, and so to end the year ;
But walk'st about thy own dear grounds,
Not craving others' larger bounds ;
For well thou know'et 'tis not th' extent
Of land makes life, but sweet content.
When now the cock, the ploughman's horn,
Calls for the lily-wristed mom,
Then to thy corn-fields thou dbst go,
Which, though well soil'd, yet thou dost know
That the best compost for the lands
Is the wise master's feet and hands.
There, at the plough, thou find'st thy team.
With a hind whistling there to them ;
And cheer'st them up by singint^ how
The kingdom's portion is the plough.
This done, then to th' enamelled meada
Thou go'st ; and, as thy foot there treads,
Thou seest a present godlike power
Imprinted in each herb and flower ;
> Amongst the sports proper to Twelfth Night in Rnglana
was the partition of a calie with a bean and pe.i in it : the in-
dividuals who got the bean and pea were respectively king and
queen for the evening.
2 A drink of warm ale, with roasted apples and spices in it.
The term is a corruption from the Celtic.
■ Farm -labourers. The term is still used in Scotland.
141
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164»
And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine,
Sweet as the blossoms of the vine.
Here thou behold 'st thy large, sleek neat,^
Unto the dewlaps up in meat ;
And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer,
The heifer, cow, and ox, draw near,
To make a pleasing pastime there.
These seen, thou go'st to riew thy flocks
Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox ;
And find'st their bellies there as full
Of short sweet grass, as backs with wool ;
And leav'st them, as they feed and fill,
A shepherd piping on the hill.
For sports, for pageantry, and plays.
Thou hast thy eves and holy-days.
On which the young men and maids meet
To exercise their dancing feet ;
Tripping the comely country round,2
With datibdils and daisies crowned.
Thy wakes, thy quintels, here thou hast.
Thy INIay-poles, too, with garland's graced ;
Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun ale.
Thy shearing feast, which never fail ;
Thy harvest-home, thy wassail-bowl,
That's tost up after fox i' th' hole ;
Thy mummeries, thy twelfth-night kings
And queens, thy Christmas revellings ;
Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit,
And no man pays too dear for it.
To these thou hast thy time to go,
And trace the hare in the treacherous snow :
Thy witty wiles to draw, and get
The lark into the trammel net ;
Thou hast thy cock rood, and thy glade.
To take the precious pheasant made ;
Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pitfalls, then.
To catch the pilfering birds, not meiL.
happy life, if that their good
The husbandmen but understood !
Who all the day themselves do please,
And younglings, with such sports as these ;
And, lying do>vn, have nought t' affright
Sweet sleep, that makes more short the night.
Julia.
Sonie asked me where the rubies grew,
And nothing did I say.
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
Some asked how pearls did grow, and where.
Then spake I to my girl.
To part her lips, and show me there
The quarelets of pearl.
One ask'd me where the roses grew,
I bade him not go seek ;
But forthwith bade my Julia show
A bud in either cheek.
Upon Jvlia^s Recovery.
Droop, droop no more, or hang the head.
Ye roses almost withered ;
New strength and newer purple get
Each here declining violet ;
Oh ! primroses, let this day be
A resurrection unto ye ;
And to all flowers ally'd in blood.
Or sworn to that sweet sisterhood.
For health on Julia's check hath shed
Claret and cream commingled ;
And these her lips do now appear
Afl beams of coral, but more clear.
0«ttle.
s A kind of dance.
Tlie Bag of the Bee.
About the sweet bag of a bee,
Two Cupids fell at odds ;
And whose the pretty prize should be,
They vowed to ask the gods.
Which Venus hearing, thither came,
And for their boldness stript them ;
And taking thence from each his flame,
With rods of myrtle whipt them.
Which done, to still their wanton cries,
When quiet grown sh' ad seen them,
She kiss'd and wiped their dove-like eyes.
And gave the bag between then^.
Uj)On a Child (hat Died.
Here she lies, a pretty bud,
Lately made of flesh and blood,
Who as soon fell fast asleep,
As her little eyes did peep.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her 1
Epitaph upon a Child.
Virgins promis'd, when I died,
That they would, each primrose-tide,
Duly morn and evening come.
And with flowers dress my tomb :
Having promis'd, pay your debts.
Maids, and here strew violets.
A Thanksgiving for his House,
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell.
Wherein to dwell ;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is weatherproof ;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry.
Where Thou, my chamber for to ward.
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and ke^
Me while 1 sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate.
Both void of state ;
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by the poor,
Who hither come, and freely get
Good words or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall,
And kitchen small ;
A little buttery, and therein
A little bin.
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead.
Some brittle sticks of thom or brier
Make me a fire.
Close by whose living coal I sit.
And glow like it.
Lord, I confess, too, when I dine.
The pulse is Thine,
And all those other bits that be
There placed by Thee.
The worts, the purslain, and the mess
Of water cress.
Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent :
And my content
Makes those, and my beloved beet.
To be more sweet.
'Tis Thou that cro\vn'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth ;
Ajid giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.
142
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBERT HERRICK.
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand
That sows my land :
All this, and better, dost Thou send
Me for this end :
That I should render for my part
A thankful heart,
Which, fir'd with incense, I resign
As wholly thine :
But the acceptance — that must be,
Lord, by Thee.
To Primroses, filled with Morning Dew.
WTiy do ye weep, sweet babes 1 Can tears
Speak grief in you.
Who were but bom
Just as the modest morn
Teem'd her refreshing dew ?
Alas ! you have not known that shower
That mars a flower.
Nor felt the unkind
Breath of a blasting wind ;
Nor are ye worn with years,
Or warp'd as we,
Who think it strange to see
Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young.
Speaking by tears before ye have a tongue.
Speak, whimp'ring younglings, and make known •
The reason why
Ye droop and weep ;
Is it for want of sleep.
Or childish lullaby ?
Or that ye have not seen as yet
The violet ?
Or brought a kiss
From that sweet heart to this J
No, no ; this sorrow shown
By your tears shed.
Would have this lecture read — •
That things of greatest, so of meanest worth,
Conceived with grief are, and with tears brought forth.'
Delight in Disorder.
A sweet disorder in the dress,
[A happy kind of carelessness ;]
A lawn about the shoulders throvra
Into a fine distraction ;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher ;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands that flow confusedly ;
A winning wave, deserving note
In the tempestuous petticoat ;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tic
I see a wild civility ;
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
To find God.
Weigh me the fire ; or canst thou find
A way to measure out the wind ;
Distinguish all those floods that are
Mixt in that watery theatre.
And taste thou them as saltless there.
As in their channel first they were.
Tell me the people that do keep
Within the kingdoms of the deep ;
Or fetch me back that cloud again,
Beshiver'd into seeds of rain.
Tell me the motes, dusts, sands, and speara
Of com, when summer shakes his civrs ;
Show me that world of stars, and whence
They noiseless spill their influence :
This if thou canst, then show me Ilim
That ridea the glorious cherubim.
Cherry Ripe.
Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry.
Full and fair ones — come and buy;
If so be you ask me whore
They do grow ? — I answer, There,
Where my Julia's lips do smile — ■
There's the land, or cherry-isle ;
Whose plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.
To Corinna, to go a Maying.
Get up, get up for shame, the blooming mom
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air ;
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree.
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east,
Above an hour since, yet you are not drest.
Nay, not so much as out of bed ;
when all the birds have matins said.
And sung their thankful hymns : 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in,
WTien as a thousand virgins on this day.
Spring sooner than the lark to fetch in i\Iay.
Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the spring time, fresh and greer.,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your go\vn or hair ;
Fear not, the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you ;
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept.
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night :
And Titan on the eastem hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying ;
Few beads are best, when once we go a Maying.
Come, my Corinna, come ; and, coming, mark
How each field turns a street,^ each street a park
Made green, and trimm'd with trees ; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough.
Or branch ; each porch, each door, ere this.
An ark, a tabernacle is,
Iklade up of white thorn neatly interwove ;
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street.
And open fields, and we not see't ?
Come, we'll abroad, and let's obey
The proclamation luade for ^lay :
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying.
But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying.
There's not a budding boy or girl, this day,
But is got up, and gone to bring in May.
A deal of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with white thorn laden home
Some have despatch'd their cakes and crearu
Before that we have left to dream ;
And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast ott' slotli :
Many a green gown has been given ;
Many a kiss, both odd and even ;
Many a glance, too, has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament ;
Many a jest told of the key's betraying
This night, and locks pick'd ; yet w' are not a Maying,
1 ITerrick hero alliidea to the inultitiules which were to he
seen roaming in tlie fields on May morning ; he afterwards re-
fers to the appearance of the towns and villages bedeeUed witU
evergreens
143
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 164».
Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time.
We shall grrow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun ;
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can ne'er be found again ;
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade ;
All loTe, all liking, all delight
Lies drown 'd with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying.
RICHARD LOVELACE.
Of the same class as Herrick, less buoyant or
rigorous in natural power, and much less fortunate
in his destiny, was Richard Lovelace (1618-1658).
This cavalier poet was well descended, being the son
of Sir AVilliam Lovelace, knight. He was educated
at Oxford, and afterwards presented at court. An-
thony Wood describes him at the age of sixteen, ' as
the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever
beheld ; a person also of innate modesty, virtue, and
courtly deportment, which made him then, but espe-
cially after, when he retired to the great city, much
admired and adored by the female sex.' Thus per-
sonally distinguished, and a royalist in principle,
Lovelace was chosen by the county of Kent to deliver
a petition to the House of Commons, praying that the
king might be restored to his rights, and the govern-
ment settled. The Long Parliament was then in the
ascendant, and Lovelace was thrown into prison for
bis boldness. He was liberated on heavy bail, but
spent his fortune in fruitless efforts to succour the
royal cause. He afterwards served in the French
army, and was wounded at Dunkirk. Returning in
1648, he was again imprisoned. To beguile the time
of his confinement, he collected his poems, and
published them in 1649, under the title of Lucasta:
Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. &c. The general title was
given them on account of the ' lady of his love,' Miss
Lucy Sacheverell, whom he usually called Lux Casta.
This was an unfortunate attachment ; for the lady,
hearing that Lovelace died of his wounds at Dun-
kirk, married another person. From this time the
course of the poet was downward. The ascendant
party did, indeed, release his person, when the death
of the king had left them the less to fear from their
opponents ; but Lovelace was now penniless, and the
reputation of a broken cavalier was no passport to
better circumstances. It appears that, oppressed with
want and melancholy, the gallant Lovelace fell into a
consumption. Wood relates that he became ' very
poor in body and purse, was the object of charity,
went in ragged clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure
and dirty places,' in one of which, situated in a miser-
able alley near Shoe Lane, he died in 1658. What a
contrast to the gay and splendid scenes of his youth !
Aubrey confirms the statement of Wood as to
the reverse of fortune ; but recent inquiries have
rather tended to throw discredit on those pictures of
the extreme misery of the poet. Destitute, however,
he no doubt was, ' fallen from his high estate ;'
though not perhaps so low as to die an example of
abject poverty and misery. The jjoetry of Love-
lace, like his life, was very unequal. There is a spirit
and nobleness in some of his verses and sentiments,
that charms the reader, as much as his gallant bear-
ing and fine person captivated the fair. In general,
however, they are affected, obscure, and harsh. His
taste was perverted by the fashion of the day — the
affected wit, ridiculous gallantry, and boasted licen-
tiousness of the cavaliers. That Lovelace knew how
to appreciate true taste and nature, may be seen from
his lines on Lely's portrait of Charles I : —
See, what an humble bravery doth shine,
And grief triumphant breaking through each line,
How it commands the face ! So sweet a scorn
Never did happy misery adorn !
So sacred a contempt that others show
To this (o' the height of all the wheel) below ;
That mightiest monarchs by this shaded book
May copy out their proudest, richest look.
Lord Byron has been censured for a line in hiB
Bride of Abydos, in which he says of his heroine —
The mind, the music breathing from her face.
The noble poet vindicates the expression on the
broad ground of its truth and appositeness. He
does not seem to have been aware (as was pointed
out by Sir Egerton Brydges) that Lovelace first em-
ployed the same illustration, in a song of Orpheui,
lamenting the death of his wife : —
Oh, could you view the melody
Of every grace,
And music of her face.
You'd drop a tear ;
Seeing more harmony
In her bright eye
Than now you hear.
Song.
Why should you swear I am forsworn,
Since thine I vow'd to be ?
Lady, it is already mom,
And 'twas last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.
Have I not lov'd thee much and long,
A tedious twelve hours' afuce ?
I must all other beauties wrong,
And rob thee of a new embrace.
Could I still dote upon thy face.
Not but all joy in thy brown hair
By others may be found ;
But I must search the black and fair,
Like skilful mineralists that sound
J'or treasure in unplough'd-up ground.
Then, if when I have lov'd my round,
Thou prov'st the pleasant she ;
With spoils of meaner beauties crown'd,
I laden will return to thee,
Even sated ■with variety.
The Hose.
Sweet, serene, sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower :
From thy long cloudy bed
Shoot forth thy damask head.
Vermilion ball that's given
From lip to lip in heaven ;
Love's couch's coverlid ;
Haste, haste, to make her bed.
See ! rosy is her bower.
Her floor is all thy flower ;
Her bed a rosy nest,
By a bed of roses prest.
Song.
Amarantha, sweet and fair.
Oh, braid no more that shining hair !
Let it fly, as unconfin'd.
As its calm ravisher, the wind ;
144
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS RANPOLPH.
Who hath left his darling, th' east,
To vraiiton o'er that spicy nest.
Every tress must be confest,
But neatly tangled, at the best ;
Like a clue of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled.
Do not, then, wind up that light
In ribands, and o'ercloud in night.
Like the sun's in early ray ;
But shake your head, and scatter day !
To Lucasta, on going to the Wars.
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and aims I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field ;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you, too, shall adore ;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Lov'd I not honour more.
To Altlica, from Prison,
"When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates ;
When I lie tangled in her hair.
And fetter'd Avith her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups ran swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crown'd,
Our hearts with loyal flames ;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep.
Know no such liberty.
When, linnet-like confined, I
With shriller note shall sing
The mercy, sweetness, majesty,
And glories of my king ;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Th' enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make.
Nor iron bars a cage ;
Minds, innocent and quiet, take
That for an hermitage :
If I have freedom in my love.
And in my soul am free ;
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
TH03IAS RANDOLPH.
Thomas Randolph (1605-1634) published a col-
lection of miscellaneous poems, in addition to five
dramatic pieces. He was born at Newnham, near
Daventry, in Northamptonshire, and was educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge. He was early distin-
p^uished for his talents, which procured him the
friendship of Ben Jonson, and the other wits of the
day. Ben enrolled him among his adopted sons ;
but Randolph fell into intemperate habits, and tlie
fine promise of his genius was destroyed by his death
^'"'^
Birthplace of Randolph.
at the age of twenty-nine. A monument was erected
to his memory by Sir Christopher Hattou.
To My Picture.
"WTien age hath made me what I am not now.
And every wrinkle tells me where the plough
Of Time hath furrow'd, when an ice sh.iU flow
Through every vein, and all my head be snow ;
When Death displays his ccldncss in my clieek,
And I, myself, in my own p v'ture seek,
Not finding what I am, but what I was ;
In doubt which to believe, this or my glass ;
Yet though I alter, this remains the same
As it was drawn, retains the ])i mitive frame.
And first complexion ; here will still be seen.
Blood on the cheek, and down upon the cliin :
Here the smooth brow will stay, the lively eye,
The ruddy lip, and hair of youthful dye.
Behold what frailty we in man may see,
Whose shadow is less given to change than he.
To a Lady admiring herself in a Looltng-glcui.
Fair lady, when you see the grace
Of beauty in your looking-glass ;
A stately forehead, smooth and hi^h.
And full of princely majesty ;
A sparkling eye no gem so fair,
Whose lustre dims the Cyprian star ;
A glorious cheek, divinely sweet.
Wherein both roses kindly meet ;
A cherry lip that would entice
Even gods to kiss at any price ;
You think no beauty is so rare
That with your shadow might compare;
That your reflection is alone
The thing that men most dote upon.
Madam, alas ! your glass doth lie,
And you are much deceived ; for I
A beauty know of richer grace,
(Sweet, be not angry) 'tis your face.
Hence, then, learn more" mild to be,
And leave to lay your blame on me :
If me your real substance move.
When you so much your shadow love,
Wise nature would not let your eye
Look on her o^iti bright majesty ;
Which, had you once but gazed upon,
You could, except yourself, love none :
What then you cannot love, let me,
That face I can, you cannot see.
145
11
PROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
50 1649
Now vou have what to love, you'll say,
What then is left for me, I pray ?
My face, sweet heart, if it please thee ;
That which you can, I cannot see :
So eitlier lore shall gain liis due,
Yours, sweet, in me, and mine in you.
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.
SiH William Davenant, whose life occupies an
impoitant space in the history of the stage, preced-
inif and after the Restoration, wrote a heroic poem
entitled Gondibert, and some copies of miscellaneous
verses. Davenant was born in 1605, and was the
Sir William Diivenant.
Bon of a vintner at Oxford. There is a scandalous
story, that he was the natural son of Shakspeare.
who was in the habit of stopjjing at the Crown
Tavern (kept by the elder Davenant) on his jour-
neys between London and Stratford. This story
was related to Pope by Bettcrton the player ; but it
seems to rest on no authority but idle tradition.
Young Davenant must, however, have had a strong
and precocious admiration of Shakspeare ; for, when
ordy ten years of age, be penned an ode, //; JReinrm-
biatin; of Master William Shakspeare, which oj)ens
in the following strain : —
Beware, delighted poets, when you sing,
Ti) welcome nature in the early spring,
Your numerous feet not tread
The banks of Avon, for each flower
(.\s it ne'er knew ii sun or shower)
Hangs there the pensive head.
It is to be regretted (for the s.ake of Davenant, as
well as of tb'i world) tluit the great dram.atist did
not live to guide the taste and foster the genius of
his youthful admirer, whose life presented some
strange adventures. About the year 1628, Davenant
began to write for the stage, and in 1638, on the
death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed laureate. lie
was afterwards manager of Drury Lane, but, entering
into the commotions and intrigues of the civil war,
he was apprehended and confined in the Tower, lie
aitcrwards escaped to France. Wlien the queen sent
over to the Earl of Newcastle a (juantity of military
stores, Davenant resolve i to return to England, and
he distinguished himself so much in the cause of
the royalists, that he was knighted for liis skill and
bravery. On the decline of the king's .aflairs. lie
returned to France, and wrote part of his Gondibert.
His next step was to sail for Virginia as .a colonial
projector ; but the vessel was captured bj' one of the
parliamentary ships of war, and Davenant was lodged
in prison at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1650,
he was removed to the Tower, preparatory to his
being tried by the High Commission Court. Ilis
life was considered in danger, but he was released
after two years' imprisonment. Milton is said to
have interposed in his behalf; and as Davenant is
reported to have interfered in favour of IMilton wlien
the royalists were again in the ascendant, after the
Restoration, we would gladly believe the statement
to be true. Such incidents give a peculiar grace and
relief to the sternness and bitterness of i)arty con-
flicts. * At Talavera, the English and French trooi)s
for a moment suspended their conflict, to drink of a
stream which flowed between them. The shells
were passed across, from enemy to enemy, without
apprehension or molestation. AVe, in the sanie
manner, woidd rather assist political adversaries to
drink of that fountain of intellectual pleasure, wliich
should be the common refreshment of both parties,
than disturb and pollute it with the havoc of tm-
seasonable hostilities.'* iMilton and Davenant must
have felt in this manner, when they waived tlieir
])olitical diflerences in honour of genius and poesy.
Wlien the author of Gondibert obtained his enlarge-
ment, he set about establishing a theatre, and, to the
surjirise of all, succeeded in the attempt. After the
Restoration, be again basked in royal favour, and
contiinied to write and superintend the performance
of plays tdl his deatli, April 7, 166S.
The poem of Gondibert, thougli regarded by Dave-
nant's friends and admirers (Cowley and Waller
being of tlie number) as a great and durable momi-
ment of genius, is now almost utterly forgotten. The
plot is roniantic, but defective in interest; and its
extreme length (about six tliousand lines), and the
description of versification in which it is written (tl;e
long four-lined stanza, with alternate rhj'mes, copied
by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis), render the poem
languid and tedious. The critics have been strangely
at variance with each other as to its merits, but to
general readers the poem may be said to lie miknown.
Davenant jirefixed a long and elaborate prefiicc to
his poem, Mhich is liighly creditable to him for judg-
ment, taste, and feeling, and maj' be considered the
precursor of Dryden's admirable critical introdiic-
tions to ilis plays. Ilis worship of Shakspeare con-
tinued unabated to the last, though he was mainly
instrumental, by his masques and scenerj', in driving
the elder liard from the stage. Dryden, in his jire-
face to the Tempest, states, that he did not set any
value on what he had written in that phu', but (jut
of gratitude to the memory of Sir William Davenant,
' who,' he adds, ' did me the hoiuiur to join me with
him in the idteration of it. It was originally Shaks-
peare's — a jioet for whom he had particularly a high
veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire.'
To the Queen,
Kntertained at night by the Countess of Anglesey.
Fair as unshaded light, or as the day
In its first birtli, when all the year was May ;
Sweet as the altar's smoke, or as the new
Unfolded bud, swcll'd by the early dew ;
♦ Edinburgh Ueview, vol. 47.
146
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
J(iHN CLEVELAND.
Smooth as the ffice of waters first appear'd,
Ere tides began to strive or winds were heard ;
Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far
Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are.
You that are more than our discreeter fear
Dares praise, with such full art, what make you here ?
Here, where the summer is so little seen,
That leaves, her cheapest wealth, scarce reach at green ;
You come, as if the silver planet were
Misled a while from her much injured sphere ;
And, t' ease the travels of her beams to-night.
In this small lanthorn would contract her light.
bovg.
The lark now leaves his watery nest,
And climbing shakes his dewy wings ;
He takes his window for the east.
And to implore j-our light, he sings.
Awake, awake, the moon will never rise,
Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes.
The merchant bows unto the seaman's star.
The ploughman from the sun his season takes ;
But still the lover wonders what they are,
Who look for day before his mistress wakes :
Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn !
Then draw 3-our curtains and begin the dawn.
[Description of the Virgin BirfJia.}
[From Gon<iibert.J
To Astragon, heaven for succession gave
One only pledge, and Birtha was her name.
Whose mother slept where flowers grew on her grave,
And she succeeded her in face and fame.
Her beauty princes durst not hope to use.
Unless, like poets, for their morning theme ;
And her mind's beauty they would rather choose,
Which did the light in beauty's lanthorn seem.
She ne'er saw courts, yet courts could have undone
With untaught looks, and an unpractised heart ;
Her nets, the most prepar'd could never shun,
For nature spread them iu the scorn of art.
She never had in busy cities been.
Ne'er warm'd with hopes, nor ere allay'd with fears ;
Not seeing punishment, could guess no sin ;
And sin not seeing, ne'er had use of teai-s.
But here her father's precepts gave her skill.
Which with incessant business fiU'd the hours ;
In spring she gather'd blossoms for the still ;
In autumn, hemes ; and in summer, flowers.
And as kind nature, with calm diligence,
Her OAvn free virtue silently employs..
Whilst slie unheard, does ripening gi-owth dispense,
So were her virtues busy without noise.
Whilst her great mistress, Nature, thus she ten<lfi,
The busy household waits no less on her ;
By secret law, each to her beauty bends.
Though all her lowly mind to that prefer.
Gracious and free she breaks upon them all
With morning looks ; and they, when she does rise.
Devoutly at her dawn in homage fall,
jVnd droop like flowers when evening shuts her eyes.
* * *
Beneath a myrtle covert she does spend,
In maid's weak wishes, her whole stock of thought ;
Fond maids ! who love with mind's fine stuff would
mend.
Which nature purposely of bodies WTOUght.
She fashions him she loved of angels' kind ;
Such as in holy story were employ'd
To the first fathers from the Eternal Mind,
And in short vision only are enjoy 'd.
As eagles, then, when nearest heaven they fly,
Of wild impossibles soon weary grow ;
Feeling their bodies find no rest so high.
And therefore perch on earthly things below ;
So now she yields ; him she an angel deem'd
Shall be a man, the name which virgins fear ;
Y'et the most harmless to a maid lie seem'd,
That ever yet that fatal name did bear.
Soon her opinion of his hurtless heart.
Affection turns to faith ; and then love's fire
To heaven, though bashfully, she does impart,
And to her mother in the heavenly quire.
' If I do love,' said she, ' that love, Heaven !
Your own disciple, Nature, bred in me ;
Why should I hide the passion you have given,
Or blush to show efiects which j'ou decree ?
' And )'ou, my alter'd mother, grown above
Great Nature, v.hich you read and reverenc'd here,
Chide not sucli kindness as you once call'd love,
When you as mortal as my father were.'
This said, her soul into her breast retires ;
With love's vain diligence of heart she dreams
Herself into possession of desires.
And trusts unauchor'd hopes in fleeting streams.
She thinks of F>den-life ; and no rough ^vind
In their pacific sea shall wTinkles make ;
That still her lowliness shall keep him kind.
Her ears keep him asleep, her voice ax* ake.
She thinks, if ever anger in him sway,
(The youthful warrior's most excus'd diseas*?;.
Such chance her tears shall calm, as showers allay
The accidental rage of winds and seas.
JOHN CLEVELAND.
John Clea^eland (1613-1 G58) was equally con-
spicuous for political loyalty and poetical conceit,
and he carried both to the utmost verge. Cleve-
land's father was rector of a parish in Leicestershire.
After coniyleting his studies at Cambridge, the poet
officiated as a college tutor, but joined the royal
armv v. lien the civil war broke out. He was the
loudest and most strenuous poet of the cause, and
distinguished himself by a fierce satire on the Scots
in 1G47. Two lines of this truculent party tirade
present a conceit at which our countrymen may
now sniile^
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his
doom ;
Not forced hi'H -ander, but confined him home.
In 16."/5, the poet was seized at Norwich, and put
in prison, being 'a person of great abilities, and so
able to do the greater disservivc' Cleveland peti-
tioned tlie Protector, stating that he was induced to
believe that, next to his adherence to the royal
party, the cause of his confinement was the narrow-
ness of his estate ; for none stood conmiitted whose
estate could bail them. ' I ani the only prisoner,'
he says, ' who have no acres to be my hostage ;' and
he ingeniously argues that jiovcrtj-, if it is a fault, is
its own punishment. Cromwell released the poor
poet, who died three years afterwards in London.
Independently of his strong and biting satires, which
were the cause of his jiopularity while living, and
which Butler jiartly imitated in Hudibras, Cleve-
land wrote some love verses containing morsels of
147
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 16tS
genuine poetry, amidst a mass of affected metaphors
and fancies. He carried gallantry to an extent
bordering on the ludicrous, making all nature — sun
and shade — do homage to his mistress.
On PliilUs, Walling before Simiise.
The sluggish mom as yet undress'd,
My Phillis brake from out her rest,
As if she'd made a match to run
With Venus, usher to the sun.
The trees (like j'eomen of her guard
Serving more for pomp than ward,
Rank'd on each side with loyal duty),
Wave branches to enclose her beauty.
The plants, whose luxury was lopp'd,
Or age with crutches underpropp'd,
Whose wooden carcasses are grown
To be but coiRns of their own,
Revive, and at her general dole,
Each receives his ancient soul.
The winged choristers began
To chirp their matins ; and the fan
Of whistling winds, like organs play'd
Unto their voluntaries, made
The waken'd earth in odours rise
To be her morning sacrifice ;
The flowers, call'd out of their beds,
Start and raise up their drowsy heads ;
And he that for their colour seeks,
May find it vaulting in her cheeks,
Where roses mix ; no civil war
Between her York and Lancaster.
The marigold, whose courtier's face
Echoes the sun, and doth unlace
Her at his rise, at his full stop
Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop.
Mistakes her cue, and doth display ;
Thus Phillis antedates the day.
These miracles had cramp'd the sun,
Who, thinking that his kingdom's won,
Powders with light his frizzled locks.
To see what saint his lustre mocks.
The trembling leaves through which he playM,
Dappling the walk with light and shade,
(Like lattice windows), give the spy
Room but to peep with half an eye.
Lest her full orb his sight should dim,
And bid us all good night in him :
Till she would spend a gentle ray,
To force us a new-fashion'd day.
But what new-fashioned palsy's this,
Which makes the boughs divest their bliss ?
And that they might her footsteps straw,
Drop their leaves with shivering awe ;
Phillis perceives, and (lest her stay
Should wed October unto May,
And as her beauty caus'd a spring,
Devotion miglit an autumn bring).
Withdrew her beams, yet made no night.
But left the sun her curate light.
JAMES SHIRLEY.
James Shirley, distinguished for his talents as
a dramatist, published, in 1646, a volume of mis-
cellaneous poems, which, witliout exliibiting any
strongly-marked features or commanding intellect,
are elegant and fanciful. His muse was not de-
based by the licentiousness of the age. The finest
production of Shirley, Death's Final Conquest, oc-
curs in one of his dramas. This piece is said to
have been greatly admired by Charles IL The
thoughts are elevated, and the expression highly
poetical
Death's Final Conqiwst.
The glories of our birth and state.
Are shadows, not substantial things ;
There is no armour against fate :
Death lays his icy hands on kings ;
Sceptre and crown,
Must tumble down, ,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Some men with swords may reap the field.
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ;
But their strong nerves at last must yield.
They tame but one another still ;
Early or late.
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
The garlands wither on your brow,
Then boast no more your mighty deeds ;
Upon Death's purple altar, now,
See where the victor victim bleeds :
All heads must come
To the cold tomb.
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
JJlion Ms Mistress Sad.
Melancholy, hence, and get
Some piece of earth to be thy seat,
Here the air and nimble fire
Would shoot up to meet desire :
Sullen humour leave her blood.
Mix not with the purer flood.
But let pleasures swelling here,
Make a spring-tide all the year.
Love a thousand sweets distilling,
And with pleasure bosoms fiUinii,
Charm all eyes that none may find us,
Be above, before, behind us ;
And while we thy raptures taste,
Compel time itself to stay.
Or by forelock hold him fast.
Lest occasion slip away.
Echo and Narci-sstis.
[From Narcissus.]
Fair Echo, rise ! sick-thoughted nymph, awake.
Leave thy green couch, and canopy of trees !
Long since the choristers of the wood did shake
Their win^s, and sing to the bright sun's uprise :
Day hath wept o'er thy couch, and, progressed,
Blusheth to see fair Echo still in bed.
If not the birds, who 'bout the coverts fly.
And with their warbles charm the neighbouring air ;
If not the sun, whose new embroidery
Makes rich the leaves that in thy arbours are.
Can make thee rise ; yet, love-sick nymph, away.
The young Narcissus is abroad to-day.
Pursue him, timorous maid : he moves apace ;
Favonius waits to play with thy loose hair,
And help thy flight ; see how the drooping grass
Courts thy soft tread, thou child of sound and air ;
Attempt, and overtake him ; though he be
Coy to all other nymphs, he'll stoop to thee.
If thy face move not, let thy eyes express
Some rhetoric of thy tears to make him stay ;
lie must be a rock that will not melt at these.
Dropping these native diamonds in his way ;
Mistaken he may stoop at them, and this.
Who knows how soon ? may help thee to a kiss.
14B
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
RICHAJID CRASHAW.
If neither love, thy beauty, nor thy tears,
Invent some other way to make him know
He need not hunt, that can have such a deer :
The Queen of Love did once Adonis woo,
But, hard of soul, with no persuasions won,
He felt the curse of his disdain too soon.
In vain I counsel her to put on wing ;
Echo hath left her solitary grove ;
And in the vale, the palace of the spring.
Sits silently attending to her love ;
But round about, to catch his voice vnth care.
In every shade and tree she hid a snare.
Now do the huntsmen fill the air with noise,
And their shrill horns chafe her delighted ear.
Which, with loud accents, give the woods a voice
Proclaiming parley to the fearful deer :
She hears the jolly tunes ; but every strain.
As high and musical, she returns again.
Rous'd is the game ; pursuit doth put on wings ;
The sun doth shine, and gild them out their way ;
The deer into an o'ergrown thicket springs.
Through which he quaintly steals his shine away ;
The hunters scatter ; but the bo}', o'erthro^vll
In a dark part of the wood, complains alone.
Him, Echo, led by her affections, found,
Joy'd, you may guess, to reach him with her eye ;
But more, to see him rise without a wound —
Who yet obscures herself behind some tree ;
He, vexed, exclaims, and asking, ' Where am I ?'
The unseen virgin answers, ' Here am I !'
'Some guide from hence ! Will no man hear?' he cries:
She answers, in her passion, ' Oh man, hear !'
* I die, I die,' say both ; and thus she tries,
\\'ith frequent answers, to entice his ear
And person to her court, more fit for love ;
He tracks the sound, and finds her odorous grove.
The way he trod was paved with violets.
Whose azure leaves do warm their naked stalks ;
In their white double ruffs the daisies jet,
And primroses are scattered m the walks.
Whose pretty mixture in the ground declares
Another galaxy embossed with stars.
Two rows of elms ran with proportioned grace.
Like nature's arras, to adom the sides ;
The friendly vines their loved barks embrace,
While folding-tops the chequered ground-work hides ;
Here oft the tired sun himself would rest,
Riding his glorious circuit to the west.
From hence delight conveys him unawares
Into a spacious green, whose either side
A hill did guard, whilst with his trees, like hairs.
The clouds were busy binding up his head ;
The flowers here smile upon him as he treads,
And, but when he looks up, hang down their heads.
Not far from hence, near an harmonious brook,
\V'lthin an arbour of conspiring trees.
Whose wilder boughs into the stream did look,
A place more suitable to her distress.
Echo, suspecting that her love was gone,
Herself had in a careless posture thrown.
But Time upon his wings had brought the boy
To see this lodging of the airy queen.
Whom the dejected nymph espies with joy
Through a small window of eglantine ;
And that she might be worthy his embrace.
Forgets not to new-dress her blubber'd face.
With confidence she sometimes would go out,
And boldly meet Narcissus in the way ;
But then her fears present her with new doubt,
And chide her over-rash resolve away.
Her heart with overcharge of love must break ;
Great Juno will not let poor Echo speak.
RICHARD CRASHAW.
Richard Crashaw, a religious poet, whose devo-
tional strains and ' lyric raptures' evince the highest
genius, was the son of a preacher at the Temple
church, London. The date of his birth is not
known, but in 1G44 he was a fellow of Peterhouse
college, Cambridge. Crashaw was, at all periods
of his life, of an enthusiastic disposition. He lived
for the greater part of several years in St Mary's
church, near Teterhouse, engaged chiefly in reli-
gious offices and writing devotional poetry ; and, as
the preface to his works informs us, ' like a primitive
saint, offering more prayers by night, than others
usually offer in the day.' lie is said to have been
an eloquent and powerful preacher. Being ejected
from his fellowship for non-compliance with the
rules of the parliamentary army, he removed to
France, and became a proselyte to the Roman
Catholic faith. Through the friendship of Cowle}^
Crashaw obtained the notice of Henrietta IVIaria,
then at Paris, and was recommended by her majesty
to the dignitaries of the church in Italy. He be-
came secretary to one of the cardinals, and a canon
of the church of Loretto. In this situation, Crashaw
died about the year 1650. Cowley honoured liis
memory with
The meed of a melodious tear.
The poet was an accomplished scholar, and his
translations from the Latin and Italian possess great
freedom, force, and beauty. He translated part of
the Sospefto d'Herode, from the Italian of ]\Iarino;
and passages of Crashaw's version are not unworthy
of Milton, who luid evidently seen the work. He
thus describes the abode of Satan : —
Below the bottom of the great abyss.
There, where one centre reconciles all things.
The world's profound heart pants ; there placed is
Mischief's old master ; close about him clings
A curl'd knot of embracing snakes, that kiss
His corresponding cheeks : these loathsome stiings
Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.
♦ « «
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings
I'lternally l>ind each rebellious limb ;
He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,
^\'hich like two bosom'd sails, embrace the dim
Air with a dismal shade, but all in vain ;
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.
While thus Heaven's highest counsels, by the fo->v
Footsteps of their effects, he trac'd too well.
He toss'd his troubled eyes — embers tliat glow
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell ;
With his foul claws he fenc'd his furrow'd brow.
And gave a ghastly shriek, whose hon-id yell
Ran trembling through the hollow vault of night.
While resident in Cambridge, Crashaw puhlishod
a volume of Latin p(Xims and epigrams, in one of
which occurs the well-known conceit relative to tlie
sacred miracle of water bemg turned into wine —
The conscious water saw its God and blush'd.
In 1646 appeared his English poems, Steps to the
Temple, The DeVnjhts of the Mvses, and Carmen Deo
Nostra. The greater part of tiie volume cons^ists of
reiigioiLS poetry, in which Crasliaw occasionally ad-
dresses the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and Mary
Slagdalen, with all the pa?fii'mate earnestness and fer-
I4y
TROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649
vour of a lover. He had an extravagant admiration
of the mystic writings of St Theresa, founder of the
Carmelites, -which seems to have had a bad effect on
his own taste, naturally prone, from his enthusiastic
temperament, to carry any favourite object, feeling,
or passion, to excess. In these flights into the third
heavens, ' with all his garlands and singing robes
about him,' Crashaw luxuriates among
An hundred thousand loves and graces,
And many a mystic thing
Which the divine embraces
Of the dear Spouse of Spirits with them will bring ;
For which it is no shame
That dull mortality must not know a name.
Such seem to have been his daily contemplations,
the heavenly manna on which his young spirit fed
with delight. This mystical style of thought and
fiincy naturally led to exaggeration and to conceits.
The latter pervaded all the poetry of the time, and
Crashaw could hardly escape the infection, even if
there had not been in his peculiar case strong pre-
disposing causes. But, amidst all his abstractions,
metaphors, and apostrophes, Crashaw is seldom
tedious. His imagination was copious and various.
He had, as Coleridge has remarked, a ' power and
opulence of invention,' and his versification is some-
times highly musical. With more taste and judg-
ment (which riper years might have produced),
Crashaw would have outstripped most of his con-
temporaries, even Cowley. No poet of his day is so
rich in ' barbaric pearl and gold,' the genuine ore of
poetry. It is deeply to be regretted that his life had
not been longer, more calm and fortunate — realising
his own exquisite lines —
A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven, hath a summer's day.
Amidst his visions of angels ascending and des-
cending, Crashaw had little time or relish for earthly
love. He has, however, left a copy of verses en-
titled. Wishes to a Supposed Mistress, in which are
some fine thoughts. He desires his fair cue to pos-
sess
Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter's head with flowers.
Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers ;
'Bove all, nothing within that lowere.
Whate'er delight
Can make day's forehead bright.
Or give down to the wings of night.
We are tempted also to quote two similes, the first
reminding us of a passage in Jeremy Taylor's lluly
laying, and the second of one of Shakspeare's best
lonnets : —
I've seen, indeed, the hopeful bud
Of a ruddy rose, that stood,
Blushing to behold the ray
Of the new-saluted day ;
His tender top not fully spread ;
The sweet dash of a shower new shed,
Invited him no more to hide
_ Within himself the purple pride
Of his fonvard flower, when lo,
While he sweetly 'gan to sliow
Ilis swelling glorie.i, Auster spied him ;
Cruel Auster thither hied him.
And with the rush of one rude blast
Sham'd not spitefully to waste
All his leaves so fresh and sweet.
And lay them trembling at his feet.
I've seen the morning's lovely ray
Hover o'er the new-born day.
With rosy wings, so richly bright.
As if he Bcorn'd to think of night,
When a ruddy stonn, whose scowl
Made Heaven's radiant face look foul,
Call'd for an untimely night
To blot the newly-blossora'd light.
The felicity and copiousness of Crashaw's language
are, however, best seen from his translations; and
we subjoin, entire, his version of Music's Duel, from
the Latin of Strada. It is seldom that so sweet and
luxurious a strain of pure description and sentiment
greets us in our poetical pilgrimage : —
Music's Ihtel.
Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat.
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute's-master ; in whose gentle airs
He lost the day's heat, and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree.
Their muse, their syren, harmless sj'ren she) :
There stood she list'ning, and did entertain
The music's soft report : and mould the same
In her own murmurs ; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good :
The m.an perceiv'd his rival, and her art,
Dispos'd to give the light-foot lady sport.
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet prwludium
Of closer strains, and e'er the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string
Charged with a flying touch ; and straightway she
Carves out her dainty Toice as readily.
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions
Quick volumes of wild notes, to let him know.
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string
A cap'ring cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance ; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and witli a long-drawn dash
Blends all together ; then distinctly trips
From this to that, then quick returning, skips
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art ; sometimes, as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out.
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear unwrinkled song ; then doth she point it
^V'ith tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that, being rear'd
In controverting warbles, evenly shar'd.
With her sweet self she wrangles ; he amaz'd.
That from so small a channel should be rais'd
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that, tickled with rare art,
The tattling strings, each breathing in his part,
Most kindly do fall out ; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace ;
The high-perch't treble chirps at this, and chides,
Until his finger (moderator) hides
And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all
Hoarse, shrill at once ; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands : this lesson too
150
EXGLISII LITER ATUJMl
RICHARD CRASHAW.
She gives them back : her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes, with a trembling bill.
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring volleys
float
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, still'd out of her breast ;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody ;
Music's best seed-plot ; when in ripen'd airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, plough'd by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboureth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire.
Sounded to th' name of gi-eat Apollo's lyre ;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing
(Most divine service) : whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice,
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise ;
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song.
Still keeping in the forward stream so long.
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about.
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast.
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest.
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their o\vn wild echoes, prattling &y.
She opes the flood-gate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the wav'd back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note ;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird ;
Her little soul is ravish'd, and so pour'd
Into loose ecstacies, that she is plac'd
Above herself, music's enthusiast.
Shame now and anger mix'd a double stain
In the musician's face : 'yet, once again.
Mistress, I come : now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be for ever mute.
Or tune a song of victory to me.
Or to thyself sing thine own obsequy.'
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings :
The sweet-lipp'd sisters musically frighted.
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted :
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath, which, married to his lyre.
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look
higher ;
From this to that, from that to this he flies.
Feels music's pulse in all her arteries ;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads.
His fingers struggle with the v )cal threads,
Following those little rills, hr sinks into
A sea of Helicon ; his hand does go
Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup :
The humorous strings expound his learned touch
By various glosses ; now they seem togrutch.
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle
In shrill-tongued accents, striving to be single ;
Every smooth turn, every delicious st]-oke
Gives life to some new grace ; thus doth he invoke
Sweetness by all her names : thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)
'J'he lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swoll'n rhapsodies ;
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies, here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone.
Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs,
Piun to and fro, complaining his sweet cares ;
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In music's ravish'd soul he dare not tell,
But whisper to the world : thug do they vary.
Each string his note, as if they meant to cany
Their master's blest soul (snatch'd out at his ears
By a strong ecstacy) through all the spheres
Of music's heaven ; and seat it there on lii"h,
lu th' empyreum of pure harmony.
At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest varietj', attending on
His fingers' fairest revolution.
In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A fuU-mouth'd diapason swallows all.
This done, he lists what she would sav to this;
And she, although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat.
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.
Alas ! in vain ! for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities
Of ehatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, raised in a natural t(>:>". ■
She fails, and failing grieves, and gi-ievin;; dies ;
She dies, and leaves her life the victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute : Oh fit to have
(That lived so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave !
Tanperance, or the Cheap Physician.
Go, now, and with some daring dru'_r
Bait thy disease ; and, whilst they t'.^g.
Thou, to maintain their precious strifo^
Spend the dear treasures of thy life.
Go, take physic, dote upon
Some big-named composition.
The oraculous doctors' mystic bil]^ —
Certain hard words made into pilis ;
And what at last shalt gain by these !
Only a costlier disease.
That wliich makes us have no need
Of physic, that's physic indeed.
Hark, hither, reader ! wilt thou see
Nature her own physician be ?
Wilt see a man, all his own wealth,
His own music, his own health ;
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well ;
Her garments, that upon her sit.
As garments should do, close and fit ;
A well-cloth'd soul that's not opj)rc's.s'd
Nor chok'd with what she should be dress'd ;
A soul sheath'd in a crystal shrine,
Through which all her bright features
As when a piece of wanton lawn,
A thin aerial veil, is drawn
O'er beauty's face, seeming to hide,
More sweetly shows the blushing bride ;
A soul, whose intellectual beams
No mists do mask, no lazy steams —
A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven, hath a summer's day I
Would'st see a man, whose well-wiiuu'd blood
Bathes him in a genuine flood \
151
lune ;
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1(^9.
A man whose tuned humours be
A seat of rarest harnjony ?
Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks, beguile
Age ? Wouldst see December smile 1
Wouldst see nests of new roses grow
In a bed of reverend snow ?
Warm thoughts, free spirits flattering
AVinter's self into a spring ?
In sum, wouldst see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man ?
Whose latest and most leaden hours
Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers ;
And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends ;
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay ;
A kiss, a sigh, and so away ?
This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see 1
Hark, hither I and thyself be he.
Hymn to the Name of Jtsus.
I sing the Name which none can say,
But touch'd with an interior ray ;
The name of our new peace ; our good |
Our bliss, and supernatural blood ;
The name of all our lives and loves :
Hearken and help, ye holy doves !
The high-born brood of day ; you bright
Candidates of blissful light,
The heirs elect of love ; whose names belong
Unto the everlasting life of song ;
All ye wise souls, who in the wealthy breast
Of this unbounded Name build your wann nest.
Awake, my glory ! soul (if such thou be.
And that fair word at all refer to thee),
Awake and sing,
And be all wing !
Bring hither thy whole self ; and let me see
What of thy parent heaven yet speaks in thee.
thou art poor
Of noble powers, I see,
And full of nothing else but empty me ;
Narrow and low, and infinitelj' less
Than this great moniing's mighty business.
One little world or two,
Alas ! will never do ;
We must have store ;
Go, soul, out of thyself, and seek for more ;
Go and request
Great Nature for the key of her huge chest
Of heav'ns, the self-involving set of spheres.
Which dull mortality more feels than hears ;
Then rouse the nest
Of nimble art, and traverse round
The airy shop of soul-appeasing sound :
And beat a summons in the same
All-sovereign name.
To warn each several kind
And shape of sweetness — be they such
As sigh with supple wind
Or answer artful touch —
That they convene and come away
To wait at the love-crowned doors of that illustrious
day
* m «
Come, lovely name ! life of our hope !
Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope !
Unlock thy cabinet of day.
Dearest sweet, and come away.
Lo, how the thirsty lands
Gasp for thy golden show'rs, with long-stretch'd hands !
Lo, how the labouring earth.
That hopes to be
All heaven by thee.
Leaps at ihy birth !
The attending world, to wait thy rise,
First turn'd to eyes ;
And then, not knowing what to do,
Turn'd them to tears, and spent them too.
Come, roj'al name ! and pay the expense
Of all this precious patience :
Oh, come away
And kill the death of this delay.
Oh see, so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measur'd out in seas of tears I
Oh, see the weary lids of wakeful hope
(Love's eastern windows) all wide ope
With curtaiua drawn.
To catch the daybreak of thy dawn !
Oh, da^vn at last, long-look'd for day !
Take thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes ! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
Oh, they are wise.
And know what sweets are suck'd from out it.
It is the hive
By which they thrive.
Where all their hoard of honey lies.
Lo, where it comes, upon the sno^vy dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of day !
Unfold thy fair conceptions ; and display
The birth of our bright joys.
Oh, thou compacted
Body of blessings ! spirit of souls extracted !
Oh, dissipate thy spicy powers.
Cloud of condensed sweets ! and break upon us
In balmy showers !
Oh, fill our senses, and take from us
All force of so profane a fallacy,
To think aught sweet but that which smells of thes.
Fair flow'ry name ! in none but thee,
And thy nectareal fragrancy.
Hourly there meets
An universal synod of all sweets ;
By whom it is defined thus —
That no perfume
For ever shall presume
To pass for odoriferous,
But such alone whose sacred pedigree
Can prove itself some kin, sweet name ! to thee.
Sweet name ! in thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell ;
A thousand hills of frankincense ;
IMountains of myrrh and beds of spices,
And ten thousand paradises,
The soul that tastes thee takes from thence.
How many unknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping !
IIow many thousand mercies there
lu pity's soft lap lie a-sleeping !
Happy he who has the art
To awake them.
And to take them
Home, and lodge them in his heart.
Oh, that it were as it was wont to be,
When thy old friends, on fire all full of thee,
Foughtagainstfrownswith smiles ; gave glorious chas»
To persecutions ; and against the face
Of death and fiercest dangers, durst with brave
And sober pace march on to meet a grave.
On their bold breasts about the world they bore thee
And to the teeth of hell stood uj) to teach thee ;
In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee.
Where racks and torments striv'd in vain to reach
thee.
Little, alas ! thought they
Who tore the fair breasts of thy friends.
Their fury but made way
For thee, and serv'd them in thy glorious ends.
152
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR niCHARD FAXSHAWE.
What did their weapons, but with wider pores
EnJirge thy flaming-breasted lovers,
Alore freely to transpire
That impatient fire
1 he heart that hides thee hardly covers *
■\\'hat did their weapons, but set wide the doors
I'or thee ? fair purple doors, of love's devising ;
The ruby windows which enrich'd the east
Of thy so oft-repeated rising.
Ench wound of theirs was thy new morning,
Atd re-en thron'd thee in thy rosy nest,
With blush of thine o^vn blood thy day adorning :
It was the wit of love o'erflow'd the bounds
Of ^^•rath, and made the way through all these wounds.
Weli-'^ine, dear, all-adored name !
For sure there is no knee
That knows not thee ;
Or if *here be such sons of shame,
Alas ! what will they do,
When stubborn rocks shall bow,
Ajid hills hang do^vn their heav'n-saluting heads
To seek for humble beds
Of dust, where, in the bashful shades of night.
Next to their own low nothing they may lie,
And couch before the dazzling light of thy dread
Majesty.
Tb'^.y that by love's mild dictate now
Will not adore thee.
Shall then, with just confusion, bow
And break before thee.
SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE.
Sir Richard Fanshawe, knight, brother of Tho-
mas Lord Fanshawe, was born in 1607. He joined
the royalists, and was secretary at war to Prince
Rupert. After the Restoration, he was appointed am-
bassador to Spain and Portugal, in which character
he died at iladrid in 1666. Fanshawe translated the
Lusiad of Camoens, and the Pastor Fido of Guarini.
With the latter production, published in 1648, he
gave to the world some miscellaneous poems, from
which the following are selected : —
.4 Hose.
Thou blushing rose, within whose virgin leaves
The wanton wind to sport himself presumes.
Whilst from their rifled wardrobe he receives
For his wings purple, for his breath perfumes !
Blown in the morning, thou shalt fade ere noon :
What boots a life which in such haste forsakes thee ?
Thou'rt wondrous frolic being to die so soon :
And passing proud a little colour makes thee.
If thee thy brittle beauty so deceives,
Know, then, the thing that swells thee is thy bane ;
For the same beauty doth in bloody leaves
The sentence of thy early death contain.
Some clown's coarse lungs will poison thy sweet flower.
If b}' the careless plough thou shalt be torn :
And many Herods lie in wait each hour
To murder thee as soon as thou art born ;
Nay, force thy bud to blow ; their tyrant breath
Anticipating life, to hasten death.
A Rich Fool.
Thee, senseless stock, because thou'rt richly gilt,
The blinded people without cause admire,
And superstition impiously hath built
Altars to that which should have been the fire.
Where shall my tongue consent to worship thee.
Since all's not gold that glisters and is fair ;
Carving but makes an image of a tree :
But gods of images are made by prayer.
Sabean incense in a fragrant cloud
Illustriously suspended o'er thy crown
Like a king's canopy, makes thee allow'd
l"(ir more than man. But let them take thee down.
And thy true value be once undei-stood.
Thy dull idolaters will find thou'rt wood.
SoxG. — The Saint's Encouragement.
[Written in 1643.]
Fight on, brave soldiers, for the cause ;
Fear not the cavaliers ;
Their threat'nings are as senseless, as
Our jealousies and fears.
'Tis you must perfect this great work.
And all nialignants slay,
You must bring back the king again
The clean contrai-y way.
'Tis for Religion that you fight.
And for the kingdom's good.
By robbing churches, plundering men,
And shedding guiltless blood.
Down with the orthodoxal train,
All loyal subjects slay ;
^\'hen these are gone, we shall be blest.
The clean contrary way.
When Charles we've bankrupt made like a*,
(Jf cro\vn and power bereft hiui.
And all his loyal subjects slain,
And none but rebels left him.
When we've beggar'd all the land.
And sent our trunks away.
We'll make him then a glorious pni.\'^,
The clean contrary way.
'Tis to preserve his majesty,
That we against him fight,
Nor are we ever beaten back.
Because our cause is right :
If any make a scruple on't,
Our declarations say,
\Mio fight for us, fight for the kin^
The clean contrary way.
At Keynton, Branford, Plymouth, Yo<Je,
And divers places more.
What victories we saints obtain'd.
The like ne'er seen before !
How often we Prince Rupert kill'd,
And bra^■ely won the day :
The wicked cavaliers did run
The clean contrary way.
The true religion we maintain,
Tlie kingdom's peace and plenty ;
Tlie privilege of parliament
Not known to one of twenty ;
The ancient fundamental laws ;
-Xiid teach men to obey
Their la^rful sovereign ; and all these
The clean contrary way.
We subjects' liberties preserve,
By prisonments and plunder,
And do enrich ourselves and state
By keeping the wicked under.
We must preserve mechanics now,
To lecturise and pray ;
By them the Gospel is advanced
The clean contrary way.
And though the king be much misled
By that malignant crew ;
He'll find us honest, and at last
Give all of us our due.
For we do wisely plot, and plot,
Rebrtllion to destroy,
He sees we stand for peace and truth.
The clean contrary way.
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO J64o
The public faith shall save our souls,
And good out-works together ;
And ships shall save our lives, that stay
Only for wind and weather.
But when our faith and works fall down,
And all our hopes decay,
Our acts will bear us up to heaven,
The clean contrary way.
Song. — The Boyalkt.
[Written in 164G.]
Come, pass about the bowl to me ;
A health to our distressed king !
Though we're in hold, let cups go free,
Birds in a cage do freely sing.
The ground does tipple healths apnco,
When storms do fall, and shall n^t we ?
A sorrow dares not show its face.
When we are ships and sack 's the sea.
Pox on this grief, hang wealth, let's sing.
Shall kill ourselves for fear of deat'a ?
We'll live by the air which songs dotli bring,
Our sighing does but waste our breath :
Then let us not be discontent.
Nor drink a glass the less of wine ;
In vain they'll think their plagues are spent^
When once they see we don't repine.
We do not suffer here alone,
Though we are beggar'd, so's the king ;
'Tis sin t' have wealth, when he has none ;
Tush ! poverty's a royal thing !
When we are larded well with drink,
Our heads shall turn as round as theirs.
Our feet shall rise, our bodies sink
Clean down the wind, like cavaliers.
Fill this unnatural quart with sack,
Nature all vacuums doth decline,
Ourselves will be a zodiac.
And every month shall be a sign.
Methinks the travels of the glass
Are circular like Plato's year.
Where everything is as it was ;
Let's tipple round ; and so 'tis here.
LADY ELIZABETH CAREW.
Lady Elizabeth Carew is believed to be the
author of the tragedy of Maria m, the Fair Queen of
JewTJ/, 1613. Though wanting in dramatic interest
and spirit, there is a vein of fine sentiment and feel-
ing in this forgotten drama. The following chorus,
in Act the Fourth, possesses a generous and noble
simplicity : —
{Revenge of Injuries.']
The fairest action of our himian life «
Is scorning to revenge an injury ;
For who forgives without a further strife,
His adversary's heart to him doth tie.
And 'tis a firmer conquest truly said.
To win the heart, than overthrow the head.
If we a worthy enemy do find.
To yield to worth it must be nobly done ;
But if of baser metal be his mind.
In base revenge there is no honour won.
Who would a worthy courage overthrow.
And who would wrestle with a worthless foe 1
We say our hearts are great, and cannot yield ;
Because they cannot yield, it proves them poor :
Great hearts are task'd beyond their power, but seld
The weakest lion will the loudest roar.
Truth's school for certain doth this same allow,
Hiyh-heartedness doth sometimes teach to bow.
A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn.
To scorn to owe a duty overlong ;
To sconi to be for benefits forborne ;
To scorn to lie, to scorn to do a wrong.
To scorn to bear an injury in mind ;
To scorn a free-bom heart slave-like to bind.
But if for wrongs we needs revenge must hare,
Then be our vengeance of the noblest kind ;
Do we his body from our furj' save.
And let our hate prevail against our mind !
What can 'gainst him a greater vengeance be.
Than make his foe more worthy far than he \
Had Mariam scom'd to leave a due unpaid,
She would to Herod then have paid her love,
And not have been bj' sullen passion sway'd.
To fix her thoughts all injury above
Is virtuous pride. Had Mariam thus been proud,
Long famous life to her had been allow'd.
SCOTTISH POETS.
ALEXANDER SCOT.
Wliile Sidney, Spenser, JIarlow, and other poets,
■svere illustrating the reign of Elizabeth, the muses
were not wholly neglected in Scotland. There was,
however, so little intercourse between the two na-
tions, that the works of the English bards seem to
have been comparatively unknown in the north, and
to have had no Scottish imitators. The country
was then in a rude and barbarous state, tyrannised
over by the nobles, and torn by feuds and dissen-
sions. In England, the lieformation had proceeded
from the throne, and was accomplished with little
violence or disorder. In Scotland, it uprooted the
whole form of so';iety, and was marked by fierce
contentions and lawless turbulence. The absorbing
influence of this ecclesiastical struggle was unfavour-
able to the cultivation of poetry. It shed a gloomy
spirit over the nation, and almost proscribed the study
of romantic literature. The drama, which in England
was the nurse of so many fine thoughts, so nnich
stirring passion, and beautiful imagery, was shunned
as a leprosy, fatal to religion and morality. The
very songs in Scotland partook of this religious cha-
racter; and so widely was the polemical spirit diffused,
that Alexander Scot, in his New Year Gift to the
Queen, in 1562, says —
That limmer lads and little lasses, lo,
Will argue baith with bishop, priest, and friar.
Scot wrote several short satires, and some miscella-
neous poems, the prevailing amatory character of
which has caused him to be called the Scottish AnO'
creon. though there are many points wanting to com-
plete his resemblance to the Tcian bard. As speci-
mens of his talents, the two following pieces ar'^
presented : —
Rondel of Love.
Lo what it is to luve,
Leani ye that list to pruve.
By me, I say, that no ways may,
The grund of greif remuve.
But still decay, both nicht and day;
Lo what it is to luve !
Luve is ane fervent fire,
Kendillit without desire.
Short plesour, lang displcsour ;
Repentance is the hire ;
Ane pure trossour, without messoui :
Luve is ane fervent fire.
154
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR UICIIAIID MAITLAND.
To lure and to be wise.
To rege with gude adwise ;
Now thus, now than, so goes the game,
Incertain is the dice ;
There is no man, I say, that can
Both luYe and to be wise.
Flee alwayis from the snare.
Learn at me to beware ;
It is ane pain and dowble train
Of endless woe and care ;
For to refrain that denger phain,
Flee always from the snare.
To his Heart,
Hence, heart, with her that must depart,
And hald thee with thy sorerain,
For I had lever ^ want ane heart,
Nor have the heart that does me pain }
Therefore go with thy luve remain.
And let me live thus unmolest ;
See that thou come not back again.
But bide with her thou luvis best.
Sen she that I have servit lang,
Is to depart so suddenly,
Address thee now, for thou sail gang
And beir thy lady company.
Fra she be gone, heartless am I ;
For why ? thou art with her possest.
Therefore, my heart ! go hence in hy,
And bide with her thou luvis best.
Though this belappit body here
Be bound to servitude and thrall,
My faithful heart is free inteir.
And mind to serve ray lady at all.
■\Vald God that I were perigall -
Under that redolent rose to rest !
Yet at the least, my heart, thou sail
Abide with her thou luvis best.
Sen in your garth-'' the lily whyte
May not remain amang the lave,
Adieu the flower of haill delyte ;
Adieu the succour that may me save ;
Adieu the fragrant balmie suaif,'*
And lamp of ladies lustiest !
My faithful heart she sail it have,
To bide with her it luvis best.
Deplore, ye ladies clear of hue,
Her absence, sen she must depart.
And specially ye luvers true,
That wounded be with luvis dart.
For ye sail want you of ane heart
As weil as I, therefore at last
Do go with mine, with mind inwart,
And bide with her t' ou luvis best.
SIR RICHARD MAITLAND.
Sir Richard Maitlaxd of Lethington (1496-
1586), father of the Secretary Lethington, of Scottish
history, relieved the duties of his situation as a judge
and statesman in advanced life, by composing some
moral and conversational pieces, and collecting, into
the well-known manuscript which bears his name,
the best productions of his contemporaries. These
literary avocations were chielly pursued in his elcgiint
retirement at Lethington, East Lothian, where a
1 Rather.
3 Garden.
2 Competent ; liad it in my power.
■» Kml)i:ici-.
Lethington Castle.
daughter acted as amanuensis to the aged poet. Ilia
familiar style reminds us of that of Lyndsay.
Satire on the Tomi Ladles.
Some wifis of the borowstoun
Sae wonder vain are, and wantoun,
In warld the}'' wait not' what to weir :
On claithis they ware- mony a croun ;
And all for newfaLgleness of geir.3
And of fine silk their furrit clokis,
With hingan sleeves, like geil pokis ;
Nae preaching will gar them forbeir
To weir all thing that sin provokis ;
And all for newfangleness of geir.
Their wilicoats maun \\oel be he^vrit,
Broudred richt braid, with pasmcnts sewit.
I trow wha wald the matter speir.
That their gudemen had cause to rue it,
That evir their wifis wore sic gcir.
Their woven hose of silk are shawin,
Barrit aboon with taisels drawin ;
With gartens of ane new maneir.
To gar their courtliness be kna-.vin ;
And all for ne^vfangleness of geir.
Sometime they will beir up their go^vn,
To shaw their wilicoat hingan domi ;
And sometime baith they will upbeir.
To shaw their hose of black or brown ;
And all for ne^-fangleness of geir.
Their collars, carcats, and hause beidis ^
With velvet hat heigh on their beidis,
Cordit with gold like aneyounkeir.
Braidit about with golden threidis ;
And all for newfangleness of geir.
Their shoon of velvet, and their muilis
In kirk they are not content of stuilis,
The sermon when they sit to heir.
But carries cusheons like vain fulls ;
And all for newfangleness of geir.
And some will spend mair, I hear say,
In spice and drugis in ane day,
Nor wald their mothers in ane yeir.
Whilk will gar mony pack decay,
When they sae vainly waste their geir.
' Wot, or know not.
■" Heads for the throat.
3 Spend.
3 Atttm
155
FROM 15&^
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1645.
Leave, burgess men, or all be lost,
On your wifis to mak sic cost,
M'Lilk may gar all your baimis bleir.l
She that may not want wine and roast,
Is able for to waste some geir.
Between them, and nobles of blude,
Nae difterence but ane velvet hude !
Their camrock curcliies are a.s deir,
Their other claithis are as gude,
And they as costly in other geir.
Of burgess wifis though I speak plain,
Some landwart ladies are as vain,
As by their claithing may appeir.
Wearing gayer nor them may gain,
On ower vain claithis wasting geir.
ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY,
Alexander Montgomery was known as a poet in
156S; but his principal work, The Cherry and the
Slae, was not published before 1597. The Cherry ami
the Slae is au allegorical poem, representing virtue
and vice. The allegory is poorly nuiiiaged; but
some of Montgomery's descrijitions are lively and
vigorous; and the style of verse ad(jpted in this
poem was afterwards copied by Burns. Divested of
some of the antique spelling, parts of tlie poem seem
as modern, and as smoothly versified, as the Scottish
poetry of a century and a-half later.
The cushat crouds, the corbie cries,
The cuckoo couks, the prattling j)yes
To geek there they begin ;
The jargon of the jangling jays,
The craiking craws and keckling kay.s.
They deave't me with their din.
The painted pawn with Argus eyes
Can on his ]May-cock call ;
The turtle wails on wither'd trees.
And Echo answers all.
Repeating, with greeting.
How fair Narcissus fell.
By lying and spying
His shadow in the well,
I saw the hurcheon and the hare
In hidlings hirpling here and there,*
To make their morning mange.
The con, the cuning, and the cat,
Whose dainty downs with dew were wat.
With stiff mustachios strange.
The hart, the hind, the dae, the rae,
The foumart and false fox ;
The bearded buck clamb up the brae
With birsy bairs and brocks ;
Some feeding, some dreading
The hunter's subtle snares.
With skipping and tripping,
They play'd them all in pairs.
The air was sober, saft, and sweet,
Nae misty vapours, wind, nor weet.
But quiet, calm, and clear,
To foster Flora's fragrant flowers,
Whereon Apollo's paramours
Had trinkled mony a tear ;
The which like silver shakers shined,
Embroidering Beauty's bed.
Wherewith their heavy heads declined
In May's colours clad.
Some knoping, some dropping
Of balmy liquor sweet.
Excelling and smelling
Through Phoebus' wholesome heat,
' Cry till their ej-es become red.
* Hums, in deKribing the opening scene of his Holy Fair,
' The hares were hirpling down the furs.'
ALEXANDER HC5IE.
Alexander Hume, who died, minister of Logie,
ill 1 609, published a volume of Hi/inns or ^Sacretl SotK/s,
in the year 1599, He was of the Humes of Polwarth,
Logic Kirk.
and, previous to turning clergyman, had studied tlie
law, and frequented the court ; but in his latter years
he was a stern and even gloomy Puritan. The most
finished of his productions is a description of a sum-
mer's day, which he calls the Dat/ Estival. The
various objects of external nature, characteristic of a
Scottish landscape, are painted with truth and clear-
ness, and a calm devotional feeling is spread over the
poem. It opens as follows : —
perfect light, which shed away
The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o'er the day,
Another o'er the night.
Thy glory, when the day forth flies,
Alore vively does appear.
Nor at mid-day unto our eyes
The shining sun is clear.
The shadow of the earth anon
Removes and drawis by,
Syne in the east, when it is gone,
Appears a clearer sky.
Whilk soon perceive the little laxks,
The lapwing and the snipe ;
And tune their song like Nature's clerks.
O'er meadow, muir, and stripe.
The summer day of the poet is one of unclouded
splendour.
The time so tranquil is and cle^r.
That nowhere shall ye find,
Save on a high and barren hill.
An air of passing wind.
All trees and simples, great and small,
That balmy leaf do bear,
Than they wore painted on a wall.
No more tliey move or steir.
156
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
KT.VG JAMES VS.
The rivers fresh, the caller streams
O'er rocks can swiftly rin,
The water clear like crystal beams,
And makes a pleasant din.
The condition of the Scottish labourer would seem
to have been then more comfortable than at present,
and the climate of the country warmer, for Hume
describes those working in the fields as stopping at
mid-day, 'noon meat and sleep to take,' and re-
fresliing themselves with ' caller wine' in a cave, and
' sallads steep'd in oil.' As the poet lived four years
in France previous to his settling in Scotland, in
mature life, we suspect lie must have been drawing
on his continental recollections for some of the
featnres in this picture. At length ' the gloaming
comes, the day is spent,' and the poet concludes iu a
■ifrain of pious gratitude and delight : —
What pleasure, then, to walk and see
End-lang a river clear.
The perfect form of every tree
Within the deep appear.
The salmon out of crulves and creels,
Uphailed into scouts.
The bells and circles on the weills
Through leaping of the trouts.
sure it were a seemly thing,
Whiie all is still and calm,
The praise of God to play and sing,
With trumpet and with shalra.
Through all the land great is the gild
Of rustic folks that cry ;
Of bleating sheep fra they be kill'd,
Of calves and rowting kye.
All labourers draw hame at even,
And can to others say.
Thanks to the gracious God of heav?n,
Whilk sent this summer day.
KING JAMES TI.
In 1584, the Scottish sovereign, King Jajfes YI.,
ventured into the magic circle of poesy himself, and
Falkland Palace,
The favourite early residence of King James VI.
published a volume entitled, Essayes of a Prentice in
the Divine art of Poesie, u-ith the liewlis and Cautelis
to he pursued and avoided. Kings are generally, as
Milton has remarked, though strong in legions, but
weak at arguments, and the * rules and cautelis' of
the royal author are puerile and ridiculous. His
majesty's verses, considering that he was only in
his eighteenth year, are more creditable to him, and
we shall quote one from the volume alluded to.
Ane Schort Poeme of TyiM.
[Original Spelling.]
As I was pansing in a morning aire.
And could not sleip nor iiawyi:^ take me rest,
Furth for to walk, the morning was so faire,
Athort the fields, it seemed to me the best.
The East was cleare, whereby belyve I gest
That f}Tie Titan cumming was in sight,
Obscuring chaste Diana by his light.
Who by his rising in the azure skyes.
Did dewlie helse all thame on earth do dwell.
The balmie dew through biniing drouth he drv'is.
Which made the soile to savour sweit and smell,
By dew that on the night before do-i^iie fell,
Which then was soukit up by the Delphienus heit
Up in the aire : it was so light and welt.
Whose hie ascending in his pui-pour chere
Provokit all from ^Morpheus to flee :
As beasts to feid, and birds to sing with heir,
Men to their labour, bissie as the bee :
Yet idle men devysing did I see,
How for to drive the tyme that did them irk.
By sindrie pastymcs, quhile that it grew mirk.
Then woundred I to see them seik a wyle,
So willingly the precious tyme to tine :
And how they did themselfis so farr begyle.
To fushe of tyme, which of itself is fyne.
Fra tyme be past to call it backwart syne
Is hot in vaine : therefore men sould be warr.
To sleuth the tyme that flees fra them so farr
For what hath man hot tyme into this lyfe.
Which gives him dayis his God aright to know I
Y'herefore then sould we be at sic a stryfe.
So spedelie our selfis for to withdraw
Evin from the tyme, which is on nowayes slaw
To flie from us, suppose we fled it noght ?
More wyse we were, if we the tyme had soght.
But sen that tyme is sic a precious thing,
I wald we sould bestow it into that
Y'hich were most pleasour to our heavenly Kin,'.
Flee ydilteth, which is the greatest lat ;
Bot, sen that death to all is destinat.
Let us employ that tyme that God hath send us,
In doing weill, that good men may commend us.
EARL OF ANCRU3I — EARL OF STIRLING.
Two Scottish noblemen of the court of James
wire devoted to letters, namely, the Earl of Ancrum
( i:)r8-1634) and the Earl of Stirling (1580-1640).
Tlie first was a younger son of Sir Andrew Kcr of
Ferniehurst, and he enjoyed the favour of both
James and Charles I. The following sonnet by the
earl was addressed to Drummond the poet in 1624.
It shows how much the union of the crowns under
James had led to the cultivation of the English style
and language : —
Sonnet in Praise of a Solitary Life.
Sweet solitary life ! lovely, dumb joy,
That need'st no warnings how to grow more wise
By other men's mishaps, nor the annoy
Which from sore wrongs done to one's self doth rise.
157
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
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The moniiiig's second mansion, truth's first friend,
Never acciuainted with the world's rain broils,
When the wliole day to our own use we spend,
And our dear time no fierce ambition spoils.
Most happy state, that never tak'st revenge
For injuries received, nor dost fear
The court's great earthquake, the griev'd truth of
chanjre.
Nor none of falsehood's savoury lies dost hear ;
Nor knows hope's sweet disease that charms our sense.
Nor its sad cure — dear-bought experience !
Tlio Earl of Stirling (William Alexander of !Men
strie, created a peer by Charles I.) was a more pro
lific poet. In 1637, lie published a complete edition
of his works, in one volume folio, with the title ot
Ilecreations with the Muses, consisting of tragedies i
lieroic poem, a poem addressed to Prince Ilenrj- (the
favourite son of King James), another heroic poem
entitled Jonathan, and a sacred poem, in twehe
parts, on the Day of Judgment. One of the Earl of
Stirling's tragedies is on the subject of Julius Casir
It was first published in 1606, and contains sever d
passages resembling parts of Shakspeare's traf,t.dv
of the same name, but it has not been ascertai c 1
which was first published. The genius of Shakspcire
did not disdain to gather hints and expressions fr m
obscure authors — the lesser lights of the age — an 1 i
famous passage in the Tempest is supposed (tlu ugh
somewhat hypercriticall}-) to be also derived from
the Earl of Stirling. In the play of Darius, there
occurs the following reflection —
Let Greatness of her glassy sceptres vaunt,
Not sceptres, no, but reeds, soon bruised, soon broken :
And lot this worldly pomp our wits enchant,
All fades, and scarechj leaves Icltind a token.
The lines of Shakspeare will instantly be recalled —
And like this insubstantial pageant, faded,
Leare not a icreek beJiiiul.
None of the productions of the Earl of Stirling
':ouch the heart or entrance the imagination. He has
not the humble but genuine inspiration of Alexander
Hume. Yet we must allow him to have been a calm
and elegant poet, with considerable fancy, and an ear
for metrical harmony. The following is one of his
best sonnets:—
I swear, Aurora, by thy starry ej'es,
And by those golden locks, whose lock none slips,
AtkI by the coral of thy rosy lips.
And by the naked snows which beauty dyes ;
I swear by all the jewels of thy mind.
Whose like yet never worldly treasure bought,
Thy solid judgment, and thy generous thought,
Which in this darken'd age have clearly shin'd ;
I swear by those, and by my spotless love,
And by my secret, yet most fervent fires,
That 1 liave never nurst but chaste desires,
And such as modesty might well approve.
Then, since 1 love those virtuous j)arts in thee,
Shouhl'st thou not love tliis virtuous mind in me ?
Tlie lady whom the poet celebrated under the name
of Aurora, did not accept his hand, but he was
married to a daughter of Sir William Erskine. Tlie
earl concocted an enlightened scheme for colonising
Nova Scotia, which was patronised by tlie king, yet
was abandoned from the difficulties attending its
accomplishment. Stirling held the office of secretary
of state for Scotland for fifteen years, from 1626 to
i641 — a period of great difficulty and delicacy, wlicn
'^harles attempted to establish episcopacy in the
north. He realised an amount of w ealth unusual for
a poet, aiid enii-luycd part of it in building a hand-
House of the Earl of Stirling.
some mansion in Stirling, which still survives, a
monument of a fortune so different from that of the
ordinary children of the muse.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND.
A greater poet flourished in Scotland at the same
time with Stirling, namely, William Drumwond of
Hawthornden (1585-1649). Familiar with classic
Drummond of Hawthornden.
and English poetry, and iml)uod with true literary
taste and feeling, Drummond soared above a mere
local or provincial fame, and was associated in
friendship and genius with his great Englisli con-
temporaries. His father. Sir John Drummond, was
gentleman usher to king James ; and the jioet seems
to have inherited his reverence for royalty No author
158
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
-WILLIAM DRDHHOND.
of any note, excepting, perhaps, Dryden, has been so
lavish of adulation as Drunimoiid. Having studied
civil law for four years in France, the poet succeeded,
in 1011, to an independent estate, and took up his
residence at Ilawthornden. If beautiful and romantic
scenery could create or nurse the genius of a poet,
Drnnimond was peculiarly blessed with means of
insjiiration. In all Scotland, there is no spot more
finely varied — more ricli, prarcful, or luxuriant —
than the cliffs, caves, and wooded hanks of tlie river
Esk, and the classic shades of Ilawthornden. In the
immediate neighbourhood is Iloslin Castle, one of
Hawthomden, the seat of Drummond.
the most interesting of Gothic ruins; and the whole
course of the stream and the narrow glen is like
the ground-work of some fairy dream. The first
publication of Drummond was a volume of occasional
X'oems ; to which succeeded a moral treatise in
prose, entitled, the Cypress Grove, and another poeti-
cal work termed, the Flowers of Z'wn. The death of a
lady, to whom he was betrothed, affected him deeply,
and he sought relief in change of scene and the ex-
citement of foreign travel. On his return, after an
absence of .some years, he happened to meet a young
lady named Logan, who bore so strong a resemblance
to the former object of his affections, that he solicited
and obtained her hand in marriage. Drummoiid's
feelings were so intense on the side of the royalists,
that the execution of Cliarles is said to have hastened
his death, which took place at the close of the same
year, December 1649. Drummond was intimate with
Ben Jonson and Drayton ; and his acquaintance
with the former has been rendered memorable by a
visit paid to him at Ilawthornden, by Jonson, in the
spring of 1619. The Scottish poet kept notes of tlie
ojiinions expressed by tlie great dramatist, and chro-
nicled some of his personal failings. For this liis
memory has been keenly attacked and traduced. It
sliould be remembered that his notes were private
memoranda, never published by liimself ; and, while
tlieir truth has been partly confirmed from other
sources, there seems no malignity or meanness in
recording faithfully his impressions of one of his most
distinguished contemporaries. The poetry of Drum-
mond has singular sweetness and harmony of versi-
fication. He was of the school of Spenser, but less
ethereal in thought and imagination. His Tears on
the Death of Moeliades (Prince Henry, son of James I.)
was written in 1612; his Wandering Muses, or the
River Forth Feasting (a congratulatory poem to King
James, on his revisiting Scotland), ajipeared in 1617,
and i)laced him among tlie gn-atc st poets of his age.
His rotmets are of a still liigher cast, liave fewer
conceits, and more natural feeling, elevation of sen-
timent, and grace of expression. Drummond wrote
a number of madrigals, epigrams, and otiier sliort
pieces, some of which are coarse and licentious. Tlie
general purity of his language, the harmony of his
verse, and the play of fancy, in all his principal pro-
ductions, are his distinguishing characteristics. With
more energy and force of mind, he Mould have been
a greater favourite with Ben Jonson — and with pos-
terity.
The Birer of Forth Feasting.
What blustering noise now interrupts my sleeps !
What echoing shouts thus cleave my ci^'stal deeps ?
And seem to call me from my watery court 1
What melody, what sounds of joy and sport,
Arc convey'd hither from each night-horn spring ?
^Vith v.-hat loud murmurs do the mountains ring,
Which in unusual pomp on tiptoes stand,
And, full of wonder, overlook the land ?
Whence come these glittering throngs, these meteor*
bright,
This golden people glancing in my sight ?
"\^'hence doth this praise, applause, and love arise ;
What load-star draweth us all eyes ?
Am I awake, or have some dreams conspir'd
To mock my sense with what I most desir'd ?
View I that living face, see I those looks,
Which with delight were wont t' amaze my brooks ?
Do I behold that worth, that man divine,
This age's glory, by these banks of mine ?
Then find I true what I long wish'd in vain ;
My much-beloved prince is come again.
So unto them whose zenith is the pole,
A\'hcn six black months are past, the sun docs roll :
So after tempest to sea-tossed wights,
Fair Helen's brothers show their clearing lights :
So comes Arabia's wonder from her woods.
And far, far off is seen by Memphis' floods ;
The feathcrM sylvan", cloud-iiko, l>y her flj'.
And with triumphing pLiUiiits beat :he sky ;
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164»
Nile marvels, Scrap's priests entranced rave,
And in Myg Ionian stone licr slnvpe engrave ;
In lasting cedars they do mark the time
In whieli Apollo's bird came to their clime.
Let mother earth now deck'd with flowers be scon,
And sweet-brcath'd zephyrs curl the meadows green :
Let heaven weep rubies in a crimson shower,
Such as on India's shores they use to pour :
Or with that golden storm the fields adorn
Which Jove rain'd when his blue-eyed maid was born.
May never hours the web of day outweave ;
May never night rise from her sable cave !
Swell proud my billows, faint not to declare
Your joys as ample as their causes are :
For nmrmurs hoarse sound like Arion's harp,
Now delicately flat, now sweetly sharp ;
And you, my nymphs, rise from j'our moist repair,
Strew all your springs and grots with lilies fair.
Some swiftest footed, get them hence, and pray
Our floods and lakes may keep this holiday ;
M'hate'er beneath Albania's hills do run.
Which see the rising or the setting sun.
Which drink stern Grampus' mists, or Ochil's snows :
Stone-rolling Tiiy, Tyne, tortoise-like, that flows ;
The pearly Don, the Dees, the fertile Spey,
^^'ild Severn, which doth see our longest day ;
Ness, smoking sulphur, Leve, with mountains crown'd.
Strange Lomond for his floating isles renowu'd ;
The Irish Rian, Ken, the silver Ayr,
The snaky Doon, the Orr with rushy hair.
The crystal-streaming Nith, loud-bellowing Clyde,
Tweed which no more our kingdoms shall divide ;
Rank-swelling Annan, Lid with curl'd streams.
The Esks, the Solway, where they lose their names ;
To every one proclaim our joys and feasts.
Our triumphs ; bid all come and be our guests ;
And as they meet in Neptune's azure hall.
Bid them bid sea-gods keep this festival ;
This day shall by our currents be renowu'd ;
Our liills about shall still this day resound :
Nay, that our love more to this day appear.
Let us with it henceforth begin our year.
To virgins flowers, to sun-burnt earth the rain,
To mariners fair winds amidst the main ;
Cool shades to pilgrims, which hot glances burn.
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return,
That day, dear Prince.
[Epitaph on Prince Henry. ]
Stay, passenger, see where enclosed lies
The paragon of Princes, fairest frame
Time, nature, place, could show to moiial eyes,
In worth, wit, virtue, miracle of fame ;
At least that part the earth of him could claim
This marble holds (hard like the Destinies) :
For as to his brave spirit, and glorious name,
The one the world, the other fills the skies.
Th' immortal amaranthus, princely rose;
Sad violet, and that sweet flower that bears
In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes,*
Spread on this stone, and wash it with your tears ;
Then go and tell from Gades unto Ind
You saw where Earth's perfections were confin'd.
To his Lute.
My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some sliady grove.
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
* Milton has copied this image in his Lycidas —
• InwTought with figures dim, and on the edge
>'ike to that sanguine flower, inscribed with woe.
And birds their ramagel did on thee bestow.
Since that dear voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from earth to tune the spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe ?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more.
But orphan wailings to the fainting ear.
Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear ;
For which be silent as in woods before :
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widow'd turtle still her loss complain.
[Tfie Praise of a Solitanj Life.']
Thrice happy he who by some shady grove.
Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own.
Thou solitary, who is not alone.
But doth converse with that eternal love.
how more sweet is bird's harmonious moan.
Or the hoarse sobbings of the widow'd dove.
Than those smooth whisperings near a prince's
throne.
Which good make doubtful, do the evil approve !
how more sweet is Zephyr's wliolesome breath,
And sighs embalm'd which new-born flowers unfold.
Than that applause vain honour doth bequeath !
How sweet are streams to poison drank in gold !
The world is full of horror, troubles, slights :
Woods' harmless shades have only true delights.
[To a Nightingale.]
Sweet bird ! that sing'st away the early hourK
Of winters past, or coming, void of care.
Well pleased with delights which present are.
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers :
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers.
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that low'rs.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs
(Attir'd in sweetness) sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven ?
Sweet artless songster ! thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres — yes, and to angels' lays
[Sonnets.]
In Mind's pure glass when I myself behold.
And lively see how my best days are spent,
What clouds of care above my head are roll'd,
What coming ill, which I cannot prevent :
My course begun, I, wearied, do repent.
And would embrace what reason oft hath told ;
But scarce thus think I, when love hath controll'd
All the best reasons reason could invent.
Though sure I know my labour's end is grief.
The more I strive that I the more shall pine.
That only death shall be my last relief :
Yet when I think upon that face divine.
Like one with an-ow shot, in laughter's place,
Maugre my heart, I joy in my disgrace.
1 know that all beneath the moon decays.
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In Time's great periods, shall return to nought {
The fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know tliat all the Muse's heavenly lays
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought.
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
' Warbling : from ramage, French.
160
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE BUCHANAH,
I know frail beauty like the pui-ple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death atfords,
That love a jarring is of mind's accords,
Where sense and will bring under Reason'3 power :
Know what I list, all this cannot me move,
But that .alas ! I both must write and love.
SIR ROBERT AYTOX.
Sir Robert Atton, a Scottish courtier and poet
(1570-1638), enjoj-ed. like Drunimond, the advan-
tages of foreign travel and adiuaintance with Eng-
lish poets. The few pieces of his composition are
in pure English, and evince a smoothness and deli-
cacy of fancy that have rarely been surpassed. The
poet was a native of Fifeshire, son of Ayton of
Kinaldie. James L appointed him one of the gentle-
men of the bea-chamber, and private secretary to
his queen, besides conferring upon him the honour
of kniglitbood. Ben Jonson seemed proud of his
friendshi/i, for he tol? Drummoud that Sir Robert
loved biiu (Jonson) dearly.
[O/i Woman^s Inconstancy.']
I lov'd thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame ;
Thou art not what thou wast before.
What reason I should be the same ?
He that can love unlov'd again,
Ilath better store of love than brain :
God send me love my debts to pay.
While unthrifts fool their love away.
Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine ;
Yea, if thou hadst remain'd thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recall.
That if thou might elsewhere inthral ;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain ?
When new desires had conquer'd thee,
And chang'd the object of thy will.
It had been lethargy in me.
Not constancy to love thee still.
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.
Yet do thou glory in thy choice,
Thy choice of his good fortune boast ;
I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice,
To see him gain what I have lost ;
The height of my disdain shall be.
To laugh at him, to blush for thee ;
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door.
[/ do Confess Thou'rt Smooth and Fair.]
I do confess thou'rt smooth and fair.
And I might have gone near to love thee ;
Had I not found the slightest prayer
That lips could speak had power to move thee;
But I can let thee now alone,
As worthy to be loved by none.
I do confess thou'rt sweet, yet find
Thee such an unthrift of thy sweets,
Thy favours are but like the wind.
That kisses every thing it meets.
And since thou can witli more than one,
Thou'rt worthy to be kiss'd by none.
The morning rose, that untouch'd stands,
Arnrd with her briers, how sweetly smells !
But pluck'd and strain'd through ruder hands,
Her sweets no longer witli her dwells;
But scent and beauty both are gone,
And leaves fall from her, one by one.
Such fate, ere long, will thee betide,
When thou hast handled been awhile.
Like sere flowers to be thro«Ti aside ;
And I will sigli, while some will smile,
To see thy love for more than one
Hath brouglit thee to be loved by none.*
GEORGE BUCHAKAN — DR ARTHUR JOHNSTON.
Two Scottish authors of this period distinguislied
themselves by their critical excellence and poetical
fancy in the Latin language. By early and intense
study, they acquired all the freedom and fluencj- of
natives in this learned tongue, and have liecome
known to posterity as the Scottish Virgil and the
Scottish Ovid. We allude to the celebrated Geosige
Buchanan and Dr Arthur Johnston. The for-
\--
c^
^"Btur/Pc
€^>lC^^
^/^
yr
mer is noticed among our prose authors. His great
work is his parapjirase of the Psalms, part of v^liich
was composed in a monastery in Portugal, to which
he had been confined by the Inquisition about the
year 1550. He afterwards pursued thesacred strain in
France ; and his task was rinished in Scotland when
]^Iary had assflmed the duties of sovereignty. Buch-
* It 13 doubtful whether this beautiful sniig (wliich Hums
destroyed by rendering into .Scotclil was .ictually the conii).)-
sition of Ayton. It is printed anonymously in Lawes's Ayres and
Dialogues, }6o9. It is u suspicious circumstance, that in IJ'at-
son's Collection of Scottish Pofins |17(x;-ll), where several poems
by Sir Robert are printed, with liis name, in a cluster, tliis ia
inserted at a different part of tlie work, witliout liis name.
Hut tlie internal evi.'.ence is strongly in favour of Sir Itobert
Ayton being tlie autlior. as, in purity of language, elegance, and
tenderness, it resembles his uminubud l.iries. Aubrey, in
praising Ayton, wiys, ' Mr Jdlin Dryden has seen verses of his,
some of tlie best of that age, printed with some other vcrsea.'
itil
12
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164!»
anan superintended tlie studies of that unfortunate
princess, and dedicated to her one of the most finished
and beautiful of liis productions, the Epilhalamium,
composed on her first nuptials. The cliaracter and
works of Buchanan, who was equally distinguished
as a jurist, a poet, and a historian, exhibit a rare
iinion of philosophical dignity and research with the
finer sensibilities and imagination of the poet.
Arthur Johnston was born at Caskieben, near Aber-
deen, in 1587. He studied medicine at Padua, and
resided for about twenty years in France. On his
return to Britain, he obtained the patronage of Arch-
bi9hop Laud, and was appointed physician to Charles
L He died at Oxford in 1641. Johnston wrote a
number of Latin elegies and epigrams, a paraphrase
of the Song of Solomon, a collection of short poems
(published in 1637), entitled, Musce Aulicce, and (his
greatest Avork, as it was that of Buchanan) a com-
plete version of the Psalms. He also edited and
contributed largely to the Delicice Poetarum Scotorum,
a collection of congratulatorj' poems by various
authors, which reflected great honour on the taste
and scholarship of the Scottish nation. Critics have
been divided as to the relative merits of Buchanan
and Johnston. We subjoin the opinions of a Scot-
tish and an English scholar : — ' If we look into Buch-
anan,' says Dr Beattie, ' what can we say, but that
the learned author, with great command of Latin
expression, has no true relish for the emphatic con-
ciseness and unadorned simplicity of the inspired
poets ? Arthur Johnston is not so verbose, and has,
of course, more vigour ; but his choice of a couplet,
which keeps the reader always in mind of the puerile
epistles of Ovid, was singularly injudicious. As
psalms may, in prose as easily as in verse, be adapted
to music, why should we seek to force those divine
strains into the measures of Roman or of modern
song ? He who transformed Livy into iambics, and
Virgil into monkish rhyme, did not, in my opinion,
act more absurdly. In fact, sentiments of devotion
are rather depressed than elevated by the arts of the
European versifier.'* The following is the testi-
mony of Mr Hallam : — ' The Scots certainly wrote
Latin with a good ear and considerable elegance of
phrase. A sort of critical controversy was carried
on in the last century as to the versions of the
Psalms by Buchanan and Johnston. Though the
national honoiir may seem equally secure by the
superiority of either, it has, I believe, been usual in
Scotland to maintain the older poet against all the
world. I am, nevertheless, inclined to think that
Johnston's Psalms, all of which are in elegiac metre,
do not fall short of those of Buchanan, either in ele-
gance of style or correctness of Latinity. In the
137th, with which Buchanan has taken much pains,
he may be allowed the preference, but not at a great
interval, and he has attained tliis superiority by too
much diffuseness.'
[TJie \Z7th PscUm, ly Bmhanan.']
Dum procul k patria moesti BabylonLs in oris,
Fluminis ad liquidas forte sedemus aquas ;
Ilia animuin subiit species miseranda Sionis,
Et nunquam j)atrii tecta videnda soli.
Flcvinius, et gcmitus luctantia verba repressit ;
Inque sinus liquidte dccidit iniber aqua;.
Muta super virides pendebant nablla ramos,
Et salices tacitivs sustinuere IjTas.
Ecce ferox dominus, Solymoe populator opimne,
Exigit in mediis carmina lata malis :
Qui patriam exilio nobis mutarit acerbo,
No8 jubct ad patrios verba rcfcrre modes,
* Beattie '« Dissertations, Moral and Critical.
Quale canebamus, steterat dum celsa Sionis
Regia, finitimis invidiosa locis.
Sicciiie divines Babylon irrideat hymnos ?
Audiat et sanctos terra profana modos ?
Solymse, 6 adyta, &; sacri penetralia tcmpli,
Ullane vos animo delcat hora nieo ?
Comprecor, ante mew capiant me oblivia dextrw,
Nee memor argutae sit mea dextra lyrre :
Os mihi destituat vox, are^cente palato,
Hasreat ad fauces aspera lingua meas :
Prima mihi vestry; nisi sint pi-fficonia laudis ;
Hinc nisi lastitiae surgat origo mcse.
At tu (quae nostne insultavit lata rajjinse)
Gentis Idumfese tu memor esto, pjiter.
Diripite, ex imis evertite fundamcntis,
^■Iquaque (clamahant) reddite tecta solo.
Tu quoque crudeles Babylon dabis iinpia poenas :
Et rerum instabiles experiere viee.s.
Felix qui nostris accedet cladibu* ultor
Reddet ad exemplum qui tibi dann.^i tuum.
Felix qui tenero consperget saxa cerebro,
Eripiens gromio pignora cara tuo.
The First of May.
[Translated, as is the subsequent piece, from the Latin
Buchanan, by the late Mr Robert Hogg.]
All hail to thee, thou First of May,
Sacred to wonted sport and play,
To wine, and jest, and dance, and song,
And mirth that lasts the whole day long !
Hail ! of the seasons honour bri;-'ht,
Annual return of sweet delight ;
Flower of reviving summer's reign,
That hastes to time's old age again !
^\'hen Spring's mild air at Nature's birth
First brcath'd upon the new-form'd earth ;
Or when the fabled age of gold,
Without fix'd law, spontaneous roll'd j
Such zephyrs, in continual gales,
Pass'd temperate along the vales,
And soften'd and refresh'd the soil,
Not broken yet by human toil ;
Such fruitful warmths peq^ctual rest
On the fair islands of the blest —
Those plains where fell disease's moan
And frail old age are both unknown.
Such winds with gentle whispers tprcad
Among the dwellings of the dead.
And shake the cypresses that grow
Where Lethe murmurs soft and slow.
Perhaps when God at last in ire
Shall purify the world with fire,
And to mankind restore again
Times happy, void of sin and pain.
The beings of this earth beneath,
Such pure ethereal air shall breathe.
Hail ! glory of the fleeting year !
Hail ! day the fairest, happiest here !
IMemorial of the time gone by,
And emblem of futurity !
On Ncwra.
My \vreck of mind, and all my woes.
And all my ills, that day arose.
When on the fair Nea>ra's eyes.
Like stars that shine,
At first, with hapless fond surprise,
I gazed with mine.
When my glance met her searching glance,
A shivering o'er my body burst,
As light leaves in the green woods dance
When western breezes stir them first ;
162
PRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN HETWOOD.
My heart forth from my breast to go,
And mix with her's already wanting,
Now beat, now trembled to and fro.
With eager fondness leaping, panting.
Just as a boy, whose nourice woos him.
Folding his young limbs in her bosom,
Heeds not caresses from another,
But turns his eyes still to his mother,
When she may once regard him watches,
And forth his little fond arms stretches.
Just as a bird within the nest
Thrft cannot fly, yet constant trying.
Its weak wings on its tender breast
Beats with the vain desire of flying.
Thou, wary mind, thyself preparing
To live at peace, from all ensnaring,
That thou might'st never mischief catch,
Plac'd'st you, unhappy eyes, to watch
With vigilance that knew no rest,
Beside the gateways of the breast.
But you, induc'd by dalliance deep,
Or guile, or overcome by sleep ;
Or else have of your own accord
Consented to betray your lord ;
Botb heart and soul then fled and left
Me spiritless, of mind bereft.
Then cease to weep ; use is there none
To think by veeping to atone ;
Since heart and spirit from me fled,
You move not by the tears you shed ;
But go to her, intreat, obtain ;
If you do not intreat, and gain,
Then will I ever make you gaze
Upon her, till in dark amaze
You sightless in your sockets roll,
Extinguish'd by her eyes' bright blaze,
As I have beer depriv'd of heart and soul.
DRAMATISTS.
Notwithstanding the greatness of the name of
Spenser, it is not in general versification that the
poetical strength of the age is found to be chiefly
manifested. Towards tlie latter part of the reign of
Elizabeth, the dramatic form of composition and re-
presentation, coinciding with that love of splendour,
chivalrous feeling, and romantic adventures, which
animated the court, rose with sudden and wonderful
brilliancy, and attractc;! nearly all the poetical genius
of England.
It would appear that, at the dawn of modern civi-
lisation, most countries of Christian Europe pos-
sessed a rude kind of theatrical entertainment, con-
sisting, not in those exhibitions of natural character
and incident which constituted thoTjlays of ancient
Greece and Rome, but in representations of the prin-
cipal supernatural events of the Old and New Testa-
ments, and of the history of the saints, whence they
were denominated Miracles, or Miracle Plays. Ori-
ginally, they appear to liave been acted by, and under
the immediate management of, the clergy, who are
understood to have deemed them favourable to the
diffusion of religious feeling ; though, from the traces
of them which remain, they seem to have been pro-
fane and indecorous in the highest degree. A
miracle play, upon the story of St Katherine, and
in the French language, was acted at Dunstable in
1119, and how long such entertainments may have
previously existed in England is not known. From
the year 1268 to 1577, they were performed almost
every year in Chester ; and there were few large
cities which were not then regaled in a similar man-
ner ; even in Scotland they were not unknown. The |
most sacred persons, not excluding the Deity, were
introduced into them.
About the reign of Henry VL, persons represent-
ing sentiments and abstract ideas, such as Mercy,
Justice, Truth, began to be introduced into the
miracle plays, and led to tlie composition of an im-
proved kind of dranui, entirely or cliicfly composed
of such, characters, and termed Mural Plays. These
were certainly a great advance upon the miracles,
in as far as tliey endeavoured to convey sound moral
lessons, and at the same time gave occasion to some
poetical and dramatic ingenuity, in imaging forth
the characters, and assigning appropriate speeches
to each. The oidy scriptural character retained
in them was the devil, who, being represented in
grotesque habiliments, and perpetually beaten bv
an attendant character, called tlie Vice, served to
enliven wliat must have been at the best a sober,
though well-meant entertainment. T!ie Cradle of
Security, Hit the Xail on the Head. Impatient Poverty,
and tlie Marria(je of Wisdom and Wit, are the names
of moral jilays which enjoyed popularity in the reign
of Henry VIII. It was about tliat tinie that acting
first became a distinct profession ; both miracles
and moral plays had previously been represented
by clergymen, schoolboys, or the members of trad-
ing incorporations, and were only brought forward
occasionally, as part of some public or private fes-
tivity.
As the introduction of allegorical characters had
been an improvement upon those plays whicli con-
sisted of scriptural persons only, so was the intro-
duction of historical and actual cliaracters an im-
provement upon those which employed only a set of
impersonated ideas. It was soon found that a real
human being, with a human name, was better cal-
culated to awaken the sympathies, and keep alive
the attention of an audience, and not less so to im-
press them with moral truths, than a being who
only represented a notion of the mind. Tlie substi-
tution of these for the sj-mbolical characters, gra-
dually took place during the earlier part of the six-
teenth century ; and thus, with some aid from Greek
dramatic literature, which now began to be studied,
and from the improved theatres of Italy and Spain,
the genuine English drama took its rise.
As specimens of something between the moral
plays and the modern drama, the Interludes of John
Heywood may be mentioned. Heywood was sup-
ported at tlie court of Henry Vill. partly as a
musician, partly as a professed wit. and partly as a
writer of plaj-s. His dramatic compositions," part
of which were produced before 1521, generallv re-
presented some ludicrous familiar incident, "in a
style of the broadest and coarsest farce, but yet
with no small skill and talent. One, called the
Four P:s, turns upon a dispute between a Palmer,
a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar (who are tlie
only characters), as to which shall tell the grossest
fiilsehood: an accidental assertion of the Palmer,
that he never saw a woman out of patience in his
life, takes the rest off tlieir guard, all of whom de-
clare it to be the greatest lie they ever heard, and
tlie settlement of the question is thus brouglit about
aniidst much drollery. One of Ileywood's cliief
objects seems to have been to satirise" the manners
of the clerg}-, and aid in the cause of tlie Reformers.
There were some less distinguished writers of in-
terludes, and Sir David Lyndsay"s Satire of the
Three Estates, acted in Scotland' in 153'J, was a
play of this kind.
The regular drama, from its very commencement,
was divided into comedy and tragedy, the elements
of both being found quite distinct in tlie rude enter-
tainments above described, not to speak of the pre-
16o
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
^
cedents afforded by Greece and Rome. Of comedy,
which was an improvement upon the interludes, and
may be more remotely traced in the ludicrous parts
of "the moral jilays, the earliest specimen that can
now be found bears the uncouth title of Ralph
Hoyster Doyster, nvi was the i)roduction of Nicolas
Ui>ALL, master of Westminster school. It is sup-
posed to have been -written in the reign of Henry
VIIL, but certainly not later than 1551. The scene
is in London, and the characters, thirteen in num-
ber, exhibit the manners of the middle orders of the
people of that day. It is divided into five acts, and
the plot is amusing and well constructed. Mr J.
Payne Collier, who 1ms devoted years of anxious
study to the liistory and illustration of dramatic
literature, has discovered four acts of a comedy,
whicli he assigns to the jear 1560. This play is
entitled Mesoi/onus, and bears to be ■written by
' Thomas Kycliardes.' The scene is laid in Italy,
but the manners are English, and tlie character of
the domestic fool, so important in the old comedy,
is fully delineated. The next in point of time is
Gammer Gurtuii's Needle, supposed to have been
written about 1565 (or still earlier) by John Still,
Master of Arts, and afterwards bisliop of Bath and
Wells. This is a piece of low rustic humour, tlie
■whole turning npon the loss and recovery of the
needle with -which Gammer Gurton was mending a
piece of attire belonging to her man Hodge. But
it is cleverly hit off, and contains a few ■well-sketched
characters.
The language of Ralph Royster Doyster, and of
Gammer Gurton's Xeedle, is in long and irregularly
measured rhyme, of which a specimen may be given
from a speech of Dame Custance in the former jilay.
respecting the difficulty of preserving a good repu-
tation : —
How necessarj' it is now a-days,
That each body live uprightly in all manner waj's ;
For let never so little a gap be open,
And be sure of this, the worst will be spoken !
Tragedy, of later origin than comedy, came di-
rectly from the more elevated portions of the moral
plays, and from the pure models of Greece ai
Rome. The earliest known specimen of this kin .
of composition is the Trayedij of Ferrex and Porrcr.
composed by Thomas Sm-kville, afterwards Earl of
Dorset, and by Thomas Norton, and played before
Queen Elizabeth at Wliitehall, by the members (;f
the Inner Temjilo, in January 1561. It is founded
on a fabulous incident in early British history, and
is full of slaughter and civil broils. It is written,
however, in regular blank verse, consists of five acts,
and observes some of the more useful rules of the
classic drama of antiiiuity, to which it bears resem-
blance in the introduction of a chorus — that is, a
group of persons whose sole business it is to inter-
sperse the play with moral observations and infe-
rences, expressed in lyrical stanzas. It may occasion
some surprise, that tlie first English tragedy should
contain lines like the following : —
Acastim. Your grace should now, in these grave
years of yours,
Have found ere this the price of mortal joys ;
How short they be, how fading here in earth ;
How full of change, how little our estate
Of nothing sure save only of the death,
To whom V)0th man and all the world doth owe
Their end at last : neither should nature's power
In other sort against your heart prevail,
Than as the naked hand whose stroke assays
The anned breast where force doth light in vain.
Oorboduc Many can yield right sage and grave
*'lTice
Of patient sprite to others wrappVl in woe.
And can in speech both rule and conquer kind,
V.'ho, if by proof they might feel nature's force,
Would sho-iv themselves men as they are indeed,
Which now will needs be gods.
Not long after the appearance of Ferrex and
Porrex, both tragedies and comedies had become not
unconmion. Damon and Pythias, the first English
tragedy upon a classical subject, was acted before
the queen at Oxford, in 1566 ; it was tiie composition
of Richard Edwards, a learned member of the uni-
versit}', but was inferior to Ferrex and Porrex, in as
far as it carried an admixture of vulgar comedy, and
was written in rln-me. In the same year, two ])lays
respectively styled the Supposes and Jocasia, the one
a comedy adapted from Ariosto, the other a tra-
gedy from Euripides, were acted in Gray's Inn Hall.
Graj-'s Inn Hall.
A traged}', called Tancred and Gismunda, composed
by five members of the Inner Temjile, and presented
there before the queen in 1568, was the first Eng-
lish play taken from an Italian novel. Various
dramatic pieces now followed, and between the years
1568 and 1580, no less than fifty-two dramas were
acted at court under the superintendence of the
Master of the Revels. Under the date of 1578. ■we
have the play o{ Piomos and Cassandra, by Gkorge
Whktsoxk, on which Shakspeare founded his
Measure for Measure. Historical plaj'S were also
produced, and the Troublesome Peign of King John,
the Famous Victories of Henry V., and the Chronicle
Histonj of Leir, King of England, formed the quarry
from which Shakspeare constructed his dramas on
the same events. The first regularly licensed theatre
in London was opened at Blackfriars in 1576 : and in
ten years, it is mentioned by Secretary Walsingham,
that there were two hundred jilayers in and near
the metropolis. This was probably an exaggeration,
but it is certain there were five public theatres open
1 CI
DRAMATISTS.
EXGLISII LITERATURE.
DRAMATISTS.
about tliii c'ummencement of Shakspeare's career, and
several private or select establish[nents. Curiosity
is naturally excited to learn something of the struc-
ture and ajipearance of the buildings in wliich his
immortal dramas first saw the light, and where he
unwillingly made himself a ' motley to the view,' in
his character of actor. The theatres were constructed
Globe Theatra.
of wood, of a, circular form, open to the weather,
excepting over the stage, which was covered with a
thatched roof. Outside, on the roof, a flag was
lioisted during the time of performance, whicli com-
menced at three o'clock, at the third sounding or
flourish of trumpets. The cavaliers and fair dames
of the court of Elizabeth sat in boxes below the
gallery, or were accommodated with stools on tlie
stage, where some of the young gallants also threw
themselves at length on the rush-strewn floor, while
their pages handed them pipes and tobacco, then a
fashionable and highlj--prized luxury. The middle
classes were crowded in the pit, or yard, which was
not furnished with seats. Sloveable scenery was
first introduced by Davenant, after the Restoration,*
but rude imitations of towers, woods, animals, or
furniture, served to illustrate the scene. To point
out the place of afction, a board containing the name,
painted or ■\vTitten in large letters, was hung out
during the performance. Anciently, an allegorical
exhibition, called the Dumb Show, was exhibited
before every act, and gave an outline of the action
or circumstances to follow. Shakspeare has pre-
served this peculiarity in the play acted before the
king and queen in Hamlet ; but he never employs it
in his own dramas. Such machinery, indeed, would
be incompatible with the increased action and busi-
ness of the stage, when the miracle plays had given
place to the ' pomp and circumstance' of historical
dramas, and the bustling liveliness of comedy. The
chorus was longer retained, and appears in ilarlow's
Faustus, and in Henry ^T. Actresses were not seen
on the stage till after the Restoration, and the
female parts were played by boys, or delicate-looking
young men. This may perhaps palliate the gross-
* ' The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome cwst
The martlet, guest of summer, chfise her nest —
Tlie forest-walks of Arden's fair domain,
W'liere Jaques fed his solitary vein ;
No pencil's aid as yet Iiad dar'd supply.
Seen only by th' intellectual eye.' — C. Lamb.
ncss of some of the language put into the mouths of
females in the old phiys. while it serves to point out
still more clearly llie depth of that innate sense of
beauty and excellence which prompted the exquisite
pictures of loveliness and perfection in Shakspeare's
female characters. At the end of each performance,
the clown, or butfoon actor of the company, recited
or sung a rliyming medley called a jig, in which he
often contrived to introduce satirical allusions to
public men or events ; and before dismissing the
audience, the actors knelt in front of the stage, and
offered up a prayer for the queen ! Reviewing these
rude arrangements of the old theatres, ;Mr Dyce
happily remarks — 'What a contrast between "tlie
almost total want of scenery in those days, and the
sj)lendid representations of external nature in our
modern playhouses ! Yet perliaps the decline of the
drama may in a great measure be attributed to this
improvement. The attention of an audience is now
directed rather to the efforts of the painter than to
those of the actor, who is lost amid the marvellous
effects of light and shade on our gigantic stages.'*
The only information we possess as to the pay-
ment of dramatic authors at this time, is contained
in the memoranda of Philip Ilenslowe, a theatrical
manager, preserved in Dulwich college, and quoted
by Malone and Collier. Before the year 1600, the
[)rice paid by Henslowe for a new jila^' never ex-
ceeded £8 ; but after this date, perhaps in conse-
quence of the exertions of rival companies, larger
sums were given, and prices of £20 and £25 are
mentioned. The proceeds of the second day's per-
formance were afterwards added to the author's
emoluments. Furnishing prologues for new plays,
the prices of which varied from five to twenty shil-
lings, was another source of gain ; but the proverbial
poverty of pfiets seems to have been exemplified in
the old dramatists, even when they were actors as
well as authors. The shareholders of the theatre
derived considerable profits from the performances,
and were occasionally paid for exliibit ions in the houses
of the nobilitv. In 1602, a sum often pounds was
given to ' Burbidgc's players' for performing Othello
before Queen Elizabeth, at Harefield, the seat of Sir
Thomas Egerton. Xearly all the dramatic authors
preceding and contemporarj' with Sliakspeare were
men who had received a learned education at the
university of Oxford or Cambridge. A profusion
of classical imagery abounds in their plays, but they
did not copy tlie severe and correct taste of the
ancient models. They wrote to suppl}' the popular
demand for novelty and excitement — for broad farce
or superlative tragedy — to introduce the coarse
raillerj- or comic incidents of low life — to dramatise
a murder, or embody the vulgar idea of oriental
bloodshed and splendid extravagance. ' If we seek
for a poetical image,' says a writer on our drama,
' a burst of passion, a beautiful sentiment, a trait of
nature, we seek not in vai.i in the works of our very
oldest dramatists. But none of the predecessors of
Sl.akspoare must be thought of along with liim,
when he appears before us like Prometheus, moulding
the figures of men, and breatViing into them the
animation and all the passions of life.'f Among the
immediate predecessors of the great poet are some
worthy of separate notice. A host of plai/irrlg/ils
abounded, and nearly all of them have touches of
that hap])y poetic diction, free, yet choice and select,
which gives a permanent value and interest to these
elder masters of English poetry-.
* Jfemoir of Shakspeiire — Aldine Poets.
+ Hl;u?kwood's M;igazine, vol. iL, from Essays on the Old
I»rama, said to have been contributed by Henry JIackenzie,
author of the ' Man of Feeling.'
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
JOHN LTLY.
JoHit Ltly, born in Kent in 1 554, produced nine
plays between the years 1579 and 1600. They
were mostly -written for court entertainments, and
performed by the scholars of St Paul's. He was edu-
cated at Oxford, and many of his plays are on my-
thological subjects, as Sappho and Phaon, Endi/mion,
the ^faid's Metamorphosis, &c. His style is affected
and unnatural, yet, like his own Niobe, in the Me-
tamorphosis, ' oftentimes he had sweet thoughts,
sometimes hard conceits ; betwixt both a kind of
yielding.' By his Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit,
Lyly exercised a powerful though injurious influ-
ence on the ftishionable literature of his day, in prose
composition as well as in discourse. His plays were
not important enough to found a school. Hazlitt
was a warm admirer of Lyly's End3'mion, but evi-
dently from the feelings and sentiments it awakened,
rather than the poetry. ' I know few things more
perfect in characteristic painting,' he remarks,
•than the exclamation of the Phrygian shepherds,
vrho, afraid of betraying the secret of jNIidas's ears,
fancy that " the very reeds bow down, as though
they listened to their talk ;" nor more affecting in
sentiment, than the apostrophe addressed by his
friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from his
long sleep, " Behold the twig to which thou laidest
down tliy head is now become a tree." ' 'J'here are
finer things in the Metamorphosis, as where tlie
prince laments Eurj'mene lost iu the woods —
Adorned with the presence of my love,
The woods 1 fear such secret power shall prove,
As they'll shut up each path, hide every way,
Because they still would have her go astray,
And in that place would always have her .seen,
Only because they would be ever green,
And keep the winged choristers still there,
To banish winter clean out of the year.
Or the song of the fiiiries —
By the moon we sport and play,
"With the night begins our day :
As we dance the dew doth fall.
Trip it, little urchins all.
Lightly as the little bee.
Two by two, and three by three.
And about go we, and about go we.
The genius of Lj'ly was essentially lyrical. The
songs in his plays seem to flow freely from nature.
The following exquisite little pieces are in his drama
o{ Alexander and Carnpasj^e, written about 1583 : —
Cupid and Campaspe.
Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses ; Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sjjarruws ;
Loses them too, and down he throws
The coral of his lip — the rose
Growing on's cheek, but none knows how ;
With these the crystal on his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin ;
All these did my C'anipaspe win :
At last he set her both his eyes ;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
Oh Love, hath she done this to thee I
What shall, alas, becoriie of me !
Scmg
What bird so sings, yet so does wail !
O 'tis the ravish'd nightingale —
Jug, jug, jug, jug — tereu — she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick -song ! who is't now we hear ?
None but the lark so shrill and clear.
Now at heaven's gate slie claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, havk ! but what a pretty note,
Poor i{obin red-breast tunes his throat;
Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing
' Cuckoo !' to welcome in th-i spring.
GEORGE PEEI.E.
George Peele lield the situation of city poet and
conductor of pageants for the court. He was also
an actor and a shareholder with Shakspeare and
others, in 1589, in the Blackfriars theatre. In 1584,
his Arraignment of Paris, a court show, was repre-
sented before Elizabeth. The author was then a
young man, who had recently left Christ-church,
Oxford. In 1593, Peele gave an example of an Eng-
lish historical play in his Edward I. The style of
this piece is turgid and monotonous ; j-et, in the fol-
lowing allusion to England, we see something of the
high-sounding kingly speeches in Shaksj^eare's his-
torical plays : — •
Illustrious England, ancient scat of kings,
Whose chivalry hath royalis'd thy fame,
That, sounding bravely through terrestrial vale,
Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories,
Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world 1
What warlike nation, train'd in feats of arms,
What barbarous people, stubborn, or untam'd,
What climate under the meridian signs,
Or frozen zone under his brumal stage,
Erst have not quak'd and trembled at the name
Of Britain and her mighty conquerors ?
Her neighbour realms, as Scotland, Denmark, France,
Awed with their deeds, and jealous of her arms,
Have begg'd defensive and offensive leagues.
Thus Europe, rich and mighty in her kings.
Hath fear'd brave England, dreadful in her kings.
And now, to eternise Albion's champions.
Equivalent with Trojan's ancient fame.
Comes lovely Edward from Jerusalem,
Veering before the wind, ploughing the sea ;
His stretched sails fiU'd with the breath of men,
That through the world admire his manliness.
And lo, at last arrived in Dover road,
Longshank, your king, your glorj', and our son,
With troops of conquering lords and warlike knights,
Like blood^'-crested ^lars, o'erlooks his host,
Higher than all his army by the head.
Marching along as bright as Phoebus' eyes !
And we, his mother, shall behold our son,
And England's peers shall see their sovereign.
Peele was also author of the OhI Wires' Talc, a legen-
dary story, part in prose, and part in blank verse,
which afforded Milton a rude outline of his fable of
Comus. The Old Wives' Tale was printed in 1595,
as acted by ' the Queen's Majesty's Players.' Tlie
greatest work of Peele is his Scripture drama, tlie
Love of King Dai'id and Fair liethxahc, with the
tragedy oi Absalom, which Mr Cain])bcll terms 'the
earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be
traced in our dramatic jwetry.' The date of represen-
tation of this drama is not known ; it was not printed
till 15.99, after Shakspc.ire had written sonic of his
finest comedies, and opened up a fountain comjiared
with which the feeble tricklings of Peele were wholly
insignificant. It is not probable that Peele's play was
written before 1590, as one passage in it is a direct
plagiarism from the Faery Queen of Spenser. We
may allow I'eele the merit of a delicate poetical
fancy and smooth musical versification. The defect
of his blank verse is its want of variety : the art of
166
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS KYD.
varying the pauses and modulating the verse with-
out the aid of rhyme had not yet been generally
adopted. In David and Bethsabe this monotony is
less observable, because his lines are smoother, and
there is a play of rich and luxurious fancy in some
of the scenes.
Prologtie to King David and Fair Bethsabe.
Of Israel's sweetest singer now I sing,
His holy style and happy victories ;
Whose muse was dipt in that inspiring dew,
Archangels 'stilled from the breath of Jove,
Decking her temples with the glorious flowers
Heaven rain'd on tops of Sion and Mount Sinai.
Upon the bosom of his ivory lute
The cherubim and angels laid tlieir breasts ;
And when his consecrated fingers struck
The golden wires of his ravishing harp,
He gave alarum to the host of heaven,
That, wing'dwith lightning, brake the clouds, and cast
Their crj'stal armour at his conquering feet.
Of this sweet poet, Jove's musician,
And of his beauteous son, I press to sing ;
Then help, divine Adonai, to conduct
Upon the wings of my well-temper'd verse.
The hearers' minds above the towers of heaven.
And guide them so iu this thrice haughty flight,
Their mounting feathers scorch not with the fire
That none can temper but thy holy hand :
To thee for succour flies my feeble muse.
And at thy feet her iron pen doth use,
Bethsabe and her maid bathing. King David above.
The Song.
Hot sun, cool fire, temper'd with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair :
Shine sun, bum fire, breathe air and ease me,
Black shade, fair nurse, sliroud me and please mo ;
Shadow (my sweet nurse) keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause, cause of mourning.
Let not my beauty's fire
Inflame unstaid desire,
*^or pierce any bright eye
That wandereth lightl}'.
Bethsabe. Come, gentle zephyr, trick'd with those
perfumes
That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love,
And stroke my bosom with the silken fan :
This shade (sun proof) is yet no proof for thee ;
Thy body, smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer tlian the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances^ cannot pierce.
Thou and thy sister, soft and sacred air.
Goddess of life and governess of health.
Keeps every fountain fresh and arbour sweet ;
No brazen gate her passage can repulse,
Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath.
Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes.
And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes.
To play the wantons with us through the leaves.
Daiid. What tunes, what words, what looks, what
wonders pierce
My soul, incensed with a sudden fire !
What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise,
Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame !
Fair Eva, plac'd in perfect happiness,
Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens,
Struck with the accents of archangels' tunes,
Wrought not more pleasure to her Imsband's thoughts
Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.
May tliat sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight.
Be still enamell'd with dlscolour'd flowers ;
1 The sun's rays.
That precious fount bear sand of purest gold ;
And for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce eartli's bowels to maintain the source.
Play upon rubles, sapphires, crysolltes ;
The brim let be embrac'd with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse ;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower,
Bear mannti every morn, instead of dew ;
Or let tlie dew be sweeter far than that
That hangs like chains of pearl on Ilermon hill.
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.
Enter Cusay.
See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel,
The fairest daughter that obeys the king.
In all the land the Lord subdued to me,
Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well.
Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,
Sv/eeter than flames of fine perfumed myiTh ;
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On zephyr's wings before the King of Heaven.
Cusay. Is it not Betlisabe the Hethite's wife,
Urias, now at Rabath siege witli Joab ?
David. Go now and bring her quickly to the king ;
Tell her, her graces hath found grace with liim.
Cusay. I will, my lord. [Exit.
David. Bright Bethsabe shall wash in David's
bower
In water mixed with purest almond flower,
And bathe her beauty in the milk of kids ;
Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure flowers.
To flowers sweet odours, an 1 to odours wings.
That carries pleasures to the hearts of kings.
* * *
Now comes my lover tripping like the roe.
And brings my longings tangled in her hair .
To 'joy her love I'll build a kingly bower.
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams,
That, for their homage to her sovereign joys.
Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests.
In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves
About the circles of her curious walks.
And with their murmur summon easeful sleep.
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.
Mr Lamb says justly, that the line ' seated in hearing
of a hundred streams' is the best in the above pas-
sage. It is indeed a noble poetical image. Peele
died >"jfore 1599, and seems, like most of his dra-
matic orethren, to have led an irregular life, in the
midst of severe poverty. A volume of Mern/ Cim-
ccited Jests, said to have been by lum, was published
after his death in 1607, which shows tliat lie was
not scrupulous as to the means of relieving his
necessities.
THOMAS KYD. ,
In 1588, Thomas Kyd produced his play of Iliero-
nimo or Jeronimo, and some years afterwards a second
part to it, under the title of tlie Spanish Trayedy, or
Hieronimo is Mad Again. This second part is sup-
posed to liave gone tlirough more editions than any
play of tlie time. Ben Jonson was afterwards en-
gaged to make additions to it, wlien it was revived
in 1601, and further .additions in 1602. Tliese new
scenes are said by Lamb to be ' the very salt of the
old play,' and so superior to Jonson's acknowledged
works, tliat lie attributes them to Webster, or some
' more potent spirit' than Ben. This seems refining
too mueli in criticism. Kyd, like Marlow, often
verges ujwn bombast, and ' deals largely in blood
and death.'
167
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
THOJIAS NASH.
Thomas Nash, a lively satirist, who amused the
town with his attacks on Gabriel Harvey and the
I^uritans, wrote a comedy called Summer's Last Will
and Testament, which was exhibited before Queen
Elizabeth in l.iOS. He was also concerned with
Marlow in writing the tragedy of Dido, Queen of
Carthage. He was imprisoned for being the author
of a satirical play, never printed, called" the Isle of
Dogs. Another piece of Nasli's, entitled the Suppli-
cation of Pierce Penniless to the Devil, was printed in
1592, whicli was followed next year by Christ's Tears
over Jerusalem. Nash was a native of LeostoH', in
Suffolk, and was born about the year 1564 ; he was
of St John's college, Cambridge, He died about
the year 1 600, after a ' life spent,' he says, ' in
fantastical satirism, in whose veins heretofore I
mispent my spirit, and prodigally conspired against
good hours.' He was the Churchill of his day, and
was much famed for his satires. One of his con-
temporaries remarks of him, in a happy couplet —
His style was witty, though he had some gall,
Something he might have mended, so may all.
Return from Parnasnis.
Tlie Tersification of Nash is hard and monotonous.
The following is from his comedy of ' Summer's Last
"Will and Testament,' and is a favourable specimen
of his blank verse : great part of the play is in
prose : —
I never lov'd ambitiously to climb,
Or thrust my hand too far into the fire.
To be in heaven sure is a blessed thing.
But, Atlas-like, to prop heaven on one's back
Cannot but be more labour than delight.
Such is the state uf men in honour placed :
They are gold vessels made for servile uses ;
High trees that keep the weather from low houses,
But cannot shield the tempest from themselves.
I love to dwell betwixt the hills and dales,
Neither to be so great as to be envied,
Nor yet so poor the world should pity me.
In his poem of Pierce Penniless, Nash draws a har-
rowing picture of the despair of a poor scholar —
Ah, worthless wit ! to train me to this woe :
Deceitful arts that nourish discontent :
111 thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so !
Vain thoughts adieu ! for now I will repent —
And yet my wants persuade me to proceed.
For none take pity of a scholar's need.
Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth.
And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch,
Since miser}' hath daunted all my mirth,
And I am quite undone through promise breach ;
Ah, friends ! — no friends that then ungentle fro\Mi
When changing fortune casts us headlong down.
ROBERT GREENE.
Robert Greene, a more distinguished dramatist,
is conjectured to liave been a native of Norfolk, as
he adds ' Norfolcicnsis' to his name, in one of his pro-
ductions. He was educated at Clare-Hall, Cam-
bridge, and in 1583 appeared as an author. He is
supposed to have been in orders, and to have held the
vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex, as, in 1585, Robert
Greene, the vicar, lost his preferment. The plaj-s of
Greene are the History of Orlando, Friar Baron and
Friar Bungay, Alphonsus, King of Arrugon, Georue-a-
Green, the Pinner of Wukejield, James IV., and the
Looking-glass for London and England: the latter was
written in conjunction with Lodge. Greene died
in Septen)ber 1592, owing, it is said, to a surfeit of
red herrings and Khenish wine! Besides ids plays,
he wrote a number of tracts, one of which, Pandosto,
the Triumph of Time, 1588, was the source from
whicli Shakspeare derived the plot of his Winter's
Tale. Some lines contained in this tale are very
beautiful : —
Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair,
Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes gi-eater than my despair —
Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe.
Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand,
That seems to melt e'en with the mildest touch.
Then knew 1 where to seat me in a land
Under the wide heavens, but yet not such.
So as she shows, she seems the budding rose.
Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower ;
Sovereign of i)eauty, like the spray she grows,
Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd flower ;
Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn.
She would he gathered though she grew on thorn.
The blank verse of Greene approaches next to that
of Marlow, though less energetic. His imagination
was lively and discursive, fond of legendary lore, and
filled •with classical images and illustrations. In his
Orlando, he thus apostrophises the evening star : —
Fair queen of love, thou mistress of delight,
Thou gladsome lamp that wait'st on Phoebe's train,
Spreading thy kindness through the jarring orbs.
That in their union praise thy lasting powers ;
Thou that hast stay'd the fiery Phlegon's course,
And mad'st the coachman of the glorious wain
To droop in view of Daphne's excellence :
Fair pride of morn, sweet beauty of the even,
Look on Orlando languishing in love.
Sweet solitary groves, whereas the nymphs
With pleasance laugh to see the satyrs play.
Witness Orlando's faith unto his love.
Tread she these la\^Tis ? — kind Flora, boast thy pride •
Seek she for shades ? — spread, cedars, for her sake.
Fair Flora, make her couch amidst thy flowers.
Sweet crystal springs,
Wash j'e with roses when she longs to drink.
All thought, my heaven ! Ah heaven, that knows my
thought !
Smile, joy in her that my content hath wrought.
Passages like this prove that Greene succeeds well,
as Hallani remarks, ' in that florid and gay style, a
little redundant in images, which Shakspeare fre-
quently gives to his princes and courtiers, and wb.ich
renders some uninipassioned scenes in the historic
plays effective and brilliant.' Professor Tieck gives
him the high praise of possessing ' a happy talent, a
clear spirit, and a lively imagination.' His comedies
have a good deal of boisterous merriment and farcical
humour. George-a-Green is a shrewd Y'orkshire-
nian, who meets with the kings of Scotland and
England, Robin Hood, ]\Iaid Marian, &e., and who,
after various tricks, receives the pardon of King
Edward —
George-a-Green, give me thy hand : there is
None in l^ngland that shall do thee wrong.
Even from my court I came to see thyself.
And now I see that fame speaks nought but truth.
The following is a specimen of the simple humour
and pt4,c(Ical jokes in the play : it is in a scene be-
tween George and his servant : —
Jenhin. This fellow comes to me,
And takes me by the bosom : you slave.
Said he, hold my liorse, and look
He takes no cold in his feet.
168
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBERT GREENE.
No, marry, shall he, sir, quoth I ;
I'll lay my cloak underneath him.
I took my cloak, spread it all along,
And his horse on the midst of it.
George. Thou clowu, did'st thou set his horse upon
thy cloak ?
JenHn. Ay, but mark how I served him.
Madge and he were no sooner gone down into the
ditch.
But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my
cloak.
And made his horse stand on the bare ground.
' Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay' is Greene's best
comedy. His friars are conjurors, and the piece con-
cludes with one of their pupils being carried off to
hell on the back of one of Friar Bacon's devils. Mr
Collier thinks this was one of the latest instances of
the devil being brought upon the stage in propria
persona. The play was acted in 1591, but may have
been produced a year or two earlier.
In some hour of repentance, when death was nigh
at ha\jd, Greene wrote a tract called A Groafs Worth
of Wit, Bought u-itha Million of Bepentance. in which
he deplores his fate more feelingly than Xash, and
also gives ghostly advice to his acquaintances, ' that
spend their wit in making plays.' Marlow he
accuses of atheism : Lodge he designates ' young
Juvenal,' and ' a sweet boy ;' Peele he considers too
good for the stage ; and he glances thus at Shaks-
peare : — ' For there is an upstart crow beautified
■with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt
in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bom-
bast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and being
an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own
conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country.' The
punning allusion to Shakspeare is palpable : the
^expressions, ' tiger's heart,' &c. are a parody on the
line in Henry VI., part third —
tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.
The Winter's Tale is believed to be one of Shaks-
peare's late dramas, not written till long after
Greene's death ; consequently, if tliis be correct, the
unhappy man could not allude to the plagiarism of
the plot from his tale of Pandosto. Some forgotten
play of Greene and his friends may have been al-
luded to ; perhaps the old dramas on which Shaks-
peare constructed his Henry YL, for in one of these,
the line, ' tiger's heart,' &c., also occurs. These
old plays, however, seem above the pitch of Greene
in tragedy. The ' Groat's Worth of Wit' was pub-
lished after Greene's death by a brother dramatist,
Henry Chettle, who, in the preface to a subsequent
work, apologised indirectly for the allusion to Shaks-
peare. ' I am as sorry,' he says, ' as if the original
fault had been my fault, because myself have seen
his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the
qualit}' he professes. Besides, divers of worship have
reported his upriglitness of dealing, which argues his
honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that ap-
proves his art.' This is a valuable statement : full
justice is done to Shakspeare's moral wortli and civil
deportment, and to his respectability as an actor and
author. Chettle's apology or explanation was made
in 1593.
The conclusion of Greene's ' Groat's Worth of Wit'
contains more pathos than all his plays : it is a har-
rowing picture of genius debased by vice, and sor-
rowing in repentance : —
' But now return I again to you three (Marlow,
Lodge, and Peele), knowing my misery is to you no
news : and let me heartily intreat 3'ou to be warned
by my harms. Delight not, as I have done, in irre-
ligious oaths, despise drunkenness, fly lust, abhor those
epicures, whose loose life hath made religion loathsome
to your ears ; and when they soothe you with terms of
mastership, remember Robert Greene (whom they have
often llattercd) perishes for want cf comfort. Re-
member, gentlemen, your lives are like so man}' light-
tapers that are with care delivered to all of you to
maintain ; these, with wind-pufFed «Tath, may be ex-
tinguished, with drunkenness put out, with negligence
let fall. The fire of my light is now at the last snuff.
yiy hand is tired, and I forced to leave where I would
begin ; desirous that you should live, though himself
be dying. — Robert Greene.'
Content — A Sonnet.
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content :
The quiet mind is riclier than a crown :
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent :
The poor estate sconis Fortune's angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care.
The mean, that 'grees with country music best,
Tlie sweet consort of mirth's and music's fare.
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss ;
A mind content both cro^vn and kinirdom is.
[Sejihcsfia's Song to her Child,
After escaping from Sliip^Tcck.]
Mother's wag, pretty boy.
Father's sorrow, father's joy.
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe.
Fortune changed made him so ;
When he had left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.
Weep not my wanton, smile upon my knee ;
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.
The wanton smiled, father wept,
Mother cried, baby leap'd ;
More he crow'd, more he cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide ;
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bless ;
For he left his pretty boy.
Father's sorrow, father's joy.
Weep not my wanton, smile upon mv knee ;
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.
I7ie Shepherd and his Wife.
It was near a thicky shade,
That broad leaves of beech had made,
Joining all their tops so nigh.
That scarce Phcebus in could pry ;
Where sat the swaii. and his wife,
Sporting in that pleasing life.
That Coridon commendeth so.
All other lives to over-go.
He and she did sit and keep
Flocks of kids and flocks of sheep :
He upon his pipe did plav.
She tuned voice unto his lay.
And, for you might her housewife know.
Voice did sing and fingers sew.
He was young, his coat was green,
With welts of white seamed between.
Turned over with a flap.
That breast and bosom in did wrap,
Skirts side and jjliglited free,
Seemly hanging to his knee,
169
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
A whittle with a silver chape ;
Cloak was russet, and the cape
Served for a bonnet oft,
To shroud him from the wet aloft :
A leather scrip of colour red,
With a button on the head ;
A bottle full of country whig,
By the shepherd's side did lig ;
And in a little bush hard by.
There the shepherd's dog did lie.
Who, while his master 'gan to sleep,
Well could watch both kids and sheep.
The shepherd was a frolic swain.
For, though his 'parel was but plain,
Yet doon' the authors soothly say.
His colour was both fresh and gay ;
And in their writs plain discuss,
Fairer was not Tityrus,
Nor RIenalcas, whom they call
The alderleefest swain of all !
Seeming him was his wife,
Both in line and in life.
Fair she was, as fair might be,
Like the roses on the tree ;
Buxom, blithe, and young, I ween,
Beauteous, like a summer's queen ;
For her cheeks were ruddy hued,
As if lilies were imbrued
With drops of blood, to make the white
Please the eye with more delight.
Love did lie within her eyes,
In ambush for some wanton prize ;
A leefer lass than this had been,
Coridon had never seen.
Nor was Phillis, that fair may,
Half so gaudy or so gay.
She wore a chaplet on her head ;
Her cassock was of scarlet red,
Long and large, as straight as bent ;
Her middle was both small and gent.
A neck as white as whales' bone,
Compast with a lace of stone ;
Fine she was, and fair she was,
Brighter than the brightest glass ;
Such a shepherd's vrife as she.
Was not more in Thessaly.
[Philador, seeing this couple sitting thus lovingly, noted the
concord of country amity, and began to conjecture with liini-
sclf , what a sweet kind of life those men use, who were by their
birth too low for dignity, and by their fortunes too simple for
envy . well, he thought to fall in prattle with them, had not
the shepherd taken his pipe in hand, and began to play, and
his wife to sing out, this roundelay : — ]
Ah ! what is love ! It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king,
And sweeter too :
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown.
And cares can make the sweetest cares to frown :
Ah then, ah tlien,
If country loves such sweet desires gain.
What lady would not love a shepherd swain 1
Ilis flocks are folded ; he comes home at night
As merry as a king in his delight.
And men'ier too :
For kings bethink them what the state require,
Where shepherds, careless, carol by the lire :
Ah then, ah then.
If country loves such sweet desires gain,
Wliat lady would not love a shepherd swain 1
He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat
His cream and curd, as doth the king his meat,
And blither too :
>Do.
For kings have often fears when they sup.
Where shepherds dread no poison in tlieir cup :
Ah then, ah then.
If country loves such sweet desires gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain !
Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound
As doth the king upon his beds of do\\ai,
More sounder too :
For cares cause kings full oft their sleep to spill,
Where weary shepherds lie and snort their fill :
Ah then, ah then.
If country loves such sweet desires gain.
What lady would not love a shepherd swain I
Thus with his wife he spends the year as blithe
As doth the king at every tide or syth,
And blither too :
For kings have wars and broils to take in hand,
When shepherds laugh, and love upon the land :
Ah then, ah then.
If country loves such sweet desires gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain !
THOMAS LODGE.
Thomas Lodge was an actor in London in 1584.
He had previously been a servitor of Trinity college,
Oxford (1573), and had accompanied Captain Clarke
in his voyage to the Canary Islands. He first
studied law at Lincoln's Inn, but afterwards prac-
tised medicine. He took the degree of M.D. at
Avignon. In 1590, he published a novel called Bo.sa-
lind, Etiphues' Golden Lcyaci/, in which he recom-
mends the fantastic style of Lyly. From part of
this work (the story of Kosalind) Shakspeare con-
structed his As You Like It. If we suppose that
Shakspeare wrote first sketches of the 'Winter's Tale*
and'As You Like It,' before 1592 (as he didof 'Romeo
and Juliet,' ' Hamlet,' &c.), we may account for
Greene's charge of plagiarism, by assuming that the
words ' beautified with our feathers,' referred to tlie
tales of ' Pandosto' and ' Rosalind.' In 1594, Lodge
wrote a historical plaj% the Wonnds of Civil War,
Lively set forth in the True Tragedies of Marius and
Sylla ; tliis play is heavy and uninteresting, but
Lodge had the good taste to follow Marlow's Tam-
burlaine, in the adoption of blank verse. I'or ex-
ample —
Ay, but the milder passions show the man ;
For, as the leaf doth beautify the tree.
The pleasant flowers bedeck the painted spring.
Even so in men of greatest reach and power,
A mild and piteous thought augments renown.
The play, A Looking- Glass for London and England,
written by Lodge and Greene, is directed to the de-
fence of the stage. It applies the scriptural story
of Nineveh to the city of London, and amidst drunken
buffoonery, and clownish mirth, contains some power-
ful satirical writing. Lodge also wrote a volume of
satires and other poems, translated Josej)lius, and
penned a serious prose defence of the drama. He
was living in 1600, as is proved by his obtaining that
year a pass from the privy council, permitting him-
self and his friend, ' Henry Savell, gent.,' to travel
into the archduke's country, taking with them two ser-
vaiits, for the purpose of recovering some debts due
them there. The actor and dramatist had now
merged in the prosperous and wealthy ])liysician:
Lodge had profited by Greene's example and warning.
According to Wood, Lodge died of the jilague in
September 1625.
It is impossible to separate the labours of Greene
and Lodge in their joint play, but the forrmr was
certainly the most dramatic in his talents. In Lodge's
' Rosalind,' there is adelightful spirit of romantic fancy
170
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CHRISTOPHKn JIARLOW.
and a love of nature that marks the true poet. We
iubjoin some of his minor pieces : —
IBeauti/.l
Like to the clear in highest sphere,
Where all imperial glory shines,
Of self-same colour is her hair,
Whether unfolded or in twines :
Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
Refining heaven by every wink ;
The gods do fear, when as they glow.
And I do tremble when I think.
Her cheeks are like the blusliing cloud,
That beautifies Aurora's face ;
Or like the silver crimson shroud,
That Phcebus' smiling looks doth grace.
Her lips are like two budded roses,
Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh ;
Within which bounds she balm encloses,
Apt to entice a deity.
Her neck like to a stately tower,
Where Love himself imprison'd lies,
To watch for glances, every hour.
From her divine and sacred eyes.
With orient pearl, with ruby red,
With marble white, with sappliire blue.
Her body everywhere is fed,
Yet soft in touch, and sweet in view.
Nature herself her shape admires.
The gods are wounded in her sight ;
And Love forsakes his heavenly fires.
And at her eyes his brand doth light.
[Rosalind's Madrigal.^
Love in my bosom, like a bee,
Doth suck his sweet ;
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Now with his feet.
Within mine eyes he makes his nest.
His bed amidst my tender breast j
My kisses are his daily feast,
And yet he robs me of my rest :
Ah, wanton, will ye ?
And if I sleep, then percheth he
With pretty flight,
And makes his pillow of my knee,
The live-long night.
Strike I my lute, he tunes the string ;
He music plays if so I sing ;
He lends rne every lovely thing,
Yet cruel he my heart doth sting :
Whist, wanton, still ye \
Else I with roses every day
Will whip you hence.
And bind you, when you long to play,
For your offence ;
I'll shut mine eyes to keep you in,
I'll make you fast it for your sin,
I'll count your power not worth a pin ;
Alas ! what hereby shall I win,
If he gainsay me ?
What if I beat the wanton boy
With many a rod ?
He will repay me with annoy.
Because a god.
Then sit thou safely on my knee.
And let thy bower my bosom be ;
Lurk in mine eyes, 1 like of thee,
0, Cupid ! so thou jnty me,
Spare not, but play thee.
[Lore.'\
Turn I my looks unto the skies.
Love with his arrows wounds mine eyes ;
If so I gaze upon the ground.
Love then in every flower is found;
Search I the shade to fly my pain.
Love meets me in the shade again ;
Want I to walk in secret grove.
E'en there I meet with sacred love ;
If so I bathe me in the spring,
E'en on the brink I hear him sing ;
If so I meditate alone,
He will be partner of my moan ;
If so I mourn he weeps with me.
And where I am there will he be !
CHRISTOPHER HARLOW.
The greatest of Shakspeare's precursors in the
drama was Christopher Marlow — a fiery imagi-
native spirit, who first imparted consistent ('haracter
and energ}' to tlie stage, in CDnnexion witli a finely
modulated and varied blank verse. Marlow is sup-
posed to have been born about the year 1562, and is
said to have been tlie son of a shoemaker at Canter-
bury. He had a learned education, and took the
degree of ]M.A. at Bennet college, Cambridge, in
1587. Previous to this, he had written his tragedy of
Tamburlaine the Great, which was successfully brought
out on the stage, and long continued a favourite.
Shakspeare makes ancient Pistol quote, in ridicule,
IJart of this play —
Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia, &c.
But, amidst the rant and fustian of ' Tamburlaine,'
tliere are passages of great beaut}- and wild grandeur,
and the versification justifies the compliment after-
wards paid by Ben Jonson, in the words, ' IMarlow's
mighty line.' His high-sounding blank verse is one
of his most characteristic features. IMarlow now
commenced the profession of an actor ; "but if we are
to credit a contemporary ballad, he was soon incapa-
citated for the stage by breaking his leg ' in one lewd
scene.' His second play, the Life and Death of Dr
Faustus, exhibits a far wider range of dramatic power
than his first tragedy. The liero studies necro-
mancy, and makes a solemn disposal of liis soul to
Lucifer, on condition of having a familiar s])irit at
his command, and unlimited enjoyment for twenty-
four years ; during which period Faustus visits ditfe-
rent countries, ' calls up spirits from tlie vasty deep,'
and revels in luxury and splendour. At length the
time expires, the bond becomes due, and a party of
evil spirits enter, amidst thunder and lightning, to
claim his forfeited life and person. Such a plot
afforded scope for deep passion and variety of ad-
venture, and jNIarlow has constnuted from it a
powerful though irregular play. Scenes and pas-
sages of terrific grandeur, and the most thrilling
agonj% are intermixed with low humour and preter-
natural machinery, often ludicrous and grotesque.
The ambition of Faustus is a sensual, not a lofty
ambition. A feeling of curiosity and wonder is ex-
cited by his necromancy and his strange compact
with Lucifer; but we do not fiiirly sym])athise witli
him till all his disguises are stripped oif, and his
meretricious splendour is succeeded by horror and
despair. Then, when he stands on the brink of ever-
lasting ruin, waiting for the fatal moment, implor-
ing, yet distrusting repentance, a scene of enchain-
ing interest, fervid passion, and overwliehning patlios,
carries cajjtive the sternest heart, and proclaims the
full trimiiiili uf tlie tragic poet.
171
FROM 15o8
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164S.
[Scenes from Marhiv's Fau^tits.']
Faustl's. — Wagnkr, his Servant.
Faxift. Sav, AVagner, thou hast perused my will.
How dost thou like it ?
IIV/. Sir, so wondrous well.
As in all humble duty I do yield
My life and lasting serTice for your lore. [Exit.
Three Scholars enter.
Faust. Gramercy, Wagner.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Fird Sch. Now, worthy Faustus, methinks your
looks are changed.
Faust. Oh, gentlemen.
Sec. Sch. What ails Faustus ?
Faust. Ah, my sweet chamber-fellow, had I lived
with thee, then had I lived still, but now must die
eternally. Look, sirs, comes he not ? comes he not ?
First 'Sc}i. Oh, my dear Faustus, what imports this
fear?
Sec. Sch. Is all our pleasure turned to melancholy ?
Third Sch. He is not well with being over solitary.
Sec. Sch. If it be so, we will have physicians, and
Faustus shall be cured.
Fint Sch. 'Tis but a surfeit, sir ; fear nothing.
Faust. A surfeit of a deadly sin, that hath damn'd
both body and soul.
Sic. Sch. Yet, Faustus, look up to heaven, and re-
member mercy is infinite.
Fu2ist. But Faustus's offence can ne'er be pardoned.
The serpent that tempted Eve maj- be saved, but not
Faustus. Oh, gentlemen, hear me with patience, and
tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant
and quiver to remember that I have been a student
here these thirty years, Oh, would I had ne'er seen
Wirtemberg, never read book ! and what wonders have
I done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world :
for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the
world ; yea, heaven itself, heaven the seat of God, the
throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy, and must
remain in hell for ever. Hell, Oh hell, for ever. Sweet
friends, what shall become of Faustus being in hell
for ever ?
Sec. Sch. Yet, Faustus, call on God.
Faust. On God, whom Faustus hath abjured ? on
God, whom Faustus hath blasphemed ? Oh, my God, I
would weep, but the devil draws in my tears. Gush
forth blood instead of tears, yea, life and soul. Oh, he
stays my tongue : I would lift up my hands, but see,
they hold'em, they hold'em !
Scholars. Who, Faustus ?
Fallot. Why, Lucifer and Mephostophilis. Oh, gen-
tlemen, I gave them my soul for my cunning.
Scholars. Oh, God forbid.
Fau.<t. God forbid it indeed, but Faustus hath done
it : for the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years
hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them
a bill with mine own blood ; the date is expired : this
is the time, and he will fetch me.
First Sch. Why did not Faustus tell us of this be-
fore, that divines might have prayed for thee ?
Favu-t. Oft have I thought to have done so ; but the
devil threatened to tear me in pieces if 1 named God ;
to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to divi-
nity ; and now it is too late. Gentlemen, away, lest
you perish with me.
Sec. Sch. Oh, what may we do to save Faustus 1
Faust. Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart.
Third Sch. God will strengthen me, I will stay with
Faustus.
First Sch. Tempt not God, sweet friend, but let us
into the next room and pray for him.
Fau.it. Ay, pray for me, pray for me ; and what
noise soever you hear, come not unto me, for nothing
can rescue me.
Sec. Sch. Pray thou, and we will pray, that God may
have mercy upon thee.
Faust. Gentlemen, farewell ; if I live till moniing,
I'll visit you : if not, Faustus is gone to hell.
Scholars. Faustus, farewell.
Faustus alone. — The Clock strikes Eleven.
Faust. Oh, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still, yor ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease and midnight never come.
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day : or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day.
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
leiite lentc currite, noctis cqui.
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
Oh, I will leap to heaven : who pulls me down ?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament :
One drop of blood will save me : Oh, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of ni}' Christ.
Yet will I call on him : spare me, Lucifer.
Where is it now ? 'tis gone !
And see a threat'ning ann, and angry brow.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fiiU on me.
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No \ then I will headlong run into the earth :
Gape earth. Oh no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reign'd at my nativity.
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud ;
That when you vomit forth into the air.
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.
Tlie Watch strikes.
Oh, half the hour is past : 'twill all be past anon.
Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin.
Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand yeais,
A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved :
No end is limited to damned souls.
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul ?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?
Oh, Pj-thagoras, Metempsycosis, were that true,
This soul should fly fi-om me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die.
Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements :
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engender'd me :
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprlv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
The Clock strikes Twelve.
It strikes, it strikes ; now, body, turn to air.
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Oh soul, be chang'd into small water drops,
And fall into the ocean : ne'er be foimd.
Thunder, and enter the Devils.
Oh mercy, heaven, look not so fierce on me.
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while *
Ugly hell gape not ; come not, Lucifer :
I'll burn my books : Oh, Mephostophilis t
Enter Scholars.
First Sch. Come, gentlemen, let us go visit FaustUB,
For such a dreadful night was never seen
Since first the world's creation did begin ;
Such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard.
Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger.
172
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOW.
Sec, Sch. help us heavens ! see here are Faustus'
limbs
All torn asunder by the hand of death.
Third Sch. The devil whom Faustus serv'dhath torn
him thus :
For 'twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought
I heard him shriek and call aloud for help ;
At which same time the liouse seem'd all on fire
With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.
Sec. Sch. Well, gentlemen, though Faustus' end be
such
As every Christian heart laments to think on ;
Yet, for he was a scholar once admired
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We'll give his mangled limbs due burial : •■
And all the scholars, cloth'd in nioumiug black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.
Chortis. Cut is the branch that might have gro\vn
full straight,
And bunied is Apollo's laurel bough
That sometime grew within this learned man:
Faustus is gone ! Regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things :
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practise more than heavenl}' power permits.
The classical taste of jNIarlow is evinced in the fine
apostroplie to Helen of Greece, ■whom the spirit Jle-
pliostopliilis conjures up 'between two Cupids,' to
gratify the sensual gaze of Faustus: —
Was this the foce that launch'd a thousand ships
And bum'd the topless towers of Ilium ?
•Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss !
Her lips suck forth my soul — see where it flies.
Come, Helen, come give me my soul again ;
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
thou art fairer than the evening air.
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars !
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele ;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arcthusa's azure arms ;
And none but thou shall be my paramour.
Before 1593, IVIarlow produced three other dra-
mas, the Jeiu of Malta, the Massac7-e at Paris, and
a historical play, Edward the Second. Tlie more
malignant passions of the human breast have rarely
been represented with such force as they are in the
Jew.
[Passages from the Jeio of Malta.']
[In one of the early scenes, Baxabas the Jew is deprived of
his wealth by the governor of Malta. A\liile being comforted
in his distress by two Jewish friends, he thus denounces his
oppressors : — ]
The plagi-ies of Egj'pt, and the curse of heaven.
Earth's barrenness, and all men's hatred
Inflict upon them, thou great Primim Motor I
And here, upon my knees, striking the earth,
1 ban their souls to everlasting pains
And extreme tortures of the fierj' deep,
That thus have dealt with me in my distress.
[So deeply have his misfortunes embittered his life, that he
would have it appear he is tired of it : — ]
And henceforth wish for an eternal night,
That clouds of darkness may enclose my flesh,
And hide these extreme sorrows from mine eyes.
[Btit when his comforters are gone, he throws off the mask of
sorrow to show his real fe».'Lines, wliicli suecest to him schemes
of the subtlest venHcanee. With the fulfilment of these, the
RBt of the play is occujiied, and wfe" - 'uiving taken terrible
vengeance on his enemies, he is overmatehed himself, he thus
confesses his crimes, and closes his career : — ]
Then Barabas, breathe forth thy latest fate,
And in the fury of thy torments, strive
To end thy life with resolution :
Know, Governor, 'tis I that slew thy son ;
I fram'd tlie challenge that did make them meet.
Know, Calymath, I aim'd thy overthrow ;
And had I but escap'd this stratagem,
I would have brought confusion on you all,
Damn'd Christian dogs, and Turkish infidels.
But now begins the extremity of heat
To pinch me with intolerable pangs.
Die life, fly soul, tongue curse thy fill, and die.
[I>k3.
'Edward the Second' is considered as superior to the
two plays mentioned in connexion with it : it is a
noble drama, with ably-drawn characters and splen-
did scenes. Another tragedy. Lust's Dominion, was
published long after ilarlow's death, with his name
as author on the title page. Mr Collier has shown
that this play, as it w;)s then printed, was a much
later production, and was probably written by Dek-
ker and others. It contains passages and cluirac-
ters, however, which have the impress of Marlow's
genius, and we think he must have written the ori-
ginal outline. Great uncertainty hangs over many
of the old dramas, from the conmion practice of
managers of theatres emplo^-ing different authors,
at subsequent periods, to furnish additional matter
for established plays. Even Faustus was dressed up
in this manner: in 1597 (four years after jMarlow's
deatli), Dekker was paid 20s. for making additions
to this tragedy; and in other five years, Birde and
Rowley were j:iaid £4 for further additions to it.
Another source of uncertainty as to the paternity
of old plays, was the unscrupulous manner in which
booksellers approjjriated any popular name of the
day, and affixed it to their publications. In addi-
tion to the above dramatic productions, ]\rarloir
assisted Nash in the tragedy of Dido, Queen of Car-
thage, and translated part of 7/e/-oan(fZ/ea7!^/cr (after-
wards completed by Chapman), and the Elegies of
Ovid ; the latter Avas so licentious as to be burned
by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, yet they
were often reprinted in defiance of the ecclesiastical
interdict. Poor ]\Iarlow lived, as he wrote, wildly:
he was accused of entertaining atheistical opinions,
but tliere is no trace of this in liis plan's. He came
to an early and singiihirly unliappy end. He was
attached to a lady, who favoured another lover;
Marlow found them in company one day, and in a
frenzy of rage attempted to stab the man witli his
dagger. His antagonist seized him by the wrist, and
turned the dagger, so tliat it entered JIarlow's own
head, ' in such sort,' says Anthony Wood, ' that, not-
withstanding all the means of surgery that could be
brought, he shortly after died of his wound.' Some
of the accounts represent the poet's rival as a mere
' serving man,' the female a courtesan, and the scene
of the fatal struggle a house of ill-fame. The old
ballad to which we have alluded thus describes the
afiiiir : —
His lust was lawless as his life,
And brought about his death ;
For in a deadly mortal strife.
Striving to stop the breath
Of one who was his rival foe.
With his own dagger slain ;
He groan 'd, and word spoke never moe,
Pierc'il tliidugh the eye and brain.*
* First published in I!!.'U by Mr Collier, in hia • New Parti-
culars regarULug the Works of Shakspearc'
173
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1C49.
Thus, condemned by the serious and puritanical, and
stained with follies, while his genius was rapidly
■maturing and developing its magnificent resources,
iSIarlow fell a victim to an obscure and disgraceful
brawl. The last words of Greene's address to him
a year or two before are somewhat ominous : — ' lie-
fuse not (with me) till this last point of extremity ;
for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be
visited.' The warning was —
Like the sad presaging raven, that tolls
The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings.
Jew of Malta.
JIarlow's fatal conflict is supposed to have taken
place at Deptford, as he was buried there oti the 1st
of June 1593. The finest compliment paid to the
genius of ithis unfortunate poet was by his contem-
porary and fellow-dramatist, Michael Drayton: —
Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had : his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.
We subjoin part of the death- scene of Edward IL in
his historical drama, a scene which Charles Lamb
says, ' moves pity and terror beyond any scene, an-
cient or modern.' It may challenge comparison
with Shakspeare's death of Richard II. ; but Marlow
could not interest us in his hero as the great dra-
matist does in the gentle Richard : —
[Scdie from Harlow's Edward II.']
Scene, Berkley Castle. TheKiNG is left alone withLiGHTBOBN,
a murderer.
Edtc. Who's there ? what light is that ? wherefore
com'st thou ?
Light. To comfort you, and bring you joyful news.
Edic. Small comfort finds poor Edward in thy looks.
Villain, I know thou com'st to murder me.
Lif/Jit. To murder j'ou, my most gracious lord !
Far is it from my heart to do you harm.
The queen sent me to see how you were us'd,
For she relents at this your misery :
And what ej'es can refrain from shedding tears,
To see a king in this most piteous state.
Ediv. Weep'st thou already ? list a while to me,
And then thy heart, were it as Gumey'sl is.
Or as Matrevis', i hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt, ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon where they keep me is a sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.
Light. villains !
Edv:. And there, in mire and puddle have I stood
This tea days' space ; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king ;
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind's distempcr'd, and my body's numb'd,
And whether I have limbs or no, 1 know not.
would my blood drop out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes !
Tell Isabel the queen, I look'd not thus.
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont.
Light. speak no more, my lord ! this breaks my
heart.
Lie on this bed, and rest yourself a while.
1 His keepers.
Edw. These looks of thine can harbour nought but
death :
I see my tragedy written in thy brows.
Yet stay a while, forbear thy bloody hand,
And let me see the stroke before it comes,
That even then when I shall lose my life,
My mind may be more steadfast on my God.
Light. What means your highness to mistrust me
thus ?
Edw. What mean'st thou to dissemble with me thus ?
Light. These hands were never stain'd with innocent
blood.
Nor shall they now be tainted with a king's.
Edic. Forgive my thought, for having such a thought.
One jewel have I left, receive thou this.
Still fear 1, and I know not what's the cause.
But every joint shakes as I give it thee.
Oh, if thou harbour'st murder in thy heart,
Let the gift change thy mind, and save thy soul.
Know that I am a king : Oh, at that name
I feel a hell of grief. Where is my crown ?
Gone, gone ; and do I still remain alive ?
Light. You're overwatch'd my lord ;liedownand rest.
Edic. But that grief keeps me waking, I should sleep ;
For not these ten days have these eyelids closed.
Now as 1 speak they fall, and yet with fear
Open again. wherefore sitt'st thou here ?
Light. If you mistrust me, I'll be gone, my lord.
Edw. No, no ; for if thou mean'st to murder me.
Thou wilt return again ; and therefore stay.
Light. He sleeps.
Edw. let me not die ; yet stay, stay a while.
Light. How now, my lord 1
Edw. Something still buzzeth in mine ears,
And tells me if I sleep I never wake ;
This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
And therefore tell me, wherefore art thou come 1
Light. To rid thee of thy life ; Matrevis, come.
Edw. I am too weak and feeble to resist :
Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul.
The taste of the public for the romantic drama, in
preference to the classical, seems now to have been
confirmed. An attempt was made towards the close
of Elizabeth's reign, to revive the forms of the
classic stage, by Daniel the poet, who wrote two
plays, Cleopatra and Philotas, which are smoothly
versified, but undramatic in their character. Lady
Pejibroke co-operated in a tragedy called Antony,
written in 1590; and Sajiuel Brandon produced,
in 1598, a tame and feeble Roman play. Virtuous
Octavia,
ANTHONY MUNDAY — HENRY CHETTLE.
In the throng of dramatic authors, the names of
Anthony IMunday and Henry Chkttle frequently
occur. Mundaj' was an author as early as 1579,
and he was concerned in fourteen plaj's. Francis
Meres, in 1598, calls him the 'best plotter' among
the writers for the stage. One of his dramas. Sir
John Oldcastle, was written in conjunction with
Michael Drayton and others, and was printed in
1600, with tlie name of Shakspeare on the title-
page ! The Death of liohert. Earl of Ilttntlngton,
printed in 1601, was a popvilar jilay by Munday,
assisted by Chettle. The pranks of Robin Hood and
Maid Marian in merry Sherwood are thus gaily set
forth :—
Wind once more, jolly huntsmen, all your horns.
Whose shrill sound, with the echoing woods' assist.
Shall ring a sail knell for the fearful deer,
Before our feather'd shafts, death's winged darts,
Bring sudden summons for their fatal ends. * *
174
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ANONYMOUS DRAMA3.
Give me thy hand : now God's curse on me light,
If I forsake not grief in griefs despite.
Much, make a cry, and yeomen stand ye round :
I charge ye, never more let woeful sound
Be heard among ye ; but whatever fall,
Laugh grief to scorn, and so make sorrow small. ' *
Marian, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want,
Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant.
For tlie soul-ravishing delicious sound
Of instrumental music, we have found
The winged quiristers, with divers notes,
Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats,
On every branch that compasseth our bower,
Without command contenting us each hour.
For arras hangings, and rich tapestry,
We have sweet nature's best embroidery.
For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look,
Thy crj'stal eyes gaze on the crystal brook.
At court, a flower or two did deck thy head.
Now, with whole garlands it is circled ;
For what in wealth we want, we have in flowers.
And what we lose in halls, we find in bowers.
Chettle was engaged in no less than thirty-eight
plays between the years 1597 and 1603, four of
which have been printed. Mr Collier thinks lie liad
written for the stage before 1592, when he published
Greene's posthumous work, ' A Groat's Worth of Wit.'
Among his plays, the names of whicli have descended
to us, is one on the subject of Cardinal Wolsey,
which probably was the original of Shakspeare's
Henry VIII. The best drama of this prolific author
which we now possess, is a comedy called Patient
Grissell, taken from Boccaccio. The humble charms
of the heroine are thus finely described : —
See where my Grissell and her father is,
Methinks her beauty, shining through those weeds.
Seems like a bright star in the sullen night.
How lovely poverty dwells on her back !
Did but the proud world note her as I do.
She would cast off rich robes, forswear rich state,
To clothe her in such poor habiliments.
The names of Haughton, Antony Brewer, Porter,
Smith, Hathaway (probably some relation of Shak-
speare's wife), Wilson, &c., also occur as dramatic
writer* From the diary of Henslowe, it appears
that, between 1591 and 1597, upwards of a hnndred
different j^lays were performed by four of the ten
or eleven theatrical companies which then existed.
Henslowe was originally a pawnbroker, wlio ad-
vanced money md dresses to the players, and he
ultimately possessed a large share of the wardrobe
and properties of th^ playhouses with which lie was
concerned. The namQ of Shakspeare does not once
occur in his diary.
Several good dramas of this golden age have de-
scended to us, the authors of which are unknown.
A few of tliese possess merit enough to have been
considered first sketches of Shakspeare, but this
opinion has been gradually abandoned by all but
one or two German critics. Most of them have been
puljlished in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays. The
best are, the ' Merry Devil of Edmonton,' the ' Lon-
don Prodigal,' the ' Yorkshire Tragedy,' 'Lord Crom-
well,' the ' Birth of Merlin,' the ' Collier of Croydon,'
' Mucedorus,' ' Locrine,' ' Arden of Feversham,' the
'Misfortunes of Arthur,' 'Edward III.,'&c. The most
correct and regular of these anonymous dramas is
' Arden of Feversham,' a domestic tragedy, founded
on a murder which took place in 1551. Alice, the
wife of Arden, proves unfaithful, and joins witli her
paramour Mosbie, and some assassins, in murdering
her husband. Tieck has translated this play into
German, as a genuine production of Shakspeare, but
the style is different. In the earliest acknowledged
works of the Warwickshire bard, there is a i)lay of
wit, and of wliat HaUam calls ' analogical imagery,'
whicli is not seen in ' Arden of Feversham,' though it
exhibits a strong picture of the passions, and indi-
cates freedom of versification and dramatic art. We
subjoin one touching scene between Alice and her
paramour — a scene of mutual recrimination, guilt,
and tenderness : —
[Scene from Arden of Feversham.']
Alice Arden — Mosbie.
Mos. How now, Alice? What ! sad and passionate ?
Make me partaker of thy pensiveness ;
Fire divided burns with lesser force.
AL But 1 will dain that fire in my breast,
Till by the force thereof my part consume.
Ah, Mosbie !
3Ios. Such deep pathaires, like to a cannon's lurst,
Discharged against a ruinated wall,
Breaks my relenting heart in thousand pieces.
Ungentle Alice, thy sorrow is ray sore ;
Thou knowest it well, and 'tis thy policy
To forge distressful looks, to wound a breast
Where lies a heart which dies wlien thou art sad.
It is not love that loves to anger love.
Al. It is not love that loves to murder love.
Mos. How mean you that 1
Al. Thou know'st how dearly Arden loved me.
Mos. And then
Al. And then — conceal the rest, for 'tis too bad,
Lest tliat my words be carried to the wind,
And published in the world to both our shames,
I pray thee, Mosbie, let our spring-time wither ;
Our harvest else will yield but loathsome weeds.
Forget, I pray thee, what has past betwixt us :
For now I blush and tremble at the thoughts.
Mos. What ! are you changed 1
Al. Ay, to my former happy life again ;
From title of an odious strumpet's name
To honest Arden's wife, not Arden's honest wife —
Ha, Mosbie ! 'tis thou hast rifled me of that.
And made me slanderous to all my kin.
Even in my forehead is tliy name engi-aven,
A mean artificer, that low-born name !
I was bewitcht ; woe-worth the hapless hour
And all the causes that enchanted me.
3Ios. Nay, if tliou ban, let me breathe curses forth ;
And if you stand so nicely at your fame,
Let me repent the credit I have lost.
I liave neglected matters of import,
That would have 'stated me above thy state ;
For slow'd advantages, and spurned at time ;
Ay, fortune's right hand Mosbie hath forsook,
To take a wanton giglot by the left.
I left the marriage of an honest maid,
Wliose dowry would have weigh'd down all thy wealth ;
Whose beauty and demeanour far exceeded ihee.
This certain good I lost for changing bad.
And wi-apt my credit in thy coinpan}'.
I was bewitcht ; that is no theme of thine ;
And thou unhallow'd hast enchanted me.
But I will break thy spells and exorcisms,
And put another sight upon these eyes.
That showed my heart a raven for a dove.
Thou art not fair ; I view'd thee not till now :
Thou art not kind ; till now I knew thee not :
And now the rain hath beaten off" thy gilt,
Thy worthless copper shows thee counterfeit.
It grieves me not to see how foul thou art,
But mads me that ever I thought thee fair.
Go, get thee gone, a copcsmatc for thy hinds ;
I am too good to be thy favourite.
Al. Ay, now I see, and too soon find it true,
175
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
Which often hath been told nie by iiiv friends,
That Mosbie loves nie not but for my wealth ;
Which too incredulous 1 ne'er believed.
Nay, hear me t^peak, IMosbie, a word or two ;
rUbite my tongue if I speak bitterly.
Look on me, Mosbie, or else I'll kill myself.
Nothing shall hide me from thy stormy look ;
If thou cry war, there is no peace for me.
1 will do penance for ottending thee ;
And burn this prayer book, which I here use,
The holy word that has converted me.
See, Mosbie, I will tear away the leaves,
And all the leaves ; and in this golden cover
Shall thy sweet phrases and thy letters dwell,
And thereon will I chiefly meditate,
And hold no other sect but such devotion.
Wilt tliou not look ? is all thy love o'erwhelm'd ?
Wilt thou not hear 1 wliat malice stops th_y ears ?
Why speak'st thou not ? what silence ties thy tongue ?
Thou hast been sighted as the eagle is,
And heard as quickly as the fearful hare,
And spoke as smoothly as an orator.
When I have bid thee hear, or see, or speak :
And art thou sensible in none of these 1
Weigh all thy good turns with this little fault.
And I deserve not Mosbie's muddy looks.
A fence of trouble is not thicken'd still ;
Be clear again ; I'll ne'er more trouble thee.
Mos. fie, no ; I'm a base artificer ;
My wings are feathered for a lowly flight.
Mosbie, fie, no ; not for a thousand pound
!Make love to you ; why, 'tis unpardonable.
We beggars must not breathe where gentles are.
Al. Sweet Mosbie is as gentle as a king.
And I too blind to judge him otherwise.
Flowers sometimes spring in fallow lands,
Weeds in gardens, roses grow on thorns ;
So whatsoe'er my Mosbie's father was,
Himself is valued gentle by his worth.
Mos. Ah, how you women can insinuate,
And clear a trespass with your sweet set tongue.
I will forget this quarrel, gentle Alice,
Provided I'll be tempted so no more.
' Arden of Feversham' was first printed in 1592.
The ' Yorkshire Tragedy,' another play of the same
kind, but apparently more hastil}' written, was per-
formed in 1604, and four years afterwards printed
with Shakspeare's name. Both Dyce and Collier,
able dramatic antiquaries and students, are inclined
to the opinion, that this drama contains passages
which only Shakspeare could have written. But in
lines like the following — thougli smooth and natu-
ral, and quoted as the most Shaksptarian in tlie play
— we miss the music of the great dramatist's thoughts
and numbers. It is, however, a forcible picture of a
luckless, reckless gambler : —
What will become of us \ All will avfay !
My husband never ceases in expense.
Both to consume his credit and his house ;
And 'tis set down by heaven's jus*; decree.
That Riot's child must needs be Beggary.
Are these the virtues that his youth did promise ?
Dice and voluptuous meetings, midnight revels,
Taking his bed with surfeits, ill beseeming
The ancient honour of his liouse and name ?
And this not all, but that which kills me most.
When he recounts his losses and false fortunes,
The weakness of his state, so much dejected,
Not as a man repentant, but half mad.
His fortunes cannot answer his expense.
He sits and sullenly locks up his arms.
Forgetting heaven, looks dowTiward, which makes him
Appear so dreadful, that he frights my heart :
Walks heavily, as if his soul were earth ;
Not penitent for those his sins are piist,
But vex'd his money cannot make them last.
A fearful melancholy, ungodly sorrow 1
AVILXIAM SHAKSPEARE,
We have seen that Greene, Peele, and Marlow,
prepared, in some degree, the waj^ for Shakspeare.
They had given a more settled and scliolastic forra
to tlie drama, and assigned it a permanent place in
the national literature. They adorned the stage
[Copy of the Bust at Stratford.]
with more variety of character and action, n'ith
deep passion, and true poetry. The latter, i/ideed,
was tinged with incoherence and extravagn;ice, hut
the sterling ore of genius was, in Marlo" at least,
abundant. Above all, they had familiarised the
public ear to the use of blank verse. The last im-
jirovement was the greatest ; for even the genius of
Shakspeare would have been cramped and confined,
if it had been condemned to move only in the fetters
of rhyme. The quick interch.-mge of dialogue, and
the various nice shades and alternations of character
and feeling, could not have been evolved in dramatic
action, except in that admirable form of verse which
unites rhythmical liurmony with the utmost freedom,
grace, iind flexibilify. When Shaksjicare, therefore,
appeared conspicuously on the horizon, the scene may
be said to have been prepared fiir his reception. The
Genius of the Drama had accumulated materials for
the use of the great i)oct, who was to extend her
empire over limits not yet recognised, and invest it
with a splendour which the world had never seeu
before.
The few incidents in Shakspeare's life are sur-
rounded with doubt and fable. The fond idolatry
with which he is now regank'd, was only turned to
his personal history at a late period, when little could
be gathered even by the most enthusiastic collector.
Our best facts are derived from legal documents.
William Shakspkark was born at Stratford-on-
Avon, in the county of Warwick, in April 1564. There
176
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSFE4BK.
is a pleasant and poetical tradition, that he was born
■>n the 23d of the month, the anniversary of St
^c^
Birthplace of Sliakspeare.
George, the tutelar saint of England; hut all we
know with certainty is, that he was baptised on the
26th. His father, John Shakspeare, was a wool-
comber or glorer, who had elevated his social posi-
tion by marriage with a rustic heiress, ilary Arden,
possessed of an estate worth about £70 per annum
of our present money. Tlie poet's father rose to
be high bailiff and "chief alderman of Stratford;
but in 1578, he is found mortgaging his wife's in-
heritance, and, from entries in the town-books, is
supposed to have fallen into comparative poverty.
WiUiam was tlie eldest of six surviving children,
and after some education at the grammar-school,
he is said to have been brought home to assist at
his father's business. There is a blank in his his-
tory for some years ; but doubtless he was engaged,
whatever might be his circumstances or employ-
ment, in treasuring up materials for his future
poetry. The study of man and of nature, f\icts in
natural history, the country, the fields, and the
■woods, would be gleaned by f\imiliar intercourse
and observation among his fellow-townsmen, and
in rambling over the beautiful valley of the Avon.
It has been conjectured that he was some time in
a lawyer's office, as his works abound in technical
legal phrases and illustrations. This has always
seemed to us higldy probable. The London players
■were also then in the habit of visiting Stratford :
Thomas Green, an actor, was a native of the town ;
and Burbage, the greatest performer of his day (the
future Richard, Hamlet, and Othello), was originally
from Warwickshire. Who can doubt, then, that
the high bailiff's son, from the years of twelve to
twenty, was a frequent and welcome visitant behind
the scenes?— that he there imbibed the tastes and
feelings which coloured all his future life— and that
he there felt the first stirrings of his immortal dra-
matic genius ? We are persu.aded that he had begun
to write long before he left Stratford, and had most
probably sketched, if not completed, his Venus
and Adonis, and the Lurrece. The amount of liia
education at the grannnar-school has been made a
question of eager scrutiny and controversy. Ben
Jonson says, he had ' little Latin, and less Greek.'
Tiiis is not denj^ing tluit he liad some. ]\Lany
Latinised idioms and expressions are to be found in
his plays. The choice of two classical subjects
for his early poetry, and the numerous felicitous
allusions in his dramas to the m3tliology of the
ancients, show that he was imbued witli the spirit
and taste of classical literature, and was a happy
student, if not a critical scholar. His mind was too
comprehensive to degenerate into pedantr\'; but
wlien, at the age of four or five and twenty, he took
the field of original dramatic composition, in com-
pany with the university-bred autliors and wits of
his times, he soon distanceil them all. in correctness
as well as fiicility, in the intellectual richness of his
thoughts and diction, and in the wide range of his
acquired knowledge. It may be safely assumed,
therefore, that at Stratford he was a hard, though
perhaps an irregular, student. The precocious ma-
turity of Shaksjieare's passions hurried him into a
premature marriage. On the 28th of November 1582,
he obtained a license at Worcester, legaUsing his
union with Anne Hathaway, with once asking of the
hanns. Two <if his neighbours became securit_y in the
sum of £40, that tlie jioet would fulfil his matrimonial
eng.agement, he being a minor, and imable, legally,
to contract for himself. Anne Hathaway was seven
years older tlian her husband. She was the daughter
of a 'substantial yeonian' of the village of Shottery,
about a n-.ilefroni Stratford. The hurry and anxiety
witli respect to tlie marriage-license, is explained
by the register of ])aptisms in the poet's native town ;
his daughter Susanna was c'nristened on the 26th
Jlay 1583, six nionths after the marriage. In ayea^
and a half, two otiier children, twins, were born to
Shakspeare, who had no family afterwards. We
may readily suppose that the small town of Strat-
ford did not oiler scope for the amlntion of the poet,
now arrived at early manhood, and feeling the ties
of a husband and a father. He removed to London
in 1586 or 1587. It has been said that his depar-
ture was hastened by the effects of a lampoon he
had written on a neighboiu-ing squire. Sir Thomas
Lucy of Charlecote, in revenge for Sir Thomas
prosecuting him for deer-stealing. The story is
inconsistent in its details. Part of it must be un-
true ; it was never recorded against him in his life-
time ; and the whole may have been built upon the
opening scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor (not
written till after Sir Thomas Lucy's death), in which
there is some wanton wit on the armorial bearings
of the Lticy family. The tale, however, is now
associated so intimately with the name of Shaks-
peare, that, considering the obscurity which rests and
pnil>:il)lv will ever rest on his history, there seems
little likelihood of its ever ceasing to have a place
in the pul)lic mind.* Shakspeare soon rose to dis-
* Mr Washington Irving, in his ' SkjtchBook,' thus adverts
to Charlecote, and tlie deer-stealing aft'^iir : —
' I had a desire to see tlie old family seat of the Lucys at
Charlecote, and to ramble through the park ^vhere Shakspeare,
in company with some of the roysters of Stratford, committed
his youthful offence of deer-stealing. In this hair-brained ex-
ploit, we are told that he was taken prisoner, and carried to
the keeper's lodge, where he remained all niiiht in doleful cap-
tivity. When brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy,
his treatment must have been galling .and humiliating; for it
so \vrought upon his spirit, as to produce a rough pasquinade,
which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecote.
This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so in^
censed him, that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put tho
severity of the laws in force against the rhyming iloer stalker.
177
:3
FRlM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
ro 1649,
tiiiotion ill the theatre. He was a shareholder of
tlie Blaekfriars Conipany, withiu two or three years
after his arrival; of the fifteen sliareholders of the
theatre in Is'ovember 1589, Shakspeare's name is
Cliarlecote Unuse.
the eleventh on tlie list. In 1596, his name is the
fifth in a list of only eight proprietors; and in 1603,
lie was second in tlie new patent pranted by King
James. It appears from recent discoveries made
by ilr Collier, tliat the wardrobe and stage proper-
ties afterwards belonged to Shakspeare, and with
the shares wliicli he possessed, were estimated at
£1400, equal to between £6000 and £7000 of our
present money. He was also a proprietor of the
Globe Theatre ; and at the lowest computation, his
income must have been about £.300 a-year, or £1500
at the present day. As an actor, Shakspeare is said
by a contemporary (supposed to be Lord Southamp-
ton) to have been ' of good account in the com-
pany ;' but the cause of his unexampled success was
his immortal dramas, the delight and wonder of his
age-
That so did take Eliza and our James,
as Ben Jonson has recorded, and as is confirmed by
various authorities. Up to 1611, the whole of
Shakspeare's plays (thirty-seven in number, accord-
ing to the first folio edition) are supposed to have
Shakspeare did not wait to brave tlie united puissance of a
knight of tlie bliire and a countrj- attorney. * *
I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms,
whose vast size bespoke the growth of tentuiits. * * It was
from wandering in e.irly life among this rich scenery, and
about the romantic solitudes of the adjoining jiark of Fulbroke,
which then formed a part of the Lucy estate, that some of
Shakspeare's commentators have supposed he derived his noble
forest meditations of Jaqucs and the enchanting woodland
pictures in •• As You Like It." * * [The house] is a large
building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style
of Queen Elizabeth's day, having been built in the first year of
her reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its original
state, and may be coiisidereil a fair specimen of the residence
of !i wealthy country gentleman of those days. * * The
front of the house is completely in the old style — with etone-
Bhafted casements, a great bow window of heavy stone-work,
and a port.-il with armorial bearings over it, carv-ed in stone.
♦ ♦ The Avon, which winds through the park, m.ikcs a
bend just at the foot of a gently sloping bank, which sweeps
round the rear of the bouse. Large herds of deer were reposing
vrjoa its borders."
been produced. With tlie nobles, the wits, and
poets of his d.ty, he was in familiar intercourse. The
'gentle Shakspeare,' as he was usually styled, was
tlironed in all hearts. But notwithstanding his
brilliant success in the metropolis, the poet early
looked forward to a permanent retirement to the
country. He visited Stratford once a-year; and
wlien wealth flowed in upon him, he purchased pro-
perty in his native town and its vicinity. He bought
Xew Place, the principal house in Stratford; in
1602, he gave £320 for 107 acres of land adjuining
to his purchase; and in 1605, he paid £440 for the
lease of the tithes of Stratford. Tlic latest entry of
his name among the king's players is in 1604, but
he was living in London in 1609. The jxar 1612
has been assigned as the date of his final retirement
to tlie country. In the fulness of liis fame, witli a
handsome competency, and before age had cliilled
the enjoyment of life, the poet returned to liis native
town to spend the remainder of liis days among the
quiet scenes and tlie friends of liis youth. His
parents were botli dead, but their declining years
had been gladdened by the prosperity of tlieir illus-
trious son. Four years were spent by Sliakspeare
in tliis dignified retirement, and tlie history of litera-
ture scarcely jiresents anotlier such ])icture of calm
felicity and satisfied ambition. He died on the 23d
of April 1616, liaviiig just completed his fifty-second
year. His widow survived him seven years. His
"two daugliters were both married (his only son
Haninet had <lied in 1596), and one of them had
three sons ; but all these died without issue, and
there now remains no lineal representative of tiie
great poet.
Shakspeare, it is believed, like his contemporary
dramatists, began his career as an author by altering
tiie works of others, and adapting tliem f<n' the stai;c.
The extract from Greene's ' Groat's Wortii of \\"it,*
which we have given in the life of tliat unhapjiy
autlior, shows that he had been engaged in this subor-
dinate literary labour Viefore 1592. Three years pre-
vious to this. Nash had published an address to tlie
students of the two universities, in which there i* a
remarkable passage: — 'It is,' he says, 'a common
practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting com-
panions, that run through every art. and thrive bv
none, to leave the trade of Norerinf, whereto they
were born, and busj- themselves with the endeavours
of art, that could scarce Latinise their neck verse if
tliey should have need; yet English Seneca, read by
candle-light, yields many good sentences, as /)loi»l is
a beggar, and so forth ; and if you intreat him far in
a frosty morning, he will afl'ord j-oii wlh'lc Hitmktx,
I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches.' 'I'he
term Noverint was apjilied to lawyers' clerks, so
called from the first word of a Latin deed of thnse
times, equivalent to the modern commencement of
Kvow all men, &c. We have no doubt that Nasli
alluded to Shakspeare in this satirical glance, for
Sliakspeare was even then, svs lias been discoveiv<l,
a shareliolder in tlie theatre ; and it appears from t!ie
title-page to the first edit ion of 'Hamlet,' in 16i)4, that,
like ' liomeo and Juliet,' and the ' Merry Wives of
Windsor,' it had been enlarged to almost twice its
original size. It seems scarcely probable that the
great dramatist should not have commenced writing
before he was twenty-seven. Some of liis first
drafts, as we have seen, he subsequently enlarged
and completed ; others may have sunTc into oblivion,
as being judged unworthy of resuscitation or im-
provement in his riper j-ears. Pericles is supposed
to be one of his earliest adaptations. Dryden, in-
deed, expres.sly states it to be the first birth of his
muse ; but two if not three styles are distinctly
traceable in this play, and the two first acts look
178
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPEARK.
like tlie work of Greene or Peele. Titus Andronicus
resembk^s the style of Marlow, and if written bj
Shakspeare, as distinct contemporary testimony
affirms, it must have been a very youthful produc-
tion. The Taming of the Shrew is greatly indebted
to an old play on the same subject, and must also
be referred to the same period. It is doubtful
whether Shakspeare Avrote any of the first part of
Henry VI. The second and third parts are model-
led on two older plays, the 'Contention of York and
Lancaster,' and the ' True Tragedy of the Duke of
York.' Whether these old dramas were early
sketches of Shakspeare's own, or the labours of some
obscure and forgotten plaj'wright, cannot now be
ascertained : they contain the death-scene of Cardi-
nal Beaufort, the last speech of the Duke of York,
and the germs of that vigorous delineation of cha-
racter and passion completed in 'Richard III.' We
know no other dramatist of that early period, ex-
cepting Marlow, who could have written those
powerful sketches. From the old plays, Shakspeare
borrowed no less than 1771 entire lines, and nearly
double that number are merely alterations. Such
wholesale appropriation of the labours of others is
found in none of his other historical plays (as King
John, Richard III., Sec, modelled on old dramas),
and we therefore incline to the opinion, that the
Contention and the True Tragedy were early pro-
ductions of the poet, afterwards enlarged and im-
proved by him, as part of his English historical
series, and then named Henry VI.
The gradual progress of Shakspeare's genius is
supposed to have been not unobserved by Spenser.
In 1594, or 1595, the venerable poet wrote his pas-
toral, entitled ' Cohn Clout's Come Home Again,' in
■which he commemorates his brother poets under
feigned names. The gallant lialeigh is tlie Sliep-
herd of the Ocean, Sir Philip Sidney is Astro])hel,
and other living authors are characterised by ficti-
tious appellations. He concludes as follows : —
And then, though last not least, is Action,
A (fenikr shepherd may nowhere be found,
Whose nmse, full of high thoughts' invention,
Doth, like himself, heroically sound.
Tlie sonorous and chivalrous-like name of Shak-
speare seems here designated. The poet had then
published his two classical poems, and probably
most of his English historical plays had been acted.
The supposition that Sliakspeare was meant, is at
least a pleasing one. We love to figure Spenser and
Raleigh sitting under the ' shady alders' on the
banks of ^SluUa, reading tlie manuscript of the ' Faery
Queen ;' but it is not less interesting to consider the
great poet watching the dawn of that mighty mind
which was to eclipse all its contemporaries. A few
years afterwards, in 1598, we meet with an impor-
tant notice of Shakspeare by Francis Meres, a con-
temporary author. 'As Plautus and Seneca,' he
says, 'are accounted the best for comedy and tra-
gedy among the Latins, so Shakspeare, among the
English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the
stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona,
his Errors, his Love's Labour Lost, his Love's
Labour Won (or All's Well that Ends Well), his Jlid-
summer Night's Dream, and his ^lerchant of Venice;
for tragedy, his Richard IL, Richard IIL, Henry
IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo
and Juliet.' Tliis was indeed a brilliant contribu-
tion to the English drama, throwing Greene, I'eele,
and Llarlow immeasurably into shade, and far
transcending all the previous productions of the
Enghsh stage. The harvest, however, was not j-et
half reaped— the glorious intellect of Shakspeare
Was still forming, and his imagination nursing those
magnificent conceptions which were afterwards em-
bodied in the Lear, the Macbeth, Othello, and Tempest
of his tragic muse.
The chronology of Shakspeare's plays has been
arbitrarily fixed by Malone and others, without ade-
quate authority. Mr Collier has shown its incor-
rectness in various particidars. He has proved, for
example, that ' Othello' was on the stage in 1602,
though Malone assigns its first appearance to 1604.
' Macbeth' is put down to 1 606, though we only know
that it existed in 1610. Henry VIII. is assigned to
1603. yet it is mentioned by Sir Henry Wotton as a
neic play in 1613, and we know that it was produced
with unusual scenic decoration and splendour in
that j'ear. The Roman plays were undoubtedly
among his latest works. The ' Tempest' has been
usually considered the last, but on no decisive autho-
rity. Adopting this popular belief, Mr Campbell has
remarked, that the 'Tempest' has a ' sort of sacred-
ness' as the last drama of the great poet, who, as if
conscious that this was to be the case, has ' been
inspired to typify himself as a wise, potent, and
benevolent magician.'
There seems no good reason for believing that
Shakspeare did not continue writing on to the period
of his death in 1616; and such a supposition is coun-
tenanced by a tradition thus recorded in the diary
of the Rev. John Ward, A.^L, vicar of Stratford-
on-Avon, extending from 1648 to 1679. 'I have
heard,' says the careless and incurious vicar, whff
might have added largely to our stock of Shak-
spearian facts, had he possessed taste, acuteness, or
industry — ' I have heard that ^Ir Shakspeare was a
natural wit, without any art at all. He frequented
the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days
lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with twa
plays every- year, and for it had an allowance so
large, that he spent at the rate of £1000 a-year, as
I have heard. Shakspeare, Drayton, and Ben Jon-
son, had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too
hard, for Shakspeare died of a fever there contracted.'
We place no great reliance on this testimony, either
as to facts literary or personal. Those who have
studied the works of the great dramatist, and marked
his successive approaches to perfection, must see that
he united the closest studj- to the keenest observa-
tion, that he attained to the highest pitch of drama-
tic art, and the most accurate philosophy of the
human mind, and that he was, as Sehlegel has hap-
pily remarked, ' a pnjfound artist, and not a blind
and wildly-luxuriant genius.'*
* Coleridge boasted of being the first in time wno publicly
denionstnited, to t)ie full extent of the position, that the sup-
posed irregularity and extravagances of Sliakspeare were ' the
mere dreams of a pedantry that arraigned the eagle because it
had not the dimensions of the swan.' He maintains, with his
usual fine poetical appreciation and feeling, that that hiw of
unity which has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity
of custom, but in nature itself, the vn'ity of feeling , is everywhere,
and at all times, observed by Shakspejire in his plays. ' Read
Romeo and Juliet — all is youth and spring ; youth with its fol-
lies, its virtues, its precipitancies ; spring with its odours, its
flowers, and its transiency ; it is one and the s;ime feeling that
commences, goes through, and ends the play.' This unity of
action, or of character and interest, conspicuous in Shakspeare,
Coleridge illustrates by an illustration drawn, with the taste of
a poet, from external nature. ' Whence .irises the harmony
that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes— in the rela-
tive shapes of rocks— the harmony of colours in the heaths,
ferns, and lichens — the leaves of the beech and the oak— the
stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other moun-
tain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring-
compared with the visual effect from the greater number of
artificial plantations ? From this— that the natural landscape
is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified ab intra in
each component part.' In working out his conceptions, either
179
FBOM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO IWfr.
Eleven of the dramas were printed during Shak-
speare's life, probably from copies piratically ob-
tained. It vras the interest of the managers that
new and popular pieces shoiild not be published ;
»ut we entertain tlie most perfect conviction, that
the poet intended all his original works, as he had
revised some, for publication. Thd ' IMerry Wives of
Windsor' is said to have been written in fourteen
days, by command of Queen Elizabeth, who wished
to see Falstaff in love. Shakspeare, however, was
anxious for his fame, as well as eager to gratify the
queen ; when the temporary occasion was served,
he returned to his plaj', filled up his first imperfect
outline, and heightened the humour of the dialogue
and character. Let not the example of this greatest
name in Englisli literature be ever quoted to sup-
port the false opinion, that excellence can be attained
without study and labour !
In 1623 appeared the first collected edition of
Shakspeare's dramatic works — seven years after his
own death, and six months after that of his widow,
who, Ave suspect, had a life-interest in the plays.
The whole were contained in one folio volume, and
a preface and dedication were supplied by the poet's
fellow comedians. Hemming and Condell.
The plots of Shakspeare's dramas were nearly all
borrowed, some from novels and romances, others
from legendary tales, and some from older plays.
In his Roman subjects, he followed North's transla-
tion of Plutarch's Lives ; his English historical plays
are chiefly taken from Holinshed's Chronicle. Erom
the latter source he also derived the plot of ' Mac-
beth,' perhaps the most transcendent of all his works.
A very cursory perusal will display the gradual pro-
gress and elevation of his art. In the ' Two Gentle-
men of Verona,' and the earlier comedies, we see the
timidity and immaturity of A-onthful genius ; a half-
formed style, bearing frequent traces of that of liis
predecessors ; fantastic quibbles and conceits (which
he never wholly abandoned) ; only a partial develop-
ment of character; a romantic and playful fancy,
but no great strength of imagination, energy, or pas-
sion. In Richard II. and III., the creative and master
mind are visible in tlie delineation of character. In
the ' Midsunmier Night's Dream,' the ' Merchant of
Venice,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' &c., Ave find the ripened
poetical imagination, prodigality of invention, and a
searching, meditative spirit. These qualities, Avith
a finer vein of morality and contemplative philo-
sophy, pervade ' As You Like It,' and the ' Twelfth
Night.' In 'Henry IV.,' the 'Merry WIa'cs,' and 'Mea-
sure for Measure,' we see his inimitable powers of
comedy, full formed, revelling in an atmosphere of
joyous life, and fresh as if from the hand of nature.
He took a loftier flight in his classical dramas, con-
ceived and finished Avith consunmiate taste and free-
dom. In his later tragedies, ' Lear,' 'Hamlet' (in its
improved form), ' Otiiello,' ' Macbeth,' and the ' Tem-
pest,' all his wonderful faculties and acquirements are
found combined — his Avit, pathos, passion, and sub-
limity — his profound knowledge and observation of
mankind, mellowed by a refined humanity and bene-
volence — his imagination richer from skilful culture
and added stores of information — his unrivalled lan-
of ch.iracteror p-ossion, we conceive Shakspeare to have laboured
for ultimate und lasting fame, not imnii'iliatc theatrical efToct.
}Ii3 audiencea must often have been unable to follow his philo-
sophy, his subtle distinctions, and his inianery. The actors
must have been equally unable to give effect to many of his
personations. He w.as apparently indifferent to both — at Ic.ist
in liis great works — and wrote for the mind of the universe.
There was, however, always enough of ordinary nature, of
pomp, or variety of action, for the multitude ; and the Knglish
historical plays, connected with national pride and glory, must
have rendered their author popular.
guage (like ' light from heaven ) — his imagery and
versification.
That Shakspeare dcAriated from the dramatic uni-
ties of time, place, and action, laid doAvn by the
ancients, and adopted by the French theatre, is well-
known, and needs no defence. In his tragedies, he
amply fulfils Avhat Aristotle admits to be the end
and object of tragedy, to beget admiration, terror, or
sympathy. His mixture of comic Avith tragic scenes
is sometimes a blemish, but it Avas the fiuilt of his
age ; and if he had lived to edit his Avorks, some of
these incongruities woidd doubtless have been ex-
punged. But, on the Avhole, such blending of oppo-
site qualities and characters is accordant with the
actual experience and vicissitudes of life. No course
of events, howeA-er tragic in its results, moA-es on in
measured, unvaried solemnity, nor Avould the Eng-
lish taste tolerate this stately French style. The
great preceptress of Shakspeare Avas Nature : he
spoke from her inspired dictates, ' Avarm from the
heart and f^iithful to its fires ;' and in his disregard of
classic rules, pursued at Avill his Avinged Avay through
all the labj'rinths of fancy and of the human heart.
These celestial flights, however, Avere regidated, as
we have said, by knoAvlcdge and taste. Mere poeti-
cal imagination might have created a Caliban, or
evoked the airy spirits of the enchanted island and
the Midsummer Dream ; but to delineate a Desde-
mona or Imogen, a Miranda or Viola, the influence
of a pure and refined spirit, cultivated and disci-
plined by 'gentle arts,' and fitmiliar by habit, thought,
and example, Avith the better parts of Avisdom and
humanity, were indispensably requisite. Peele or
MarloAv might have draAvn the forest of Arden, Avith
its Avoodland glades, but who but Shakspeare could
haA-e supplied the mo>-al beartti/ of the scene ? — the
refined simplicity and gaiety of Rosalind, the philo-
sophic meditations of Jaques, the true Avisdom, ten-
derness, and grace, diffused over the wliolc of that
antique half-courtl}' and h;df pastoral drama. These
and similar personations, such as Benedict and Bea-
trice, Mercutio, &c., seem to us even more Avonder-
ful than tb.e loftier characters of Shakspeare. No
types of them could haA'e existed but in his OAvn
mind. The old drama and the chroniclers furnished
the otitlines of his historical personages, though
destitute of the heroic ardour and elevation Avhich
he breathed into them. Plutarch and the poets
kindled his classic enthusiasm and taste ; old Chap-
man's Homer perhaps rolled its majestic c.idences
over his ear and imagination ; but characters in
Avhich polished manners and easy grace are as pre-
dominant as Avit, reflection, or fancy, Avere then un-
knoAvn to the stage, as to actual life. They are
among the most perfect creations of his genius, and,
in reference to his taste and habits, they are valuable
materials for his biography.
In judgment, Shakspeare excels his contemporary
dramatists as much as in genius, but at the same
time it nnist be confessed that he also partakes of
their errors. To be unwilling to acknowledge any
faults in his plays, is, as Hallam remarks, ' an ex-
travagance rather derogatory to the critic than
honourable to the poet.' Fresh from the perusal of
any of his Avorks, and under the immediate effects of
his inspirations — Avalking, as it Avere, in a Avorld of
his creating, with beings familiar to us almost from
infancy — it seems like sacrilege to breathe one word
of censure. Yet truih must admit that some of his
plays are hastily and ill-constructed as to plot ; that
his proneness to quibble and play with words is
brought forward in scenes Avhere this pccidiarity
constitutes a positive defect ; that he is sometimes
indelicate where indelicacy is least p.ardonahle, and
where it jars most painfully Avith the associations of
180
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPEARE.
the scene ; and that his style is occasionally stiff,
turffid, and obscure, chiefly because it is at once
highly figurative and condensed in expression. Ben
Jonson has touched freely, but with manliness and
fairness, on these defects.
' I remember,' he sa\-s, ' the players have often
mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in
his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted
I out a line. ^ly answer hath been, would he had
blotted a thousand ! which they thought a male-
volent speech. I had not told posterity this, but
for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted,
and to justif)- mine own candour; for I loved the
man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry
as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of
an open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy,
brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he
flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was ne-
cessary he should be stopped, siiffllraandus erat, as
Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own
power ; would the rule of it had been so too !
Many times he fell into those things could not
escape laughter, as when he said, in the person of
Cajsar, one speaking to him, " Cfesar, thou dost me
■wrong." he replied, " CfPsar did never wrong but
with just cause," and such like, which were ridicu-
lous.* But he redeemed his vices with his \'irtues.
There was ever more in him to be praised than to
be pardoned.'
The first edition of Shakspeare was published, as
already stated, in 1623. A second edition was pub-
lished in 1632, the same as the first, excepting that
it was more disfigured with errors of the press. A
third edition was published in 1644, and <v fourth in
1685. The public admiration of this grea,' English
classic now demanded that he should receive the
honours of a commentary ; and Rowe, the poet,
gave an improved edition in 1709. Pope, Warbur-
ton, Johnson. Chalmers, Steevens, and others, suc-
cessively published editions of the poet, with copious
notes. The best of the whole is the voluminous
edition by Malone and Boswell, published in twenty-
one volumes, in 1821. The critics of the great poet
are innumerable, and they bid fair, hke Banquo's
progeny, to ' stretch to the crack of doom.' The
scholars of Germany have distinguished themselves
by their philosophical and critical dissertations on
the genius of Shakspeare. Tliere never was an
author, ancient or modern, whose works have been
so carefuL'.y analysed and Ulustrated, so eloquently
expounded, or so universally admired.
He so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would ^^nsh to die.
Milton on Shakspeare, 1630.
* Since the beginning of the present centur}',' says a
writer in the Edinburgh Review (1840), ' Shak-
speare's influence on our literature has been very
great ; and the recognition of his supremacy not
only more unqualified, but more mtelligent than
ever. In many instances, indeed, and particularly
by reason of the exaggerated emjjhasis which is so
apt to infect periodical writing, the veneration for
the greatest of all poets has risen to a height which
amoimts literally to idolatry. But the error is the
safest which can be committed in judging the works
of genius ; and the risk of any evil consequences is
* Jonson's allusion is to the following line in the third act of
Julius Csesar —
Know Ca?sar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.
The >issage was probably altered by Ben's suggestion, or still
more likely it was corrupted by the blunder of the player.
excluded by that inquiring temper, which is as cha-
racteristic of literature in our times, as is its appear-
ance of comparative animation.'
The difficulty of making selections from Shak-
speare must be obvious. If of character, his cha-
racters are as numerous and diversified as those in
human life ; if of style, he has exliausted all styles,
and has one for each description of poetry and ac-
tion ; if of wit, humour, satire, or pathos, where shall
our choice fall, where all are so abundant ? We have
felt our task to be something like being deputed to
search in some magnificent forest for a handful of
the finest leaves or plants, and as if we were diligently
exploring the world of woodland beauty to accom-
plish faithfully this hopeless adventure. Happily,
Sliakspeare is in all hands, and a single leaf will re-
call the fertile and majestic scenes of his inspiration.
IMwder of King Duncan.]
[Macbeth, prompted by ambition, and pushed on by hii
savage wife, resolves to murder the king, then his guest, and
seize the crown.]
Macbeth and a Servant
Macb. Go bid thy mistress, when m} dii ik is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
[Exit Sercanl,
Is this a dagger which I see before me.
The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight ? — or art thou but
A. dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going ;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses.
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still ;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing.
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now, o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep : now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings ; and withered Murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf.
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sound and firm-set earth.
Hear not my steps, which way the}' walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout.
And take the present horror from the time.
Which now suits with it. Whilst I threat, he livtjs-
\\'ords to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
\_A bell rings.
I go, and it is done ; the bell invites me :
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell. \_Exit.
Enter Lady Macbeth.
Lady. That which hath made them diuiik, hath
made me bold :
What hath quench'd them, hath given me fir'^. F'ark !
peace !
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night — he is about it —
The doors are open ; and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores. 1 have dnigg'd
their possets,
That death and nature do conteml about them,
Whether they live or die.
Macb. [ Within.] \\'ho'8 there ? what ho !
181
V&OM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 164<»
Lady. Alack ! I am afraid they have awak'J ;
And 'tis not done. Th' attempt, and not the deed,
Confounds us. Hark ! I laid their daggers ready ;
He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I lEntcr Macbeth] had done't.
My husband !
Macb. I've done the deed — didst thou not hear a
noise ?
Lady. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets C17.
Did not you speak \
Macb. When 1
Lady. Now.
Macb. As I descended ?
Laxly. Ay.
Macb. Hark ! — who lies i' th' second chamber ?
Lady. Donalbain.
Macb. This is a sorry sight. [Lools on his hands.
Lady. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
Macb. There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one
cried, Murder !
That they did wake each other ; I stood and heard
them ;
But they did say their prayers, and address'd them
Again to sleep.
Lady. There are two lodg'd together.
Macb. One cried, God bless us ! and Amen ! the
other ;
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands,
Listening their fear, I could not say, Amen,
When they did say, God bless us.
Lady. Consider it not so deeply.
Macb. But wherefore could not I pronounce Amen ?
I had most need of blessing, and Amen
Stuck in my throat.
Lady. These deeds must not be thought,
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad.
Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry. Sleep no
morel
Macbeth does murder sleep— the innocent sleep —
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care.
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath.
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
Lady. What do you mean 1
Macb. Still it cry'd, Sleep no more, to all the
house 'y
Glamis hath murder'd sleep. And therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more !
Lady. \\'ho was it that thus cry'd 1 Why, worthy
Thane ;
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brain-sickly of things. Go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place ?
They must lie there. Go, carry them, and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
Macb. I'll go no more.
I am afraid to think what I have done ;
Look't on't again, I dare not.
Lady. Infirm of purpose :
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures ; 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If lie do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt. IKiit.
Knocking within.
Macb. Whence is that knocking ! [Sfartinij.
How is't with me, when every noise appals me i
What hands are here I — ha ! they pluck out mine
eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will
rather
The nmltitudinous seas incamardine,
Making the green one red
Enter Lady Macbeth.
Lady. My hands are of your colour ; but I shame
To wear a heart so white. [Kiiocl:] I hear a knocking
At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber ;
A little water clears us of this deed,
How easy is it then ? Your constancy
Hath left you unattended. [^Knockinr/.l Hark, more
knocking !
Get on your night-gown, lest occasion call us.
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
Macb. To know my deed, 'twere best not know
myself. [Kiicrk.
Wake, Duncan, with this knocking. Ay, 'would tlmu
couldst ! \_Eu:ctnit.
[Love Scene by Night in a Garden.']
Borneo. He jests at scars, that nev-er felt a wound —
But, soft ! what light through yonder window breaks ;
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun !
[Juliet appears above at a window.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.
Who is already sick and pale with grief.
That thou her maid art far more fair than she ;
Be not her maid since she is envious ;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it ; cast it off
It is my lady ; ! it is my love ;
that she knew she were !
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that ?
Her eye discourses ; I will answer it
1 am too bold ; 'tis not to me she speaks :
Two of the fairest stars of all the heav'n.
Having some business, do intreat her eyes.
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head ?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp : her eyes in heav'n
Would through the airy region stream so bright.
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand !
that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek !
Jul. Ah me !
Horn. She speaks.
Oh, speak again, bright angel ! for thou art
As glorious to this sight, being e'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heav'n,
Unto the white-upturned, wond'ring eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him.
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Jul. Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo !
Deny thy father, and refuse tliy name :
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
Bom, Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at
this ? [Amle.
Jul. 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy :
Thou art thyself, though not a IMoiitague.
What's Montague ? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face — nor any other part
Belonging to a ma«. 0, be some other name !
What's in a name \ That which we call a rose.
By any other name would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes,
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name ;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Bom. I take thee at thy word :
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptis'd ;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
Jul. What man art thou, that thus, bescrecn VI innight.
So stumblest on my counsel ?
182
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPfcARB,
Rom. By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am :
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the v,-ord.
Jul. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.
Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague ?
Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.
Jul. Howcam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high, and hard to climb ;
And the place death, considering who thou art,
]f any of my kinsmen find thee here.
Rom. With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these
walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out ;
And what love can do, that dares love attempt :
Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.
Jid. If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
Rom. Alack ! there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords ; look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.
Jul. I would not for the world they saw thee here.
Rom. I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes,
And but thou love me, let them find me here ;
!My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
Jul. By whose direction found'st thou out this place ?
Rom. By love, that first did prompt me to inquire ;
He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.
I am no pilot ; yet wert thou as far
As that va-st shore, wash'd with the farthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandise.
Jul. Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my clieek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.
Fain would I dwell on form ; fain, fain deny
"What I have spoke- -but farewell compliment !
Dost thou love me ? I know thou wilt say ay ;
And I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear'st,
Thou may'st prove false : at lovers' perjuries.
They say, Jove laughs. 0, gentle Romeo !
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully ;
Or, if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I'll frown and be perverse, Knd say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo ; but else not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou may'st think my 'haviour light ;
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more coving to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou over-heard'st, ere I was 'ware,
My true love's passion ; therefore pardon me.
And not impute this yielding to light love.
Which the dark night hath so diseover'd.
Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear.
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops
Jul. swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon.
That monthly changes in her circled orb :
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Rom. 'What shall I swear by ?
Jul. Do not swear at all ;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
M'hich is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.
Rom. If my heart's dear love — ■
Jul. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night ;
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden.
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be.
Ere one can say it lightens. Sweet, good-night !
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath.
May prove a beauteous flower, when next we meet.
Good-night, good-night — as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart, as that within my breast !
Rom. 0, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied ?
Jul. What satisfaction canst- thou have to-night ?
Rom. Th' exchange of thy love's faithful vow for
mine.
Jul. I gave thee mine before thou did'st request it ;
And yet I would it were to give again.
i?ci//i.Wouldst thou withdraw it \ for what pui^pose,
love ?
Jul. But to be frank, and give it thee again.
And yet I wish but for the thing I have :
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep ; the more 1 give to thee.
The more I have, for both are infinite.
I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu !
[A'io-^e calls within.
Anon, good nurse ! Sweet ^Montague, be true.
Stay but a little, I will come again. '\_Exit.
Rom. blessed, blessed night ! I am afear'd.
Being in night, all this is but a dream ;
Too flattering sweet to be substantial.
Re-enter Juliet above.
Jul. Three words, dear Romeo, and good-night
indeed.
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I'll procure to come to thee.
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite ;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay.
And. follow thee, my love, throughout the world.
[ With in : Madam 1
I come, anon — but if thou mean'st not well,
I do beseech thee [Within: jNIadam !] By and by,
I come —
To cease thy suit, find leave me to my gi-ief.
To-morrow will I send.
Rom. So thrive my soul
Jul. A thousand times good night. [ Ent,
Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy lij;;it..
Love goes tow'rd love, as school-boys from their books :
But love from love, tow'rds school with heavy looks.
Enter Juliet again.
Jul. Hist ! Romeo, hist ! for a falconer's voice,
To lure this tassel gentle back again.
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud ;
Else would I tear the cavewhere Echo lies.
And make her airj- tongue more hoarse than mine.
With repetition of my Romeo's name.
Rom. It is my soul that calls upon my name.
How silver-sweet sound lovei-s' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears !
Ju.l. Romeo !
Rom. My sweet !
Jul. At what o'clock to-morrow
Shall I send to thee ?
Rom. At the hour of nine.
Jul. I will not fail ; 'tis twenty years till then.
I have forgot wliy I did call thee' back.
Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.
Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there ;
Rememb'ring how I love thy company.
Rom. And I'll still stay to have thee still forget.
Forgetting any other home but this.
Jul. 'Tis almost morning. 1 would have thee gone ,
And yet no further than a wanton's bird.
Who lets it hop a little from her hand.
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves.
And with a silk thread plucks it back again.
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
Rom. I would I were thy bird.
Jul. Sweet, =0 would I :
Yet 1 should kill thee with much cherishing.
Oood-night, good-niglit : j)artiiig is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good-night, till it be morrow. [Krit,
Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thjr
breast !
183
PROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
'Would 1 were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest I
Hence will I to my jrhostly friars' close cell,
His help to ciave,'and my dear hap to tell. \_Exlt.
[Dein-lption of a Moonlii/hi Niffkt, with Jim Mttsic]
Lor. The moon shines bright : in such a night as
til is,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise ; in such a night,
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojans' wall,
And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Crcssid lay that night.
Jes. In such a night
Did Tliisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew ;
And saw the lion's shadow ere himself.
And ran dismay'd away.
Lor. In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wide sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Jcs. In such a night
Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs
That did renew old j*I'".son.
Lor. In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And with .in unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.
Jcs. And in such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well ;
Stealing her soul with many vows uf faith.
And ne'er a true one.
Lor. And in such a night
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
» * *
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica ; look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patlnes of bright gold ;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn :
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear.
And draw her home with music.
Jes. I'm never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lor, The reason is, your spirits are attentive ;
For do but note a wild and wanton herd.
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts.
Fetching mad bounds, bellowinj; and neighing
loud
(Which is the hot condition of their blood) ;
If they ])erchance but hear a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their cars.
You sliall ])crceive them make a mutual stand ;
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,
By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and
floods ;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage.
But nuisic for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath not music in himself.
Nor is not mov'd with conconl of sweet sounds.
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ;
The motions of his sjiirit are dull as night.
And his affectioiis dark as Krebus :
\ et no such man be trusted.
Merehiint of Vmict
\Ghost Scene in Ilavilet.]
Ifaitilct. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold.
Horatio. It is a nijiping and an eager air.
Ham. \\'hat hour now 2
Ilor. I think it lacks of twelve.
Marcdlvs. No, it is struck.
llor. Indeed ? I heard it not. It then draws near
the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[Noise ofivarlike music within.
What does this mean, my lord ?
Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes hia
rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg'ring up-spring reels ;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Hor. Is it a custom ?
Ham. Ay, marry is't :
But to my mind, though I am native here.
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel, east and west,
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations ;
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition ; and, indeeci, 't takes
From our achievements, though poiform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men.
That for some vicious mole of nature in them.
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty.
Since nature cannot choose his origin.
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion.
Oft breaking dovm the pales and forts of reason ;
Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners ; that these men
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect.
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star.
Their virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo.
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance often dout
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost.
Hor. Look, my lord, it comes !
Ham. Angels <and ministers of grace defend us !
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from lieav'n or blasts from hell,
Re thy intents wicked or charitable.
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape.
That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, Father, Royal Dane ; Oh, answer me ;
Lot me not burst in ignorance ; but tell
Why thy canonis'd bones, hears'd in death,
Have burst their cerements ? Why the sepulchre.
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd.
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again 2 What may this mean.
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Hevisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
INIaking night hideous, and we fools of nature.
So horribly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ?
Say, why is this 1 Wherefore ? What should we do ?
lO'ho.st heckons Hamlet.
Hor. It beckons you to go away with it.
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
Mar. Look, with what courteous action
It waves you off to a removed gi'ouud :
But do not go with it.
Ilor. No, by no means. [Holding Hamlet.
Ham. It will not speak then I will follow it.
184
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITE rati; RK.
SHAKSPEARE.
//or . Do not, my lord.
Ham. Why, what should be the fear ?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee ;
.And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. — I'll follow it
Ilor. What if it tempt you tow'rd the flood, my lord ;
Or to the dreiidful summit of the clitt".
That beetles o'er his base into the sea ;
And there assume some other horrible form.
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness 1 Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain,
That looks so many fathoms to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath.
Ham. It waves me still. — Go on, I'll follow thee.
Mar. You shall not go, my lord.
Ham. Hold off your hands.
^[ar. Be rul'd ; you shall not go.
Ham. My fate cries out.
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nei-ve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen
[Breahinr/ from them.
By heav'n, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me
I say, away ! Go on — I'll follow thee.
[E.rcimt Ghost and Hamlet.
Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.
Mar. Let's follow ! 'Tis not fit thus to obey him.
Hor. Have after. To what issue will this come ?
Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Hor. Heaven mil direct it.
Mar. Kay, let's follow him. [Exeunt.
\_MarTc Antony over Ccesai-'s Body."]
Ant. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your
ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them ;
The good is oft interred with their bones :
So let it be with Caesar. Noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious ;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault.
And gi-ievously hath Cresar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest
(For Brutus is an honourable man,
So are they all, all honourable men),
Come I to speak in Cffisar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me ;
But Brutus says he was ambitious ;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Cajsar seem ambitious 2
W'hen that the poor have cried, Cfcsar hath wept ;
A^mbition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious ;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that, on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown.
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition I
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious ;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke ;
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause :
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him ?
Oh, judgment ! thou art fled to brutish beasts.
And men have lost their reason ! Bear with me :
My heart is in the coffin there with Cassar,
And I must pause till it come back to mo.
\st Cit. Methinks there is much reason in liifl
sayings.
'Id Cit. If t!iou consider rightly of the matter,
Cwsar has had great wrong.
'6d C'i'l. lias he, masters? I fear there will a
Worse come in his place.
4lh Oil. Mark'd ye his words ? He would not
take the crowii ;
Therefore, 'tis certain he was not ambitious.
\st Cit. If it be found so, some will dear abide it.
2d Cit. Poor soul ! his eyes are red as tire with
weeping.
'6d Cit. There's not a nobler man in Rome than
Antony.
4th Cit. Now, mark him, he begins ag.ain to speak.
Ant. But yesterday, the word of Caisar might
Have stood against the world ; now lies he there.
And none so poor to do him reverence.
C)h, masters ! if I were dispos'd to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men.
I will not do them wrong : I rather choose
To wTong tlie dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wi-ong such honourable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Caosar:
I found it in his closet ; 'tis his will.
Let but the commons hear this testament
(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read),
And they would go and kiss dead Ciesar's wounds.
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood ;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.
4th Cit. Well hear the will ; read it, Mark Antony.
All. The will ! the will ! We will hear Ciesar's
will !
Ant. Have patience, gentle friends ! I must not
read it ;
It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd j'ou.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men ;
Y\jid, being men, hearing the will of C-.esar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
'TIS good you know not that you are his heirs ;
For, if you should. Oh, what would come of it !
4th Cit. Read the will ; we wdll hear it, .\jitony ,
You shall read us the will ; Caesar's will !
Ant. Will you be patient ? will you stay a wliile 1
I have o'ershot myself, to tell you of it.
I fear I ^^Tong the honourable men
Whose dagirers have stabb'd Caesar. I do fear it.
4th Cit. They were traitors. Honourable men !
AIL The will ! the testament !
2d Cit. 'i'hev were villains, murderers ! The will !
Head the will !
Ant. You will compel me, then, to read the will ?
Then make a ring about the corpse of Cassar,
And let me show you him that made the will.
Shall I descend? And will you give me leave ?
All. Come down.
2d Cit. Descend. [He comes down from tim pulpit
3d Cit. You shall have leave.
4th Cit. A ring ! Stand round !
\ist Cit. Stand from the heai-se, stand from the body,
2d Cit. Room for Antony — most noble Antony !
Ant. Nay, press not so upon me ; stand far off.
All. Stand back ! room ! bear back !
Ant. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle. I remember
Tlie first time ever Cassar put it on ;
'Twas on a summer's evening in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii.
Look ! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through ;
See, what a rent the envious Casca nuidc !
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd ;
And, as he plucked his cur.sed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Ctesar followed it !
185
PROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO IWS.
As rushing out of doors, to be rcsolv'd
If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no.
For Brutus, as you know, was Cresar's angel ;
Judge, Oh you gods ! how dearly Crcsar loy'd him.
This was the most unkindest cut of all ;
For when the noble Casar saw him stab.
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms.
Quite vanquish'd him ; then burst his mighty heart :
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Porapey's statua.
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
Oh, what a fall was there, ray country-men !
Then I, and you, and all of us fell do^-n,
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.
Oh, now you weep ; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity : these are gracious drops.
Kind souls ! What ! weep you when you but behold
Our Cwsar's vesture wounded ! Look you here !
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.
\st Cit. piteous spectacle !
2d Cit. noble Ctesar !
U Cit. woful day !
itk Cit. traitors ! villains !
\st Cit. most bloody sight !
2d Cit. We will be reveng'd ! Revenge ! About —
seek — bum — fire — kill — slay ! Let not a trai-
tor live !
[^Othdlo's Relation of his Courtship to the Senate.^
Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors.
My very noble and approv'd good masters ;
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter.
It is most true ; true, I have married her ;
The ver\' head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,
And little blest with the soft phrase of peace ;
For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
Till now, some nine moons wasted, thej' have us'd
Their dearest action in the tented field ;
And little of this great world can I speak.
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle ;
And therefore shall I little grace my cause
In speaking for myself. Yet by your gracious patience
I will a round unvamish'd tale deliver
Of my whole course of love : what drugs, what charms.
What conjuration, and what mighty magic
(For such proceeding I am charg'd withal)
I won his daughter with.
Her father lov'd me, oft invited me ;
Still question'd me the story of my life.
From year to year ; the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have past.
I ran it through, ev'n from my boyish days.
To the very moment that he bade me tell it :
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field ;
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach ;
Of being taken by the insolent foe.
And sold to slavery ; of my redemption thence.
And portance in my travel's history.
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle.
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch
heaven,
It was my lot to speak, such was the process ;
And of the cannibals that each other cat.
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear
^\'ould Desdemona seriously incline ;
But still the house aflairs would draw her thence ;
Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
Bhe'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse : which I observing.
Took once a ])liant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayef of earnest heart,
'''hM I would all my j)llgriiM.'i;.'e dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard.
But not intentively. I did consent.
And often did beguile her of her tears.
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth sufFer'd. ily story being done.
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs ;
She swore — in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas j)as3iiig
strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man : — she thank'J
me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story ;
And that would woo her. On this hint I spake ;
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them.
[Queen Mab.'\
then, I see queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Dra^vn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs ;
The cover, of the wings of grasshopj)ers ;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web ;
The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry l)eaiiis;
Her whip, of cricket's bone ; the lash, cf film ;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid :
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub.
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this- state she gallops night \>y night.
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ;
On courtiers' knees, that dream on courtsles straight ;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees ;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream.
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues.
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose.
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit :
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail.
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice !
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck.
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades.
Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes ;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very JNIab
That plats the manes of horses in the night ;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once imtangled, much misfortune bode^.
Romeo and Juliet
[End of All EartMy Glm'ies.l
Our revels now are ended : these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air ;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe Itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded.
Leave not a rack behind ! \Ve are such stuff"
As dreams are made on, and our little lile
Is rounded with a sleep. ''
The Tempet'.
186
nUAMATlSTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPEAaK.
\_Lifc and Death Wciyhcd.l
To be, or not to be, that ia the question —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them ? To die — to sleep — ■
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to ! — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die — to sleep —
To sleep ! — perchance to dream ! — ay, there's the rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
IMust give us pause — there 's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life :
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes.
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin 1 Who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life.
But that the dread of something after death
(That undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns) puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not off 1
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
And entei-prises of great pith and moment,
W^ith this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
HamUt
[Fear of Death.l
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted sj)irit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds.
And blo\vn with restless violence round about
The pendant world ; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible !
The weariest and most loathed worldly life.
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death,
Measure/i>r Measure.
^Description of Ophelia^ s Drovming.']
There is a willow grows ascant the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ;
There with fantastic garlands did she make.
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long pur|)les
(That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them),
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke.
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up.
Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,
As one Incapable of her own distress.
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element ; but long it could not bo,
Till that her gannents, heavy with their drink,
PuU'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
[Perseva'ance.']
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion,
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord.
Keeps honour bright : to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail,
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way.
For honour travels in a strait so narrow.
Where one but goes abreast : Keep, then, the path ;
For Emulation hath a thousand sons.
That one by one pursue ; if you give way.
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by.
And leave you hindmost.
Or, like a gallant horse, fall'n in first rank.
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'er-run and trampled on : then what they do in pre-
sent.
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours ;
For Time is like a fashionable host.
That slightly shakes his parting guest by tlie liand.
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer : Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing. ! let not Vi.tue
seek
Remuneration for the thing it was ; for beauty,
wit.
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service.
Love, friendship, charit}-, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating Time.
Troilus and Cressiis.
[The Deceit of Ornament or Appearances. \
The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt.
But being season'd with a gi-acious voice.
Obscures the show of evil ? In religion,
What danmed error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text.
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ?
There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on its outward parts.
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning IMars ;
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk !
And these assume but valour's excrement.
To render them redoubted. Look on beauty.
And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight.
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
flaking them lightest that wear most of it.
So are those crisped, snaky, golden locks,
AVhich make such wanton gambols with the win 1
Upon supposed fairness ; often kno^^•n
To be the dowry of a second head,
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.
Thus ornament is but the gilded shore •
To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word.
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
T' entrap the wisest : therefore, thou jraudy gold.
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee :
Nor none of thee, thou pale and comnioi! drudge
'Tween man and man : but thou, thou meagre
lead,
Which rather threaten'st than dost promise aug'it.
Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,
And here choose I ; joy be the consequence.
Merchant of I'enict.
FllOM l.loO
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164».
[J/ercy.]
The quiiHtv of mercy is not strain'd ;
It diupijoth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed ;
It blcs.seth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes
Tlie throned monarch better than his crown :
His sceptre shows the force of temporal pow'r,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above the sceptred sway ;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings ;
It is an attribute to God himself ;
And earthly power doth then show likcEt God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this —
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy ;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Merchant of Venice.
[Solitude prefei-red to a Court Life, and the Advantaf/es
of Adversity.}
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Ilath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court ?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season's difference ; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind ;
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,
' This is no flattery ;' these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head :
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it !
Amiens. Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style !
As I'ou Like It.
[77ic World Compared to a Stage.}
Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy —
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play.
Jaqiws. All the world 's a stage.
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Alewling and puking in his nurse's anns :
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, the soldier.
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard.
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel ;
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances ;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ;
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shanks ; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. L.ast scene of all.
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion :
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
As You Like It
[Dcsa'iption of Night in a Camp>.}
From camp to camp, thro' the foul womb of night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds.
That the lix'd sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other's watch.
Fire answers fire ; and through their paly flames,
Each battle sees the other's umber'd face.
Steed threatens steed, in higli and boastful neighs.
Piercing the night's dull ear ; and from the tents.
The armourers, accomplishing the knights.
With busy hammers closing rivets up.
Give dreadful note of preparation.
The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll,
And the third hour of drowsy morning name.
Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
The confident and over-lusty Frencli
For the low-rated English play at dice,
And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night,
Who, like a foul and ugly witch, does limp
So tediously away. The poor condemned English,
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires
Sit patiently, and inly ruminate
The morning's danger : and their gesture sad
(Investing lank lean cheeks and war-worn coats)
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon
So many horrid ghosts. 0, now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruin'd band.
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent.
Let him cry praise and glory on his head !
For forth he goes, and visits all his host.
Bids them good-morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note
How dread an army hath enrounded him ;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
Unto the weary and all-watched night ;
But freshly looks, and overbears attaint.
With cheerful semblance anil sweet majesty ;
That ev'ry wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
A largess universal, like the sun.
His liberal eye doth give to every one,
Thawing cold fear.
Uenrp V
[The Blessings of a ShepJiercTs Life.}
God ! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain ;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now.
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.
Thereby to see the minutes how they run :
How many make the hour full complete.
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the j-ear,
How nuuiy years a mortal man may live.
^^'hcn this is known, then to divide the times :
So many hours must I tend my flock ;
So many hours must I take my rest ;
So many liours must I contemplate ;
So many hours must I sport myself ;
So many days my ewes have been with young ;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean ;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece :
188
BEAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SHAKSPEARK.
So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Pass'J over, to the end they were created.
Would bring white hairs unto <a quiet grare.
Ah ! what a life were this ! how sweet ! how lovely !
Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter sliade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery 1
3'es, it doth, a thousandfold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle.
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince's delicates ;
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.
Ilcnry VI.
[The Vicissitudes of Life.}
So farewell to the little good you bear me.
Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness !
This is the state of man : To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms.
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls as I do. I have ventur'd,
Like little wanton boys, that swim on bladders.
These many summers in a sea of glory ;
But far beyond my depth : my high-blo^vn pride
At length broke under me ; and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye !
I feel my heart new open'd. 0, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours !
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin.
More })angs and fears than wars or women have ;
And, when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
Henry VIII.
[Falstaff's Cowardice arid Boastinr/.']
[FalstafF, who is represented as a monster of fat, a sensualist,
Bnd a coward, yet ia rendered tolerable by his humour, had
accompanied Prince Henry and some other dissolute companions
on a predatory expedition to Gad's ITill, where they first robbed
a few travellers, and afterwards the Prince and Poins set upon
FalstafF and others of the party in the diirk, and made them
take to flight. The following scene takes place afterwards in
their favoui'ite London haunt, the Boar's Head Tavern in East-
cheap.]
To Prince IIenrv and Poins, enter Falstafk, Gadshill,
Bardolph, and Peto.
Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been ?
Fed. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a ven-
geance too! — marry, and amen! Give me a cup
of sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I'll sow
nether stocks, and mend them, and foot tliem too.
A plague of all cowards ! Give me a cup of sack,
rogue. Is there no virtue extant ? [lie drinks.
P. Henry. Uidst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of
butter ? — pitiful-hearted Titan, that melted at the
sweet tale of the sun? — if thou didst, then behold that
compound.
Fal. You rogue, here's lime in this sack too. There
is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man.
Yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime
in it — a villanous coward. Go thy ways, old Jack ;
die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be
not forgot upon the face cf tlie earth, then am I a
shotten herring. There live not three good men un-
hanged in England ; and one of them is fat, and grows
old. God help the while ! — a bad world, I say ! I
would I were a weaver ; I could sing all manner of
songs. A plague of all cowards, 1 say still I
P. Henry. How now, wool-sack ? — what mutter
you ?
F(d. A king's son ! If I do not beat thee out of
thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy
subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I'll
never wear hair on my face more. You Prince of
Wales !
P. Henry. Why, you whoreson round man ! — what's
the matter?
Fal. Are you not a coward ?— answer me to that ;
and Poins there ? [To Poins.
P. Henry. Ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward,
I'll stab thee.
Fal. I call thee coward ! I'll see thee damn'd ere
I call thee coward ; but I would give a thousand
pound I could run as fast as thou canst. You are
strait enough in the shoulders ; you care not who sees
your back. Call you that backing of your friends ?
A plague upon such backing ! — give me them that
will face me. Give me a cup of sack ; I am a rogue,
if I drunk to-day.
P. Henry. villain ! thy lips are scarce wiped since
thou drunk'st last.
Fal. All's one for that. A plague of all cowards,
still say I ! [Ue drinks.
P. Henry. Wliat's the matter?
Fal. What's the matter? — here be four of us have
ta'en a thousand pound this morning.
P. Henry. Where is it, Jack? — where is it?
Fal. where is it.' — taken from us it is: a hundred
upon poor four of us.
P. Henry. What, a hundred, man 1
Fal. 1 am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with
a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scap'd by
miracle. I am eight times thrust tlu'ough tlie doub-
let, four through the hose, my buckler cut through
and through, my sword hacked like a hand-saw, ecce
s-if/mim. I never dealt better since I was a man. All
would not do. A plague of all cowards ! Let them
speak : if they speak more or less than truth, they are
villains, and the sons of darkness.
P. Henry. Speak, sirs. How was it ?
Gads. We four sot upon some dozen •
Fal. Sixteen, at least, my lord.
Gads. And bound them.
Pc/o. No, no, they were not bound.
Fal. You rogue, they were bound, eveij man of
them ; or I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew.
Gads. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh
men set upon us
Fal. And unbound the rest, and then came in the
other.
P. Henry. What ! fought you with them all ?
Fal. All? I know not what you call all; but if I
fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish ;
if there were not two or tbxee and fifty upon poor
old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.
Poins. Pray heaven, you have not murdered some
of them.
Fal. Nay, that's past praying for ; I have peppered
two of them : two, I am sure, I have paid ; two
rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal — if
I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. Thou
know'st my old ward ; here I lay, and thus I bore my
point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me
P. Henry. What ! four ? — thou saidst but two even
now.
Fal. Four, Hal ; I told thee four.
Puins. Ay, ay, he said four.
189
FROM 15oO
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1649.
J-"al. These four came all-afront, and mainly thrust
at nie. I made me no more ado, but took all their
seven points in my target, thus.
P. Henry. Seven ? — why, there were but four even
now.
Fal. In buclcram.
Poitis. Ay, four in buckram suits.
Fal. Seven, by these hilt"-, or I am a villain else.
P. Ilmi-y. Pr'ythee, let him alone ; we shall have
more anon.
Fal. Dost thou hear me, Hal 1
P. Henry. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.
Fal. Do so, for it is worth the list'ning to. These
nine in buckram, that I told thee of
p. Henry. So, two more already.
Fal. Their points being broken
Poi)u<<. Down fell their hose.
Fal. Began to give me ground. But I follow'd me
close, came-in foot and hand ; and with a thought,
seven of the eleven I paid.
P. Henry. monstrous! — eleven buckram men
grown out of two !
Fal. But, as the devil would have it, three mis-
begotten knaves, in Kendal green, came at my back,
and let drive at me ; for it was so dark, Hal, that
thou couldst not see thy hand.
P. Henry. These lies are like the fother that begets
them ; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why,
thou clay-brain'd guts ; thou knotty-pated fool ; thou
whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-keech
Fal. What, art thou mad I — art thou mad ? — is not
the truth the truth ?
P. Henry. W^hy, how couldst thou know these men
in Kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst
not see thy hand ? Come, tell us your reason 1 A\'hat
say'f-t thou to this ?
Poiiui. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.
Fal. What, upon compulsion 1 No ; were I at the
strappado, or all the racks in the world, 1 would not
toll you on compulsion. Give you a reason on com-
pulsion ! — if reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I
would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I
P. Hairy. I'll be no longer guilty of this sin ; this
sanguine coward, this bcd-presser, this horse back-
breaker, this huge hill of flesh !
Fal. Awaj', you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried
neat's tongue, you stock-fish. for breath to utter
what is like thee ! — you tailor's yard, you sheath, you
bow-case, you vile standing tuck ;
P. Henry. Well, breathe a while, and then to it
again ; and when thou hast tired thyself in base com-
parisons, hear me speak but this.
Poins. I^Iark, Jack.
P. Henry. W'c two saw you four set on four ; you
bound them, and were masters of their wealth. Mark
now, how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did
we two set on you four ; and, with a word, outfaced
you from your prize, and have it ; yea, and can show
it you here in the house ; and, Falstalf, you carried
your guts away as 'nimbly, with as quick dexterity,
and roared for mercy, and still ran and roared, as ever
I heard bull-calf. What a slave art thou, to hack
thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in
fight ! What trick, what device, what starting hole,
canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open
and apparent shame 1
Poins. Come, let's hear, Jack ; what trick hast thou
now?
Fal. By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that
made ye. Why, hear ye, my masters. Was it for
me to kill the heir-apparent? — should I turn upon
the true prince ? Why, thou know'st I am as valiant
as Hercules ; but beware instinct ; the lion will not
touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter ; I
was a coward on instinct. I shall think the better
of myself, and thee, during my life ; I, for a valiant
lion, and thou, for a true prince. But, lads, I am
glad you have the mone^'. Hostess, clap to the doors ;
watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys,
hearts of gold, all the title? of good fellowship come
to you ! What ! shall we be merry ?— shall we have a
play extempore ?
P. Henry. Content ; and the argument shall be
thy running away.
Fal. Ah ! no more of that, Hal, an thou lov'st me.
First Part of Henry IF.
[FaUtajf aiTCStcd hy Jiis Jiostess, Dame Quicliy.'\
To Fai.staff and IIostkss, with Bardolph and two Sheriff "a
Officers, enter the Chief -Justick, attended.
Ch. Just. What's the matter? keep the peace here,
ho!
Ifo.it. Good, my lord, be good to me ! I beseech you,
stand to me !
Ch. Just. How now. Sir John ! what, are you brawl-
ing here ?
Doth this become your place, your time, and business ?
You should have been well on your way to York.
Stand from him, fellow ! 'Wherefore hang'st thou on
him ?
Host. my most worshipful lord, an't please your
grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is
arrested at my suit.
C/t. Just. For what sum !
Host. It is more than for some, my lord ; it is ior
all, all I have. He hath eaten me out of house
and home ; he hath put all my substance into that
fat belly of his : but I will have some of it out again,
or I'll ride thee o' nights, like the mare.
Fal. I think I am as like to ride the marc, if I
have any vantage of ground to get up.
Ch. Just. How comes this, Sir John ? Fie ! what
man of good temper would endure this tempest of
exclamation ? Are you not ashamed to enforce a
poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own \
Fal. \\'hat is the gross sum that I owe thee ?
Host. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, th3'self
and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a
A Ciiblet from the Boar's-Head Tavern, supposed to
be that alluded to by Dame Quickly.
parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at
the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in
Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for
likening his father to a singing-man of Windsor ;
thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing tliy
wound, to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife.
Canst thou deny it ? Did not goodwife Keech, the
butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip
Quickly ? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar,
telling us she had a good dish of prawns ; whereby
thou didst desire to eat some ; whereby I told thee,
they were ill for a green wound ? And didst thou not,
when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no
190
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEN JONSGX
more so familiarity with such poor people ; saying,
that ere long they should call me madam ? And didst
thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shil-
lings ? I put thee now to thy book-oath ; deny it, if
thou canst.
Fal. My lord, this is a poor mad soul ; and she
says, up and down the town, that her eldest son is like
you : she hath been in good case, and, the truth is,
poverty hath distracted her. * *
Ch. Just. You speak as having power to do wrong ;
but answer iu the effect of your reputation, and satisfy
the poor woman.
Fal. Come hither, hostess. {Taking her aside.
Enter a Mkssenger.
Ch. Just. Now, master Gower ; what news ?
Ooicer. The king, my lord, and Henry prince of
Wales,
Are near at hand : the rest the paper tells.
Fal. As I am a gentleman
Host. Nay, you said so before.
Fal. As I am a gentleman. Come, no more words
of it.
Host. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must
be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my
dining-chambcrs.
Fal. Glasses, glasses is the only drinking ; and for
thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the
prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work, is
worth a thousand of these bed-hangings, and these fly-
bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound, if thou canst.
Come, if it were not for thy humours, there is not a
better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and
draw thy action. Come, thou must not be in this
humour with me ; do'st not know me ? Come, come,
I know thou wast set on to this.
Jlost. Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty
nobles ; I am loath to pa^Ti my plate, in good ear-
nest, la !
Fal. Let it alone ; I'll make other shift : you'll be
a fool still.
Host. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my
gown. I hope you'll come to supper I * *
Fal. Will I live? — Go with her, with her; hook
on, hook on. [To the officers.
Second Part of Henri/ 1^-
BEN JOKSON.
The second name in the dramatic literature of this
period has been generally assigned to Ben Jonson,
though some may be disposed to claim it for tlie
more Shakspearian genius of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Jonson was born ten years after Shakspeare — in
1574 — and appeared as a writer for the stage in
his twentieth j'ear. His early life was full of hard-
ship and vicissitude. His father, a clergyman in
Westminster (a member of a Scottish family from
Annandale), died before tlie poet's birth, and liis
mother marrj'ing again to a bricklayer, Ben was
brought from Westminster school and put to the
same employment. Disliking the occupation of his
father-in-law, he enlisted as a soldier, and served in
the Low Countries. He is reported to liave killed
one of the enemy in single combat, in the view of
both armies, and to have otherwise distinguished
himself for his youthful bravery. As a poet, Jonson
afterwards reverted with pride to liis conduct as a
soldier. On his return to England, he entered St
Jolm's college, Cambridge ; but his stay there must
have been short — probably on account of his
straitened circumstances — for, about the age of
twenty, he is found married, and an actor in Lonr
don. Ben made his debut at a low theatre near
Clerkenwell, and, as liis opponents afterwards re-
minded him, failed completely as an actor. At the
same time, he was engaged in writing for the stage,
either by lumself or conjointly with others. He
quarrelled with anotlier Derformer, and on their
fighting a du(_l with swords, Jonson had the misfor-
tune to kill liis antagonist, and was severely wounded
himself. He was conuiiitted to prison on a cliarge
of murder, but was released without a trial. On re-
gaining his libertj', he commenced writing for the
stage, and produced, in 1596, his Every Man in his
Humour. The scene was laid in Italy, but the cha-
racters and manners depicted in tlie piece were Eng-
lish, and Jonson afterwards recast the whole, and
transferred the sceae to England. In its revised
form, ' Every Man in his Humour' was brought oat
at the Globe Tlieatre in 1598, and Shakspeare was
one of the performers in the play. He had himself
produced some of his finest comedies by this time,
but Jonson was no imitator of his great rival, wlio
blended a spirit of poetical romance with his comic
sketches, and made no attempt to delineate the do-
mestic manners of his countrymen. Jonson opened
a new walk in the drama : he felt his strength, and
tlie public cheered him on with its plaudits. Queen
Elizabeth patronised the new poet, and ever after-
wards he was ' a man of mark and likeliliood.' In
1599, appeared his Evert/ Man out of his Humour, a
less able performance than its predecessor. Ci/nthia'i
lievek and tlie Poetaster followed, and the fierce
rivalry and contention wliich clouded Jonson's after-
life seem to have begun about this time. He had
attacked Marston and Dekker, two of his brother
dramatists, in the ' Poetaster.' Dekker replied with
spirit in his 'Satiromastix,' and Ben was silent for two
years, ' living upon one Townsend, and scorning the
world,' as is recorded in the diary of a contemporary.
In 1603, he tried ' if tragedy had a more kind aspect,'
and produced his classic drama of Sejanus. Shortly
after the accession of King James, a comedy calleii
Eastward Hoe, was written conjointly by Jonson,
Chapman, and Marston. Some passages in this piece
reflected on the Scottish nation, and the matter was
represented to the king by one of his courtiers (Sir
James Murray) in so strong a light, that the authors
were thrown into prison, and threatened with tlie loss
191
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
of their ears and noses. They were not tried ; and
when Ben was set at liberty, he gave an entertain-
ment to his friends (Seldcn and Camden being of
the number) : his motlier was present on this joyous
occasion, and she produced a paper of poison, which
she said she intended to have given her son in liis
liquor, rather tlian he should submit to personal
mutilation and disgrace, and another dose which she
intended afterwards to have taken herself. The old
lady must, as Whalley remarks, have been more of
An antique Koman than a Briton. Jonson's own
conduct in this affair was noble and spirited. He
had no considerable share in the composition of the
piece, and was, besides, in such favour, tliat he would
not have been molested ; ' but this did not satisfy
him,' says Gifford ; ' and he, tlierefore, with a liigh
sense of honour, voluntarily accompanied his two
friends to prison, determined to share their fate.'
We cannot now ascertain what was the miglity
satire that moved the patriotic indignation of James ;
it was doubtless softened before publication ; but in
some copies of 'Eastward Iloe' (1605), there is a pas-
sage in which the Scots arc said to be ' dispersed over
the face of the whole eartli ;' and the dramatist sar-
castically adds, ' But as for them, there are no greater
friends to Englishmen and England, when they are
out 071 1, in the world, than they are ; and for ray part,
I would a hundred thousand of them were there
(in Virginia), for we are all one countrymen now,
you know, and we should find ten times more com-
fort of them there than we do here.' The offended
nationality of James must have been laid to rest by
the subsequent adulation of Jonson in his Court
Masques, for he eulogised the vain and feeble mo-
narch as one that would raise the glory of England
more than Elizabeth.* Jonson's three great comedies,
Volpone, or the Fox, Epicene, or the Silent Woman,
and the Alchemist, were his next serious labours ;
his second classical tragedy, Catiline, appeared in
1611. His fame had now reached its highest eleva-
tion ; but he produced several otlier comedies, and a
vast number of court entertainments, ere his star
began sensibly to decline. In 1619, he received the
appointment of poet laureate, with a pension of a
hundred merks. The same year Jonson made a
journey on foot to Scotland, where he had many
friends. He was well received by the Scottish gentry,
and was so pleased with the country, that he medi-
tated a poem, or drama, on tlie beauties of Loch-
lomond. The last of his visits was made to Drum-
mond of Hawthornden, with whom he lived three
weeks, and Drummond kept notes of his conversa-
tion, which, in a subsequent age, were communicated
to the world. In conclusion, Drummond entered on
his journal the following character of Ben himself : —
' He is a great lover and praiser of himself ; a con-
temner and scorner of others ; given ratlier to lose a
friend than a jest ; jealous of every word and action
of tliose about him, especially after drink, which is
one of tlie elements in which he liveth ; a dissembler
of ill parts which reign in him ; a bragger of some
good that he wanteth ; thinketli nothing well but
what either he himself or some of his friends and
countrymen hath said or done ; he is passionately
kind and angry ; careless either to gain or keep ;
vindictive, but, if well answered, at himself; for any
religion, as being versed in both -.j- interpreteth best
* An account of these entortainmente, as essentially con-
nected with English literature, is given at the close of this
article.
t Drummond here alludes to Jonson having been at one
period of his life a Honian Ciitliolic. When in prison, after
killing the actor, a priest convertc-d liim to the churcli of llome,
and he continued a member of it for twelve years. At the ex-
piration of that time, he returned to the Protestant communion.
sayings and deeds often ta the worst ; oppressed
with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason,
a general disease in many poets.'
This character, it must be confessed, is far from
being a flattering one ; and probably it was, uncon-
scioush', overcharged, owing to the recluse habits
and staid demeanour of Drummond. "VVe believe it,
liowever, to be substantially correct. Inured to
hardships and to a free boisterous life in his early
days, Jonson seems to have contracted a roughness
of manner, and habits of intemperance, which never
wholly left him. Priding himself immoderately
on his classical acquirements, he was apt to slight
and condemn his less learned associates ; while the
conflict between his limited means and his love of
social pleasures, rendered him too often severe and
saturnine in his temper. Whatever he did was done
with labour, and hence was highly prized. His con-
temporaries seemed fond of mortifying his pride, and
he was often at war with actors and authors. With
the celebrated Inigo Jones, Avho was joined with him
in the preparation of the Court Masques, Jonson
waged a long and bitter feud, in which both parties
were to blame. When his better nature prevailed,
and exorcised the demon of envy or spleen, Jonson
was capable of a generous warmth of friendship, and
of just discrimination of genius and char-icter. His
literary reputation, his love of conviviawry, and his
high colloquial powers, rendered his society much
courted, and he became the centre of a band of wits
and revellers. Sir Walter Raleigh founded a club,
known to all posterity' as the INIermaid Club, at which
Jonson, Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and
other poets, exercised themselves with ' wit-combats'
more bright and genial than their wine.* One of the
favourite haunts of these bright-minded men was
the Falcon Tavern, near the theatre in Bankside,
Southwark, of which a sketch has been preservea.
The latter days of Jonson were dark and painful.
Attacks of palsy confined him to his house, and his
necessities compelled him to write for the stage when
his pen had lost its vigour, and wanted the charm
of novelty. In 1630, he produced his comedy-, the
Neiv Inn, which was unsuccessful on the stage. The
king sent him a present of £100, and raised his
laureate pension to the same sum per annum, adding
a yearly tierce of canary wine. Next year, however,
we find Jonson, in an Epistle Mendicant, soliciting
assistance from the lord-treasurer. He continued
writing to the last. Dryden has styled the latter
works of Jonson his dotages ; some are certainly
unworthj- of him, but the Sad Shepherd, Avhich he
left unfinished, exhibits the poetical fancy of a youth-
ful composition. He died in 1637, and was buried
in Westminster Abbey, where a square stone, mark-
ing the spot Avhere the poet's body was disposed
verticall,v, was long afterwards shown, inscribed
only with the words, ' Rare Ben Jonson !'
As a proof of his enthusiastic temperament, it is mentioned,
that Jonson drank out the full cup of wine at the enmniunion
table, in token of his reconciliation with the church of Eng-
land.
* ' Many were the wit-combats betwixt Shakspeare and Ben
Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanisli great galleon and
an English manof-war : Master .Jonson, like the fomier, was
built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in liis performances.
Shakspeare, with tlie English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but
lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and taJce
advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and inven-
tion.' — Fuller's Worthies.
Besides the Jlermaid, Jonson was a great frequenter of a club
called the Apollo, at the Old Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, for
which ho \vi-ote rules — Leges Conviviaks — and penned a welcome
over the door of the room to all those wlio approved of the
' true Phcebian liquor.' Ben's rules, it must be said, discounte-
nanced excess.
192
OEAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEN JONSON.
Jonson founded a style of regular English comedy,
massive, avcU compacted, and fitted to endure, yet
not very attractive in its materials. His works, alto-
gether, consist of about fifty dramatic pieces, but by
far the greater part are masques and interludes. His
principal comedies are, ' Every Man in his Humour,'
Falcon Tavern.
' Vulpone,' the ' Silent "Woman,' and the ' Alchemist.'
His Roman tragedies may be considered literal im-
personations of classic antiquity, ' robust and richly
graced,' yet stitf and unnatural in style and con-
struction. They seem to bear about the same re-
semblance to Shakspeare's classic dramas that sculp-
ture does to actual life. The strong delineation of
character is the most striking feature in Jonson's
comedies. The voluptuous Volpone is drawn with
great breadth and freedom ; and generally his por-
traits of eccentric characters — men in whom some
peculiarity has grown to an egregious excess — are
ludicrous and impressive. His scenes and characters
show the labour of the artist, but still an artist pos-
sessing rich resources ; an acute and vigorous in-
tellect ; great knowledge of life, down to its lowest
descents ; wit, lofty declamation, and a power of
dramatising his knowledge and observation, with
uingular skill and effect. His pedantry is often mis-
placed and ridiculous : when he wishes to satirise
his opponents of the drama, he lays the scene in the
court of Augustus, and makes himself speak as
Horace. In one of his Roman tragedies, he prescribes
for the composition of a mucus, or wash for the
face ! His comic theatre is a gallery of strange,
clever, original portraits, powerfully drawn, and
skilfully disposed, but many of them repulsive in
expression, or so exaggerated, as to look like carica-
tures or libels on humanity. We have little deep
passion or winning tenderness to link the beings of
his drama with those we love or admire, or to make
us sympathise with them as with existing mortals.
The charm of reality is generally wanting, or when
found, it is not a pleasing reality. When the great
artist escapes entirely from his elaborate wit and
personified humours into tlie region of fancy (as in
tlie lyrical passages of ' Cynthia,' ' Epicene,' and the
whole drama of the ' Sad Sheplierd'), we are struck
with the contrast it exhibits to his ordinary manner.
He thus presents two natures ; one hard, rugged,
gross, and sarcastic — 'a mountain belly and a rocky
face,' as he described his own person — the other
airy, fanciful, and graceful, as if its possessor had
never combated with the world and its bad passions,
but nursed his understanding and his fancy in
poetical seclusion and contemplation.
[The Fall of CatUhie.']
Pctrelus. The straits and needs of Catiline being
such,
As he must fight with one of the two armies
That then had near inclosed him, it pleas'd fate
To make us tlie object of his desperate choice,
Wherein the danger almost pois'd the honour :
And, as he rose, the day grew black with him,
And fate descended nearer to the earth.
As if she meant to hide the name of things
Under her wings, and make the world her quarry.
At this we roused, lest oue small minute's stay
Had left it to be inquired what Rome was ;
And (as we ought) ann'd in the confidence
Of our great cause, in fonn of battle stood.
Whilst Catiline came on, not with the face
Of any man, but of a public ruin :
His countenance was a civil war itself ;
And all his host had, standing in their looks.
The paleness of the death that was to come ;
Yet cried they out like vultures, and urged on,
As if they would precipitate our fates.
Nor stay'd we longer fur 'em, but himself
Struck the first stroke, and with it fled a life.
Which out, it seem'd a naiTow neck of land
Had broke between two mighty seas, and either
Flow'd into other; for so did the slaughter ;
And whirl'd about, as when two violent tides
]Meet and not yield. The furies stood on hills,
Circling the place, and trembling to see men
Do more than they ; whilst pity left the field,
Griev'd for that side, that in so bad a cause
They knew not what a crime their valour was.
The sun stood still, and was, behind the cloud
The battle made, seen sweating, to drive up
His frighted horse, whom still thenoisedrovebackwara ;
And now had fierce Enyo, like a flame,
Consum'd all it could reach, and then itself,
Had not the forturiO of the commonwealth,
Come, Pallas-like, to every Roman thought ;
"Which Catiline seeing, and that now his troops
Cover'd the earth they 'ad fought on with their trunks,
Ambitious of great fame, to cro^vn his ill,
Collected all his fur}', and ran in
(Arm'd with a glory high as his despair)
Into our battle, like a Libyan lion
Upon his hunters, scornful of our weapons.
Careless of wounds, plucking down lives about him.
Till he had circled in himself with death:
Then fell he too, t' embrace it where it lay.
And as in that rebellion 'gainst the gods,
Minerva holding forth Medusa's head.
One of the giant brethren felt himself
Grow marble at the killing sight ; and mw,
Almost made stone, began to inquire what flint,
What rock, it was that crept through all his limbs ,
And, ere he could think more, was that he fear'd :
So Catiline, at the sight of Home in us.
Became his tomb ; 3"et did his look retain
Some of his fierceness, and his hands still niov'd,
19.1
14
FROM 1553
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1649.
As if he labour'd yet to grasp the state
With those rebellious parts.
Cato. A brave bad death !
Had this been honest now, and for his country,
As 'twas against it, who had e'er fall'n greater ?
[Accusation and Death of Silius in the Senate House.]
[Silius, an honourable Roman, hated by Tiberius Caesar, the
emperor, and Sejunus, is unjustly accused in the senate-house
by VaiTO, the consul. The other persons present are Domitius
Afer, Latiaris, and Cotta, enemies of Silius, and Arruntius and
Babinus, his friends, with lictores and prctconet, inferior offi-
cers of the senate.]
Afer. Cice Caius Silius.
Free. Caius Silius !
Sil. Here.
Afer. The triumph that thou hadst in Germany
For thy late victory on Sacrovir,
Thou hast enjoy'd so freely, Caius Silius,
As no man it envy'd thee ; nor would Caesar,
Or Rome admit, that thou wert then defrauded
Of any honours thy deserts could claim.
In the fair service of the commonwealth :
But now, if after all their loves and graces
(Thy actions and their courses being discover'd),
It shall appear to Cresar, and this senate,
Thou hast defil'd those glories \fith thy crimes
Sil. Crimes?
Afer. Patience, Silius.
Sil. Tell thy moil of patience
I am a Roman. What are my crimes ? proclaim them.
Am I too rich ? too honest for the times ?
Have I or treasure, jewels, land, or houses,
That some informer gapes for ? Is my strength
Too much to be admitted ? or my knowledge 1
These now are crimes.
Afer. Nay, Silius, if the name
Of crime so touch thee, with what impotence
Wilt thou endure the matter to be search'd 1
Sil. I tell thee, Afer, with more scorn than fear :
Employ your mercenary tongue and art.
Where's my accuser 1
Var. Here.
Arr. Varro the consul.
Is he thrust in 1
Var. 'Tis I accuse thee, Silius.
Against the majesty of Rome, and Cffisar,
I do pronounce thee here a guilty cause,
First of beginning and occasioning.
Next, drawing out the war in Gallia,
For which thou late triumph'st ; dissembling long
That Sacrovir t ) be an enemy,
Only to make thy entertainment more :
Whilst thou and thy wife Sosia poU'd the province :
Wherein, with sordid base desire of gain,
Thou hast discredited thy actions' worth,
And been a traitor to the state.
Sil. Thou liest.
Arr. I thank thee, Silius, speak so still and often.
Vur. If I not prove it, Ciesar, but unjustly
Have call'd him into trial ; here 1 bind
Myself to suffer what I claim against him;
And yield to have what I have spoke, confirra'd
By judgment of the court, and all good men.
Sil. Caesar, I crave to have rny cause deferr'd,
Till this man's consulship be out.
Tib. We cannot.
Nor may we grant it.
Sil. Why 1 shall he design
My day of trial! is he my accuser!
And must he be my judge?
Tib. It hath been usual,
And is a right that cui>:oin hath allow'd
The magistrate, to call forth private men ;
And to appoint their daj' : which privilege
We may not in the consul see infring'd,
R_V whose deep watches, and industrious care,
It is so labour'd as the commonwealth
Receive no loss, by any oblique course.
Sil. Caesar, thy fraud is worse than violence.
Tib. Silius, mistake us not, we dare not use
The credit of the consul to thy wrong ;
But only do preserve his place and power,
So far as it concerns the dignity
And honour of the state.
Arr. Believe him, Silius.
Cot. Why, so he may, Arruntius.
Arr. I say so.
And he may choose too.
Tib. By the Capitol,
And all our gods, hut that the dear republic,
Our sacred laws, an8 just authority
Are interess'd therein, I should be silent.
Afer. 'Please Ctesar to give way unto his trial ;
lie shall have justice.
Sil. Nay, I shall have law ;
Shall I not, Afer? speak.
Afer. \^'ould you have more \
Sil. No, my well-spoken man, I would no more ;
Nor less : might I enjoy it natural.
Not taught to speak unto your present ends.
Free from thine, his, and all your unkind handling,
Furious enforcing, most unjust presuming.
Malicious, and manifold applying.
Foul wresting, and impossible construction.
Afer. He raves, he raves.
<SV/. Thou durst not tell me .so,
Hadst thou not Cffisar's warrant. I can see
Whose povver condemns nie.
Var. This betrays his spirit.
This doth enough declare him what he is«
Sil. \\'hat am I ? speak.
Var. An enemy to the state.
Sil. Because I am an enemy to thee,
And such corrupted ministers o' the state,
That here art made a present instrument
To gratify it with thine own disgrace.
Scj. This to the consul is most insolent !
Aid impious !
Sil. Ay, take part. Reveal yourselves.
Alas ! I scent not your confed'racies.
Your plots, and combinations ! I not know
Minion Scjanus hates me ; and that all
This boast of law, and law is but a form,
A net of Vulcan's filing, a mere engine.
To take that life by a pretext of justice.
Which you pursue in malice ? 1 want brain.
Or nostril to persuade me, that your ends
And purposes are made to what they are.
Before my answer ! 0, you equal gods.
Whose justice not a world of wolf-turn'd men
Shall make me to accuse, howe'er provok'd ;
Have I for this so oft cngag'd myself !
Stood in the heat and fervour of a fight,
When Phoebus sooner hath forsook the day
Than I the field, against the blue-ey'd Gauls
And crisped Germans ? when our lioman eagles
Have fann'd the fire with their labouring wings.
And no blow dealt, that left not death behind itt
When I have charg'd, alone, into the troops
Of curl'd Sicambrians, routed them, and came
Not off, with backward ensigns of a slave.
But forward marks, wounds on my breast £*nd face,
Were meant to thee, Cresar, and thy Rome t
And have I this return ? did I for this
Perform so noble and so brave defeat
On Sacrovir ? (0 Jove, let it become me
To boast my deeds, when lie, whom they concern,
Sliall thus fcirget them.)
194
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURi:.
HEN JONSON.
Afer. Silius, Silius,
These are the common customs of thy blood,
When it is high with wine, as now with rage :
This well agrees with that intemperate vaunt
Thou lately mad'st at Agrippina's table.
That, when all other of the troops were prone
To fall into rebellion, only thine
Remain'd in their obedience. Thou wert he
That sav'd the empire, which had then been lost,
Had but thy legions, there, rebell'd or mutin'd ;
Thy virtue met, and fronted every peril.
Thou gav'st to Caesar, and to Rome, their surety.
Their name, their strength, their spirit, and their
state.
Their being was a donative from thee.
An: Well worded, and most like an orator.
Tib. Is this true, Silius 1
S'd. Save thy question, Cresar,
Thy spy of famous credit hath affirm'd it,
Arr. Excellent Roman !
Sab. He doth answer stoutly.
Sej. If this be so, there needs no other cause
Of crime against him.
Var. What can more impeach
The roj'al dignity and state of Caesar,
Than to be urged Nvith a benefit
He cannot pay ?
Cot. In this, all Caesar's fortune
Is made unequal to the courtesy.
Lat. His means are clean destroy'd that should re-
quite.
Gal. Nothing is great enough for Silius' merit.
AiT. Gallus on that side too ?
Sil. Come, do not hunt
And labour so about for circumstance.
To make him guilty, whom you have foredoom'd :
Take shorter ways ; I'll meet your purposes.
The words were mine, and more I now will say :
Since I have done thee that great service, Caesar,
Thou still hast fear'd me ; and, in place of grace,
Return'd me hatred : so soon all best turns,
With doubtful princes, turn deep injuries
In estimation, when they greater rise
Than can be answer'd. Benefits, with you,
Are of no longer pleasure than you can
With ease restore them ; that transcended once,
Your studies are not how to thank, but kill.
It is your nature to have all men slaves
To you, but you acknowledging to none.
The means that make your greatness, must not come
In mention of it ; if it do, it takes
So much away, you think : and that which help'd,
Shall soonest perish, if it stand in eye.
Where it may front, or but upbraid the high.
Cot. Suffer him speak no more.
Var. Note but his spirit.
Afcr. This shows him in the rest.
Scj. He hath spoke enough to prove him Caesar's foe.
Lat. Let him be censur'd.
Cot. His thoughts look through his words.
)Sy. A censure.
BU. Stay
Sta}', most officious senate, I shall straight
Delude thy fury. Silius hath not plac'd
His guards within him, against fortune's spite,
So weakly, but he can escape your gripe,
That are but hands of fortune : she herself.
When virtue doth oppose, must lose her threats.
All that can happen in humanity.
The fro\vn of Caesar, proud Sejanus' hatred.
Base Van-o's spleen, and Afer's bloodying tongue.
The senate's sen-ile flattery, and these
Muster'd to kill, I'm fortified against.
And can look down upon ; they are beneath mc.
It is not life whereof I stand enamour'd ;
Nov shall my end make me accuse my fate.
The coward and the valiant man must fall,
Only the cause, and manner how, discerns them :
Which then are gladdest, when they cost us dearest.
Romans, if any here be in this senate.
Would know to mock Tiberius' tyranny.
Look upon Silius, and so learn to die. [Stabs himseJf.
Var. O desperate act !
Arr. An honourable hand !
Tib. Look, is he dead ?
Sab. 'Twas nobly struck, and home.
Arr. My thought did prompt him to it.
Farewell, Silius.
Be famous ever for th}' great example.
Fall ofSejanut.
[Love.]
[From the ' New Inn.']
LovEL and Host of the New Inn.
Lov. There is no life on earth, but being in love !
There are no studies, no delights, no business,
No intercourse, or trade of sense, or soul.
But what is love ! I was the laziest creature,
The most unprofitable sign of nothing.
The veriest drone, and slept away ^ny life
Beyond the dormouse, till I was in l'>ve !
And now I can out-wake the nightingale.
Out-watch an usurer, and out-walk him too.
Stalk like a ghost that haunted 'bout a treasure ;
And all that fancied treasure, it is love !
Host. But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love-well !
I would know that.
Lov. I do noc know 't myself.
Whether it is. But it is love liath been
Tlie hereditary passion of our house.
My gentle host, and, as I guess, my friend ^
The truth is, I have lov'd this lady long.
And impotentl}', with desire enough,
But no success^: for I have still forborne
To express it in my person to her.
Host. How then ?
Lov. I have sent her toys, verses, and ai-igrama,
Trials of wit, mere trifles, she has commended.
But knew not whence they came, nor could she guess.
Host. This was a pretty riddling way of wooiu^ !
Lov. I oft have been, too, in her company.
And look'd upon her a whole day, admir'd her,
Lov'd her, and did not tell her so ; lov'd still,
Look'd still, and lov'd ; and lov'd, and look'd, an 1
sigh'd ;
But, as a man neglected, I came off,
And unregarded.
Host. Could you blame her, sir.
When you were silent and not said a word ?
Lov. 0, but I lov'd the more ; and she might read it
Best in my silence, had she been
Host. As melancholic
As you are. Pray you, why would you stand mute, sir 1
Lov. thereon hangs a history, mine host.
Did you e'er know or hear of the Lord Beaufort,
Who serv'd so bravely in France ? I was his page,
And, ere he died, his friend : I foUow'd him
First in the wars, and in the times of peace
I waited on his studies ; whicli were right.
He had no Arthurs, nor no Kosicleers,
No Knights of the Sun, nor Amadis de Gauia,
I'rimalions, and Pantagruels, public nothings ;
Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister.
Sent out to poison courts, and infest manners :
But great Achilles', Agamemnon's acts,
Sage Nestor's counsels, and Ulysses' sleights,
Tydides' fortitude, as Homer wrouirht them
In liis immortal fancy, for examples
Of the henjic virtue. Or, as Virgil,
That master of the Epic poeui, limn'd
Pious ^neas, his religious prince,
19«
rKOM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1C4S
Bearing his aged parent on his shoulders,
Rapt, from the flames of Troy, with his young son.
And these he brought to practice and to use.
He gave nie first my breeding, I acknowledge.
Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of hearen
Domi to the laps of thankful men ! But then.
The trust committed to me at his death
\Va3 above all, and left so strong a tie
On all my powers, as time shall not dissolve,
Till it dissolve itself, and bury all :
The care of his brave heir and only son !
Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, hopeful lord.
Hath cast his first affections on this lady.
And though I know, and may presume her such,
As out of humour, will return no love.
And therefore might indifferently be made
The courting-stock for all to practise on,
As she doth practise on us all to scorn :
Yet out of a religion to my charge,
And debt profess'd, 1 have made a self-decree,
Ne'er to express my person, though my passion
Bum me to cinders.
[A Simpleton and a Braggadocio.']
[Bnbadil, the braggadocio, in his mean and obscure lodging,
Is v»6ited by Matthew, the simpleton.]
Mat. Save you, sir ; save you, captain.
Bob. Gentle master ^latthew ! Is it you, sir ?
Please you to sit do\TO.
Mat. Thank you, good captain, you may see I am
somewhat audacious.
Bob. Not so, sir. I was requested to supper last
night by a sort of gallants, where you were msh'd for,
and drunk to, I assure you.
Mat. Vouchsafe me, by whom, good captain ?
Bob. Marry, by j'oung Well-bred, and others. Why,
hostess, a stool here for this gentleman.
Mat. No haste, sir ; 'tis very well.
Bob. Body o' me ! — it was so late ere we parted last
night, I can scarce open my eyes yet ; I was but new
risen, as you came : how passes the day abroad, sir ? —
you can tell.
Mat. Faith, some half hour to seven : now, trust
me, you have an exceeding fine lodging here, very
neat and private !
Bob. Ay, sir ; sit down, I pray you. Mr Matthew
(in any case) possess no gentlemen of our acquaint-
ance with notice of my lodging.
Mat. Who ! 1, sir ?— no.
Bob. Not that T need to care who know it, for the
cabin is convenient, but in regard I would not be too
popular, and generally visited as some are.
Mat. True, captain, I conceive you.
Bob. For, do you see, sir, by tlie heart of valour in
me (except it be to some i)eculiar and choice spirits,
to whom I am extraordinarily engaged, as yourself,
or so), I could not extend thus far.
Mat. Lord, sir, I resolve so.
Bob. I confess I love a cleanly and quiet privacy,
above all the tumult and roar of fortune. What new
book ha' you there ! What ! Go by, llieronymo !'
Mat. Ay, did you ever see it acted 1 Ls't not well
penn'd ?
Bob. \V'cll-peun'd ! I would fain see all the poets
of tliese times pen such another play as that was ! —
they'll prate and swagger, and keep a stir of art and
devices, when (as I am a gentleman), read 'em, they
are the most .shallow, pitiful, barren fellows, that live
upon the face of the earth again.
Mat. Indeed ; here are a number of fine speeches in
' A cant pb'vse of the day.
this book. ' eyes, no eyes, but fo uitains fraught
with tears !' There's a conceit ! — fountains fraught
with tears ! ' life, no life, but lively form of death!'
Another! '0 world, no world, but mass of public
wrongs !' A third ! ' Confused and fiU'd with murder
and misdeeds!' A fourth ! 0, the muses! ls't not
excellent ? ls't not simply the best that ever ycu
heard, captain ? Ha ! how do you like it ?
Bob, 'Tis good.
Mat. ' To thee, the purest object to my sense,
The most refined essence heaven covers.
Send I these lines, wherein I do commence
The happy state of turtle-billing lovers.
If they prove rough, unpolish'd, harsh, and rude,
Haste made the waste. Thus mildh' I conclude.*
Bob. Naj', proceed, proceed. Wlicre's this ?
[Bobadil is making him ready all this ichl^e.
Mat. This, sir? a toy o' mine own, in my nonage ;
the infancy of my muses ! But when will you coine
and see my study ? Good faith, 1 can show you some
very good things I have done of late. That boot be-
comes your leg passing well, captain, methinks.
Bob. So, so ; it's the fashion gentlemen now use.
Mat. Troth, captain, and now you speak o' the
fashion, ^Master Well-bred 's elder brother and I are
fiiUen out exceedingly. This other day, I happened
to enter into some discourse of a hanger, which, 1
assure you, both for fashion and workmanship, was
most peremptory-beautiful and gentleman-like ; yet
he condemned and cried it do'SMi for the most pyed
and ridiculous that ever he saw.
Bob. Squire Downright, the half-brother, was't not!
Mat. Aj', sir, he.
Bob. Hang him, rook, he ! why, he has no more
judgment than a malt-horse. By St George, I won-
der you'd lose a thought upon such an animal ; the
most peremptory absurd clo\vn of Christendom, this
day, he is holden. I protest to you, as I am a gentle-
man and a soldier, I ne'er changed words with his
like. By his discourse, he should eat nothing but
haj' : he was bom for the manger, pannier, or pack-
saddle ! He has not so much as a good phrase in his
belly, but all old iron and rusty proverbs !— a good
commodity for some smith to make hob-nails of.
3Iat. Ay, and he thinks to carry it away with his
manhood still, where he comes : he brags he will gi'
me the bastinado, as I hear.
Bob. How I he the bastinado ? How came he by
that word, trow ?
Mat. Nay, indeed, he said cudgel me ; I terni'd it
so for my more grace.
Bob. That ma}' be, for I was sure it was none of his
word : but when ? when said he so ?
J/rt/. Faith, yesterday, they say ; a young gallant,
a friend of mine, told me so.
Bob. By the foot of Pharaoh, an 'twere my case
now, I should. send him a chartcl presently. The bas-
tinado ! A most proper and sufficient depeudance,
warranted by the great Caranza. Come hither ; ^-ou
shall chartel him ; I'll show you a trick or two, you
shall kill him with at pleasure ; the first stoccata, if
you will, by this air.
j][at. Indeed ; you have absolute knowledge i' the
mystery, I have heard, sir
Bob. Of whom 1 — of whom ha' you heard it, I be-
seech you ?
Mot. Troth I have heard it spoken of divers, tliat
you have very rare, and un-in-one-breath-utter-able
skill, sir.
Bob. By heav'n, no not I ; no skill i' the earth ;
some small rudiments i' the science, as to know my
time, distance, or so: I have profest it more for noble-
men and gentlemen's use than mine own ])ractice, 1
assure you. Ho-^tess, accommodate us with another
bcd-stiitf lien; quickly: lend us another bed-staff": the
woman does not understand the words of action. IiOok
196
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEN JONSON.
you, sir, exalt not your point above this state, at any
hand, and let your poniard maintain your defence,
thus ; (give it the gentleman, and leave us ;) so, sir.
Come on. twine your body more about, that you may
fall to a more sweet, comel}', gentleman-like guard ;
so, indifferent : hollow your body more, sir, thus ;
now, stand fast o' your left leg, note your distance,
keep your due proportion of time. 0, you disorder
your point most irregularly !
3Iat. How is the bearing of it now, sir 1
Bob. 0, out of measure ill ! — a well-experienced
hand would pass upon you at pleasure.
Mat. How mean you, sir, pass upon me ?
Bob. Why, thus, sir, (make a thrust at me) ; come in
upon the answer, control your point, and make a full
career at the body ; the best practis'd gallants of the
time name it the passado ; a most desperate thrust,
believe it !
Mat. Well, come, sir.
Bob. Why, you do not manage your weapon with
any facility or grace to invite me ! I have no spirit
to play with you ; j'our dearth of judgment renders
you tedious.
Mat. But one venue, sir.
Bob. Venue ! fie ; most gross denomination as ever
I heard. 0, the stoccata, while you live, sir, note
that ; come, put on j-our cloak, and we'll go to some
private place where you are acquainted — some tavern
or so — and have a bit ; I'll send for one of these
fencers, and he shall breatlie you, by my direction,
and then I will teach you your trick ; you shall kill
him with it at the first, if you please. Why, I will
learn you by the true judgment of the eye, hand, and
foot, to control any enemy's point 1' the world. Should
your adversary confront you with a pistol, 'twere
nothing, by this hand ; you should, by the same rule,
control his bullet, in a line, except it were hall shot,
and spread. What money ha' you about you. Master
Matthew?
Mat. Faith, I ha' not past a two shillings, or so.
Boo. 'Tis somewhat with the least ; but come ; we
will have a bunch of radish, and salt to taste our wine,
and a pipe of tobacco, to close the orifice of the sto-
mach ; and then we'll call upon young Well-bred :
perhaps we shall meet the Coridon his brother there,
and put him to the quesi'on.
Every Man in his Humour.
IBobadil's Plan for Saving the Expense of an Army.]
Bob. I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and
under seal, I am a gentleman, and live here obscure,
and to myself ; but were I known to her majesty and
the lords (observe me), I would undertake, upon this
poor head and life, for the public benefit of the state,
not only to spare the entire lives of her subjects in
general, but to save the one half, nay, three parts of
her yearly charge in holding war, and against what
enemy soever. And how would I do it, think you 2
E. Kno. Nay, I know not, nor can I conceive.
Bob. Why thus, sir. I would select nineteen more, to
myself, throughout the land ; gentlemen they should be
of good spirit, strong and able constitution ; I would
choose them by an instinct, a character that I have :
and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as
your punto, your reverso, your stoccata, your irabroc-
cato, your passado, your montanto, till they could all
play very near, or altogether as well as myself. This
done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we
twenty would come into the field the tenth of March,
or thereabouts ; and we woubl challenge twenty of
the enemy ; they could not in their honour refuse us ;
well, we would kill them : challenge twenty more, kill
them ; twenty more, kill them ; twenty more, kill them
too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty
a-day, that's twenty score; tw^ntv smre. tha.f'e two
hundred ; two hundred a-day, five days a thousand ;
forty thousand ; forty times five, five times forty, two
hundred days kills them all up by computation. And
this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcass to
perform, provided there be no treason practised upon
us, by lair and discreet manhood ; that is, civilly by
the sword.
Ibid.
[Advice to a RecTcless Youth.]
Knowdl. What would I have you do ? I'll tell you,
kinsman ;
Learn to be wise, and practise how to thrive.
That would I have you do : and not to spend
Your coin on every bauble that you fancy,
Or every foolish brain that humours you.
I would not have you to Invade each place,
Nor tluHist yourself on all societies,
Till men's affections, or your own desert,
Should worthily invite you to your rank.
He that is so respectless In his courses,
Oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
Nor would I you should melt away 3'ourself
In flashing bravery, lest, while you affect
To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
A little puff of scorn extinguish it.
And 3'ou be left like an unsavourj' snuff,
Whose property is only to ofl'end.
I'd ha' you sober, and contain yourself;
Not that your sail be bigger than your boat ,
But moderate your expenses now (at first)
As you may keep the same proportion still.
Nor stand so much on your gentility.
Which is an airy, and mere borrow'd thing.
From dead men's dust, and bones; and none of yours,
Except you make, or hold it.
loid.
[The Alchemist.]
Mammon. Surly, his Friend. The scene, Subtle's Ho iso.
Mam. Come on, sir. Now you set your foot ou
shore
In novo orbe. Here's the rich Peru :
And there within, sir, are the golden mines.
Great Solomon's Opliir ! He was sailing to't
Three years, but we have reach'd it in ten months
This is the day wherein to all my friends
I will pronounce the happy word, Be rich.
This dav you shall be spcctatissiini.
You sliall no more deal with the hollow dye.
Or tlie frail card. No more be at charge of keeping
The livery punk for the j'oung heir, that must
Seal at all hours in his shirt. No more.
If he deny, ha' him beaten to't, as he is
That brings him the commodity. No more
Shall thirst of satin, or the covetous hunger
Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloak
To be display'd at Madam Augusta's, make
The sons of Sword and Hazard fall before
The golden calf, and on their knees whole nights
Commit Idolatry with wine and truiupets ;
Or go a-feasting after drum and ensign.
No more of this. You shall start up young viceroys,
And have your punques and punquetees, my Surly :
And unto thee I speak it first. Be rich.
Where is my Subtle there '\ within, ho —
[Face ansivcrs from teithin.
Sir, he'll come to you by aiid by.
Mam. That's his fire-drake.
His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals
Till he firk nature up in her own centre.
You are not faithful, sir. This night I'll change
All that is metal in thy house to gold:
And early in the morning will I send
197
moM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1648
To all the plumbers and the pewterers,
And buy their tin and lead up ; and to Lothbury,
For all the copper.
Sur. What, and turn that too 1
Mam. Yes, and I'll purchase Deronshire and Corn-
wall,
And make them perfect Indies ! You admire now ?
Sur. No, faith.
Mam. But when you see the effects of the great
medicine !
Of which one part projected on a hundred
Of Mercury, or Venus, or the ISIoon,
Shall turn it to as many of the Sun ;
Nay, to a thousand, so ad infinitum:
You will believe me.
Sur. Yes, when I see't, I will.
Mam. Ila ! why,
Do you think 1 fable with you ? I assure you.
He that has once the flower of the Sun,
The perfect Ruby, which we call Elixir,
Not only can do that, but by its virtue
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life,
Give safety, valour, yea, and victory,
To whom he will. In eight-and-twenty days
I'll make an old man of fourscore a child.
Sur. No doubt ; he's that already.
Mam, Nay, I mean,
Restore his years, renew him like an eagle.
To the fifth age ; make him get sons and daughters,
Young giants, as our philosophers have done
(The ancient patriarchs afore the flood).
By taking, once a-week, on a knife's point,
The quantity of a grain of mustard of it,
Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids.
Sur. The decay 'd vestals of Pickt-hatch would
thank you,
That keep the fire alive there.
Mam. 'Tis the secret
Of nature naturised 'gainst all infections,
Cures all diseases, coming of all auses ;
A month's grief in a day ; a year's in twelve ;
And of what age soever, in a month :
Past all the doses of your drugging doctors.
I'll undertake withal to fright the plague
Out o' the kingdom in three months.
Sur. And I'll
Be bound the players shall sing your praises,
then.
Without their poets.
Mam. Sir, I'll do't. Meantime,
I'll give away so much unto my man,
Shall serve the whole city with preservative
Weekly ; each house his dose, and at the rate —
Sur. As he that built the water-work does with
water !
Mam. You are incredulous.
Sur. Faith, I have a humour,
I would not willingly be guU'd. Your Stone
Cannot transmute me.
Mam. Pertinax Surly,
Will you believe antiquity t Records ?
I'll show you a book, where Moses, and his sister,
And Solomon, have written of the Art !
Ay, and a treatise penn'd by Adam.
Sur. How ?
Mam. Of the Philosopher's Stone, and in High
Dutch.
Sur. Did Adam write, sir, in High Dutch I
Mam. He did.
Which proves it was the primitive tongue.
Sur. What paper ?
Mam. On cedar-board.
Sur. that, indeed, they say,
Will last 'gainst wonns.
Mam. 'Tis like your Irish wood
''Jainst cobwebs. I liave a piece of Jason's fleece too,
Which was no other than a book of Alchemy,
Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum.
Such wa^s Pythagoras' Thigh, Pandora's Tub,
And all that fable of Medea's charms,
The manner of our work : the bulls, our furnace,
Still breathing fire : our Arfjent-rive, the Dragon :
The Dragon's teeth, Mercury sublimate.
That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting ;
And they are gather'd into Jason's helm
(Th' Alembick), and then sow'd in Mars his field,
And thence subllmM so often, till they are fix'd.
Both this, the Hesperian Garden, Cadmus' Story,
Jove's Shower, the Boon of Midas, Argus' Eyes,
Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more.
All abstract riddles of our Stone.
THE COURT MASQUES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUR?
The courts of James I. and Charles I., while as yet
danger neither existed nor was anticipated, were
enlivened by the peculiar theatrical entertainment
called the IVIasque — a trifle, or little better, in itself,
but which has derived particular interest from the
genius of Jonson and Milton. The origin of the
masque is to be looked for in the 'revels' and 'shows'
which, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six-
teenth centuries, were presented on high festive
occasions at court, in the inns of the lawyers, and at
the universities, and in those mysteries and morali-
ties which were the earliest forms of tlie spoken
drama. Henry VIII., in his earlier and better days,
had frequent entertainments, consisting of a set of
masked and gaily-dressed characters, or of such
representations as the following: In the hall of the
palace at Greenwich, a castle was reared, with
numerous towers and gates, and every appearance of
preparation for a long siege, and inscribed, Le for-
tresse dangereux ; it was defended by six richly-dressed
ladies ; the king and five of his courtiers then en-
tered in the disguise of knights, and attacked the
castle, which tlie ladies, after a gallant resistance,
surrendered, the ali'air concluding with a dance of
the ladies and knights. Here there was nothing but
scenery and jiantomime ; by and bj-, poetical dia-
logue, song, and music, were added; and when the
masque had reached its height in the reigns of James
and the first Charles, it employed the first talent of
the country- in its composition, and, as Bacon re-
marks, being designed for princes, was by princes
plaj'ed.
Masques were generally prepared for some remark-
able occasion, as a coronation, the birth of a young
prince or noble, a peer's marriage, or the visit of
some royal personage of foreign countries ; and they
usually took place in the ball of the palace. Many
of them were enacted in that banqueting room at
Whitehall, through which a prince, who often took
part in them, afterwards walked to the scaffold
Allegory and mythology were the taste of that age :
we wonder at the fact, but we do not perhaps suffi-
ciently allow for the novelty of classical imagery and
characters in those daj's, and it may be only a kind
of prejudice, or the effect of fashion, which makes us
so rigorously banish from our literature allusions to
the jioetic beings of Grecian antiquity-; while we con-
tentedly solace ourselves in contemplating, tlirough
what are called historical novels, the much ruder, and
perhaps not more truly represented, personages of the
jniddle ages. The action of a masque was always some-
thing short and simple ; and it is easy to see that, ex-
cepting where very high poetical and musical talent
was engaged, the principal charm must have lain in
the elegance of the dresses and decorations, and the
piquancy of a constant reference from the actors in
their assumed, to the actors in their real cha.-actera
198
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITER ATURF
BEN JONhON.
Usually, besides gods, goddesses, and nymphs from
classical antiquity, there were such personages as
Night, Day, Beauty, Fortitude, and so forth ; but
though the persons of the drama were thus removed
from common hfe, the reference of the whole busi-
ness of the scene to the occasion which had called it
forth, was as direct as it could well be, and even
ludicrously so, particularly when the object was to
pay a compliment to any of the courtly audience.
This, however, was partly justified by the private
cliaracter of the entertainment ; and it is easy to
conceive that, when a gipsy stepped from the scene,
and, taking the king's hand, assigned him all the
good fortune which a loyal subject should wish to a
sovereign, there Avonld be such a marked increase of
sensation in the audience, as to convince the poet
that there lay the happiest stroke of his play.
Mr Collier, in his Annals of the Stage, has printed
a document which gives a very distinct account of
the court masque, as it was about the time when the
drama arose in England ; namely, in the early years
of Elizabeth. That princess, as is well-known, de-
signed an amicable meeting with Mary Queen of
Scots, which was to have taken place at Nottingham
castle, in May 1.562, but was given up in conse-
quence, as is believed, of the jealousy of Elizabeth
regarding the superior beauty of Mary. A masque
was devised to celebrate the meeting and entertain
the united courts, and it is the poet's scheme of tliis
entertainment, docketed by Lord Eurleigh, to which
reference is now made. The masque seems to have
been simply an acted allegory, relating to the circum-
stances of the two queens; and it throws a curious light
not only upon the taste, but upon the political his-
tory of the period. We give the procedure of the
first night.
* First, a prison to be made in the hall, the name
whereof is Extreme Oblivion, and the keeper's name
thereof Argus, otherwise called Circumspection : then
a masque of ladies to come in after this sort :
First Pallas, riding upon an unicorn, having in her
hand a standard, in which is to be painted two ladies'
hands, knit in one fast within the other, and over
the hands, written in letters of gold. Fides.
Then two ladies riding together, the one upon a
golden lion with a crown of gold on his head, the
other upon a red lion, with the like crown of gold ;
signifying two virtues ; that is to say, the lady on
the gc'den lion is to be called Prudentia, and the
lady on the red lion Temperantia.
After this, to follow six or eight ladies masquers,
bringing in captive Discord and False Report, with
ropes of gold about their necks. When these have
marched about the hall, then Pallas to declare be-
fore the queen's majesty, in verse, that the goddess,
understanding the noble meeting of these two
queens, hath willed her to declare unto them that
those two virtues, Prudentia and Temperantia, have
made great and long suit unto Jupiter, that it would
please him to give unto tliem False Report and
Discord, to be punished as they think good ; and
that those ladies have now in their presence deter-
mined to commit tliem fast bound unto the aforesaid
prison of Extreme Oblivion, there to be kept by the
aforesaid jailor Argus, otherwise Circumspection, for
ever, unto whom Prudentia shall deliver a lock,
whereuxjon shall be written In Eternum. Then Tem-
perantia shall likewise deliver unto Argus a key,
whose name shall be Nunquam, signifying that, when
False Report and Discord are conmiitted to the
prison of Extreme Oblivion, and locked there ever-
lastingly, he should put in the key to let them out
nunquam [never] ; and when he hath so done, tlien
the trumpets to blow, and the English ladies to take
the nobility of the strangers, and dance.'
On the second night, a castle is presented in the
hall, and Peace comes in riding in a chariot drawn
by an elephant, on whidi sits Friendship. The
latter pronounces a speech on the event of the pre-
ceding evening, and Peace is left to dwell with
Prudence and Temperance. The third night showed
Disdain on a wild boar, accompanied by Prepensed
]\Ialice, as a serpent, striving to procure the libera-
tion of Discord and False Report, but opposed suc-
cessfully by Courage and Discretion. At the end of
the fight, ' Disdain shall run his ways, and escape
with life, but Prepensed ISIalice shall be slain ; sig-
nifying that some imgodly men may still disdain
the perpetual peace made between these two virtues ;
but as for their prepensed malice, it is easy trodden
imder these ladies' feet.' The second night ends
with a flowing of wine from conduits, ' during which
time the English lords shall mask with the Scottish
ladies :' the third night terminates by the six or
eight ladies masquers singing a song ' as full of
harmony as may be devised.' The whole entertain-
ment indicates a sincere desire of reconciliation on
the ])art of Elizabeth ; but the first scene — a prison
— seems strangely ominous of the events which fol-
lowed six years after.
The masque, as has been stated, attained the
zenith of its glory in the reign of James I., the
most festive known in England between those of
Henry VIII. and Charles II. The queen, tlie
])rinces, and nobles and ladies of the highest rank,
took parts in them, and they engaged the genius
of .Jonson, Inigo Jones, and Henry Lawes, each
in his various department of poet, machinist, and
nmsician ; while no expense was sjjared to render
them worthy of the place, the occasion, and the
audience. It appears from the accounts of the
Master of Revels, that no less than £4215 was
lavished on these entertainments in the first six
years of the king's reign. Jonson himself composed
twenty-three masques ; and Dekker, Middleton, and
others of the leading dramatic authors, Shakspeare
alone excepted, were glad to contribute in this man-
ner to the pleasures of a court whose patronage was
so essential to them.
The marriage of Lord James Hay to Anne,
daughter and heir of Lord Denny, January 6th,
1607, was distinguished at court (Whitehall) by
wliat was called the Memorable Masque, tlie pro-
duction of Dr Thomas Campion, an admired musi-
cian as well as poet of that da}', now forgotten. On
this occasion, the great hall of the palace was fitted
up in a way that shows the mysteries of theatrical
scenery and decoration to have been better under-
stood, and carried to a greater height, in that age,
than is generally sujiposed. One end of the hall was
set apart for tlie audience, having the king's seat in
tlie centre ; next to it was a space for ten concerted
musicians — base and mean lutes, a bandora, a double
sackbut, a harpsichord, and two treble violins — be-
•sides wlioin there were nine violins, thnee lutes, six
cornets, and six chapel singers. The stage was con-
cealed by a curtain resembling dark clouds, which
being withdrawn, disclosed a green valley with green
round at)out it, and in the midst of them nine golden
ones of fifteen feet high. Tlie bower of Flora was
on their right, the house of Night on the left ; be-
tween tliem a hill hanging like a cliff over the grove.
The bower of Flora was spacious, garnished with
flowers and flowery branches, with lights among
them ; the house of Niglit ample and stately, with
black columns studded with golden stars ; while
a!)out it were placed, on wires, artificial bats and
owls continually moving. As soon as the king
entered the great hull, tlie hautboys were heard
from tlie top of the hill a,nd from the wood, till
1!)!>
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
Flora and Zephynis were seen busily gathering
flowers from the bower, throwing them into baskets
which two sylvans held, attired in changeable
taffetj'. Besides two other allegorical characters,
Night and Hesperus, there were nine masquers, re-
presenting Apollo's knights, and personated by
young men of rank.
After songs and recitative, the whole vale was
suddenly withdrawn, and a hill with Diana's tree
discovered. Night appeared in her house with Nine
Hours, apparelled in large robes of black tafTety,
painted thick with stars ; their hair long, black, and
spangled with gold ; on their heads coronets of stars,
and their faces black. Every Hour bore in his hand
a black torch painted with stars, and lighted.
Night. Vanish, dark vales, let night in glory shine.
As she doth bum in rage ; come, leave our shrine,
You black-haired hours, and guide us with your lights,
Flora hath wakened wide our drowsy sprites.
See where she triumphs, see her flowers are thrown.
And all about the seeds of malice sown ;
Despiteful Flora, is't not enough of grief,
That Cynthia's robbed, but thou must grace the thief?
Or didst not hear Night's sovereign queen i complain
Hymen had stolen a nymph out of her train.
And matched her here, plighted henceforth to be
Lore's friend and stranger to virginity ?
And mak'st thou sport for this ?
Florra. Be mild, stem Night ;
Flora doth honour Cynthia and her right ; * *
The nymph was Cynthia's while she was her o^vn,
But now another claims in her a right.
By fate reserved thereto, and wise foresight.
Zephynts. Can C^Tithia one kind virgin's loss be-
moan 1
How, if perhaps she brings her ten for one ? * *
After some more such dialogue, in which Hesperus
takes part, Cynthia is reconciled to the loss of her
n^-raph ; the trees sink, by means of enginery, under
the stage, and the masquers come out of their tops
to fine music. Dances, processions, speeches, and
songs follow, the last being a duet between a Sylvan
and an Hour, by the way of tenor and bass.
Syl. Tell me, gentle Hour of Night,
Wherein dost thou most delight ?
Hour. Not in Bleep. Syl. Whei-ein, then ?
Hour. In the frolic view of me)..
Syl. Lov'st thou music ? Hoxtr. Oh, 'tis sweet.
Syl. What's dancing ? Hour. Even the mirth of feet.
Syl. Joy you in fairies and in elves ?
Hour. W'e are of that sort ourselves :
But, Sylvan, say, why do you love
Only to frequent the grove ?
Syl. Life is fullest of content,
Where delight is innocent.
Hour. Pleasure must vary, not be long ;
Come, then, let's close and end our sonc.
Then the masquers made an obeisance to the king,
and attended him to the banqueting room.
The masques of Jonson contain a great deal of
fine poetry, and even the prose descriptive parts are
remarkable for grace and delicacy of language — as,
for instance, M-here he speaks of a sea at the back of
a scene, catching 'the eye afar off Avith a wander
ing beauty.' In that which was produced at the
marriage of Kainsay, Lord Haddington, to Lady
Elizabeth Katcliff, tiie scene presented a steep red
cliff, topped by clouds, allusive to the red cliff from
which the lady's name was said to be derived ; before
vhich were two pillars charged with spoils of love,
umongst which were old and young persons bound
> Diana.
with roses, ^redding garments, rocks, and spindles,
hearts transfixed with arrows, others flaming, vir-
gins' girdles, garlands, and worlds of such like.'
Enter Venus in her chariot, attended by the Graces,
and delivers a speech expressive of her anxiety to
recover her son Cupid, Avho has run away from her.
The Graces then make proclamation as follows: —
\st Grace. Beauties, have you seen this toy,
Called love, a little boy.
Almost naked, wanton, blind ;
Cruel now, and then as kind !
If he be amongst j^e, say ;
He is Venus' runaway.
Id Grace. She that mil but now discover
Where the winged wag doth hover.
Shall to-night receive a kiss.
How or where herself would wish ;
But who brings him to his mother,
Shall have that kiss, and another.
?A Grace. He hath marks .about him plenty ;
You shall know him among twenty.
All his body is a fire.
And his breath a flame entire.
That, being shot like lightning in,
Wounds the heart but not the skin.
\i't Grace. At his sight the sun hath turn'd,
Neptune in the waters buni'd ;
Hell hath felt a greater heat ;
Jove himself forsook his seat ;
From the centre to the sky
Are his trophies reared high.
Id Grace. Wings he hath, which though ye clip.
He will leap from lip to lip.
Over liver, lights, and heart,
But not stay in any part ;
And if chance his arrow misses,
He Mrill shoot himself in kisses.
Zd Grace. He doth bear a golden bow,
And a quiver hanging low,
Full of arrows, that outbrave
Dian's shafts ; where, if he have
Any head more sharp than other.
With that first he strikes his mother.
l.'^ Grace. Still the fairest are his fuel.
When his days are to be cruel.
Lovers' hearts are all his food.
And his baths their warmest blood ;
Nought but wounds his hand doth season,
And he hates none like to Reason.
Id Ghxice. Trust him not ; his words, though sweet.
Seldom with his heart do meet.
All his practice is deceit ;
Every gift it is a bait ;
Not a kiss but poison bears ;
And most treason in his tears.
3ti Grace. Idle minutes are his reign •,
Then the straggler makes his gain.
By presenting maids with toys.
And would have ye think them joys ;
'Tis the ambition of tlie elf
To have all childish as himself.
\$t Grace. If by these ye please to know him,
Beauties, be not nice, but show him.
2d Grace, Though ye had a will to hide him.
Now, we hope, ye'U not abide him.
3d Grace. Since you hear his falser play,
And that he 's Venus' runart-ay.
Cupid enters, attended by twelve boys, representing
' the Sports and pretty Lightnesses that accompany
200
DRAMATI 4TS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEM JOli''SOI(.
Love,' who dance, and then Venus apprehends her
son, and a pretty dialogue ensues between them and
Hymen. Vulcan afterwards appears, and, claiming
the pillars as his workmanship, strikes tlie red clitf,
which opens, and shows a large luminous sphere
containing the astronomical lines and signs of the
zodiac. He makes a quaint speech, and presents the
sphere as his gift to Venus on the triumph of her
son. The Lesbian god and his consort retire ami-
cably to their chariot, and the piece ends by the
•inging of an epithalamium, interspersed with dances
of masquers : —
Up, youths and A'irgius, up, and praise
The god, whose nights outshine his days ;
Hymen, whose hallow'd rites
Could never boast of brighter lights ;
Whose bauds pass liberty.
Two of your troop, that with the morn were free,
Are now waged to his war.
And what they are,
If you'll perfection see,
Yourselves must be.
Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star !
What joy, what honours can compare
With holy nuptials, when they are
Made out of equal parts
Of years, of states, of hands, of hearts !
When in the happy choice
The spouse and spoused have foremost voice !
Such, glad of Hymen's war,
Live what they are,
And long perfection see ;
And such ours be.
Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star !
* * *
Still further to illustrate this curious subject, and
to revive a department of our literature almost
totally unknown, we present one entire masque of
Jonson, a short but beautiful one, which was repre-
sent at court in 1615, 'by the lords and gentlemen,
the king's servants,' and seems to have been designed
as a compliment to the king on the point of his love
of justice.
The Golden Age Bestored.
The court being seated and in expectation,
Loud Music : Pallas in her chariot descending to a
softer music.
Look, look ! rejoice and wonder
That you, offending mortals, are
(For all your crimes) so much the care
Of him that bears the thunder.
Jove can endure no longer,
Your great ones should your less invade ;
Or that your weak, though bad, be made
A prey unto the stronger.
And therefore means to settle
Astnea in her seat again ;
And let down in his golden chain
An age of better metal.
Which deed he doth the rather,
That even En^-y may behold
Time not enjoy 'd his head of gold
Alone beneath his father,
But that his care conserveth,
As time, so all time's honours too.
Regarding still what heav'n should do,
And ri,jt what earth deservcth.
\^A tumult, aid clcushino of arms heard within.
But hark ! what tumult from yond' cave is heard ?
What noise, what strife, what earthquake and alarms,
As troubled Nature for her maker fear'd,
And all the Iron Age were up in arms !
Hide me, soft cloud, from their profaiier eyes,
Till insolent Rebellion take the field ;
And as their spirits with their counsels rise,
I frustrate all with showing but my shield.
[^'Ae retires behind a dcntd.
The Irok Age presents itself, calling forth the Evils.
7. Ar/e. Come forth, come forth, do we not hear
What purpose, and how worth our fear,
The king of gods hath on us 1
lie is not of the Iron breed,
That would, though Fate did help the deed.
Let Shame In so upon us.
Rise, rise then up, thou grandame Vice
Of all my issue. Avarice,
Bring with thee Fraud and Slander,
Corruption with the golden hands.
Or any subtler 111, that stands
To be a more commander.
Thy boys. Ambition, Pride, and Scorn,
Force, Rapine, and thy babe last bom.
Smooth Treachery, call hither.
Arm Folly forth, and Ignorance,
And teach them all our Pyrrhic dance :
We may triumph together.
Upon this enemy so great.
Whom, if our forces can defeat,
And but this once bring under,
V^'q are the masters of the skies.
Where all the wealth, height, power liss.
The sceptre, and the thunder.
Wiich of you would not in a war
Attempt the price of any scar,
To keep your onto states even ?
But liere, which of you is that he.
Would not himself the weapon be,
To ruin Jove and heaven ?
About it, then, and let him feel
The Iron Age is turn'd to steel.
Since he begins to threat her :
And though the bodies here are lesg
Than were the giants ; he'll confess
Our malice is far greater.
The Evils enter for the Antimasque, and dance to two ilniro»,
trumpets, and a confusion of niartiul music. At tlie end of
which Pallas reappears, showing her shield. The Gvii4
are turned to statues.
Pal. So change, and perish, scarcely knowing how,
That 'gainst the gods do take so vain a vow.
And think to equal with your mortal dates,
Their lives that are obnoxious to no fates.
'Twas time t' appear, and let their folly see
'Gainst whom they fought, and with what destinj'.
Die all that can remain of you, but stone,
And that be seen a while, and then be imne !
Now, now descend, you both belov'd of Jove,
And of the good on earth no less the love.
[TVtc sceiv: changes, and she calU
AsTn^A and the Golden Ahs.
Descend, you long, long wish'd and wanted pair,
And as your softer times divide the air.
So shake all clouds off with your golden hair;
For Spite is spent : the Iron Age is fled.
And, with her power on earth, her name is dead.
201
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
AsTR^EA and the Golden Aoe descending with a song.
Ast. G. A(je. And are we then
To live agen,
With men ?
Ast. Will Jove such pledges to the earth restore
As justice 1
O. Age. Or the purer ore ]
Pal. Once more.
G. Age. But do they know,
How much they owe I
Below ?
Ast. And will of grace receive it, not as due !
Pal. If not, they harm themselves, not you.
Ast. True.
G. Age. True.
Cho. Let narrow natures, how they will, mistake,
The great should still be good for their own sake.
[They conie forward.
Pal. Welcome to earth, and reign.
Ast. G. Age. But how, without a train.
Shall we our state sustain ?
Pal. Leave that to Jove : therein you are
No little part of his Minerva's care.
Expect awhile.
You far-famed spirits of this happy isle.
That, for your sacred songs have gain'd the style
Of Phoebus' sons, whose notes the air aspire
Of th' old Egyptian, or the Thracian lyre,
That Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Spenser, hight,
Put on your better flames, and larger light.
To wait upon the Age that shall your names new
nourish.
Since A'irtue press'd shall grow, and buried Arts shall
flourish.
Cliau. Gow. We come.
Lyd. Spen. We come.
Omnes. Our best of fire.
Is that which Pallas doth inspire.
[They descend.
Pal. Then see you yonder souls, set far within the
shade.
That in Elysian bowers the blessed seats do keep.
That for their living good, now semi-gods are made,
And went away from earth, as if but tam'd with sleep ?
These we must join to wake ; for these are of the strain
That justice dare defend, and will the age sustain.
Clio. AwaVa, awake, for whom these times were kept.
wake, wake, wake, as you had never slept !
Make haste and put on air, to be their guard.
Whom once but to defend, is still reward.
Pal. Thus Pallas throws a lightning from her shield.
[The scene of light discovered.
Cho. To which let all that doubtful darkness yield.
Ast. Now Peace.
G. Age. And Love.
Ast. Faith,
G. Age. Joys.
Alt. G. Age. All, all increase. [A pause.
Chau. And Strife,
Gow. And Hate,
Lyd. And Fear,
Spen. And Pain,
Omnes. All cease.
Pal. No tumour of an iron vein.
The causes shall not come again.
Cho. But, as of old, all now be gold.
Move, move then to the sounds ;
And do not only walk your solemn rounds.
But give those light and airy bounds.
That fit the Genii of these gladder grounds.
The first Dance.
Pal. Already do not all things smile ?
Ast. But when they have enjoy'd a while
The Age's quickening power :
Age. That every thought a seed doth bring.
And every look a plant doth spring,
And every breath a flower :
Pal, The earth unplough'd shall yield her crop,
Pure honey from the oak shall drop,
The fountain shall run milk :
The thistle shall the lily bear.
And every bramble roses wear,
And every worm make silk.
Cho. The very shrub shall balsam sweat.
And nectar melt the rock with heat,
Till earth have drank her fill :
That she no harmful weed may know,
Nor barren fern, nor mandrake low,
Nor mineral to kill.
Here the main Dance.
After which,
Pal. But here's not all : you must do more.
Or else you do but half restore
The Age's liberty.
Poe. The male and female us'd to join,
And into all delight did coin
That pure simplicity.
Then Feature did to Form advance,
And Youth call'd Beauty forth to dance.
And every Grace was by :
It was a time of no distrust.
So much of love had nought of lust ;
None fear'd a jealous eye.
The language melted in the ear,
Yet all without a blush might hear;
They liv'd with open vow.
Cho. Each touch and kiss was so well plac'd,
They were as sweet as they were chaste,
And such must yours be now.
Here they dance with the Ladies.
Ast. What change is here 1 I had not more
Desire to leave the earth before.
Than I have now to stay ;
My silver feet, like roots, are wreath'd
Into the ground, my wings are slieath'd,
And I cannot away.
Of all there seems a second birth ;
It is become a heaven on earth,
And Jove is present here.
I feel the godhead ; nor will doubt
But he can fill the place throughout,
Whose power is everywhere.
This, this, and only such as this.
The bright Astroea's region is.
Where she would pray to live ;
And in the midst of so much gold,
Unbought with grace, or fear unsold,
The law to mortals give.
Here they dance the Galliards and Corantoa.
Pallas [ascending, and calling the Poets.]
'Tis now enough ; behold you here,
What Jove hath built to be your -phere,
You hither must retire.
And as his bounty gives you cause,
Be ready still without your pause,
To show the world your fire.
20S
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Like lights about Astrsea's throne,
You here must shine, and all be one,
In fervour and in flame ;
That by your union she may grow,
And, you sustaining her, may know
The Age still by her name.
Who vows, against or heat or cold,
To spin your garments of her gold,
That want, may touch you never ;
And making garlands ev'ry hour,
To >vrite your names in some new flower,
That you may live for ever.
Cho. To Jove, to Jove, be all the honour given,
That thankful hearts can raise from earth to heaven.
FRANCIS BEAUMONT — JOHN FLETCHER.
The literary partnerships of the drama which we
have had occasion to notice were generally brief and
incidental, confined to a few scenes or a single play.
In Beaumont and Fletcher, we have the inte-
resting spectacle of two young men of liigli genius,
of good birth and connexions, living together for ten
years, and writing in union a series of dramas, pas-
sionate, romantic, and comic, thus blending together
their genius and tlieir fame in indissoluble con-
nexion. Shakspeare was undoubtedly the inspirer of
these kindred spirits. They appeared when his
genius was in its meridian splendour, and they were
completely subdued by its overpowering influence.
They reflected its leading characteristics, not as
shivisli copyists, but as men of high powers and
attainments, proud of borrowing inspiration from a
source which they could so well appreciate, and
which was at once ennobling and inexhaustible.
Francis Beaumont was the son of Judge Beaumont,
a member of an ancient family settled at Grace Dieu,
in Leicestershire. He was born in 1586, and educated
at Cambridge. He became a student of the Inner
Temple, probably to gratify his father, but does not
seem to have prosecuted the study of tlie law. He
was married to the daugliter and co-heiress of Sir
Henry Isley of Kent, by whom lie liad two daugliters.
He died before he had completed liis tliirtieth year,
• nd was buried, March 9, 161,5-6, at the entrance to
: t Benedict's chapel, Westminster Abbey. Jolin
lletcher was the son of Hr Richard Fletelier, bisliop
of Bristol, and afterwards of Worcester. He waa
born ten years before his friend, in 1576, and lie sur-
vived him ten years, dying of tlie great plague in
1625, and was buried in St Mary Overy's church,
Southwark, on the 19th of August.
The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher are fifty-
two in number. The greater part of them were nok
printed till 1647, and hence it is impossible to assign
the respective dates to each. Dryden mentions, tliat
Philaster was the first play that brought tliem into
esteem with the public, though tliey had written
two or tliree before. It is improbable in plot, but
interesting in character and situations. Tlie jealousy
of Philaster is forced and unnatural ; tlie character
of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the page, is a
copy from Viola, yet there is something peculiarly
delicate in the following account of her hopeless
attachment to Philaster : —
My father oft would speak
Your worth and virtue ; and, as I did grow
More and more apprehensive, 1 did thirst
To see the man so prais'd ; but yet all this
Was but a maiden longing, to be lost
As soon as found ; till, sitting in my window,
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god,
I thought (but it was you), enter our gates.
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had puft'd it forth and suck'd it in
Like breath. Then was I called away in haste
To entertain you. Never was a man
Ileav'd from a sheep-cote to a scejitre raised
So high in thoughts as 1 : you loft a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever. I did hear you talk,
F'ar above singing ! After you were gone,
I grew acquainted with my lioart, and search'd
What stirr'd it so. Alas ! I found it love ;
Yet far from lust ; for could I but have li\ed
In presence of you, I had had my end.
For this I did delude my noble father
AVitli a feign'd pilgrimage, and dress'd myself
In habit of a boy ; and for I knew
ISIy birtli no matcli for you, 1 was past hoj*
f )f having you. And, understanding well
Tiiat wlieu I made discovery of my sex,
I could not stay with you, I made a vow,
By all the most religious things a maid
Could call together, never to be known,
A\'hilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes,
For other than I seem'd, that I iiiiglit ever
Abide witli you : then sat I by the fount
Where first you took me up.
Philaster had previously described his finding the
disguised maiden by tlie fount, and the descrii)lion is
higlily poetical and picturesque : —
Hunting the buck,
I found him sitting by a fountain-side.
Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst.
And paid the nymph again as much in tears.
A garland lay him by, made by liimself.
Of many several flowers, bred in the bav,
Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness
Dcliglitcd me : But ever when lie turii'd
His tender eyes upon them he would weep,
As if he meant to make them grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, 1 ask'd him all his stor}'.
He told me that his ])arents gentle died.
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields.
Which gave him roots ; and of the crystal sj)ring»,
Wliich did not stop their coui-ses ; and the sun.
Which still, he tliank'd him, yielded him his light.
Then took he up his garland, and did show
What every flower, as country people hold,
20 ."i
FKOM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 164fl.
Did signify ; and how all, ordcr'd thus,
Express'dhis grief: and to my thoughts did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art
That could be wish'd ; so that methought I could
Have studied it. I gladly entertain'd him
Who was as glad to follow.
The Maid's Tragedy, supposed to be written about
the same time, is a drama of a powerful but un-
pleasing character. The purity of female virtue in
Amintor and Aspatia, is well contrasted with the
guilty boldness of Evadne ; and the rougli soldier-
like bearing and manly feeling of Melantius, render
the selfish sensuality of the king more hateful and
disgusting. Unfortvmately, there is much licentious-
ness in tliis fine play — wiiole scenes and dialogues
are disfigured bj- this master vice of the tlieatre of
Beaumont and Fletcher. Their dramas are ' a rank
unweeded garden,' which grew only the more disor-
derh- and vicious as it advanced to maturity. Flet-
cher must bear the chief blame of tliis defect, for lie
vrxoie longer than his associate, and is generally
understood to have been the most copious and fertile
composer. Before Beaumont's death, tliey liad, in
addition to ' Pliilaster,' and tlie ' Maid's Tragedy,'
produced King and no King, Bonduca, The Laws of
Candy (tragedies) ; and The Woman Hater, The
Knight of tJie Burning Pestle, The Honest Mans For-
tune, The Coxcomb, and The Captain(cotned\es). Flet-
cher afterwards produced three tragic dramas, and
nine comedies, the best of Avhich are, The Chances,
The Spanish Curate, The Beggar's Bush, and Bule a
Wife and Have a Wife. He also wrote an exquisite
pastoral drama. The Faithful Shepherdess, wliich Mil-
ton followed pretty closely in the design, and partly
in the language and imagery, of Comus. A higher
though more doubtful honour has been assigned to
the twin authors ; for Shakspeare is said to have
assisted them in the composition of one of their works,
The Two Noble Kinsmen, and his name is joined with
Fletcher's on the title page of the first edition. The
bookseller's authority in such matters is of no weight;
and it seems unlikely that our great poet, after the
production of some of his best dramas, should enter
into a partnership of this description. The ' Two
Noble Kinsmen' is certainly not superior to some of
the other plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.
The genius of Beaumont is said to have been more
correct, and more strongly inclined to tragedy, than
that of his friend. The later works of Fletcher are
chiefly of a comic character. His plots are some-
times inartificial and loosely connected, but he is
always lively and entertaining. There is a rapid
succession of incidents, and the dialogue is wittj',
elegant, and amusing. Dr3-den considered tliat they
understood and imitated the conversation of gentle-
»nen nmch better than Shakspeare ; and he states
that their plays were, in his day, the most pleasant
and frequent entertainments of the stage ; ' two of
theirs being acted through the year, for one of
Shakspeare's or Jonson's.' It was different some
fortj' years previous to this. In 1627, the King's
Company bribed the Master of the Revels with £5,
to interfere in preventing the plaj-ers of the theatre
called the Ked Bull, from performing the dramas of
Shakspeare. One cause of the preference of Beau-
mont and Fletcher, may liave been the license of
their dramas, suited to the perverted taste of the
court of Charles II., and the spirit of intrigue wliich
they adopted from the Spanish stage, and naturalised
on the English. 'We cannot deny,* remarks Ilallam,
'that the depths of Shakspeare's mind were often
unfathomable by an audience ; the bow was drawn
by a matchless hand, but the shaft went out of sight.
All might listen to Fletcher's pleasing, though not
profound or vigorous, language; his thoughts are
noble, and tinged with the idealitj' of romance ; his
metaphors vivid, though sometimes too forced ; he
possesses the idiom of English without much pe-
dantry, though in many passages he strains it beyond
common use ; his versification, though studiously
irregular, is often rhythmical and sweet ; yet we
are seldom arrested by striking beauties. Good lines
occur in every page, fine ones but rarely. We lay
down the volume with a sense of admiration of what
we have read, but little of it remains distinctly in
the memory. Fletcher is not much quoted, and" has
not even afibrded cojiious materials to those who cull
the beauties of ancient lore.' His comic powers are
certainly far superior to his tragic. Massinger im-
presses the reader more deeply, and has a moral
beauty not possessed by Beaumont and Fletcher, but
in comedy he falls infinitely below them. Though
their characters are deficient in variety, their know-
ledge of stage-effect and contrivance, their fertility
of invention, and the airy liveliness of their dialogue,
give the charm of novelty and interest to their
scenes, ilr Macaulay considers that the models
wliich Fletcher had principally in his eye, even for
his most serious and elevated compositions, were not
Shakspeare's tragedies, but his comedies. 'It was
these, with their idealised truth of character, their
poetic beauty- of imagery, their mixture of the grave
with the playful in thought, their rapid j-et skilful
transitions from the tragic to the comic in feeling;
it was these, the pictures in which Shakspeare had
made his nearest approach to portraying actual life,
and not those pieces in which he transports the ima-
gination into his own vast and awful world of tragic
action, and suffering, and emotion — that attracted
Fletcher's fancy, and proved congenial to his cast of
feeling.' This observation is strikinglyjust, applied
to Shakspeare's mixed comedies or plavs, like the
'Twelfth Night,' the 'Winter's Tale,' 'As You Like
It,' &c. The rich and genial comedy of Falstaff, Shal-
low, and Slender, was not imitated by Fletcher. His
' Knight of the Burning Pestle' is an admirable bur-
lesque of the false taste of the citizens of London for
chivalrous and romantic adventures, without regard
to situation or probability. On the whole, the dramas
of Beaumont and Fletcher impress us with a liigh
idea of their powers as poets and dramatists. The
vast variety and luxuriance of their genius seem t3
elevate them above Jonson, though they were des-
titute of his regularity and solidity, and to place
them on the borders of the ' magic circle' of Shak-
speare. The confidence and buoyancy of youth are
visible in their productions. They haid not tasted of
adversity, like Jonson or Massinger; and they had
not the profoundly-meditative spirit of their great
master, cognisant of all human feelings and sym-
pathies; life was to tliem a scene of enjoyment and
pleasure, and the exercise of their genius a source of
refined delight and ambition. They were gentlemen
who wrote for the stage, as gentlemen have rarely
done before or since.
{Generosity of C(Esar.'\
[Ptolemy, king of Egj-pt, having secured the head of Pompey,
comes with his friends Achoreus and Photinus to present it to
Caesar, as a means of gaining his favour. To them enter Caesar,
Antony, Dolabclla, and Sceva.]
Pho. Do not shun me, Csesar.
From kingly Ptolemy 1 bring this present.
The crown and sweat of thy Pharsalian labour,
The goal and mark of high ambitious honour.
Before, thy victory had no name, Coesar,
Thy travel and thy loss of blood, no recompense ;
Thou dreaiu'dst of being worthy, and of war,
20*
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
And all thv furious conflicts were but slumbers :
Here they take life ; here they inherit honour,
Grow fix'd, and shoot up everlasting triumphs.
Tiike it, and look upon thy humble servant,
With noble eyes look on the princely Ptolemy,
That olfers with this head, most mighty Csesar,
What thou wouldst once have given for't, all Egypt.
Ack. Nor do not question it, most royal conqueror,
Nor disesteem the benefit that meets thee.
Because 'tis easily got, it comes the safer :
Yet, let me tell thee, most imperious Cresar,
Though he oppos'd no strength of swordis to win this,
Nor labour'd through no showers of darts and lances,
Yet here he found a fort, that faced him strongly,
An inward war : He was his grandsire's guest.
Friend to his father, and when he was expell'd
And beaten from this kingdom by strong hand,
And had none left him to restore his honour,
No hope to find a friend in such a misery,
Then in stept Pompey, took his feeble fortune,
Strengthen'd, and cherish'd it, and set it right again :
This was a love to Caasar.
See. Give me hate, gods !
Pho. This Cffisar may account a little ^vicked ;
But yet remember, if thine own hands, conqueror,
Had fall'n upon him, what it had been then ;
If thine own sword had touch'd his throat, what that
way !
He was thy son-in-law ; there to be tainted
Had been most terrible ! Let the worst be render'd,
We have deserv'd for keeping thy hands innocent.
Cwsar. Oh, Scera, Sceva, see that head ! See, cap-
tains.
The head of godlike Pompey !
See. He was basely ruiu'd ;
But let the gods be grier'd that sufier'd it.
And be you Csesar.
Ccesar. Oh thou conqueror.
Thou glory of the world once, now the pity ;
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus ^
What poor fate follow'd thee and pluck'd thee on
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian ?
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger,
That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness,
Nor 'yorthy circumstance show'd what a man was?
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets,
And loose lascivious pleasures I to a boy,
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness,
No study of thy life to know thy goodness 1
And leave thy nation, nay, thy noble friend,
Leave him distrusted, that in tears falls with thee.
In soft relenting tears I Hear me, great Pompey ;
If thy great spirit can hear, I must task thee !
Th' hast most unnobly robb'd me of my victory,
My love and mercy.
Ayit. Oh, how brave these tears show!
How excellent is sorrow in an enemy !
Dol. Glory appears not greater than this goodness.
Ccesar. Egyptians, dare ye think your highest pyra-
mids.
Built to outdare the sun, as you suppose.
Where your unworthy kings lie rak'd in ashes,
Are monuments fit for him ? No ; brood of Nilus,
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven.
No pjTamids set off his memories.
But the eternal substance of his greatness.
To which I leave him. Take the head away,
And, with the body, give it noble burial :
Your earth shall now be bless'd to hold a Roman,
Whose braveries all the world's earth cannot balance.
See. If thou be'st thus loving, I shall honour thee :
But great men may dissemble, 'tis held possible.
And be right glad of what they seem to weep for ;
There are such kind of philosophers. Now do I wonder
How he would lock if Pompey were alive again ;
But how he'd set his face.
Ccesar. You look now, king.
And you that have been agents in this glory,
For our especial favour ?
Ptol. ^Ve desire it.
Ccesar. And doubtless you expect rewards !
See. Let me give 'em :
I'll give 'em such as Nature never dream'd of;
I'll beat him and his agents in a mortar.
Into one man, and that one man I'll bake then.
Ca;mr. Peace !— I forgive you all ; that's recom-
pense.
You're young and ignorant ; that pleads your pardon ;
And fear, it may be, more than hate, provok'd you.
Your ministers, I must think, wanted judgment,
And so they err'd : I'm bountiful to think this.
Believe me, most bountiful. Be you most thankful ;
That bounty share amongst ye. If I knew what
To send you for a present, king of Egypt,
I mean a head of equal reputation,
And that you lov'd, tho' 'twere your brightest sister's
(But her you hate), I would not be behind you.
Plol. Hear me, great Cresar !
Ccesar. I have heard too much ;
And study not with smooth shows to invade
My noble mind, as you have done my conquest :
You're poor and open. I must tell you roundly,
That man that could not recompense the benefits,
The great and bounteous services of Pompey,
Can never dote upon the name of Ca?sar.
Though I had hated Pompey, and allow'd his ruin,
I gave you no commission to perform it.
Hasty to please in blood are seldom trusty ;
And, but I stand envirou'd mth my victories,
My fortune never failing to befriend me.
My noble strengths, and friends about my person,
I durst not try you, nor expect a courtesv.
Above the pious love you sbo^^'d to Pompey.
You've found me merciful in arguing with ye ;
Swords, hangmen, fires, destructions of all natures,
Demolishments of kingdoms, and whole ruins,
Are wont to be my orators. Turn to tears.
You -OTetched and poor reeds of sun-burnt Egj-pt,
And now you've found the nature of a conqueror.
That you cannot decline, with all your flatteries.
That where the day gives light, will be himself still ;
Know how to meet his worth with humane courtesies !
Go, and embalm those bones of that great soldier
Howl round about his pile, fling on your spices.
Make a Sabean bed, and place this phenix
Where the hot sun may emulate his virtues,
And draw another Pompey from his ashes
Divinely great, and fix him 'mongst the worthies'
Ptol. We will do all.
Ccemr. You've robb'd him of those tears
His kindred and his friends kept sacred for him.
The virgins of their funeral lamentations ;
And that kind earth that thought to cover him
(His country's earth) will cry out 'gainst your crutlty,
And weep unto the ocean for revenge.
Till Nilus raise his seven heads and devour ve !
My grief has stopt the rest ! When Pompey liV'd,
He us'd you nobly ; now he's dead, use him so. [Ej-ii.
The False One.
[Grief of Aspatia for theManiarje of Amintor and
Evadne.l
EvADNB, AsPATiA, DuLA, and other Ladies.
Evad. Would thou could'st instil [To BvXa.
Some of thy mirth into Aspatia.
Asp. It were a timeless smile should prove my cheek ;
It were a fitter hour for me to laugh,
When at the altar the religious priest
Were pacifying the ofi'ended powers
With sacrifice, than now. This should have been
203
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
My night, and all j-our hands have beea employ'd
In giving me a spotless offering
To young Amintor's bed, as we are now
For you : pardon, Evadne ; would my worth
Were great as yours, or that the king, or he,
Or both thought so ; perhaps he found me worthless ;
But till he did so, in these ears of mine
(These credulous ears) he pour'd the sweetest words
That art or lore could frame.
Evad. Nay, leave this sad talk, madam.
Asp. Would I could, then should I leave the cause.
Lay a garland on my hearse of the dismal yew.
Erad. That's one of your sad songs, madam.
A.'fp. Believe me, 'tis a very pretty one.
Evad. How is it, madam 1
Asp. Lay a garland on my hears*
Of the dismal yew ;
Maidens, willow branches bear,
Say I died true.
My love was false, but I was firm,
From my hour of birth ;
Upon my buried body lie
Lightlj', gentle earth !
Madam, good night ; may no discontent
Grow 'twixt your love and you ; but if there do,
Inquire of me, and I will guide your moan,
Teach you an artificial way to grieve,
To keep your sorrow waking. Love your lord
No worse than I ; but if you love so well,
Alas ! you may displease him ; so did I.
This is the last time you shall look on me :
Ladies, farewell ; as soon as I am dead.
Come all and watch one night about my hearse ;
Bring each a mournful story and a t§ar
To offer at it when I go to earth ;
With flattering ivy clasp my coffin round,
Write on my brow my fortune, let ray bier
Be borne by virgins that shall sing by course
The truth of maids and perjuries of men.
Evad. Alas ! I pity thee. [Amintor enters.
Asp. Go and be happy in your lady's love ;
[To Amintor.
May all the wrongs that you have done to me
Be utterly forgotten in my death.
I'll trouble you no more, yet I will take
A parting kiss, and will not be denied.
You'll come, my lord, and see the virgins weep
When I am laid in earth, though you yourself
Can know no pity : thus I wind myself
Into this willow garland, and am prouder
That I was once your love (though now refus'd)
Than to have had another true to me.
The Maid's Tragedy.
[Palamon and Arcitc, Captives in Greece."]
Pal. How do you, noble cousin ?
Arc. How do you, sir.
Pcd. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery.
And bear the chance of war yet ; we are prisoners,
I fear, for ever, cousin.
Arc. I believe it.
And to that destiny have patiently
Laid up my hour to come.
Pal. Oh, cousin Arcite,
Where is Thebes now ? where is our noble country ?
Where are our friends and kindreds ? never more
Must we behold those comforts, never see
The hardy youths strive for the games of honour.
Hung with the painted favours of their ladies,
Like tall ships under sail ; then start amongst them.
And as an east wind leave them all behind us
Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite,
Even in the wagging of a wanton leg,
Outstript the people's praises, won the garlands
Ere they have time to wish them ours. Oh, never
Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour,
Our arms again, iind feel our fiery horses
Like proud seas under us, our good swords now
(Better the red-eyed god of war ne'er wore)
Ravish'd our sides, like age, must run to rust,
And deck the temples of those gods that hate us ;
These hands shall never draw them out like lightning
To blast whole armies more !
Arc. No, Palamon,
Those hopes are prisoners with us ; here we are.
And here the graces of our youths must wither
Like a too timely spring ; here age must find us,
And (which is heaviest) Palamon, unmarried ;
The sweet embraces of a loving wife
Loalen with kisses, arm'd with thousand Cupids,
Shall never clasp our necks, no issue know us,
No figures of ourselves shall we e'er see.
To glad our age, and like young eagles teach them
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,
' Remember what your fathers were, and conquer.'
The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments.
And in their songs curse ever-blinded Fortune,
Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done
To youth and nature. This is all our world :
We shall know nothing here but one another ;
Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes.
The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it :
Summer shall come, and with her all delights,
But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.
Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite. To our Tlieban hounds
That shook the aged forest with their echoes.
No more now must we halloo, no more shake
Our pointed javelins, whilst the angry swine
Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages.
Struck with our well-steel'd darts. All valiant uses
(The food and nourishment of noble minds)
In us two here shall perish : we shall die
(Which is the curse of honour) lastly
Children of grief and ignorance.
Arc. Yet, cousin.
Even from the bottom of these miseries,
From all that fortune can inflict upon us,
I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,
If the gods please to hold here ; a brave patience,
And the enjoying of our griefs together.
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish
If I think this our prison !
Pal. Certainly
'Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes
Were twinn'd together ; 'tis most true, two souls
Put in two noble bodies, let them suffer
Tlic gall of hazard, so they grow together,
Will never sink ; they must not ; say they could,
A willing man dies sleeping, and all's done.
A re. Shall we make worthy uses of this place
That all men hate so much ?
Pal. How, gentle cousin ?
Arc. Let's think this prison holy sanctuary.
To keep us from corruption of worse men !
We are young, and j'et desire the ways of honour,
That liberty .and common conversation.
The poison of pure spirits, might (like women)
\\'oo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations
May make it ours ? And here being thus together.
We are an endless mine to one another ;
"We are one another's wife, ever begetting
New births of love ; we are father, friends, acquaint-
ance ;
We are, in one another, families ;
I am your heir, and you are mine. This place
Is our inheritance ; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us ; here, with a little patience.
We shall live long, and loving ; no surfeits seek us ;
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty,
S06
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATUHE.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEB.
A vrife might part us la\N'fully, or business ;
Quarrels consume us ; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance ; I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine ej'es,
Or prayers to the gods : a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.
Pal. You have made me
(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton
With my captivit}' : what a misery
It is to live abroad, and everywhere !
'Tis like a beast, methinks ! I find the court here,
I'm sure, a more content ; and all those pleasures,
That woo the wills of men to vanity,
I see through now ; and am sufficient
To tell the -world, 'tis but a gaudy shadow.
That old Time, as he passes by, takes with him.
^\'hat had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones ? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving gods found this place for us,
We had died, as they do, ill old men, unwept.
And had their epitaphs, the people's curses.
The Two NoUe Kimmen.
{Disinterestedness of Biancka.l
[From the ' Fair JIaid of the Inn.']
Enter Cesario and a Servant.
Cesa, Let any friend have entrance.
Sere. Sir, a' shall.
Cesa. Any ; I except none.
Serv. We know your mind, sir. [E.nt.
Cesa. Pleasures admit nobounds. I'mpitch'dsohigh,
To such a growth of full prosperities,
That to conceal my fortunes were an injury
To gratefulness, and those more liberal favours
By whom my glories prosper. He that flows
In gracious and swoln tides of blest abundance,
Yet will be ignorant of his o^wn fortunes.
Deserves to live contemn'd, and die forgotten :
The harvest of my hopes is now already
Ripen'd and gather'd ; I can fatten youth
With choice of plenty, and supplies of comforts ;
My fate springs in my own hand, and I'll use it.
Enter two Servants, and Biancha.
\st. Sen: 'Tis my place.
2d. Sen: Yours ? Here, fair one ; I'll acquaint
My lord.
1st. Sen: He's here •, o;o to him boldly.
2d. Sen: Please you
To let him understand h.^w readily
I waited on your errand !
1st. iSW'f . Saucy fellow !
You must excuse his breeding.
Cesa. What's the matter ?
Biancha ? my Biancha 1 — To your offices !
lExe^int Sen:
This visit, sweet, from thee, my pretty dear.
By how much more 'twas unexpected, comes
So much the more timelj- : witness this free welcome,
Whate'er occasion led thee !
Bian. You may guess, sir ;
Yet, indeed, 'tis a rare one.
Cesa. Prithee, speak it.
My honest virtuous maid.
Bian. Sir, I have heard
Of your misfortunes ; and I cannot tell you
Whether I have more cause of joy or sadness,
To know they are a truth.
Cesa. What truth, Biancha?
Misfortunes ? — how ? — wherein ?
Bian. You are dlsclaim'd
For being the lord Alberto's son, and publicly
Acknowledg'd of as mean a birth as mine is :
It cannot choose but grieve you.
Cesa. Grieve me ? Ha, ha, ha, ha I
Is this all ?
Bia)i. This all ?
Cesa. Thou art sorry for't,
I warrant thee ; alas, good soul, Biancha !
That which thou call'st misfortune is my happiness ;
My happiness, Biancha !
Bian. If you love me,
It may prove mine too.
Cesa. Jlay it ? I will love thee,
]My good, good maid, if that can make thee happy,
Better and better love tliee.
Bian. Without breach, then.
Of modesty, I come to claim the interest
Your protestations, both by vows and letters,
Have made me owner of : from tlie first hour
I saw you, I confess I wish'd I had been.
Or not' so much below your rank and greatness,
Or not so much above those humble flames
That should have warm'd my bosom with a temperate
Kqiialitv of desires in equal fortunes.
Still, as" you utter'd language of att'ection,
I courted time to pass more slowly on,
'I'hat I might turn more fool to lend attention
To what I durst not credit, nor yet hope for ;
Yet still as more I heard, I wislrd to hear more.
Cesa. Didst thou in troth, wench 1
Bian. Willingly betray'd
ilyself to hopeless bondage.
Cesa. A good girl !
I thought i should not miss, whate'er thy answer waa,
Bian. But as I am a maid, sir, (and i' faith
You may believe me, for I am a maid),
So dearfy I respected both your fame
And quality, that I would first have perish'd
In my sick thoughts, than ere have given consult
To have undone your fortunes, by inviting
A marriage with so mean a one as I am :
I should have died sure, and no creature known
The sickness that had kill'd me.
Cesa. Pretty heart !
Good soul, alas, alas !
Bian. Now since I know
There is no difference 'twixt your birth and mine,
Not much 'twixt our estates (if any be,
The advantage is on my side), I come willingly
To tender you the first-fruits of my heart,
And am content t' accept you for my husband,
Now when you are at lowest.
Ctsa. For a husband ?
Speak sadly ; dost thou mean so ?
Bian. In good deed, sir,
'Tis pure love makes this proflfer.
Cesa. I believe thee.
What counsel urg'd thee on? tell me ; thy father*
^U worshipful smug host ? Was't not he, wench !
Or mother hostess ? ha 1
Bian. D' you mock my parentage ?
I do not scorn yours : mean folks arc as worthy
To be well spoken of, if they deserve well.
As some whose only fame lies in their blood.
Oh, you're a proud poor man ! all your oaths falsehooa,
Your vows deceit, your letters forged and wicked !
Cesa. Thoud'st be my wife, I dare swear.
Bian. Had your heart.
Your hand, arid tongue, been twins, vou had reputed
This courtesy a benefit.
Cesa. Simplicity,
How prettily thoii mov'st me ! Why, Bianchx,
Report has cozen'd thee ; I am not fallen
From my expected honours or possessions.
Though "from tlie hope of birthright.
Bian. Are you not?
Then I am lost again ! I have a suit too ;
You'll grant it, if you be a good man.
Cesa. Anything.
^ 207
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA 01
TO lb4t'
Bian. Pray do not talk of aught what I have said t'ye.
Cesa. As 1 wish health, I will not I
Bian. Pity me ;
But never love me more !
Cisa. Nay, now you're cruel :
Why all these tears ? — Thou shalt not go.
Bian. I'll pray for you,
That you may have a virtuous wife, a fair one ;
And when I'm dead
Cesa. Fie, fie !
Bian. Think on me sometimes,
With mercy for this trespass !
Cesa. Let us kiss
At partinfr, as at coming !
Bian. This I have
As a free dower to a virgin's grave ;
All goodness dwell with you ! lEocit.
Cesa. Harmless Bi.ancha !
Unskill'd ! what handsome toys are maids to play with !
[Pastoral Love."]
[Prom the ' Faithful Shepherdess.']
To Clorinda a Satyr enters.
Satyr. Through yon same bending plain
That flings his arms doAvn to the main.
And through these thick woods have I run,
Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun.
Since the lusty spring began.
All to please my master Pan,
Have I trotted without rest,
To get him fruit ; for at a feast
He entertains, this coming night,
His paramour the Syrinx bright :
But behold a fairer sight !
By that heavenly form of thine.
Brightest fair, thou art divine.
Sprung from great immortal race
Of the gods, for in thy face
Shines more awful majesty
Than dull weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold.
And live : therefore on this mould
Lowly do I bend my knee
In worship of thy deity.
Deign it, goddess, from my hand
To receive whate'er this land
From her fertile womb doth send
Of her choice fruits ; and but lend
Belief to that the Satyr tells.
Fairer by the famous wells
To this present day ne'er grew,
Nevi;r better, nor more true.
Here be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good.
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown
Than the squirrel whose teeth crack them ;
Deign, fairest fair, to take them :
For these, black-eyed Driope
Hath oftentimes commanded me
With my clasped knee to climb.
See how well the lusty time
Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a queen.
Some be red, some be green ;
These are of that luscious meat
The great god Pan himself doth eat :
All these, and what the woods can yield.
The harming mountain or the field,
I freely jffer, and ere long
Will bring you more, more sweet and strong ;
Till when, humbly leave I take.
Lest the great Pan do awake.
That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.
I must go, I must run.
Swifter than the fiery sun. l^Ejit.
Clor. And all my fears go with thee.
What greatness, or what private hidden power,
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast ? — sure I am mortal ;
The daughter of a shepherd ; he was mortal.
And she that bore me mortal ; prick my hand
And it will bleed ; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink.
Makes me a-cold : my fear says I am mortal :
Yet I have heard (my mother told it me).
And now I do believe it, if I keep
My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend.
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Sliall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires.
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tole me on
Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin.
Else why should this rough tiling, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself, and more misshaiien.
Thus mildly kneel to me ? Sure there's a power
In that gi'cat name of Virgin, that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites
That break their confines. Then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard ; for here I'll dwell
In opposition against fate and hell.
Pebioot and Amoret appoint to meet at the Virtuous
Well.
Perl. Stay, gentle Amoret, thou fair-brow'd maid,
Thy shepherd prays thee stay, that holds thee dear.
Equal with his soul's good.
Amo. Speak, I give
Thee freedom, shepherd, and thy tongue be still
The same it ever was, as free from ill.
As he whose conversation never knew
The court or city, be thou ever true.
Peri. When I fall off from my affection.
Or mingle my clean thoughts with ill desires,
First let our great God cease to keep my flocks.
That being left alone without a guard,
The wolf, or winter's rage, summer's great heat.
And want of water, rots, or what to us
Of ill is yet unkno^^'n, fall speedily.
And in their general ruin let me go.
Amo. I pray thee, gentle shepherd, wish not so :
I do believe thee, 'tis as hard for me
To think thee false, and harder than for thee
To hold me foul.
Peri. you are fairer far
Than the chaste blushing mom, or that fair star
That guides the wand'riiig seamen through the deep,
Straiter than straitest pine upon the steep
Head of an aged mountain, and more white
Than the new milk we strip before daylight
From the full-freighted b.ags of our fair flocks.
Your hair more beauteous than those hanging locks
Of young Apollo.
Amo. Shepherd, be not lost,
Y' are sail'd too far already from the coast
Of our discourse.
Peri. Did you not tell me once
I should not love alone, I should not lose
Those many passions, vows, and holy oaths,
I've sent to heaven ? Did you not give your hand.
Even that fair hand, in hostage ? Do not then
Give back again those sweets to other meu
You yourself vow'd were mine.
Amo. Shepherd, so far as maiden's modesty
May give assurance, I am once more thine,
208
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH litp:rati/re.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEB.
Once more I give my hand ; be ever free
From that great foe to faith, foul jealousy.
Peri. I take it as my best good ; and desire,
For stronger confirmation of our love,
To meet this happy night in that fair grove,
Where all true shepherds have rewarded been
For their long service. * *
to that holy wood is consecrate
A Virtuous Well, about whose flowerv barlf"
The nimble-footed fairies dance their roui'ils
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftenti^ncs
Their stolen children, so to make thi-m free
From dving flesh and dull mortaliiy.
Bv this'fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn
And !;iven awav his freedom, many a troth
Been plight, which neither envy ncc old time
Could ever break, with many a cAa^te kiss given
In hope of coming happiness • by this
Fresh fountain m.-my a blusfii"g maid
Hath crown'd t.'ie head c/ her long loved shcplierd
With gaudv dowers, vhil^t he happy sung
Lays of hi^love avd dear captivity.
Tlid God of *ne!RiVER rises with Amoret in his arms.
Jliit7- Gvd. What pow'rful charms my streams
Ba-'k again unto their spring, [do bring
■?\'ith such force, that I their god.
Three times striking with my rod,
Could not keep them in their ranks !
My fishes shoot into the banks ;
There's not one that stays and feeds,
All have hid them in the weeds.
Here's a mortal almost dead,
Fall'n into my river-head,
Hallow'd so with many a spell,
That till now none ever fell.
'Tis a female, young and clear.
Cast m by some ravisher.
See upon her breast a wound,
On which there is no plaster bound ;
Yet she's warm, her pulses beat,
'Tis a sign of life and heat.
If thou be'st a virgin pur-^.
I can give a present cure.
Take a drop into thy wounu
From my watery locks, more round
Than orient pearl, and far more pure
Than unchaste flesh may endure.
See, she pants, and from her flesh
The warm blood gusheth out afresh.
She is an unpolluted maid ;
I must have this bleeding staid.
From my banks I pluck this flow'r
With holy hand, whose virtuous pow'r
Is at once to heal and draw.
The blood returns. I never saw
A fairer mortal. Now doth break
Her deadly slumber : Virgin, speak.
Amo. Who hath restor'd my sense, given me
new breath,
And brought me back out of the arms of death ?
God. I have heal'd thy wounds.
Amo. Ah me !
God. Fear not him that succour'd thee :
I am this fountain's god ! Below,
My waters to a river grow.
And 'twixt two banks with osiers get,
That only prosper in the wet.
Through the meadows do they glide,
Wheeling still on ev'ry side,
Sometimes winding round about,
To find the even'st channel out.
And if thou wilt go with me.
Leaving mortal company.
In the cool stream shalt thou lie.
Free from harm as well as I :
I will gi'e thee for thy food
No fi-!'! that useth in the mud !
But trout and pike, that love to swim
Where the gravel from the brim
Througli tlie pure streams may be seen :
Orient pearl fit for a queen.
Will I give, thy love to win,
And a sliell to keep them in :
Not a fish in all my brook
That shall disobey thy look.
But, when thou wilt, come sliding by.
And from thy white hand take a fly.
And to make thee understand
How I can my waves command,
They shall bubble whilst I sing.
Sweeter than the silver string.
The Song.
Do not fear to put thy feet
Naked in the river, sweet ;
Think not leech, or newt, or toad,
Will bite thy foot, when thou hast trod ;
Nor let the water rising high.
As thou wad'st in, make thee cry
And sob ; but ever live with me.
And not a wave shall trouble thee !
The lyrical pieces scattered throughout Beaumont
and Fletcher's plays are generally in the same grace-
ful and fanciful style as the poetry of the ' Faithful
Shepherdess :' some are here subjoined : —
\_Melanclioly.'\
[Prom • Nice Valour.']
Hence, all you vain deliglits,
As short as are the nights
^yherein you spend your folly !
There's nought in this life sweet.
If man were wise to see't.
But only melancholy !
Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fasten'd to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up, without a sound !
Fountain heads, and pathless groves.
Places which pale passion loves !
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous'd, stive bats and owls !
A midnight bell, a parting groan !
These are the sounds we feed upon ;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley:
Nothing's so dainty-sweet as lovely melancholy.
{Sony.]
[From the ' False One.']
Look out, bright eyes, and bless the air !
Even in shadows you are fair.
Shut-up beauty is like fire.
That breaks out clearer still and higher.
Though your beauty be confin'd,
And soft Love a prisoner bound,
Yet the beauty of your mind.
Neither check nor chain hath found.
Look out nobly, then, and dare
Ev'n the fetters that you wear !
[The Power of Love.'\
[From ' Valentinian.']
Hear ye, ladies that despise
What the mighty Love has done ;
Fear examples and be wise :
Fair Calisto was a nun :
200
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
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Leda, sailing on the stream,
To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accountinjr but a dream,
Doted on a silver swan ;
Danae in a brazen tower,
Where no love was, lov'd a shower.
Hear ye, ladies that are coy,
What the mighty Love can do ;
Fear t*<e fierceness of the boy ;
The chaste moon he makes to woo
Vesta, kindling holy fijes,
Circled round about with spies
Never dreaming loose desires,
Doting at the altar dies ;
Ilion in a short hour higher,
He can build, and once more fire.
[To Sleep.']
[From the Same.]
Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince : fall like a cloud
In gentle showers ; give nothing that is loud
Or painful to his slumbers ; easy, sweet [light ?],
And as a purling stream, thou son of night,
Pass bv his troubled senses, sing his pain _
Like hollow murmuring wind or gentle rain.
Into this prince, gently, oh, gently slide.
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride !
ISong to Pan, at the conclusion of the Faithful
Shepherdess.]
All ye woods, and trees, and bow'rs,
All ye virtues and ye pow'rs
That inhabit in the lakes.
In the pleasant springs or brakes,
!Move your feet
To our sound.
Whilst we greet
All this ground,
With his honour and his name
That defends oui flocks from blame.
He is great, and he is just,
He is ever good, and must
Thus be honour'd. Daffodilies,
Roses, pinks, and loved lilies,
Let us fling,
Whilst we sing,
Ever holy,
Ever holy.
Ever honour'd, ever young !
Thus great Pan is ever sung.
[From ' RoUo.']
Take, oh take those lips away.
That so sweetly were forsworn.
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the mom ;
But my kisses bring again.
Seals of love, though seal'd in vain.
Hide, oh hide those hills of snow,
Which thy frozen bosom bears.
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are yet of those tliat Ai)ril wears ;
But first set my poor heart free.
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
GEORGE CHAPMAN.
George Chapman, the translator of Homer, wrote
early and copiously for the stage. His first plaj-,
the Blind Beggar of Alexandria, was printed in 1598,
the same year that witnessed Ben Jonson's first and
masterly dramatic effort. Previous to this, Chap
man had translated part of the Iliad ; and his lofty
fourteen-syllable rhyme, with such lines as the fol-
lowing, would seem to have promised a great tragic
pw^t :—
tiom his bright helm and shield did burn a most un-
wearied fire.
Like rich Auiumnus' golden lamp, whose brightness
men admire.
Past all the other host of stars, when with his cheerful
face.
Fresh wash'd in \ofty ocean waves, he doth the sky
enchase. "^
The beauty of Chapm.-vn's compound Homeric epi-
thets (quoted by Thomas Warton), as silver- footed
T.l'eti^, the tripk-feathered helm, the fair-haired bov,
hgh-walkd Ihebes, the strong-icingedX-Awce. &c , bear
the impress of a poetic-sl imacrination diaste yet
luxuriant. But however spirited nnd lofry as a
translator. Chapman proved "i^it a hcuw and cum-
brous dramatic writer. He continued to suiiplv tlso
theatre with tragedies and comedies up to icio, (ir
later; j-et of the sixteen that have <le;cended tons
not one possesses the creative and vivif vin.r pow.-r
of dramatic genius. In didactic observmij),, .i,,^^
description he is sometimes happy, and hence v.], as
been praised for possessing 'more thinking;' ti.au
most of his contemporaries of the buskined muse.
His judgment, however, vanished in action, for V.is
plots are unnatural, and liis style was too hard and
artificial to admit of any nice delineation of charac-
ter. His extravagances are also as bad as those ot
ilarlow, and are seldom relieved by poetic tlioughts
or fancj*. The best known pla^-s of Chai)man are
Eastward Hoe (written in conjunction with Jonson
and Marston), Bitsst/ D'Ambois, Bi/ro>t's Conspiracy,
All Fools, and the Gentleman Usher. In a soiinct
prefixed to 'All Fools,' and addressed to Walsinghani,
Chapman states that he w-as ' mark'd by age for
aims of greater weight.' This play was written ia
1599. It contains the following fanciful lines: —
I tell thee love is Nature's second sun.
Causing a spring of virtues where he sliiiies ;
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties both of art and nature.
Are given in vain to men ; so, without love,
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues bred in men lie buried ;
For love informs them as the sun doth colours.
In 'Bussy D'Ambois' is tlie following invocation
for a Spirit of Intelligence, wliich has been higlily
lauded by Charles Lamb : —
I long to know
How my dear mistress fares, and be inform'd
What hand she now holds on the troubled blood
Of her incensed lord. Methought the spirit,
When he had utter'd his pcrplex'd presage,
Threw his chang'd count'nance headlong into clouds :
His forehead bent, as he would hide his face :
He knock'd his chin against his darken'd breast,
And struck a churlish silence through his powers.
Terror of darkness ! thou king of flames !
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out of crystal on dark earth ;
And hurl'st instinctive fire about the world :
Wake, wake the drowsy and enchanted night
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle.
Or thou, great prince of shades, where never sun
Sticks his far-darted beams ; whose eyes are made
To see in darkness, and see ever best
Where sense is blindest : open now the heart
Of thy abashed oracle, that, for fear
Of some ill it includes, would fain lie hid :
And rise thou with it in thy greater light.
210
ORAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS DEKICER.
The life of Chapman was a scene of content and
prosperity. lie was born at Hitching Hill, in Hert-
fordshire, in 1557 ; was educated both at Oxford and
Cambridge ; enjoyed the royal patronage of King
James and Prince Henry, and the friendship of
Spenser, Jonson, and Shakspeare. He was tempe-
rate and pious, and, according to Oldys, ' preserved,
in his conduct, the true dignity of poetry, which he
compared to the tlower of the sun, that disdains to
open its leaves to the ej^e of a smoking taper.' The
life of this venerable scholar and poet closed in 1634.
at the ripe age of sevent3'-seven.
Chapman's Homer is a wonderful work, consider-
ing the time when it was produced, and the continued
spirit which is kept up. Marlow had succeeded in
the fourteen-syllable verse, but only in select pas-
sages of Ovid and Jlusa^us. Chapman had a vast
field to traverse, and thougli he trod it hurriedly
and negligently, he preserved tlie tire and freedom
of his great original. Pope and WaJJer both praised
his translation, and perhaps it is now more fre-
quently in the hands of scholflrs and poetical stu-
dents than the more polisheJ and musical version of
Pope. Chapman's translations consist of the ' Iliad'
(which he dedicated to Prince Henry), the ' Odyssey'
(dedicated to the n)yal favourite Carr, Earl of
Somerset), .and the ' Georgics of Ilesiod,' winch he
inscribed to Lord Bacon. A version of ' Hero and
Leander,' left unfinished by Marlow, was completed
by Cliax>ra-iu> ^'i*l published in 1606.
TH03IAS DEKKER.
Thomas Dekker appears to have been an indus-
trious author, and Collier gives the names of above
twenty plays which he produced, either wholly or
in part. He was connected with Jonson in writing
for the Lord Admiral's theatre, conducted by Hens-
lowe ; but Ben and he became bitter enemies, and
the former, in his 'Poetaster,' performed in 1601, has
satirised Dekker under the character of Crispinus,
representing himself as Horace ! Jonson's charges
against his adversary are ' his arrogancy and impu-
dence in commending his own thing* and for his
translating.' The origin of the quarrel does not
appear, but in an apologetic dialogue added to the
' Poetaster,' Jonson says —
Whether of malice, or of ignorance,
Or itch to have me their adversary, I know not,
Or all these mlx'd ; but sure 1 am, three years
They did provoke me with their petulant styles
On every stage.
Dekker replied by another drama, Satiromasfix, or
the Untrussing the Humorous Poet, in which .Jonson
appears as Horace junior. Tliere is more raillery
and abuse in Dekker's answer than wit or poetry,
but it was well received by the play-going public.
Dekker's Fortunatus, or the Wishing Cap, and the
Hop^M Whore, are Ids best. The latter was a great
favcTxirite with Ilazlitt, who says it unites ' the sim-
plicity of prose witli the graces of poetry.' The
poetic diction of Dekker is choice and elegant, but
he often wanders into absurdity. Passages like the
following would do honour to any dramatist. Of
Patience : —
Patience ! why, 'tis the soul of peace :
Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven :
It makes men look like gods. The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit :
The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.
The contrast between female honour and shame —
Nothing did make me, when I loved thein best,
To loathe them more tlian this : when in the street
A fair, young, modest damsel I did meet ;
She sccm'd to all a dove when I pass'd by.
And I to all a raven : every eye
That follow'd her, went with a bashful glance:
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn : to her, as if she had been
Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail :
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail ;
She, crown'd with reverend praises, pass'd by them ;
I, though with face niask'd, could not 'scape the
hem ;
For, as if heaven had set strange marks on such,
Because they should be pointing-stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan.
Let her walk saint-like, notele-;s, and unknown,
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own.
The picture of a lady seen by her lover —
JNIy Infelice's face, her brow, her eye.
The dimple on her cheek : and such sweet skill
Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown.
These lips look fresh and lively as her own ;
Seeming to move and speak. Alas ! now I seo
The reason why fond women love to buy
Adulterate complexion : here 'tis read ;
False colours last after the true be dead.
Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all tlie music set upon her tongue.
Of all that was past woman's excellence,
In her white bosom : look, a painted board
Circumscribes all ! Earth can no bliss afford;
Nothing of her but this ! This cannot speak ;
It has no lap for me to rest upon ;
No lip worth tasting. Here the worms will feed,
As in her cofhn. Hence, then, idle art.
True love 's best pictured in a true love's heart.
Here art thou drawn, sweet maid, till this be dead.
So that thou livest twice, twice art buried.
Thou figure of my friend, lie there !
Dekker is supposed to have died about the year
1638. His life seems to have been spent in irre-
gularity and poverty. According to Oldys, he was
three years in the King's Bench prison. In one of
his own beautiful lines, he says —
We ne'er are angels till our passions die.
But the old dramatists lived in a world of passion,
of revelry, want, and despair.
JOHN WEBSTER.
JoHV Werster, the ' noble-minded,' as Ilazlitt
designates him, lived and died about the same time
as Dekker, with whom he wrote in the conjunct
authorsliip then so common. His original dramas
are the Duchess of Malfy, Guise, or the Massacre of
France, the Devil's Law Case, Appius and Virginia,
and the Mitite Devil, or Vitloria Coromhona. Web-
ster, it has been said, was clerk of St Andrew's
cliurch, Holborn ; but Mr Dyce, his editor and bio-
grajiher, searched the registers of the parish for his
name without success. The ' White Devil' and the
' Duchess of Malfy' have divided the opinion of critics
as to their relative merits. They are both powerful
dramas, thougli filled with 'supernumerary horrors.'
The former was not successful on the stage, and the
author published it with a dedication, in which ho
states, that ' most of the people that come to the
pla3'-house resemble those ignorant asses who, visit-
ing stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for
good books, but new books. He was accused, like
211
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO ]b4n.
Jonson, of being a slow writer, but he consoles
himself with the example of Euripides, and confusses
that he did not write with a goose quill winged with
two feathers. In this slighted play there are some
exqi'isite touches of pathos and natural feeling. The
griei of a group of mourners over a dead body is
thus described : —
I found them winding of Marcello's cor.se,
And there is such a solemn melody,
'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,
Such as old grandames watching by the dead
Were wont to outwear the nights with ; that, be-
lieve me,
I had no eyes to guide me forth the room,
They were so o'ercharged with water.
The funeral dirge for Marcello, sung by his mother,
possesses, says Charles Lamb, ' that intenseness of
feehng which seems to resolve itself into the elements
which it contemplates :' —
Call for the robin red-breast and the wren.
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole,
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole.
To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And, when gay tombs are robb'd, su.stain no harm ;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men.
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
The following couplet lias been admired : —
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright ;
But, look'd to near, have neither heat nor light.
The ' Duchess of iSIalfy' abounds more in the terrible
graces. It turns on the mortal offence which the
lady gives to her two proud brothers, Ferdinand,
Duke of Calabria, and a cardinal, by indulging in a
generous though infatuated passion for Antonio, her
steward.
' This passion,' Mr Dyce 'justly remarks, ' a sub-
ject most difficult to treat, is managed with infinite
delicacy ; and, in a situation of great jHiril for the
author, she condescends -without being degraded,
and declares the affection with which her dependant
had inspired her without losing anything of dignity
and respect.' The last scenes of the play are con-
ceived in a spirit which every intimate student of
our elder dramatic literature must feel to be pecu-
liar to Webster. The duchess, captured by Bosola,
is brought into the presence of her brother in an
imperfect light, and is taught to believe that he
wishes to be reconciled to her.
[Scene from the Duchess of Maljy.^
Ferd. Where are you ?
I}uch. Here, sir.
Ferd. This darkness suits you well.
Diich. I would ask you pardon.
Ferd. You have it ;
For I account it the honourablest revenge.
Where I may kill, to pardon. Where are your cubs '
Duck. Whom ?
Ferd. Call them your children.
For, though our national law distinguish bastards
From true legitimate issue, compassiouate nature
Makes them all equal.
Duch. Do you visit me for this ?
You violate a sacrament o' th' church,
Will make you howl in hell for't.
Ferd. It had been well
Could you have liv'd thus always : fcr, indeed.
You were too much i' th' light — but no more ;
' come to seal my peace with you. Here's a hand
[Gives her a dead man's hand.
To which you have vow'd much love : the ring upon :
You gave.
Duch. I affectionately kiss it.
Ferd. Pray do, and bury the print of it in yoiv.
heart.
I will leave this ring with you for a love token ;
And the hand, as sure as the ring ; and do not doubt
But you shall have the heart too ; when you need a
friend,
Send to him that ow'd it, and you shall see
Whether he can aid you.
Duch. You are very cold :
I fear you are not well after your travel.
Ha ! lights ! horrible !
Ferd. Let her have lights enough. [Ejyit.
Duch. What witchcraft doth he practise, that he
hath left
A dead man's hand here ?
[Here is discovered, behind a traverse, the .irtificiul
figures of Antonio and his children, appe.iring as
if they were dead.]
Bos. Look you, here's the piece from which 'twas
ta'en.
He doth present you this sad spectacle
That, now you know directly tiiey are dead
Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve
For that which cannot be recovered.
Duch. There is not between heaven and en,rth one
wish
I stay for after this.
Afterwards, by a refinement of cruelty, thf bro-
ther sends a troop of madmen from the hospital to
make a concert round the duchess in prison. After
they have danced and sung, Bosola enters disguised
as an old man.
[Death of the Duchess.']
Duch. Is he mad too ?
Bos. I am come to make thy tomb.
Duch. Ha ! my tomb ?
Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my deathbed,
Gasping for breath : Dost thou perceive me sick ?
Bos. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sick-
ness is insensible.
Duch. Thou art not mad sure : dost know me I
Bos. Yes.
Duch. Who am I 1
Bos. Thou art a box of wormseed ; at best but a
salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh ? a
little crudded milk, fantastical puff-pa«te. Oui
bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use
to keep flies in, more contemptible ; since ours is tc
preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a
cage ? Such is the soul in the body : this world is
like her little turf of grass ; and the heaven o'er our
heads like her looking glass, only gives us a miserable
knowledge of the small compass of our prLson.
Duch. Am not I thy duchess ?
Bos. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot
begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in grey hairs)
twenty years' sooner than on a merry milkmaid's.
Thou sleepest worse, than if a mouse should be forced
to take up her lodging in a cat's ear : a little infant
that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would
cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow,
Duch. I am Duchess of Malfy still.
Bos. That makes thy sleeps so broken.
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright ;
But, look'd to near, have neither heat nor light.
Duch. Thou art very plain.
Bos. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living.
I am a tomb-maker.
Duch. And thou comest to make my tomb ?
Bos. Yes.
212
DRAMATISTS.
ENCxLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS MIDDLETON.
Jjxuli. Let ine be a little incrry.
Of what stuff wilt thou make it ?
Bos. Nay, resolve me first ; of what fashion ?
Dwh. Why, do we grow fantastical in our death-
bed ? Do we affect fashion in the grave 2
Bos. IMost ambitiously. Princes' images on their
tombs do not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray
up to heaven : but with their hands under their
cheeks (as if they died of the toothache) : they are
not carved with theb eyes fixed upon the stars ; but,
as their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the
self-same way they seem <-:> turn their faces.
Duch. Let me know fully, therefore, the effect
Of this thy dismal preparation,
This talk, fit for a charnel.
Bos. Now I shall.
\_A coffin, cords, and a hell produced.
Here is a present from j-our princely brothers ;
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings
Last benefit, last sorrow. »
Duch. Let me see it.
I have so much obedience in my blood,
I wish it in their veins to do them gooil.
Bos. This is your last presence chamber.
Cur. 0, my sweet lady.
Ducli. Peace, it affrights not me.
Bos. I am the common bellman,
That usually is sent to condemn'd persons
The night before they suffer.
Duch. Even now thou saidst
Thou wast a tomb-maker.
Bos. 'Twas to bring you
Bv den-ees to mortification : Listen.
Hark, now every thing is still ;
This screech-owl, and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud.
Much you had of land and rent ;
Your length in clay 's now competent.
A long war disturb'd j'our mind ;
Here your perfect peace is sign'd.
Of what is 't fools make such vain keejiin,^ ?
Sin, their conception ; their birth, weeping :
Their life, a general mist of error.
Their death, a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet :
And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck.
'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day :
End your groan, and come away.
Car. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers : alas !
What will you do with my lady 1 Call for help.
Duck. To whom ; to our next neighbours I Thej'
are mad folks.
Farewell, Cariola.
1 pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold ; and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep. — Kow what you please ;
^\■hat death ?
Bos. Strangling. Here are your executioners.
Duch. I forgive them.
The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' the lungs,
Would do as much as they do.
Bos. Doth not death fright you ?
Duch. Who would be afraid on't.
Knowing to meet such excellent company
In th' rt'ier world.
Bos. Yet, methinks,
The manner of your death should much afflict you :
This cord should terrify you.
Duch. Not a whit.
What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds ? or to be smothered
With cassia ? or to be shot to death with pearls !
I know death hath ten thousand scvera;! doors
For men to take their exits : and 'tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways : any way (for heav'n
sake)
So I were out of your whispering : tell my brothers
That I perceive death (now I'm well awake)
Best gift is they can give or I can take.
I would fain put off my last woman's fault ;
I'd not be tedious to you.
Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength
Must pull do«-n heaven upon me.
Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly ardi^d
As princes' palaces ; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death,
Serve for ]\Iandragora to make me sleep.
Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
They then may feed in quiet.
[TIici/ strangle her, hieeling.
Ferdinand enters.
Ferd. Is she dead ?
Bos. She is what you would have her.
Fix your eye here.
Fcrd. Constantly.
Bos. Do you not weep !
Other sins only speak ; murder shrieks out.
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens.
Ferd. Cover her face : mine eyes dazzle : she died
young.
Bos. I think not so : her infelicity
Seem'd to have years too many.
Fcrel. She and I were twins :
And should I die this instant, I had lived
Her time to a minute.
THOMAS MroDLETON.
A conjecture that an old neglected drama by Tho-
JIAS MiDDLETON Supplied the witchcraft scenery,
and part of the lyrical incantations, of ' Macbeth,' lias
kept alive the name of tli'S poet. So late a^* 1778,
]\[iddleton's play, the Wuch, was first published by
Keed from the author's manuscript. It is possible
that the 'Witch' may have preceded ' Macbeth ;' but
as the latter was written in the fulness of Shak-
speare's fame and genius, we think it is more pro-
bable that the inferior author was the Irorrower. He
may have seen the play performed, and thus caught
the spirit and words of the scenes in question; or,
for aught we know, the ' Witch' may not have been
written till after 1623, when Shakspeare's first folio
appeared. We know that after tliis date ^liddleton
was writing for the stage, as, in 1624, his play, A
Game at Chess, was brought out, and gave great
offence at court, by bringing on the stage the king
of Spain, and his ambassador, Gondomar. The latter
complained to King James of the insult, and Mid-
dleton (who at first 'shifted out of the way') and
the poor players were brought before the privy-
council. They were only reprimanded for their
audacity in ' bringing modern Christian kings upon
the stage.' If the dramatic sovereign had been
James himself, nothing less than the loss of ears
and noses would have appeased offended royalty !
Middleton wrote about twenty plays: in 1603, we
find him assisting Dekker at a court-pageant, and
he was afterwards concerned in different pieces with
Rowley, Webster, and other authors. He would
seem to have been well-known as a dramatic writer.
On Shrove Tuesday, 1617, the I-ondon apprentices,
in an idle riot, demolished the Cockpit Theatre, and
an old ballad describing the circumstance, states —
213
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1()49.
Books old and young on Leap they flung,
And burnt them in the blazes,
Tom Dekker, Heywood, JMiddleton,
And other wandering crazys.
In 1620, Middleton was made chronologer, or city
poet, of London, an office afterwards held by Ben
Jonson, and which expired with Settle in 1724.* He
died in July 1627. Tiie dramas of Middleton have
no strongly- marked character ; his best is Women
Beware of Women, a tale of love and jealousy, from
the Italian. The following sketch of married hap-
piness is delicate, and finely expressed : —
l^ffappiness of Married Life.']
How near am I now to a happiness
That earth exceeds not ! not another like it :
The treasures of the deep are not so precious,
As are the conceal'd comforts of a man
Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air
Of blessings when I come but near the house.
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth !
The violet bed's not sweeter. Honest wedlock
Is like a banqueting house built in a garden,
On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours ; when base lust,.
"With all her powders, paintings, and best pride.
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.
Now for a welcome.
Able to draw men's envies upon man ;
A kiss now that will hang ui)on my lip
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose.
And full as long !
The 'Witch' is also an Italian plot, but the superna-
tural agents of Middleton are the old witches of
legendary story, not the dim mysterious uneartldy
beings that accost INIacbeth on the blasted heaUi.
The ' Charm Song' is much the same in both : —
The Witches going about the Cauldron.
Black spirits and white ; red spirits and crey ;
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, Tiffin, keep It stiff" in ;
Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky ;
Liard, Robin, j-ou must bob in ;
Round, around, around, about, about ;
All ill come running in ; all good keep oil*; !
\st Witch. Here's the blood of a bat.
Hecate. Put in that ; oh put in that.
2d Witch. Here's libbard's bane.
Hecate. Put in again,
\st Witch. The juice of toad, the oil of adder.
2d Witch. Those will make the younker madder.
AU. Round, around, around, &c.
The flight of the witches by moonlight is described
with a wildgr?/.«toand delight; if the scene was written
before ' Macbeth,' Middleton deserves the credit of
true poetical imagination : —
Enter Hecate, STADLirr, IIoppo, and other Witches.
IIcc. The moon's a gallant ; see how brisk she rides !
Stad. Here's a rich evening, Hecate.
Ilec. Ay, is't not, wenches.
To take a journey of five thousand miles ?
Hop. Ours will be more to night.
Hec. Oh, it will be precious. Heard you the owl yet ?
Stad. Briefly in the copse,
As we came through now.
* The Bal.ary given to the city poot is incidentally mentioned
by Jonsi>n in an indignant letter to the ivirl of Newcastle in
1631. ' Yesterday the barbarous Court of Aldermen have with-
drawn tlieir chandlery pension for verjuice and mustard —
L.a3, 68. W.'
Hec. 'Tis high time for us then.
Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times
As we came thro' the woods, and drank her fill :
Old Puckle saw her.
Hec. You are fortunate still.
The very screech-owl lights upon your shoulder,
And woos you like a pigeon. Are you furnished 1
Have you your ointments ?
Stad. All.
Hec. Prepare to flight then :
I'll overtake you swiftly.
Stad. Hie, then, Hecate :
We shall be up betimes.
Hec. I'll reach you quickly. [They ascend.
Enter FiRESTONB.
Fire. They are all going a-birding to night. They
talk of fowls i' th' air that fly by day ; I'm sure they'll
be a company of foul sluts there to-night. If we have
not mortality affeared, I'll be hang'd, for they are
able to putrefy it to infect a whole region. She spies
me now.
Hec. What ! Firestone, our sweet son ?
Fire. A little sweeter than some of you; or a dung-
hill were too good for one.
Hec. How nuich hast there ?
Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones ; besides
six lizzards, and three serpentine eggs.
Hec. Dear and sweet boy ! What herbs hast thou ?
Fire. I have some mar-martin and mandragon.
Hec. Mar-maritin and mandragora thou would'st
say.
Fire. Here's pannax too. I thank thee ; my pan
akes, I am sure, with kneeling down to cut 'em.
Hec. And selago.
Hedge Hissop too ! How near he goes my cuttings !
Were they all cropt by moonlight ?
Fire. Eveiy blade of 'em, or I'm a mooncalf, mother.
Hec. Hie thee home with 'em.
Look well to th' house to-night ; I am for aloft.
Fire. Aloft, quoth you ? I would you would break
your neck once, that I might have all quickly.
[Aside.] — Hark, hark, mother ! they are above the
steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of
musicians.
Hec. They are, indeed ; help me ! help me ! I'm too
late else.
Song.
[In the air above.]
Come away, come away,
Hecate, Hecate, come away,
Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come ;
With all the speed I may ;
With all the speed I may.
Where's Stadlin ?
[Ahore."] Here.
Hec. Where's Puckle ?
[Above.] Here.
And IIoppo too, and Hellwain too :
We lack but you, we lack but you.
Come away, make up the count.
Hec. I will but 'noint and then I mount.
[A Spirit descends in the shape of a cat.
[Above.] There's one come down to fetch his dues ;
A kiss, a coll, a sij) of blood ;
And why thou stay'st so long, I muse, I muse,
Since th' air's so sweet and good.
Hec. Oh, art thou come ;
What news, what news ?
Spirit. All goes still to our delight.
Either come, or else
Refuse, refuse.
Hec. Now, I am furnlsh'd for the flight.
Fire. Hark, hark ! The cat sings a brave treble
in her own language.
214
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROBERT TAVI.OR.
Hec. [Ascending with the Sjnrit.] Now I go, now 1 fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.
Oh, what daiuty pleasure 'tis
To ride in the air,
"When the moon .shines fair,
And sing, and dance, and toy and kiss !
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,
Over seas, our mistress' fountains,
Over steep towers and turrets,
We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds ;
No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds ;
No, not the noise of waters' breach,
Or cannon's roar our height can reach.
[^Alove.'] No ring of bells, &c.
JOHX JIARSTON.
John Marston, a rough and vigorous satirist and
dramatic writer, produced his Malcontent, a comedy,
prior to 1600; his Antonio and Mellida. a tragedy, in
1602 ; the Insatiate Countess, What You Will, and
other plays, written between the latter date and
1634, when he died. He was also connected with
Jonson and Chapman in the composition of the un-
fortunate comedy, Eastu-ard Hoe. In his subsequent
quarrel with Jonson, Marston was satirised by Ben
in his ' Poetaster,' under the name of Demetrius.
Marston was author of two volumes of miscellaneous
poetry, translations, and satires, one of which (Pig-
malion's Image) was ordered to be burned for its
'icentiousness. Islr Collier, who states that Marston
seems to have attracted a good deal of attention in
his' own day, quotes from a contemporarj' diary the
following anecdote: — 'Nov. 21, 1602. — Jo. Marston,
the last Christmas, when he danced with Alderman
More's wife's daughter, a Spaniard born, fell into a
strange commendation of her wit and beauty. "When
he had done, she thought to pay him home, and told
him she thought he was a poet. 'Tis true, said he,
for poets feign and lie ; and so did I when I com-
mended your beauty, for you are exceeding foul.'
This coarseness seems to have been characteristic of
Marston: his comedies contain strong biting satires,
but he is far from being a moral writer. Ilazlitt
says, his forte was not sympathy either with the
stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn
and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of
men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in
lofty invective. The following humorous sketch of
a scholar and his dog is worthy of Shakspeare : —
I was a scholar : seven useful springs
Did I deflower in quotations
Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man ;
The more I learnt, the more I learnt to doubt.
Delight, my spaniel, slept, whilst I baus'd leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words : and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh.
Shrunk up my veins : and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of Antick Donate : still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I ; first, an sit anima;
Then, an it were mortal. hold, hold ; at that
They're at brain bufiets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together ; still my spaniel slept.
Then, whether 'twere corporeal, local, fixt,
Ex traduce, but whether 't had free will
Or no, hot philosophers
Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt ;
I stagger'd, knew not which was firmer part,
But thought, quoted, read, observ'd, and pried,
Stufft noting-books : and still m/ spaniel slept.
At length he wak'd, and yawn'd ; and by yon sky,
For aught I know, he knew as much as I.
ROBERT TAYLOR — WII.LIAJI ROWLEY — CYRIL
TOURNEUR.
Among the otlier dramatists at this time may be
mentioned Robert Taylor, ;\uthor of the Hog hath
Lost his Pearl : William Rowley, an actor and joint
writer witli IMiddlctoii and Dekker, who produced
several plays ; Cyril Toukneijr, author of two good
dramas, the Atheist's Tragedy and the Revenger s
Tragedij. A tragi-comedy, the Witch of Edmonton, is
remarkable as having been the work of at least three
authors — Rowley, Dekker. and Ford. It embodies,
in a striking form, the vulgar superstitions respect-
ing witchcraft, which so long debased the popular
mind in England : —
[Seme from the Witch of Edmonton.']
MoTHKR Sawyer alone.
Scnc. And why on nie ? why should the envious
world
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me ?
'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant.
And like a bow buckled and bent together
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself;
!NIust I for that be made a common sink
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues
To fall and run into ? Some call me witch,
And being ignorant of myself, they go
About to teach me how to be one : urging
That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so)
Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn,
Themselves, their servants, and tlioir babes at nurse :
This they enforce upon me ; and in part
Make me to credit it.
Banks, a F.-irmer, enters.
Ba/iTcs. Out, out upon thee, witch !
Saic. Dost call me v>-itch ?
Banls. I do, witch ; I do :
And worse I would, knew I a name more hateful.
"What inakest thou upon my ground ?
Saw. Gather a few rotten sticks to wami mc.
Banls. Down with them when I bid thee, quickly ;
I'll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else.
Saw. You won't ! churl, cut-throat, miser I th.ere
they be. Would they stuck 'cross thy throat, tliy
bowels, thy maw, thy midriff
Banks. Say'st thou me so ? Hag, out of my grotmd.
<S'ait'. Dost strike me, slave, cunnudgeon 1 Now thy
bones aches, thy joints cramps.
And convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews.
Banks. Cursing, thou hag ? take that, and that.
Saw. Strike, do : and w thir'd may that hand iind
arm.
Whose blows have lara'd me, drop from the rotten
trunk.
Abuse me ! beat me ! call me hag and witch !
What is the name ? where, and by what art leam'd ?
What spells, or charms, or invocations.
May the thing call'd Familiar be purchased ?
I am shunn'd
And hated like a sickness ; made a scorn
To all degrees and sexes. 1 have heard old beldams
Talk of familiars in the shape of mice.
Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what.
That have appear'd ; and suck'd, some say, their blood.
But by what means they came acquainted with them,
I'm now ignorant, ^\'ould some power, good or bad,
Instruct me which way I might be reveng'd
Upon this churl, I'd go out of myself.
And give this fury leave to dwell within
This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age :
Abjure all goodness be at hate with prayer,
215
FROM IS.'ifl
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164i)
And study curses, inii)rccations,
Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths,
Or anything that's ill ; so I might work
Revenge upon this miser, this black cur,
That barks, and bites, and sucks the very blood
Of me, and of my credit, 'lis all one
Tc be a witch as to be counted one.
[A Droimcd Soldier.']
[From Toumeur's ' Atheist's Tragedy.']
Walking upon the fatal shore,
Among the slaughter'd bodies of their men,
Which the fuU-stomaeh'd sea had cast upon
The sands, it was my unhappy chance to light
Upon a face, whose favour, when it lived.
My astonish'd mind inform'd me I had seen.
He lay in his armour, as if that had been
His coffin ; and the weeping sea (like one
Whose milder temper doth lament the death
Of him whom in his rage he slew) runs up
The shore, embraces him, kisses his cheek ;
Goes back again, and forces up the sands
To bury him ; and every time it parts,
Sheds tears upon him ; till at last (as if
It could no longer endure to see the man
^^'hom it had slain, yet loath to leave him), with
A kind of unresolv'd unwilling pace.
Winding her waves one in another (like
A man that folds his arms, or wrings his hands,
For grief), ebb'd from the body, and descends ;
As if it would sink down into the earth.
And hide itself for shame of such a deed.
An anonymous play, the licturn from Parnassus,
■was acted by the students of St John's college, Cam-
bridge, about the year 1602 : it is remarkable for
containing criticisms on contemporary authors, all
poets. Each author is summoned up for judgment,
and dismissed after a few words of commendation or
censure. Some of these poetical criticisms are finely
written, as well as curious. Of Spenser —
A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po ;
A shriller nightingale than ever blest
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud
While he did chant his rural minstrelsy.
Attentive was full many a dainty ear :
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
M'hile sweetly of the Faery Queen he sung ;
While to the water's fall he tuned her fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name.
The foUowng extract introduces us to Marlow,
Jonson, and Shakspeare ; but to the latter only as
the author of the ' Venus' and ' Lucrece.' Ingenioso
reads out the names, and Judicio pronounces judg-
ment : —
Iiif/. Christopher Marlow.
Jiul. Marlow was happy in his buskin'd muse ;
Alas ! unhappy in his life and end.
Pity it is that wit so ill should well.
Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.
Jnr/. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got,
A tragic penman for a dreary plot.
Benjamin Jonson.
Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.
Iny. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath
by observation, and makes only nature privy to what
he indites ; so slow an inventor, that he were better
betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying ; a blood
whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he
was in times past in laying of a brick.
William Shakspeare.
Jud. Who loves Adonis' love or Lucroce' rape ;
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,
Could but a graver subject him content.
Without love's lazy foolish languishment.
The author afterwards introduces Kempe and Bur-
bage, the actors, and makes the former state, in
reference to the university dramatists—' Why, here's
our fellow Shakspeare puts them all down ; ay, and
Ben Jonson too.' Posterity has confirmed this ' Re-
turn from Parnassus.'
GEORGE COOKE — THOMAS NABBES — NATHANIEL FIELD
— JOHN DAY — HENRY GLAPTHORNE — THOMAS RAN-
DOLPH RICHARD BROJIE.
A lively comedy, called Green's Tu Quoque, was
written by George Cooke, a contemporary of Shak-
speare. Thomas Nabbes (died about 1645) was
the author oi Microcosmus, a masque, and of several
other plays. In ' Microcosmus' is the following fine
song of love : —
Welcome, welcome, happy pair,
To these abodes where spicy air
Breathes perfumes, and every sense
Doth find his object's excellence ;
Where's no heat, nor cold extreme,
No winter's ice, no summer's scorching beam ;
Where's no sun, yet never night,
Day always springing from eternal light.
Chorus. All mortal sufferings laid aside.
Here in endless bliss abide.
Nathaniel Field (who was one of the actors in
Ben Jonson's 'Poetaster') began to write for the stage
about 1609 or 1610, and produced Wonuni is a
Weathercock, Amends for Ladies, &c. He had the
honour of being associated with Massinger in the
composition of the Fatal Dowry. John Day, in con-
junction with Chettle, wrote the Blind Beggar oj
Bcthnal Green, a popular comedy, and was also
author of two or three other plays, and some miscel-
laneous poems. Henry Glapthorne is mentioned
as ' one of the chiefest dramatic poets of the reign of
Charles I.' Five of his plays are printed — Albcrtus
Wallenstein, the Hollander, Argalus and Parthenia,
Wit in a Constable, the Lady's Privilege, &c. There
is a certain smoothness and prettiness of expression
about Glapthorne (particularly in his 'Albertus'),
but he is deficient in passion and energy. Thomas
Randolph (1607-1634) wrote the Muses' Looking-
Glass, the Jealous Lovers, Sec. In an anonymous jday,
Sweetman the Woman-hater, is the following happy
simile : —
Justice, like lightning, ever should appear
To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear.
Richard Brome, one of the best of the secondary
dramatists, produced several plays, the Antipodes,
the City Wit, the Court Beggar, &c. Little is known
of the personal history of these authors : a few scat-
tered dates usually make up the whole amount of
their biography. The public demand for theatrical
novelties called forth a succession of writers in this
popular and profitable walk of literature, who seem
to have discharged their ephemeral tasks, and sunk
with their works into oblivion. The glory of Shak-
speare has revived some of the number, like halos
round his name; and the rich stamp of the age, in
style and thought, is visible on the pages of most of
them.
PHILIP massinger.
The reign of James produced no other tragic poet
equal to Philip Massinger, an unfortunate author,
wlu)se life was spent in obscurity and poverty, and
216
ENGLISH LITER ATURli:.
pur LIP MASSIXOER.
who, dying almost unknown, was buried Avitliiio
other inscription than the mclanclioly note in the
parish register, ' Philip Massinger, a strtniger.' Tliis
poet was born about the year 1584. His fatlier, as
appears from the dedication of one of his plays, was
Philip Massinger.
in the service of the Earl of Pembroke ; and as he
was at one time intrusted with letters to Queen
Elizabeth, the situation of the elder Massinger must
have been a confidential one. Whether Philip ever
• wandered in the marble halls and pictured galleries
of Wilton, that princely seat of old magnificence,
where Sir Philip Sidney composed his Arcadia,'' is
not known : in 1602, he was entered of Albau Hall,
Oxford. He is supposed to have quitted the inii-
versity about 1604, and to have commenced M-riting
for the stage. The first notice of him is in Hens-
lowe's diary, about 1614, where he makes a joint ap-
plication, with N. Field, and R. Daborne, for a loan of
£5, without which, they say, they could not he bailed.
Field and Daborne were both actors and dramatic
authors. The sequel of Massinger's history is only
an enumeration of his plays. He wrote a great
number of pieces, of which eighteen have been pre-
served, and was found dead in his bed at his house,
Bankside, Southwark, one morning in March, 1640.
The Virgin Martyr, the Bondman, the Fatal iJo/rrt/,
the City Madam, and the New Way to Fay Old Debts,
are his best-known productions. Tlie last-mentioned
has kept possession of the stage, chiefly on account
of the effective and original character of Sir Giles
Overreach. Massinger's comedy resembles Ben Jon-
son's, in its eccentric strength and wayward exhi-
bitions of human nature. The greediness of avarice,
the tyranny of unjust laws, and the miseries of
poverty, are drawn with a powerful hand. The
luxuries and vices of a city life, also, afford Massin-
ger scope for his indignant and forcible invective.
Genuine humour or sprightliness he had none. His
dialogue is often coarse and indelicate, and his cha-
racters in low life too depraved. The tragedies of
Massinger have a calm and dignified seriousness, a
lofty pride, that impresses the imagination very
strongly. His genius was more eloquent and de-
scriptive than impassioned or inventive ; yet his
pictures of suffering virtue, its struggles and its
trials, are calculated to touch the heart, as well as
gnvtify the taste. His versification is smooth and
mellifluous. Owing, perhaps, to the sedate and
iliK"itii.'d tone of Massinger's plays, the}' were not
I'.vived after the Restoration, Even Dryden did
nut tliink him worthy of mention, or had forgot liis
works, vhcn he wrote his Essay on Dramatic Foesy.
[A Midnight Scene.']
[From tlie ' Virgin MartjT.'j
Angelo, an Angel, attends Dorothea as a page.
Dor. My book and taper.
Anrj. Here, most holy mistress.
Dor. Thy voice sends forth .such music, that I nert /
Was ravish'd with a more celestial sound.
Were every servant in the world like thee.
So full of goodness, angels would come dovTii
T 1 dwell with us : thy name is Angelo,
And like tliat name thou art. Get thee to rest ;
Thy 3'outh with too nmch watching is opprcst.
Ang. No, my dear lady. I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
By my late watching, but to wait on you.
When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven.
So blest I hold me in your company.
Therefore, my most lov'd mistress, do not bid
Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence ;
For then you break his heart.
Dor. Be nigh me still, then.
In golden letters down I'll set that day
Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope
To meet such worlds of comfort in thyself.
This little, pretty body, when I, coming
Forth of the temple, heard my beggar-boy.
My sweet-faced, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms.
Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand ;
And when I took thee home, my most chaste bosom,
Methought, was fiU'd with no hot wanton fire,
But with a holy flame, mounting since higher,
On wings of cherubims, than it did before.
Ang. Proud am I that my lady's modest eye
So likes so poor a servant.
Dor. I have offer'd
Handfuls of gold but to behold thy parents.
I would leave kingdoms, were I queen of some,
To dwell with thy good father ; for, the son
Bewitching me so deeply with his presence,
He that begot him must do't ten times more.
I pray thee, my sweet boy, show me thy parents ;
Be not asham'd.
Ang. I am not : I did never
Know who my mother was ; but, by yon palace,
Fill'd with bright heav'nly courtiers, I dare assure you,
And pawn these eyes upon it, and this hand,
My father is in heav'n ; and, pretty mistress,
If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand
No worse, than yet it doth, upon my life.
You and 1 both shall meet my father there,
And he shall bid you welcome.
Dor. A bless'd day !
[Pride of Sir Giles Overreach in liis Dawjhtei:]
[From the ' New Way to Pay Old Debts.']
LovKL. — Overreach.
Over. To my wish we are private.
I come not to make offer with my daughter
A certain portion ; that were poor and trivial :
In one word, I pronounce all that is mine.
In lands or leases, ready coin or goods,
With her, my lord, comes to you ; nor shall you ho pa
One motive to induce you to believe
I live too long, since every year I'll add
Something unto the heap, which shall be yours too
Lov. You are a right kind father.
Over. You shall have reason
To think me such. How do you like this seat?
It is well- wooded and well-water'd, the acres
2l'»
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1649.
Fertile and rich : would it not serve for change,
To entertain your friends in a summer's progre.'s 1
What thinks my noble lord 1
Lnr. 'Tis a wholesome air,
And well built, and she,' that is mistress of it,
Worthy tlie large rerenue.
Over. She the mistress ?
It may be so for a time ; but let my lord
Say only that he but like it, and would have it ;
1 say, ere long 'tis his.
Lao, Impossible.
Over. You do conclude too fast ; not kno^ving me,
Nor the engines that I work by. 'Tis not alone
The Lady Alhvorth's lands ; but point out any man's
In all the shire, and say they lie convenient
And useful for your lordship ; and once more,
I say aloud, they are yours.
Lav. I dare not own
What's by unjust and cruel means extorted :
Jly fame and credit are more dear to me
Than so to expose 'em to be censured by
The public voice.
Over. You run, my lord, no hazard :
Your reputation shall stand as fair
In all good men's opinions as now :
Nor can my actions, though condemn'd for ill.
Cast any foul aspersion upon yours.
For though I do contemn report myself
As a mere sound, I still will be so tender
Of what concerns you in all points of honour, ,
That the immaculate whiteness of your fame,
Nor your unquestion'd integrity,
Shall e'er be sullied with one taint or sp^>,
That may take from your innocence and ck idour.
All my ambition is to have my daughter
Right honourable ; which mj' lord can make her :
And might I live to dance upon my knee
A young Lord Lovell, bom by her unto you,
I write nil ultra to my proudest hopes.
As for possessions and annual rents.
Equivalent to maintain you in the port
Your noble birth and present state require,
I do remove that burden from your shoulders,
And take it on mine own ; for though I ruin
The country to supply your riotous waste.
The scourge of prodigals (want) shall never find
you.
Lov. Are you not frighted with the imprecations
And curses of whole families, n.ade wretched
By your sinister practices \
Onr. Yes, as rocks are
When foamy billows split themselves against
Their flinty ribs ; or as the moon is moved
When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her bright-
ness.
I am of a solid temper, and, like these,
Steer on a constant course : with mine own sword,
If call'd into the field, I can make that right
Which fearful enemies murmur'd at as wron".
Now, for those other piddling complaints,
IJreath'd out in bitterness ; as, when they call me
Extortioner, tjxant, cormorant, or intruder
On my poor neighbour's right, or grand encloser
Of what was common to my private use ;
Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries.
And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold,
I only think what 'tis to have my daughter
Right honourable ; and 'tis a powerful charm,
Makes me insensible of remorse or pity,
Or the least sting of conscience.
Lov. I admire
The toughness of your nature.
Ortr. 'Tis for you.
My lord, and for my daughter, I am marble.
' Tlie Laily AlUvorth.
[Compassion for Mi.ffortune.']
[From the ' City Madam.']
Lul:e. No word, sir,
I hope, shall give oft'ence : nor let it relish
Of flattery, though I proclaim aloud,
I glory in the bravery of your mind.
To which your wealth 's a servant. Not that riches
Is, or should be, contemn'd, it being a blessing
Deriv'd from heaven, and by your industry
PuU'd down upon you ; but in this, dear sir,
You have many equals : such a man's possessions'
Extend as far as yours ; a second hath
His bags as full ; a third in credit flies
As high in the popular voice : but the distinction
And noble difference by which you are
Divided from them, is, that you are styled
Gentle in your abundance, good in plenty ;
And that you feel compassion in j'our bowels
Of others' miseries (I have found it, sir ;
Heaven keep me thankful for't !), while they are ciirs'<'
As rigid and inexorable. * *
Your affability and mildness, clothed
In the garments of your thankful debtors' breath.
Shall everywhere, though you strive to conceal it.
Be seen and wonder'd at, and in the act
With a prodigal hand rewarded. Whereas, si ch
As are born only for themselves, and live so,
Though prosperous in worldly understandings.
Are but like beasts of rapine, that, by odds
Of strength, usurp and tyrannise o'er others
Brought under their subjection. * *
Can you think, sir.
In your unquestion'd wisdom, I beseech you,
The goods of this poor man sold at an outcry.
His wife turn'd out of doors, his children forc'd
To beg their bread ; this gentleman's estate
By wrong extorted, can advantage you ?
Or that the ruin of this once brave merchant,
For such he was esteem'd, though now decay'd,
Will raise your reputation with good men ?
But you may urge (pray you, pardon me, my zea.
Makes me thus bold and vehement), in this
You satisfy your anger, and revenge
For being defeated. Suppose this, it will not
Repair your loss, and there was never yet
But shame and scandal in a victory.
When the rebels unto reason, passions, fought it.
Then for revenge, by great souls it was ever
Contemn'd, though ofi'er'd ; entertain'd by none
But cowards, base and abject spirits, strangers
To moral honesty, and never yet
Acquainted with religion. * *
<SV)- John. Shall I be
Talk'd out of my money ?
Liikc. No, sir, but intreated
To do yourself a benefit, and preserve
What you possess entire.
Sir John. How, my good brother ?
Luke. By making these your beadsmen. When
they eat,
Their thanks, next heaven, will be paid to youi
mercy ;
When your ships are at sea, their prayers will swell
The sails with prosperous winds, and guard them from
Tempests and pirates ; keep your warehouses
From fire, or quench them with their tears.
[ Unequal Love.1
[Prom the ' Great Duke of Florence.']
Giovanni, nephew to the Grand Duke, taking lesTe of
LiDiA, daughter of his Tutor.
Lldia. Must you go, then,
So suddenly ?
218
uramatists.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN POKO.
Gioi: There's no evasion, Lidia,
To gain the least delay, though 1 would buy it
At any rate. Greatness, with private men
Esteem'd a blessing, is to me a curse ;
And we, whom, for our high births, they conclude
The only freemen, are the only slaves :
Happy the golden mean-1 xiad I been bom
In a poor sordid cottage, not nursed up
With expectation to command a court,
I might, like such of your condition, sweetest.
Have ta'en a safe and middle course, and not,
As I am now, against ray choice, compell'd ;
Or to lie grovelling on the earth, or raised
So high upon the pinnacles of state,
That I must either keep my height with danger,
Or fiiU with certain ruin.
Lidia. Your own goodness
Will be your faithful guard.
Giov. 0, Lidia ! For had I been your equal,
I might have seen and lik'd with mine own eyes.
And not, as now, with others. I might still,
And without observation or envy,
As I have done, continued my delights
With you, that are alone, in my esteem,
The abstract of society : we might walk
In solitary groves, or in choice gardens ;
From the variety of curious flowers
Contemplate nature's workmanship and wonders :
And then, for change, near to the murmur of
Seme bubbling fountain, I might hear you sing.
Aid, from the well-tuned accents of your tongue,
In my imagination conceive
With what melodious hannony a choir
Of angels sing above their Maker's praises.
And then, with chaste discouree, as we return'd,
Imp feathers to the broken wings of Time :
And all this I must part from.
One word more,
And then I come. And after this, when, with
Continued innocence of love and service,
I had gro«-n ripe for hvTueneal joys.
Embracing you, but with a lawful flame,
I might have been your husband.
Lidia. Sir, I was.
And ever am, your servant ; but it was.
And 'tis far from me in a thought to cherish,
Such saucy hopes. If I had been the heir
Of all the globes and sceptres mankind bows to,
At my best you had deserv'd me ; as I am,
Howe'er unworthy, in my virgin zeal,
I wish you, as a partner of your bed,
A princess equal to you ; such a one
That may make it the study of her life.
With all the obedience of a wife, to please you ;
May you have happy issue, and I live
To be their humblest handmaid !
Giov. I am dumb, and can make no reply ;
This kiss, bathed in tears.
May learn you wl ^t J should say.
JOHN FORD.
Contemporary with Massinger, and possessing
kindred tastes and powers, was John Ford (1586-
1639). This author wisely trusted to a regular
profession, not to dramatic literature, for his sup-
port. He was of a good Devonshire family, and
bred to the law. His first eiforts as a writer for
the stage, were made in unison with Webster and
Dekker. He also joined with the latter, and with
Rowley, in composing the Witch of Edmonton, already
mentioned, the last act of which seems to be Ford's.
In 1628 appeared the Lover's Melandiuhj, dedicated
to his friends of the Society df Gray's Inn. In 1633
were printed his three tragedies, '.he Brother and
Sister, the Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice. He
next wrote Perkin Warbeck, a correct and spirited
historical drama. Two other pieces. Fancies Chaste
and Noble, and the Ladi/'s Trial, produced in 1038
and 1639, complete the list of Ford's works. He is
supposed to have died shortly after the production
of his last phiy.
A tone of pensive tenderness and pathos, with a
peculiarly soft and musical style of blank verse,
characterise this poet. The choice of his subjects
was unhappy, for he has devoted to incestuous pas-
sion the noblest offerings of his muse. The scenes
in his ' Brother and Sister,' descriptive of the crimi-
nal loves of Annabella and Giovanni, are painfully
interesting and harrowing to the feelings, but con-
tain his finest poetry and expression. The old dra-
matists lo-ed to sport and dally with such forbid-
den themes, which tempted the imagination, and
awoke those slumbering fires of pride, passion, and
wickedness, that lurk in the recesses of the human
heart. They lived in an age of excitement — the
newly-awakened intellect warring with tlie senses
— the baser parts of humanity with its noblest qaa-
lities. In this struggle, the dramatic poets were
plunged, and they depicted forcibly what they saw
and felt. ]Much as they wrote, their time was not
spent in shady retirement; they flung tliemselves
into the full tide of the passions, sounded its depths,
wrestled with its diSiculties and defilements, and
were borne onwards in headlong career. A few,
like poor Marlow and Greene, sunk early in unde-
plored misery, and nearly all were unhappy. This
very recklessness and daring, however, gave a mighty
impulse and freedom to their genius. They were
emancipated from ordinary restraints ; they were
strong in their sceptic pride and self-will ; they
surveyed the whole of life, and gave expression to
those wild half- shaped thoughts and unnatural
promptings, which wiser conduct and reflection
would have instantly repressed and condemned.
With them, the passion of love was an all-pervad-
ing fire, that consumed the decencies of life ; some-
times it was gross and sensual, but in other mo-
ments imbued -with a wild preternatural sweetness
and fervour. Anger, pity', jealousy, revenge, re-
morse, and tlie other primary feelings and elements
of our nature, were crowded into their short exist-
ence as into their scenes. Nor was the light of
religion quenched : there were glimpses of heaven
in the midst of the darkest vice and debauchery.
The better genius of Shakspeare lifted him above
this agitated region ; yet his ' Venus and Adonis,'
and the ' Sonnets,' show that he had been at one time
soiled by some of its impurities. Ford was appa-
rently of regular deportment, but of morbid diseased
imagination.* His latest biographer (Mr Hartley
Coleridge) suggests, that the choice of horrible sto-
ries for his two best plays may have been merely
an exercise of intellectual power. ' His moral sense
was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities
of sin, and by compassion for rare extremes of suf-
fering.' Ford was destitute of tlie fire and grandeur
of the heroic drama. ;Mr Charles Lamb ranks him
with the first order of poets; but this praise is exces-
sive. Admitting his sway over the tender passions,
and the occasional beauty of his language and con-
ceptions, he wants the elevation of great genius.
He has, as Hallam remarks, the power over tears ;
for he makes his readers sympathise even with his
vicious characters.
* Some unknown contemporary has preserved a graphic trait
of Ford'8 appearance and reserved deiK)rtment —
' Deep in a dump .John Ford .ilone was got,
■\Vitli foliied arms and melancholy hat,"
21»
CYCLOPil'.DIA OF
10 1649.
[A Dying Bequest.']
[From t)ie ' Broken Heart']
Calantha.— Pknthea.
Cal. P.cing alone, Penthea, you hare granted
The opportunity you sought, smd might
At all times have commanded.
Pen. 'Tis a benefit
Which I shall owe your goodness even in death f r.
My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes
Piemaining to run down ; the sands are spent :
For, by an inward messenger, I feel
The summons of departure short and certain.
Ci'/. You feed too much your melancholy.
Ptii. Glories
Of human gi-eatness are but pleasing dreams,
And shadows soon decaying : on the stage
Of my mortality my youth hath acted
Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length ;
By varied pleasures sweeten'd in the mixture,
But tragical in issue.
Cal. Contemn not your condition for the proof
Of bare opinion only : to what end
Reach all these moral texts I
Pen. To place before ye
A perfect mirror, wherein you may see
How weai-}' I am of a lingering life,
V\''ho count the best a misery.
Cul. Indeed
You have no little cause ; yet none so great
As to distrust a remedy.
Pen. That remedy
Must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead.
And some untrod-on comer in the earth.
Not to detain your expectation, princess,
I have an humble suit.
Cal. Speak, and enjoy it.
Pen. Vouchsafe, then, to be my executrix ;
And take that trouble on ye, to dispose
Such legacies as I bequeath impartially :
I have not much to give, the pains are easy ;
Heaven will reward your piety and thank it,
When I am dead : for sure I must not live ;
I hope I cannot.
Cal. Now beshrew thy sadness ;
Thou turn'st me too much woman.
Pen. Her fair eyes
Melt into passion : then I have assurance
Encouraging my boldness. In this paper
^ly will was character'd ; which you, with pardon,
Shall now know from mine own mouth.
Cal. Talk on, prithee j
It is a pretty earnest.
Pen. I have left me
But three poor jewels to bequeath. The first 13
My youth ; for though I am much old in griefs.
In years I am a child.
Cal. To whom that ?
Pen. To virgin wives ; such as abuse not wedlock
By freedom of desires, but covet chiefly
The i)lcdges of chaste beds, for ties of love
Rather than ranging of their blood : and next,
To married maids ; such as prefer the number
Of honour.ible issue in their virtues.
Before the flattery of delights by marriage ;
May those be ever young.
Cal. A second jewel
You mean to part with ?
Pen. 'Tis my fame ; I trust
By scandal yet untouch'd : this I bequeath
To Memory and Time's old daughter, Truth.
If ever my unhappy name find mention.
When I am fall'n to dust, may it deserve
Beseeming charity without dishonour.
Cal. How handsomely thou play'st with harmlei^
sport
Of mere imagination ! Speak the last.
I strangely like thy will.
Pen. This jewel, madam.
Is dearly precious to me ; 3'ou must use
The best of your discretion, to employ
This gift as I intend it.
Cal. Do not doubt me.
Pen. 'Tis long ago, since first I lost my heart ;
Long I have liv'd without it : but instead
Of it, to great Calantha, Sparta's heir,
By service bound, and by atFection vow'd,
I do bequeath in holiest rites of love
Mine only brother Ithocles.
Cal. What saidst thou ?
Pen. Impute not, heav'n^blest lady, to ambition,
A faith as humbly perfect as the prayers
Of a devoted suppliant can endow it :
Look on him, princess, with an eye of pity ;
How like the ghost of what he late appear'd
He moves before you !
Cal. Shall I answer here,
Or lend my ear too grossly ?
Pen. First his heart
Shall fall in cinders, scorch'd by your disdain,
Ere ho will dare, poor man, to ope an eye
On these divine looks, but with low-bent thoughts
Accusing such presumption : as for words.
He dares not utter any but of service ;
Yet this lost creature loves you. Be a princess
In sweetness as in blood ; give him his doom,
Or raise him up to comfort.
Ced. What new change
Ajipears in my behaviour, that thou darest
Tempt ni}- displeasure ?
Pen. I must leave the world,
To revel in Elysium ; and 'tis just
To wish my brother some advantage here.
Yet by my best hopes, Ithocles is ignorant
Of this pursuit. But if you please to kill him,
Lend him one angry look, or one harsh word,
And you shall soon conclude how strong a power
Your absolute authority holds over
His life and end.
Cal. You have forgot, Penthea,
How still I have a father.
Pen. But remember
I am sister : though to me this brother
Hath been, you know, unkind, O most unkind.
Cal. Christalla, Philema, where are ye ? Lady,
Your check lies in my silence.
{^Contention of a Bird and a Muisician.]*
[From tlie ' Lover's Jlelancholy.']
Menaphon and Amkthus.
3Ien. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales
Which poets of an elder time have feign'd
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting that paradise.
To Thessaly I came ; and living private.
Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequented silent groves.
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encountcr'd me : I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention,
That art [and] nature ever were at strife in.
Aiiu't. I cannot yet conceive what you infer
By art and nature.
3Ien. I shall soon resolve you.
A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather.
Indeed, entranced my soul : As I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, 1 saw
* For an amplification of the subject of this cxtr.act, see artiole
' RiCHAKD CbABHAH'.'
220
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS HEYWOOD.
This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute,
With strains of strange yariety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seem'd, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That, as they flock'd about him, all stood silent,
Wond'ring at what they heard. I wonder'd too.
A met. And so do 1 ; good ! on —
Mm. A nightingale,
Nj^'ire's best skill'd musician, undertakes
Thv, challenge, and for every several strain
The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own ;
He could not run division with more art
Upon his quaking instrument, than she,
The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to : for a voice, and for a sound,
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe
That such they were, than hope to hear again.
Amet. How did the rivals part ?
Men. You term them rightly ;
For they were rivals, and their mistress, harmony.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird
^Vhom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice :
To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick.
That there was curiosity and cunning.
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.
Amet. Now for the bird.
Men. The bird, ordaiu'd to be
Music's first martyr, strove to imitate
These several sounds : which, when her warbling
throat
Fail'd in, for grief, down dropp'd she on his lute,
And brake her heart ! It was the quaintest sadness.
To see the conqvieror upon her hearse.
To weep a funeral elegy of tears ;
That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide
Mine own unmanly weakness, that made me
A fellow-mourner with him.
Amet. I believe thee.
Men. He look'd upon the trophies of his art.
Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes, then sigh'd and
cried :
' Ala3, poor creature ! I will soon revenge
This ci\ielty upon the author of it :
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
ShalV never more betray a harmless peace
To an Untimely end :' and in that sorrow.
As he was pashing it against a true,
I suddenly stept in.
Amet. Thou hast discours'd
A truth of mirth and pity.
THOlSAS HKYWOOD.
Thomas Heywood was one of the most iudefeti-
gable of dramatic writers. He had, as he informs
his readers, ' an entire hand, or nt least a main
finger,' in two hundred and twenty plays. He wrote
also several prose works, besides attending to his
business as an actor. Of his huge dramatin library,
only twenty-three plays have come down to us, the
best of which are, A Wonian Killed with Kindness, the
English Traveller, A Challenge for Beautj/, the lioyal
King and Loyal Subject, the Lancashire Witches, the
Rape oj Lucrece, Love's Mistress, &c. The few par-
ticulars respecting Heywood's life and history have
been gleaned from his own writings and the dates of
his plays. The time of his birth is not known; but
he was a native of Lincolnshire, and was a fellow
of Peter- House, Cambridge: he is found writing
fcr the stage in 1596, and he continued to exercise
his ready pen down to the year 1640. In on^ of liis
prologues, he thus adverts to the various sources of
Ilia multifarious labours :
To give content to this most curious age.
The gods themselves we've brought down to the stage,
And figured them in planets ; made even hell
Deliver up the furies, by no spell
(Saving the muse's rapture) further we
Have traffick'd by their help ; no history
We have left unrifled ; our pens have been dipt
As well in opening each hid manuscript
As tracks more vulgar, whether read or sung
In our domestic or more foreign tongue :
Of fairies, elves, nymphs of the sea and land,
The lawns, the groves, no number can be scann'd
Which we have not given feet to.
This was written in 1637, and it shows how eager
the play-going public were then for novelties, though
they possessed the theatre of Shakspeare and his
contemporaries. The death of Heywood is equally
unknown with the date of his birth. As a dramatist,
he had a poetical fancy and abundance of classical
imagery ; but his taste was defective ; and scenes of
low buffoonery, ' merry accidents, intermixed with
apt and witty jests,' deform his pieces. His humour,
however, is more pure and moral than that of most
of his contemporaries, ' There is a natural repose in
his scenes,' says a dramatic critic, ' which contrasts
pleasingly with the excitement that reigns in most
of his contemporaries. Middleton looks upon his
characters with the feverish anxiety with which we
listen to the trial of great criminals, or watch their
behaviour upon the scaffold. Webster lays out their
corpses in the prison, and sings the dirge over them
when they are buried at midnight in unhallowed
ground. Heywood leaves his characters before they
come into these situations. He walks quietly to and
fro among them while they are yet at large as mem-
bers of society ; contenting himself with a sad smile
at their follies, or with a frequent warning to them
on the consequences of their crimes.' * The follow-
ing description of Psyche, from ' Love's Mistress,' is
in his best manner : —
ADMETUS. — A8TI0CHE. — PETBEA.
Adm. Welcome to both in one ! Oh, can you tell
What fate your sister hath ?
Both. Psyche is well.
Adm. So among mortals it is often said.
Children and friends are well when they are dead.
Ast. But Psyche lives, and on her breath attend
Delights that far surmount all earthly joy ;
IMusic, sweet voices, and ambrosian fare ;
Winds, and the light-wing'd creatures of the air ;
Clear channell'd rivers, springs, and flowery meads,
Are proud when Psyche wantons on their streams.
When Psyche on their rich embroidery treads,
When Psyche gilds their crystal with her beams.
We have but seen our sister, and, behold !
She sends us with our laps full brimm'd with gold.
In 1635, Heywood published a poem entlcled tl.t^
Hierarchy of Angels. Various songs are scattcn-d
through Heywood's neglected plays, some of then
easy and flowing : —
Song.
Pack clouds away, and welcome day.
With night we banish sorrow :
Sweet air blow soft, mount lark aloft.
To give my love good morrow :
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow :
♦ Edinburgh Review, vol. 03, p. 223.
221
FROM 1558
CYCLOP^ailDIA OF
TO 1(U:
Uiril, prune th_y wing, nightingale, sing,
To give my love good morrow.
To give my love good morrow,
Notes from them all I'll borrow.
Wiilce from thy nest, robin red-breast,
Sing, birds, in every furrow ;
And from each bill let music shrill
(live my fair love good morrow.
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow.
You pretty elves, amongst j'ourselves,
Sing my fair lo^'e good morrow.
To give my love good morrow.
Sing, birds, in every furrow.
SkepJierd's Song.
We that have known no greater state
Tlian this we live in, praise our fate ;
For courtly silks in cares are spent,
\A'hen country's russet breeds content.
The power of sceptres we admire.
But sheep-hooks for our use desire.
Simple and low is our condition.
For here with us is no ambition :
"We with the sun our flocks unfold,
Whose rising makes their fleeces gold ;
Our music from the birds we borrow.
They bidding us, we them, good morrow.
Our habits are but coarse and plain.
Yet they defend from wind and rain ;
As warm too, in an equal eye,
As those be-stain'd in scarlet dye.
The shepherd, with his home-spun lass,
As many meiTy hours doth pass.
As courtiers with their costly girls,
Though richly deck'd in gold and pearls ;
And, though but plain, to purpose woo.
Nay, often with less danger too.
Those that delight in dainties' store.
One stomach feed at once, no more ;
And, wlien with homely fare we feast,
With us it doth as well digest ;
And many times we better speed.
For our wild fruits no surfeits breed.
If we sometimes the willow wear.
By subtle swains that dare forswear.
We wonder whence it comes, and fear
They've been at court and h^arnt it there.
[Shipwreck hy Drliik.']
[From the ' English Traveller."]
-This gentleman and I
Pass'd but just now by your next neighbour's house,
Where, as they say, dwells one young Lionel,
An ui! thrift youth ; his father now at sea :
And there this night was held a sumptuous feast.
In the height of their carousing, all their brains
Warni'd witli the heat of wine, discourse was ofier'd
Of shijis and storms at sea : when suddenly,
Out of his giddy wildness, one conceives
The room wherein they quaff' d to be a pinnace
Moving and floating, and the confus'd noise
To be tlie nmrmuring winds, gusts, mariners ;
That their unsteadfast footing did proceed
From rocking of the vessel. Tliis conceiv'd.
Each one begins to apprehend the danger.
And to look out for safety. I"'ly, saith one.
Up to tlie main-top, and discover. He
Climbs by the bed-post to the tester, there
Reports a turbulent sea and tempest towards ;
And wills them, if they'll save their sliip and lives.
To cast tlieir lading overboard. At this
^L' iiill to work, and hoist into the street,
As to the sea, what next came to their hand.
Stools, tables, tressels, trenches, bedsteads, cups.
Pots, plate, and glasses. Here a fellow whistles ;
They take him for the boatswain : one lies struggling
Upon the floor, as if he swam for life :
A third takes the bass-viol for the cock-boat.
Sits in the bellow on't, labours, and rows ;
His oar the stick with which the fiddler play'd :
A fourth bestrides his fellow, thinking to 'scape
(As did Arion) on the dolphin's back,
Still fumbling on a gittern. The rude multitude,
N\'atching without, and gaping for the spoil
Cast from the windows, went by th' ears about it ;
The constable is call'd t' atone the broil ;
\\'hich done, and hearing such a noise within
( )f imminent shipwTCck, enters the house, and finds them
In this confusion : they adore his staff".
And think it Neptune's trident ; and that he
Comes with his Tritons (so they call'd his watch)
To calm the tempest, and appease the waves :
And at this point we left them.
JAMES SHIRLEY.
The last of these dramatists — ' a great race,' &a.ys
Mr Charles Lamb, ' all of whom spoke nearly the
same language, and had a set of moral feelings and
notions in common' — was James Shirley, born in
London in 1596. Designed for holy orders, Shirley
was educated first at Oxford, wliere Archbishop Laud
refused to ordain him on account of his appearance
being disfigured by a mole on his left cheek. lie
afterwards took the degree of A.M. at Cambridge,
and ofliciated as curate near St Albans. Like his
brother divine and poet, Crashaw, Shirley embraced
the commimion of the church of Rome. He lived as
a schoolmaster in St Albans, but afterwards settled
in London, and became a voluminous dramatic
writer. Thirty -nine plaj's procee<k'd from his pro-
lific pen ; and a modern edition of his works, edited
by Gifibrd, is in six octavo volumes. When the
Master of tlie Revels, in 1633, licensed Sliirley's
play of tlie Young Admiral, he entered on his books
an expression of his admiration of the drama, because
it was free from oaths, profoneness, or obsceneness ;
trusting that his approbation would encourage the
poet ' to pursue this beneficial and cleanly way of
poetry.' Shirley is certainly less impure than 2nost
of his contemporaries, but he is far from ftiulticss in
this respect. His dramas seem to have been toler-
ably successful. When the civil wars broke out, the
poet exclianged the pen for the sword, and took tlie
field under his patron the Earl of Newcastle. After
the cessation of this struggle, a still worse niisfors
tune befell our author, in tlie sliutting of the theatres,
and he was forced to betake lii;iistlf to liis former
occupation of a teacher. Tlie Restoration does not
seem to have mended his fortunes. In 1666, the
great fire of London drove (he poet and liis family
from their house in Wlihefriars ; and shortly after
this event, both he and his wife died on the same
day. A life of various labours and reverses, thus
found a sudden and tragic termination. Shirley's
plays have less force and dignity than those of
Jlassingcr; less pathos than those of Ford. His
comedies have the tone and manner of good society.
Mr Campbell has praised his ' polished and refined
dialect, the ' airy touches of his expression, the deli-
cacy of his sentiments, and the beauty of his similes.'
He admits, however, what every reader /ee/s, the want
in Shirley of any strong passion or engrossing inte-
rest. Ilallam more justly and comprehensively
states — ' Shirley has no originality, no force in con-
ceiving or delineating character, little of pathos, and
less, perliaps, of wit; his dramas produce no deep
impression m reading, and of course can leave none
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JAMES SIURLBT.
in the memory. But his mind -was poetical; his
better characters, especially females, express pure
thoughts in i^ure langruage ; he is never tumid or
affected, and seldom obscure ; the incidents succeed
rapidly, the personages are numerous, and there is
a general animation in the scenes, which causes us
to read him with some pleasure. Xo very good pla}-,
nor possibly any very good scene, could be found
in Shirley ; but he has many lines of considerable
beauty.' Of these fine lines, Dr Farmer, in his
' Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' quoted per-
haps the most beautiful, being part of Fernando's
description, in the ' Brothers,' of the charms of his
mistress : —
Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
Which suddenly' took birth, but ovenveigh'd,
With its own swelling, dropt upon her bosom,
Which, by reflection of her light appear'd
As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament.
After, her looks grew cheerful, and I saw
A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyes,
As if they had gain'd a victory o'er grief ;
And with it many beams twisted themselves,
Upon whose golden threads the angels walk
To and again from hea'sen.
In the same vein of delicate fancy and feeling is the
following passage in the Grateful Servant, where
Cleona learns of the existence of Foscari, from her
page Dulcino : —
Cle. The day breaks glorious to my darken'd thoughts.
He lives, he lives yet ! Cease, ye amorous fears,
More to perplex me. Prithee speak, sweet j'outh ;
How fares m}' lord ? Upon my virgin heart
I'll build a flaming altar, to olFer up
A thankful sacrifice for his return
1o life and me. Speak, and increase my comforts.
Is iy> in perfect health ?
-Oift. Not perfect, madam,
Until you bless him with the knowledge of
•four constau
cy.
^\ ^ gs'' ^^^ wings and fly then ;
Tell_h-jn my love -loth burn like vestal fire,
UTiich, vrith his meiBorv richer than all spices,
Disperses o.V,urs rouna about mv soul,
And did refre^J. it when a-ras dull and sad.
With thinking ol his absence.
f et stav,
Thou goest away too s»on ; where Is lie ? speak.
JJul. He gave me no curnmission Jor that, lady ;
He will soon save that question by his ^presence.
C/e. Time has no feathei^ ; he wa^ks now on
crutches.
Relate his gestures when he gave ti^e this.
What other words 1 Did mirth smile on his bror t
I would not for the wealth of this great norld
He should suspect my faith. What said he, prithee i
Did. He said what a warm lover, when desire
Makes eloquent, could speak ; he said you were
Both star and pilot.
C'/e. The sun's lov'd flower, that shuts his yellow
curtain
When lie declineth, opens it again
At his fair rising : ^vith my parting lord
I clos'd all my delight ; till his approach
It shall not spread itself.
Tlie Prodigal Lady.
[From the ' Lady of Pleasure.*]
Aretina and the Steward.
Stew. Be patient, madam, you may have your plea-
sure.
Aret. 'Tis that I came to town for ; I would not
Endure again the country conversation
To be the lad}' of six shires ! The men.
So near the primitive making, they retain
A sense of nothing but the earth ; their brains
And barren heads standing as much in wa::t
Of ploughing as their ground : to hear a fellow
]\Iake himself merry and his horse with whistling
Sellinger's round ;' t' observe with what solemnity
They keep their wakes, and throw for pewter candle-
sticks ;
How they become the morris, with whose bells
They ring all into Whitsuii ales, and swear
Through twenty scarfs and napkins, till the hobbyhorse
Tire, and the ilaid-^Iarian, dissolved to a jelly.
Be kept for spoon meat.
Stew. These, with your pardon, are no argument
To make the country life appear so hateful ;
At least to your particular, who eiijoy'd
A blessing in that calm, would you be puas'd
To think so, and the pleasure of a kingdom :
While your own will commanded what should move
Delights, 3'our husband's love and power joined
To give your life more harmony. You liv'd there
Secure and innocent, belov'd of all :
Prais'd for your hospitality, and pray'd for:
You might be envied, but malice knew
Not where you dwelt. — I would not prophesy,
But leave to your own apprehension
\\'hat may succeed your change.
A ret. You do imagine.
No doubt, you have talk'd wisely, and confuted
London past all defence. Your master should
Do well to send you back into the country.
With title of superintendent bailie.
Enter Sib Thomas Bornwjei.l.
Bom. How now, what's the matter ?
Angry, sweetheart ?
Aret. I am angry with myself,
To be so miserably restrain'd in things
Wherein it doth concern your love and honour
To see me satisfied.
Born. In what, Aretina,
Dost thou accuse me ? Have I not obeyed
All thy desires against mine own opinion ?
Quitted the country, and remov'd the hope
Of our return by sale of that fair lordship
We liv'd in ; chang'd a calm and retir'd life
For this wild town, compos'd of noise and charge !
Aret. What charge more than is necessary
For a lady of my birth and education ?
Born. I am not ignorant how nmch i.obility
Flows in j'our blood ; your kinsmen, great and powei 'ul
r th' state, but with this lose not your memory
Of being my wife. I shall be studious,
Madam, to give the dignity of your birth
All the best ornaments which become my fortur«,
But would not flatter it to ruin both,
AiiJ be the fable of the town, to teach
Other men loss of wit by mine, employeii
To serve your vast expenses.
A rd. Am I then
Brought in the balance so, sir ?
Born. Though you wci^h
Me in a partial scale, niy^heart is honest,
And must take liberty to think you have
Obeyed no modest counsel to affect,
Nay study, ways of pride and costly ceremony.
Your change of gaudy furniture, and pictures
Of this Italian master and that Dutchman's ;
Your mighty looking-glasses, like artillery,
BroiujJit home on engines ; the superfluous plate.
Antique and novel ; vanities of tires ;
Fourscore pound suppers for my lord, your kinamau ,
Banquets for t'other lady, aunt and cousins ;
' A favourite though homely dance of those days, taking ht
title from an actor named St Lecer.
223
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO lb'
! And perfumes that exceed all : train of serrants,
To stifle us at home and show abroad,
; More motley than the French or the Venetian,
About your coach, whose rude postilion
Must jiester every narrow lane, till passengers
And tradesmen curse your chokin>' up their stalls,
And common cries pursue your ladyship
For hind'ring o' the market.
Aret. Have you done, sir ?
Bom. 1 could accuse the gaiety of your wardrobe
And prodigal embroideries, under which
Rich satins, plushes, cloth of silver, dare
Not show their own complexions. Your jewels,
Able to bum out the spectator's eyes.
And show like bonfires on you by the tapers.
Something might here be spared, with safety of
; Your birth and honour, since the truest wealth
I Shines from the soul, and draws up just admirers.
i I could urge something more.
! Artt. Pray do ; I like
' Your homily of thrift.
Born. I could wish, madam,
You would not game so much.
Aret. A gamester too ?
Born. But are not come to that repentance yet
Should teach you skill enough to raise your prolit ;
You look not through the subtlety of cards
And mysteries of dice, nor can you save
Charge with the box, buy petticoats and pearls ;
; Kor do I wish you should. My poorest servant
j Shall not upbraid my tables, nor his hire,
; Purchas'd beneath my honour. You may play,
; Not a pastime, but a tyranny, and vex
, Yourself and my estate by 't.
I Aret. Good — proceed.
Born. Another game you have, which consumes more
I Your fame than purse ; your revels in the night,
I Your meetings called the ball, to which appear,
j As to the court of pleasure, all your gallants
I And ladies, thither bound by a subpoena
I Of Venus and small Cupid's high displeasure ;
I 'Tis but the family of love translated
', Into more costly sin. There was a play on 't,
j And had the poet not been brib'd to a modest
Expression of your antic gambols in 't.
Some darks had been discover'd, and the deeds too ;
In time he may repent, and make some blush
To see the second part danc'd on the stage.
My thoughts acquit you for dishonouring me
By any foul act, but the virtuous know
'Tis not enough to clear ourselves, but the
Suspicions of our shame.
Aret. Have you concluded
Your lecture ?
Bom. I have done ; and howsoever
My language may appear to you, it carries
No other than my fair and just intent
To your delights, without curb to their modest
I And noble freedom.
! In the ' Ball,' a comedy partly by Chapman, but
chiefly by Shirley, a coxcomb (Bostoek), craved on
the point of family, is showh ui> in the most admir-
I able manner. Sir Marmaduke Travers, by way of
I fooling him, tells him that he is rivalled in his suit
I of a particular ludy by Sir Ambrose Lamount.
[Scene from the Ball.}
BosTOCK and Sir Marmadukk.
Bot. Does she lore any body eUe !
Mar. I know not.
But she has half a score upon my knowledge,
Are suitors for her favour.
Bos. Name but one,
Knd if he cannot show as many coats
Mar. He thinks he has good cards for her, and likea
His game well.
Boi. Be an understanding knight,
And take my meaning ; if he cannot show
As much in heraldry
3far. I do not know how rich he is in fields,
But he is a gentleman.
Bos. Is he a branch of the nobility ?
How many lords can he call cousin ? — else
He must be taught to know he has presumed
To stand in competition with me.
Mai: You will not kill him 1
Bos. You shall pardon me ;
I have that within me must not be provok'd ;
There be some living now that have been kill'd
For lesser matters.
3far, Some living that have been kill'd ?
Bos. I mean some living that have seen examples,
Not to confront nobility ; and I
Am sensible of my honour.
3far. His name is
Sir Ambrose.
Bos. Lamount ; a knight of yesterdav'.
And he shall die to-morrow; name another.
Mar. Not so fast, sir ; you must take some breath.
Bos. I care no more for killing half a dozen
Knights of the lower house — I mean that are not
Descended from nobility — than I do
To kick any footman ; an Sir Ambrose were
Knight of the Sun, king Oberon should not save him,
Nor his queen Mab.
Enter Sir Ambrose Lamount.
3far. Unluckily he's here, sir.
Bos. Sir Ambrose,
How does thy knighthood 1 ha '
Amb. My nymph of honour, well ; I joy to see thee.
Bos. Sir IMarmaduke tells me thou art suitor to
Lady Lncina.
Amh. 1 have ambition
To be her servant.
Bos. Hast ? thou'rt a brave knight, and I i^jinmend
Thy judgment.
Ami. Sir jMarmaduke himself leans ^-^at way to"-
Bos. Why didst conceal it ? Coi-^e, the moi^ tlie
merrier.
But I could never see you ther<'«
Mar. I hope.
Sir, we may live.
Bos. I'll tell you, gentlemen,
Cupid has given us »'l one Vivev 5
I serve that lady ^o ; you ui^Jerstand mc !
But who shall carry her, t^e fates detenu me ;
I could be kr'ghted too
Amb. That would Ve no addition to
Your blcod. , , , , , , ,
Bos. I think ii would not ; so my lord told me ;
Tbou know'st jny lord, not the earl, my other
Cousin ? there's a spark his predecessors
Have match'd into the blood ; you understand
He put me upon this lady ; I proclaim
No hopes ; pray let's together, gentlemen ;
If she be wise — I say no more ; she shall not
Cost me a sigh, nor shall her love engage me
To draw a sword ; I have vow'd that.
Mar. You did but jest before.
Avib. 'Twere pity that one drop
Of your heroic blood should fall to th' ground :
Who knows but all your cousin lords may die.
Mar. As I believe them not immortal, sir.
Amb. Then you are gulf of honour, swallow all,
May marry some queen yourself, and get princes
To furnish the barren parts of Christendom.
There was a long cessation of the regular drama.
In 1642, the nation was convulsed with the elementa
of discord, and in the same month that the sword
224
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
ENGLISH LITKRAlUUi:.
BYIID AND llt'NNia,
was drawn, the theatres were closed. On the 2d of
September, the Long Parliament issued an ordinance,
' suppressins; public stage plays throiv^hout tlie king-
dom during tliese calamitous times.' An infraction
of this ordinance took place in 1644, when some
players were apprehended for jjcrforining Beaumont
and Fletcher's • King and no King' — au ominous title
for a drama at that period. Anotlier ordinance was
issued in 1G47, and a third in tlie following 3'ear,
when tlie House of Commons appointed a provost
marsliall, for the purpose of suppressing plays and
seizing ballad singers. Parties of strolling actors
occasionally performed in tlie country ; but there was
no regular theatrical performances in London, till
Davenant brought out his opera, the Siege of Rhodes,
in the year 1656. Two years afterwards, he removed
to the Cockpit Theatre. Drury Lane, where he per-
formed until tlie eve of the llestoration. A strong
partiality for the drama existed in the nation, which
all the storms of the civil war, and the zeal of tlie
Puritans, had not been able to crush or subdue.
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES OF THE PERIOD 1558-1649.
[Convivial Song, by Bifhop Still.l
'From tlie play of ' Gammer Gurton's Needle,' about 156.^.]
I caimot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good ;
But sure I think that I can drink
With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I nothing am a-cold ;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare ;
Both foot and hand go cold ;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.
I love no roast but a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire ;
And little bread shall do me stead ;
Much bread I nought desire.
No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow.
Can hurt me if I wold,
I am so ■RTapp'd, and thoroughly lapp'd,
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side, &c.
Vnd Tib, my wife, that as her life
Loveth well good ale to seek.
Full oft drinks she, till ye may see
The tears run down her cheek :
Then doth she troul to me the bowl.
Even as a maltworm should,
And saith, ' Sweetheart, 1 took my part
Of this jolly good ale and old.'
Back and side, &c.
Now let them drink till they nod and wink,
Even as good fellows should do ;
They shall not miss to have the bliss
Good ale doth bring men to.
And all poor souls that have scour'd bowls,
Or have them lustily troul'd,
God save the lives of them and their wives.
Whether they be young or old.
Back and side, kc.
My Mind to me a Kingdom is.
[From RjTd's ' Psalms, Sonnets,' ice. VMR.'}
My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such perfect joy therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That God or nature hath asslgn'd :
Though much I want that most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
No princely port, nor wealthy store.
Nor force to win a victory ;
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to win a loving eye ;
To none of these I yield as thrall,
For why, my mind despise them all.
I see that plenty surfeits oft.
And hasty climbers soonest fall ;
I see that such as are aloft,
Mishap doth threaten most of all;
These get with toil, and keep with fear:
Such cares niy mind can never bear.
I press to bear no haughty sway ;
I wish no more than may suffice ;
I do no more than well I may,
Look what I want, my mind supplies ;
Lo, thus I triumph like a king.
My mind's content with anythiu"'.
I laugh not at another's loss.
Nor grudge not at another's gain ;
No worldly waves my mind can toss ;
I brook that is another's bane ;
I fear no foo, nor fawn on friend ;
I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
My wealth is health and perfect ease.
And conscience clear my chief defence j
I never seek by bribes to please,
Nor by desert to give offence ;
Thus do 1 live, thus will I die;
Would all do so as well as I !
[From the s cme.]
What jjleasure have great princea
More dainty to their choice.
Than herdsmen wild, who careless
In quiet life rejoice:
And Fortune's fate not fearing,
Sing sweet in summer morning.
Their dealings plain and rightful,
Are void of all deceit ;
They never know how s])iteful
It is to feel and wait
On favourite presumptuous.
Whose pride is vain and sumptuous.
All day their flocks each tendcth.
All night they take their rest,
More quiet tlian wlio scndeth
His ship into the East,
Where gold and pearl are plenty,
But getting very dainty.
For lawyers and their pleading
They esteem it not a straw ;
They think tliat honest meaning
Is of itsplf a law ;
Where Conscience judgeth pla'i (y,
They spend no money vainly.
happy who thus liveth.
Not caring nuich for gold,
With clothing wliich sutliceth
To keep him from the cold :
Though poor and plain his diet,
Yet merry it is and quiet.
Mrdltutlon n-Jien ive go to Bed.
[From the ' Ilamifii! of Ifonpy?unl<Ies.' By W niisir
Ilimnib: l.^fVi.]
Lord my God, I wandered have
As one that runs astr:n',
And have in thought, in word, and deed.
In idleness and phiv,
22*
16
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 164?>.
Offended sore thy Majesty,
In heaping sin to sin,
Aiid yet thy mercy liath ine spar'd,
So gracious liast thou been !
Lord, my faults 1 now confess,
And sorry am therefor ;
But not so much as fain I would :
Lord, what wilt thou more ?
It is tliy grace must bring that spirit
For which I humbly pray.
And that this night thou me defend,
As thou hast done this day.
And grant, when these mine eyes and tongue
Shall fail through Nature's might,
That then the powers of my poor soul
May praise thee day and night.
Meditation.
'From tlie ' Poor Widow's Jlite.' By AVillian^ Ilunnis ; 151)5.]
Thou, (Jod, that rul'st and reign'st in light,
That flesh cannot attain ;
Thou, God, that know'st the thoughts of men
Are altogether vain ;
Thou, God, whom neither tongue of man
Nor angel can express ;
Thou, God, it is that I do seek.
Thou pity my distress !
Thy seat, Goil, is everywhere.
Thy power all powers transcend ;
Thy wisdom cannot measured be.
For that it hath no end !
Thou art the jiower and wisdom too,
And sole felicity ;
But I a lump of sinful flesh.
Nurse of iniquity.
Thou art by nature merciful.
And Mercy is thy name ;
And I by nature miserable,
The thrall of sin and shame :
Then let thy nature, O good God !
Now work this force in me ;
And cleanse the nature of my sin.
And heal my misery.
One depth, good Lord, another craves ;
!My depth of sinful crime
Requires the depth of mercy great.
For saving health in tune.
Sweet Christ, grant that thy depth of grace
May swallow up my sin ;
That I thereby may whiter be.
Than even snow hath been.
Tale of Argentik caul Curan.
[From a poetical epitome of English history, entitled Albion's
Englanil, published in I5il(>, the composition of William AVanier,
an attorney of the Comnura Ples.s, who died at a ripe age in
1609.]
The Brutons thus departed hence, seven kingdoms here
begone,
Where diversely in diverse broils the Saxons lost and
won.
King K<lell and King Adelbright in Di via jointly reign :
In loyal concord during life these kingly friends remain.
When Adelbright should leave his life, to Edell thus
he says :
By those same bonds of happy love, that held us friends
always,
By our byparted crown, of which the moiety is mine,
By God, to whom my soul must pass, and so in time
may thine,
I pray tiiee, nay, conjure thee, too, to nourish as thine
own
Thy niece, my diiughtc Argcntile, till she to age be
grown,
And then, as thou receivest, resign to her my throne.
A promise had for this bequest, the testator he dies,
But all that Edell undertook he afterward iknies.
Yet well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was
grown
The fairest lady under heaven ; whose beauty beln"
kno«Ti,
Amanyprinces seek her love, but none might her obtain,
ForGrippel Edell to himselfherkingdom sought to gain ;
By chance one Curan, son unto a prince in Danske, did
see
The maid, with whom lie fell in love, as much as one
might be.
Unhappy youth ! what should he do ? his saint was
kept in mew,
Nor he, nor any noble man admitted to her view.
One while in melancholy fits he pines himself away ;
Anon he thought by force of arms to win her if he niay.
And still against the king's restraint did secretly in-
veigh.
At length the high controller. Love, whom none may
disobey,
Imbased him from lordliness unto a kitchen dnidijc,
That so, at least, of life or death she might become his
judge.
Access so had to see, and speak, he did his love bewray,
And tells his birth : her answer was, she husbandloss
would stay.
Meanwhile, the king did beat his brains, his booty to
achieve.
Not caring what became of her, so heby her mi L'httlirive :
Atlasthisresolution was, somepeasant should tier wive.
And, which was working to his wish, he did observe
with joy
How Curan, whom he thought a drudge, scapt many an
amorous toy.
The king, perceiving such his vein, promotes his vassal
still,
Lest that the baseness of the man should let, perhaps,
his will.
Assured therefore of his love, but not sufpcctli:g who
The lover was, the king himself in his behalf did woo.
Tlie lady, resolute from love, unkindly takes that h«
Should bar the noble, and unto so base a match agree ,
And therefore, shifting out of doors, de])arted thence by
stealth,
Preferring poverty before a dangerous life in wealth.
When Curan heard of her escape, the anguish in Iiis
heart
Was more than much ; and after her from court he did
depart :
Forgetful of himself, his birth, his countrv, friends, and
all.
And onlv minding whom he mist — the foundress of his
thrall !
Normeansheaftertofrequent, orcourt, orstately towns,
But solitarily to live amongst the country grownes.
A brace of years he lived thus ; well-pleased so to live ;
And shepherd-like to feed a flock, himself did wholly
give.
So wasting, love, by work and want, grew almost to the
wane :
But then began a second love, the worser of the twain !
A country wench, a neatherd's maid, where Curan
kept his sheep,
Did feed her drove; and now on her was all the shep-
herd's keep,
lie borrow'd, on the working days, his holly ruflets oft :
And of the bacon's fat, to make his startups black and
soft :
And lest his tar-box .should oflx>nd, he left it at the fold ;
Sweet growt or whig, his bottle had as much as it
would hold ;
A sheave of bread as brown as nut, and cheese as white
as snow.
And wildings, or the season's fruit, he did in scrip bestow •
220
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WARNER.
And whilst liis pieba. 1 cut did sleep, and sheep-hook
lay him by,
On hollow quills of :>aten straw he piped melody.
But when he spied her, his saint, he wip'd his greasy
shoes,
And clear'd the drivel from his beard, and thus the
shepherd woos :
I have, sweet wench, a piece of cheese, as good as
tooth may chaw.
And bread, and wildings, souling well ;' and there-
withal did draw
His lardry ; and, in eating, * See yon crumpled ewe,'
quoth he,
' Did twin this fall ; faith thou art too elvish, and too
coy;
Am I, I pray thee, beggarly, that such a flock enjoy ?
[wis I am not ; yet that thou dost hold me in disdain
.'s brim abroad, and made a gibe to all that keep this
plain.
There be as quaint, at least that think themselves as
quaint, that crave
The match which thou (I wot not why) may'st, but
mislik'st to have.
How would'st thou match ? (for well I wot, thou art
a female) ; I,
I know not her, tha*' willingly, in maidenhood would
die.
The ploughman's labcir hath no end, and he a churl
will prove ;
The craftsman hath more work in hand than fitteth
on to love ;
The merchant, trafficking abroad, suspects his wife at
home ;
A youth will play the wanton, and an old man prove
a mome ;
Then choose a shepherd ; with the sun he doth his
flock unfold,
And all the day on hill or plain he merry chat can
hold :
And with the sun doth fold again : then jogging home
betime,
He turns a crab, or tunes a roynd, or sings some merry
rhyme ;
Nor lacks he gleeful tales to tell, whilst that the bowl
doth trot :
And sitteth singing care away, till he to bed hath got.
There sleeps he soundly all the night, forgetting mor-
row cares.
Nor fears he blasting of his ct ti, or uttring of his
wares.
Or storms by sea, or stirs on land, or crack of credit lost.
Nor spending franklier than his flock shall still defray
the cost.
Well wot I, sooth they say, that say, more quiet
niglits and days
The shepherd sleeps and wakes than he whose cattle
he doth graze.
JJclieve me, lass, a king is but a man, and so am I ;
Content is worth a monarchy, and mischiefs hit the
high.
As late it did a king and his, not dying far from
hence,
AVho left a daughter (save thyself) for fair, a matcli-
less wench.'
Here did he pause, as if his tongue had made his
heart offence.
The neatress, longing for the rest, did egg him on to
tell
How fair she was, and who she was. 'She bore,'
quoth he, ' the bell
For beauty: though I clownish am, I know what
beauty is.
Or did I not, yet, seeing thee, I senseless were to miss.
Suppose hc»- beauty Helen's like, or Helen's somewhat
less,
And every star consorting to a pure complexion guess.
Her stature comely tall, her gait well graced, and her
wit
To marvel at, not meddle with, as matchless, I omit.
A globe-like head, a gold-like hair, a forehead smooth
and high.
An even nose, on either side stood out a grayish eye:
Two ros}' cheeks, round ruddy lips, with just set teeth
within,
A mouth in mean, and underneath a round and
dimpled chin.
Her snowy neck, with bluish veins, stood bolt upright
upon
Her portly shoulders ; beating balls, her veined breasts,
anon.
Add more to beauty ; wand-like was her middle,
falling still * *
And more, her long and limber arras had white and
azure wrists.
And slender fingers answer to her smooth and lily fists !
A leg in print, and pretty foot ; her tongue of speech
was spare ;
But speaking, Venus seem'd to speak, the ball from
Ide to bear !
With Pallas, Juno, and with both, herself contends in
face ;
Where equal mixture did not want of mild and stately
grace :
Her smiles were sober, and her looks were cheerful
unto all.
And such as neither wanton seem, nor wayward ;
mell, nor gall.
A quiet mind, a patient mood, and not disdaining any ;
Not gibing, gadding, gawdy ; and her faculties were
many.
A nymph, no tongue, no heart, no eye, might praise,
might wish, might see.
For life, for love, for form, more good, more worth,
more fair than she !
Yet such an one, as such was none, save only she was
such :
Of Argentile, to say the most, were to be silent much.'
' I knew the lady very well, but worthless of such
praise,'
The neatress said ; ' and muse I do, a shepheiJ thus
should blaze
The coat of beauty. Credit me, thy latter speech bewrays
Thy cIo\vnish shape, a coined show. But wherefore
dost thou weep ?'
(The shepherd wept, and she was woe, and both did
silence keep.)
' In troth,' quoth he, ' I am not such as seemiu;,- I
profess ;
But then for her, and now for thee, I from myself
digress.
Her loved I, ■(vretch that I am, a recreant to be ;
I loved her, that hated love ; but now I die for thee
At Kirklaiid is my father's court, and Curan is mj
name ;
In Edell's court sometimes in pomp, till love controll'd
the same :
But now ; what now ? dear heart ! how now ? what
ailest thou to weep V
(The damsel wept, and he Avas woe, and both did
silence keep.)
' I grant,' quoth she, ' it was too much, that you did
love so nmch ;
But whom your former could not move, your second
love doth touch.
Thy twice beloved Agentile submitteth her to thee :
And for thy double love presents herself a single fee ,
In passion, not in person thaiig'd, and 1, my lord, am
she.'
They sweetly surfeiting in joy, and silent for a space,
Whereas the ecstacy had end, did tenderly embrace ;
And for their wedding, and their wish, got fitting
time and place.
227
moM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
Sonnet.
[By George Chapman, the Translator of Homer : 1595.]
Muses, that sing Love's sensual einpirie,
And lovers kindling your enraged iires
At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye,
Blo^vn with the empty breath of vain desires ;
You, that prefer the painted cabinet
Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye,
That all your joys in dying figures set,
And stain the living substance of your glory ;
Abjure those joys, abhor their memory ;
And let my love the honour'd subject be
Of love and honour's complete history !
Your eyes were never yet let in to see
The majesty and riches of the mind,
That dwell in darkness ; for your god is blind.
77(6 Woodman^s Walk.
(TTom ' England's Helicon," 1600, where it is signed, ' Shep.
Tonie.']
Through a fair forest as I went,
Upon a summer's day,
I met a woodman, quaint and gent,
Yet in a strange array.
I marvell'd much at his disguise,
Whom I did know so well :
But thus, in terms both grave and wise.
His mind he 'gan to tell ;
Friend ! muse not at this fond array.
But list a while to me :
For it hath holpe me to survey
What I shall show to thee.
Long liv'd I in this forest fair.
Till, weary of my weal.
Abroad in walks I would repair,
As now I will reveal.
My first day's walk was to the court,
Where beauty fed mine eyes ;
Yet found I that the courtly sport
Did mask in sly disguise :
For falsehood sat in fairest looks.
And friend to friend was coy :
Court favour fiU'd but empty rooks,
And then 1 found no joy.
Desert went naked in the cold,
When crouching craft was fed :
Sweet words were cheaply bought and sold.
But none that stood in stead.
Wit was employed for each man's own ;
Plain meaning came too short ;
All these devices, seen and known,
Made me forsake the court.
Unto the city next I went.
In hope of better hap ;
Where liberally I launcht and spent.
As set on Fortune's lap.
The little stock I had in store,
Methought would ne'er be done ;
Friends flock'd about me more and more,
As quickly lost as won.
For, when I spent, then they were kind ;
But when my purse did fail.
The foremost man came lust behind :
Thus love with wealth dath quail.
Once more for footing yet I strove,
Although the world did frown :
But they, before that held me up.
Together trod me do^vn.
And, lest once more I should arise.
They sought my quite decay :
Then got I into this disguise,
And thence I stole away.
And in my mind (methought), I said,
Lord bless me from the city :
Where simpleness is thus betray'd
Without remorse or pity.
Yet would I not give over so,
But once more try my fate ;
And to the country then I go.
To live in quiet state.
There did appear no subtle shows,
But yea and nay went smoothly ;
But, lord ! how country folks can gloia,
When they speak most untruly !
More craft was in a buttoned cap.
And in an old wife's rail.
Than in my life it was my hap
To see on down or dale.
There was no open forgery
But underhanded gleaning.
Which they call country policy.
But hath a worser meaning.
Some good bold face bears out the wrong,
Because he gains thereby ;
The poor man's back is crack'd ere long,
Yet there he lets him lie.
And no degree, among them all.
But had such close intending.
That I upon my knees did fall,
And pray'd for their amending.
Back to the woods I got again,
In mind perplexed sore ;
Where I found ease of all my pain,
And mean to stray no more.
There city, court, nor country too,
Can any way annoy me ;
But as a woodman ought to do,
I freely may employ me ;
There live I quietly alone.
And none to trip my talk :
Wherefore, when I am dead and gone.
Think on the woodman's walk !
There is a Garden in her Face.
[From'Anllour'sUecreationin JIusic,'by Rich. Alison: 1 506.]
There is ii garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow ;
A heavenly paradise is that [)lace,
Wherein all jjloasant fruits do grow;
There cherries grow that none may buy,
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do inclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows.
They look like rose-buds till'd with snow :
Yet them no peer nor prince may buy.
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry.
228
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MISCELLANEOUS PIECI
Her eyes like angels watch them still ;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threiit'niiig with piercing frowns to kill
All that approach with eye or hand
These sacred cherries to come nigh,
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry.
Robin Goodfellow.
[Attributed, upon supposition only, to Bea #wnson.]
From Oberon, in fairy land,
Tlie king of ghosts and shadows there,
Mad Robin I, at his command,
Am sent to view the night-sports here.
What revel rout
Is kept about.
In every corner where I go,
I will o'ersee.
And merry be.
And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho !
Jlore swift than lightning can I fly
About this airy welkin soon.
And, in a minute's space, descry
Each thing that's done below the moon.
There's not a hag
Or ghost shall wag.
Or cry, 'ware goblins ! where I go ;
But Robin I
Their feats will spy,
And send them home with ho, ho, ho !
Whene'er such wanderers I meet.
As from their night-sports they trudge home.
With counterfeiting voice I greet,
And call them on with me to roam :
Through woods, through lakes ;
Through bogs, through brakes ;
Or else, unseen, with them I go.
All in the nick,
To play some trick.
And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho 1
Sometimes I meet them like a man.
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound ;
And to a horse I turn me can,
To trip and trot about them round.
Rut if to ride
My back they stride,
More swift than wind away I go.
O'er hedge and lands.
Through poi 's and ponds,
I hurry, laughing, ho, ho, ho !
When lads and lasses merry be.
With possets and with 'unkets fine ;
Unseen of all the company,
I eat their cakes and sip their wine !
And, to make sport,
I pufF and snort :
And out the candles I do blow :
The maids I kiss.
They shriek— Who's this ?
I answer nought but ho, ho, ho !
Yet now and then, the maids to please,
At midnight I card up their wool ;
And, while they sleep and take their ease.
With wheel to threads their flax I pull.
I grind at mill
Their malt up still ;
I dress their hemp ; I spin their tow ;
If any wake,
And would me take,
1 wend me, laughing, ho, ho, ho !
When any need to borrow auglit.
We lend them what they do require :
And, for the use demand we nought ;
Our own is all we do desire.
If to repay
They do delay.
Abroad amongst them then I go,
And night by night,
I them aftright,
With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho !
When lazy queans have nought to do.
But study how to cog and lie :
To make debate and mischief too,
'Twixt one another secretly :
I mark their gloze.
And it disclose
To them whom they have WTonged so :
^^'hen I have done,
I get me gone,
Arid leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho !
When men do traps and engines set
In loop holes, where the vermin creep,
Who from their folds and houses get
Their ducks and geese, and lambs and
I spy the gin.
And enter in,
And seem a vermin taken so ;
But when they there
Approach me near,
I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho !
By wells and rills, in meadows green,
We nightly dance oui heyday guiae J
And to our fairy king and .lueen.
We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.
When larks 'gin sing.
Away we fling ;
And babes new born steal as we go J
And elf in bed
We leave in stead.
And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho !
From hag-bred Merlin's time, have I
Thus nightly revelled to and fro ;
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Good-fellow.
Fiends, ghosts, and sprites.
Who haunt the nights.
The hags and goblins do me know;
And beldames old
My feats have told.
So vale, vale ; ho, ho, ho !
The Old and Youwj Courtier.
An old song made by an aged old pate.
Of an old worshipful gentleman, who had a greiw
estate.
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rati^,
And an oKl porter to relieve the poor at his gate ;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,
And the queen's old courtier.
With an old lady, whose anger one word assuages ;
They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,
And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen,
nor pages.
But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats i»,nd
badges ;
Like an old courtier, &c.
With an old study fiU'd full of learned old books.
With an old reverend cliaplain, you might know him
by his looks,
'•29
#ROH 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649
With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,
Aud an old kitchen, that lualntaiu'd half a dozen old
cooks ;
Like an old courtier, &c.
With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and
bows,
With old swords and bucklers, that had borne many
shrewd blows,
And an old frieze coat, to cover his worship's trunk
hose.
And a cup of old sherry, to comfort his copper nose ;
Like an old courtier, &c.
With a good old fashion, when Christmas was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bjvgpipe and
drum,
With good cheer enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man
dumb ;
Like an old courtier, &c.
With an old falconer, huntsmen, and a kennel of
hounds,
That never hawk'd, nor hunted, but in his own
grounds ;
Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own
bounds.
And when he died, gave every child a thousand good
pounds ;
Like an old courtier, &c.
But to his eldest son his house and lands he assign'd,
Charging him in his will to keep the old bountiful
mind.
To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours
be kind :
But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how he was
inclined ;
Like a young courtier of the king's.
And the king's young courtier.
Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his
land.
Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his com-
mand.
And takes up a thousand pounds upon his father's
land.
And gets drunk in a tavern till he can neither go nor
stand :
Like a j'oung courtier, &c.
With a newfangled lady, that is dainty, nice, aud
spare.
Who never knew what belong'd to good housekeeping
or care.
Who buys gaudy-colour'd fans to play with wanton
air.
And seven or eight different dressings of other women's
hair :
Like a young courtier, &c.
With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one
stood.
Hung round with new pictures that do the poor no
good,
With a fine marble chimney, wherein bums neither
coal nor wood,
And a new smooth shovel board, whereon no victuals
ne'er stood :
Like a young courtier, &c.
With a new study, stuff'd full of pamphlets and plays.
And a new chaplain, tliat swears faster than he prays,
W'illi a new buttery hatch, that opens once in four or
live days.
And a new Fiench cook, to devise fine kickshaws and
toys :
Like a yomg courtier, &c.
With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on.
On a new journey to London straight we all must be
gone.
And leave none to keep house, but our new portei
John,
Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with
a stone ;
Like a young courtier, &c.
With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is com-
plete,
With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry
up the meat.
With a waiting gentlewoman, whose dressing is very
neat,
Who, when her lady has dined, lets the servants not
eat ;
Like a young courtier, &c.
With new titles of honour, bought with his father's
old gold.
For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors are sold ;
And this is the course most of our new gallants hold,
Which makes that good housekeeping is now grown so
cold
Among the young courtiers of the king,
Or the king's young courtiers.
Time's Alteration.
When this old cap was new,
'Tis since two hundred year ;
No malice then we knew.
But all things plenty were :
All friendship now decays
(Believe me this is true) ;
Which was not in those days,
When this old cap was new.
The nobles of our land,
AV'ere much delighted then.
To have at their command
A crew of lusty men,
Which by their coats were kno^vn,
Of tawny, red, or blue.
With crests on their sleeves shown,
When this old cap was new.
Now pride hath banish'd all.
Unto our land's reproach,
When he whose means is small.
Maintains both horse and coach. :
Instead of a hundred men,
The coach allows but two ;
This was not thought on then.
When this old cap was new.
Good hospitality
Was cherish'd then of many J
Now poor men starve and die.
And are not hclp'd by any :
For charity waxetli cold.
And love is found in few ;
This was not in time of old,
When this old cap was new.
Where'er j'ou travelled then,
You might meet on the way
Brave kniglits and gentlemen,
Clad in their country grey ;
That courteous would appear,
And kindly welcome you ;
No puritans then were.
When this old cap was new.
Our ladies in those days
In civil habit went ;
Broad cloth was then worth praise.
And gave the best content :
230
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MTSCELLANEOl'S PIFCES.
French fashions then were scom'd ;
Fond fauiiles then none knew ;
Then modesty women adom'd,
When this old cap was new.
A man might then behold,
At Christmas, in each hall,
Good fires to curb the cold,
And meat for great and small ;
The neighbours were friendly bidden,
And all had welcome true ;
The poor from the gates were not cliiJden,
When this old cap was new.
Black jacks to every man
Were fill'd with wine and beer ;
No pewter pot nor can
In those days did appear :
Good cheer in a nobleman's house
Was counted a seemly show ;
We wanted no brawn nor souse,
When this old cap was new.
We took not such delight
In cups of silver fine ;
None under the degree of a knight
In plate drank beer or wine :
Now each mechanical man
Hath a cupboard of plate for a show ;
Which was a rare thing then.
When this old cap was new.
Then bribery was unborn,
No simony men did use ;
Christians did usury scorn,
Devis'd among the Jews.
Tlie lawyers to be fee'd
At that time hardly knew ;
For man with man agreed,
When this old cap was new.
No captain then caroused.
Nor spent poor soldier's pay ;
They were not so abused
As they are at this day :
Of seven days they make eight,
To keep from them their due ;
Poor soldiers had their right,
When this old cap was new :
Which made them fonvard still
To go, although not prest ;
And going with good will.
Their fortunes were the best.
Our English then in fight
Did foreign foes subdue,
And forced them all to flight,
When this old cap was new.
God save our gracious king.
And send him long to live :
Lord, mischief on them bring
That will not their alms give,
But seek to rob the poor
Of that which is their due :
This was not in time of yore.
When this old cap was new.
Loyalty Confined.
[Supposed to have been written by Sir Roger L'F.^tranpe,
while in confinement on account of his adherence to Charles I.]
Beat on, proud billows ; Boreas, blow ;
Swell, curl'd waves, high as Jove's roof;
Your incivility doth show
That innocence is tempest-proof;
Though surly Nereus frown, my thoughts are calm ;
Then strikt , affliction, for thy wounds are balm.
That which tlie world miscalls a jail,
A private closet is to me :
Whilst a good conscience is my bail.
And innocence my liberty :
Locks, bars, and solitude, together met.
Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret.
I, wlnlst I wish'd to be retired.
Into this private room was turned ;
As if their wisdoms had conspir'd
The salamander should be burned ;
Or like those sophists, that would drown a fish,
I am constrain d to suffer what 1 wish.
The cj'nic loves his poverty.
The pelican her wilderness,
And 'tis the Indian's pride to be
Naked on frozen Caucasus :
Contentment cannot smart, stoics we see
Make torments easy to their apathy.
These manacles upon my arm
I, as my mistress' favours, wear ;
And for to keep my ankles warm,
I have some iron shackles there :
These walls are but my garrison ; this cell,
Which men call jail, doth prove my citadel.
I'm in the cabinet lock'd up
Like some high-prized margarite ;
Or like the great Mogul or Pojie,
Am cloister'd up from jmblic sight :
Retiredness is a piece of majesty.
And thus, proud sultan, I'm as great as thee.
Here sin for want of food nmst starve.
Where tempting objects are not seen ;
And these strong walls do only sen'e
To keep vice out, and keep me in :
Malice of late 's grown charitiiiile sure ;
I'm not committed, but am kejit secure.
So he that struck at Jason's life,
Thinking t' have made his pur[)ose sure,
B}' a malicious friendly knife
Did only wound him to a cure :
Malice, I see, wants wit ; for what is meant
Mischief, ofttimes proves favour by th' event.
When once my prince afiliction hath.
Prosperity doth treason seem ;
And to nuike smooth so rough a path,
I can learn patience from him :
Now not to sufi'er sliows no loyal heart —
When kings want ease, subjects must bear a part
What though I cannot see my king.
Neither in jierson, or in coin ;
Yet contemplation is a thing
That renders what I have not, mine .
My king from me what adamant can part,
Whom I do wear engraven on my heart.
Have you not seen the nightingale
A prisoner like, coop'd in a cage.
How doth she chant lier wonted tale,
In that her narrow hermitage !
F.ven then her cliarming melody doth prove
That all her bars are trees, her cage a grove.
I am that bird whom they combine
Thus to deprive of llUerty ;
But though they do my corj)se confine,
Yet, nuiugre hate, my soul is free :
And, though immur'd, yet can I chirp and sing
Disgrace to rebels, glory to my king.
My soul is free as ambient air.
Although my baser part's immew'd ;
Whilst loyal thoughts do still repair
T' accompany niy solitude ;
Although rebellion do my body bind,
My king alone can captivate my iuiiitl.
231
FROM 1558
CYCL0P^15DIA OF
TO llji'j.
PROSE AVRITERS.
HE prose Arriters of tliis
aue rank chiefly in the
(iejiartmeiits of thcolotry,
pliilosojihy, and historical
and antiquarian informa-
tion. There was, as yet,
lardly any vestige of
] irt)SL' employed vitli taste
in fiction, or even in ob-
servations upon manners;
thougli it must be ob-
j served, that in Elizabeth's
' reign appeared the once
[ popular romance of Ar-
cadia, by Sir Philip Sid-
ney; and there lived un-
der the tvro succeeding monarchs several acute and
humorous describers of human cliaracter.
SIR PHELIP SIDNEY.
Sir Philip Sidney was born, in l.')r)4.at Penshurst,
I Keut; and during his studies at Shrewsbury, Ox-
f ]rii, and Cambridge, displayed remarkable acuteness
of intellect and cravingforknowledgc. After spending
three years on the continent, he returned to Erighuul
in isrf), and became one of the brightest ornaments of
the court of Elizabctli, in wliose favour he stood very
high. In the year 1580, his mind having been
ruffled in a quarrel with the Earl of Oxford, he retired
insearcliof tranquillity to the seat of his brother-
in-law, the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, and there
occasionally employed himself in composing tlie work
above-mentioned, a heroic romance, to wliich, as it
was written chiefly for his sister's amusement, lie
^iive the title of Ihe Counteasof Pcmbrnhc's Arrtidin.
This production was never finished, and, not having
been intended for the press, appeared only after tlie
author's death. His next work was a tract, entitled
The Defence of Poesy, where he has repelled the ob-
jections brought by the Puritans of his age against
the poetic art, the professors of which they contemp-
tuously denominated 'caterpillars of the common-
wealtli.' This production, though written with the
partiality of a poet, has been deservedly admired for
the beauty of its style and general soundness of ita
reasoning. In 1584, the character of his uncle, the
celebrated Earl of Leicester, having been attacked
in a publication called Leicester's CommomveciUh,
Sidney wrote a reply, in which, although the heaviest
accusations were passed over in silence, he did not
scruple to address his opponent in such terms as the
following: — 'But to thee I say, thou therein liest in
thy throat, which I will be ready to justify upon
thee in any place of Europe, where thou wilt assign
me a free place of coming, as within three months
after the publishing hereof I may understand thy
mind.' This performance seems to have proved un-
satisfactory to Leicester and his friends, as it was not
printed till near the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Desirous of active employment, Sidney next
contemplated an expedition, with Sir Francis Drake,
against the Spanish settlements in America; but
this intention was frustrated by a peremptory man-
date from the queen. In 1585, it is said, he was
named one of the candidates for the crown of Poland,
at that time vacant ; on which occasion Elizabeth
again threw obstacles in the way, being afraid ' to
lose the jewel of her times.' He was not, however,
long permitted to remain unemployed ; for, in the
same year, Elizabeth having determined to send
military assistance to the Protestant inhabitants of
the Netherlands, then groaning beneath the oppres-
sive measures of tlie Spaniards, he was appointed
governor of Flushing, one of the towns ceded to the
English in return for this aid. Soon afterwards, the
Earl of Leicester, witli an army of six thousand men,
went over to the Netherlands, wliere he was joined
b}' Sir Philip, as general of the horse. The conduct
of the earl in this war -was highly imprudent, and
such as to call forth repeated expressions of dissatis-
fiiction from his nephew Piiilip. The military ex-
ploits of tlie latter were higlily honourable to liim ;
in jiarticular, he succeeded in taking tlie town of
Axel in 1586. His career, however, was destined to
be short ; for having, in September of the same year,
accidentally encountered a detachment of the Spanish
army at Zutphen. he received a wound, which in a
few weeks proved mortal. As he was carried from
the field, a well-known incident occurred, by which
the generosity of his nature was strongly displayed.
Being overcome with thirst from excessive bleeding
and fatigue, he called for water, which was accord-
ingly brought to him. At the moment he was lifting
it to his mouth, a poor soldier was carried by, des-
perately wounded, who fixed his e3'es eagerly on the
cup. Sidney, observing this, instantly delivered the
beverage to him, saying, ' Th}- necessity is yet greater
than mine.' His death, which took place on the
19th of October 1586, at the early age of thirty-two,
was deeply and extensively lamented, both at home
and abroad. His bravery and chivalrous magna-
nimity — his grace and polish of manner — the jnirity
of his morals — his learning and refinement of taste
— had procured for him love and esteem wherever
he was known. By the direction of Elizabeth, his
remains were conveyed to London, and honoured
with a public funeral in the cathedral of St Paul's.
Of tiie pcK'try of Sir Philip Sidney we have spoken
in a former jiage. It is almost exclusively as a
prose writer that he deserves to be prominently men-
232
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEV.
tioned in a history of Eiiijlish Literature ; and in
judging of liis merits, we ouglit to bear in mind the
early age at wliich he was cut off. Ilis 'Arcadia,' on
which tlie chief portion of liis fame undoubtedly
rests, was so universallj'^ read and admired in tlie
reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, that, in 1633,
it had reached an eiglith edition. Subsequently',
however, it fell into comparative neglect, in which,
during the last century, the contemptuous terms in
which it was spoken of by Horace Walpole contri-
buted not a little to keep it. By that writer it is clia-
racterised as 'a tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral
romance, which the patience of a young virgin in
love cannot now wade through.' And the judgment
more recently pronounced by Dr Drake,* and Mr
Hazlitt,f is almost equally unfavourable. On the
other hand, Sidney has found a fervent admirer in
another modern writer, wlio highly extols the
'Arcadia' in the second volume of the Retrospective
Review. A middle course is steered by Dr Zouch,
who, in his memoirs of Sidney, published in 1808,
while he admits that changes in taste, manners, and
opinions, have rendered the ' Arcadia' unsuitable to
modern readers, maintains that ' tliere are passages in
this work exquisitely beautiful — useful observations
on life and manners — a variety and accurate discri-
mination of characters — fine sentiments, expressed in
strong and adequate terms — animated descriptions,
equal to any that occur in the ancient or modern
poets — sage lessons of morality, and judicious reflec-
tions on government and policy. A reader,' he con-
tinues, ' who takes up the volume, may be compared
to a traveller who has a long and dreary road to
pass. The objects that successively meet his eye
may not in general be very pleasing, but occa-
sionally he is charmed with a more beautiful pro-
spect — with the verdure of a rich valley — with a
meadow enamelled with flowers — with a nuirmur of
a rivulet — the swelling grove — the hanging rock —
the splendid villa. These charming objects abun-
dantly compensate for the joyless regions he has
traversed. They fill him with delight, exhilarate his
drooping spirits — and at the decline of day, he reposes
with complacency and satisfaction.' This represen-
tation we are inclined to regard as doing at least
ample justice to the ' Arcadia,' the former higli popu-
larity of which is, doubtless, in some degree attri-
butable to the personal fame of its autlior, and to the
scarcity of works of fiction in the daj's of Elizabeth.
But to whatever causes the admiration with which
it was received may be ascribed, there can hardly,
we think, be a question, that a work so extensively
perused must have contributed not a little to fix tlie
English tongue, and to form that vigorous and ima-
ginative style which characterises the literature of
the beginning and middle of the seventeenth centurj-.
Notwithstanding the occasional over-inflation and
pedantry of his style, Sidney may justly be regarded
as the best prose writer of his time. He was, in
truth, what Cowper felicitously calls him, a ' warbler
of poetic prose.'
In his personal character, Sidney, like most men
of high sensibility and poetical feeling, showed a
disposition to melancholy and solitude. His chief
fault seems to have been impetuosity of temper, an
illustration of which has already been quoted from his
reply to 'Leicester's Commonwealth.' The same trait
appears in the following letter (containing what
proved to be a groundless accusation), which he
wrote in 1578 to the secretary of his father, then
lord deputy of Ireland.
* Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, Sco., 11. 9.
t Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the AgB of Eliza-
beth, p. 2t>3.
' ilr Molyueux — Few words are best. My letters
to my father have come to the eyes of some. Neither
can 1 condemn any but you for it. If it be so, y-,\i
have played the very knave with me ; and so 1 Hill
make you know, if 1 have good proof of it. But that
for so much as is past. For that is to come, I assure
you before God, that if ever I know you do so much
as read any letter I write to my fatlier, without his
commaiidmeiit, or ray consent, I will thrust my dag-
ger into you. And trust to it, for I speak it in earnest.
In the mean time, farewell.'
Of the following extracts, three are from Sidney's
'Arcadia,' and the fourth from his 'Defence of Poesy.'
[A Tempest.']
There arose even with the sun a veil of dark clouds
before his face, which shortly, like ink poured into
water, had blacked over all the face cf heaven, pre-
paring, as it were, a mournful stage for a tragedy
to be played on. For, forthwith the winds began
to speak louder, and, as in a tumultuous kingdom, to
think themselves fittest instruments Oi c'..:r.m;ind-
ment ; and blowing whole storms of hail and rain
upon them, they were sooner in danger than they
could almost bethink themselves of change. For then
the traitorous sea began to swell in pride against the
afflicted navy, under wliich, while the heaven favoured
them, it had lain so calmly; making mountains of
itself, over which the tossed and tottering slsip sliould
climb, to be straight carried down again to a pit of
hellish darkness, with such cruel blows against the
sides of the ship, that, which way soever it went, was
still in his malice, that there was left neither i)owcr to
stay nor way to escape. And shortly had it so dis-
severed the loving company, which the u^y before had
tarried together, that most of them neve.- met again,
but were swallowed up in his never-satisfied mouth.
l^Descript'ioii of Arcadia.]
There were hills which garnished their proud
heights with stately trees ; humble vallev."!, whose base
estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver
rivers ; meadows, enamelled with all sorts of eye-
pleasing flowers ; thickets, which being lined with
most ])leasaut shade, were witnessed so to, by the
cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds ; each
pasture stored with sheep, feeding with soUr security ;
while the pretty lambs, with bleiiting oratory, craved
the dam's comfort ; here a sheplierd's hoy piping, as
though he should never be old ; there a young shep-
herdess knitting, and withal singing; and il seemed
that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her
hands kept time to her voice-music.
[A Stag Hunt.]
Then went they together abroad, the good Kahuuler
entertaining them with pleasant discoursing — how
well he loved the sport of hunting when he was a
young man, how nmch in the comparison thereof he
disdained all chamber-delights, that the sun (how
groat a journey soever he had to make) could never
prevent hira with earlincss, nor the moon, with her
sober countenance, dissuade him from watching till
midnight for the deers feeding. 0, said he, you will
never live to my age, without you keep yourself in
breath with exercise, and in heart w-ith joyfulness ;
too much thinking doth consume the spirits ; and oft
it falls out, that, while one thinks too much of his
doing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking. Then
spared he not to romendjer, how much .Vrcadia was
changed since his youth ; activity and good fellow-
ship being nothing in the price it was then hold in;
but, according to tlie nature of the old-growing world,
233
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649
Btill worse and worse. Then ■noiild he tell them
stories of such gallants as he had known ; ana »-,
with pleasant company, beguiled the time's haste, and
shortened the way's length, till they came to the side
of the wood, where 'the hounds were in couples, stay-
inf their coming, but with a whining accent craving
liberty ; many of them in colour and marks so re-
sembling, that it showed they were of one kind. The
huntsmen handsomely attired in their green liveries,
as though they were children of summer, with staves
in their hands to beat the guiltless earth, when the
hounds were at a fault ; and with horns about their
necks, to sound an alarm upon a silly fugitive ; the
hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the
stag thought it better to trust to the nimbleness of
his feet than to the slender fortification of his lodg-
ing ; but even his feet betrayed him ; for, howsoever
they went, they themselves uttered themselves to the
scent of their enemies, who, one taking it of another,
and sometimes believing the wind's advertisements,
sometimes the view of (their faithful counsellors)
the huntsmen, with open mouths, then denounced
war, when the war was already begun. Their cry
being composed of so well-sorted mouths, that any
man would perceive therein some kind of propor-
tion, but the skilful woodmen did find a music.
Then delight and variety of opinion drew the horse-
men sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds with
voice and horn, kept still, as it were, together. The
wood seemed to conspire with them against his own
citizens, dispei-sing their noise through all his quarters ;
and even the nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of
Narcissus, and became a hunter. But the stag was
in the end so hotly pursued, that, leaving his flight,
he was driven to make courage of despair ; and so
turning his head, made the hounds, with change of
speech, to testify that he was at a bay : as if from hot
pursuit of their enemy, they were suddenly come to a
parley.
l^Praue of Poetry.']
The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth
you of the particularities, as well of the tediousness
of the way, as of the pleasant lodging you shall have
when your journey is ended, as of the many bye-turn-
ings that may divert you from your way ; but this is
to no man, but to him that will read him, and read
him with attentive studious painfulness ; which con-
stant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed
half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden
to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly,
learned men have learnedly thought, that where once
reason hath so much overmastered passion, as that
the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light
each man hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's
book ; since in nature we know it is well to do well,
and what is well and what is evil, although not in the
words of art which philosophers bestow upon us ; for
out of natural conceit the philosophers drew it. But
to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved
\ with desire to know, ' hoc opus hie labor est'^ — [' this is
the grand difficulty.']
Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human,
and according to the human conceit) is our poet the
monarch. For he doth not only show the waj-, but
giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice
anj' rnan to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if 3'our jour-
ney should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first,
give you a cluster of grapes ; that, full of that taste,
you may long to pass farther. He begiimeth not with
obscure definitions ; which must blur the margin with
interpretations, and load the memory with doubtful-
ness ; but he cometh to you with words set in delight-
ful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared
for, the well enchantxg skill of music ; and with a
tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which
holdeth children from play, and old men from the
chimney comer ; and pretending no more, doth intend
the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue ;
even as the child is often brought to take most whole-
some things, by hiding them in sucli other as have a
pleasant taste ; which, if one should begin to tell them
the nature of the aloes or rhubarbarum they should
receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears
than their mouth. So is it in men (most of whom
are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in
their graves). Glad they will be to hear the tales of
Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, jEneas ; .and hearing them,
must needs hear the right description of wisdom,
valour, and justice ; which, if they had been barely
(that is to say, philosophical!}') set out, the^ would
swear they be brought to school again.
LORD BURLEIGH.
Another of the ftivourites of Queen Elizabeth was
■William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, wbj, for forty
years, ably and faithfully served lier in the capa-
city of secretary of state. He died in 1598, at the
age of seventy-six. As a minister, this celebrated
individual was distinguished for wariness, appli-
cation, sagacity, calmness, and a degree of close-
ness which sometimes degenerated into hypocrisy.
Most of these qualities character'sed also what is,
properly speaking, his sole literary production;
namely, Precepts or Directions for the Well Ordering
and Carriage of a Man's Life. These precepts were
addressed to his son, Eobert Cecil, afterwards Earl
of Salisbury. Some of them are here subjoined.
[Choice of a Wife.]
WTien it shall please God to bring thee to man's
estate, use great providence and circumspection in
choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all
thy future good or evil. And it is an action of life,
like unto a stratagem of war ; wherein a man can err
but once. If thy estate be good, match near home
and at leisure ; if weak, far off and quickly. Inquire
diligently of her disposition, and how her parents have
been inclinedl in their youth. Let her not be poor,
how generous soever. For a man can bu}' notliing in
the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and
uncomely creature altogether for wealth ; for it will
cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee. Neither
make choice of a dwarf, or a fool ; for, by the one thou
shalt beget a race of pigmies ; the other will be thy
continual disgrace, and it will yirke thee to hear her
talk. For thou shalt fiiid it, to thj' great grief, that
there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool. .
[Domestic Economy.']
And touching the guiding of thy house, let thy
hospitality be moderate, and, according to the means
of thy estate, rather plentiful than sparing, but not
costly. For I never knew any man grow poor bv keep-
ing an orderly table. But some consume themselves
through secret vices, and their hospitality bears the
blame. But banish swinish drunkards out of thine
house, which is a vice impairing health, consuming
much, and makes no show. I never heard praise
ascribed to the drunkard, but for the well-bearing oi
his drink ; which is a better commendation for a
brewer's horse or a drayman, than for either a gentle-
man or a serving-man. Beware thou spend not above
three of four parts of thy revenues ; nor above a third
part of tliat in thy house. For the other two parts
will do no more than defray thy extraordinaries, which
2.3 1
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
KICIlAUn IIOOKEK.
always surmount the ordinary by much ; othenrise
thou shalt live like a rich beggar, in continual want.
And the needy man can never live happily nor con-
Vctedly. For every disaster makes him ready to
mortgage or sell. AJid that gentleman, who sells an
acre of land, sells an ounce of credit. For gentility
is nothing else but ancient riches. So that if the
foundation shall at any time sink, the building must
needs follow.
[Education of Cldldrcn.']
Bring thy children up in learning and obedience,
yet without outward austerity. Praise them openly,
leprehend them secretly. Give them good countenance
and convenient maintenance according to thy ability,
otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and what
portion thou shalt leave tliem at thy death, they will
thank death for it, and not thee. .\nd I am per-
suaded that the foolish cockering of some parents, and
the over-stem carriage of others, causeth more men
and women to take ill courses, than their o^m vicious
inclinations. !Marry thy daughters in time, lest they
marry themselves. And suffer not thy sons to pass
the Alps ; for they shall leani nothing there but
pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they
get a few broken languages, that shall profit them
nothing more than to have one meat seiwed in divers
dishes. Neither, by my consent, shalt thou train them
up in wars ; for he that sets up his rest to live by
that profession, can hardly be an honest man or a good
Christian. Besides, it is a science no lona^er in request
than use ; ^or soldiers in peace are like chimneys
in summer
[Suretyship and Borroicing.']
Beware of suretyship for thy best friends. He that
payeth another man's debts, seeketh his own decay.
But, if thou canst not otherwise choose, rather lend
thy money thyself upon good bonds, although thou
borrow it. So shalt thou secure thyself, and pleasure
thy friend. Neither borrow money of a neighbour, or
a friend, but of a stranger, where, paying for it, thou
shalt hear no more of it. Otherwise thou shalt eclipse
thy credit, lose thy freedom, and yet pay as dear as
to another. But in borrowing of money, be precious
of thy word ; for he that hath care of keeping days of
payment, is lord of another man's purse.
RICHARD HOOKER.
One of the earliest, and also one of the most
distinguished prose writers of this period, was Rich-
ard Hooker, a learned and gifted theologian, born
of poor but respectable parents near Exeter, about
the year 1553. At school he displayed so much
aptitude for learning, and gentleness of disposition,
that, having been recommended to Jewel, bishop
of Salisbury, he was taken under the care of that
prelate, who, after a satisfactory examination into
his merits, sent him to Oxford, and contributed to
his support. At the university. Hooker studied
■with great ardour and success, and became much
respected for modesty, prudence, and piety. After
Jewel's death, he was patronised by Sandys, bishop
of London, who sent his son to Oxford to enjoy
the benefit of Hooker's instructions. Another
of his pupils at this time was George Cranmer, a
grand-nephew of the famous archbishop of that
name ; and with both these yoiuig men he formed a
close and enduring friendship. In 1579, his skill in
the oriental languages led to his temporary appoint-
ment as deputy-professor of Hebrew ; and two years
later, he entered into holy orders. Not long after
this he bad the misfortune to be entrapped into a
marriage, which proved a constant source of aimo)--
ance to him during life. The ("irt'unistances of this
union, wliich place in a strong light tlie simple and
unsuspecting nature of the niiui, v.ere tliesc. I laving
been appointed to preach at r'aul's Cross in London,
he put up at a house set apart for tlie reception of
the jireachers. On his arrival there from Oxford,
he was wet and weary, but received so much kind-
1^
tr/|..^,^;y'^v^^*
Richard Hooker.
ness and attention from the hostess, that, according
to his biographer( Walton), in his excess of gratitude,
' lie thought himself bound in conscience to believe
all that she said. So tlie good man came to be per-
suaded by her tliat lie was a man of a tender consti-
tution ; and that it was best for him to have a wife,
that might prove a nurse to him — sucli an one as
might both prolong his life, and make it more com-
fortable ; and such an one she could and would pro-
vide for him, if he thought fit to marry.' Hooker,
little apt to suspect in others that guile of wliich he
himself was so entirely free, became the dupe of this
woman, authorising her to select a wife for him, and
promising to marry whomsoever she sliould chix)se.
The wife she provided was her own daughter,
describe<l as 'a silly, clownish woman, and withal a
mere Xantippe,' whom, liowever, he married accord-
ing to his promise. With this helj)niate he led
but an uncomfortable life, though ajipurently in a
spirit of resignation. When visited by Sandys and
Cranmer at a rectory in Buckinghamshire, to which
he had been presented in 15S4, he was found by
them reading Horace, and tending slieep in the
absence of his servant. In his house they received
little entertainment, except from his conversation ;
and even this, Mrs Hooker did not fail to disturb, by
calling him away to rock the cradle, and by exhibit-
ing such other samples of good manners, as made
them glad to depart on the following morning. In
taking leave, Cranmer expressed liis regret at the
smallness of Hooker's income, and the uncomfortable
state of his domestic affairs; to wliich the worthy
man replied, ' My dear George, if saints liave usually
a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am
none, ouglit not to repine at what my wise Creator
hath ap[)oiiited fur me, but labour (as indeed I do
dail}-) to submit mine to his will, and possess my
soul in patience and peace.' On his return to Lon-
235
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
don, Sandys made a strong appeal to his fatlier in
bclialf\;f iloiikcr, tlie result of which was the ap-
pointment of the meek divine, in 1585, to the office
of master of the Temple. lie accordingly removed
to London, and conunenced his labours as forenoon
preacher. It happened that the office of afternoon
lecturer at the Temple was at this period filled by
AValter Travers, a man of great learning and elo-
quence, but highly Calvinistical in his opinions,
while the views of Hooker, on the other hand, both
on cliurch government and on points of theologv,
were of a moderate cast. The consequence was,
that the doctrines delivered from the pulpit varied
very much in their character, according to the
preacher from whom they proceeded. Indeed, the
two orators sometimes preached avowedly in oppo-
sition to each other— a circumstance which gave
occasion to the remark, that ' the forenoon sermons
spoke Canterbury, and the afternoon Geneva.' This
disputation, though conducted with good temper,
excited so much attention, that Archbishop Whitgift
suspended Travers from preaching. There ensued
between him and Hooker a printed controversy,
which was found so disagreeable by the latter, that
he strongly expressed to the arcHibisliop his wish to
retire into the country, where he might be ]>ermitted
to live in peace, and have leisure to finish his treatise
Of the Laics of Ecclesiastical Polity, already begun.
A letter which he wrote to the archbishop on this
' occasion deserves to be quoted, as showing not only
that peacefulness of temper which adhered to him
through life, but likewise the object that his great
■work was intended to accomplish. It is as follows : —
' My lord — When I lost the freedom of my cell,
which was my college, yet I fouud some degree of it
in my quiet country parsonage. But I am weary of
the noise and oppositions of this place ; and, indeed,
God and nature did not intend me for contentions,
but for study and quietness. And, my lord, my par-
ticular contests here with Mr Travers have proved the
liiore unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a
good man ; and that belief hath occasioned me to
examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions.
And to satisfy that, I have consulted the holy Scrip-
ture, and other laws, both human and divine, whether
the conscience of him and others of his judgment
j)Ught to be so far complied with by us as to alter our
frame of church government, our manner of God's
worship, our praising and praying to him, and our
established ceremonies, as often as their tender con-
sciences shall require us. And in this examination
I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a
treatise in which I intend the satisfaction of others,
by a demonstration of the reasonableness of our laws
of ecclesiastical polity. But, my lord, I shall never
be able to finish what I have begun, unless I be re-
moved into some quiet parsonage, where I may see
God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and
eat my own bread in peace and privacy : a place
where I may, without disturbance, meditate my ap-
proaching mortality, and that great account which all
flesh must give at the last day to the God of all
spirits.'
In consequence of this appeal, Hooker was pre-
sented, in 1591, to the rectory of Boscomb, in Wilt-
shire, wliere he finished four books of his treatise,
which were printed in 1594. Queen Elizabeth hav-
ing in the following year presented him to the rec-
tory of Bishop's-Bourne, in Kent, he removed to tliat
place, where the remainder of liis life was spent in
tlie faithful discliarge of the duties of his office.
Here he wrote the fifth book, published in 1597;
and finislied other three, which did not appear till
after his death. This event took jdace in Novem-
ber 1600. A few days previously, his house was
robbed, and when the fact was mentioned to him, he
anxiouslj' inquired whether his books and ]iapers
were safe. The answer being in the affirmative, he
exclaimed, ' Then it matters not, for no other Itjss
can trouble me.'
Hooker's treatise on ' Ecclesiastical Polity' displays
an astonishing amount of learning, sagacity, and
industry ; and is so excellently written, that, accord-
ing to the judgment of Lowth, the author has, in
correctness, propriety, and purity of English style,
hardly been surpassed, or even equalled, by anj- of
liis successors. This praise is unquestionably too
high ; for, as Dr Drake has observed, ' though tlie
words, for the most part, are well chosen and pure,
the arrangement of them into sentences is intricate
and harsh, and formed almost exclusively on the
idiom and construction of the Latin. Much strengtii
and vigour are derived from this adoption, but per-
spicuity, sweetness, and ease, are too generally sac-
rificed. There is, notwithstanding these usual fea-
tures of his composition, an occasional simjilicity in
his pages, both of style and sentiment, which truly
charms.'* Dr Drake refers to the following sentence,
with which the preface to the 'Ecclesiastical Polity'
is opened, as a striking instance of that elaborate
collocation which, founded on the structure of a
language widely different from our own, was the
fashion of the age of Elizabeth. ' Though for no other
cause, yet for this, that posterity may know we
have not loosely, through silence, permitted things
to pass away as in a dream, there shall be, for men's
information, extant this much concerning the pre-
sent state of the church of God established amongst
us, and their careful endeavours which would have
upheld the same.'
The argument against the Puritans is conducted
by Hooker with rare moderation and candour, and
certainly the cliurch of England has never had a
more powerful defender. Tlie work is not to be
regarded simply as a theological treatise ; it is still
referred to as a great authority upon the whole range
of moral and political principles. It also bears a
value as the first publication in the English lan-
guage which observed a strict methodical arrange-
ment, and presented a train of clear logical reasoning.
As specimens of the body of the work, several
extracts are here subjoined : —
[Scripture and the Law of Natii.re.']
What the Scripture purjioseth, the same in all
points it doth perforin. Howheit, that here we swerve
not in judgment, one thing especially we must ob-
serve; namely, that the absolute perfection of Scripture
is seen by relation unto that end whereto it tendeth.
And even hereby it conieth to pass, that, first, such as
imagine the general and main drift of the body of
sacred Scripture not to be so large as it is, nor that
God did thereby intend to deliver, as in truth he doth,
a full instruction in all things unto salvation neces-
sary, the knowledge whereof man by nature could not
otherwise in this life attain unto ; they are by this
very mean induced, either still to look for new reve-
lations from heaven, or else dangerously to add to the
Avord of God uncertain tradition, that so the doctrine
of man's salvation may be complete ; which doctrine
we constantly hold in all respects, without any such
things added, to be so complete, that we utterly refuse
as much as once to acquaint ourselves with anything
further. Whatsoever, to make up the doctrine of
man's salvation, is added as in supply of the Scrip-
ture's insufficiency, we reject it ; Scripture, purj)osing
this, hath perfectly and fully done it. Again, the
* Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, &c., i. 10.
236
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
RICHARD HOOKER.
scope and purpose of God in delivering the lioly Scrip-
ture, such as do take more largely than behoveth,
thev, on the contrary, side-racking and stretching it
further than by him was meant, are drawTi into sun-
dry as great inconveuiences. They, pretending the
Scripture's perfection, infer thereupon, that in Scrip-
ture all things lawful to be done must needs be con-
tained. We count those things perfect which want
nothing requisite for the end whereto they were in-
stituted. As, therefore, God created every part and
particle of man exactly perfect — that is to say, in all
points sutncient unto that use for which he appointed
it — so the Scripture, yea, every sentence thereof, is
perfect, and wanteth nothing requisite unto that pur-
pose for which God delivered the same. So that, if here-
upon we conclude, that because the Scripture is per-
fect, therefore all things lawful to be done are com-
prehended in the Scripture ; we may even as well
conclude so of every sentence, as of the whole sum
and body thereof, unless we first of all prove that it
was the drift, scope, and purpose of Almighty God in
holy Scripture to comprise all things which man may
practise. But admit this, and mark, I beseech you,
what would follow. God, in delivering Scripture to
his church, should clean have abrogated among them
the Law of Nature, which is an infallible knowledge
imprinted in the minds of all the children of men,
whereby bcth general principles for directing of human
actions are comprehended, and conclusions derived
from them ; upon which conclusions groweth in parti-
Ci;larity the choice of good and evil in the daily aflairs
of this life. Admit this, and what shall the Scripture
be but a snare and a torment to weak consciences,
filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities,
doubts insoluble, and extreme despairs? Not that the
Scripture itself doth cause any such thing (for it
tendeth to the clean contrary, and the fruit thereof
is resolute assurance and certainty in that it teacheth) ;
but the necessities of this life urging men to do that
which the light of nature, common discretion, and
judgment of itself directeth them unto ; on the other
side, this doctrine teaching them that so to do were to
sin against their own souls, and that they put forth
their hands to iniquity, whatsoever they go about, and
have not first the sacred Scripture of God for direc-
tion ; how can it choose but bring the simple a thou-
sand times to their wits' end ; how can it choose but
vex and amaze them ? For in every action of common
life, to find out some sentence clearly and infallibly
setting before our eyes what we ought to do (seem we
in Scripture never so expert), would trouble us more
than we are aware. In weak and tender minds, we
little know what misery this strict opinion would
breed, besides the stops it would make in the whole
course of all men's lives and actions. jNIake all things
sin which we do by direction of nature's light, and by
the rule of common discretion, without thinking at
all upon Scripture ; admit this position, and parents
shall cause their children to sin, as oft as they cause
them to do anything, before they come to years of
capacity, and be ripe for knowledge in the Scripture.
Admit this, and it shall not be with masters as it was
with him in the gospel ; but sen-ants being com-
manded to go, shall stand still till they have their
errand warranted unto them by Scripture. Which, as
it standeth with Christian duty in some cases, so in
common affairs to require it were most unfit.
[Zeal and Fear in JieliffionJ]
Two affections there are, the forces whereof, as they
bear the greater or lesser sway in man's heart, frame
accordingly to the stamp and character of his religion —
the one zeal, the other fear. Zeal, unless it be rightly
guided, when it endeavoureth most busily to please
God, forceth upon him those unseasonable offices which
please him not. For which cause, if they who this
way swerve be compared with such sincere, sound, and
discreet as Abraham was in matter of religion, the
service of the one is like unto flattery, the other like
the faithful sedulity of friendship. Zeal, except it
be ordered aright, when it bendeth itself unto conflict
with all things either indeed, or but imagined to be,
opposite unto religion, useth the razor many times
with such eagerness, that the very life of religion itself
is thereby hazarded ; through hatred of tares the com in
the field of God is plucked up. So that zeal needeth both
ways a sober guide. Fear, on the other side, if it have
not the light of true understanding concerning God,
wherewith to be moderated, breeduth likewise super-
stition. It is therefore dangerous that, in things divine,
we should work too much upon the spur either of zeal
or fear. Fear is a good solicitor to devotion. Ilowbeit,
sith fear in this kind doth grow from an apprehension
of Deity endued with irresistible power to hurt, and
is, of all affections (anger excepted), the unaptest to
admit any conference with reason, for which cause the
wise man doth say of fear, that it is a betrayer of the
forces of reasonable understanding ; therefore, except
men know beforehand what manner of service pleaseth
God, while they are fearful they try all things which
fancy offereth. ^lany there are who never think on
God but when they are in extremity of fear ; and then,
because what to think, or what to do, they are uncer-
tain ; perplexity not suffering them to be idle, they
think and do, as it were in a phrensy, they know not
what. Superstition neither knoweth the right kind,
nor observeth the due measure, of actions belonging
to the service of God, but is always joined with a
wrong opinion touching things divine. Superstition
is, when things are either abhorred or observed, with
a zealous or fearful, but erroneous relation to God.
By means whereof, the superstitious do sometimes
serve, though the true God, yet with needless offices,
and defraud him of duties necessary, sometimes load
others than him with such honours as properly are his.
[^Defence of Reason.l
But so it is, the name of the light of nature 1.5 made
hateful with men ; the star of reason and learning,
and all other such like helps, beginneth no otherwise
to be thought of, than if it were an unlucky comet ;
or as if God had so accursed it, that it should never
shine or give light in things concerning our duty any
way towards him, but be esteemed as that star in the
revelation, called Wormwood, which, being fallen
from heaven, maketh rivers and waters in which it
falleth so bitter, that men tasting them die thereof.
A number there are who think they cannot admire as
they ought the power and authority of the word of
God, if in things divine they should attribute any
force to man's reason ; for which cause they never use
reason so willingly as to disgrace reason. Their usual
and common discourses are unto this effect. First,
' the natural man perceiveth not the things of the
spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him ;
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned,' kc. kc. By these and the like disputes, an
opinion hath spread itself very far in the world ; as if
the way to be ripe in faith, were to be raw in wit and
judgment ; as if reason were an enemy unto religion,
childish simplicity the mother of ghostly and divine
wisdom. « « «
To our purpose, it is sufficient that whosoever doth
sen'e, honour, and obey God, whosoever believeth in
him, that man would no more do this than innocents
and infants do but for the light of natural reason that
shineth in him, and maketh him apt to apprehend
those things of God, which being by grace discovered,
are effectual to persuade reasonable minds, and none
other, that honour, obedience, and credit, belong
237
FROM 1558
CYCLOPJEDIA OF
TO 1649.
aright unto God. No man cometh unto God to offer
him sacrifice, to pour out supplications and prayers
before him, or to do him any service, which doth not
first believe him both to be, and to be a rewarder of
them who in such sort seek unto him. Let men be
tau"-ht this, either by revelation from heaven, or by
instruction upon earth ; by labour, study, and medi-
tation, or by the only secret inspiration of the Holy
Ghost ; whatsoever the mean be they know it by, if
the knowledge "thereof were possible without discourse
of natural reason, why should none be found capable
thereof but only men ; nor men till such time as they
come unto ripe and full ability to work by reasonable
understanding ? The whole drift of the Scripture of
God, what is it, but only to teach theology 1 Theology,
what is it, but the science of things divine? What
science can be attained unto, without the help of
natural discourse and reason ? Judge you of that
which I speak, saith the apostle. In vain it were to
speak anything of God, but that by reason men are
able somewhat to judge of that they hear, and by dis-
course to discern how consonant it is to truth. Scrip-
ture, indeed, teacheth things above nature, things
which our reason by itself could not reach unto. Yet
those also we believe, knowing by reason that the
Scripture is the word of God. * * The thing
we have handled according to the question moved
about it, which question is, whether the light of rea-
son be so pernicious, that, in devising laws for the
church, men ought not by it to search what may be
fit and convenient 1 For this cause, therefore, we
have endeavoured to make it appear, how, in the na-
ture of reason itself, there is no impediment, but that
ihe self-same spirit which revealcth the things that
Vjod hath set down in his law, may also be thought to
aid and direct men in finding out, by the light of rea-
son, what laws are expedient to be made for the guid-
ing of his church, over and besides them that are in
Scripture.
{^Cliurck Music.']
Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument
or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a
due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding
is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in
that very part of man which is most divine, that some
have been thereby' induced to think that the soul itself
by nature is, or hath in it, harmony ; a thing which
delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all states ; a thing
as seasonable in grief as in joy ; as decent, being added
unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as
ieing used when men most sequester themselves from
action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility
which music hath to express and represent to the
mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean,
the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps
and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of
all passions whereunto the mind is subject ; yea, so
to imitate them, that, whether it resemble unto us the
same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean
contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one con-
firmed, than changed and led away by the other. In
harmony, the very image and character even of vir-
tue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with
their resemblances, and brought by having them often
iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which
cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent
than some kinds of harmony ; than some, nothing
more strong and potent unto good. And that there is
such a difference of one kind from another, we need
no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are
at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and
heaviness, of some more mollified and softened in
mind ; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another
to move and stir our affections ; there is that draweth
V) a marvellous grave aud sober mediocrity ; there ia I
also that carrieth, as it were, into ecstacies, filling the
mind with a heavenly joy, and for the time in a
manner severing it from the body ; so that, although
we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or
matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in
due sort, and carried from the car to the spiritual
faculties of our souls, is, by a native puissance and
etficacy, greatly available to bring to a perfect temper
whatsoever is there troubled ; apt as well to quicken
the spirits as to allay that which is too eager ; sove-
reign against melancholy and despair; forcible to
draw forth tears of devotion, if the mind be such as
can yield them ; able both to move and to moderate
all affections. The prophet David having, therefore,
singular knowledge, not in poetry alone, but in music
also, judged them both to be things most necessary for
the house of God, left behind him to that puq)ose a
number of divinely-indited poems, and was further
the author of adding unto poetry melody in public
prayer ; melody, both vocal and instrumental, for the
raising up of men's hearts, and the sweetening of their
affections towards God. In which considerations the
church of Christ doth likewise at this present day
retain it as an ornament to God's service, and an help
to our o^vn devotion. They which, under pretence of
the law ceremonial abrogated, require the abrogation
of instrumental music, approving, nevertheless, the
use of vocal melody to remain, must show some rea-
son wherefore the one should be thought a legal cere-
mony, and not the other. In church music, curiosity
or ostentation of art, wanton, or light, or unsuitable
harmony, such as only pleaseth the ear, and doth not
naturally serve to the verj* kind and degree of those
impressions which the matter that goeth with it
leaveth, or is apt to leave, in men's minds, doth rather
blemish and disgrace that we do, than add either
beauty or furtherance unto it. On the other side, the
faults prevented, the force and efficacy of the thing
itself, when it drowneth not utterly, but fitly suiteth
with matter altogether sounding to the praise of God,
is in truth most admirable, and doth much edify, if
not the understanding, because it teacheth not, yet
surely the affection, because therein it worketh much.
They must have hearts very Ary and tough, from whom
the melody of the psalms doth not sometime draw
that wherein a mind religiously affected delighteth.
LORD BACON.
But the fame of Hooker, as indeed of all his con-
temporaries, is outshone by that of the illustrious
Lord Bacox. Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, lord-keeper of the great seal, was born in Lon-
don on the 22d of January 1561, and in childhood
displayed such vivacity of intellect and sedateness of
behaviour, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him
her young lord-keeper. At the age of thirteen, he was
sent to Cambridge, where, so early as his sixteenth
year, he became disgusted with the Aristotelian phi-
losophy, which then held unquestioned swaj' in the
great English schools of learning. This dislike of the
philosophy of Aristotle, as Bacon himself declared
to his secretary Dr Kawlc}', he fell into ' not for the
worthlessness of the autlior, to whom he would ever
ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness
of the way ; being a philosophy, as his lordship used
to say, only strong for disputations and contentions,
but barren of the production of works for the benefit
of the life of man.'* After spending about four years
at Cambridge, he travelled in France, his acute
observations in wliich country were afterwards pub-
lished in a work entitled Of the State of Europe.
By the sudden death of his father in 1579, he was
compelled to return hastily to England, and engage
* Rawley's Life of Racon.
238
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD BACON.
in some profitable occupation. After in vain soli-
citing his uncle, Lord Burleigli, to procure for him
such a provision from jrovcrimient as niight allow
him to devote his time to literature and jihilosophy,
he spent several years in the study of the law.
While engaged in practice as a barrister, however,
he did not forget philosophy, as it appears that he
sketched at an early period of life his great work
called The Instauiation of the Sciences. In 1590, he
obtained the post of Counsel Extraordinary to the
queen ; and three j-ears afterwards, sat in parliament
for the county of Middlesex. As an orator, lie is
highly extolled by Ben Jonson. In one of his
speeches, he distinguished himself by taking the
popular side in a question respecting some large sub-
sidies demanded by the court ; but finding that he
had given great ofience to her majesty, he at once
altered his tone, and condescended to apologise witli
that servility which unhappily appeareil in too many
of his subsequent actions. To Lord Burleigh and
his son Robert Cecil, Bacon continued to crouch in
the hope of advancement, till at length, finding
himself disappointed in that quarter, he attached
himself to Burleigh's rival, Essex, who, with the
utmost ardour of a generous friendship, endeavoured
to procure for him, in 1594, the vacant office of
attorney-general. In this attempt he was defeated,
through the influence of the Cecils, who were jealous
of both him and his friend ; but he in some de-
gree soothed Bacon's disappointment by presenting to
him an estate at Twickenliani, worth two thousand
pounds. It is painful to relate in what manner
Bacon repaid such benefits. "When Essex was brought
to trial for a conspiracy against the queen, the friend
whom he had so largely obliged and confided in, not
only deserted him in the hour of need, but unneces-
sarily appeared as counsel against him, and by every
art and distorting ingenuity of a pleader, endeavoured
to magnify his crimes. He complied, moreover,
after tlie earl's execution, with the queen's request
that he would write A Dcchiratiim of the I'nictices
and Treasons Attempted and Committed hij Robert, Earl
of Essex, which was printed by autliDrity. Into
this conduct, which indicates a lamentable want of
high moral principle, courage, and self-respect,
Bacon was in some measure led by pecuniary difQ-
culties, into which his improvident and ostentatious
habits, coupled with the relative inadequacy of his
revenues, had plunged him. By maintaining himself
in the good gracts of the court, he hoped to secure
that professional advancement which would not only
fill his empty coflt-rs, but gratify those ambitious
longings which had arisen in his mind. But tempta-
tions of this sort, though they may palliate, can
never excuse siich iiiunoralities as those whii-li
Bacon on this and future occasions showed himself
capable of.
After the accession of .Tames, the fortunes of
Bacon began to improve. He was knighted in 1603,
and, in subsequent years, oV'tained successively the
otfices of king's counsel, solicitor-general, judge of
the ]\rarshalsea court, and attorney-general. This
last ajipointment he received in 1613. In the execu-
tion of his duties, he did not scruple to lend himself
to the most arbitrary measures of the court, and
even assisted in an attemiit to extort from an old
clerg3mian, of tlie name of I'eacham, a confession
of treason, by torturing him on the rack.
Although his income had now been greatly en-
larged by the emoluments of office and a marriage
with the daughter of a wealthy alderman, liis extra-
vagance, and that of his servants, which he seems to
have been too good-natured to check, eontim:ed
to keep him in difficulties. lie cringed before tlie
king and his favourite Villiers; and at length, in
1619, reached the sunnnit of his ambition, by being
created Lord High Chancellor of England, and
Baron Verulam. This latter title gave place in the
following year to that of Viscount St Albans. As
chancellor, it cannot be concealed that, both in his
political and judicial capacities, he grossly deserted
his duty. Not only did he suffer Villiers to inter-
fere with his decisions as a judge, but, by accepting
numerous presents or bribes from suitors, gave
occasion, in 1621, to a parliamentary inquir_v,
which ended in his condenmatii n and disgrace. He
fully confessed the twenty-three articles of cor-
ruption which were laid to his charge ; and when
waited on by a committee of the House of Lords,
appointed to inquire whether the confession was
subscribed by himself, he answered, ' It is my act,
my hand, my heart : I beseech your lordships to be
merciful to a broken reed.' Banished from public
life, he had now ample leisure to attend to his i)hilo,-
sophical and literary pursuits. Yet, even while
he was engaged in business, these had not been
neglected. In 1597, he published the first edition of
his Essays, which were afterwards greatly eidarged.
These, as he himself says of them, ' come home to
men's business and bosoms ; and, like the late new
halfpence, tlie pieces are small, and the silver is
good.' From the generally interesting nature of the
subjects of the 'Essays,' and the excellence of their
style, this work immediately acquired great popu-
larity, and to the present day continues the most
generally read of all the author's productions. • iL
is also,' to use the words of I\Ir Dugald Ste\''art,
'one of those where the superiority of his geniu.s
appears to the greatest advantage, the novelty sind
depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief
from the triteness of his subject. It may be read
from beginning to end in a few hours, and jx't. after
the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in
it something overlooked before. This, indeed, is a
cliaracteristie of all Bacon's writings, and is only to
be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they
furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic
activity they impart to our torpid faculties."* In
* First Preliminary Dissertatiim to ' Encyclnpacdia Uritan
nica,' p. 3G, seventh edition,
239
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1G49.
1605, he published another work, which still con-
tinues to be extensively perused; it is entitled Of
the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine
and Human. This vohime, which was afterwards
enlarged and published in the Latin language, with
the title De Augmentis Scientiarum, constitutes the
first part of liis great work called Instaiiratio Scien-
tiamm, or the Instauration of the Sciences. The second
part, entitled Is'ovum Organum, is that on which,
chief!}', his high reputation as a j^liilosopher is
grounded, and on the composition of which he be-
stowed most labour. It is written in Latin, and
appeared in 1620. In the first part of the ' Advance-
ment of Learning, after considering the excellence
of knowledge and the means of disseminating it,
togetlier with w'.at had already been done for its
advancement, and what omitted, he proceeds to
divide it into tlie tliree brandies of history, poetrj',
and philosophy ; these having reference to what he
considers ' tlie three parts of man's understanding' —
memory, imagination, and reason. The concluding
portion of tlie volume relates to revealed religion.
The ' Novum Organum,' which, as already mentioned,
is the second and most important part of the ' In-
stauration of the Sciences,' consists of aphorisms, the
first of M'hich furnislies a key to the author's leading
doctrines : ' Man, who is the servant and interpreter
of nature, can act and understand no further than
he has, either in operation or in contemplation, ob-
served of the method and order of nature.' His new
method — novum organum — of employing the un-
derstanding in adding to liuman knowledge, is fully
expounded in this work, the following translated
extracts from which will make manifest what tlie
reformation was wliich he sought to accomplish.
After alluding to the little aid which the useful
arts had derived from science, and the small improve-
ment which science had received from practical men,
he proceeds — ' But whence can arise such vagueness
and sterility in all the ph3-sical systems which have
hitherto existed in the world ? It is not certainly from
anything in nature itself; for the steadiness and
regularity of the laws by which it is governed, clearly
mark them out as objects of certain and precise
knowledge. Neither can it arise from any want of
ability in those who have pursued such inquiries,
many of whom have been men of the highest talent
and genius of the ages in which they lived ; and it
can therefore arise from nothing else but the per-
verseness and insufficiency of the methods that have
been pursued. Men have sought to make a world
from their own conceptions, and to draw from their
own minds all the materials which they employed ;
but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted expe-
rience and observation, they would have had facts,
and not opinions, to reason about, and might have
ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws
which govern the material world.' ' As things
are at present conducted, a sudden transition is
niaile from sensible objects and particular facts to
gener.al i)ropositions, wliich are accounted principles,
an<l round which, as round so many fixed poles,
disputation and argument continually revolve. From
the propositions thus hastily assumed, all things are
derived, by a process compendious and precipitate,
ill suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated
to debate. The way that promises success is the
reverse of this. It requires that we sliould generalise
slowly, going from particular things to those which
are but one step more general ; from those to others
of still greater extent, and so on to such as are uni-
versal. By such means we may liope to arrive at
principles, not vague and obscure, but luminous and
well-defined, such as nature herself will not refuse
to acknowledge.' After describing the causes which
lead the understanding astray in the search after
knowledge — the idoJs^ as he figuratively terms them,
before which it is apt to bow — Bacon, in the second
book of the 'Novum Organum,' goes on systematically
to expound and exemplif)- his method of philosophis-
ing, indicated in the foregoing extracts, and to which
the appellation of the inductive method is applied.
This he does in so masterly a way, that he has earned
with posterity the title of the father of experimental
science. ' The power and compass,' says Professor
Playfair, ' of a mind which could form such a plan
beforehand, and trace not merely the outline, but
many of the most minute ramifications, of sciences
which did not j-et exist, must be an object of admi-
ration to all succeeding ages.' It is true that tlie
inductive method had been both practised and even
cursorily recommended by more than one philo-
sopher prior to Bacon ; but unquestionably he was
the first to unfold it completely, to show its infinite
importance, and to induce the great body of scientific
inquirers to place tliemselves under its guidance. In
another respect, the benefit conferred by Bacon upon
mankind was perhaps still greater. He turned the
attention of philosophers fi'oni speculations and dis-
putes upon questions remote from use, and fixed it
upon inquiries ' productive of works for the benefit
of the life of man.' The Aristotelian philosophy was
barren ; the object of Bacon was ' the amjilification of
the power and kingdom of mankind over the world' —
' the enlargement of the bounds of human empire to
the effecting all things possible' — the augmentation,
by means of science, of the sum of human happiness,
and the alleviation of human suffering. In a word,
he was eminently a utilitarian.
The third part of the 'Instauration of the Sciences,'
entitled Sylva Sylvarum, or History of Nature, is
devoted to the facts and phenomena of natural
science, including original observations made by
Bacon himself, which, though sometimes incorrect,
are useful in exemplifying the inductive method of
searching for truth. The fourth part is called Scula
InteUectus, from its pointing out a succession of steps
by which the understanding may ascend in such
investigations. Other two parts, which the author
projected, were never executed.
Another celebrated publication of Lord Bacon is
his treatise. Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, 1610;
wherein he attempts, generally with more ingenuity
than success, to discover secret meanings in the
mythological fables of antiquity. He wrote also
Felicities of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, a History of
King Henry VII., a philosophical romance called
the Nexu Atlantis, and several minor productions
which it is needless to specify. His letters, too, have
been published.
After retiring from public life. Bacon, though
enjoying an annual income of £2500, continued to
live in so ostentatious and prodigal a style, that, at his
death, in 1626, his debts amounted to upwards of
£22,000. His devotion to science appears to have
been tlie immediate occasion of bringing his earthly
existence to a close. 'While travelling in his carriage
at a time when there was snow on the ground, he
began to consider whether flesh might not be pre-
served by snow as well as by salt. In order to make
the experiment, he alighted at a cottage near High-
gate, bought a hen, and stuffed it with snow. Tliis so
chilled him, that he was unable to return home, but
went to the Earl of Arundel's house in the neighbour-
hood, where his illness was so much increased by the
dampness of a bed into which he was put, that he
died in a few days.* In a letter to the earl, the last
* This account is given by Aubrey, who probiibly obtained it
from Hobbcs, one of Jiacon's intimate fritnds, and afterwards
an acquaintance of Aubrey. — See ' Aubrey's Lives of Kmincnt
240
I'ROSE waiTERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD BACON.
which he wrote, after comparing himself to the elder
Pliny, ' who lost his life by trying an experiment
about the burning of Mount Vesuvius,' he does not
forget to mention his own experiment, which, says
he, ' succeeded excellently.' In liis will, the follow-
Monument of Lord Baoon.
ing strikingly prophetic passage is found : ' Sly
name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to
mine own country after some time is passed over.'
Bacon, like Sidney, Avas a ' warbler of poetic prose.'
No EngUsh writer has surpassed him in fervour and
brilliancy of style, in force of expression, or in rich-
ness and significance of imagery. Keen in dis-
covering analogies where no resemblance is apparent
to common eves, he has sometimes indulged to
excess in the exercise of his talent. Yet. in general,
his comparisons are not less clear and apposite than
full of imagination and meaning. He has treated of
philosophy" witli all tlie splendour, yet none of the
vagueness, of poetry. Sometimes his style possesses
a degree of conciseness very rarely to be found in the
compositions of the Elizabethan age. Of this qua-
lity the last of the subjoined extracts is a notable
illustration.
[Univeifities]
As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the
springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the
grouml, except ic be collected into seme receptacle,
where it mav by union comfort and sustain itself ;
and, for that 'cause, the industry of n.an hath framed
and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools ;
Persons," ii. 227. At pages 222 and 602 of the same volume, we
learn that Hobbes was a favourite with Bacon, ' who was wont
to have him walk with him in his delicate groves, when he did
meditate : and when a notion darted into his lordship's mind,
Mr Ilobbes was presently to write it down, and his lordship
was wont to say that he did it better than any one else about
him ; for that many times, when he read their notes, he scarce
understood what they writ, because they understood it not
clearly themselves.' ' lie assisted his lordship in translating
•everal of his essays into Latin.'
which men have accustomed likevrise to beautify and
adoni with accomplishments of magnificence and
state, as well as of use and necessity ; so knowledge,
whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring
from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to
oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions,
conferences, and places appointed, as universities,
colleges, and schools, for the receipt and comforting
the ,^ame.
[^Lihi-aries.]
Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the
ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without
delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
[Governmmt.]
In Orpheus's theatre, all beasts and birds assembled ;
and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey,
some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably to-
gether, listening unto the airs and accords of the harp ;
tlie sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned
by some louder noise, but ever}' beast returned to his
o'wTt nature ; wherein is aptly described the nature
and condition of men, who are full of savage and
unreclaimeddesiresofprofit, of lust, of revenge : which,
as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to reli-
gion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion
of books, of 'sermons, of harangues, so long is society
and peace maintained ; but if these instruments be
silent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible,
all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.
[Prosperity and Adversity.']
The virtue of prosperity is temperance ; the virtue
of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity is the blessing of
the Old Testament ; adversity is the blessing of the
New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the
clearer revelation of God"s favour. Yet even in the
Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you
siiall hear as many hearselike airs as carols ; and the
pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in de-
scribing the afilictions of Job than the felicities of
Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and
distastes ; and adversity is not without comforts and
hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries, it
is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and
solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy
work upon a lightsome ground ; judge therefore of the
pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Cer-
tainly, virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant
where they are incensed or crushed : for prosperity
doth best "discover vice, but adversity doth best dis-
cover virtue.
\_Friendship.'\
It had been hard for him that spake it, to have put
more truth and untruth together in few words, than
in that speech, ' Whosoever is delighted in solitude,
is either a wild beast or a god ;' for it is most true,
that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards
society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage
beast ; but it is most untrue, that it should have any
character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed,
not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love
and desire to sequester a man's self for a hijrher con-
versation : such as is found to have been falsely and
feignedly in some of the heathens — as Epimenides,
the Candian ; Numa, the Pioman ; i;mpe<h)clcs, the
Sicilian ; and Apollonius, of Tyana ; and truly, and
really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers
of the church. But little do men perceive what soli-
tude is, and how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not
company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and
241
17
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
talk but a tiukling cymbal where there is no love.
The Latin adage niccteth with it a little : ' Magna
ci vitas, magna solitudo' — [' Great city, great soli-
tude'] ; because in a great to\ni friends are scattered,
80 that there is not that fellowship, for the most part,
which is in less neighbourhoods ; but we may go
farther, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and
miserable solitude to want true friends, without which
the world is but- a wilderness ; and, even in this scene
also of solitude, whosoever, in the frame of his nature
and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of
the beast, and not from humanity.
A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and dis-
charge of the fulness of the heart, which passions of
all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of
stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in
the body, and it is not mucli otherwise in the mind :
you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the
spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for
the brain ; but no receipt openeth the heart but a
true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joj's, fears,
hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon
the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or
confession.
It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great
kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friend-
ship whereof we speak- — so great, as they purchase it
many times at the hazard of tlieir own safety and
greatness : for princes, in regard of the distance of
their fortune from that of their subjects and servants,
cannot gather this fruit, except, to make themselves
capable thereof, they raise some persons to be, as it
were, companions, and almost equals to themselves,
■which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The
modem languages give unto such persons the name
of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace
or conversation ; but the Roman name attainpth the
true use and cause thereof, naming them ' participes
curarum' [' participators in cares'] ; for it is that which
tieth the knot : and we see plainly that this hath been
done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but
by the wsest and most politic that ever reigned, who
have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their
servants, whom both themselves have called friends,
and allowed others likewise to call them in the same
manner, using the word which is received between
private men.
It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth
of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy — namely,
that he would communicate his secrets ^vith none ;
and, least of all, those secrets which troubled him
most. Whereupon he goeth on, and saith, that towards
his latter time, that closeness did impair and a little
perish his understanding. Surely Comineus might
have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased
him, of his second master, Louis XL, whose closeness
was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras
is dark, but true, ' Cor ne edito' — [' Eat not the heart.']
Certainly, if a man would give it a hard phrase, those
that want friends to open themselves unto, are canni-
bals of their own hearts ; but one thing is most ad-
mirable (wherewitli I will conclu<le this first fruit of
friendsliip), which is, that tliis communicating of a
man's self to liis friend, works two contrary effects,
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves ; for
there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend,
but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth his
griefs to his friend, but lie grievcth the less. So that
it is, in truth, of oi»cration upon a man's mind of
like virtue as the alchymists use to attribute to their
Btone for man's body, that it worketh all contrary
effects, but still to the good and benefit of nature ; but
yet, without praying in aid of alchymists, there is a
manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature;
for, in bodies, union strengtlicncth and cherisheth any
'latural actir^a, and, on the other side, weakeneth and
dulleth any violent impression — and even so is ic of
minds.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sove-
reign for the understanding, as the first is for the
affections ; for friendship niaketh indeed a fair day
in the affections from storm and tempests, but it
maketh daylight in the understanding, out of dark-
ness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to
be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man
receiveth from his friend ; but before you come to
that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind
fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understand-
ing do clarify and break up, in the communicating
and discoursing with another : he tosseth his thoughts
more easily — he marshalleth them more orderly — he
seeth how they look when they are turned into words
— finally, he waxeth wiser than himself ; and that
more by an hour's discourse than by a day's medi-
tation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king
of Persia, ' That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened
and put abroad' — whereby the imagery doth appear
in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.
Neither is this second fruit of friendship, in opening
the understanding, restrained only to such friends as
are able to give a man counsel (they indeed are best),
but even without that a man leameth of himself, and
bringeth his O'wn thoughts to light, and whctteth his
wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a
word, a man were better relate himself to a statue or
picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.
Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship
complete, that other point which lieth more open, and
falleth within vulgar observation — which is faithful
counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith well, in one
of his enigmas, ' Dry light is ever the best ;' and cer-
tain it is, that the light that a man receiveth by coun-
sel from another, is drier and purer than that which
cometh from his own understanding and judgment,
which is ever infused and drenched in his affections
and customs. So as there is as much difference between
the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth
himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend
and of a flatterer ; for there is no such flatterer as
is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against
flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.
Counsel is of two sorts ; the one concerning manners,
the other concerning business : for the first, the brst
preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful
admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's s-.-lf
to a strict account, is a medicine sometimes too y)icrc-
ing and corrosive ; reading good books of morality is
a little flat and dead ; observing our faults in others
is sometimes improper for our case ; but tlie best re-
ceipt (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the
admonition of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold
what gross errors and extreme absurdities many (es])e-
cially of the greater sort) do commit, for want of a
friend to tell them of theni, to the great damage both
of their fame and fortune : for, as St James saith, tliey
are as men ' that look sometimes into a glass, and
presently forget their own shape and favour:' as for
business, a man may think, if he will, that two eyes
see no more than one ; or, that a gamester seeth always
more than a looker-on ; or, that a man in anger is as
wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty
letters ; or, that a musket may be shot off as well
upon the arm as upon a rest ; and such other fond and
high imaginations, to think himself all in all : bvit
when all is done, the help of good counsel is that which
setteth business straight ; and if any man think that
he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces ; asking
counsel in one business of one man, and in another
business of another man ; it is as well (that is to say,
better, perhaps, than if he asked none at all), but he
runneth two dangers ; one, that he shall not be faith-
fully counselled — for it is a rare thing, except it be
242
PROSS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
STR WALTER RAI.EIGH.
from a perfect and entire friend, to have counsel given,
but such as shall be bowed and crooked to some ends
which he hath that giveth it ; the other, that he shall
have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with
good iiieaniug), and mixed partly of mischief and
partly of remedy — even as if you would call a pln'si-
cian, that is thought good for the cure of the disease
you complain of, but is unacquainted with your body
— and therefore, may put you in a way for present
cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind,
and so cure the disease, and kill the patient : but a
friend, that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate,
will beware, by furthering any present business, how
he dasheth upon other inconvenience — and, therefore,
rest not upon scattered counsels, for they will rather
distract and mislead, than settle and direct.
After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in
the affections, and support of the judgment), foUoweth
the last fruit, which is, like the pomegranate, full of
many kernels — I mean, aid and bearing a part in all
actions and occasions. Here, the best way to repre-
sent to life the manifold use of friendship, is to cast
and see how many things there are which a man can-
not do himself; and then it will appear that it was a
sparing speech of the ancients, to say ' that a friend
is another himself; for that a friend is far more than
himself.' Men have their time, and die many times
in desire of some things which they principally take
to heart ; the bestowing of a child, the finishing of a
work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, he
may rest almost secure that the care of those things
will continue after him ; so that a man hath, as it
were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body,
and that body is confined to a place ; but where friend-
ship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him
and his deputy ; for he may exerci|e them by his
friend. How many things are there which a man
cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself?
A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty,
much less extol them ; a man cannot sometimes brook
to supplicate or beg ; and a number of the like : but
all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which
are blushing in a man's own. So, again, a man's per-
son hath many proper relations which he cannot put
off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father ;
to his wife but as a husband ; to his enemy but upon
terms : whereas a friend may speak as the case re-
quires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to
enumerate these things were endless : I have given
the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part ;
if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.
[ Uses of Knowledge.']
Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and
fierceness of men's minds; though a little of it doth
rather work a contrary effect. It taketh away all
levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion
of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the
mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn
back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to
accept of nothing but [what is] examined and tried.
It taketh away all vain admiration of anything, which
is the root of all weakness : for all things are admired,
either because they are new, or because they are great.
* * If a man meditate upon the universal frame
of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness
of souls excepted) will not seem more than an ant-hill,
where some ants caiTy corn, and some carry their young,
and some go empty, and all to and fro a little lieap of
dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or
adverse fortune : which is one of the greatest impedi-
ments of virtue, and imperfection of manners. * *
Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the
knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears to-
gether. It were too long to go over the particular
remedies which learning doth minister to all the
diseases of the mind — sometimes purging the ill
humours, sometimes opening the obstructions, some-
times helping the digestion, sometimes increasini"
appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and ulcera-
tions thereof, and the like ; and I will therefore con-
clude with the chief reason of all, which is, that it
disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed
or settled in the defects thereof, but still to be capable
and susceptible of reformation. For the unlearned
man knoweth not what it is to descend into himself,
and call himself to account ; nor the pleasure of that
most pleasant life, which consists in our daily feeling
ourselves become better.* The good parts he hath, he
will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously,
but not much to increase them: the faults he hath, he
will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much
to amend them ; like an ill mower, that mows on still
and never whets his scythe. Whereas, with the learned
man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the
correction and amendment of his mind with the use
and employment thereof.
[BooJ:s and Skips Compared.']
If the invention of the ship was thought so noble,
which carrieth riches and commodities from place to
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in
participation of their fruits, how much more are
letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through
the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant par-
ticipate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions,
the one of the other !
[ Shidies.]
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for
ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness
and retiring ; for ornament, is in discourse ; and for
ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business^
for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of par-
ticulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, and the
plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those
that are learned. To spend too much time in studies,
is sloth ; to use them too mucli for ornament, is
affectation ; to make judgment wholly by their rules,
is the humour of a scholar ; they perfect nature, and
are perfected by experience — for natural abilities are
like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; and
studies themselves do give forth directions too much at
large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty
men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and
wise men use them ; for they teach not their own use ;
but that is a wisdom without them, and above them,
won by observation. Read not to contradict and con-
fute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find
talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some
books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested : that is, some
books are to be read only in parts ; others to be read,
bat not curiously ; and some few to be read wholly,
and with diligence and attention. Some books also
may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them
by others ; but that would be only in the less im-
portant arguments, and the meaner sort of books ; else
distilled books are, like commori distilled waters,
flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference
a ready man, and wTiting an exact man ; and, there-
fore, if a man write little, he had need have a great
memory ; if he confer little, he had need have a
present wit ; and if he read little, he had need have
much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
In the brilliant constellation of great men which
adorned the reigns of Elizabeth and James, one of
* This exprcsbion is given in the original in Latin.
243
PROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649
the most distinguished of those who added eminence
in Uteriiture to high talent for active business, was
Sir Walter Ealeigh, a man whose character will
always make him occupy a prominent place in the
history of his country. lie was born in 1552, at
Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, of an ancient family;
and from his youtli was distinguished by great in-
tellectual acuteness, but still more by a restless and
adventurous disposition. He became a soldier at the
age of seventeen ; fought for the Protestant cause in
the civil wars of France and the Netherlands; and
afterwards, in 1579, accompanied his half brother,
Sir Ilumplirey Gilbert, on a voyage to Newfound-
land. 'I'liis expedition proved unfortunate, but by
familiarising liini with a maritime life, had probably
much influence in leading him to engage in those
subsequent expeditions by which he rendered him-
self famous. In 1580 he assisted in suppressing tlie
Earl of Desmond's rebellion in Ireland, wliere he
obtained an estate, and was for some time governor
of Cork. After this, having occasion to visitLondon,
he attached himself to the court, and with the aid
of a handsome person and wiiming address, con-
trived to insinuate himself into tlie favour of Eliza-
betli. A well-known anecdote illustrates the gal-
lantry and tact by wliich he was characterised. One
day, when he was attending the queen on a walk,
she came to a miry part of the road, and for a
moment liesitated to jiroceed. Kaleigh, ])erceiving
this, instantly ])i:lled off his ricli phisli cloak, and,
by spreading it. before lier feet, enabled her to pass
on unsoiled. This mark of attention delighted the
queen, from whom, as it has been facetiously re-
marked, his cloak was the means of procuring for him
many a good suit. Kaleigh was one of the courtiers
whom she sent to attend the Duke of Anjou back
to the Netherlands, after refusing that nobleman her
hand. In 1584 he again joined in an adventure for
the discovery and settlement of unknown countries.
With the help of his friends, two ships were sent out
in quest of gold mines, to tliat part of North Ame-
rica now called Virginia. Kaleigh himself was not
with these vessels; the commodities brought home by
■which produced so good a return, that the owners
were induced to fit out, for the next year, another
fleet of seven ships, under the command of Kaleigh's
kinsman, Sir Kiehard Grenville. The attempt made
on this occasion to colonise America proved an utter
failure, and, after a second trial, the enterprise was
given up. This expedition is said to have been the
means of introducing tobacco into England, and also
of making known the potato, which was first cul-
tivated on Raleigh's land in Ireland.
Hayes Farm — the Birthplace of Raleigh.
Meanwhile, the prosperity of Kaleigh at the
English court continued to increase. Elizabeth
knighted him in 1584; and, moreover, by granting
monopolies, and an additional Irish estate, conferred
on him solid marks of her favour. In return for
these benefits, he zealously and actively exerted
himself for the defence of her majesty's dominions
against the Spaniards in 1588 ; having not only been
one of those patriotic volunteers who sailed against
the formidable and far-famed Armada in the English
channel, but, as a member of her majesty's council
of war, contributed, by his advice and experience, to
tlie maturing of tliose defensive arrangements which
led to the discomfiture of the enemy. Ne.xt year,
he accompanied a number of his countrymen who
went to aid the expelled king of I'ortugal in an
attempt to regain his kingdom from the Spaniards.
After his return, Elizabeth continued her largesses
to him, till at length his troublesome importunities
drew from her the question, 'When, Sir Walter, will
you cease to be a beggar ?' With his usual tact, he
rejilied, ' Wlien your gracious majesty ceases to b&
a benefactor.' By taking bribes, and otherwise
abusing his power and the influence which he had at
court, he became unpopular with the nation at large.
About this time he exerted himself to reduce
to j)ractice an idea thrown out by Montaigne, by
setting up an ' oflBce of address,' intended to serve
244
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WALTER RALBr'^H.
the purposes now executed chiefly by literary and
philosophical societies. Tlie description of tliis
scheme, given by Sir William Petty, affords a strik-
ing picture of the difficulties and obstacles whicli
laj'' in the way of men of study and inquiry two cen-
turies ago. It seems, sajs Sir William, ' to have been
a plan by which the wants and desires of all learned
men might be made known to each other, where
they might know what is already done in the business
of learning, what is at present in doing, and what is
intended to be done ; to the end tliat, by such a gene-
ral communication of designs and mutual assistance,
the wits and endeavours of the world may no longer be
as so many scattered coals, which, having no union,
are soon quenched, whereas, being but laid together,
they would have yielded a comfortable light and
heat. For the present condition of men [in the early
part of the seventeenth century] is like a field where
a battle having been lately fought, we see many legs,
arms, and organs of sense, lying here and there,
M'hich, for want of conjunction, and a soul to quicken
and enliven them, are fit for nothing but to feed the
ravens and infect the air ; so we see many wits and
ingenuities dispersed up and down the world, whereof
some are now labouring to do what is already done,
and puzzling themselves to re-invent what is already
invented ; others we see quite stuck fast in difficulties
for default of a few directions, whicli some other man,
might he be met withal, both could and would most
easily give him. Again, one man requires a small
sum of money to carry on some design that requires
it, and there is perhaps another who has twice as
much ready to bestow upon the same design; but
these two having no means to hear the one of the
other, the good work intended and desired by both
parties does utterly perish and come to nothing.'
When visiting his Irish estates after his return
from Portugal, Kaleigh formed or renewed with
Spenser an aquaintance which ripened into intimate
friendship. He introduced the poet to Elizabeth, and
otherwise benefited him by his patronage and encour-
agement ; for which favour Spenser has acknowledged
his obligation in his pastoral entitled ' Colin Clout's
Come Home Again,' where Raleigh is celebrated under
the title of the 'Shepherd of the Ocean,' and also in
a letter to him, prefixed to the ' Faery Queen,' ex-
planatory of the plan and design of that poem. In
1592, Sir Walter engaged in one of those predatory
naval expeditions which, in Elizabeth's reign, were
common against the enemies of England ; a fleet of
thirteen ships, besides two of her majesty's men-of-
war, being intrusted to his command. This armament
was destined to attack Panama, and intercept the
Spanish plate fleet, but, having been recalled by
Elizabeth soon after sailing, came back with a single
prize. On his return, Raleigh incurred the displeasure
of the virgin queen by an amour with one of her
maids of honour ; for which offence, though he married
the lady, he suffered imprisoinnent for some months.
While banished from the court, he undertook, at his
own expense, in 1595, an expedition to Guiana, con-
cerning whose riches many wonderful tales were then
current. He, however, accomplished nothing beyond
taking a formal possession of the country in the
queen's name. After coming back to England, he
published, in 1596, a work entitled Discovery of the
Larye, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana : this
production Hume has very unjustly characterised as
'full of the grossest and most palpable lies that
were ever attempted to be imposed on the credulity
of mankind.' It would appear that he now regained
the queen's favour, since we find him holding, in the
same year, a command in the expedition against
Cadiz, under the Earl of Essex an<l Lord Effingham.
In the successful attack on that town, his bravery, as
well as prudence, was very conspicuous. In '597,
he was rear-admiral in the expedition wh:?b srdcd
under Essex to intercept the Spanish West-India
fleet ; and by capturing Fayal, one of the Azores,
before the arrival of the commander-in-chief, gave
great offence to the earl, wlio considered himself
robbed of the glory of the action. A temporary re-
conciliation was effected : but Raleigh afterwards
heartily joined with Cecil in promoting the downfall
of Essex, and was a spectator of his execution from
a window in the Armoury. On tlie accession of
James I., which followed soon after, the prosperity
of Raleigh came to an end, a dislike against him
having previously been instilled by Cecil into the
royal ear. Through the malignant scheming of the
same hypocritical minister, he was accused of con-
spiring to dethrone the king, and ])lace the crown on
the head of Arabella Stuart ; and likewise of attempt-
ing to excite sedition, and to establisli popery by the
aid of foreign powers. A trial for high treason en-
sued, and upon the paltriest evidence, he was con-
demned by a servile jury. Sir Edward Coke, who
was then attorney-general, abused liim on this occa-
sion in violent and disgraceful terms, bestowing
upon him freely such epitliets as viper, damnable
atheist, tlie most vile and execrable traitor tliat ever
lived, monster, and spider of hell. Raleigh defended
himself with such temper, eloquence, and strength
of reasoning, tliat some even of his enemies were
convinced of his innocence, and all parties were
ashamed of the judgment pronounced. He was,
however, reprieved, and instead of being executed,
was committed to tlie Tower, in which his wife was
permitted to bear him company. During the twelve
years of his imprisonment, he wrote the chief portion
of his works, especially the History of the World, of
which only a part was finished, comprehending the
period from the creation to the downfall of the i\Ia-
cedonian empire, about 170 years before Christ. This
was published in 1614. The excellent way in which
he treats the histories of Greece and Rome, has ex-
cited just regret that so great a portion of the work
is devoted to Jewish and Rabbinical learning — sub-
jects which have withdrawn too much of the author's
attention from more interesting departments of his
scheme. The learning and genius of Raleigh, who,
in the words of Hume, ' being educated amidst naval
and military enterprises, had surpassed in the pur-
suits of literature even those of the most recluse and
sedentary lives,' have excited much admiration ; but
]\rr D'Israeli* has lately attempted to diminish the
wonder, by asserting, on the authority of Ben Jonson
and a manuscript in the Lansdowne collection, that
our historian was materially aided by the contribu-
tions of his learned friends. Jonson told Drummond
of Hawtliornden that Raleigh ' esteemed more fame
than conscience. The best wits in England were
employed in making his history ; Ben liimself had
written a piece to him of the Punic war, -wliich he
altered and set in his book.' According to the
manuscript above-mentioned, a still more important
helper was a 'Dr Robert Burrel, rector of North-
wald, in the county of Norfolk, who was a great
favourite of Sir Walter Raleigh, and had been his
chaplain. All, or the greatest part, of the drudgery
of Sir Walter's history, for criticisms, chroiiorogy,
and reading Greek and Hebrew authors, was per-
formed by him for Sir AValter.' Mr Tytler, in his
recent 'Life of Raleigh,'f has, however," sliowu that
there is no good reason for supposing Raleigh's obli-
gations to his friends to have been greater than those
of literary men in general, when similarly circum-
* Curicisities of Literature, ytli edit., vol. v., p. iia
t Page 457, note G.
2
VRou 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 161!l.
stanced ; and, moreover, tliat it was not left for Mr
D'Israeli to discover the fact, that Raleigh had ob-
tained such assistance from tlie individuals whom he
specifies.
Both in stj-le and matter, this celebrated work is
vastly superior to all the English liistorical produc-
tions which had previously appeared. Its style,
though partaking of the faults of the age, in being
frequently stiff and inverted, lias less of these defects
than the diction of any other writer of the time. Mr
Tytler, with justice, commends it as 'vigorous, purely-
English, and possessing an antique richness of orna-
ment, similar to what pleases us when we see some
ancient priory or stately manor-house, and compare
it with our more modern mansions.' ' The work,' he
adds, 'is laborious without being heavy, learned
without being dry, acute and ingenious without de-
generating into the subtle but trivial distinctions of
the schoolmen. Its narrative is clear and spirited,
and the matter collected from the most authentic
sources. The opinions of the author on state-policy,
on the causes of great events, on the diflerent forms
of government, on naval or military tactics, on agri-
culture, commerce, manufactures, and other sources
of national greatness, are not the mere echo of otlier
minds, but the results of experience, draw-n from the
study of a long life spent in constant action and
vicissitude, in various climates and countries, and
from personal labour in offices of high trust and re-
sponsibility. But perhaps its most striking feature
is the sweet tone of pliilosophic melancholy which
pervades the whole. Written in prison during the
quiet evening of a tempestuous life, we feel, in its
perusal, that we are the companions of a superior
mind, nursed in contemplation, and chastened and
improved by sorrow, in which the bitter recollection
of injury, and the asperity of resentment, have passed
away, leaving only the heavenly lesson, that all is
vanity.'*
"We shall commence our quotations from Raleigh
with one in which the merits of the book are not re-
presented, but which is instructive, as showing tlie
childishness with whicli men argued in those daj-s
upon subjects they understood not, and could not
understand.
That the flood hath not ufterhj defaced the maris of
Paradise, nor caused hilh in the earth.
And first, whereas it is supposed by Aug. Cbry-
Eamensis, that the flood hath altered, deformed, or
rather annihilated this place, in such sort, as no man
can find any mark or memory thereof (of which opi-
nion there were others, also, ascribing to the flood the
cause of these high mountains, which are found on all
the earth over, with many other strange effects) ; for
my own opinion, I think neither the one nor the other
to be true. For, although I cannot deny but that the
face of Paradise was, aftertheflood, withered and grown
old, in respect of the first beauty (for both the ages of
men and the nature of all things time hath changed),
yet, if there had been no sign of anj- such place, or if
the soil and seat had not remained, then would not
Moses, who wrote of Paradise 8.50 years after the flood.
Lave described it so particularlj', and the prophets,
long after Moses, would not have made so often men-
tion thereof. And though the very garden itself were
not then to be found, but that the flood, and other
accidents of time, made it one common field and pas-
ture with the land of Eden, yet the place is still the
fame, and the rivers still remain the same rivers. By
two of which (never doubted of), to wit, Tigris and
I'^upbrates, we are sure to find in what longitude
* Pp. 339 .ind JJi;.
Paradise lay ; and of one of these rivers, which after-
ward doth divide itself into four branches, we arc
sure that the ])artition is at the very border of tin?
garden itself. For it is wi-itten, that out of Eden went
a river to water the garden, and from thence it was
divided, and became into four heads. Now, whether
the word in the Latin translation {inde), from thence,
be referred to YAen itself, or to Paradise, yet the divi-
sion and branching of those rivers must be in the
north or south side of the very garden (if the rivers
run, as they do, north and south) ; and therefore
these rivers yet remaining, and Eden manifestly
known, there could be no such defacing by the flood,
as is supposed. Furthermore, as there is no likeli-
hood that the place could be so altered, as future ages
know it not, so is there no probability that either these
rivers were turned out of their courses, or new rivers
created b_y the flood, which were not ; or that the flood,
as aforesaid, by a violent motion, when it began to
decrease, was the cause of high hills or deep valleys.
For what descent of waters could there be in a sphe-
rical and round body, wherein there is nor high nor
low ? seeing that any violent force of waters is either
by the strength of wind, by descent from a higher to
a lower, or by the ebb or flood of the sea. But that
there was an}- wind (whereby the seas are most en-
raged), it appeareth not ; rather the contrary is pro-
bable ; for it is written, ' Therefore God made a wind
to pass upon the earth, and the waters ceased.' So as
it appeareth not that until the waters sank there was
any wind at all, but that God afterward, out of his
goodness, caused the wind to blow, to drj- up the
abundant .slime and mud of the earth, and make the
land more finu, and to cleanse the air of thick va-
pours and unwholesome mists ; and this we know by
experience, that all downright rains do evermore dis-
sever the violence of outrageous winds, and beat down
and level the swelling and mountainous billow of the
sea ; for any ebbs and flows there could be none, w-hen
the waters were equal and of one height over all the
face of the earth, and when there were no indraughts,
bays, or gulfs, to receive a flood, or any descent or
violent falling of waters in the round form of the
earth and waters, as aforesaid ; and therefore it seem-
eth most agreeable to reason, that the waters rather
stood in a quiet calm, than that they moved with any
raging or overbearing violence. And for a more direct
proof that the flood made no such destroying altera-
tion, Joseph avoweth, that one of those pillars erected
by Seth, the third from Adam, was to be seen in his
days ; which pillars were set up above 14-26 years
before the flood, counting Seth to be an hundred years
old at the erection of them, and Josopli himself to
have lived some forty or fifty years after Christ ; of
whom, although there be no cause to believe all that
he wrote, yet that, which he avoucheil of his own time,
cannot (without great derogation) be called in ques-
tion. And therefore it may be possible, that some
foundation or ruin thereof might well be seen : now,
that such pillars were raised by Seth, all antiquity
hath avowed. It is also ^vritten in Berosus (to whom,
although I give little credit, yet I cannot condemn
him in all), that the city of Enoch, built by Cain
about the mountains of Lebanus, was not defiiced by
length of time ; yea, the ruins thereof, Annius (who
commented upon that invented fragment) saith, wo-u
to be seen in his days, who lived in the reign of Ferui-
nand and Isabella of Castile ; and if these his v-'ords
be not true, then w-as he exceeding impudent. For,
speaking of this city of Enoch, he concludeth in this
sort : — ' Cujus maxima* et ingentis molis fundaments
visuntur, et vocatur ab incolis regionis, civitas Cain,
ut nostri mercatores et perigrinireferunt' — [' Thefoun-
dation of which huge mass is now to be seen, and the
place is called by the people of that region the City
of Cain, as both our strangers and merchants report.']
246
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
It is also avowed by Poraponius Mela (to whom I give
more credit in these things), that the city of Joppa
ivas biiilt before the flood, over which Cephawas king,
whose name, with his brother Phineas, together with
the grounds and principles of their religion, was found
graven upon certain altars of stone ; and it is not im-
possible that the ruins of this other city, called Enoch
by Annius, might be seen, though founded in the first
age ; but it could not be of the first city of the world,
built by Cain, the place, rather than the time, deny-
ing it.
And to prove directly that the flood was not the
cause of mountains, but that there were mountains
from the creation, it is written, that 'the waters of
the flood overflowed by fifteen cubits the highest
mountains.' And Masius Damascenus, speaking of
the flood, writeth in this manner: — ' Et supra ^liny-
adam escelsus mons in Armenia (qui Baris appellatur)
in quo confugientes multos sermo est deluvii tempore
liberates' • — [' And upon IMinyada there is a high
mountain in Armenia (called Baris), unto which (as
it is said) that many fled in the time of the deluge,
and that they saved themselves thereon.'] Now,
although it is contrary to God's word, that any more
were saved than eight persons (which Masius doth not
avouch but by report), yet it is a testimony, that such
mountains were before the flood, which were after-
wards, and ever since, kno^vn by the same names ; and
on which mountains it is generally received that the
ark rested, but untruly, as I shall prove hereafter.
And again, it appeareth, that the mount Sion (though
by another name) was known before the flood ; on which
the Talmudists report, that many giants saved them-
selves also, but (as Annius saith) without all autho-
rity either divine or human.
Lastly, it appeareth that the flood did not so turn
upside down the face of the earth, as thereby it was
made past knowledge after the waters were decreased,
by this, that when Noah sent out the dove the second
time, she returned >vith an olive leaf in her mouth,
which she had plucked, and which (until the trees
were discovered) she found not ; for otherwise, she
might have found them floating on the water ; a mani-
fest proof, that the trees were not torn up by the roots,
nor swam upon the waters ; for it is written, ' folium
olivse raptum,' or ' decerptum' — ['a leaf plucked'];
which is, to take from a tree, or to tear off". By this it is
apparent (there being nothing written to the contrary),
thai the flood made no such alteration as was sup-
posed, but that the place of Paradise might be seen
to succeeding ages, especially unto Moses, by whom
it pleased God to teach the truth of the world's crea-
tion, and unto the prophets which succeeded him ;
both which I take for my warrant, and to guide me
in this discover}'.
[The Battle of Thermopyke.']
After such time as Xerxes had transported the army
over the Hellespont, and landed in Thrace (leaving
the description of his passage alongst that coast, and
how the river of Lissus was drunk dry by his multi-
tudes, and the lake near to Pissyrus by his cattle,
with other accidents in his marches towards Greece),
I will speak of the encounters he had, and the shame-
ful and incredible overthrows which he received. As
first at ThermopylfB, a narrow passage of half an acre
of ground, lying between the mountains which divide
Thessaly from Greece, where sometime the Phocians
had raised a wall with gates, which was then for the
most part ruined. At this entrance, Leonidas, one of
the kings of Sparta, with 300 Lacedajmonians, assisted
with 1000 Tegeataj and Mantineans, and 1000 Arca-
dians, and other Peloponnesians, to the number of
3100 in the whole ; besides 100 Phocians, 400 Thebans,
700 Ttespians, and all the forces (such as they were)
of the bordering Locrians, defended the passage two
whole days together against that huge army of the
Persians. The valour of the Greeks appeared so ex-
cellent in this defence, that, in the first day's fight,
Xerxes is said to have three times leaped out of his
throne, fearing the destruction of his army by one
handful of those men whom not long before he had
utterly despised : and when the second day's attempt
upon the Greeks had proved vain, he was altogether
ignorant how to proceed further, and so might have
continued, had not a runagate Grecian taught him a
secret way, by which part of his army might ascend
the ledge of mountains, and set upon the backs of those
who kept the straits. But when the most valiant of
the Persian army had almost inclosed the small forces
of the Greeks, then did Leonidas, king of the Lace-
demonians, with his 300, and 700 Thespians, which
were all that abode by him, refuse to quit the place
which they had undertaken to make good, and with
admirable courage, not only resist that world of men
which charged them on all sides, but, issuing out of
their strength, made so great a slaughter of their
enemies, that they might well be called vanquishers,
though all of them were slain upon the place. Xerxes
having lost in this last fight, together with 20,000 other
soldiers and captains, two of his own brethren, began to
doubt what inconvenience might befall him by the vir-
tue of such as had not been present at these battles, with
whom he knew that he shortly was to deal. Especially
of the Spartans he stood in great fear, whose manhood
had appeared singular in this trial, which caused him
ver}- carefully to inquirewhat numbers they could brine
into the field. It is reported of Dieneces, the Spartan,
that when one thought to have terrified him by savins
that the flight of the Persian arrows was so thick as
would hide the sun, he answered thus — ' It is very good
news, for then shall we fight in the cool shade.'
In another of his works Raleigh tells, in the fol-
lowing vigorous language, wherein lies
Tlie Strength of Kings.
They say the goodliest cedars which grow on the
high mountains of Libanus thrust their roots between
the clefts of hard rocks, the better to bear themselves
against the strong storms that blow there. As nature
has instructed those kings of trees, so has reason taught
the kings of men to root themselves in the hardv heart*
of their faithful subjects ; and as those kings of trees
have large tops, so have the kings of men large crowns,
whereof, as the first would soon be broken from theii
bodies, were they not underbome by many branche?,
so would the other easily totter, were they not fastened
on their heads with the strong chains of civil justice
and of martial discipline.
In the year 1615, Raleigh was liberated from tht
Tower, in consequence of having projected a second
expedition to Guiana, from Avhich the king hoped to
derive some profit. His purpose was to colonise
the country, and work gold mines; and in 1617 a
fleet of twelve armed vessels sailed under his com-
mand. The whole details of his intended proceed-
ings, however, were weakly or treacherously com-
municated by the king to the Spanish goveniment,
by whom the scheme was miserably thwarted. Re-
turning to England, he landed at Plymouth, and on
his way to London was arrested in the king's name.
At this time the projected match between Prince
Charles and the Infanta of Spain occupied James's
attention, and, to propitiate the Spanish government,
he determined that Raleigh nuist be sacrificed. After
many vain attempts to discover valid grounds of accu-
sation against him, it was found necessarj- to proceed
upon the old sentence, and Raleigh was accordingly
247
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 161J*.
bc'lipuded on the 29th of October 1618. On the scaf-
fold his behaviour was firm and calm ; after address-
ing the people in justification of his character and
conduct, he took up the axe, and observed to the
sheriff, ' This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure
for all diseases.' Having tried how the block fitted
his head, he told tlie executioner tliat he would give
the signal by Ufting up his hand; 'and then,' added he,
'fear not, but strike home!' He then laid himself
down, but was requested by the executioner to alter
the position of his head : ' So the heart be right,' was
his reply, ' it is no matter which way the head lies.'
On tlie signal being given, the executioner failed to
act with promptitude, which caused Kaleigh to ex-
claim, 'Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!'
By two strokes, which he received without shrink-
ing, the head of this intrepid man was severed from
his body.
The night before liis execution, he composed the
following verses in prospect of death : —
Even such is Time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust ;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
JJiuts up the story of our days !
While in prison in expectation of death, either on
this or the former occasion, he wrote also a tender
and affectionate valedictory letter to his wife, of
which the following is a portion : —
You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words in
these my last lines ; my love I send you, that you
may keep when I am dead, and my counsel, that
vou may remember it when I am no more. I would
act with my will present you sorrows, dear Bess ; let
them go to the grave with me, and be buried in the
dust. And seeing that it is not the mil of God that
I shall see you any more, bear my destruction pa-
tiently, and with a heart like yourself.
First, I send you all the thanks which my heart
can conceive, or my words express, for your many
travails and cares for me, which, though they have
not taken effect as you wished, yet my debt to you is
not the less ; but pay it I never shall in this world.
Secondly, I beseech you, for the love you hear me
living, that you do not hide j'ourself many days, but
by your travails seek to help my miserable fortunes,
and the right of your poor child ; your mourning can-
not avail me, that am but dust.
* * *
Paylie oweth me a thousand pounds, and Aryan six
hundred ; in Jersey, also, I have much owing me. Dear
wife, I beseech you, for my soul's sake, pay all poor
men. When I am dead, no doubt you shall be much
Bought unto ; for the world thinks I was very rich ;
have a care to the fair pretences of men, for no gicater
misery can befall you in this life than to become a
prey unto the world, and after to be despised. I
speak, God knows, not to dissuade you from marriage,
for it will be best for you, both in respect of God
and the world. As for me, I am no more yours, nor
you mine ; death hath cut us asunder, and God hath
divided me from the world, and you from me. Re-
member your poor child for his father's sake, who
loved you in his happiest estate. I sued for my life,
but, God knows, it was for you and yours that I de-
sired it : for know it, my dear wife, your child is the
child of a true man, who, in his own respect, despiseth
death, and his mis-shapen and ugly forms. I cannot
write much (God knows how hardly I steal this time
when all sleep), and it is also time for me to separate
my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body,
which living was denied you, and either lay it in
iSherburn or Exeter church, by my father and mother.
I can say no more, time and death calleth me away.
The everlasting God, powerful, infinite, and inscrut-
able God Almighty, who is goodness itself, the true
light and life, keep you and yours, and have mercy
upon me, and forgive my persecutors and false ac-
cusers, and send us to meet in his glorious kingdom.
]My dear wife, farewell ; bless my boy, pray for me,
and let my true God hold you both in his arms.
Besides the works already mentioned, Raleigh
composed a number of political and other pieces,
some of which have never been published. Among
those best known are his Maxims of State, tlie
Cabinet Council, the Sceptic, and Advice to his Son.
The last contains much admirable counsel, some-
times tinctured, indeed, with that worldliness and
caution which the writer's hard experience had
strengthened in a mind naturally disposed to be
mindful of self-interest. The subjects on which he
advises his son are — the choice of friends and of a
wife, deafness to flattery, the avoidance of quarrels,
the preservation of estate, the choice of servants,
the avoidance of evil means of seeking riches, the
bad effects of drunkenness, and the service of God.
W^e extract his
Three Bulcs to he observed for the Preservation of a
Man's Estate.
Amongst all other things of the world, take care of
thy estate, which thou shalt ever preserve if thou ob-
serve three things : first, that thou know what thou
hast, what every thing is worth that thou hast, and to
see that thou art not wasted by thy servants and
officers. The second is, that thou never spend any-
thing before thou have it ; for borrowing is the canker
and death of every man's estate. The third is, that
thou suffer not thyself to be wounded for other men's
faults, and scourged for other men's offences ; which
is, the surety for another, for thereby millions of men
have been beggared and destroyed, paying the reckon-
ing of other men's riot, and the charge of other men's
folly and prodigality ; if thou smart, smart for thine
own sins ; and, above all things, be not made an ass
to carry the burdens of other men : if any friend
desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of
what thou hast to spare ; if he press thee farther,
he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather
chooseth harm to itself than offereth it. If thou be
bound for a stranger, thou art a fool ; if for a mer-
chant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim ; if
for a churchman, he hath no inheritance ; if for a
lawj'er, he will find an invasion by a syllable or word
to abuse thee ; if for a poor man, thou must pay it
thj-self ; if for a rich man, he needs not : therefore
from suretyship, as from a man-slaj'er or enchanter,
bless thyself ; for the best profit and return will be
this, that if thou force him for whom thou art bound,
to pay it himself, he will become thy enemy ; if thou
use to pay it thyself, thou wilt be a beggar ; and be-
lieve thy father in this, and print it in thy thought,
that what virtue soever thou hast, be it never so ma-
nifold, if thou be poor withal, thou and thy qualities
shall be despised. Besides, poverty is ofttiraes sent
as a curse of God ; it is a shame amongst men, an
imprisonment of the mind, a vexation of every worthy
spirit : thou shalt neither help thyself nor others ;
thou shalt drown thee in all thy virtues, having no
means to show them ; thou shalt be a burden and an
eyesore to thy friends, every man will fear thy com-
pany ; thou shalt be driven basely to beg and depend
on others, to flatter unworthy men, to make dishonest
shifts : and, to conclude, poverty provokes a man to
do infamous and detested deeds ; let no vanity, there-
fore, or persuasion, dra^v thee to that worst of worldly
miseries.
If thou be rich, it will give thee pleasure in health,
248
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
joii.y STOW.
comfort in sickness, keep thy mind and body free,
save thee from many perils, relieve thee in thy elder
years, relieve the poor and thy honest friends, and
give means to thy posterity to live, and defend them-
selves and thine own fame. Where it is said in the
Proverbs, ' That he shall be sore vexed that is surety
for a stranger, and ho that hateth surttyship is sure ;'
it is further said, ' TL. poor is hated even of his own
neighbour, but the rich have many friends.' Lend
not to him that is mightier than thyself, for if thou
lendest him, count it but lost ; be not surety above
thy power, for if thou be surety, think to pay it.
RICHARD GRAFTON.
We now revert to a useful, though less brilliant,
class of writers, the English chroniclers ; a continu-
ous succession of whom was kept up during the
period of which we are now treating. The first who
attracts our attention is Richard Grafton, an
individual who, in addition to the craft of author-
ship, practised the typographic;d art in London in
tlie reigns of Henry VIH. and three succeeding
monarchs. Being printer to Edward VI., he was
employed, after the death of that king, to prepare the
proclamation which declared the succession of Lady
Jane Grey to the crown. For this simply profes-
sional act he was deprived of his patent, and osten-
sibly for the same reason committed to prison.
WhUe there, or at least while unemployed after the
loss of his business, he compiled An Abridgment of
the Chronicles of England, published in 1562, and of
which a new edition, in two volumes, was published
in 1809. IMuch of this work was borrowed from
Hall ; and the author, though sometimes referred to
as an authority by modern compilers, holds but a
low rank among English historians.
JOHN STOW.
His contemporary, John Stow, enjoys a much
higher reputation as an accurate and impartial
recorder of public events. This industrious writer
was born in London about tlie year 1525. Being
the son of a tailor, he was brought up to that
business, but early exhibited a decided turn for an-
tiquarian research. About the year 1560, he formed
the design of composing annals of English history,
in consequence of which, he for a time abandoned
his trade, and travelled on foot through a consider-
able part of England, for the purpose of examining
the historical manuscripts preserved in cathedrals
and other public establishments. He also enlarged,
as far as his pecuniary resources allowed, his collec-
tion of old books and manuscripts, of which there
were many scattered through the country, in conse-
quence of the suppression of monasteries by Henry
VIH.* Necessity, however, compelled him to resume
* Vast numbers of books were at this period wantonlj' de-
stroyed. ' A number of tliem which purchased these supersti-
tious mansions,' says Bishop Bale, ' reserved of those library
books some to serve their jakes, some to scour their candle-
sticks, and some to rub their boots, and some they sold to the
grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent over sea to book-
binders, not in small numbers, but at times whole ships full.
Yea, the universities are not all clear in this detestable fact ;
but cursed is the belly which seeketh to be fed with so >mgodly
gains, and so deeply sliameth his native country. I know a
merchantman (which shall at this time be nameless) that
bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings
price : a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied
instead of grey paper, by the space of more than these ten years,
and yet hath he store enough for as many years to come.' —
Bale's Declaration, &c., quoted in ' Collier's Eccles. Hist.' ii. 16b".
Another illustration isgivenby the editor of ' Letters written by
Eminent Persons, in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu-
his trade, and his studies were suspended till tuv
bounty of Dr I'arker, archbishop of Canterbury,
enabled him again to prosecute them. In 1565 he
published his Summiiry of English Chronicles, dedi-
cated to the Earl of Leicester, at whose request the
work was undertaken. Parker's death, in 1575, ma-
terially reduced his income, but he still managed
to continue his researches, to which his whole time
and energies were now devoted. At length, in 1598,
appeared his Survey of London, the best known of
his writings, and which has served as the ground-
work of all subsequent histories of the metropolis.
There was another work, his large Chronicle, or
History of England, on which forty vears' labour had
been bestowed, which he was very desirous to pub-
lish ; but of this he succeeded in printing only an
abstract, entitled Flores llistariarum, or Annuls of
England ( 1 600). A volume published from his papers
after his death, entitled Stow's Chronicle, does imt
contain the large work now mentioned, wliicli, thouuii
left by him fit for the press, seems to have somehow
gone astra_v. In his old age he fell into such poverty,
as to be driven to solicit charity from the public.
Having made application to James I., he received
the royal license ' to repair to churches, or other
places, to receive the gratuities and charitable bene-
volence of well-disposed people.' It is little to the
honour of the contemporaries of this worthy andin-
Stow's Monument in the church of St Andrew undei
Shaft, London.
dustrious man, that he should have been thus lit«
rally reduced to beggary. Under the pressure ol
want and disease. Stow died in 1605, at the advanced
ries' (London, 1813). ' The splendid and magnificent abbey of
JIalmesbury,' says ho, ' which possessed some of the finest
manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked, and its treasures
either sold or burnt to serve the commonest purposes of life.
An antiquary who travelled through tliat town many years
after tlie dissolution, relates that he saw broken windows
patched up with remnants of the most valuable manuscrlptg
on vellum, and that the bakers had not even then consunu'd the
stores they had accimiukited, in heating their ovens !' (Vol. 1.,
p. 278.)
249
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164;.
age of eighty years. His -works, thougli possessing
few graces of stj'le, have always been esteemed for
accurac}' and research. He often declared that, in
composing them, he had never allowed himself to be
swayed either by fear, favour, or malice ; but that
he had impartially, and to the best of his knowledge,
delivered the truth. So highly was his accuracy
esteemed by contemporary authors, that Bacon and
Camden took statements upon his sole credit. The
following extract is taken from the ' Survey of Lon-
don :' —
\_S2y<»'ts upon the Ice in Elizahelli's Reign.']
When that great moor which washeth Moorfields,
at the north wall of the city, is frozen over, great com-
panies of young men go to sport upon the ice ; then
fetching a run, and setting their feet at a distance,
and placing their bodies sidewise, they slide a gi-eat
way. Others take heaps of ice, as if it were great
mill-stones, and make seats ; many going before,
draw him that sits thereon, holding one another by
the hand in going so fast ; some slipping with their
feet, all fall down together : some are better practised
to the ice, and bind to their shoes bones, as the legs
of some beasts, and hold stakes in their hands headed
with sharp iron, which sometimes they strike against
the ice ; and these men go on with speed as doth a
bird in the air, or darts shot from some warlike en-
gine : sometimes two men set themselves at a distance,
and run one against another, as it were at tilt, with
these stakes, wherewith one or both parties are thro\vn
down, not without some hui-t to their bodies ; and after
their ftill, by reason of the violent motion, are carried
a good distance from one another ; and wheresoever the
ice doth touch their head, it rubs off tall the skin, and
lays it bare ; and if one fall upon his leg or arm, it
is usually broken ; but young men greedy of honour,
and desirous of victory, do thus exercise themselves in
counterfeit battles, that they may bear the brunt more
strongly wlien they come to it in good earnest.
RAPHAEL HOLINSHED — WILLIAM HAKRISON — JOHN
HOOKER — FRANCIS BOTEVILLE.
Among all the old chroniclers, none is more fre-
quently referred to than Kaphael Holinshed, of
whom, however, almost nothing is known, except
that he was a principal writer of the chronicles
•which bear his name, and that he died about the
year 1580. Among his coadjutors were Willi a bi
Harrison, a clergyman, John Hooker, an uncle
of the author of the ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' and
Francis Boteville, an individual of whom no-
thing has been recorded, but that he was ' a man of
great learning and judgment, and a wonderful lover
of antiquities.' John Stow, also, was among the
contributors. Prefixed to tlie historical portion of
the work is a description of Britain and its inhabi-
tants, by William Harrison, which continues to be
highly valued, as aftbrding an interesting picture of
the state of tlie counti'y, and manners of the people,
in the sixteenth century. This is followed by a his-
tory of England to the Norman Conquest, by Holin-
shed ; a history and description of Ireland, by
Richard Stanihurst; additional chronicles of Ireland,
translated or written by Hooker, Holinshed, and
Stanihurst; a description and history of Scotland,
mostly translated from Hector Boece, by Holinshed
or Harrison ; and, lastly, a history of England, by
Holinshed, from the Norman Conquest to 1577, when
the first edition of the ' Chronicles' was published. In
the second edition, which appeared in 1587, several
sheets containing matter olTensive to the queen and
her ministers were omitted ; but these have been
ip«tfred ill the excellent edition in six volumes
quarto, published in London in 1807-8. It Avas from
the translation of Boece that Shakspeare derived the
ground-work of his tragedy of ' Macbeth.' As a spe-
cimen of these chronicles, we are tempted to quote
some of Harrison's sarcastic remarks on the dege-
neracy of his contemporaries, their extravagance in
dress, and the growth of luxury among them. His
account of the languages of Britain, however, being
peculiarly suited to the object of tlie present work,
and at the same time highly amusing from the
quaintness and simplicity of the style, it is here given
in preference to any other extract.
[The Languages of Britain.']
The British tongue called Cymric doth yet re-
main in that part of the island which is now called
Whales, whither the Britons were driven after the
Saxons had made a full conquest of the other, which
we now call England, although the pristine inte-
grity thereof be not a little diminished by mixture of
the Latin and Saxon speeches withal, llowbeit, many
poesies and writings (in making whereof that nation
hath evermore delighted) are yfet extant in my time,
whereby some difference between the ancient and
present language may easily be discerned, notwith-
standing that among all these there is nothing to be
found which can set do-(vn any sound and full testi-
mony of their own original, in remembrance whereof
their bards and cunning men have been most slack
and negligent. * *
Next unto the British speech, the Latin tongue was
brought in by the Romans, and in manner generally
planted through the whole region, as the French was
after by the Normans. Of this tongue I will not say
much, because there are few which be not skilful in
the same. Howbeit, as the speech itself is easy and
delectable, so hath it perverted the names of the
ancient rivers, regions, and cities of Britain, in such
wise, that in these our days their old British denomi-
nations are quite grown out of memory, and yet those
of the new Latin left as most uncertain. This re-
maineth, also, unto my time, borrowed from the
Romans, that all our deeds, evidences, charters, and
writings of record, are set down in the Latin tongue,
though now very barbarous, and thereunto the copies
and court-rolls, and processes of courts and leets
registered in the same.
The third language apparently known is the Scy-
thian,* or High Dutch, induced at the first by the
Saxons (which the Britons call Saysonaoc,t as they do
the speakers Sayson), a hard and rough kind of speech,
God wot, when our nation was brought first into ac-
quaintance withal, but now changed with us into a
far more fine and easy kind of utterance, and so
polished and helped with new and milder words, that
it is to be avouched how there is no one speech under
the sun spoken in our time that hath or can have
more variety of words, copiousness of jihrases, or
figures and flowers of eloquence, than hath our Eng-
lish tongue, although some have affirmed us rather to
bark as dogs than talk like men, because the most of
our words (as they do indeed) incline unto one syllable.
This, also, is to be noted as a testimony remaining
still of our language, derived from the Saxons, that
the general name, for the most part, of every skilful
artificer in his trade endeth in here with us, albeit the
h be left out, and er only inserted, as, scrivenhere,
writehere, shiphere, &c. — for scrivener, writer, and
shipper, &c. ; beside many other relics of that speech,
never to be abolished.
After the Saxon tongue came the Norman or French
* It ia scarcely necessary lo remark, that tliU tonii is here
misapplied.
t The Highlanders of Scotland still speak of the Englwh iis
Satseimcli (moaning Saxons).
250
PROSE WRITEHJS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
RICHARD IIAKLUYT.
language over into our country, and therein were our
laws written for a long time. Our children, also,
were, by an especial decree, taught first to speak the
same, and thereunto enforced to learn their construc-
tions in the French, whensoever they were set to the
grammar-school. In like sort, few bishops, abbots, or
other clergymen, were admitted unto any ecclesiastical
function here among us, but such as came out of
religious houses from beyond the seas, to the end they
should not use the English tongue in their sermons to
the people. In the court, also, it grew into such con-
tempt, that most men thought it no small dishonour
to speak any English there ; which bravery took his
hold at the last likewise in the country with every
ploughman, that even the very carters began to wax
weary of their mother-tongue, and laboured to speak
French, which as then was counted no small token of
gentility. And no marvel ; for every French rascal,
when he came once hither, was taken for a gentleman,
only because he was proud, and could use his own
language. And all this (I say) to exile the English
and British speeches quite out of the country. But
in vain ; for in the time of king Edward 1., to wit,
toward the latter end of his reign, the French itself
ceased to be spoken generally, but most of all and by
law in the midst of Edward III., and then began the
English to recover and grow in more estimation than
before ; notwithstanding that, among our artificers,
the most part of their implements, tools, and words
of art, retain still their French denominations even
to these our days, as the language itself is used like-
wise in sundry courts, books of record, and matters of
law ; whereof here is no place to make any particular
rehearsal. Afterward, also, by diligent travail of
Geotfrey Chaucer and John Gower, in the time of
Richard II., and after them of John Scogan and John
Lydgate, monk of Bury, our said tongue was brought
to an exce^ent pass, notwithstanding that it never
came unto the type of perfection until the time of
Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewel, bishop of Sarum,
John Fox, and sundry learned and excellent writers,
have fully accomplished the ornature of the same, to
their great praise and immortal commendation ; al-
though not a few other do greatly seek to stain the
same, by fond affectation of foreign and strange words,
presuming that to be the best English which is most
corrupted with external terms of eloquence and sound
of many syllables. But as this excellency of the
English tongue is found in one, and the south part
of this island, so in Wales the greatest number (as
I said) retain still their own ancient language, that
of the north part of the said country being less cor-
rupted than the other, and therefore reputed for the
better in their own estimation and judgment. This,
also, is proper to us Englishmen, that since ours is a
middle or intermediate language, and neither too
rough nor too smooth in utterance, we may mth much
facility learn any other language, beside Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin, and speak it naturally, as if we
were home-bom in those countries ; and yet on the
other side it falleth out, I wot not by what other
means, that few foreign nations can rightly pronounce
ours, without some and that great note of imj)erfection,
especially the Frenchmen, who also seldom write any-
thing that savoureth of English truly. But this of
all the rest doth breed most admiration with me, that
if any stranger do hit upon some likely pronunciation
of our tongue, yet in age he swerveth so much from
the same, that he is worse therein than ever he was,
and thereto, peradventure, halteth not a little also in
his own, as I have seen by experience in Reginald
Wolfe, and others, whereof I have justly marvelled.
The Cornish and Devonshire men, whose country
the Britons call Cerriiw, have a speech in like sort of
their own, and such as hath indeed more affinity with
the Armorican toujjue than I can well discuss of. Yet
in mine opinion, they are both but a con-upted kind
of British, albeit so far degenerating in these daya
from the old, that if either of them do meet witli a
Welshman, they are not able at the first to understand
one anotlier, except here and there in some odd words,
without the help of intci-preters. And no marvel, in
mine opinion, that the British of Cornwall is thus
corrupted, since the Welsh tongue that is spoken in
the north and south part of Wales doth differ so much
in itself, as the English used in Scotland doth from
tliat which is spoken among us here in this side ol
the island, as I have said already.
The Scottish-English hath been much broader and
less pleasant in utterance than ours, because that
nation hath not, till of late, endeavoured to bring the
same to any perfect order, and yet it was such in
manner as Englishmen themselves did speak for the
most part beyond the Trent, whither any great amend-
ment of our language had not, as then, extended
itself. Howbeit, in our time the Scottish language
endeavoureth to come near, if not altogether to niatch,
our tongue in fineness of phrase and copiousness oi
words, and this may in part appear by a history ol
the Apocrypha translated into Scottish verse by Hud-
son, dedicated to the king of that country, and con-
taining six books, except my memory do fail me.
RICHARD HAKLUYT.
Richard Hakluyt is another of the laborious com-
pilers of this period, to whom the world is indebted
for the preservation, in an accessible form, of narra-
tives which would otherwise, in all probability, have
fallen into oblivion. The department of history which
he chose was that descriptive of the naval adven-
tures and discoveries of his countrymen. Hakluyt
was born in London about the year ] 553, and received
his elementary education at Westminster school, lie
afterwards studied at Oxford, wliere he engaged in
an extensive course of reading in various languages,
on geographical and maritime subjects, for wliich
he had early displayed a strong liking. So much
reputation did his knowledge in those departments
acquire for him, that he was appointed to lecture
at Oxford on cosmography and the collateral sciences,
and curried on a correspondence witli those cele-
brated continental geograpliers, Ortelius and Mer-
cator. At a subsequent period, he resided for five
years in Paris as chaplain to the English ambas-
sador, during which time he cultivated tlie acquaint-
ance of persons eminent for their knowledge ol
geography and maritime history. On his return
from France in 1588, Sir Walter Raleigh appointed
him one of the society of counsellors, assistants, and
adventurers, to whom he assigned his patent for
the prosecution of discoveries in America. Pre-
viously to tliis, he had published, in 1582 and 1587,
two small collections of voyages to Americji ; but
these are included in a much larger work in three
volumes, whicli he published in 1598, 1599, and 1600,
entitled The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traf-
fiques, and Discoveries of t lie jEnglish Natio7i, viade by
Sea or Over Land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant
Quarters of the Earth, within the Compass of these 1 500
years. In the first volume are contained voyages
to the north and north-east ; tlie true state of Ice-
land; the defeat of the Spanish Armada; tlie expe-
dition under the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, &c. In the
second, he relates voyages to the south and south-
east; and in the tliird, expeditions to North Ame-
rica, the West Indies, and round tlie worM. Nar-
ratives are given of nearly two hundred ainl twenty
voyages, besides many relative documents, snch aa
patents, instructions, and letters. To this collectKm
all the subsequent compilers in this dejtartment have
951
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
been largely indebted. In the explanatory catalogue
prefixed to ' Churchill's Collection of Voyages,' and
of which Locke has been said to be the author,
Haklnyt's collection is spoken of as ' valuable for
the good tlicre to be picked out : but it might be
wished the author had been less voluminous, deli-
vering wliat was really authentic and useful, and
not stuffing his work with so many stories taken
upon trust, so many trading voyages that have
nothing new in them, so many warlike exploits
not at all pertinent to his undertaking, and such a
multitude of articles, charters, privileges, letters,
relations, and other things little to the purpose of
travels and discoveries.'* The work having become
very scarce, a new edition, in five volumes quarto,
was published in 1809. Ilakluyt was the author,
also, of translations of two foreign works on Florida;
and, when at Paris, published an enlarged edition of
a history in the Latin language, entitled De Rebus
Oceanicis et Orbe Novo, by Martyr, an Italian author ;
this was afterwards translated into English by a
person of the name of Lok, under the title of The
History of the West Indies, containing the Acts and
Adventures of the Spaniards, which have Conquered and
Peopled those Countries; enriched with Variety of Plea-
sant Relation of Manners, Ceremonies, Laws, Govern-
ments, and Wars, of the Indians. In 1601 Ilakluyt
published the Discoveries of the World, from the First
Original to the Year of our Lord 1555, translated,
with additions, from the Portuguese of Antonio
Galvano, governor of Ternatc, in the East Indies.
At his death, in 1616, his papers, which were nume-
rous, came into the hands of
SAMUEL PURCHAS,
another English clergyman, who made use of them
in compiling a history of voj'ages, in four volumes,
entitled Purchas his Pilgrims. This appeared in
1625; but the author had already published, in 1613,
before Hakluyt's death, a volume called Purchas his
Pilgrimage ; or, Relations of the World, and the Reli-
gions Ob^erted in all Ages and Places Discovered from
the Creation unto this Present. These two works (a
new edition of the latter of which was published in
1626) form a continuation of Hakluyt's collection,
but on a more extended plan.f The publication of
this voluminous work involved the autlior in debt :
it was, however, well received, and has been of
much utility to later compilers. The writer of the
catalogue in Churchill's collection says of Purchas,
that ' he has imitated Ilakluyt too much, swelling
his work into five volumes in folio ;' yet, he adds,
' the whole collection is very valuable, as having
preserved many considerable voyages that miglit
otherwise have perished. But, like Ilakluyt, he has
thrown in all that came to hand, to fill up so many
volumes, and is excessive full of his own notions,
and of mean quibbling and playing upon M-ords ; yet
for such as can make choice of the best, the collec-
tion is very valuable.'J Among his peculiarities is
♦ Churchill's Collection, vol. i., p. xvii.
t The contents of tho different volumes are as follow :
Vol. I. of the ' Pilgrims' contains Voyages and Travels of Ancient
Kings, Patriarchs, Apostles, and Philosophers; Voyages of Cir-
cumnavigators of the Globe ; and Voyages along the coasts of
Africa to tho East Indies, Japan, China, the Philippine Islands
and the I'ersian and Arabian Gulfs. Vol. II. contains Voyages
and Relations of Afiica, Kthiopia, Palestine, Arabia, Persia,
and other parts of Asia. Vol. III. contains Tartary, China,
Russia, North-Wcst America, and the Polar Regions. Vol. IV.
contains America and the West Indies. Vol. V. contains the
Pilgrimage, a Theological and Geographical History of Asia,
i^frica, and America.
i Vol i., p. xvii.
that of interlarding theological reflections and dis-
cussions with his narratives. Purclias died about
1628, at the age of fiftj'-one. His other works are,
Mlcrocofmris, or the History of 3Ian (\619); the King's
Tower and Triumpluint Arch of London (1623); and
a Funeral isermon (1619). Ilis quaint eulogy of the
sea is here extracted from the ' Pilgrimage :' —
[The Sea.]
As God hath combined the sea and land into one
globe, so their joint combination and mutual assist-
ance is necessary to secular happiness and glorj'. The
sea covcreth one-half of this patrimony of man, whereof
God set him in possession when he said, ' Replenish
the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
every living thing that nioveth upon the earth.' * *
Thus should man at once lose half his inheritance, if the
art of navigation did not enable him to manage this
untamed beast, and with the bridle of the winds and
saddle of his shipping to make him serviceable. Now
for the services of the sea, they are inimmerable : it
is the great purveyor of the world's commodities to
our use ; conveyer of the excess of rivers ; uniter, by
traffick, of all nations : it presents the eye with diver-
sified colours and motions, and is, as it were, with
rich brooches, adorned with various islands. It is an
open field for merchandise in peace ; a pitched field
for the most dreadful fights of war ; j'ields diversity
of fish and fowl for diet ; materials for wealth, medi-
cine for health, simples for medicines, pearls, and
other jewels for ornament ; amber and ambergrise for
delight ; ' the wonders of the Lord in the deep' for
instruction, variety of creatures for use, multiplicity
of natures for contemplation, diversity of accidents
for admiration, compendiousness to the way, to full
bodies healthful evacuation, to the thirsty earth fertile
moisture, to distant friends pleasant meeting, to weary
persons delightful refreshing, to studious and religious
minds a map of knowledge, mystery of temperance,
exercise of continence ; school of prayer, meditation,
devotion, and sobriety ; refuge to the distressed, por-
tage to the merchant, passage to the traveller, customs
to the prince, springs, lakes, rivers, to the earth ; it
hath on it tempests and calms to chastise tlie sins, to
exercise the faith, of seamen ; manifold affections in
itself, to affect and stupify the subtlest philosopher ;
sustaineth moveable fortresses for the soldier ; main-
taineth (as in our island) a wall of defence and watery
garrison to guard the state ; entertains the sun with
vapours, the moon with obsequiousness, the stars also
with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the
air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the
rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys
with fertility ; containeth most diversified matter for
meteors, most multiform shapes, most various, nume-
rous kinds, most immense, difFormed, deformed, un-
formed monsters ; once (for why should I longer detain
you ?) the sea yields action to the body, meditation
to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof
to each part, by this art of arts, navigation.
JOHN DAVIS.
Among the intrepid navigators of Queen Eliza-
beth's reign, whose adventures are recorded by Ilak-
luyt, one of the most distinguished is John Davis,
a native of Devonshire, who, in 1585, and the two
following years', made three voyages in search of a
north-west pas.sage to China, and discovered the
well-known straits to which his name has ever since
been applied. In 1595 he himself published a small
and now exceedingly rare volume, entitled The
World's Ilydrographical Description, ' wherein,' as
we are told in "the title-page, ' is proued not onely
252
PROSK WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Jon:( DAVIS.
by aucthoritie of writers, but also by late experience
of trauellers, and reasons of substantial! probabilitie,
that the worlde in all his zones, clyniats, and places,
is habitable and inhabited, &nd tlie seas likewise
universally nauigable, without any naturall anoy-
ance to hinder the same ; Avhereby appeares that
from England there is a short and speedie passage
into the South Seas to China, Malucca, Phillipina,
and India, by northerly navigation, to the renowne,
honour, and benefit of her maiesties state and com-
munalty.' In corroboration of these positions, he
gives a short narrative of his voyages, Avhich, not-
withstanding the unsuccessful termination of them
all, he considers to afford arguments in favour of
the nortli-west passage. This narrative, with its
original spelling, is here inserted as an interesting
specimen of the style of such relations in the age of
Elizabeth.
IDavis's Voyages in Search of the NoHh- West Passage.]
In my first voyage, not experienced of the nature
of those clymattes, and having no direction either by
Chart, Globe, or other certayne relation in what alti-
tude that passage was to bee searched, I shaped a
Northerly course and so sought the same towards the
South, and in that my Northerly course I fell upon
the shore which in ancient time was called Groynland,
fine hundred leagues distant from the durseys West
Nor West Northerly, the land being very high and
full of mightie mountaines all couered witli snow, no
viewe of wood, grasse, or earth to be scene, and the
shore two leagea of into the sea so full of yse as that
no shipping cold by any nieanes come neere the same.
The lothsome rewe of the shore, and irksome noyse of
theysewas such, as that it bred strange conceipts among
us, so that we supposed the place to be wast and voyd
of any sencible or vegitable creatures, wherupon I
called the same Desolation ; so coasting this shore
towardes the South in the latitude of sixtie degrees, I
found it to trend towardes the west. I still followed
the leading thereof in the same height, and after fiftie
or sixtie leages, it fayled and lay directly north, which
I still followed, and in thirtie leages sayllng upon the
West side of this coast by me named Desolation, we
were past all the yse and found many greene and
plesant Ills bordering upon the shore, but the moun-
tains of the maine were still covered with great quan-
tities of snowe. I brought my shippe among those ylls
and there mored to refreshe our selves in our wearie
travell, in the latitude of sixtie foure degrees or there
about. The people of the country, having espyed our
shipps, came down unto us in their canoes, holding up
their right hand to the Sunne and crying Yliaout,
would stricke their brestes ; we doing the like the
people came aborde our shippes, men of good stature,
unbearded, small eyed and of tractable conditions ; by
whom, as signes would permit, we understoode that
towardes the North and West there was a great sea,
and using the people with kindnesse in geuing them
nayles and knifes which of all things they most de-
sired, we departed, and finding the sea free from yse,
supposing ourselves to be past all daunger, we shaped
our course West Nor West, thinking thereby to passe
for China, but in the latitude of sixtie sixe degrees,
wee fell with an other shore, and there founde an
other passage of 20 leages broade directly West into
the same, wliich we supposed to bee our hoped strayght.
We intered into the same thirty or fortie leages, finding
it neither to wyden nor straighten ; then, considering that
theyeere was spent, for tliis was in the fyne of August,
and not knowing the length of this straight and dan-
gers thereof, we tooke it our best course to retourne
wirh notice of our good successe for this small time
of search. And so retouming in a sharpKj fret of
Westerly windes, the 29 of September we arrived at
Dartmouth. And acquainting master Secretory with
the rest of the honoral&le and worshipfuU adventurers
of all our procedinges, I was appointed againe the
seconde yeere to search the bottome of this straight,
because by all likelihood it was the place and passage
by us laboured for. In this second attempt the mer-
chants of Exeter and other places of the West be-
came adventurers in the action, so that, being suffi-
ciently furnished for sixe monthes, and havingdirection
to search this straighte, untill we found the same to
fall into an other sea upon the West side of this part
of America, we should agayne retourne, for then it was
not to be doubted but shiping with trade might
safely bee conueied to China and the parts of Asia.
We departcsd from Dartmouth, and ariving unto the
south part of the cost of Desolation costed the same
upon his west shore to the lat. of 66. degres, and
there ancored among the ylls bordering upon the same,
where wee refreshed our selues. The people of this place
came likewise vnto vs, by whome I vnderstood through
their signes that towardes the North the sea was large.
At this place the chiefe shipe wliereupon I trusted,
called the Mermayd of Dartmouth, found many occa-
sions of discontentment, and being unwilling to pro-
ceede she there forsooke me. Then considering howe
I had giuen my fayth and most constant promise to
my worshipfuU good friend master ^^'illiaul Sander-
son, who of all men was the greatest aduenturer in
that action, and tooke such care for the perfounnance
theerof that hee hath to my knowledge at one time
disbursed as much money as any fine others whatso-
euver out of his o^^^ae purse, when some of the com-
pany haue bin slacke in giulng in their adaenture.
And also knowing that I should lose the fauour of
master Secretory, if I should shrinke from his direction,
in one small barke of thirty tonnes, whereof master
Sanderson was owner, alone without farther comfort or
company I proceeded on my voyage, and ariuing unto
this straights followed the same eightie leages, vntill
I came among many ylandes, where the water did eb
and flowe sixe fadome vpright, and where there had
beene great trade of people to make trayne. But by
such thinges as there we found, wee knewe that they
were not Xtians of Europe that vsed that trade ; in
fine, by seaching with our boate, wee founde small
hope to passe any farther that way, and therefore
retourning againe recouered the sea and so coasted
the shore towardes the South, and in so doing (for it
was to late to search towardes the North) wee founde
an other great inlett neere fortie leages broade where
the water entred in with violent swiftnes. This we
likewise thought might be a passage, for no doubt but
tlie North partes of America are all ylands, by ought '
that I could percelue therein ; but because I was alone
in a small barke of thirtie tonnes, and the yeere
spent I entered not into the same, for it was now the
seuenth of September, but coasting the shore towardes
tlie South we saw an incredible number of blrdes.
Ilauing diners fishermen aborde our barke, they all
concluded that there was a great scull of fish. Wee
beeing vnprouided of fishing furniture, with a long
spike nayle mayde a hoke, and fastening the same to
one of our sounding lynes. Before the bayte was
changed wee tooke more than fortie great cods, the
fishe swimming so aboundantly thicke about oui
barke as is incredible to be reported of, which with a
small portion of salte that we had, wee preserued
some thirtie couple, or there aboutes, and so returned
for England. And hauing reported to nuister Secre-
toi-y the whole successe of this attempt, hee com-
manded inee to present unto the most honorable
Lorde high tliresurer of England some parte of that
fisli, which when his Lordship saw and hearde at large
tlie relation of this seconde atteni])t, 1 recelued fautr-
able countenance from his honour, aduisiiig mee io
prosecute the action, of which his Lordship conceiue^
253
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
a very good opinion. The next yeere, although diaers
of the aduenturers fel from the action, as al the wes-
tern nierchantes and most of those in London, yet
some of the aduenturers both honorable and worshipfuU
continued their willing fauour and charge, so that by
this ineanes the next yeere 2. shippes were appointed
for the fi.-ihing and one pniace for the discouery.
Departing from Dartmouth, through God's merciful
fauour I ariuedto the place of fishing and there accord-
ing to my direction I left the 2 shipps to follow that
busines, taking their faithful promise not to depart
vntill my returne vnto them, which shoulde bee in the
fine of August, and so in the barke I proceeded for
the discouery, but after my departure in sixteene
dayes the shippes had finished their royage, and so
presently departed for England, without regard of
their promise. My selfe, not distrusting any such hard
measure, proceeded in the discouerie and followed my
course in the free and open sea, betweene North and
Nor west, to the latitude of sixtie seuen degrees, and
there I might see America west from me, and Desola-
tion east ; then when I saw the land of both sides, I
began to distrust that it would prooue but a gulfe.
Notwithstanding, desirous to knowethe full certaintye,
I proceeded, and in sixtie eight degrees the passage
enlarged, so that I could not see the westeme shore ;
thus I continued to the latitude of seuentie fiue de-
grees, in a great sea, free from yse, coasting the
westeme shore of Desolation. The people came conti-
nually rowing out vnto me in their Canoas, twenty,
forty, and one hundred at a time, and would giue me
fishe dried, Samon, Samon peale, cod, Caplin, Lumpe,
stone base, and such like, besides diuers kindes of
birdes, as Partrig, Fesant, Gulls, sea birdes, and other
kindes of fleshe. I still laboured by signes to knowe
from them what they knew of any sea towards the
North. They still made signes of a great sea as we m-
derstood them ; then I departed from that coast, think-
ing to discouer the North parts of America, and after
I had sayled towardes the west neere fortie leages I
fell upon a great bancke of yse ; the wind being North
and blewe much, I was constrained to coast the same
towardes the South, not seeing any shore West from
me, neither was there any yse towards the North, but
a great sea, free, large, very salt and blue and of an
unsearcheable depth. So coasting towardes the South
I came to the place wher I left the shippes to fishe,
but found them not. Then being forsaken and left in
this distresse referring my selfe to the mercifull proui-
dence of God, shaped my course for England and vn-
hoped for of any, God alone releuing me, I ariued at
Dartmouth. By this last discouerie it seemed most
manifest that the passage was free and without impe-
diment towards the North, but by reason of the Spanish
fleete and unfortunate time of master Secretoryes
death, the voyage was omitted and neuer sithens at-
tempted.
Davis made five voyages as a pilot to the East
Indies, where he was killed in 1605 in a contention
•with some Japanese off the coast of Malacca.
GEORGE SAKDYS.
Five years after that event, George Sandys, a son
of the Archbishop of York, and author of a well-
known metric.'d translation of 'Ovid's Metamor-
phoses,' set out upon a journey, of which he pub-
lished an account in 1615, entitled A lielatiun of a
Journeii begun Anno TJomlni 1610. Four Bouks, con-
tainiiHj a JJescription of the Turkish Empire of Egypt,
of the Holy I^nd, of the Remote Parts of Italy, and
Islands adjoining. This work was so popular as to
reach a seventh edition in 1673 — a distinction not
undeserved, since, as Mr Kerr has remarked, in his
(""fitalogue of Voyages and Travels, ' Sandys was an
accoiiiplislieJ gcntlcnnin. well prepared, by ]>revious
study, for liis travels, whicli are distinsuisliod by
erudition, sagacity, and a love of truth, and are
written in a pleasant style.'* He devoted particular
attention to the allusions of the ancient poets to the
various localities through which he passed. In bis
dedication to Prince Charles, be thus refers to the
[Jlodcm State of Ancient Countries.']
The parts I speak of are the most renowned coun-
tries and kingdoms : once the seats of most glorious
and triumphant empires ; the theatres of valour and
heroical actions ; the soils enriched with all earthly
felicities ; the places where Nature hath produced her
wonderful works ; where arts and sciences have been
invented and perfected ; where wisdom, virtue, policy,
and civility, have been planted, have flourished ; and,
lastly, where God himself did place his own common-
wealth, gave laws and oracles, inspired his prophets,
sent angels to converse with men ; above all, where
the Son of God descended to become man ; where he
honoured the earth with his beautiful steps, wrought
the works of our redemption, triumphed over death,
and ascended into glory : which countries, once so
glorious and famous for their happy estate, are now,
through vice and ingratitude, become the most de-
plored spectacles of extreme misery ; the wild beasts
of mankind having broken in upon them, and rooted
out all civility, and the pride of a stem and barbarous
tyrant possessing the thrones of ancient and just do-
minion. Who, aiming only at the height of great-
ness and sensuality, hath in tract of time reduced so
great and goodly a part of the world to that lament-
able distress and servitude, under which (to the asto-
nishment of the understanding beholders) it now
faints and groaneth. Those rich lands at this present
remain waste and overgro^vn with bushes, receptacles
of wild beasts, of thieves and murderers ; large terri-
tories dispeopled, or thinly inhabited ; goodly cities
made desolate ; sumptuous buildings become ruins ;
glorious temples either subverted, or prostituted to
impiety ; true religion discountenanced and oppressed;
all nobility extinguished ; no light of learning per-
mitted, nor virtue cherished : violence and rapine in-
sulting over all, and leaving no security except to an
abject mind, and unlooked-on poverty ; which cala-
mities of theirs, so great and deserved, are to the rest
of the world as threatening instructions. For assistance
wherein, I have not only related what I saw of their
present condition, but, so far as convenience might
permit, presented a brief view of the former estates
and first antiquities of those peoples and countries :
thence to draw a right image of the frailty of man,
the mutability of whatsoever is worldly, and assur-
ance that, as there is nothing unchangeable saving
God, so nothing stable but by his grace and protection.
The death of Sandys, which took place in 1643,
was somewhat preceded by that of a contemporary
traveller,
VOLUAM LITHGOW,
a Scotsman, who traversed on foot many Euro-
pean, Asiatic, and African countries. This indivi-
dual was one of those tourists, now so abundant, who
travel from a love of adventure and locomotion, with-
out having anj' scientific or literary object in view
According to his own statement, he walked more
than thirty-si.x thousand miles ; and so decidedly
did he give the preference to that mode of travelling,
that, even when the use of a carriage was oflTercd to
him, he steadfiistly declined to avail himself of the
accommodation. His narrative was published in
» Kerr's Collection of Voyages, vol. xviii. p. 558.
254
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JAMES HOW KM.
London in 1 640, with a long title, commencing thus —
The Total Discourse of (he Bare Adventures and Pair-
fal Peregrinations of Long Nineteen Years' Travels
from Scotland to the most famous Kingdoms in Europe,
Asia, and Africa. Pcrfited b;/ Three Dear-bought Voy-
ages in Surveying Forty-Eight Kingdoms, Ancient and
Modern; Twenty-One Peipublics, Ten Absolute Prin-
cipalities, with Two Hundred Islands. One of his prin-
cipal and least agreeable adventures occurred at
JIalaga in Spain, where he was arrested as an Eng-
lish spy. and conmiitted to jirison. The details which
he gives of his sufferings while in confinement, and
the tortures applied to him with the view of extract-
ing a confession, are such as to make humanity
sicken. Having been at length relieved by some
English residents in Jlalaga, to whom his situation
accidental!}- became known, he was sent to London
■bj'' sea, and afterwards forwarded, at tlie expense of
King James, to Batli, where he remained upwards
of six months, recruiting his sliattered frame. He
died in 1640, after having attempted, apparently
without success, to obtain redress by bringing his
case before the Upper House.
JA^rES HOWELL.
James Howell was one of the most intelligent
travellers and pleasing miscellaneous writers in the
early part of the seventeenth century. Born in Car-
marthenshire about 1596, he received his education
at Hereford and Oxford, and repaired to London in
quest of employment. He was there appointed
steward to a patent-glass manufactory, in which
James HoweU.
capacity he went abroad in 1619, to procure mate-
rials and engage workmen. In the course of his
travels, which lasted till 1621, he visited many com-
mercial towns in Holland, Flanders, France, Spain,
and Italy ; and, being possessed of an acute and in-
quiring mind, laid up a great store of useful observa-
tions on men and manners, besides acquiring an
extensive knowledge of modern languages. His con-
nexif>n with the glass company soon after ceased,
and he again visited France as the travelling com-
panion of a young gentleman. After this lie was
sent to Spain, as agent for the recovery of an Eng-
lish vessel which had been seized in Sardinia on a
charge of snuiggling ; but all hopes of obtaining re-
dress being destroyed by the breaking off of Prince
Charles's proposed marriage with the infanta, he
returned to England in 1624. His next office was
that of secretary to Lord Scrope, as president of the
north; and in 1627 he was chosen by the corpora-
tion of Richmond to be one of their representatives
in parliament. Three years afterwards he visited
Copenhagen as secretary to the Englis?" ''mbassador.
Having complimented Charles T. in two ffn all poems,
he obtahied, in 1640, tlie clerkship of the council, an
appointment which lasted but a short time, as, three
years afterwards, he was imprisoned in the Fleet by
order of a committee of parliament. Here he re-
mained till after the king's death, supporting him-
self by translating and composing a variety of
works. At tlie Restoration he became historiogra-
pher-royal, being the first who ever enjoyed that
title ; and continued his literary avocations till his
death, in 1666. ()f upwards of forty publications of
tliis lively and sensible writer, none is now gene-
rally read except his Epistohe Ho-Eliano', or Familiar
Letter/, first printed in 1645, and considered to be
the earliest specimen of epistolary literature in the
language. The letters are dated from various places
at home and abroad ; and though some of them are
supposed to have been compiled from memory while
the author was in the Fleet prison, the greater num-
ber seem to bear suffieient internal evidence of hav-
ing been written at the times and places indicated.
His remarks on the leading events and characters of
the time, as well as the animated accounts given of
what he saw in foreign countries, and the sound
reflections witli wliich his letters abound, contri-
bute to render the work one of permanent interest
and value.
To Dr Francis MaiiseU,
* * These wishes come to you from \'enice, a place
where there is nothing wanting that heart can wish ; re-
nowned Venice, the admired'st city in the world, a city
that all Europe is bound unto, for she is her greatest
rampart against that huge eastern tyrant, the Turk, by
sea ; else, I believe, he had overrun all Christen iom
by this time. Against him this city hath perfon led
notable exploits, and not only against him, but di\ers
others ; she hath restored emperors to their thrones,
and popes to their chairs, and with her galleys often
preserved St Peter's bark from sinking : for which, by
way of reward, one of his successors espoused her to
the sea, which marriage is solemnly renewed every
year in solemn procession by the Doge and all the
Clarissiraos, and a gold ring cast into the sea out of
the great Galeasse, called the Bucentoro, wherein the
first ceremon}- was performed by the pope himself,
above three hundred years since, and they say it is the
self-same vessel still, though often put upon careen,
and trimmed. This made me think, nay, I fell upon
an abstracted notion in phiksophy, and a s])eculation
touching the bod}- of man, which, being in perpetual
flux, and a kind of succession of decays, and conse
quently requiring, ever and anon, a restoration of what
it loseth of the virtue of the former aliment, and what
was converted after the third concoction into a blood
and fleshly substance, which, as in all other sul)luiiary
bodies that have internal principles of heat, useth to
transpire, breathe out, and waste away through invi-
sible pores, by exercise, motion, and sleeji, to niako
room still for a supply of new nurriture : 1 fell, I
say, to consider whether our bodies may be said to be
of like condition with this Bucentoro, which, though
it be reputed still the same vessel, yet, I believe
there's not a foot of that timber remaining wliich it
had upon the first dock, having been, as they tell me,
255
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 1649,
so often planked and ribbed, calked and pieced. In
like manner, our bodies may be said to be daily re-
paired by new sustenance, which begets new blood,
and consequently new sj)irit9, new humours, and, 1
may say, new flesh ; the old, by continual deperdition
and insensible perspirations, evaporating still out of
us, and giving way to fresh ; so that I make a question
whether, by reason of these perpetual reparations and
accretions, the body of man may be said to be the
same numerical body in his old age that he had in
his manhood, or the same in his manhood that he had
in his youth, the same in his youth that he carried
about with him in his childhood, or the same in his
childhood which he wore first in the womb. I make a
doubt whether I had the same identical, individually
numerical body, when I carried a calf-leather satchel
to school in Hereford, as when I wore a lamb-skin
hood in Oxford ; or whether I have the same mass of
blood in my veins, and the same flesh, now in Venice,
which I carried about me three years since, up and
do>vn London streets, having, in lieu of beer and ale,
drunk wine all the while, and fed upon different
riands. Now, the stomach is like a crucible, for it
hath a chemical kind of virtue to transmute one
body into another, to transubstantiate fish and fruits
into flesh within and about us ; but though it be
questionable whether I wear the same flesh which is
flusible, I am sure my hair is not the same, for you
may remember I went flaxen-haired out of England,
but you shall find me returned with a very dark
brown, which I impute not only to the heat and air
of those hot countries I have eat my bread in, but to
the quality and diflijrence of food : you will say
that hair is b'jt an excrementitious thing, and makes
not io this purpose ; moreover, methinks I hear
thee say that this may be true only in the blood
and spirits, or such fluid parts, not in the solid and
heterogeneal parts. But I will press no farther at
this time this philosophical notion, which the sight of
Bucentoro infused into me, for it hath already made
me exceed the bounds of a letter, and, I fear me, to tres-
pass too much upon your patience ; I leave the farther
disquisition of this point to your own contemplations,
who are a far riper philosopher than I, and have
waded deeper into and drunk more of Aristotle's well.
But, to conclude, though it be doubtful whether I
carry about me the same body or no in .all points, that
I had in England, I am well assured 1 bear still the
same mind, and therein I verify the old verse —
Ccelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt,
' The air, but not tlie mind, they change,
AVho in outlandisli countries range.'
For, what alterations soever happen in this micro-
cosm, in this little world, this small bulk and body
of mine, you may be confident that nothing shall alter
my afiections, specially towards you, but that I will
persevere still the same — the very same
Vbnice, July 1, IG21.
To Sir William St John, Knight.
Sir — Having seen Antcnor's tomb in Padua, and the
amphitheatre of Flaminius in Verona, with other
brave towns in Lombardy, I am now come to Rome,
%nd Rome, they say, is every man's country ; she is
called Communis Patria, for every one that is within
the compass of the Latin church finds himself here, as
it were, at home, and in his mother's house, in regard
of interest in religion, which is the cause that for one
native there be five strangers that sojourn in this
city ; and without any distinction or mark of strange-
ness, they come to preferments and offices, both in
church and state, according to merit, which is more
valued and sought after here than an3'where.
But whereas I expected to have found Rome ele-
vated upon seven hills, I met her rather spreading
upon a fl.at, having humbled herself, since she was
made a Christian, and descended from those hills to
Campus Martius ; with Trasieren, and the suburbs of
Saint Peter, she hath yet in compass about fourteen
miles, which is far short of that vast circuit she had
in Claudius his time ; for Vopiscus writes she was then
of fifty miles in circumference, and she had five hun-
dred thousand free citizens in a fiimous cense that
was made, which, allowing but six to every family in
women, children, and servants, came to three millions
of souls ; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of
that number. The pope is grown to be a great tem-
poral prince of late years, for the state of the church
extends above three hundred miles in length, and two
hundred miles in breadth ; it contains Ferrara, Bo-
logna, Romagnia, the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria,
Sabina, Perugia, with a part of Tuscany, the patri-
mony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are
above fifty bishopricks ; the pope hath also the duchy
of Spoleto, and the exarchate of Ravenna ; he hath the
toAvn of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and the
country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He hath
title also good enough to Naples itself ; but, rather
than offend his champion, the king of Spain, he is
contented with a white mule, and purse of pistoles
about the neck, which he receives every year for a
heriot or homage, or what you will call it ; he pre-
tends also to be lord paramount of Sicily, Urbin,
Parma, and Masseran ; of Norway, Ireland, and Eng-
land, since King John did prostrate our crown at
Pandelfo his legate's feet.
The state of the apostolic see here in Italy lieth
'twixt two seas, the Adriatic and the Tyrrhene, and it
runs through the midst of Italy, which makes the
pope powerful to do good or harm, and more capable
than any other to be an umpire or an enemy. His
authority being mixed 'twixt temporal and spiritual,
disperseth itself into so many members, that a young
man may grow old here before he can well understand
the form of government.
The consistory of cardinals meet but once a-week,
and once a-week they solemnly wait all upon the pope.
I am told there are now in Christendom but sixty-
eight cardinals, whereof there are six cardinal bishops,
fifty one cardinal priests, and eleven cardinal deacons.
The cardinal bishops attend and sit near the pope,
when he celebrates any festival ; the cardinal priests
assist him at mass, and the cardinal deacons attire
him. A cardinal is made by a short breve or writ
from the pope in these words, ' Creamus te sociura
rcgibus, superiorem ducibus, et fratrem nostrum :' —
[' We create thee a companion to kings, superior to
dukes, and our brother.'] If a cardinal bishop should
be questioned for any olfcnce, there must be twenty-
four witnesses produced against him. The bishop of
Ostia hath most privilege of any other, for he conse-
crates and installs the i)<)pe, and goes always next to
him. All these cardinals have the repute of princes,
and besides other incomes, they have the annat of
benefices to supjjort their greatness.
For point of power, the pope is able to put 50,000
men in the field, in case of necessity, besides his naval
strength in galleys. We read how Paul III. sent
Charles V. twelve thousand foot and five hundred
horse. Pius V. sent a greater aid to Charles IX.;
256
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JAMES HOWELL.
and for riches, besides the temporal dominions he
hath in all the countries before named, tlie datany or
despatching of bulls, the triennial subsidies, annats,
and other ecclesiastical rights, mount to an unkno\\ii
sum ; and it is a common saying here, that as Ion? as
the pope can finger a pen, he can want no pence. Fius
v., notwithstanding his expenses in buildings, left
four millions in the castle of Saint Angelo in less
than five years ; more, I believe, than this Gregory
XV. will, for he hath many nephews ; and better
it is to be the pope's nephew, than to be a favourite to
any prince in Christendom.
Touching the temporal government of Rome, and
oppidan affairs, there is a pra?tor and some choice
citizens, which sit in the Capitol. Amongst other
pieces of policy, there is a synagogue of Jews permitted
here (as in other places in Italy) under the pope's
nose, but they go with a mark of distinction in their
hats ; they are tolerated for a-ivantage of commerce,
wherein the Jews are wonderful dexterous, though
most of them be only brokers and Lombardeers ; and
they are held to be here as the cynic held women to
be — malum necessariuin. There be few of the Romans
that use to pray for the pope's long life, in regard the
oftener the change is, the more advantageous it is for
the city, because commonly it brings strangers, and a
recruit of new people. The air of Rome is not so
wholesome a^ of old ; and amongst other reasons, one
is, because rf the burning of stubble to fatten their
fields. I'or her antiquities, it would take up a whole
volume to write them ; those which I hold the chiefest
are \'espasiau's amphitheatre, where fourscore thou-
sand people might sit ; the stoves of Anthony ; divers
rare statues at Belvidere and St Peter's, specially that
of Laocoon ; the obelisk ; for the genius of the Roman
hath always been much taken with imager^', limning,
and sculptures, insomuch that, as in former times, so
now 1 believe, the statues and pictures in Rome ex-
ceed the number of living people. One antiquity
among others is very remarkable, because of the
change of language ; which is, an ancient column
erected as a tropliy for Duilllus the consul, after a
famous naval victoi-y obtained against the Carthagi-
nians in the second Punic war, where these words are
engraven, and remain legible to this day, ' Exemet
leciones Macistrates Castreis exfocient pugnandod
caped enque navebos marid consul,' and half a dozen
lines more. It is called Columna Rostrata, having the
beaks and prows of ships engraven up and down,
whereby it appears, that the Latin then spoken was
much differing from that which was used in Cicero's
time, 150 years after. Since the dismembering of the
empire, Rome hath run through many vicissitudes
and turns of fortune ; and had it not been for the
residence of the pope, I believe she had become a heap
of stones, a mount of rubbish, by this time : and how-
ever that she bears .up indifferent well, yet one may
say —
Qui miseranda viJet veteris vestigia Romje,
lUe potest nieiito dicere, Roma fuit.
' They who the ruins of first Rome behold,
Blay say, Rome is not now, but was of old.*
Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of
Rome past, when she was in that flourisli that St
Austin desired to see her in. She who tamed the
world, tamed herself at last, and falling under her own
weight, fell to be a prey to time ; yet there is a provi-
dence seems to have a care of her still; for though her
air be not so good, nor her circumjacent soil so kindly
as it was, yet she hath wherewitli to keep life and soul
together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is the
sole cause of her peopling now ; so that it may be said,
when the pope came to be her head, she was reduced
to her first principles ; for as a shepherd was founder, |
so a shepherd is still governor and preserver. But
whereas the French have an odd saying, that
Jamais chcval ni liomme,
S'amenda pour aller a Rome.
' Ne'er horse nor man did mend,
That unto Rome did wend ;'
truly, I must confess, that I find myself much bet-
tered by it ; for the sight of some of these ruins did
fill me with symptoms of mortification, and made me
more sensible of the frailty of all sublunary things,
how all bodies, as well inanimate as animate, are sub-
ject to dissolution and change, and everything else
under the moon, except the love of — Your faithful ser-
vitor — J. H.
Rome, September 13, 1621.
To Captain Tliomas B.
Noble Captain — Yours of the 1st of ]\Iarch was
delivered me by Sir Richard Scot, and I hold it no
profanation of this Sunday evening, considering the
quality of my subject, and having (I thank God for
it) performed all churcli duties, to employ some hours
to meditate on you, and send you this friendly salute,
though I confess in an unusual monitory way. My
dear Captain, I love you perfectly well ; I love both
your person and parts, Avhich are not vulgar ; I am in
love with your disposition, which is generous, and I
verily think you were never guilty of any pusillani-
mous act in your life. Nor is this love of mine con-
ferred upon you gratis, but you may challenge it as
your due, and by way of correspondence, in regard of
those thousand convincing evidences you have given
me of yours to me, which ascertain me that you take
me for a true friend. Now, I am of the number of
those that had rather commend the virtue of an enemy
than soothe the vices of a triend ; for j'our own par-
ticular, if your parts of virtue and your infirmities
were cast into a balance, I know the first would much
outpoise the other ; yet give me leave to tell you that
there is one frailty, or ratlier ill-favoured custom, that
reigns in you, which weighs much ; it is a humour ol
swearing in all your discourses, and they are not slight
but deep far-fetched oaths that you are wont to rap
out, which you use as flowers of rhetoric to enforce a
faith upon the hearers, who believe you never the more ;
and you use this in cold blood when you are not pro-
voked, which makes the humour far more dangerous.
I know many (and I cannot say I myself am free from
it, God forgive me), that, being transported with choler,
and, as it were, made drunk with passion by some
sudden provoking accident, or extreme ill-fortune at
play, will let fall oaths and deep protestations ; but to
belch out, and send forth, as it were, whole vo.lies of
oaths and curses in a caliH humour, to verify every
trivial discourse, is a thing of horror. I knew a king
that, being crossed in his game, would amongst his
oaths fall on the gi'ound, and bite the very earth in the
rough of his passion ; I heard of another king (Heiry
IV. of France), that in his highest distemper would
swear but 'Ventre de Saint Gris,' ['By the belly
of St Gris ;'] I heard of an Italian, that, having been
much accustomed to blaspheme, was weaned from it
by a pretty wile, for, having been one night at play,
and lost all his money, after many execrable oaths,
and having offered money to another to go out to face
heaven and defy God, he threw himself upon a bed
hard by, and there fell asleep. The other gamesters
played on still, and finding that he was fast asleep,
they put out the candles, and made semblance to i)lay
on still ; they fell a wrangling, and spoke so loud that
he awaked ; he hearing them play on still, fell a rub-
bing liis eyes, and his conscience presently prompted
him that he was struck blind, and that God's judg-
ment had deservedly fallen down upon him for his
2hl
18
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1642>
blasphemies, and so he fell to sigh anS weep pitifully ;
a ghostly father was sent for, who undertook to do
some act's of penance for hiui, if he would make a vow
never to play again or blaspheme, which he did ; and
so the candles were lighted again, which he thought
were burning all the while ; so he became a perfect
convert. I could wish this letter might produce the
same effect in you. There is a strong text, that the
curse of heaven hangs always over the dwelling of the
swearer, and j'ou have more fearful examples of mira-
culous judgments in this particular, than of any other
sin.
There is a little town in Languedoc, in France, that
hath a multitude of the pictures of the Virgin Mary
up and down ; but she is made to carry Christ in her
rif^ht arm, contrary to the ordinary custom, and the
reason they told me was this, that two gamesters being
at play, and one having lost all his money, and bolted
out many blasphemies, he gave a deep oath, that that
jade upon the wall, meaning the picture of the
blessed Virgin, was the cause of his ill luck; hereupon
the child removed imperceptibly from the left arm to
the right, and the man fell stark dumb ever after ;
thus went the tradition there. This makes me think
upon the Lady Southwell's news from Utopia, that
he who sweareth when he playeth at dice, may chal-
lenge his damnation by way of purchase. This in-
fandous custom of swearing, I observe, reigns in Eng-
land lately, more than anywhere else ; though a
German in his highest puff of passion swear a hun-
dred thousand sacraments, the Italian by * * *
the French by God's deatli, the Spaniard by his
flesh, the Welshman by his sweat, the Irishman by
his five wounds, though the Scot commonly bids the
devil ha'e his soul, yet, for variety of oaths, the English
roarers put do^vn all. Consider well what a dangerous
thing it is to tear in pieces that dreadful name, which
makes the vast fabric of the world to tremble, that
holy name wherein the whole hierarchy of heaven
doth triumph, that blissful name, wherein consists the
fulness of all felicity. I know this custom in you
yet is but a light disposition ; 'tis no habit, I hope ;
let me, therefore, conjure j'ou by that power, friend-
ship, by that holy league of love which is between us,
that you would suppress it, before it come to that ; for
1 must tell you that those who could find it in their
hearts to love you for many other things, do disrespect
you for this ; they hate your company, and give no
credit to whatsoever you sa}", it being one of the pun-
ishments of a swearer, as well as of a liar, not to be
believed when he speaks truth.
Excuse me that I am so free with you ; what I
write proceeds from the clear current of a pure affection,
and I shall heartily thank you, and take it for an
argument of love, if you tell me of my weaknesses,
which are (God wot) too, too many ; for my body is
but a Cargazon of corrupt humours, and being not
able to overcome them all at once, I do endeavour to
do it by degrees, like Sertorius his soldier, who, when
he could not cut off" the horse's tail at one blow with
his sword, fell to pull out the hair one by one. And
touching this particular humour from which I dis-
suade you, it hath raged in me too often by contingent
fits, but I thank God for it, I find it much abated and
purged. Now, the only ])hysic I used was a precedent
fast, and recourse to the holy sacrament the next dav,
of purpose to implore pardon for what had passed,
and power for the future to quell those exorbitant
motions, those ravings and feverish fits of the soul ;
in regard there are no infinuities more dangerous, for
at the same instant they have lieing, tliey become im-
pieties. And the greatest symptom of amendment I
find in me is, because whensoever I hear the holy
name of God jslasphemed by any other, it makes my
heart to tremble within my breast ; now, it is a i)eui-
»ential rule, that if sins present do not please thee,
sins past will not hurt thee. All other sins have for
their object either pleasure or profit, or some aim or
satisfaction to body or mind, but this hath none at
all ; therefore fie upon't, my dear Cajitain ; try whether
you can make a conquest of yourself in subduing this
execrable custom. Alexander subdued the world,
CiBs.ar his enemies, Hercules monsters, but he that
o'ercomes himself is the true valiant captain.
York, Aug. 1, 1628.
To the Eight Hon. the Lord Cliffe.
My Lord — Since, among other passages of enter-
tainment we had lately at the Italian ordinary (where
your lordship was pleased to honour us with your jire-
sence), there happened a large discourse of wines, and
of other drinks that were used by several nations of
the earth, and that your lordship desired me to deliver
what I obsen-ed therein abroad : I am bold now to
confirm and amplify, in this letter, what I then let
drop extempore from me, having made a recoUecti'^n
of myself for that purpose.
It is without controversy, that, in the nonage of the
world, men and beasts had but one buttery, which
was the fountain and river, nor do we read of anv
vines or wines till two hundred years after the flood";
but now I do not know or hear of anj nation that
hath water only for their drink, except the Japanese,
and they drink it hot too ; but we may say, tliat
what beverage soever we make, either by brewin'^,
by distillation, decoction, percolation, or pressing, it
is but water at first ; nay, wine itself is but water sub-
limed, being nothing else but that moisture .and sap,
which is caused either by rain or other kind of irriga-
tions about the roots of the vine, and drawii up to the
bi-anches and berries by the virtual attractive heat of
the sun, the bowels of the earth serving as a leaibic
to that end, which made the Italian vineyard-man
(after a long drought, and an extreme hot summer,
which had parched up all his grapes) to con)])l;iin
that — ' per mancamento d'acco bevo del' accqua ; se io
bavessi accqua, beveriel vino' — [' for want of water I
am forced to drink water ; if I had water, I would drink
wine'] ; it may also be applied to the miller, when he
has no water to drive his mills.
The vine doth so abhor cold, that it cannot gmw
beyond the 49th degree to any purpose ; therefore God
and nature hath furnished the north-west nations with
other inventions of beverage. In this island the old
drink was ale, noble ale, than which, as 1 heard a great
foreign doctor afiirm, there is no liquor that more in-
creascth the radical moisture, and preserves the natu-
ral heat, which are the two pillars that support the life
of man. But since beer hath hupped in amongst us, aie
is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so go.^d
as Sir .John Oldcastle and Smugg the smith was u>ed
to drink. Besides ale and beer, the natural driiik of
part of this isle may be said to be metheglin, brag;>iit,
and mead, which differ in strength according to tlie
three degrees of comparison. The first of the three,
which is strong in the superlative, if taken immoiit r-
ately, doth stupify more than any other liquor, and
keeps a humming in the brain, which made one say,
that he loved not metheglin, because he was used to
speak too much of the house he came from, meaning
the liive. Cider and perry are also the natural drinks
of parts of this isle. But I have read in some old
authors of a famous drink the ancient nation of the
Picts, who lived 'twixt Trent and Tweed, and were
utterly extinguished by the overpowering of the Scot,
were used to make of decoction of flowers, tlie receipt
whereof they kept as a secret, and a tiling sacred to
themselves, so it perished with them. These are all
the common drinks of this isle, and of Ireland also,
where they are more given to milk and strong waters
of all colours ; the prime is usquebagh, which cannot
258
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JAMES HOWELt.
be made anpvhere in that iierfcction, and whereas we
drink it here in aqua vitas measures, it goes down there
by beer-glassfuls, being more natural to the nation.
In the Seventeen Provinces hard by, and all Low
Germany, beer is the common natural drink, and
nothing else ; so is it in Westphalia, and all the lower
circuit of Saxony ; in Denmark, Swethland, and Nor-
way. The Pruss hath a beer as thick as honey ; in
the Duke of Saxe's country, there is beer as yellow as
gold, made of wheat, and it inebriates as soon as sack.
In some parts of Germany they use to spice their beer,
which will keep many years ; so that at some wed-
dings there will be a butt of beer drunk out as old as
the bride. Poland also is a beer country ; but in
Russia, ^luscovy, and Tartar}', they use mead, which
is the naturalest drink of the country, being made of
the decoction of water and honey ; this is that which
the ancients called hydromel. glare's milk is a great
drink with the Tartar, which may be a cause why they
are bigger than ordinar\', for the physicians hold, that
milk enlargeth the bones, beer strengtheneth the
nerves, and \vine breeds blood sooner than any other
liquor. The Turk, when he hath his stomach full of
pilau, or of mutton and rice, will go to nature's cel-
lar, either to the next well or river to drink water,
which is his natural common drink ; for JSIahomet
taught them that there was a devil in every berry of
the gi-ape, and so made a strict inhibition to all his
sect from drinking of wine as a thing profane ; he had
also a reach of policy therein, because they should not
be encumbered with luggage when they went to war,
as other nations do, who are so troubled with the car-
riage of their wine and beverages. Yet hath the Turk
peculiar drinks to himself besides, as sherbet made of
juice of lemon, sugar, amber, and other ingredients ;
he hath also a drink called Cauphe,* which is made of
a bro^vn berrj', and it may be called their clubbing
drink between meals, which, though it be not very
gustful to the palate, yet it is very comfortable to the
stomach, and good for the sight ; but notwithstanding
their prophet's anathema, thousands of them will ven-
ture to drink wine, and they will make a precedent
prayer to their souls to depart from their bodies in the
interim, for fear she partake of the same pollution. * *
In Asia, there is no beer drunk at all, but water,
wine, and an incredible variety of other drinks, made
of dates, dried raisins, rice, divers sorts of nuts, fruits,
and roots. In the oriental countries, as Camhaia,
Calicut, Narsingha, there is a drink called Banque,
which is rare and precious, and 'tis the height of en-
tertainment they give their guests before they go to
sleep, like that nepenthe which the poets speak so
much of, for it provokes pleasing dreams and delightful
fantasies ; it will accommodate itself to the humour
of the sleeper ; as, if he be a soldier, he will dream of
victories and taking of towns ; if he be in love, he
will think to enjoy his mistress ; if he be covetous, he
will dream of mountains of gold, &c. In the Molucca
and Philippines there is a curious drink called
Tampoy, made of a kind of gillyflowers, and another
drink called Otraqua, that comes from a nut, and it
is the more general drink. In China, they have a
holy kind of liquor made of such sort of flowers for
ratifying and binding of bargains, and having drunk
thereof, they hold it no less than perjury to break what
they promise ; as they write of a river of Bythinia,
whose water hath a peculiar virtue to discover a per-
jurer, for, if he drink thereof, it will presently boil
in his stomach, and put him to visible tortures ; this
makes me think of the river Styx among the poets,
which the gods were used to swear by, and it was the
greatest oath for the performance of anything.
Nubila promissi Styx niihi testis erit.
It put me in mind, also, of that which some write of
* i. e. Coffee.
the river of Rhine, for trying the legitimation of a
child being thrown in — if he be a bastard, he will
sink ; if otherwise, he will not.
In China, they speak of a tree called Magnais, which
affords not only good drink, being pierced, but all
things else that belong to the subsistence of man ; they
bore the trunk with an auger, and there issucth out
sweet potable liquor ; 'twixt the rind and the tree there
is a cotton, or hempie kind of moss, which they wear
for their clothing : it bears huge nuts, which have ex-
cellent food in them : it shoots out hard prickles above
a fathom long, and those ann them : with the bark
they make tents, and the dotard trees scne for firing.
Africa also hath a great diversity of drinks, as having
more need of them, being a hotter country far. In
Guinea, of the lower Ethiopia, there is a famous
drink called ^lingol, which issueth out of a tree much
like the palm, being bored. But in the upper Ethiopia,
or the Habassins' country, they drink mead, concocted
in a different manner ; there is also much wine there.
The common drink of Barbary, after water, is that
which is made of dates. But in Egypt, in times past,
there was beer drunk called Zicus in Latin, which was
no other than a decoction of barley and water : they
had also a famous composition (and they use it to this
day) called Chissi, made of divers cordials and provo-
cative ingredients, which they throw into water to
make it gustful ; they use it also for fumigation. But
now the general drink of Egypt is Nile water, which of
all water may be said to be the best ; * * 'tis yellow-
ish and thick ; but if one cast a few almonds into a
potful of it, it will become as clear as rock-water ; it is
also in a degree of lukewarmness — as Martial's boy :
Tolle puer calices, tepidique toreumata Nili.
In the New World they have a world of drinks, for
there is no root, flower, fruit, or pulse, but is reducible
to a potable liquor ; as in the Barbadoe Island, the
common drink among the English is mobbi, made of
potato roots. In ^lexico and Peru, which is the great
continent of America, with other parts, it is prohibited
to make wines, under great penalties, for fear of
starring of trade, so that all the wines they have are
sent from Spain.
Now for the pure wine countries. Greece, with all
her islands, Italy, Spain, France, one part of four of
Germany, Hungary, with divers countries thereabouts,
all the islands in the ^Mediterranean and Atlantic sea,
are wine countries.
The most generous wines of Spain grow in the mid-
land parts of the continent, and Saint Martin bears
the bell, which is near the court. Now as in Spain,
so in all other wine countries, one cannot pass a day's
journey but he will find a differing race of wine ; those
kinds that our merchants carry over are those onlj' that
grow upon the sea-side, as malagas, sherries, tents,
and alicants : of this last there's little comes over
right ; therefore the vintners make tent (which is a
name for all wines in Spain, except white) to supply
the place of it. There is a gentle kind of white wine
grows among the mountains of (iallicia, but not of
body enough to bear the sea, called Ribadavia. Por-
tugal affords no wines worth the transporting.* They
have an old stone they call Yef, which they use to
throw into their wines, which clarifieth it, and makes
it more lasting. There's also a drink in Spain called
Alosha, which they drink between meals inhotweather,
and 'tis a hydromel made of water and honey ; much
of them take of our mead. In the court of Spain there's
a German or two that brow beer ; Init for that ancient
drink of Spain which Pliny speaks of, composed of
flowers, the receipt thereof is utterly lost.
* This will sound stranpely in these days, when the wine
chiefly drunk in England is of Portupuesc extra<tion. The iin-
portiition of wines from Portugal dates from the reign of
Charles IL
2.50
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDlA OF
TO 1649.
In Greece there are no wines that have bodies
enough to bear the sea for long voyages ; some few
niuscadels and malnisies are brought over in small
casks ; nor is there in Italy any wine transported to
England but in bottles, as Verde and others ; for the
length of the voyage makes them subject to pricking,
and so lose colour, by reason of their delicacy.
France, participating of the climes of all the coun-
tries about her, affords wines of quality accordingly;
as, towards theAlps and Italy, she hath a luscious rich
wine called Frontiniac. In the country of Provence, to-
wards the Pyrenees in Languedoc, there are wines
congustable with those of Spain : one of the prime
gort of white wines is that of Beaumc ; and of clarets,
that of Orleans, though it be interdicted to wine the
king's cellar with it, in respect of the eorrosiveness it
carries with it. As in France, so in all other wine
countries, the white is called the female, and the claret
or red wine is called the male, because commonly it
hath more sulphur, body, and heat in't : the wines
that our merchants bring over upon the river of
Garonne, near Bourdeaux, in Gascony, wliich is the
greatest mart for wines in all France. The Scot, be-
cause he hath always been an useful confederate to
France against England, hath (among other privileges)
right of pre-emption of first clioice of wines in Bour-
deaux ; he is also permitted to carry his ordnance to
the very walls of the to^^•n, whereas the English are
forced to leave them at Blay, a good way down the
river. There is a hard green wine, that grows about
Rochelle, and the islands thereabouts, which the cun-
ning Hollander sometime used to fetch, and he hath
a trick to put a bag of herbs, or some other infusions
into it (as he doth brimstone in Rhenish), to give it a
whiter tincture, and more sweetness ; then they re-em-
bark it for England, where it passeth for good ISachrag,
and this is called stooming of wines. In Normandy
there's little or no wine at all grows ; therefore the
common drink of that country is cider, specially in
low Normandy. There are also many beer houses in
Paris and elsewhere ; but though their barley and
water be better than ours, or that of Germany, and
though they have English and Dutch brewers among
them, yet they cannot make beer in that perfection.
The prime wines of Germany grow about the Rhine,
specially in the Prolts or lower Palatinate about
Bachrag, which hath its etymology from Bachiara ; for
in ancient times there was an altar erected there to
the honour of Bacchus, in regard of the richness of the
wines. Here, and all France over, 'tis held a great
part of incivility for maidens to drink wine until they
are married, as it is in Spain for them to wear high
shoes, or to paint, till then. The German mothers, to
make their sons fall into a hatred of wine, do use,
when they are little, to put some owl's eggs into a cup
of Rhenish, and sometimes a little living eel, which,
twingling in the wine while the child is drinking, so
scares him, that many come to abhor and have an an-
tipathy to wine all their lives after. From Bachrag
the first stock of vines which grow now in the grand
Canary Island, were brought, which, with the heat of
the sun and the soil, is grown now to that height of
perfection, that the wines wliich they afford are ac-
counted the richest, the most firm, the best bodied, and
lastingst wine, and the most defecated from all earthly
grossness, of any other whatsoever ; it hath little or no
sulphur at all in't, and leaves less dregs behind, though
one drink it to excess. French wines may be said but
to pickle meat in tlie stomachs, but this is tlie wine
that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but
it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liiiuor :
of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that
merry induction, 'TJiat good wine m.akes good blood,
good blood causeth good humours, good liumours cause
good thouglits, good tliouglits bring forth good works,
good works carry a man to heaven — ergo, good wine
carrieth a man to heaven.' If tliis l>e true, surely I
more English go to heaven this way tlian any other ;
for I think there's more Canary brought into England
than to all the world besides. I think, also, there is a
hundred times more drunk under the name of Canary
wine than there is brought in ; for sherries and ma-
lagas, well mingled, pass for canaries in most taverns,
more often than Canary itself; else I do not see how
'twere possible for the vintner to save by it, or to live
by his calling, unless he were permitted sometimes to
be a brewer. When sacks and canaries were brouglit
in first among us, they were used to be drunk in aqua
vitjB measures, and 'twas held fit only for those to
drink who were used to carry their legs in their hands,
their eyes upon their noses, and an almanac in tlieir
bones ; but now they go down every one's throat, both
young and old, like milk.
The countries that are freest from excess of drink-
ing are Spain and Italy. If a woman can prove her
husband to have been thrice drunk, by the ancient
laws of Spain she may plead for a divorce from him.
Nor indeed can the Spaniard, being hot-brained, bear
much drink, yet I have heard that Gondamar was once
too hard for the king of Denmark, when he was here
in England. But the Spanish soldiers that have been
in the wars of Flanders will take their cups freely,
and the Italians also. When I lived 'tother side the
Alps, a gentleman told me a merry tale of a Ligurian
soldier, who had got drunk in Genoa ; and Prince
Doria going a-horseback to walk the round one night,
the soldier took his horse by the bridle, and asked
what tlie price of him was, for lie wanted a horse.
The prince, seeing in what humour he was, caused him
to be taken into a house and put to sleep. In the
morning he sent for him, and asked him what he
would give for his horse. ' Sir,' said the recovered
soldier, ' the mercliant that would have bought him
last ni;,lit of your highness, went away betimes in the
morning.' The boonest companions for drinking are
the Greeks and Germans ; but the Greek is the mer-
riest of the two, for he will sing, and dance, and kiss
his next companions ; but the other will drink as
deep as he. If the Greek will drink as many glasses
as there be letters in his mistress's name, the otlier
will drink the number of his years ; and though he be
not apt to break out in singing, being not of so airy a
constitution, yet he will drink often musically a
health to every one of these six notes, ut, re, mi, fa,
sol, la ; which, with this reason, are all comprehended
in this hexameter : —
TJt rellvet miserum fatum solitosque labores.
The fewest draughts he drinks are three — the first to
quench the thirst past, the second to quench the pre-
sent thirst, the third to prevent the future. I heard
of a company of Low Dutelimen that had drunk so
deep, that, beginning to stagger, and their heads turn-
ing round, they thought verily they were at sea, and
that the upper chamber where they were was a ship,
insomuch that, it being foul windy weather, they fell
to throw the stools and other things out of the window,
to lighten the vessel, for fear of suffering shipwreck.
Thus have I sent your lordship a dry discourse
upon s, fluent subject; yet I hope your lordshij) will
please to take all in good i)art, because it proceeds
from your most humble and ready servitor, .J. II.
Wcatmin. 7. Octob. 1634.
From ai.other of Howell's works, entitled Tnstruc-
tiovsforForen/nTravel, published in 104:2, and which,
like ills letters, contains many acute and liuniorous
observations on men and things, we extract the fol-
lowing passage on the
[Tales of Travellers.']
Others have a custom to be always relating strange
things and wonders (of the humour of Sir John Man-
2 fid
PROSE WIIITEIUS.
EiNGLisH liti:rail:uk.
WILLIAM CAMDEN.
deville), and they usually present them to the hearers
through inultiplyiiig-glasses, and thereby cause the
thing to appear far greater than it is in itself; they
make mountains of mole-hill?, like Charenton-Bridge-
Echo, which doubles the sound nine times. Such a
traveller was he that reported the Indian fly to be as
big as a fox ; China birds to be as big as some horses,
and their mice to be as big as monkeys ; but they
have the wit to fetch this far enough off, because the
hearer ma}- rather believe it than make a voyage so
far to disprove it.
Every one knows the tale of him who reported he
had seen a cabbage, under whose leaves a regiment of
soldiers were sheltered from a shower of rain. Another,
who was no traveller (yet the wiser man), said, he
had passed bj' a place where there were 400 braziers
making of a cauldron — 200 within, and 200 without,
beating the nails in ; the traveller asking for what
use that huge cauldron was? he told him — 'Sir, it
was to boil your cabbage.'
Such another was the Spanish traveller, who was so
habituated to hA'perbolise, and relate wonders, that he
became ridiculous in all companies, so that he was
forced at last to give order to his man, when he fell
into any excess this way, and report anything impro-
bable, he should pull him by the sleeve. The
master falling into his wonted hyperboles, spoke of a
church in China that was ten thousand j-ards long ;
his man, standing behind, and pulling liim by the
sleeve, made him stop suddenly. The company' ask-
ing, ' I pray, sir, how broad might that chi.rch be?'
he replied, ' But a yard broad, and you may thank my
man for pulling me by the sleeve, el*' I had made it
foursquare for you.'
SIR TH03IAS HERBERT.
The only other traveller of much note at this time
vas Sir Thojias Herbert, who in 1626 set out
on .1 journey to the east, and, after his return, pub-
lished, in 1634, ^4 Relation of some Years' Travels
into Africa and the Greater Asia, especialli/ the Ter-
ritory of the Persian Monarchy, and some parts of
the Oriental Indies and Isles adjacent. According
to the judgment of the author of the Catalogue
in Churchiirs Collection, these travels ' have de-
servedly had a great reputation, being tlie best
account of those parts written [before the end
of the seventeenth century] by any Englishman,
and not inferior to the best of foreigners ; what is
peculiar in them is, the excellent description of all
antiquities, the curious remarks on them, and the
extraordinary accidents that often occur.'* This
eulogy seems too high ; at least we have found the
author's accounts of the places which he visited far
too meagre to be relished by modern taste. A brief
extract from the work is given below. In the civil
■wars of England, Herbert sided with the parliament,
and, when the king was required to dismiss his own
servants, was chosen by his majesty one of the
grooms of the bed-chamber. Herbert then became
much attached to the king, served him with much
zeal and assiduity, and was on the scaffold when the
ill-fated monarch was brought to the block. After
the Restoration, he was rewarded by Charles H.
with a baronetcy, and subsequently devoted much
time to literary pursuits. In 1678 he wrote Thren-
odia Carolina, containing an Historical Account if the
Two Last Years of the Life of King Charles I. This
was reprinted in a collection of ' Memoirs of the Two
Last Years of that Unparalleled Prince, of Ever-
blessed Memory, King Charles I.,' pubUshedin 1702.
Sir Thomas Herbert died in 1682.
* Vol. i. p. 21.
\_DLiseription of !^t Helena.'^
St Helena was so denominated by Juan de Nova,
the Portugal, in regard he first discovered it on that
saint's day. It is doubtful whether it adhere to
America or Afric, the vast ocean bellowing on both
sides, and almost equally ', yet I imagine she in-
clines more to Afer than Vespusius. 'Tis in circuit
thirty English miles, of that ascent and height that
'tis often enveloped with clouds, from whom she
receives moisture to fatten her ; and as the land is
very high, so the sea at the brink of this isle is
excessive deep, and the ascent so immediate, that
tliougli tlie sea beat fiercely on her, yet can no ebb
nor flow be well perceived there.
The water is sweet above, but, running down and
participating with the salt hills, tastes brackish at his
fall into the valleys, which are but two, and those wcry
small, having their appellations from a lemon-tree
above, and a ruined chapel placed beneath, built by
the Spaniard, and dilapidated by the Dutch. Thc'.e
has been a village about it, lately depopulated ''njin
her inhabitants by command from the Spanish king;
for that it became an unlawful magazine of seamen's
treasure, in turning and returning out of both the
Indies, whereby he lost both tribute and prerogative
in apparent measure.
Monuments of antique beings nor other rarities can
be found here. You see all, if you view the ribs of
an old carrick, and some broken pieces of her ord-
nance left there against the owner's good will or ap-
probation. Goats and hogs are the now dwellers, who
nniltiplyin great abundance,'and (though unwillingly)
artbrd themselves to hungry and sea-beaten passengers.
It has store of patridge and guinea-hens, all which
were brought thither by the honest Portugal, who now
dare neither anchor there, nor own their labours, lest
the English or Flemings question them.
The isle is very even and delightful above, and
gives a large prospect into the ocean. 'Tis a saying
with the seamen, a man there has his choice, whetlier
he will break his heart going up, or his neck coining
dovnx • either wish bestowing more jocundity than
comfort.
WILLIAM CAMDEX.
We now turn to a circle of laborious writers, w..o
exerted themselves in the age of Elizabeth to dis-
cover and jireserve the remains of antiquity which
had come down to their times. Among these, tlie
leading place is unquestionably clue to \Villiam
Camden, who, besides being eminent as an antiquary,
claims to be considered likewise as one of the best
historians of his age. Camden was born in London
in l.'j.'jl, and received his education first at Clirist's
hospital and St Paul's school, and afterwards at
Oxford. In 157.5 he l)ecame second master of West-
minster school; and while performing the duties of
this office, devoted his leisure hours to the study of
the antiquities of Britain — a subject to which, from
his earliest years, he had been strongly inclined.
That he might personally examine ancient remains,
he travelled, in 1582, through some of the eastern
and northern counties of England ; and the fruits of
his researches appeared in his most celebrated work,
written in Latin, with a title signifying. Ihilain;
or a Chorographical Description of the Most Flourishing
Kingdom of Ungland, Scotland, Ireland, and the Adja-
cent Islands, from Remote Antiquity. This was pub-
lished in 1586, and immediately brought liim into
high repute as an antiquary and man of learning.
Anxious to improve and enlarge it, he joiirnied at
several times into different parts of the country,
examining archives and relics of antiiinity, and col-
lecting, with indefatigable industry, whatever iiifor-
261
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164^.
mation niiglit contribute to render it more complete.
The sixth edition, published in 1607, was that which
received his finishing touches ; and of this an Eng-
/lVi^(^^^y^ Cy"^
lish translation, executed, probably with the author's
assistance, by Dr Philemon Holland, appeared in
1610. From the preftice to that translation we
extract the account which Camden gives of his
labours : —
I hope it shall be no discredit if I now use again,
by way of preface, the same words, with a few more,
that I used twenty-four years since in the tirst edi-
tion of this work. Abraham Ortelius, the worthv
restorer of ancient geography, arriving here in Eng-
land about thirty -four years past, dealt earnestly
with me that I would illustrate this isle of Britain,
or, as he said, that I would restore antiquity to Bri-
tain, and Britain to antiquity ; which was (I under-
stood), that I would renew ancientn,-, enlighten ob-
scurity, clear doubts, and recall horue verity, by way
of recovery, which the negligence of writers", and cre'-
dulity of the common sort.'had in a manner proscribed
and utterly banished from among us. A painful
matter, I assure you, and more than difficult ; wherein
what toil is to be taken, as no man thinketh, so no
man believcth but he who hath made the trial. Never-
theless, how much the difficulty discouraged me from
it, so much the glory of my country encouraged me
to undertake it. So, while at one and the same time
I was fearful to undergo the burden, and yet desirous
to do some senice to my country, I found two diffe-
rent affections, fear and boldness, I know not how,
conjoined in one. Notwithstanding, by the most
gracious direction of the Almighty, taking industry
for my consort, I adventured upon it ; and, with all
my study, care, cogitation, continual meditation,
jiain, and travail, I employed myself thereunto when
I had any spare time. I made search after the ety-
mology of Britain and the firs^^nhabitants timorously ;
neither in so doubtful a matter have I affirmed ought
confidently. For I am not ignorant that the first
originals of nations are obscure, by reason of their
profound antiquity, as things which are seen very
deep and far remote ; like as the coui-ses, the reaches,
the coiiduences, and the outlets of great rivers are
well-known, yet their first fountains and heads lie
commonly unknown. I have succinctly run over the
Romans' government in Britain, and the inundation
of foreign people thereinto, what they were, and from
whence they came. I have traced out the ancient
divisions of these kingdoms ; I have summarily speci-
fied the states and judicial courts of the same. Iii
the several counties, I have compendiously set Aovra
the limits (and yet not exactly by perch and pole, to
breed questions), what is the nature of the soil, which
were pLaces of the greatest antiquity, who have been
dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, barons, and some
of the most signal and ancient families therein (for
who can particulate all ?) What I have performed,
I leave to men of judgment. But time, the most
sound and sincere witness, will give the truest infor-
mation, when envy (which persecuteth the living)
shall have her mouth stopped. Thus much give me
leave to say — that I have in no wise neglected such
things as are material to search and sift out the truth.
I have attained to some skill of the most ancient
British and Saxon tongues. I have travelled over all
England for the most part ; I have conferred with
most skilful observers in each country ; I have stu-
diously read over our own country writers (old and
new), all Greek and Latin authors which have once
made mention of Britain ; I have liad conference with
learned men in the other parts of Christendom ; I
have been diligent in the records of this realm ; I
have looked into most libraries, registers, and memo-
rials of churches, cities, and cor{)orations ; I have
pored over many an old roll and evidence, and pro-
duced their testimony (as beyond all exception) when
the cause required, in their very own words (although
barbarous they be), that the honour of verity might in
no wise be impeached.
For all this I may be censured as unadvised, and
scant modest, who, being but of the lowest form in the
school of antiquity, where I might well have lurked
in obscurity, have adventured as a scribbler upon the
stage in this learned age, amidst the dlvei-sities of re«
lishes both in wit and judgment. But to tell the truth
unfeignedly, the love of my country, which conipriseth
all love in it, and hath endeared me to it, the glory
of the British name, the advice of some judicious
friends, hath over-mastered my modesty, and (will'd I,
nill'd I) hath enforced me, against mine own judg-
ment, to undergo this burden too heavy for me, and
so thrust me forth into the world's view. For I see
judgments, prejudices, censures, aspersions, obstruc-
tions, detractions, affronts, and confronts, as it were,
in battle array to environ me on every side ; some
there are which wholly contemn and avile this study
of antiquity as a back-looking curiosity ; whose autho-
rity, as I do not utterly vilify, so I do not over-prize
or admire their judgment. Neither am 1 destitute of
reason whereby I might approve this my purpose to
well-bred and well-meaning meii, which tender the
glory of their native country ; and, moreover, could
give them to understand that, in the study of antiquity
(which is always accompanied with dignity, and hath
a certain resemblance with eternity), there is a sweet
food of the mind well befitting such as are of honest
and noble disposition. If any there be which are
desirous to be strangers in their own soil, and foreigners
in their own city, they may so continue, and therein
flatter themselves. For such like I have not written
these lines, nor taken these pains.
The ' Britannia' has gone through many subse-
quent editions, and has proved so useful a repository
of antiquarian and topographical knowledge, that it
has been styled by Bishop Nicolsou ' the common
262
FROSE WRITEUS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAMUEL DANIEL.
sun, whereat our modern writers have all lij^lited
their little torclies.' The last edition is that of
1789, in two volumes folio, largely augmented by
I>Ir Gough.
In 1593 Camden became head master of 'West-
minster school, and, for the use of his pupils, pub-
lished a Greek grammar in 1597. In the same year,
however, his connexion with that seminary came to
an end, on his receiving the appointment of Claren-
cieux king-of-arms, an oflBce which allowed him
more leisure for his favourite pursuits. The prin-
cipal works which he subsequently published are,
I. An Account of the jSIonuments and Inscriptions in
Westminster Abbey; 2. A Collection of Ancient English
Historians ; 3. A Latin JVarrative of the Gunpowder
Plot, drawn up at the desire of James YI. ; and, 4.
Annals of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, also in Latin.
The last of these works is praised by Hume as good
composition, with respect both to style and matter,
and as being ' written with simplicity of expression,
very rare in that age, and with a regard to truth.'
It is, however, generally considered as too favour-
able to EUzabeth ; and Dr Robertson characterises
the account of Scottish affairs under Queen JIary
as less accurate than any other. Camden died un-
married in 1623, at the age of seventy-two, and
was interred in Westminster Abbey. Not long
before his death, he foxmded and endowed a history
lecture at Oxford.
BIB HENRY SPELMAN — SIR ROBERT COTTON — JOHN
SPEED — SAMUEL DANIEL.
Sir Henry Spelman, a man of similar tastes,
and who was intimate with Camden, was bom
in 1562 at Congham, in Norfolk, of which county
ht»was high-sheriff in 1604. His works are almost
all upon legal ar.d ecclesiastical antiquities. Hav-
ing, in the coujse of his investigations, found it
necessary to study the Saxon language, he em-
bodied the fruits of his labour in his great work
called Glossarittm Archwologicum, the object of which
is the explanation of obsolete words occurring in
the laws of England. Another of his produc-
tions is A History of the English Conncih, pub-
lished partly in 1639, and partly after his death,
which took place in 1641. The writings of this
author have furnished valuable materials to English
liistorians, and he is considered as the restorer of
Saxon literature, both by means of his own studies,
and by founding a Saxon professorship at Cam-
bridge. Sir Robert Cotton (1570-1631) is cele-
brated as an industrious collector of records, chart-
ers, and writings of every kind relative to the an-
cient history of England. In the prosecution of his
object he enjoyed unusual facilities, the recent sup-
pression of monasteries having thrown many valuable
books and written documents into private hands.
In 1600, he accompanied his friend Camden on an
excursion to Carlisle, for the purpose of examining
the Eicts' wall and other relics of former times. It
was principally on his suggestion that James I. re-
sorted to the scheme of creating baronets, as a means
of supplying the treasury ; and he himself was one
of those who purchased the distinction. Sir Robert
Cotton was the author of various historical, political,
and antiquarian works, which are now of little in-
terest, except to men of kindred tastes. His name
is remembered chiefly for the benefit which he
conferred upon literature, by saving his valuable
library of manuscripts from dispersion. After Ixjing
considerably augmented by his son and grandson,
it became, in 1706, the property of tiie public, and
in 1757 was deposited in the British Museum. One
hundred and eleven of the manuscripts, many of
them higlily valuable, had before tliis time been un-
f)rtunately destroyed by fire. Erom those which
remain, historians still continue to extract large
stores of inforiiiation. During his lifetime, materials
were drawn from his library by Raleigh, Bacon,
Selden, and Herbert; and he furnished literary
assistance to many contemporary authors. Besides
aiding Camden in the compilation of the ' Britannia,'
he materially assisted John Speed (1552-1629),
by revising, correcting, and adding to a Hidory of
Great Brituin, published by that writer in 1614.
Speed was indebted also to Spelman and others for
contributions. He is characterised by Bishop Nicol-
son as ' a person of extraordinary industry and at-
tainments in the study of antiquities.' Being a tailor
by trade, he enjoyed few advantages from educa-
tion ; yet his history is a highly creditable perform-
ance, and was long the best in existence. He was
the first to reject the fables of preceding chroniclers
concerning the origin of the Britons, and to exercise
a just discrimination in the selection of autliorities.
His history commences with the original inhabitants
of the island, and extends to the union of England
and Scotland under King James, to wluim the work
is dedicated. In 1606 he published maps of Great
Britain and Ireland, witli the English sliires, hun-
dreds, cities, and shire-towns This collection was
superior to any other that had appeared. Samuel
Daniel (1562-1619), wlio has already been men-
tioned as a poet, distinguished himself also as a
writer of prose. Besides A Defence of Ithjme, pub-
lished in 1611, he composed A History of England,
of which only the first and second parts, extending
from the Norman Conquest to the end of the reign
of Edward III., were comjileted by himself. Of these,
the first appeared in 1613, and the second about
five years later. Being a judicious and tasteful per-
formance, and written in a clear, simple, and agree-
able style, the work became very popular, and soon
passed tlirough several editions. It was continued
in an inferior manner to the death of Richard III.,
by John Trussel, an alderman of Winchester. Like
Speed, Daniel was cautious in giving credit to nar-
ratives of remote events, as will appear from his
remarks, here subjoined, on the
[Uncertainty of the Early History of Nations."]
Undertaking to collect the principal affairs of this
kingdom, I had a desire to have deduced the same
from the beginning of the first British kings, as they
are registered in their catalogue ; but finding no
authentical warrant how they came there, I did put
off that desire with these considerations : That a
lesser part of time, .and better known (which was
from 'William I., surnamed the Bastard), was more
than enough for my ability ; and how it was but our
curiosity to search further back into times pa,st than
we might discern, and whereof we could neither have
proof nor profit ; how the begiiniings of all people and
states were as uncertain as the heads of great rivers,
and could not add to our virtue, and, peradventure,
little to our reputation to know them, considering how
commoidy they rise from the springs of poverty, piracy,
robbery, and violence ; howsoever fabulous writers (to
glorify their nations) strive to abuse the credulity of
after-ages with heroical or miraculous bcginnin<js.
For states, as men, are ever best seen when they aro
up, and as they are, not as they were. Besides, it
seems, God in his providence, to check our presump-
tuous inquisition, wraps up all things in uncertainty,
bars us out from long antiquity, and bounds our
searches within the comj)ass of a few ages, as if the
same were sufiicient, both for example and instruc-
tion, to the government of men. For liad we the par-
ticular occurrents of all ages and all nations, it might
263
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO l()-l!i.
more stiift', but not better our understanding ; we shall
find still the same correspondencies to hold in the
actions of men ; virtues and vices the same, though
rising and falling, according to the worth or weakness
of governors ; the causes of the ruins and mutations
of states to be alike, and the train of affairs carried
by precedent, in a course of succession, under like
colours.
THOMAS MAY — SIR JOHN HAYWARD
RICHARD KNOLLES.
Thomas May (1595-1650), who, like Daniel, was
both a poet and a historian, published, in 1647, The
History of the Parliament of England -which began
November 3, 1640. This is, in reality, a history
Thomas May.
rather of the civil war which arose while tliat
parliament was sitting, than of the proceedings of
the parliament itself. The work was imposed upon
him in his capacitj' of secretary for the parliament,
and was reluctantly undertaken. It gave great
offence to the royalists, by whom both the author
and his performance were loudly abused. Its com-
position is inelegant, but the candour displayed in it
has been pronounced much greater than the royalists
were willing to allow.
Among the minor historians of the time of Eliza-
beth appears Sir John Hayward, who, in 1599,
published The First Fart of the Life and Feign of
Henry IV., which he dedicated to the Earl of
Essex. Some passages in it gave such offence to
the queen, that she caused the author to be im-
prisoned. He was patronised by James L, however,
and at the desire of Prince Henry composed Lives of
the Three Norman Kings of England (1613). After
his death, which happened in 1627, was published
his Life and Feign of King Edward IT,, icith the
Beginning of the Feign of Queen Elizabeth (1630).
He writes with considerable smoothness, but too
dramatically, imitating Livy and other ancient his-
torians in the practice of putting speeches into the
mouths of the characters. Kicuard Knoli.es,
master of a free school at Sandwich, in Kent, where
he died in 1610, wrote a History of the Turks, which
is praised by Dr Johnson in the 122d number of tlie
'Kambler' as exhibiting all the excellences that nar-
ration can admit. ' His style,' says Johnson, ' though
somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated
by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear.
Nothing could have .sunk this author into obscurity
but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose
story he relates.' This account of the work is, how-
ever, considered to surpass its deserts. As a speci-
men, we extract the account given of
The Tuling of Comtantinoph by the Turls.
A little before day, the Turks approached the walls
and begun the assault, where shot and stones were
delivered upon tliem from the walls as thick as hail,
whereof little fell in vain, by reason of the multitude
of the Turks, who, pressing fast unto the walls, could
not see in the dark how to defend themselves, but
were without number wounded or slain ; but these
were of the common and worst soldiers, of whom the
Turkish king made no more reckoning than to abate
the first force of the defendants. Upon the first ap-
pearance of the day, Mahomet gave the sign appointed
for the general assault, whereupon the city was in a
moment, and at one instant, on every side most furi-
ously assaulted by ihe Turks^ for I^Iahomet, the more
to distress the (?.*-/endants, and the better to see the
forwardness of the soldiers, had before appointed
wliich part cf the city every colonel with his regiment
should assail : which they valiantly performed, de-
livering their arrows and shot upon the defendants so
thick, that the light of the day was therewith dark-
ened ; others in the meantime courageously mounting
the scaling-ladders, and coming even to handj'-strokes
with the defendants upon the wall, where the fore-
most were for the most part violently borne forward
by them which followed after. On the other side, the
Christians with no less courage withstood the Turkish
fury, beating them do^vn again with great stones and
weighty pieces of timber, and so overwhelmed them
with shot, darts, and arrows, and other hurtful devices
from above, that the Turks, dismayed with the terror
thereof, were ready to retire.
Mahomet, seeing the great slaughter and discom-
fiture of his men, sent in fresh supplies of his jani-
zaries and best men of war, whom he had for that
purpose reserved as his last hope and refuge ; by whose
coming on his fainting soldiers were again encouraged,
and the terrible assault begun afresh. At which
time the barbarous king ceased not to use all possible
means to maintain the assault ; by name calling upon
this and that captain, promising unto some whom he
saw forward golden mountains, and unto others in
whom he saw any sign of cowardice, threatening mo*t
terrible death ; by which means the assault became
most dreadful, death there raging in the midst of
many thousands. And albeit that the Turks lay dead
by heaps upon the ground, yet other fresh men pressed
on still in their places over their dead bodies, and
with divers event either slew or were slain by their
enemies.
In this so terrible a conflict, it chanced Justinianus
the general to be wounded in the arm, who, losing
much blood, cowardly withdrew himself from the
place of his charge, not leaving any to supply his
room, and so got into the city by the gate called
Roniana, which he had caused to be opened in the
inner wall ; pretending the cause of his departure to
be for the binding up of his wound, but being, indeed,
a man now altogether discouraged.
The soldiers there present, dismayed with the de-
parture of their general, and sore charged by the
janizaries, forsook their stations, and in haste fled to
the same gate whereby Justinianus was entered ; with
the sight whereof the other soldiers, dismayed, ran
thither by heaps also. But whilst they violently
strive all together to get in at once, they so wedged
one another in the entrance of the gate, that few of
so great a multitude got in ; in wliich so great a
press and confusion of minds, eight hundred persons
were there by them that followed trodden under
fuot, or thrust to death. The emperor himself, for
safeguard of his life, flying with the rest in that
264
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR HENRY W'OTTOM.
press as a man not regarded, miserably ended his days,
together with the Greek empire. His dead body was
shortly after found by the Turks among the slain, and
known by his rich apparel, whose head being cut oft',
was forthwith presented to the Turkish tyrant, by
whose commandment it was afterward thrust upon the
point of a lance, and in great derision carried about
as a trophy of his victory, first in the camp, and
afterwards up and do^\^l the city.
The Turks, encouraged with the flight of the Chris-
tians, presently advanced their ensigns upon the top
of the uttermost wall, crying Victory ; and by the
breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which,
having once found a breach in the bank, overfloweth,
and beareth down all before it ; so the Turks, when
they had won the utter wall, entered the city by the
same gate that was opened for Justinianus, and by a
breach which they had before made with their great
artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces all that
came in their way, without farther resistance became
lords of that most famous and imperial city. ... In
this fury of the barbarians perished many thousands
of men, women, and children, without respect of age,
sex, or condition. INIany, for safeguard of their lives,
fled into the temple of Sophia, where they were all
without pity slain, except some few reserved by the
barbarous victors to purposes more grievous than death
itself. The rich and beautiful ornaments and jewels
of that most sumptuous and magnificent church (the
stately building of Justinianus the emperor) were, in
the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried awa}'
by the Turks ; and the church itself, built for God to
be honoured in, for the present converted into a stable
for their horses, or a place for the execution of their
abominable and unspeakable filthiness ; the image of
the crucifix was also by them taken do«-n, and a
Turk's cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up
and shot at with their arrows, and afterwards, in great
derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been
in procession, with drums playing before it, railing
and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Chris-
tians, which I note not so much done in contempt of
the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian
religion.
ARTHUR ■WLLSOX — SIR RICHARD BAKER.
Arthur Wilson, another historian, flourished
somewhat later, having been born in 1596. He was
secretary to Robert, Earl of Essex, tlie parliamentary
general in the civil wars ; and afterwards became
steward to the Earl of Warwiek. He died in 1G52,
leaving in manuscript a work on The Life and
Reign of James I., which was publislied in the follow-
ing year. A comedy of his, entitled The Inconstant
Lady, was printed at Oxford in 1814.
We shall conclude our survey of the historical
writers of this period by devoting a few words to Sir
Richard Baker, who lived from 1563 to 1645, and
whose ' Chronicle' was long popular in England, par-
ticularly among country gentlemen. Addison makes
it the favourite book of Sir Roger de Coverley. Baker
was knighted by James I. in 1603, and in 1620 be-
came high-sheriff for Oxfordshire, in which he pos-
sessed considerable property. Afterwards having
imprudently engaged for the payment of debts con-
tracted by his wife's family, he became insolvent, and
spent several years in the Fleet prison, where lie died
in 1645. While in durance, he wrote Meditations and
Disquisitions on portions of Scripture, translated
Balzac's Letters and Mai vezzi's Discourses on Tacitus,
and composed two pieces in defence of the theatre.
His principal work, however, was that already re-
ferred to, entitled A Chronicle of the Kings of England,
from the time of the Romans' Government unto the Death
of King James. This work, which appeared in 1641,
the author complacently declares to be ' collected
with so great care and diligence, that if all other of
our chronicles were lost, this only would be sufficient
to inform posterity of all passages memorable or
worthy to be known.' Notwithstanding such high
pretensions, the ' Chronicle' was afterwards proved
by Thomas Blount, in 'Animadversions' published
in 1672, to contain many gross errors ; and although
an edition printed in 1730 is said to be purged of
these to a considerable extent, yet the work must
continue to be regarded as an injudicious perform-
ance, unworthy of much reliance. The style of
Baker, which is superior to his matter, is described,
in a letter written to him by his former college
friend Sir Henry Wotton, as ' full of sweet raptures
and of researching conceits; nothing borrowed, no'
thing vulgar, and yet all flowing from 3'ou, I know
not how, with a certain equal facility.'
sir henry wotton.
Sir Henry Wotton, of whom some account has
already been given, was himself one of the conspi
cuous characters of this period, both as a writer and
a politician. While resident abroad, he embodied
the result of his inqiiiries into political affairs in a
work called The State of Christendom ; or a most Exact
and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and
Hidden Mysteries of the Times. This, however, was
not printed till after his death. In ICV-i, while
provost of Eton college, he published JJ/ements of
Architecture, then the best work on that subject, and
the materials of which were no doubt collected chietly
in Italy. His latter years were spent in planning
several works, which, from the pecuniar}' difficultie?
in which he found himself involved, were nevei
executed. 77*6 RcUquice Wottoniana^, a posthumous
publication, is a collection of his miscellaneous pieces,
including lives, letters, poems, and characters. These
display considerable liveliness of fancy and intellec-
tual acuteness, though tainted with the pedantry of
the times. Several of them are here extracted : —
[ What Education Embraces.}
First, there must proceed a way how to discern
the natural inclinations and capacities of children.
Secondly, next must ensue the culture and furnish-
ment of the mind. Thirdly, the moulding of beha-
viour and decent forms. Fourthly, the temj>ering of
affections. Fifthly, the quickening and exciting of
observations and practical judgment. Sixthly, and
the last in order, but the principal in value, being
that which must knit and consolidate all the rest, is
the timely instilling of conscientious principles and
seeds of religion.
Every Nature is not a Fit Stock to Graft a Scholar on.
The Spaniard that wrote 'The Trial of Wits,'
undertakes to show what complexion is fit for every
profession. I will not disable any for proving a
scholar, nor yet dissemble that I have seen many
happily forced upon that course, to which by nat-ire
they seemed much indisposed. Sometimes the possi
bility of preferment prevailing with the credulous,
expectation of less expense with the covetous, opinion
of ease with the fond, and assurance of remoteness
with the unkind parents, have moved them, without
discretion, to engage their children in adventures o.^
learning, by whose return they have received but
small contentment : but they who are deceived ia
their first designs deserve less to be condemned, as
such who (after sufficient trial) persist in their wil-
fulness are no way to be pitied. I have known some
who have been acquainted (by the complaints ol
265
FROM I55&
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164!>
governors, clamours of creditors, and confessions of
their sons) what might be expected from them, j-et
have held them in with strong hand, till they have
desperately quit, or disgi-acefuUy forfeited, the places
where they lived. Deprived of which, they might
hope to avoid some misery, if their friends, who were
so careful to bestow them in a college when they were
young, would be so good as to provide a room for
Ihem in some hospital when they are old.
[Commendation lefore Trial Injudicious.']
The fashion of commending our friends' abilities
before they come to trial, sometimes takes good effect
with the common sort, who, building their belief on
authority, strive to follow the conceit of their betters ;
but usually, amongst men of independent judgments,
this bespeaking of opinion breeds a purpose of stricter
examination, and if the report be answered, procures
only a bare acknowledgment; whereas, if nothing be
proclaimed or promised, they are perhaps content to
signify their own skill in testifying another's desert :
otherwise great wits, jealous of their credit, are ready
to suppress worth in others, to the advancing of their
OT\Ti, and (if more ingenuous) no farther just than to
forbear detraction ; at the best, rather disposed to
give praise upon their own accord, than to make pay-
ment upon demand or challenge.
THOMAS HOBBES.
No literary man excited more attention in the
middle of the seventeenth century, and none of that
age has exercised a more wide and permanent in-
fluence on the philosophical opinions of succeeding
generations, than Thomas IIobbes, born at !Malmes-
bnry in 1588. His mother's alarm at the approach of
the Spanish Armada is said to have hastened his birth,
Thomas IIobbes.
and was probably the cause of a constitutional timi-
dity which possessed him through life. After study-
ing for five years at Oxford, he travelled, in IGIO,
through France, Italj', and Germanj-, in tlie capa-
city of tutor to Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of
Devonshire, with whom, on roturnini,' to England,
he continued to reside as his secretar}-. At this
time he became intimate with Lord Bacon, Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jjns in. His pupil
dying in 1628, Hobbes again visited r.iris ; but in
1631 he undertook to superintend the education of
the young Earl of Devonsliire, with whom he set off,
three years later, on a tour through France, Italy,
and Savoy. At Pisa he became intimate with Gali-
leo the astronomer, and elsewhere held communica-
tion with other celebrated characters. After his re-
turn to England in 1637, he resided in the e-arl's
family, at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. He now de-
voted himself to study, in which, however, he was
interrupted by the political contentions of the times
Being a zealous roj'alist, he found it necessary, in
1640, to retire to Paris, where he lived on termsi of
intimacy with Descartes and other learned men,
whom the patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu had
at that time drawn together. While at Paris, he en-
gaged in a controversy about the quadrature of the
circle, and in 1647, he was appointed mathematical
instructor to Charles, Prince of Wales, who then re-
sided in the French capit.il. Previously to this time,
he had commenced the publication of those works
which he sent forth in succession, with the view of
curbing the spirit of freedom in England, by showing
the philosophical foundation of despotic monarchy.
The first of them was originally printed in Latin at
Paris, in 1642, under the title of Elementa Fhiloso-
phlca de Give ; when afterwards translated into Eng-
lish, it was entitled Philosophical liudiments Concern-
ing Government and Society. This treatise is regarded
as the most exact account of the author's political
system : it contains many profound views, but is
disfigured by fundamentid and dangerous errors.
The principles maintained in it were more full^- dis-
cussed in his larger work, published in 1651, under
the title of Leviathan : or the Matter, Form, and Power
of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Man is
here represented as a selfish and ferocious animal,
requiring the strong hand of despotism to keep him
in check ; and all notions of right and wrong are
m.ade to depend upon views of self-interest alone.
Of this latter doctrine, commonly known as the
Selfish System of moral philosophy, Hobbes was in-
deed the great champion, both in the ' Leviathan,' and
more particularly in his small Treatise on Human
Nature, pubUshed in 1650. There appeared in the
same year another work from his pen, entitled De
Corpore Politico ; or, ' Of the Body Politic' The
freedom with which theological subjects were handled
m the ' Leviathan,' as well as the offensive ])olitical
views there maintained, occasioned a great outcry
against the author, particularly among the clergy.
This led Charles to dissolve his connexion with
the philosopher, who, according to Lord Clarendon,
' was compelled secretly to fly out of Paris, the
justice having endeavoured to apprehend him, and
soon after escaped into England, where he never re-
ceived any disturbance.' He again took up his abode
with the Devonshire family, and became intimate
with Selden, Cowley, and Dr Harvey, the discoverer
of the circulation of the blood. In 1654 he puhlislied
a short but admirably clear and comprehensive Letter
upon Liberty and Necessity; where the doctrine of
the self-determining power of the will is ojiposed
with a subtlety and profundity unsurpassed in any
subsequent writer on that much-agituted question.
Indeed, he appears to have been the first who under-
stood and expounded clearly the doctrine of j)]iiloso-
phical necessity. On this subject, a long controversy
between him and Bishop Bramhall of Londonderry
took place. Here he fought with the skill of a mas-
ter ; but in a mathematical dispute with Dr Wallis,
professor of geometry at Oxford, which lasted twenty
years, he fairly went beyond his depth, and obtained
no increase of reputation. The fact is, that Hcjbbes
had not begun to study mathematics till the age
of forty, and, like other late learners, greatly over-
estimated his knowledge. He suj^posed himself U
266
FROSE ■WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS HOBBKS.
have discovered tlie quadrature of the circle, au.d
dogmatically upheld his claim in the face of the
clearest refutation. In this controversy, personal
feehng, according to the custom of the time, appeared
■without disguise. Hobbes having publislied a sar-
castic piece, entitled Six Leifsoun to the Professors
of Mathematics in Oxford, AVallis retorted by ad-
ministering, in 1G56, Due Correction for Mr Ilobbcs,
or School-Discipline for not Saying his Lessons Bight.
Here his language to the pliilosopher is in the
following unceremonious strain : — ' It seems, Mr
Hobbes, that you have a mind to say your lesson, and
that the mathematic professors of Oxford should hear
you. You are too old to learn, though you have as
much need as those that be younger, and yet will
think much to be whipt. What moved you to say
your lessons in English, ■when tlie books against
■which you do chiefly intend them were written in
Latin ? Was it chietly for the perfecting your natu-
ral rhetoric, M'henever you thought it convenient to
repair to Billingsgate .' You found that the oyster-
■women could not teach you to rail in Latin. Now
you can, upon all occasion, or without occasion, give
the titles of fool, beast, ass, dog, Sec, wliicli I take
to be but barking ; and they are no better than a
man might have at Billingsgate for a box o' the car.
You tell us, " though the beasts that think our rail-
ing to be roaring, have for a time admired us, yet,
now you have showed them our ears, they will be
less affrighted." Sir, those persons needed not a sight
oi your ears, but could tell by the voice what kind of
creature brayed in your books : you dared not have
said this to their faces.' When Charles II. came to
the throne, he conferred on Hobbes an annual pen-
sion of one hundred pounds ; but notwithstanding this
and other marks of the royal favour, much odium
continued to prevail against him and his doctrines.
The ' Leviathan' and ' l)e Give' were censured in par-
liament in 1666, and also drew forth many printed
replies. Among the authors of these, the most dis-
tinguished was Lord Clarendon, who, in 1676, pub-
lished A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and
Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr Hobbes's
Book, entitled Leviathan. Two years previously,
Hobbes had entered a new field of literature, by
publishing a metrical version of four books of Homer's
Odyssey, which ■was so well received, that, in 1675,
he sent forth a translation of the remainder of that
poem, and also of the whole Iliad. Here, according
to Pope, ' Hobbes has given us a correct explanation
of the sense in general ; but for particulars and cir-
cumstances, he eontiinially lops them, and often
omits the most beautiful. * * He sometimes
omits whole similes and sentences, and is now and
then guilty of mistakes, into which no writer of his
learning could have fallen but through carelessness.
His poetry, as well as Ogilby's, is too mean for criti-
cism.' Nevertheless, the work became so popular,
that three large editions were required within less
than ten years. Hobbes was more successful as a
translator in prose than in poetry ; his version of
the Greek historian Thucydides (which had ap-
peared in 1629, and was the first work tliat he pub-
lished) being still regarded as the best English
translation of that author. Its faithfulness to the
original is so great, that it frequently degenerates
into servility. This work, he says, was undertaken
by him 'from an honest desire of preventing, if pos-
sible, those disturbances in which he was apprehen-
sive that his country would be involved, by sliowing,
in the history of the Peloponnesian war, tlie fatal
consequences of intestine troubles.' At Chatsworth,
to which he retired in 1674 to spend the remainder
of his days, he continued to compose various works,
the principal of which, entitled Behemoth, or a His-
tory of the Ciril Wars from 164lWy HJiiO, wasfinislied
in 1679, but did not ai>i)ear till after his death, an
event which took jjlace in Diceniber of tliat year,
when he had attained the age of ninety-two.
Hobbes is descril;ed by Lord Clarendon as one for
whom he ' had always had a great esteem, as a
man who, besides his eminent parts of learning and
knowledge, hath l>een always looked upon as a man
of probity and a life free from scandal.' It was a
saying of Charles II., in reference to the opposition
which the doctrines of Hobbes met from the clergy,
tliat ' he was a bear, against whom the church played
their young dogs, in order to exercise them.' In
his latter years he became morose and impatient of
contradiction, both by reason of his growing infir-
mities, and from indulging too much in solitude, by
which his natural arrogance and contempt for the
opinions of other men were greatly increased. He
at no time read extensively : Homer, Virgil, Thu-
cydides, and Euclid, were his favourite authors ; and
he used to say, that, ' if he had read as much as
other men, he should have been as ignorant as
they.' Owing to the timidity of his dis])osition, he
was continually apprehensive about his personal
safety, insomuch tliat he could not endure to be left
in an empty house. From the same motive, proliably,
it was, that, notwithstanding his notorious hetero-
doxy, he maintained an external adherence to the
established church, and in his works sometimes
assented to theological views which undoubtedly he
did not hold. Though he has been stigmatised as
an atheist, the charge is groundless, as may be in-
ferred from what he says, in his ' Treatise on Human
Nature,' concerning
\_God.-\
Forasmuch as God Almighty is incomprehensible,
it followeth that we can have no conception or image
of the Deity ; and, consequently, all his attributes
signify our inability and defect of power to conceive
anything concerning his nature, and not any concep-
tion of the same, except only this. That there is a
God. For the eflects, we acknowledge naturally, do
include a power of their producing, before they were
produced ; and that power presupposeth something
existent that hath such power : and the thing so
existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal,
must needs have been produced by somewhat before
it, and that, again, by something else before that, till
we come to an eternal (that is to say, the first) Power
of all Powers, and first Cause of all Causes : and this
is it which all men conceive by the name of GOD,
implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omni-
potency. And thus all that will consider may know
that God is, though not what he is : even a man that
is bom blind, though it be not possible for him to
have any imagination what kind of thing fire is, yet
he cannot but know that something there is that men
call fire, because it warmeth him.
[Pity and Indignation.]
Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity
to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another
man's calamity. But when it lighteth on sucli as we
think have not deserved the same, the compassion is
greater, because then there appeareth more j> -obabi-
lity that the same may happen to us ; for the evil
that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to
every man. But when we see a man sufler for great
crimes, which we cannot easily think will fall upon
ourselves, the pity is the less. And therefore men are
apt to pity those whom they love ; for whom ihey
love they think worthy of good, and therefore not
worthy of calamity. Thence it is also, that men pity
267
FROM I008
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164S
tlie vices of some persons at the first sight only, out of
love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hard-
ness of heart, jiroceeding either from slo\vness of ima-
gination, or some extreme great opinion of their own
exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of
all or most men.
Indignation is tliat grief which consisteth in the
concepdon of good success happening to them whom
thev think unworthy thereof. Seeing, therefore, men
think all those unworthy whom they hate, tliey think
them not only unworthy of the good fortune they have,
but also of their own virtues. And of all the passions
of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are most
raised and increased by eloquence ; for the aggrava-
tion of the calamit}', an 1 extenuation of the fault,
augmenteth pity ; and the extenuation of the worth of
the person, together with the magnifying of his suc-
cess, which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn
these two psissions into fury.
[Eimdation and Envy.']
Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self
exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with
hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his
0^VIl ability. But envy is the same grief joined with
pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-for-
tune that may befall him.
ILawjhtcr.']
There is a passion that hath no name ; but the
sign of it is that distortion of the countenance which
we call laughter, which is always joy : but what joy,
what we think, and wherein we triumph when we
laugh, is not hitherto declared b}' any. That it con-
sisteth in wit, or, a-s they call it, in the jest, exjie-
rience confuteth ; for men laugh at mischances and
indecencies, wherein there lieth no wit nor jest at all.
And forasmuch as the same thing is no more ridi-
culous when it gi-oweth stale or usual, whatsoever it
be that moveth laughter, it must be new and unex-
pected. ]\Ien laugh often (especially such as are
greedy of applause from everything they do well) at
their own actions performed never so little beyond
their 0'(\'n expectations ; a.s also at their o\vn jests :
and in this case it is manifest that the passion of
laughter proceedetli from a sudden conception of some
ability in himself that laugheth. Also, men laugh
at the infirmities of others, by comparison wherewith
their own abilities are set off and illustrated. Also
men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth
in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds
some absurdity of another ; and in this case also the
passion of laughter proceeded from the sudden imagi-
nation of our own odds and eminency ; for what is
else the recommending of ourselves to our own good
opinion, by comparison with another's man's infirmity
or absurdity? l-'or when a jest is broken upon our-
selves, or friends, of whose dishonour we participate,
we never laugh thereat. I may therefore conclude,
that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden
glory arising from a sudden conception of some emi-
nencj' in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity
of others, or with our own formerly ; for men laugh at
the follies of themselves past, when they come sud-
denly to remembrance, excei)t they bring with them
any present dishonour. It is no wonder, therefore,
that men take heinously to be laughed at or derided ;
that is, triumplicd over. Laughing without offence,
must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted
from persons, and when all the company may laugh
together ; for laughing to one's self putteth all the
rest into jealousy, and examination of themselves.
Besides, it is vain glory, and an argument of little
isorth, to think tlie infirmity of another sufficient
'nattei for his triumph.
[Zoj'e of Knoicledgc.']
Forasmuch as all knowledge beglnneth from ex])e-
rience, therefore also new experience is the beginning
of new knowledge, and the Increase of experience the
beginning of the increase of knowledge. '\\'hatsoever,
therefore, happeneth new to a man, glveth him matter
of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not be-
fore. And this hope and expectation of future know-
ledge from anything that happeneth new and strange,
is that passion which we commonly call admiration ;
and the same considered as appetite, is called curiosity,
which is appetite of knowledge. As in the discerning
of faculties, man leaveth all community with beasts
at the faculty of imposing names, so also doth he
surmount their nature at this passion of curiosity. For
when a beast seeth anything new and strange to him,
he considereth It so far only as to discern whether it
be likely to serve his turn or hurt him, and accord-
ingly approacheth nearer to it, or fleeth from it :
whereas man, who in most events remembereth in
what manner they were caused and begun, looketh
for the cause and beginning of everything that arlseth
new unto him. And from this passion of admiration
and curiosity, have arisen not only the invention of
names, but also supposition of such causes of all
things as they thought might produce them. And
from this beginning is derived all philosophy, as astro-
nomy from the admiration of the course of heaven ;
natural philosophy from the strange eftects of the
elements and other bodies. And from the degrees of
curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge
amongst men ; for, to a man in the chase of riclies or
authority (which in respect of knowledge are but sen-
suality), it is a diversity of little pleasure, whether it
be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the
day ; or to enter Into other contemplations of any
strange accident, otherwise than whether it conduce
or not to the end he pursueth. Because curiosity is
delight, therefore also novelty is so ; but especially
that novelty from which a man concelveth an opinion,
true or false, of bettering his own estate ; for, in such
case, they stand affected with the hope that all game-
sters have while the cards are shuffling.
The fullowing passages are extracted from Ilobbcs's
works on
The Necessity of the Will.
The question is not, whether a man be a free agent,
that is to say, whether he can WTlte or forbear, speak
or be silent, according to his will ; but whether the
will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him
according to his will, or according to anything else In
his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I
can do if I ivill ; but to say, I can idll if I will, I take
to be an absurd speech.
[In answer to Bishop Bramhall's assertion, that
the doctrine of free will ' is the belief of all man-
kind, which we have not learned from our tutors,
but is imprinted in our hearts by nature'] — It is
true, very few have learned from tutors, that a man
is not free to will ; nor do they find it much in
books. That they find in books, that which the
poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on
the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the
churches, and the doctors In the universities, and that
which the common people in the markets and all man-
kind In the whole world do assent unto, is the samo
that I assent unto ; namely, that a man hath freedom
to do if he will ; but whether he hatli freedom to will,
is a question wliich it seems neither the bishop nor they
ever thought on. * * A wooden top that is lashed
by the buys, and runs about, sometimes to one wall,
Boraetimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes
268
I'KOS!'; WRITKIW.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD IIERnEnT.
hittinjr men on the sliins, if it were sensible of its
own motion, would think it proceeded from its own
will, unless it felt what lashed it. And is a man any
wiser when he runs to one place for a benefice, to an-
other for a bargain, and troubles the world with
writing errors, and requiring answers, because lie
thinks he does it without other cause than his o\vn
will, and seeth not what are the lashings that cause
♦hat will ?
[Concerning the justice of punishing criminals on
the supposition of necessity of the will, he remarks]
— The intention of the law is not to grieve the delin-
quent for that which is past, and not to be undone,
but to make him and others just, that else would not
be so ; and respecteth not the evil act past, but the
good to come ; insomuch as, without the good intention
for the future, no past act of a delinquent could jus-
tify his killing in the sight of God. But you will
say, How is it just to kill one man to amend another,
if what were done were necessary ? To this I answer,
that men are justly killed, not for that their actions
are not necessitated, but because they are noxious; and
that they are spared and preserved whose actions are
not noxious. For where there is no law, there no
killing, nor anything else, can be unjust ; and by the
right of nature we destroy (without being unjust) all
that is noxious, both beasts and men. * * When
we make societies or commonwealths, we lay down
our right to kill, excepting in certain cases, as murder,
theft, or other offensive action ; so that the right which
the commonwealth hath to put a man to death for
crimes, is not created by the law, but remains from
the first right of nature which every man hath to
preserve himself ; for that the law doth not take that
right away in the case of criminals, who were by law
excepted. Men are not, therefore, put to death, or
punished, for that their theft proceedeth from election ;
but because it was noxious, and contrary to men's
preservation, and the punishment conducing to the
preservation of the rest ; inasmuch as, to punish those
that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and
maketh men's wills such as men would have them.
And thus it is plain, that from the necessity of a
voluntary action cannot be inferred the injustice of
the law that forbiddeth it, or of the magistrate that
punisheth it.
[As to praise or dispraise] — These depend not
at all on the necessity of the action praised or dis-
praised. For what is it else to praise, but to say a
thing is good 1 Good, I say, for me, or for somebody
else, or for the state and commonwealth. And what
is it to say an action is good, but to say it is as I would
wish, or as another would have it, or according to the
will of the state ; that is to say, according to the law ?
Does my lord think that no action can please me, or
him, or the commonwealth, that should proceed from
necessity ? Things may be therefore necessary, and
yet praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised,
and neither of them both in vain ; because praise
and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment,
do, by example, make and conform the will to
good or evil. It was a very great praise, in my
opinion, that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato, where
he says, that he was good by nature, ' et quia aliter
esse non potuit ' — [' and because he could not be
otherwise.']
The style of Hobbes is characterised by Sir .James
Mackintosh as ' the very perfection of didactic lan-
guage. Sliort, clear, precise, pithy, his language
never has mcfre than one meaning, which never re-
quires a second thought to find. By the help of his
exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind,
that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little
tract on Human Nature lias scarcely an ambiguous
or a needless word. He has so great a jiower of
always clioosing the ;»")st significant term, that he
never is reduced to tlie poor expedient of nsinar many
in its stead. He had so thoroughly studied the
genius of the language, and knew so -well to steer
between pedantry and vulgarity, that two centuries
have not superannuated probably more than a dozen
of his words.' * Among his greatest i)liilosopliical
errors are those of making no distinction betAveen
the intellectual and emotive faculties of man — ol
representing all human actions as the results of in-
tellectual deliberation alone — and of in every case
deriving just and benevolent actions from a cool
survey of the advantages to self M-hich may be ex-
pected to flow from them. In short, he has given
to neither the moral nor the social sentiments a place
in his scheme of human nature. The opponents o^
this selfish system have been numberless ; nor is the
controversy terminated even at the present day.
The most eminent of those who have ranged them-
selves against Hobbes are Cumberland, Cudworth,
Shaftesbury, Clarke, Butler, Ilutcheson, Karnes,
Smith, Stewart, and Brown.
LORD HERBERT.
Among the distinguished persons whom we have
mentioned as intimate with Hobbes, is Lord Her-
bert OF Cherbury (1581-1G4S), a brave and
high-spirited man, at a time when honourable
feeling was rare at the English court. Like the
philosopher of Malmesbury, he distinguished him-
self as a free-thinker ; and, says l)r Leland, ' as
he was one of the first, so he was confessedly one
of the greatest wTiters that have appeared among
us in the deistical cause.' f He was born at Eyton,
in Shropshire, studied at Oxford, and acquired, "both
at home and on the continent, a high reputation for
the almost Quixotic chivalry of his character. In j
1616 he was sent as ambassador to Paris, at which '
place he pubhshed, in 1624, his celebrated deistical
book, De Veritate, prout distinguitur a Revelatioiie
VerisimiU, Possibili, et a Falsa — "[' Of Truth, as it is
distinguished from Probable, Possible, and False
Revelation']. In this work, the first in which deism
was ever reduced to a system, the author main-
tains the sufficiency, universality, and absolute per-
fection of natural religion, and the consequent use-
lessness of supernatural revelation. This universal
religion he reduces to the following articles: — 1,
That there is one supreme God. 2. That he is
chiefly to be worshipped. 3. That piety and virtue
are the principal part of his worship. 4. That we
must repent of our sins, and if we do so, God will
pardon them. 5. That good men are rewarded, and
bad men punished, in a future state ; or, as he some-
times expresses it, both here and hereafter. In
reprinting tlie work at London in 1645, he added
two tracts, De Causis Errorum [' Of the "Jauses
of Error'], and De Religione Laid [' Of the Reli-
gion of a Layman'] ; and soon afterwards he pub-
lished another book, entitled De Religione GentiHum,
Erroruvique apud eos Causis, of wh'ich an lOnglish
translation appeared in 1705, entitled 'The Ancient
Religion of the Gentiles, and Cause of their Errors,
Considered.' The treatise 'De Veritate' was answered
by the French philosopher Gassendi, and lunnerous
replies have appeared in F^ngland. Lord Herbert wrote
a Ilistonjofthe Life and Reign of King Henry VI IL,
which was not printed till 1649, the year after his
death. It is termed by Lord Orford 'a masterpiece
* Second Preliminary Dissertation to ' Encyclopjpdia Britan-
nica," p. 318.
t Leland's View of the Deiatical Writers, Letter IL
269
FROM 1553
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1G49.
of historic biography;' and in Bishop Nicolson's
opinion, ' the author "has acquitted himself with the
like reputation as Lord Chancellor Bacon gained by
the Life of Henry VIL, having, in the poUte and
martial part> been admirably exact, from the best
records that remain.' He has been accused, how-
ever, of partiality to the tyrannical monarch whose
actions he relates, and of having produced rather a
pancgjTic, or an apology, than a fair and judicious
representation. As to style, the work is considered
one of the best old specimens of historical compo-
sition in the language, being manly and vigorous,
and unsullied bj' the quaintness and pedantry of the
age. Lord Herbert is remarkable also as the earliest
of our autobiographers. The memoirs which he left
of his own life were first printed in 1764, and have
ever since been popular. In the following extract,
there is evidence of the singular fact, that though he
conceived revelation unnecessarj^ in a religious point
of view, he seriously looked for a communication of
the Divine will as to the publication or suppression
of his principal work : —
My book, De Ventate, prout distinguiticr a Reve-
lafione Verislmili, Possibili, et a Falso, having been
begun by me in England, and formed there iu all its
principal parts, was about this time finished ; all the
Bpare hours which I could get from my visits and
negotiations being employed to perfect this work,
which was no sooner done, but that I communicated
it to Hugo Grotius, that great scholar, who, having
escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into
France, and was much welcomed by me and Monsieur
Tieleners also, one of the greatest scholars of his time,
who, after they had perused it, and given it more
commendations than it is fit for me to repeat, ex-
horted me earnestly to print and publish it ; howbeit,
as the frame of mj' whole book was so different from
anything which had been written heretofore, I found
I must either renounce the authority of all that had
written formerly concerning the method of finding out
truth, and consequently insist upon my own way, or
hazard myself to a general censure, concerning the
whole argument of my book ; I must confess it did not
a little animate me, that the two great persons above-
mentioned did so highly value it, yet, as I knew it
would meet with much opposition, I did consider
whether it was not better for me a while to suppress
it. Being thus doubtful in my chamber, one fair day
in the summer, my casement being open towards the
south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I
took my book ' De Veritate' in my hand, and, kneel-
ing on my knees, devoutly said these words : —
* thou eternal God, author of the light which
now shines upon me, and giver of all inward illumi-
nations, I do beseech thee, of thy infinite goodness,
to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to
make ; I am not satisfied enough whether I "shall
publish this book De Veritate ; if it be for thy glory,
I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven ; if not,
I shall suppress it.'
I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud,
though yet gentle noise, came from the heavens (for
it was like nothing on earth), which did so comfort
and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and
that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I
resolved to print my book.
This, how strange soever it may seem, I protest
before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
BUperstitiousIy deceived herein, since I did not only
clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky that
ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my think-
in;; see the place from whence it came.
I
I As a sample of his ' Life of Henry "VTH.,' take his
; fcount of
[Sir Thomas Mores Iicsif/7ia(ion of the Great Seal.]
Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England,
after divers suits to be discharged of his place (which
he had held two years and a-half), did at length by
the king's good leave resign it. The example whereof
being rare, will give me occasion to speak more parti-
cularlv of him. Sir Thomas More, a person of sharp
wit, and endued besides with excellent parts of
learning (as his works may testify), was yet (out of I
know not what natural facetiousness) given so much
to jesting, that it detracted no little from the gravity
anil importance of his place, which, though generally
noted and disliked, I do not think was enough to
make him give it over in that merriment we shal'.
fini anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I
believe him so much addicted to his private opinions
as to detest all other governments but his own Uto])ia,
so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow
his book, or secret offence taken against some person
or matter (among which perchance the king's new in-
tended marriage, or the like, might be accounted)
occasioned this strange counsel ; though, yet, I find no
reason pretended for it, but infirmity and want of
health. Our king hereupon taking the seal, and giv-
ing it, together with the order of knighthood, to
Thomas Audeley, speaker of the Lower House, Sir
Thomas More, without acquainting any body with
what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea,
where, after a mass celebrated the next day in the
church, he comes to his ladj''s pew, with his hat in
his hand (an office formerly done by one of his gentle-
men), and says, ' Madam, my lord is gone.' But she
thinking this at first to be but one of his jests, was
little moved, till he told her sadly, he had given up
the great seal ; whereupon she speaking some pas-
sionate words, he called his daughters then present to
see if they could not spy some fault about their
mother's dressing ; but they after search saying they
could find none, he replied, ' Do you not perceive that
your mother's nose standeth somewhat awry ?' — of
which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she
went from him in a rage. Shortly after, he acquainted
his servants with what he had done, dismissing them
also to the attendance of some other great personages,
to whom he had recommended them. For his fool, he
bestowed him on the lord mayor during his office, and
afterwards on his successors in that charge. And now
coming to himself, he began to consider how much he
had left, and finding that it was not above one hun-
dred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he
advised with his daughters how to live together. But
the grieved gentlewomen (who knew not what to re-
ply, or indeed how to take these jests) remaining
astonished, he says, ' We will begin with the slender
diet of the students of the law, and if that will not
hold out, we will take such commons as they have at
Oxford ; which yet if our purse will not stretch to
maintain, for our last refuge we will go a-begging, and
at every man's door sing together a Salve Reginn. to get
alms. But these jests were thought to have in them
more levity, than to be taken everywhere for current ,
he might have quitted his dignity without using such
sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more retired and
quiet life, without making them or himself contemp-
tible. And certainly whatsoever he intended hereby,
his family so little understood his meaning, that they
needed some more serious instructions. So that I
cannot persuade myself for all this talk, that so ex-
cellent a person would omit at fit times to give his
family that sober account of his relinquishing this
place, which I find he did to the Archbishop Warham,
Erasmus, and others.
TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.
One of the most important literary undertak-
270
PROSE WaiTEBS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
KINO JAMKS 1.
ings of this era was the execution of the present
authorised transhition of tlie Bible. At tlie great
conference held in 1604 at Hampton Court, be-
tween tlie established and puritan clergj', the ver-
sion of Scripture then existing was generally dis-
approved of, and the king consequently appointed
fifty-four men, many of whom were eminent as
Hebrew and Greek scholars, to commence a new
translation. In 1607, fortj'-seven of the number
met, in six parties, at Oxford, Cambridge, and West-
minster, and proceeded to their task, a certain por-
tion of Scripture being assigned to each. Every
individual of each division, iu the first place, trans-
lated the portion assigned to the division, all of
which translations were collected ; and when each
party had determined on the construction of its part,
it was proposed to the other divisions for general
approbation. When they met together, one read the
new version, Avhilst all the rest held in their hands
either copies of the original, or some valuable ver-
sion ; and on any one objecting to a passage, the
reader stopped till it was agreed upon. The result
was published in 1611, and has ever since been re-
puted as a translation generally faithful, and an
excellent specimen of the language of the time.
Being universally read by all ranks of the people, it
has contributed most essentially to give stability and
uniformity to the English tongue.
KING JAMES I.
KixG James was himself an author, but his works
are now considered merely as curiosities. His most
celebrated productions are the Basilicon Doroti, I)ce-
monohgii, and A Counterblast to Tobacco. The first
was written, for the instruction of his son Prince
Henr}', a short time before the union of the crowns,
and seems not to have been originally intended for
the press. In the ' Dajmonolog}-,' the British Solo-
mon displays his wisdom and learning in maintain-
ing the existence and criminality of witches, and
discussing the manner in which their feats are
performed. Our readers will be amused by the
following extracts from this performance, the first
of wliich is from the preface : —
[Sorcery and Witchcraft.']
The fearful abounding at this time in this country
of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or
enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to des-
patch in post this following treatise of mine, not in
any wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learn-
ing and ingine, but only, moved of conscience, to
press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting
hearts of many ; both that such assaults of Sathan are
most certainly practised, and that the instruments
thereof merits most severely to be punished : against
the damnable opinions of two principally in our age,
whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not
ashamed in public print to deny that there can be
such a thing as witchcraft ; and so maintains the old
error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The
other called Wierua, a German physician, sets out a
public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby, pro-
curing for their impunity, he plainly bewTays himself
lo have been one of that profession. And for to make
this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it
in form of a dialogue, which I have divided into three
books : the first speaking of magic in general, and
necromancy in special : the second, of sorcery and
witchcraft : and the third contains a discourse of all
these kinds of spirits, and spectres that appears and
troubles persons : together with a conclusion of the
whole work. My intention in this labour is only to
prove two things, as I have already said : the one,
tliat such devilish arts have been and are : the other,
what exact trial and severe punishment they merit :
and therefore reason I, what kind of things are pos-
sil)le to be performed in these arts, and by what
natural causes they may be. Not that 1 toucli every
particular thing of the devil's power, for that were in-
finite : but only, to speak scholasticly (since this
cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon
genus, leaving species and differentia to be compre-
hended therein. As, for example, speaking of the
power of magicians in the first book and sixth chapter,
I say that they can suddenly cause be brought unto
them all kinds of dainty dishes by their familiar
spirit : since as a thief he delights to steal, and as a
spirit he can subtilly and suddenly enough transport
the same. Now, luider this genus may be comprehended
all particulars depending thereupon ; such as the
bringing wine out of a wall (as we have heard oft to
have been practised) and such others ; which parti-
culars are sulfieiently proved by the reasons of the
general.
[IIow Witches Travel]
PhiJomathes. But by what ■v. ay say they, or think ye
it possible, they can come to these unlawful conven*
tions ?
Epistemon. There is the thing which I esteem theii
senses to be deluded in, and, though they lie not in
confessing of it, because they think it to be true, vet
not to be so in substance or effect, for they say, that
by divers means they may convene either to the ador-
ing of their master, or to the putting in practice any
service of his conuuitted unto their charge ; one wav is
natural, which is natural riding, going, or sailing, at
what hour their master comes and advertises them.
And this way may be easily believed. Anoth ;r waji
is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be
true : which is by being carried by the force of the
spirit which is their conductor, either above the earth or
above the sea, swiftly, to the place where they are to
meet : which I am persuaded to be likewise possible,
in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the angel
in that firm to the den where Daniel lay, so think I
the devil will be ready to imitate God, as well in that
as in other things : which is much more possible to
him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind,
being but a natural meteor, to transport from one place
to another a solid body as is commonly and daily seen
in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be
carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space
that they may retain their breath : for if it were
longer, their breath could not remain unextinguished,
tlieir body being carried in such a violent and forcible
manner, as, by example, if one fall off a small height,
Jiis life is but in peril, according to the hard or soft
lighting ; fiut if one fall from a high and stay' rock,
his breath will be forcibly banished from the body be-
fore he can win- to the earth, as is oft seen by experi-
ence. And in this transporting they say themselves.
that they are invisible to any other, except amongst
themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of
impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before,
speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken
and obscure so the air that is next about them, by con-
tracting it strait together, that the beams of any other
num's eyes cannot pierce through the same, "to see
them ? But the third way of their coming to their
conventions is that wherein I think them deluded : for
some of them saith that, being transformed in the like-
ness of a little beast or fowl, they will come and pierce
through whatsoever house or church, tliough all ordi-
nary passages be closed, by whatsoever open the air
may enter in at. And some saith, that their boliei
lying still, as in an ecstacy, their spirits wiU b«
' Steep.
^Get.
271
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649-
ravished out of their bodies, and carried to such places ;
Mid for verifying thereof will give evident tokens, as
well by witnesses thut have seen their body lying
^enseless in the mean time, as by naming persons
whomwith they met, and giving tokens what purpose
was amongst them, whom othenvise they could not
liave known ; for this form of journeying they affirm
to use most when they are transported from one coun-
try to another.
BOBERT BURTON.
One of the most entertaining prose writers of this
age was Egbert Bcrton (1576 — 1639-40), rector
of Segrave in Leicestershire, and a member of
Christ-church, Oxford. Burton was a man of great
benevolence, integrity, and learning, but of a whim-
Bicid and melancholy disposition. Though at cer-
tain times he was a facetious companion, at others
his spirits were very low ; and when iu this condi-
Robert Burton.
cion, he used to go down to the river near Oxford
and dispel the gloom by listening to the coarse
jests and ribaldry of the bargemen, which excited
"his violent laughter. To alleviate his mental dis-
tress, he wrote a book, entitled The Anatomy of
Mchncholi/, which appeared in 1621, and presents,
in quaint language, and with many shrewd and
amusing remarks, a view of all the modifications
of that disease, and the manner of curing it. The
erudition displayed in this work is extraordinary,
every page abounding with quotations from Latin
authors. It was so successful at first, that the
publisher realised a fortune by it ; and Warton says,
that 'the author's variety of learning, his quota-
tions from scarce and curious books, his pedantry,
sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance,
miscellaneous matter, intermixture of agreeable tales
and illustrations, and, perhaps .ibove all, the singu-
larities of his feelings, clothed in an uncommon
quaintness of style, have contributed to render it,
even to modern' readers, a valuable repository of
amusement and information.' It delighted I)r John-
son so much, tliat he said this ' was the only book
that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than
l>p wished to rise.' Its reputation was considerably
exte-.idcd bv the publication of ' Illustrations of
Sterne,' in 1798. by the late I)r Ferriar of ISIanches-
ter, who convicted that writer of copying passages,
verbatim, from Burton, without acknowledgment.
Many others have, with like silence, extracted ma-
terials from his pages. The book has lately been
more than once reprinted.
Prefixed to the ' Anatomy of Melancholy ' is a
poem of twelve stanzas, from which JMilton baa
borrowed some of the imagery of his ' II Penserosc
The first six stanzas are as follows : —
[77(6 Author's Abstract of Melancholy. ']
When I go musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things foreknown,
When I build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow, void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly ;
Isought so sweet as melancholy.
When I go walking all alone.
Recounting what 1 have ill-done,
My thoughts on me then tyrannise.
Fear and sorrow me surprise ;
Whether I tarry still, or go,
Methinks the time moves vei-y slow.
All my griefs to this are jolly ;
Nought so sad as melancholy.
When to myself I act and smile,
With pleasing thoughts the time beguile.
By a brook side or wood so green,
Unheard, unsought for, or unseen,
A thousand pleasures do me bless,
And cro'ivn my soul with happiness.
All my joys besides are folly ;
None so sweet as melancholy.
\Mien I lie, sit, or walk alone,
I sigh, I grieve, making great moan ;
In a dark grove or irksome den.
With discontents and furies then,
A thousand miseries at once
Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce.
All my griefs to this are jolly ;
None so sour as melancholy.
Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Sweet music, wondrous melody,
To'wns, palaces, and cities, fine ;
Here now, then there, the world is mine,
Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine,
Whate'er is lovely is divine.
All other joys to this are folly ;
None so sweet as melancholy.
Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Ghost, goblins, fiends : my phantasie
Presents a thousand ugly shapes ;
Headless bears, black men, and apes ;
Doleful outcries and fcarfnl sights
My sad and dismal soul aflrights.
All my griefs to this are jolly ;
None so daran'd as melancholy.
Of Burton's prose, the following will serve ns a
specimen : —
[Melancholy and Contemplation.']
Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with
melancholy, and gently brings on, like a Siren, a
shooing-hom, or some sphinx, to this irrevocable gulf:
a primary cause Piso calls it : most pleasant it is at
first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed
272
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ROnKRT lU'UTO.N.
»> *n'l(- days, and keep their chambers ; to walk alone
ill .-.I'Tiie solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a
brook side ; to meditate upon some delightsome and
pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; 'ama-
bilis insania,' and ' mentis gratissimus error.' A most
incomininible delight it is so to melancholise, and
build castles in the air ; to go smiling to them-
selves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they
suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that
they see acted or done. ' Blanda quidein ab initio'
■ — £' pleasant, indeed, it is at first'], saith Lemnius,
to conceive and meditate of such pleasant things
sometimes, 2^resent, jutst, or to come, as Rhasis speaks.
So delightsome these toys are at first, they could
spend whole days and nights without sleep, even
whole years alone in such contemplations and fan-
tastical meditations, which are like unto dreams : and
they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly
interrupt. So pleasant their vain conceits are, that
they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary busi-
ness ; they cannot address themselves to them, or
almost to any study or employment : these fantasti-
cal and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly,
so urgently, so continually set upon, creep in, insinu-
ate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them ;
they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary
business, stave off ■>r extricate themselves, but are
ever musing, melancholising, and carried along, as he
(thej say) that is led round about an heath with a
puck in the. night. They run earnestly on in this
labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy me-
ditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, or
easily leave off winding and unwinding themselves, as
90 many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until
at last the scene is turned upon a sudden, by some
bad object ; 4,nd they, being now habituated to such
vain meditati.ons and solitary places, can endure no
company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and
distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, ' sub-
rusticus pudor' — [' clownish bashfulness'], discontent,
cares, and weariness of life, surprise them in a mo-
ment ; and they can think of nothing else : conti-
nually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but
this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them,
and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal
object to their minds, which now, by no means, no
labour, no persuasions, they can avoid ; ' hiBret lateri
lethalis arundo' — [' the deadly aiTOw sticks fast in
their side'] ; they may not be rid of it ; they can-
not resist. I may not deny but that there is some
profitable meditation, contemplation, and kind of
solitariness to be embraced, wl ch the fathers so
highly commended (Hierom, Chi /sostome, C^^Jrian,
Austin, in whole tracts, which Petrarch, Erasmus,
Stella, and others, so much magnify in their books) ;
A paradise, a heaven on earth, if it be used aright,
good for the body,' and better for the soul ; as many
of these old monks used it, to divine contemplation ;
as Simulus, a courtier in Adrian's time, Dioclesian
the emperor, retired themselves, &c. In that sense,
' Vatia solus scit vivere'- — [' Vatia alone knows how
to live'] ; which the Romans were wont to say,
when they commended a country life ; or to the bet-
tering of their knowledge, as Deniocritus, Cleanthes,
and those excellent philosophers have ever done, to
sequester themselves from the tumultuous world ;
or as in Pliny's Villa Laurentana, Tully's Tuscula,
Jovius's study, that they might better ' vacare studiis
et Deo' [' give themselves up to God and their studies'].
Methinks, therefore, our too zealous innovators were
not so well advised in that general subversion of ab-
beys and religious houses, promiscuously to fling
do«Ti all. They might have taken away those gross
abuses <^rept in amongst them, rectified such incon-
veniences, and not so far to have raved and raged
a^jainst those fair buildings and everlasting monuments
of our forefathers' devotion, consecrated to pious uses.
Some monasteries and collegiate cells might have been
well spared, and their revenues otherwise employed,
here and there one, in good towns or cities at least,
for men and women of all sorts and conditions to
live in, to sequester themselves from the cares and
tumults of the world, that were not desirous or fit
to marry, or otherwise willing to be troubled with
common affairs, and knew not well where to bc«tow
themselves ; to live apart in, for more conveniency,
good education, better company sake ; to follow their
studies (1 say) to the perfection of arts and sciences,
common good, and, as some truly devoted monks of
old had done, freely and truly to s'erve God : for these
men are neither solitary nor" idle, as the poet r-^'le
answer to the husbandman in ^sop, that objecit.*
idleness to him ; he was never so idle as in his com-
pany ; or that Scipio Africanus, in Tully, 'nunquam
minus solus, quam cum solus ; nunquam minus
otiosus quam cum essefc otiosus' — [' never less soli-
tary than when he was alone, never more busy than
when he seemed to be most idle']. It is reported
by Plato, in his dialogue Be ylmore, in that pro-
digious commendation of Socrates, how a deep medi-
tation coming into Socrates's mind by chance, he
stood still musing, * eodem vestigio cogitabundus,'
from morning to noon ; and when, as then he had
not yet finished his meditation, ' perstabat cogitans,'
he so continued till the evening ; the soldiers (for he
then followed the camp) observed him with admira-
tion, and on set puq:>ose watched all night ; but he
persevered immoveable, ' ad exortum solis,' till the
sun rose in the morning, and then, saluting the sun,
went his ways. In what humour constant Socrates
did thus, I know not, or how he might be affected ;
but this would be pernicious to another man ; what
intricate business might so really possess him, I can-
not easily guess ; but this is ' otiosum otium' — [' care-
less tranquillity'] ; it is fiir othenvise with these men,
according to Seneca: 'omnia nobis mala solitudo per-
suadet' — [' this solitude undoeth us'] ; ' pugnat cum
vita sociali' — [' 'tis a destructive solitariness^']. These
men are devils alone, as the saying is, ' homo solus
aut deus aut demon' — [' a man alone, is either a
saint or a devil'] ; 'mens ejus aut languescit, aut tu-
mescit' — [' his mind either languishes or bursts'] ;
and ' vas soli !' — in this sense, wo be to him that is
so alone ! These ^vretches do frequently degenerate
from men, and, of sociable creatures, become beasts
monsters, inhumane, ugly to behold — misanthropi ;
they do even loathe themselves, and hate the company
of men, as so many Timons, Nebuchadnezzars, by
too much indulging to these pleasing humours, and
through their own default. So that which jNIercu-
rialis {consil. 11.) sometimes expostulated with his
melancholy patient, may be justly applied to every
solitary and idle person in particular ; ' Natura de
te videtur conqueri posse,' &c. — [' Nature may justly
com])lain of thee, that, whereas she gave thee a
good wholesome temperature, a sound body, and God
liath given thee so divine and excellent a soul, so
many good parts and profitable gifts ; thou hast not
only contemned and rejected, but hast corrupted
them, polluted them, overthrown their temperature,
and perverted those gifts with riot, idleness, solitari-
ness, and many other Avays ; thou art a traitor to God
and nature, an enemy to thyself and to the world'].
' Perditia; tute ex te' &c.— [' thou hast lost thyself wil-
fully, cast away thyself ; thou thyself art the efficient
cause of thine own misery, by not resisting such vain
cogitations, but giving way unto them'].
Burton, who believed in judicial astrology, ij
said to have foretold, from a cahiulation of Iiis
nativity, the time of liis own death; which occurred
at the period he predicted, but not without some
273
39
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
suspicion of its havinji been occasioned by his
own hand. In his epitaph at Oxford, ■written by
Tomb of Burton, in the Cathedral.
himjjlf, he is described as having lived and died by
melancholy.
TH051AS DEKKER.
It may be observed, that there was no absolute
•want of the lighter kind of prose during tliis age.
Several of the dramatists and others amused them-
selves by throwing off small works of a satirical and
humorous cast, but all of them in a style so far from
pure or elegant, and so immediately referring to
passing manners, that they have, with hardly an
exception, sunk into oblivion. Thomas Dekker,
who has already been spoken of as a writer of plays,
produced no fewer tlian fourteen works of this kind.
In one, entitled The GuWs Hornbook, published in
1609, he assumes the character of a guide to the
fashionable follies of the town, but only with the
design of exposing them to ridicule. The following
extracts may serve as specimens of the light writing
of the period : —
[Against Fine Clothes.']
Good clothes are the embroidered trappings of
pride, and good cheer the very root of gluttony. Did
man, think you, conic wrangling into the world about
no better matters, than all his lifetime to make privy
searches in Birchin Lane for whalebone doublets, or
for pies of nightin<.'ale3' tongues in Heliogabalus his
kitchen ? No, no ; the first suit of apparel that ever
mortal man put on, came neither from the mercer's
shop nor the merchant's warehouse : Adam's bill
would have been taken then, sooner than a knight's
bond now ; yet was he great in nobody's books for
eatin and velvets. The silk-worms had something
el>e to 'li^ in those days than to set up looms, and he
fr<e of tlio weavers, llii breeches were not so much
•rorih aa King Stephen's, iat cost but a poor noble ;
for Adam's holiday hose and doublet were of no bettei
stuff than plain fig-leaves, and Kve's best gown of the
same piece ; there went but a pair of shears between
them. An antiquary of this town has yet some of
the powder of those leaves to show. Tailors then
were none of the twelve companies ; their hall, that
now is larger than some dorfes among the Nether-
landers, was then no bigger than a Dutch butcher's
shop : they durst not strike down their customers
with large bills : Adam cared not an apple-pariuc^
their lousy hems. There was then neither the Spanish
slop, nor the skipper's galligaskin, nor the Danish
sleeve, nor the French standing collar : your treble-
quadruple ruffs, nor your stitf-necked rabatos, that
have more arches for pride than can stand under five
London bridges, durst not then set themselves out in
point ; for the patent for starch could by no means be
signed. Fashion was then counted a disease, and
horses died of it ; but now, thanks to foil}', it is held
the only rare physic, and the purest golden asses live
upon it.
[IIoic a Gallant should behave himself in PauVs Walhs*'\
He that would strive to fashion his legs to his silk
stockinirs, and his proud gait to his broad garters, h'.t
him whiff down these observations : for, if he once get
to walk by the book, and I see no reason but he mav,
as well as fight by the book, Paul's may be proud of
him ; Will Clarke shall ring forth encomiums in his
honour; John, in Paul's churchyard, shall fit his
head for an excellent block ; wliil^t all the inns of
court rejoice to behold his most handsome calf.
Your mediterranean isle is then the only gallery,
wherein the pictures of all your true fashionate and
complimental gulls are, and ought to be hung up.
Into that gallery carry your neat body ; but take Iiced
you pick out such an hour, when the main shoai of
islanders are swimming up and down. And first ob-
serve your doors of entrance, and your exit ; not much
unlike the players at the theatres ; keeping your de-
corums, even in fantasticality. As, for example, if
you prove to be a northern gentleman, I would wi>h
you to pass through the north door, more often esi>«-
cially than any of the other ; and so, according to
your countries, take note of your entrances.
Now for your venturing into the walk. Be circum-
spect, and wary what pillar you come in at ; and tf.ke
heed in any case, as you love the reputation of your
honour, that you avoid the serving-man's log, and
approach not within five fathom of that pillar ; but
bend your course directly in the middle line, that the
whole body of the church may appear to be yours ;
where, in view of all, you may publish your suit in
what manner you affect most, either with the slide of
your cloak from the one shoulder ; and then you
must, as 'twere in anger, suddenly snatch at the
middle of the inside, if it be taffeta at the leasi ; and
so by that means your costly lining is betrayed, or
else by the pretty advantage of compliment. But
one note by the way do I especially woo you to, the
neglect of which makes many of our gallants cheap
and ordinary, that by no means you he seen above
four turns ; but in the fifth make yourself away, either
in some of the semsters' shops, the new tobacco
office, or amongst the booksellers, where, if you cannot
read, exercise your smoke, and inquire who has writ
agai;ist this divine weed, kc. For this withdrawing
yourself a little will much benefit your suit, which
else, by too long walking, would be stale to the whole
spectators : but howsoever, if Paul's jacks be once up
with their elbows, and quarrelling to strike eleven ;
as soon as ever the clock has parted them, and ended
the fray with his hammer, let not the duke's gallery
contain you any longer, but pa.>s away apace in o;)en
* St Paul'b Cathedral was then a public promeiMde.
>74
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOSEPH HALL.
view ; in ■which departure, if by chance you either
encounter, or aloof otf throw your inquisitive eye upon
any knight or squire, being your familiar, salute him
not by his name of Sir such-a-one, or so ; but call him
Ned, or Jack, kc. This will set off your estimation
with great men ; and if, though there be a dozen com-
panies between j'ou, 'tis the better, he call aloud to
you, for that is most genteel, to know where he shall
find you at two o'clock ; tell him at such an ordinary,
or such ; and be sure to name those that are dearest,
and whither none but your gallants resort. After
dinner you may appear again, having translated your-
self out of your English cloth cloak into a light
Turkey grogram, if j-ou have tliat happiness of shift-
ing ; and then be seen, for a turn or two, to correct
your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and
to cleanse your gums with a wrought handkerchief;
it skills not whether you dined, or no ; that is best
known to your stomach, or in what place you dined ;
though it were with cheese, of your own mother's
making, in your -hamber, or study,
JOSEPH HALL.
Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich, whose poetical
satires have already been mentioned, was the author
of many controversial tracts in defence of episcopacy ;
and, like many other churchmen, he suffered for his
opinions during the ascendancy of the Presbyterians.
He published also a variety of sermons, meditations,
epistles, paraphrases, nnd other pieces of a similar
character. This distinguished prelate died in 1656.
From the pitliy and sententious quality of his style,
he has been called ' the English Seneca ;' many
parts of his prose -writings have the thought, feel-
ing, and melixly of the finest poetry. The most
popular of his works is that entitled Occasional Me-
ditations, a lew extracts from which are here sub-
joined.
Upon the Sight of a Tree Full-hlossomed,
Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms ; it is not
possible that all these should prosper ; one of them
must needs rob the other of moisture and growth ; I
do not love to see an infancy over-hopeful ; in these
pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and
at la.'^t leaves the mind sapless and ban-en : as, there-
fore, we are wont to pull off some of the too frequent
blossoms, that the rest may thrive, so, it is good wis-
dom to moderate the early excess of the parts, or pro-
gress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it other-
wise in our Christian profession ; a sudden and lavish
ostentation of grace may fill the eye with wonder,
and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill
the lap with fruit.
Let me not promise too much, nor raise too high
expectations of my undertakings ; I had rather men
should complain of my small hopes than of my short
performances.
Upon Occasion of a Red-breast coming into his Chamber.
Pretty bird, how cheerfully dost thou sit and sing,
and yet knowest not where thou art, nor where thou
shalt make thy next meal ; and at night must shroud
thyself in a bush for lodging ! What a shame is it
for me, that see before me so liberal provisions of my
God, and find myself sit warm under my own roof,
yet am ready to droop under a distrustful and un-
thankful dulness. Had I so little certainty of my
harbour and purveyance, how heartless should I be,
how careful ; how little list should I have to make
music to thee or myself ! Surely thou comest not
hither without a providence. God sent thee not so
much to delight, as to shame me, but all in a convic-
tion of my sullen unbelief, who, under more apparent
means, am less cheerful and confident ; reason and
faith have not done so much in me, as in thee mere
instinct of nature ; want of foresight makes thee more
merry if not more happy here, than the foresight of
better things inaketh me.
God, thy pi-ovidence is not impaired by those
powers thou hast given me above these brute things ;
let not my greater helps hinder me from a holy
security, and comfortable reliance on thee.
Upon the Kindling of a Charcoal Fire,
There are not many creatures but do naturally
affect to diffuse and enlarge themselves ; fire and
water will neither of them rest contented with their
own bounds ; those little sparks that I see in those
coals, how they spread and enkindle their next brands !
It is thus morally both in good and evil ; either of
them dilates itself to their neighbourhood ; but espe-
cially this is so much more a])parent in evil, by how
much we are more apt to take it. Let but some spark
of heretical opinion be let fall upon some unstable,
proud, busy spirit, it catcheth instantly, and fires
the next capable subject ; they two have easily in-
flamed a third ; and now the more society the more
speed and advantage of a public combustion. When
we see the church on a flame, it is too late to complain
of the flint and steel ; it is the holy wisdom of supe-
riors to prevent the dangerous attritions of stubborn
and Avrangling spirits, cr t& quench their first sparks
in the tinder.
But why should not gracs and truth be as success-
ful in dilating itself to the gaining of many hearts ?
Certainly these are in themselves more winning, if
our corruption had not made us indisposed to good :
God, out of a holy eiiv}' and emulation at the
speed of evil, I shall labour to CLkindle others with
these heavenly flames ; it shall not be my fault if they
spread not.
Upon the Sight of two Snails,
There is much variety even in creatures of the same
kind. See there, two snails ; one hath an house, the
other wants it ; yet both are snails, and it is a ques-
tion, whether case is the better : that which hath a
house hath more shelter, but that which wants it hath
more freedom ; the privilege of that cover is but a
burden ; you see, if it hath but a stone to climb over,
with what stress it draws up that beneficial load ; and
if the passage prove strait, finds no entrance ; whereas
the empty snail makes no difterence of way. Surely
it is always an ease and sometimes a happiness to
have nothing ; no man is so worthy of envy as he that
can be cheerful in want.
Upon Hearing of Music by Night.
How sweetly doth this music sound in this dead
season ! In the day-time it would not, it could not,
so much aft'ect the ear. All harmonious sounds are
advanced by a silent darkness ; thus it is with the
glad tidings of salvation ; the gospel never sounds so
sweet as in the night of preservation, or of our o^vn
])rivate affliction ; it is ever the same, the difference
is in our disposition to receive it. God, whose
praise it is to give songs in the night, make my pro-
sperity conscionable, and my crosses cheerful.
Upton the Sight of an Otd in the Twilight.
What a strange melancholic life doth this creatuit
lead ; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy
bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest,
to fly abroad, and vent her harsh notes. I know not
why the ancients have sacred this bird to wisdom, ex-
cept it be for her safe closeness and singular perspi-
cuity ; that when other domestical and airy creatures
275
FROM 15.58
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649
are blind, she only hath inward light, to discern the
least objects for her own advantage. Surely thus
much wit they have taught us in her ; that he is the
wisest man that would have least to do with the mul-
titude • that no life is so safe as the obscure ; that re-
tiredness if it have less comfort, yet has less danger
and vexation ; lastly, that he is truly wise who sees
by a li"ht of his own, when the rest of the world sit
in an i<aiorant and confused darkness, unable to ap-
prehend any truth, save by the helps of an outward
illumination.
Had this fowl come forth in the day-time, how had
all the little birds flocked wondering about her, to see
heruncouth visage, to hear her untuned notes; she lik<?s
her estate never the worse, but pleaseth herself in her
own quiet reservedness ; it is not for a wise man to be
much affected with the censures of the rude and un-
skilful vulgar, but to hold fast unto his own well-
chosen and well-fixed resolutions ; every fool knows
what is wont to be done ; but what is best to be done,
is known only to the wise.
Upon the Sight of a Great Library.
What a world of wit is here packed up together ! I
know not whether this sight doth more dismay or
comfort me ; it dismays me to think, that here is so
much that I cannot know ; it comforts me to think
that this variety yields so good helps to know what I
should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon
— there is no end of making many books ; this sight
verifies it — there is no end ; indeed, it were pity there
should ; God hath given to man a busy soul, the agi-
tation whereof cannot but through time and expe-
rience work out many hidden truths ; to suppress
these would be no other than injurious to mankind,
whose minds, like unto so many candles, should be
kindled by each other : the thoughts of our delibera-
tion are most accurate ; these we vent into our papers ;
what a happiness is it, that, without all offence of
necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient
worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and
confer with them of all my doubts ! — that I can at
pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers,
and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to
give their well-studied judgments in all points of
question which I propose ! Neither can I cast my
eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I
must learn somewhat : it is a wantonness to complain
of choice.
No law binds me to read all ; but the more we can
take in and digest, the better liking must the mind's
needs be : blessed Le God that hath set up so many
clear lamps in his church.
Now, none but the wilfully blind can plead dark-
ness ; and blessed be the menior}- of those his faithful
servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their
lives, in these precious papers, and have willingly
wasted themselves into these during monuments, to
give light unto others.
The sermons of Bishop Hall display an uncom-
monly rapid and vehement species of eloquence, well
fitted to arouse and impress even the most listless
audience. As a specimen, we give the following
extract from a discourse on the text, ' It is finished/
preached at Paul's Cross, on Good Friday, 1609.
[Claist Cfucijied Afresh hy Sinners.']
Behold, this storm, wherewith all the powers of
the world were shaken, is now over. The elders,
Pharisees, Judas, the soldiers, priests, witnesses,
judges, thieves, executioners, devils, have all tired
themselves in vain with their own malice ; and he
triumphs over them all, upon the throne of his cross :
his enemies are vanquished, his I'ather satisfied, his
! noul with this world at rest and glory ; ' It is finished.'
Now, there is no more betraying, agonies, airaign-
ments, scourgings, scoffing, crucifying, conflicts, ter-
rors ; all ' is finished.' Alas ! beloved, and will we
not let the Son of God be at rest ? Do we now again
go about to fetch him out of his glor)', to scorn and
crucify him ? I fear to say it : God's spirit dare and
doth ; ' They crucify again to themselves the Son of
God, and make a mock of him :' to themselves, not
in himself ; that they cannot, it is no thank to them ;
thev would do it. See and consider : the notoriously
sinful conversations of those that should be Christians,
offer violence unto our glorified Saviour ; they stretch
their hand to heaven, and pull him down from his
throne to his cross ; they tear him with thorns, pierce
him with nails, load him with reproaches. Thou
hatest the Jews, spittest at the name of Judas, railest
on Pilate, condemnest the cruel butchers of Christ ;
yet thou canst blaspheme, and swear him quite over,
curse, swagger, lie, oppress, boil with lust,' scoff, riot,
and livest like a debauched man ; yea, like a human
beast ; yea, like an unclean devil. Cry Hosanna as
long ai thou wilt ; thou art a Pilate, a Jew, a Judas,
an execationer of the Lord of life ; and so much
greater shall thy judgment be, by how much thy light
and his glory is more. Oh, beloved, is it not enough
that he died once for us ! Were those pains so light,
that we should every day redouble them ? Is this the
entertainment that so "gracious a Saviour hath de-
served of us by dying ? Is this the recompense of
that infinite love of his that thou shouldest thus
cruelly vex and wound him with thv sins ? Every
of our sins is a thorn, and uai'^ and spear to him;
while thou pourest down thy dru^ken carouses, thou
givest thy Saviour a portion of gal'i ; while thou de-
spisest his poor servants, thou spittest on his face •
while thou puttest on thy proud dressss, and liftest
up thy vain heart with high conceits, thou settest a
crown of thonis on his head ; while thou wrintrest and
oppressest his poor children, thou whippest linn and
drawest blood of his hands and feet. Thou h\T)ocrite
how darest thou offer to receive the sacrament of God
with that hand which is thus imbrued with the bV)od
of him whom thou receivest ? In every ordiuarv txiy
profane tongue walks, in the disgrace of the reliVious
and conscionable. Thou makest no scruple of thine
own sins, and scomest those that do ; not to be wicked,
is crime enough. Hear him that saith, ' Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me V Saul strikes at Damascus ;
Christ suffers in heaven. Thou strikest ; Christ Jesus
smarteth, and will revenge. These are the afterinus
of Christ's sufferings. In himself it is 'finished ;' in
his merabei-s it is not, till the world be finished. We
must toil, and groan, and bleed, that we may reii^n ;
if he had not done so, ' It had not been finished.'
This is our warfare ; this is the religion of our sorrow
and death. Now are we set upon the sandy pavement
of our theatre, and are matched with all sorts of evils ;
evil men, evil spirits, evil accidents, and, which is
worst, our own evil hearts ; temptations, crosses, per-
secutions, sicknesses, wants, infamies, death ; all
these must in our courses be encountered by the law
of our profession. What should we d ) but strive and
suffer, as our general hath done, that we may reign
as he doth, and once triumph in our Consummatum
est ? 1 God and his angels sit upon the scaffolds
of heaven, and behold us : our cro«i) is ready ; our
day of deliverance shall come ; yea, ■ ur redemption
is near, when all tears shall be wiped from our eyes,
and we that have sown in tears shall reap in joy. In
the mean time, let us possess our souls not in patience
only, but in comfort : let us adore and magnify cir
Saviour in his sufferings, and imitate him in our own.
Our sorrows shall have an end ; our joys shall not :
our pains shall soon be finished ; our glory shall be
finished, but never ended.
I It is finished.
276
PUOSE WUITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS OTERBURT.
The writing of characters was a favourite species
of composition among tlie autliors of this period.
How successfully Bisliop Hall could portray human
nature, will appear from his character of
77(6 Hypocrite.
An hj-pocrite is the worst kind of player, by so much
that he acts the better part ; which hath always two
faces, ofttiraes two hearts ; that can compose his fore-
head to sadness and gravity, while he bids his heart
be wanton and careless within, and, in the mean time,
laughs ^vithin himself to think how smoothly he hath
cozened the beholder. In whose silent face are ^vritten
the characters of religion, which his tongue and ges-
tures pronounce, but his hands recant. That hath a
clean face and garment, with a foul soul ; whose mouth
belies his heart, and his fingers bely his mouth.
Walking early up into the city, he tunis into the
great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one
kuee, worshipping that God which at home he cares
not for, while his eye is fixed on some window or some
passenger, and his heart knows not whither his lips go.
He rises, and, looking about with admiration, com-
plains of our frozen charity, commends the ancient.
At church he will ever sit where he may be seen best,
and in the midst of the sermon pulls out his tables in
haste, as if he feared to lose that note ; when he wi-ites
either his forgotten errand, or nothing. Then he turns
his Bible with a noise, to seek an omitted quotation,
and folds the leaf as if he had found it, and asks aloud
the name of the preacher, and repeats it, whom he
publicly salutes, thanks, praises in an honest mouth.
He can command tears when he speaks of his youth,
indeed, because it is past, not because it was sinful ;
himself is now better, but the times are worse. All
other sinii he reckons up with detestation, while he
loves and hides his darling in his bosom ; all his
speech returns to himself, and every occurrent draws
in a story to his own praise. When he should give,
he looks about him, and says, Who sees me ? no alms
nor pravers fall from him without a witness ; belike
lest God should deny that he hath received them ;
and when he hath done (lest the worhi should not
know it), his own mouth is his trumpet to proclaim it.
With the superfluity of his usury he builds an hos-
pital, and harbours them whom his extortion hath
spoiled ; so when he makes many beggars, he keeps
some. He tumeth all gnats into camels, and cares
not to undo the world for a circumstance. Flesh on
a Friday is more abominable to him than his neigh-
bour's bed ; he abhors more not to uncover at the
name of Jesus than to swear by the name of God.
When a rhymer reads his poem to him, he begs a
cop3% and persuades the press. There is nothing that
he dislikes in presence, that in absence he censures
not. He comes to the sick bed of his step-mother and
weeps, when he secretly fears her recovery. He greets
his friend in the street with a clear countenance, so
fast a closure, that the other thinks he reads his heart
in his face ; and shakes hands with an indefinite invi-
tation of— When will you come? and when his back
is turned, joys that he is so well rid of a guest ; yet it
that guest visit him unfeared, he counterfeits a smiling
welcome, and excuses his cheer, when closelj' he frowns
on his wife for too much. He shows well, and says
well, and himself is the worst thing he hath. In brief,
he is the stranger's saint, the neighbour's disease, the
blot of goodness, a rotten stick in a dark night, the
poppy in a com field, an ill-tempered candle with a
great snuff, that in going out smells ill ; an angel
abroad, a devil at home ; and worse when an angel than
when a devil.
Tlie Busy-Body.
His estate is too narrow for his mind ; and, there-
fore, he is fain to make hiniself room in others' atfairs,
3'et ever in pretence nf love. No news can stir but by
his door ; neither can he know that which he must
not tell. What everj- man ventures in a Guiana
voyage, and wliat they gained, he knows to a hair.
AMiether Holland will have peace, he knows ; and on
what conditions, and with what success, is familiar to
him, ere it be concluded. No post can pass him with-
out a question ; and, rather than he will lose the news,
he rides l)ack with him to appose' him of tidings ;
and then to the next man he meets he supplies the
wants of his hasty intelligence, and makes up a per-
fect tale ; wherewith he so haunteth the patient
auditor, that, after many excuses, he is fain to endure
rather the censures of his manners in running away,
than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse.
His speech is oft broken off with a succession of long
parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the con-
clusion ; and perhaps would effect it, if the other's
ear were as unwcariable as his tongue. If he see but
two men talk, and read a letter in the street, he runs
to them, and asks if he may not be partner of that
secret relation ; and if they deny it, he offers to tell,
since he may not hear, jvonders ; and then falls upon
the report of the Scottish mine, or of the great fish
taken up at Lynn, or of the freezing of the Thames ;
and, after many thanks and dismissions, is hardly
intreated silence. He undertakes as much as he
performs little. This man will thrust himself fonvard
to be the guide of the way he knows not ; and calls
at his neighbour's window, and asks why his servants
are not at work. The market hath no commodity
which he prizeth not, and which the next table shall
not hear recited. His tongue, like the tail of Samp-
son's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set
the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself
begins table-talk of his neighbour at another's board,
to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to
conceal the re, orter : whose choleric answer he returns
to his first host, enlarged with a second edition : so,
as it uses to be dune in the fight of unwilling mastiffs,
he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them
to an eager conflict. There can no act pass without his
comment ; which is ever far-fetched, rash, suspicious,
dilatory. His ears are .'ong, and his eyes quick, but
most of all to imperfections ; which, as he easily sees,
so he increases with intermeddling. He harbours
another man's servant ; ard, amidst his entertain-
ment, asks what fiire is usual at home, what hours
are kept, what talk jiasseth at their meals, what his
master's disposition is, what his government, what
his guests : and when he hath, by curious inquiries,
extracted all the juice and spi.-it of hoped intelli-
gence, turns him off whence he came, and works on a
new. He hates constancy, as an earthen dulness,
unfit for men of spirit ; and loves to ,'hange his work
and his place : neither yet can he be so soon weary of
any place, as every place is weary of him : for, as he
sets himself on work, so others pay him with hatred ;
and look, how many masters he hath, so many ene-
mies ; neither is it possible, that any should not hate
him, but who know him not. So, then, he labours
without thanks, talks without credit, lives without
love, dies without tears, without pity — save that
some say, ' It was pity he died no sooner.'
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.
Sir Thomas Overbury was another witty an.l
ingenious describer of characters. He at one time
was an intimate associate of Robert Car, tiie mi-
nion of James I. ; but having opposed tlie favour-
ite's marriage with the infamous Countess of Essex,
he incurred the hatred of the abandoned p.iir, and
through their influence was confined and poisoned
in the Tower, The way iii which this murder wu
1 Question.
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 164i»
screened from justice, leaves a foul blot on the
memory of the kinfr. and on the history of the age.
Overbury wrote two didactic poems, called 7/(t
Wiff, and TheClwlce of a Wife, but, though popular
at the time, these are now lield in no estimation,
either as preceptive or as literary productions. Some
»f his prose Characters, or ' Witty Descriptions of
the Proj>erties of Sundry Persons,' are, however,
excellent, thougli, like many other productions of
James's reign, disfigured by far-fetched conceits.
27te Tinl-er.
A tinker is a moveable, for he hath no abiding in
one place ; by his motion he gathers heat, thence his
choleric nature. lie seems to be very devout, for his
life is a continual jnlgrimage ; and sometimes in humi-
litv goes barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue.
His house is as ancient as Tubal Cain's, and so is a
renegade by antiquity; yet he proves himself a gal-
lant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back ; or a
philosopher, for he bears all his substance about him.
From his art w.-vs music first invented, and therefore
is he always furnished with a song, to which his ham-
mer keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder
of the kettle-drum. Note, that where the best ale is,
there stands his music most upon crotchets. The
companion of his travels is some foul sun-burnt quean ;
that, since the terrible statute, recanted gipsyism, and
is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England
with his bag and baggage ; his conversation is irre-
proveable, for he is ever mending. He observes truly
the statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg,
in which he is irremoveabl}' constant, in spite of whips
01 imprisonment ; and so strong an enemy to idleness,
that in mending one hole, be had rather make three
than want work ; and when he hath done, he throws
the wallet of his faults behind him. He embraceth
naturally ancient customs, conversing in open fields
and lowly cottages ; if he visit cities or towns, 'tis
but to deal upon the impei-fections of our weaker ves-
sels. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting,
proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every
place, but enters no farther than the door, to avoid
suspicion. Some would take him to be a coward, but,
believe it, he is a lad of mettle ; his valour is com-
monly three or four yards long, fastened to a pike in
the end for flying off. He is very provident, for he
will fight with but one at once, and tlien also he had
rather submit than be counted obstinate. To con-
clude, if he 'scape Tyburn and Banbury, he dies a
beggar.
The Fair and Happy Milkmaid.
Is a country wench, that is so far from niaklng her-
self beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to
put all/afe-p/i?/«c out of countenance. She knows a
fair look is but a dund) orator to commend virtue,
therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in
her 80 silently, as if they had stolen upon her without
her knowledge. The lining of her apparel, which is
herself, is far better than outsides of tissue ; for though
she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she
is decked in innocence, a far better wearing. She
doth not, with lying long in bed, spoil both her com-
plexion and conditions : nature hath taught her, too
immoderate sleep is rust to the soul ; she rises, there-
fore, with Chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night
tnakcs the lamb her cvrfcw. In milking a cow, and
straining tlie tents througli her fingers, it seems that
BO sweet a milk-press makes the milk whiter or sweeter ;
for never came almond-glore or aromatic ointment on
her jialm to taint it. The golded ears of com fall and
kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if tlicy wislied
to be bound and l(>d prisoners by the .same liand that
'Jciiijd them. Her breath is her own, which scents all
the year long of June, like a new-made hay-cock. Sht
makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft
with pity ; and when winter evenings fall early, sit-
ting at lier merry wheel, she sings defiance to the
giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so
sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to
do ill, being her mind is to do well. She bestows her
vcar's wages at next fair, and in choosing her gar-
ments, counts no bravery in the world like decency.
The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and sur-
gery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares gc
alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no
manner of ill, because she means none ; yet, to say
truth, she is never alone, but is still accompanied with
old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones ;
yet they have their efficacj', in that they are not palled
with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are
so chaste, that she dare tell them ; only a Friday's
dream is all her superstition ; that she conceals for
fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is, she
may die in the spring-time, to have store of flower.i
stuck upon her winding-sheet.
A Franldin.
His outside is an ancient yeoman of EngLand, though
his inside may give arms (with the best gentleman)
and never see the herald. There is no truer servant
in the house than himself. Though he be master, he
says not to his servants, go to field, but let us go ,
and with his own eye doth both fatten his flock, and
set forward all manner of husbandry. He is taught
by nature to be contented with a little ; his own fold
yields him both food and raiment ; he is pleased with
any nourishment God sends, whilst curious gluttony
ransacks, as it were, Noah's ark for food, only to feed
the riot of one meal. He is never known to go to
law ; understivnding to be law-bound among men, ia
like to be hide-bound among Ins beasts ; they thrive
not under it, and that such men sleep as unquietly
as if their pillows were stuffed with lawyers' pen-
knives. When he builds, no poor tenant's cottage
hinders his prospect ; they are, indeed, his aJ:ns-houses,
though there be painted on them no such superscrip-
tion. He never sits up late, but when he hunts the
badger, the vowed foe of his lambs ; nor uses he any
cruelty, but when he hunts the hare ; nor subtlety,
but when he setteth snares for the snipe, or pitfalls
for the blackbird ; nor oppression, but when in the
month of July he goes to the next river and shear.i
his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks
not the bones of the dead anything bruised, or the
worse for it, though the country lasses dance in the
churchyard after even-song. Rock-Monday, aiul the
wake in summer, shrovings, the wakeful catches on
Christmas-eve, the hoky, or seed-cake, these he yearly
keeps, yet holds them no relics of Popery. He is not
so inquisitive after news derived from the privy-closet,
when the finding an eyery of hawks in his own ground,
or the foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings
more pleasant and more profitable. He is lord para-
mount within himself, though he hold by never so
mean a tenure, and dies the more contentedly (though
he leave his heir young), in regard he leaves him
not liable to a covetous guardian. Lastly, to end
him, he cares not when his end comes ; he needs not
fear his audit, for his quietus is in heaven.
JOHN EARLE.
John Earle, bishop of Worcester, and afterwards
of Salisbury, was a very successful writer in the
same department. lie was a man of great learning
and eloquence, extremely agreeable and facetious in
conversation, and of such excellent moral and reli-
gious qualities, that (in the language of Walton)
, there had lived since the death of llichard Hooker
278
•:iOSE WniTERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
OWEN FELl.TlIAM.
no mail ' whom God had blessed with more imio-
cent wisdom, more sanrtified learninjj, or a more
pious, peaceable, primitive temper.' He was at one
period chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles, with
whom he went into exile during the civil war, after
being deprived of his whole property for his adhe-
rence to the royal cause. Bishop p]arle was a native
of York, where he was born in 1601 ; and his
death took place in 1665. His principal work is
entitled Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World
Discovered, in Essays and Characters, published about
1628, and which is a valuable storehouse of parti-
culars illustrative of the manners of the times.
Among the characters drawn are those of an Anti-
quary, a Carrier, a Player, a Pot-poet, a University
Dun, and a Clown. We shall give the last.
The Cl(mn.
The plain country fellow is one that manures his
ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untilled.
He has reason enough to do his business, and not
enough to be idle or melancholy. lie seems to have
the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversa-
tion is among beasts, and his talons none of the
shortest, only he eats not grass, because he loves not
Ballets. His hand guides the plough, and the plough
his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very
mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his
oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree,
better than English. His mind is not much distracted
with objects ; but if a good fat cow come in his way,
he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste
be never so great, will fix here half an hour's con-
templation. His habitation is some poor thatched
roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes
that let out smoke, which the rain had long since
washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon
on the inside, which has hung there from his grand-
sire's time, and is yet to ^ake rashers for posterity.
His dinner is his other w^^rK, for he sweats at it as
nmch as at his labour ; he is a terrible fastener on a
piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard
off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold,
which he takes from his landlord, and refers it whollv
to his discretion : yet if he give him leave, he is a good
Christian, to his power (that is), comes to church in his
best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where
he is capable only of two prayers, for rain and fair
weather. He apprehends God's blessings onlv in a
good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but
on good ground. Sunday he esteems a day to make
merry in, and thinks a bagjiipe as essential to it as
evening prayer, where he walks very solemnly after
service with his hands coupled behind him, and cen-
sures the dancing of his parish. His compliment with
his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his
salutation commonly some blunt curse. He thinks
nothing to be vices but pride and ill husbandry, from
which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has
some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse.
He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day,
where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk
with a good conscience. He is sensible of no calamity
but the burning a stack of com, or the overflowing of
a meadow, and thinks Noah's flood the greatest plague
that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but
spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled, and
if he get in but his harvest before, let it come when it
will, he cares not.
OWEN FELLTHAM.
Owen Felltham, the author of a work of great
merit, entitled Resolves ; IHriiie, Moral, and Political,
is a writer of whose personal history nothing what-
ver is known, except that he was one of a family of
three children, and that his father was a Suffolkman.
The date of the first publication of the ' Uesolvp'/
is uncertain ; but the second edition appeared in
1628, and so popular did the book continue during
the seventeenth century, that it had readied the
twelfth edition in 1709. Subsequently, it fell into
oblivion, till reprinted in Ui06, by Mr Gumming, of
the Board of Control. It consists of essays on reli-
gious and moral subjects, and seems to derive its
name from the circumstance, that the author, who
wrote for his own improvement, generally forms
resolutions at the end of each essay. Both in sub-
stance and in manner, the work in many places
bears a considerable resemblance to the essays of
Bacon. Felltham's style is, for the most part, vigo-
rous, harmonious, and well adapted to the subjects ;
sometimes imaginative and eloquent, but occasion-
ally chargeable with prolixity, superabundance of
illustration, and too great familiarity and looseness
of expression. His sentiments are distinguished by
good sense, and great purity of religious and moral
principle.
[Moderation in Grief.'}
I like of Solon's course, in comforting his constant
friend ; when, taking him up to the top of a turret,
overlooking all the piled buildings, he bids him think
how many discontents there had been in those houses
since their framing — how many are, and how many
will be ; then, if he can, to leave the world's calami-
ties, and moum but for his own. To mourn for none
else were hardness and injustice. To mourn for all
were endless. The best way is to uncontract the brow,
and let the world's mad spleen fret, for that we smile
in woes.
Silence was a full answer in that philosopher, that
being asked what he thought of human life, said
nothing, turned him round, and vanished.
[Limitation of Human Knoirkdr/c.']
Learning is like a river, whose head being far in the
land, is, at first rising, little, and easily viewed ; but,
still as you go, it gapeth with a wider bank ; not with-
out pleasure and delightful winding, while it is on
both sides set with trees, and the beauties of various
flowers. But still the further you follow it, the deeper
and the broader 'tis ; till at last, it inwaves itself in
the uufathomed ocean ; there you see more water, but
no shore — no end of that liquid fluid vastness. In
many things we may sound Nature, in the shallows ot
her revelations. We may trace her to her second
causes ; but, beyond them w^ -reet with nothing but
the puzzle of the soul, and the dazzle of the mind's
dim eyes. While we speak of things that are, that
we may dissect, and have power and means to find
the causes, there is some pleasure, some certainty.
But when we come to metaphysics, to long buried
antiquity, and unto unrevealed divinity, we are in a
sea, which is deeper than the short reach of the line
of man. Much may be gained by studious inquisi-
tion ; but more will ever rest, which man cannot dis-
cover.
[Affainst Readiness to Take Offcncc-I
We make ourselves more injuries than are offered
us ; they many times pass for wrongs in our ovm
thoughts, that were never meant so by the heart of
him that speaketh. The apprehension of wrong hurts
more than the sharpest part of the wrong done. So, by
falsely making ourselves i)atients of wrong, we be-
come the true and first actors. It is not good, in
matters of discourtesy, to dive into a man's mind, be-
yond his own conuucnt ; nor to stir upon a doubtful
indignity without it, unless we have proofs that carry
weijiht and conviction with them. Words do some-
•27'.<
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164&
times fly from the tongue that the heart did neither
hatch lior harbour. A\'hile we think to revenge an
injury, we many times begin one ; and, after that,
repent our misconceptions. In things that may have
a double sense, it is good to think the better was in-
tended ; so shall we still both keep our friends and
qoietness.
Of being Over-valued.
Let me have but so much wisdom as that I may or-
derly manage myself and my means, and I shall never
care to be pointed at, with a that is he. 1 wish not to be
esteemed wiser than usual ; they that are so do better
in concealing it than in telling the world of it. I
hold it a greater injury to be over-valued than under ;
for when brought to the touch, the one shall rise with
praise, while the other shall decline with shame. The
former has more present honour, but less safety : the
latter is humbly secure, and what is wanting in re-
nown is made up in a better blessing, quiet. There
is no detraction worse than to over-praise a man : for
if his worth prove short of what report doth speak
him, his own actions are ever giving the lie to his
honour.
Against Detraction.
In some dispositions there is such an envious kind
of pride, that they cannot endure that any but them-
selves should be set forth as excellent ; so that, when
they hear one justly praised, they will either openly
detract from his virtues, or, if those virtues be like a
clear and shining light, eminent and distinguished, so
that he cannot be safely traduced by the tongue, they
will then raise a suspicion against him by a myste-
rious silence, as if there were something remaining to
be told, which over-clouded even his brightest glor}'.
Surely, if we considered detraction to proceed, as it
does, from en'vy, and to belong only to deficient minds,
we should find, that to applaud virtue would procure
us far more honour, than underhandedly seeking to
disparage her. The former would show that we loved
what we commended, while the latter tells the world,
we grudge that in others which we want in ourselves.
It is one of the basest oftices of man to make his
tongue the lash of the worthy. Even if we do know
of faults in others, I think we can scarcely show our-
selves more nobly virtuous, than in having the charity
to conceal them ; so that we do not flatter or encou-
rage them in their failings. But to relate anything
we may know against our neighbour, in his absence,
is most unbeseeming conduct. And who will not con-
demn him as a traitor to reputation and society, who
tells the private fault of his friend to the public and
ill-nat\ired world 1 When two friends part, they
■hould lock up one another's secrets, and exchange
their keys. The honest man will rather be a grave to
his neighbour's errors, than in any way expose them.
Of Neglect.
There is the same difierence between diligence and
neglect, that there is between a garden properly cul-
tivated and the sluggard's field which fell under" Solo-
mon's view, when overgromi with nettles and thorns.
The one is clothed with beauty, the other is unplea-
sant and disgusting to the sight. Negligence is the
rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best re-
solutions. What nature made for use, for stren>'th
and ornament, neglect alone converts to trouble weak-
ness, and deformity. We need only sit still, and dis-
eases will arise from the mere want of exercise.
How fair soever the soul may be, yet while con-
nected with our fleshy nature, it requires continual
care and vigilance to prevent its being soiled and dis-
'^loured. Take the weeders from the Floralium i and
' Flower-garden.
a very little time will change it to a wilderness, and
turn that which was before a recreation for men into
a habitation for vermin. Our life is a warfare ; and
we ought not, while passing through it, to sleep with
out a sentinel, or march without a scout. He wh«
neglects either of these precautions, exposes himself
to surprise, and to becoming a prey to the diligence
and perseverance of his adversary. The mounds of
life and virtue, as well as those of pastures, will decay ;
and if we do not repair them, all the beasts of the
field will enter, and tear up everything good which
grows within them. With the religious and well-dis-
posed, a slight deviation from wisdom's laws will dis-
turb the mind's fair peace. M.acarius did penance for
only killing a gnat in anger. Like the Jewish touch
of things unclean, the least miscarriage requires puri-
fication. ]Man is like a watch ; if evening and morn-
ing he be not wound up with prayer and circumspec-
tion, he is unprofitable and false, or serves to mislead.
If the instrument be not truly set, it Avill be harsh
and out of tune ; the diapason dies, when every string
does not perform his part. Surely, without a union
to God, we cannot.be secure or well. Can he be happy
who from happiness is divided ? To be united to God,
we must be influenced by his goodness, and strive to
imitate his perfections. Diligence alone is a good
patrimony ; but neglect will waste the fairest fortune.
One preserves and gathers ; the other, like death, is
the dissolution of all. The industrious bee, by her
sedulity in summer, lives on honey all the winter. But
the drone is not only cast out from the hive, but beaten
and punished.
No Man Can he Good to All.
I never yet knew any man so bad, but some hare
thought him honest and afix)rded him love ; nor ever
any so good, but some have thought him evil and
hated him. Few are so stigmatical as that they are
not honest to some; and few, again, are so just, as
that they seem not to some unequal : either the igno-
rance, the env}% or the partiality of those that judge,
do constitute a various man. Nor can a man in him-
self always appear alike to all. In some, nature hath
invested a disparity ; in some, report hath fore-blinded
judgment ; and in some, accident is the cause of dis-
posing us to love or hate. Or, if not these, the varia-
tion of the bodies' humours ; or, perhaps, not an}' of
these. The soul is often led by secret motions ; and
loves, she knows not why. There are impulsive pri-
vacies which urge us to a liking, even against the par-
li.amental acts of the two Houses, reason, and the
common sense ; as if there were some hidden beauty
of a more magnetic force than all that the ej'e can see
and this, too, more powerful at one time than another
Undiscovered influences please us now, with what we
would sometimes contemn. I have come to the same
man that hath now welcomed me with a free expression
of love and courtesy, and another time hath left me
unsaluted at all ; yet, knowing him well, I have been
certain of his sound affection ; and have found this,
not an intended neglect, but an indisposedness, or a
mind seriously busied within. Occasion reins the mo
tions of the stirring mind. Like men that walk in
their sleep, we are led about, we neither know whither
nor how.
Meditation.
Meditation is the soul's perspective glass ; whereby,
in her long remove, she discenieth God, as if he were
nearer hand. 1 persuade no man to make it his whole
life's business We have bodies as well as souls ; and
even this wor^<l, «hile we are in it, ought somewhat
to be cared for. As those states are likely to flourish
where execution follows sound advisements; so is man,
when contemplation is seconded by action. Contem-
280
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
PETER HEVLIN.
plation generates ; action propagates. Without the
first, the latter is defective ; without the last, the
first is but abortive, and embryous. Saint Bernard
compares contemplation to Rachel, which was the
more fair ; but action to Leah, which was the more
fruitful. I will neither always be' busy, and doing ;
nor ever shut up in nothing but thought. Yet that
which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest
part of my life, and that is, my thinking.
PETER HEYLIN.
Among those clerical adherents of the king, M-ho,
like Bishcp Earle, were despoiled of their goods by
the parliament, was Peter IIeylin, born near Ox-
ford in 1600. This industrious writer, who figures
at once as a geographer, a divine, a poet, and a
historian, composed not fewer than thirty -seven
publications, of which one of the most celebrated
is his Microco^mus, or a Description of the Great
World, first printed in 1621. As a historian, he
displays too much of the spirit of a partisan and
bigot, and stands among the defenders of civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny. His works, though now almost
fcrgotten, were much read in the seventeenth cen-
tury, and portions of them may still be perused with
pleasure. After the Restoration, his health suffered
so much from disappointment at the neglect of his
claims for preferment in the church, that he died
soon after, in 1662. In a narrative which he pub-
lished of a six weeks' tour to Fr.ance in 1625, he
gives the following humorous description of
IThe French.']
The present French is nothing but an old Gaul,
moulded into a new name : as r^sh he is, as head-
strong, and as hair-brained. A nation whom you
shall win with a feather, and lose with a straw ; upon
the first sight of him, you shall have him as familiar
as your sleep, or the necessity of breathing. In one
hour's conference you may endear him to you, in the
second unbutton him, the third pumps him dry of all
his secrets, and he gives them you as faithfully as if
you were his ghostly father, and bound to conceal
them ' sub sigillo confessionis ' — [' under the seal of
confession'] ; when you have learned this, you ma}'
lay him aside, for he is no longer serviceable. If
you have any humour in holding him in a further
acquaintance (a favour which he confesseth, and I
believe him, he is unworthy of), himself will make
the first separation : he hath said over his lesson
now unto you, and now must find out somebody else
to whom to repeat it. Fare him well ; he is a gar-
ment whom I would be loath to wear above two days
together, for in that time he will be threadbare.
'Familiare est hominis onmia sibi remittere' — [' It is
usual for men to overlook their own faults'], saith
Velleius of all ; it holdeth most properly in this
people. He is very kind-hearted to himself, and
thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full ; so
much he hath in him the nature of a Chinese, that he
thinketh all men blind but himself. In this private
self-conceitedness he hateth the Spaniard, loveth not
the English, and contemneth the fJerman ; himself is
the only courtier and complete gentleman, but it is
his own glass which he seeth in. Out of this conceit
of his own excellency, and partly out of a shallowness
of brain, he is very liable to exceptions ; the least
distaste that can be draweth his sword, and a minute's
pause sheatheth it to your hand ; afterwards, if you
beat him into better manners, he shall take it kindly,
and cry, scrvik-ur. In this one thing they are wonder-
fully like the devil ; meekness or Bubmission makes
them insolent ; a little resistance putteth them to
their heels, or makes them your spaniels. lu a word
(for I have held him too long), he is a walking vanity
in a new fashion.
I will give you now a taste of his table, which you
shall find in a measure furnished (I speak not of the
peasant), but not with so full a manner as with us.
Their beef they cut out into such chops, that that
which goeth there for a laudable dish, would be
thought here a university commons, new served from
the hatch. A loin of mutton serves amongst them for
three roastings, besides the hazard of making pottage
with the rump. Fowl, also, they have in good plenty,
especially such as the king found in Scotland ; to say
truth, that which they have is sufficient for natur*
and a friend, were it not for the mistress or the
kitchen wench. I have heard much fame of the
French cooks, but their skill lieth not in the neat
handling of beef and mutton. They have (as gene-
rally have all this nation) good fancies, and are
special fellows for the making of puft-pastes, and the
ordering of banquets. Their trade is not to feed the
belly, but the ])alate. It is now time you were set
down, where the first thing you must do is to say
your grace ; private graces are as ordinaiy there as
private masses, and from thence I think they learned
them. That done, fall to where you like best ; they
observe no method in their eating, and if you look for
a carver, you may rise fasting. \Vhen you are risen,
if vou can digest the sluttishness of the cookery
(which is most abominable at first sight), I dare trust
you in a garrison. Follow him to church, and therf
he will show himself most irreligious and irreverent ;
I speak not of all, but the general. At a mass, in
Cordeliers' church in Paris, I saw two French papists,
even when the most sacred mystery of their faith was
celebrating, break out into such a blasphemous and
atheistical laughter, that even an Ethnic would have
hated it ; it was well they were Catholics, othenvise
some French hothead or other would have sent them
laughing to Pluto.
The French language is. Indeed, very sweet and de-
lectable : it is cleared of all harshness, by the cutting
and leaving out the consonants, which maketh it fall
otl" the tongue very volubly ; yet, in m) opinion, it is
rather elegant than copious ; and, tU;refore, is much
troubled for want of words to find out paraphrases. It
expresseth very much of itself in the action ; the head,
body, and shoulders, concur all in the pronouncing of
it ; and he that hopeth to speak it with a good grace,
must have something in him of the mimic. It is en-
riched with a full number of significant proverbs,
which is a great help to the French humour in scotfing ;
and very full of courtship, which maketh all the
people compliinental. The poorest cobbler in the vil-
lage hath his court cringes, and his eaubcnite ch cour;
his court holy-water as perfectly as the prince of
Conde',
[French Lore of Dancing.']
At my being there, the sport was dancing, an exer-
cise much used by the French, who do naturally
affect it. And it seems this natural inclination is so
strong and deep rooted, that neither age nor the ab-
sence of a smiling fortune can prevail against it. For
on this dancing green there assembleth not only youth
and gentry, but also age and beggary ; old wives,
which could not set foot to ground without a crutch
in the streets, had hero taught their feet to amble;
you would have thought, by the cleanly conveyance
and carriage of their bodies, that thej' had been
troubled with the sciatica, and yet so eager in thp
sport, as if their dancing-days should never be done.
Some there was so ragged, that a swift galliard would
ahnost have shaken them into nakedness, and the}-,
also, most violent to have their carcasses directed in a
measure. To have attempted the staying of them at
home, or the persuading of them to work when they
281
FROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1645/
heard the fiddle, had been a task too unwieldy for
Hercules. In this mixture of age and condition, did
we observe them at their pastime ; the rags being so
interwoven with the silks, and >\Tinkled brows so in-
terchangeably mingled with fresh beauties, that you
would have thought it to have been a mummery of
fortunes ; as for those of both sexes which were alto-
gether past action, they had caused theraselres to be
carried thither in their chairs, and trod the measures
with their eyes.
I Holland aiui ife Inhabitants.]
The country for the most part lieth rery low,
insomuch that they are fain to fence it with banks
and ramparts, to keep out the sea, and to restrain
rivers within their bounds ; so that in many places
one may see the sea far above the land, and yet re-
pulsed with those banks : and is withal so fenny and
full of marshes, that they are forced to trench it with
innumerable dikes and channels, to make it firm land
and fit for dwelling ; yet not so firm to bear either
trees or much grain. But such is the industry of the
people, and the trade they drive, that having little or
no corn of their own growth, they do provide them-
selves elsewhere ; not only sufficient for their own
spending, but wherewith to supply their neighbours :
having no timber of their own, they spend more
timber in building ships, and fencing their water-
courses, than any country in the world : having no
wine, they drink more than the people of the country
where it" groweth naturally ; and, finally, having
neither flax nor wool, they make more cloth, of both
sorts, than in all the countries in the world, except
France and England.
The present inhabitants are generally given to sea-
faring lives, so that it is thought that in Holland, Zea-
land, and West Friesland, there are 2500 ships of war
and burden ; the women for the most part laborious
in making stuffs. Nay, you will hardly see a child of
four years of age that is not kept to work, and made
to earn its own living, to the great commendation of
their government. The greatest of their natural
commodities is butter and cheese ; of which, besides
that infinite plenty which they spend in their own
houses, and amongst their garrisons, they sell as much
unto other countries as comes to ten thousand crowTis
per annum. By which means, and by the gi-eatness
of their fish trade, spoken of before, they are grown so
wealthy on the land, and so powerful at sea, that as
Flanders heretofore was taken for all the Netherlands,
Bo now Holland is taken generally for all the pro-
vinces confederated in a league against the Spaniard.
JOHN SELDEN.
One of the most le.arned writers, and at the same
time conspicuous political characters of the time,
was John Selden, a lawyer of active and vigorous
character. He wa^ born of reputable parentage in
1584. After being educated at Chichester and Ox-
ford, he studied law in London, and published in
the Latin language, between 1G07 and IGIO, seve-
ral historical and antiquarian works relative to his
native country. These acquired for him, besides
considerable reputation, the esteem and friendship
of Camden, Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, Ben .Ion-
son, Browne, and also of Drayton, to whose ' Toly-
olbion' he furnished notes. By ^^lton he is spoken of
as ' the chief of learned men reputed in this land.'
His largest English work, A Treatke on Titles of
Honour, was published in 1614, and still continues a
standard authority respecting the degrees of nobility
and gentry in England, and the origin of such dis-
tinctions in other countries. In 1617 his fame was
greatly extended, both at home and on the continent.
by the publication of a Latin work on the idolatry
of the Syrians, and more especially on the heathen
deities mentioned in the Old Testament. In his next
performance, A History of Tithes (1618), by leaning
to the side of those Avho question the divine right of
the church to that fund, he gave great offence to the
clergy, at whose instigation the king summoned the
author to his presence and reprimanded him. He
was, moreover, called before several members of the
formidable high commission court, who extracted
from him a written declaration of sorrow for what
he had done, without, however, any retraction of his
opinion. Several replies appeared, but to these he
was not allowed to publish a rejoinder. During the
subsequent part of his life, Selden showed but little
respect for his clerical contemporaries, whose con-
duct he deemed arrogant and oppressive. Nor did
he long want an opportunity of showing that civil
tyranny was as little to his taste as ecclesiastical ; for
being consulted by the parliament in 1621, on occa-
sion of the dispute with James concerning tlieir
powers and privileges, he spoke so freely on the po-
pular side, and took so prominent a part in drawing
up the spirited protestation of parliament, that he
suffered a short confinement in consequence of tlie
royal displeasure. As a member of parliament, both
in this and in the subsequent reign, he continued
to defend the liberty of the people, insomuch that
on one occasion he was committed to the Tower on
the charge of sedition. In 1640, when the Long
Parliament met, he was unanimously elected one of
the representatives of Oxford university ; but though
still opposing the abuses and oppressions of which
the people complained, he was averse to extreme
measures, and desirous to prevent the power of the
sword from falling into the hands of either party.
Finding his exertions to ward off a civil war tmavail-
ing, he seems to have withdrawn himself as mucli as
possible from public life. While in parliament, he
constantly employed his influence in behalf of learn-
ing and learned men, and y)erformed great services to
both universities. In 164.T he was appointed keeper
of the records in the Tower. Meanwhile, his politi
282
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITER ATURi:
JOHN SELDEN.
cal occupations were not suffered to divert liis mind
altogether from literarj^ pursuits. Besides anac-
^">\int, published in 1628, of the celebrated Arunde-
Ilouse of Selden at Salvington, Sussex.
lian marbles, which had been brought from Greece
the previous j'ear,* he gave to the vorld various
works on legal and ecclesiastical antiquities, parti-
cularly those of the Jewish nation ; and also an ela-
borate Latin treatise in support of the right of
British dominion over the circumjacent seas. This
last appeared in 1635, and found great favour with
all parties. A defence of it against a Dutch writer
was the last publication before his death— an event
which took place in 1654. His friend Archbishop
Usher preached his funeral sermon, and his valuable
library was added by his executors to the Bodleian at
Oxford. After his death, a collection of his sayings,
entitled Table Talk, was published by his amanuensis,
who states that he enjoyed for twenty years the
opportunity of hearing his employer's discourse, and
was in iL?. habit of committing faithfully to writing
'the e.xcellent things that usually fell from him.'
It is more by his ' Table Talk' than by the works
published in his life-time, that Selden is now gene-
rally known as a writer ; for though he was a man of
great talent and learning, his style was deficient in
ease and grace, and the class of subjects which he
chose was one little suited to the popular taste. The
following eulogy of him by Lord Clarendon, whose
politics were opposite to his, proves how highly
he was respected by all parties : — ' He was a person
whom no character can flatter, or transmit any
expressions eqxial to his merit and virtue. He was
of so stupendous a learning in all kinds and in all
languages (as may appear in his excellent writings),
that a man would have thought he had been entirely
conversant amongst books, and had never spent an
hour but in reading and writing ; yet his humanity,
affability, and courtesy, were such, that he would
have been thought to have been bred in the best
courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and de-
light in doing good, exceeded that breeding. His
Btyle in all his writings seems harsh, and sometimes
obscure, which is not wholly to be imputed to the
abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out
of the paths trod by other men, but to a little under-
valuing the beauty of style, and too much propensity
* Thomas Howard, Karl of Arundel, who was a zealous
patron of the fine arts, sent agents into Italy and Greece to
collect and transmit to England interesting remains of anti-
quity. Among other relics so procured were the above-men-
tioned marbles, brought by Mr (afterwards Sir William) Petty
from Smyrna, and on which were found certain Greek inscrip-
tions — including that called the Parian Chronicle, from its
being supposed to have been made in the isle of Paros, about
263 years before Christ. This Clironicle, by furnishing the
dates of many events in ancient history, proved of very great
use in chronological investigations.
to the language of antiquity : but in his conversa-
tion he was tlie most clear disccurser. and had the
best faculty of making hard things easy, and present-
ing them to the understanding, that hath been known
Mr Hyde was wont to say, tliat he valued him.^ell
upon nothing more than upon having had Mr Sel-
den's acquaintance from the time he was very young,
and held it -with great deliglit as long as they were
suffered to continue together in London ; and he was
much troubled always wlien lie heard him blamed,
censured, and reproached, for staying in London, and
in the parliament after they were in rebellion, and
in tlie worst times, which his age obliged him to do;
and how wicked soever the actions were which were
every day done, he was confident he had not given
his consent to them, but would have hindered them
if he could with his own safety, to which he was
always enough indulgent. If he had some infir-
mities with other men, they were weighed down
with wonderful and prodigious abilities and excel-
lences in the other scale.'
]Many of the apophthegms to be found in Selden's
' Table Talk' are exceedingly acute; many of them
are humorous ; while some embody propositions
whicli, though uttered in familiar conversation, he
probably would not have seriously maintained. As
might be expected, satirical remarks on the clergy
abound, and there are displays also of that caution's
spirit which distinguished him throughout his career.
Marriage, for example, he characterises as ' a despe-
rate thing: the frogs in yEsop were extreme wise;
they had a great mind to some water, but they
would not leap into the well, because they could
not get out again.' Tlie following are additional
extracts from the ' Table Talk :' —
Evil Speaking.
1 . He that speaks ill of another, commonly before
he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks
against ; for if he had civility or breeding, he would
forbear such kind of language.
"2. A gallant man is above ill words. An example we
have in the old lord of Salisbury-, who was a great wise
man. Stone had called some lord about court fool ;
the lord complains, and has Stone whipped ; Stone
cries, ' I might have called my lord of Salisbury fool
often enough, before he would have had me whipped.'
3. Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather give
him good words, that he may use Vou the better, if
you chance to fall into his hands. "The Spaniard did
this when he was dying ; his confessor told him, to
work him to repentance, how the devil tormented the
wicked that went to hell ; the Spaniard replying, called
the devil, my lord: ' I hope my lord the devil is not
so cruel.' His confessor reproved him. ' Excuse me,'
said the Don, ' for calling him so ; I know not into what
hands I may fall ; and if I happen into his, I hope
he will use me the better for giving him good words.'
Humility,
1. Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise,
and yet everybody is content to hear. The master
thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for
the clergj', and the clergy for the laity.
2. There is JnimUitas qimdam in ritioA If a man
does not take notice of that excellency and perfection
that is in himself, how can he be thankful to God,
who is the author of all excellency and perfection ?
Nay, if a man hath too mean an opinion of himself,
it will render him unserviceable both to God and man.
3. Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else
a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttons ther«
must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drink«
1 Such a thing as a faulty excess of humility.
283
FRCIM 1558
CYCLOPJEDIA OF
TO 1G49
iii^ ; it is not the eating, nor it is not the drinking,
that is to be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.
King.
A king is a thing men have made for their o\vn
Bakes, for quietness sake ; just as in a family one man
is ajipoiiited to buy the meat : if every man should
buv, or if there were many buyers, they would never
agree ; one would buy what the other liked not, or
what the other had bought before, so there would be
a confusion. But that charge being committed to
one, he, according to his discretion, pleases all. If
they have not what they would have one day, they
shall have it the next, or something as good.
IIcre»y.
'Tis a vain thing to talk of an heretic, for a man
for his heart can think no otherwise than he does
think. In the primitive times there were many opi-
nions, nothing scarce, but some or other held. One of
these opinions being embraced by some prince, and
received into his kingdom, the rest were condemned
as heresies ; and his religion, which was but one of
the several opinions, first is said to be orthodox, and
80 to have continued ever since the apostles.
Learning and Wisdom.
Ko man is wiser for his learning : it may adminis-
ter matter to work in, or objects to work upon ; but
wit and wisdom are bom with a man.
Oracles.
Oracles ceased presently after Christ, as soon as
nobody believed them : just as we have no fortune-
telle:-s, nor wise men [wizards], when nobody cares
for them. Sometimes you have a season for them,
when people believe them ; and neither of these, I
conceive, vrrought by the devil.
Dreams and Prophecies.
Dreams and prophecies do thus much good : they
make a man go on ^vith boldness and courage upon a
danger, or a mistress. If he obtains, he attributes
much to them ; if he miscarries, he thinks no more of
them, or is no more thought of himself.
Sermons.
Nothing is text but what is spoken of in the Bible,
and meant there for person and place ; the rest is
application, which a discreet man may do well ; but
'tis /lis scripture, not the Holy Ghost's.
First, in your sermons use your logic, and then your
rhetoric : rhetoric without logic is like a tree with
leaves and blossoms, but no root.
Libels.
Though some make light of libels, yet you may see
by them how the wind sits : as, take a straw and
throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which
way the wiml is, which you shall not do by casting
up a stone. More solid things do not show the com-
plexion of the times so well aa ballads and libels.
Devils in the Head.
A person of quality came to my chamber in the
Temple, and told me he had two devils in his head,
(I wondered what he meant), and, just at that time,
one of them bid him kill me. With that I began to
be afraid, and thought he was mad. He said he knew
I could cure him, and therefore intreated me to give
bim something, for he was resolved he would go to
nobody else. I, percciring what an opinion he had
of me, and that it was only melancholy that troubled
him, took him in hand, warranted him, if he would
follow my directions, to cure him in a short time. 1
desired him to let me be alone about an hour, and then
to come again ; which he was very willing to. In the
mean time, I got a card, and wrapped it up handsome
in a piece of taffeta, and put strings to the talieta ;
and when he came, gave it to him to hang about his
neck ; withal charged him, that he should not disorder
himself, neither with eating or drinking, but eat very
little of supper, and say his prayers duly when he
went to bed ; and I made no question but he would
be well in three or four days. Within that time I
went to dinner to his house, and asked him how he
did ? lie said he was much better, but not perfectly
well; for, in truth, he had not dealt clearly with
me ; he had four devils in his head, and he perceived
two of them were gone, witli that which I had given
him, but the other two troubled him still. ' Well,'
said I, ' I am glad two of them are gone ; I make
no doubt to get away the other two likewise.' So I
gave him another thing to hang about his neck. Three
days after, he came to me to my chamber, and pro-
fessed he was now as well as ever he was in his life,
and did extremely thank me for the great care I had
taken of him. I, fearing lest he might relapse into
the like distemper, told him that there was none but
myself and one physician more in the whole to\vn
that could cure the devils in the head, and that was
Dr Harvey (whom I had prepared), and wished him,
if ever he found himself ill in my absence, to go to
him, for he could cure his disease as well as myself.
The gentleman lived many years, and was never
troubled after.
We quote the following morsel from the preface
to Selden's ' History of Tithes :' —
[Free Lnquirt/.]
For the old sceptics that never would profess that
they had found a truth, yet showed the best way to
search for any, when they doubted as well of what
those of the dogmatical sects too credulously received
for infallible principles, as they did of the newest
conclusions. They were indeed, questionless, too nice,
and deceived themselves with the nimbleness of their
own sophisms, that permitted no kind of established
truth. But, plainly, he that avoids their disputing
levity, yet, being able, takes to himself their liberty
of inquiry, is in the only way that in all kinds of
studies leads and lies open even to the sanctuary of
truth ; while others that are servile to common opi-
nion and vulgar suppositions, can rarely hope to be
admitted nearer than into the base court of her temple,
which too speciously often counterfeits her inmost
sanctuary,
JAMES USHER.
The man who, along with Seklen, at this time
contributed most to extend the reputation of Eng-
lish learning throughout civilised Europe, was his
friend James Usher, archbishop of Armagh, and
])rimate of Ireland. This celebrated scholar was
i)orn at Dublin in 15S1, and would have devoted
himself to the law, had not the death of his father,
whose wishes pointed to that profession, allowed
liini to follow his own inclination for theology. He
succeeded to his father's estate, but, wishing to
devote himself uninterruptedly to study, gave it
up to his brother, reserving for himself only a
sufficiency for his maintenance at college and the
purchase of books. He early displayed great zeal
against the Konian Catholics ; and, notwithstand-
ing the mildness of his personal character, con-
tinued throughout his life to manifest a highly in-
284
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH.
tolerant spirit towards them. In 1606 he visited
England, and became intimate with Camden and
Sir Robert Cotton, to the former of whom he com-
municated some Yiiluable particulars about the an-
^aV
Archbishop Usher.
cient state of Ireland and the history of Dublin :
these were afterwards inserted by Camden in his
' Britannia.' For thirteen years subsequently to
1607, Usher filled the chair of divinity in the uni-
versit}' of D'lblin, in performing the duties of which
he confined I/* attention chiefly to the controversies
between the Protestants and Catholics. At the con-
vocation of tne Irish clergy in 1615, when they
determined to assert their independence as a national
church, the articles drawn up on the occasion ema-
nated chiefly from his pen ; and by asserting in them
the Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation
in their broadest aspect, as well as by his advocacy
of the rigorous observance of the Sabbath, and his
known opinion, that bishops were not a distinct
order in the church, but only superior in degree to
presbyters, he exposed himself to the charge of beirg
a favourer of Puritanism. Having been accused as
such to the king, he went over to England in 1619,
and, in a conference with his majesty, so fully
cleared himself, that he was ere long appointed to the
see of Meath, and in 1624 to the archbishopric of
Armagh. Soon afterwards he gave evidence of his
intolerant spirit towards tlie Catholics, by acting as
the leading man at the drawing up of a protestation
commencing thus : — 'The religion of the Papists is
superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doc-
trine erroneous and heretical ; their church, in re-
spect of both, apostatical. To give them, therefore,
a toleration, or to consent that tliey may freely
exercise their religion, and profess their faith and
doctrine, is a grievous sin.' At a subsequent period,
Usher's zeal sliowed itself in a more creditable
shape on the occasion of a letter from the king to
the Irish archbisliops, complaining of the increase of
Popery in Ireland. He invited persons of the Catho-
lic Y)ersuasion to his house, and endeavoured to con-
vert them by friendly argument, in which attempt
his great skill in disputation is said to have given
him considerable success. During the political con-
vulsions of Charles's reign. Usher, in a treatise en-
titled The Poicer of the Prince, and Obedience of the
Subject, maintained the absolute unlawfulness of
taking up arms against the king. The Irish rebel-
lion, in 1641, drove him to England, where he
settled at Oxford, then the residence of Charles.
Subsequently the civil war caused him repeatedly
to change his abode, which was finally the Countess
of Peterborough's seat at Ryegate, where he died in
1656, at the age of seventy-five. Most of his writ-
ings relate to ecclesiastical history and antiquities,
and were mainly intended to furnish argmnents
against the Catholics ; but the production for which
he is chieflj" celebrated is a great chronological work
entitled Annaks, or ' Annals,' the first part of which
was published in 1650, and the second in 1G54. It is a
chronological digest of universal history, from the
creation of the world to the dispersion of the Jews
in Vespasian's reign. The author intended to add a
third part, but died before accomplishing his design.
In this work, which was received with great ap-
I)lause by the learned throughout Europe, and has
been several times reprinted on the continent, the
author, by fixing the three epochs of the deluge, the
departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their re-
turn from Babylon, has reconciled the chronologies
of sacred and profane history ; and down to the pre-
sent time, his chronological system is that which is
generally received. A posthumous work, which he
left unfinished, -was printed in 1660, under the title
of Chronoloyia Sacra ; it is accounted a valuable pro-
duction, as a guide to the study of sacred history,
and as showing the grounds and calculations of the
principal epochs of the ' Annals.'
"WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH.
William Chillingworth was a still more pro-
minent, though less bigoted, opposer of the doc-
trines of the church of Rome, than his contempo-
■\ViUiam Chillingworth.
rary Usher. This famous polemic was born ai
Oxford in 1602, and studied there. An early love o1
disputation, in which he possessed eminent skill,
brought upon him such a habit of doubting, that
his opinions became unsettled on all subjects, in-
somuch that a Jesuit, named Fisher, was able to
argue him into a belief of the doctrines of Popery.
The chief argument which leil to this result vas
that which maintained the necessity of an infallible
living guide in matters of faith, to which character
285
FROM 15.58
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1649.
the Hom.in Catliolic cliurdi appeared to him to be
best entitled. For some time after this, he studied
at the Jesuits' college .it Douay; but his friends in-
duced him to return to Oxford, where, after addi-
♦ionjil study of the points of difference, he declared
in favour of the Trotestant faith. This drew him
into several controversies, in which he employed
the arguments that were afterwards methodically
stated in his famous work entitled The Religion of
the Protestants a i<aje Way to Salrativu, published in
1637. This treatise, which has placed its author in
the first rank of religious controversialists, is con-
sidered a model of perspicuous reasoning, and one
of the ablest defences of the Protestant cause. The
author maintains that the Scripture is the only rule
to which appeal ought to be made in theological dis-
putes ; that no church is infallible ; and that the
apostles' creed embraces all the necessary points
of faith. The latitudinarianism of Chilling^vorth
brought upon him the appellations of Arian and
Socinian ; and his character for orthodoxy was still
further shaken by his refusal to accept of prefer-
ment, on condition of subscribing the thirty-nine
articles. His scruples having, however, been over-
come, he was promoted, in 163S, to the chancellor-
ship of Salisbury. During the civil war. he zealously
adhered to the royal party, and even acted as en-
gineer at the siege of Gloucester in 1643. He died
in the succeeding year. Lord Clarendon, who was
one of his intimate friends, has drawn the following
character of this eminent divine : — ' He was a man
of so great a subtilty of understanding, and so rare
a temper in debate, that, as it was impossible to
provoke him into any passion, so it was very diflB-
cult to keep a man's self from being a little discom-
posed by his sharpness and quickness of argument,
and instances, in which he had a rare facility, and a
great advantage over all the men I ever knew.'
Writing to a Catholic, in allusion to the changes of
his own faith, Chillingworth says — ' I know a man,
that of a moderate Protestant turned a Papist, and
the day that he did so, was convicted in conscience
that his yesterday's opinion was an error. The same
man afterwards, upon better consideration, became
a doubting Papist, and of a doubting Papist a con-
firmed Protestant. And yet this man thinks him-
self no more to blame for all these changes, than a
traveller, who, using all diligence to find the right
way to some remote city, did yet mistake it, and
after find his error and amend it Xay, he stands
upon his justification so far, as to maintain that his
alterations, not only to you, but also from you, b}'
God's mercy, were the most satisfiictory actions to
himself that ever he did, and the greatest victories
that ever he obtained over himself, and his affections,
in those tilings which in this world are most pre-
cious.' In the same liberal spirit are written the
following passages, extracted from his great work : —
[Agahist the Employment of Force in Religion. ]
I have learned from the ancient fathers of the
church, that nothing is more against religion than to
force religion ; and of St Paul, the weapons of the
Christian warfare are not carnal. And great reason •
for human violence may make men counterfeit, hut
cannot make them believe, and is therefore fit for
nothing but to breed fonn without and atheism with-
in. Besides, if this means of bringing men to em-
brace any religion were generally used (as, if it may
be justly used in any place by those that have power,
and think they have truth, certainly they cannot with
reason deny, but that it may be used in every place
by those that have power as well as they, and think
•hey have truth as well as they), what could follow but
the maintenance, perhaps, of truth, but perhaps onl f
the profession of it, in one place, and the oppression of
it in a hundred ? What will follow from it but the
preservation, peradventure, of unity, but, peradven-
ture, only of unifomiity, in particular states and
churches ; but the immortalising the greater and
more lamentable divisions of Christendom and the
world ? And, therefore, what can follow from it but,
perhaps, in the judgment of carnal policy, the tem-
poral benefit and tranquillity of temporal states and
kingdoms, but the infinite prejudice, if not the deso-
lation, of the kingdom of Christ I * * But they
that know there is a King of kings, and Lord of lords,
by whose will and pleasure kings and kingdoms stand
and fall, they know that to no king or state anything
can be profitable which is unjust ; and that nothing
can be more evidently unjust than to force weak men,
by the profession of a religion which they believe not,
to lose their o'rni eternal happiness, out of a vain and
needless fear lest they may possibly disturb their tem-
poral quietness. There is no danger to any state from
any man's opinion, unless it be such an opinion, by
which disobedience to authority, or impiety, is taught
or licensed (which sort, I confess, may justly be
punished as well as other faults), or unless this san-
guinary doctrine be joined with it, that it is lawful
for him by human violence to enforce others to it.
Therefore, if Protestants did offer violence to other
men's consciences, and compel them to embrace their
reformation, I excuse them not.
[i?ra50?i vni^t be appealed to in Beligious Discxissions.^
But you that would not have men follow their rea-
son, what would you have them follow ? their passions,
or pluck out their eyes, and go blindfold ? No, you
say ; j'ou would have them follow authority. In
God's name let them ; we also would have them fol-
low authority ; for it is upon the authority of univer-
sal tradition that we would have them believe Scrip-
ture. But then, as for the authority which you would
have them follow, you will let them see reason why
they should follow it. And is not this to go a little
about— to leave reason for a short turn, and then to
come to it again, and to do that which you condemn
in others ? It being, indeed, a plain impossibility for
any man to submit his reason but to reason ; for he
that doth it to authority, must of necessity think him-
self to have greater reason to believe that authority.
A collection of nine sermons, preached by Chil-
lingworth before Charles I., has been frequently
printed. From one of these we select the following
animated expostulation with his noble he.arers : —
[Against Duelling,']
But how is this doctrine [of the forgiveness of in-
juries] received in the world \ ^\'hat counsel would
men, and those none of the worst sort, give thee in
such a case ? How would the soberest, discreetest,
well-bred Christian advise thee 1 Whj', thus : If
thy brother or thy neighbour have offered thee an
injury, or an affroiit, forgive him ? By no means ;
thou art utterly undone, and lost in reputation with
the world, if thou dost forgive him. What is to be
done, then ? Why, let not thy heart take rest, let
all other business and employment be laid aside, till
thou hast his blood. How ! A man's blood for an
injurious, passionate speech — for a disdainful look?
Nay, that is not all : that thou mayest gain among
men the reputation of a discreet, well-tempered mur-
derer, be sure thou killcst him not in passion, when thy
blood is hot and boiling with the provocation ; but
proceed with as great temper and settledness of rea-
son, with as much discretion and preparedness, as thou
wouldest to the communion : after several days' re«
286
TROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITER ATUilE.
JOHN HALES.
spite, that it may appear it is thy reason guides thee,
and not thy passion, invite him kindly and courteously
into some retired place, and there let it be determined
whether his blood or thine shall satisfy the injur)-.
Oh, thou holy Christian religion ! Whence is it
that thy children have sucked this inhuman poison-
ous blood, these raging fiery spirits ? For if we shall
inquire of the heathen, they will say. They have not
learned this from us ; or of the Mahometans, they
will answer, We are not guilty of it. Blessed God !
that it should become a most sure settled course for a
man to run into danger and disgrace with the world,
if he shall dare to perform a commandment of Christ,
which is as necessary for liim to do, if he have any
hopes of attaining heaven, as meat and drink is for
the maintaining of life ! That ever it should enter
into Christian hearts to walk so curiously and exactly
contrary unto the ways of God ! That whereas he
sees himself every day, and hour almost, contemned
and despised by thee, who art his servant, his crea-
ture, upon whom he might, without all possible im-
putation of unrighteousness, pour do^vn all the vials
of his wrath and indignation ; vet he, notwithstanding,
is patient and long-suffering towards thee, hojdng that
his long-suffering may lead thee to repentance, and
beseeching thee daily by his ministers to be reconciled
unto him ; and yet thou, on the other side, for a dis-
tempered passionate speech, or less, should take upon
thee to send thy neighbour's soul, or thine o\vn, or
likely both, clogged aud oppressed with all your sins
utrepented of (for how can repentance possibly con-
sist with such a resolution ?), before the tribunal-seat
of G^d, to expect your final sentence ; utterly de-
priving, yourself of all the blessed means which God
has conlrived for thy salvation, and putting thyself
in such at. estate, that it sliall not be in God's power
almost to da thee any good. Pardon, I beseech you,
my earnestness, almost inteaiperateness, seeing that
it hath proceeded from so just, so warrantable a
ground ; and sir.ce it is in your power to give rules of
honour and reputation to the whole kingdom, do not
you teach others to be ashamed of this inseparable
badge of your religion — charity and forgiving of of-
fences : give men leav-^ to be Christians without dan-
ger or dishonour ; or, if religion will not work with
you, yet let the laws of that state wherein you live,
the earnest desires and care of your righteous prince,
prevail with you.
JOHN HALES.
John II.4LES (1584-1656) is by Mosheim classed
with Chillingworth, as a prorchient defender of ra-
tional and tolerant principles in religion. He was
highly distinguished for his knowledge of the Greek
language, of whicli he was appointed professor at
Oxford ill 1612. Si.x years afterwards, he went to
Holland as chaplain to Sir Dudlej' Carleton, am
ba,ssador at the Hague ; and on this occasion lie
attended the meetings of the famous synod of
Dort, the proceedings of wliich are recorded in his
published letters to Sir Dudley. Till this time,
he held the Calvinistic opinions in which he had
been educated; but the arguments of tlie Arminian
champion Episcopius, urged before the synod, made
him, according to his own e.xpression, ' bid John
Calvin good night.' His letters from Dort are cha-
racterised by Lord Clarendon as ' the best memorial
of the ignorance, and passion, and animosit}', and
injustice of that 'jonvention.'"* Although the emi-
nent learning and abilities of Hales would certainly
have led to high preferment in the church, he chose
rather to live in studious retirement, and accordingly
withdrew to Eton college, where he had a private
* Clarendon's Life of Himself, i. 27.
fellowship under his friend Sir Henry Saville as
provost. Of this, after the defeat of the royal party,
he was deprived, for refusing to take the ' engage-
ment,' or oath of fidelity, to the Commonwealth of
England, as then estalifished without a king or
house of lords. By cutting off the means of subsist-
ence, Ills ejection reduced him to such straits, that
at length he was under the necessity of selling the
greater part of his library, on which he had ex-
pended £2500, for less than a third of that sum.
This he did from a spirit of independence, which re-
fused to accept the pecuniary bounty liberally offered
by his friends. Besides sermons and miscellanies
(the former of which compose the chief portion of his
works), he wrote a famous Tract concerning Schism
and Schismatics, in which the causes of religious dis-
union, and, in particular, the bad effects of Epis-
copal ambition, are freely discussed. This tract
having come to the hands of Archbishop L.-md, who
was an old acquaintance of tlie autlior, Hales ad-
dressed a letter in defence of it to the priniate. who
having invited him to a conference, was so well satis-
fied, that he forced, though not without difficulty, a
prebendal stall of Windsor on the acceptance of the
needy but contented scholar. The learning, abilities,
and amiable dispositions of John Hales are spoken
of in the higliest terms, not only by Clarendon, but
by Bishop Pearson, Ur Heylin, Andrew Marvel, and
Bishop Stilliiiglleet. He is styled by Anthony Wood
' a walking library ;'* and Pearson considered him to
be ' a man of as great a sharpness, quicliness, and
subtilty of wit, as ever this or perhaps any nation
bred. His iiidustrj^ did strive, if it were possible, to
equal the largeness of his capacity, whereby lie be-
came as great a master of polite, various, and tini-
versal learning, as ever yet conversed witli Viooks.'f
His extensive knowledge he cheerfully communicated
to others; and his disposition being liberal, obliging,
and charitable, made liini, in religious matters, a de-
termined foe to intolerance, and, in society, a liighly
agreeable companion. Lord Clareiidon says, that ' no-
thing troubled him more than tlie brawls which were
grown from religion ; and he therefore exceedingly
detested the tyranny of the church of Rome, more
for their imposing uncharitably upon the consciences
of other men, than for the errors in tlieir own opi-
nions ; and would often say, that he would renounce
the religion of the church of England to-morrow, if
it obliged him to believe that any other Christians
sliould be damned ; and that nobody would conclude
another man to be damned, who did not wisli him
so. No man more strict and severe to himself; to
other men so charitable as to their opinions, that he
thought that other men were more in fault for their
carriage towards them, than the men themselves
were who erred ; and he thouglit that pride and
passion, more than conscience, were the cause cpf all
separation from each other's communion.' John
Aubrej-, who saw liim at Eton after his sequestra-
tion, describes liim as 'a pretty little man, sanguine,
of a cheerful countenance, very gentle and cour-
teous.' J
The style of his sermons is clear, simple, and in
general correct; and the subjects are frequently
illustrate-i with quotations from the ancient philo-
sophers and Christian fathers.§ The subjoined ex-
* Athena; Oxon. xi. 124.
t Preface to ' The Golden Remains of the Everiiieinorablu
Mr John Hales.'
i Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Persons, ii. SCa
§ In the year 17<iJ, an edition of his works was publisheil by
Lord Ilailes, who took the unwarrantable liberty of ino.leniis-
ing the langtiage according to his own ta~te. Tliis, we learn
from ISnswell, met the strong disapprobation of l)r .lohnson.
'An author's language, sir (said he), is a ch.iractiTistical
28"'.
FROM 1558
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1641
fracts are from a sermon, Of Inquiry and Private
Judgment in Religion.
[Private Judgment in Bdigion.']
It were a thing worth looking into, to know the
reason why men are so generally willing, in point of
reli-'ion, to cast themselves into other men's arms,
and, leaving their own reason, rely so much upon
another man'.". Is it because it is modesty and
humility to think another man's reason better than
our own I Indeed, I know not how it comes to pass,
we account it a vice, a part of enry, to think another
man's goods, or another man's fortunes, to be better
than our own ; and yet we account it a singular
virtue to esteem our reason and wit meaner than
other men's. Let us not mistake ourselves ; to con-
temn the advice and help of others, in love and admi-
ration to our own conceits, to depress and disgrace
other men's, this is the foul rice of pride : on the
contrary, thankfully to entertain the advice of others,
to give it its due, and ingenuously to prefer it before
our own if it deserve it, this is that gracious virtue
of modesty : but altogether to mistrust and relinquish
our own faculties, and commend ourselves to others,
this is nothing but poverty of spirit and indiscretion.
I will not forbear to open unto you what I conceive
to be the causes of this so general an error amongst
men. First, peradventure the dregs of the church of
Rome are not yet sufficiently washed from the hearts
of many men. We know it is the principal stay and
supporter of that church, to suffer nothing to be in-
quired into which is once concluded by them. Look
through Spain and Italy ; they are not men, but
beasts, and, Issachar-like, patiently couch down
under every burden their superiors lay upon them.
Secondly, a fault or two may be in our own minis-
try ; thus, to advise men (as I have done) to search
into the reasons and grounds of religion, opens a
way to dispute and quarrel, and this might breed
us some trouble and disquiet in our cures, more than
we are willing to undergo ; therefore, to purchase
our own quiet, and to banish all contention, we are
content to nourish tiiis still humour in our hearers ;
as the Sibarites, to procure their ease, banished the
smiths, because their trade was full of noise. In the
meantime, we do not see that peace, which ariseth out
of ignorance, is but a kind of sloth, or moral lethargy,
seeming quiet because it hath no power to move.
Again, maybe the portion of kpowledge in the mini-
ster himself is not over-great ; it may be, therefore,
good policy for him to suppress all busy inquir}- in
his auditorj', that so increase of knowledge in them
might not at length discover some ignorance in him.
Last of all, the fault may be in the people themselves,
who, because they are loath to take pains (and search
into the grounds of knowledge is evermore painful),
are well content to take their ease, to gild their vice
with goodly names, and to call their sloth modesty,
and their neglect of inquin- filial obedience. These
reasons, beloved, or some of kin to these, may be the
motives unto this easiness of the people, of entertain-
ing their religion upon trust, and of the neglect of
the inquiry into the grounds of it.
To return, therefore, and proceed in the refutation
of this gross neglect in men of their owii reason, and
casting themselves upon other wits. Hath God given
you eyes to see, and legs to support you, thac so your-
selves might lie still, or sleep, and require the use of
other men's eyes and legs ? That faculty of reason
which is in every one of you, even in the meanest
that hears me this day, next to the help of God, is
part of his composition, and is also cliaractcristical of the age
in which he writes. liesides, sir, when the l.inguage is changed,
we arc not sure that the sense is the same. No, sir ; I am sorrj-
Lord Ilailes has done this.' — Boswell'i L>/e c/ Johmon, iv. 282 ;
•dit. 1823.
vour eyes to direct you, and your legs to support you,
in your course of integrity and .-"anctity ; you may no
more refuse or neglect the use of it, and rest your-
selves upon the use of other men's reason, than neglect
j-our own and call for the use of other men's eyes and
legs. The man in the gospel, who had bought a farm,
excuses himself from going to the marriage-supper,
because himself would go and see it : hut we have
taken an easier course ; we can buy our farm, and go
to supper too, and that only by saving our pains to
see it ; we profess ourselves to have made a great
purchase of heavenly doctrine, yet we refuse to see it
and survey it ourselves, but trust to other men's eyes,
and our surveyors : and wot you to what end ? I
know not, except it be, that so wc may with the better
leisure go to the marriage-supper ; that, with llaman,
we may the more merrily go in to the banquet pro-
vided for us ; that so we may the more freely betake
ourselves to our pleasures, to our profits, to our trades,
to our preferments and ambition. * •
Would you see how ridiculously we abuse ourselves
when we thus neglect our own knowledge, and securely
hazard ourselves upon others' skill ? Give me leave,
then, to show you a perfect pattern of it, and to report
to you what I find in Seneca the philosopher, re-
corded of a gentleman in Rome, who, being purely
ignorant, yet greatly desirous to seem learned, pro-
cured himself many senants, of which some he caused
to study the poets, some the orators, some the histo-
rians, some the philosophers, and, in a strange kind
of fancy, all their learning he verily thought to be
his own, and persuaded himself that he knew all that
his servants understood ; yea, he giew to that height
of madness in this kind, that, being weak in body and
diseased in his feet, he provided himself of -trrestlera
and runners, and proclaimed games and rsces, and
performed them by his servants ; still xpplauding
himself, as if himself had done them. lieloved, you
are this man : when you neglect to try ihe spirits, to
study the means of salvation yourselves, but tontent
yourselves to take them upon trust, and repose your-
selves altogether on the wit and knowledge of us that
are your teachei-s, what is this It a manner but to
account with j'ourselves, that our knowledge is yours,
that you know all that we knjw, who are but your
servants in Jesus Christ ?
[Children ReJidy to Believe.']
Education and breeding is nothing else but the
authority of our teachers taken over our childhood.
Now, there is nothing which ought to be of less force
with us, or which we ought more to su.spect : for
childhood hath one thing natural to it, which is a
great enemy to truth, and a great furtherer of deceit :
what is that ? Credulity. Nothing is more credulous
than a child : and our daily experience shows how
strangely they will believe either their ancients or
one another, in most incredible reports. For, to be
able to judge what persons, what reports are credible,
is a point of strength of which that age is not capable :
' The chiefest sinew and strength of wisdom,' saith
Epicharmus, ' is not easily' to believe.' Have we not,
then, great cause to call to better account, and exa-
mine by better reason, whatsoever we learned in so
credulous and easy an age, so apt, like the softest
wax, to receive every impression ? Yet, notwith-
standing this singular weakness, and this large and
real exception which we have against education, I
verily persuade mj-self, that if the best and strongest
ground of most men's religion were opened, it would
appear to be nothing else.
[Reverence for Ancient Opinions.']
Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) but
man's authority bom some ages before us I Now^ for
288
<»ROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN GAUDEN.
the truth of things, time makes no alteration ; things
are still the same they are, let the time be pa-'C, pre-
senl or to come. Those things which we reverence
for antiquity, what were they at their lirst birth ?
Were they "false ? — time cannot make them true.
Were they true ? — time cannot make them more true.
The circumstance, therefore, of time, in respect of
truth and error is merely impertinent.
{Prevalence of an Opinim no Argument for its TnithJ]
Universality is such a proof of truth, as truth itself
is ashamed of; for universality is nothing but a
quainter and a trimmer name to signify the multi-
tude. Now, human authority at the strongest is but
weak, but the multitude is the weakest part of human
authority : it is the great patron of error, most easily
abused, and most hardly disabused. The beginning
of error may be, and mostly is, from private persons,
but the niaintainer and continuer of error is the
multitude.
JOHN GAUDEN.
John GAtroENwas a theologian of a far more world-
ly ajid ambitious character than either of the three
preceding divines. He was born in 1605, and when
about thirty rears of age became chaplain to the Earl
of Warwick, one of the Presbyterian leaders, besides
obtaining two preferments in the church. Being of
a temporising disposition, he professed the opinions
in vogue with the earl's party, and in 1 640 preached
bf.'fore the house of commons a sermon v^hich gave
so much satisfaction, that the members not only voted
thanks to him, but are said to have presented him
with a silver tankard. Next year, the rich deanery
of Becking, in Essex, was added to his preferments ;
all of which, when the Presbyterian form of cluirch
government and worship was substituted for the
Episcopal, he kept by conforming to the new order of
thi ^gs, though not without apparent reluctance.
When the army resolved to impeach and try the
king in 1648, he published A Religious and Loyal
Protestation against their purposes and proceedings :
this tract was followed in subsequent years by
various other pieces, which he sent forth in defence
of the cause of the royalists. But his grand service
to that party consisted in his writing the famous
Ikon Basilike ; or the Portraiture of his Most Sacred
Majesty, in his Solitude aiid Sufferings, a work pro-
fessing to emanate from the pen of Charles I. himself,
and to contain the devout meditations of his latter
days. There appears to have been an intention to
publish this ' Portraiture' before the execution of the
king, as an attempt to save his life by working on
the feelings of the people ; but either from the diffi-
cult}' of getting it printed, or some other cause, it
did not make its appearance till several days after
his majesty's death. The sensation which it pro-
duced in his favour was extraordinary. ' It is not
eas}-,' says Hume, ' to conceive the general compas-
sion excited towards the king by the publishing, at
so critical a juncture, a work so full of piety, meek-
ness, and humanity. Many have not scrupled to
ascribe to that book the subsequent restoration of
the royal family. Milton compares its effects to
those which were wrought on the tumultuous Romans
by Antony's reading to them the will of Cssar.' So
eagerly and universally was the book perused by
the nation, that it passed through fifty editions in a
single year ; and probably through its influence the
title of Royal Martyr was applied to the king. It
being of course desirable, for the interest of the ruling
party, that the authenticity of the work should be
discredited, they circulated a vague rumour that its
true author was one of the household chaplains of
the king. Milton, who, as secretary to the council
of state, wrote an answer to it, which he entitled
' Iconoclastes,' or The Image-breaker, alludes to the
doubts which prevailed on the subject ; but at this
time the real history of the book was unknown.
The first disclosure took place in 1691, when there
appeared in an Amsterdam edition of Milton's 'Icono-
clastes,' a memorandum said to have been made by
the Earl of Anglesey, in which that nobleman affirms
he had been told by Charles II. and his brother that
the ' Ikon Basilike' was the production of Gauden.
This report was confirmed in the following year by
a circumstantial narrative published by Gauden's
former curate, Walker. Several writers then en-
tered the field on both sides of the question ; the
principal defender of the king's claim being Wag-
staffe, a nonjuring clergyman, who published an
elaborate ' Vindication of King Charles the Martyr,'
in 169.3. For ten years subsequently, the literary
war continued ; but after this there ensued a long
interval of repose. When Hume wrote his history,
the evidence on the two sides appeared so equally
balanced, that, ' with regard to the genuineness of
that production, it is not easy,' says he, 'for a
historian to fix any opinion which will be entirely
to his own satisfaction. The proofs brought to
evince that this work is or is not the king's, are so
convincing, that if any impartial reader peruse any
one side apart, he will think it impossible that
arguments could be produced sufficient to counter-
balance so strong an evidence ; and when he com-
pares both sides, he will be some time at a loss to
fix any determination.' Yet Hume confesses that
to him the arguments of the royal party appeared
the strongest. In 1786, however, the scale of evi-
dence was turned by the publication, in the third
volume of the Clarendon State Papers, of some of
Gauden's letters, the most important of which are
six addressed by him to Lord Chancellor Clarendon
after the Restoration. He there complains of the
poverty of the see of Exeter, to which he had already
been appointed, and urgently solicits a further re-
ward for the important secret service which he had
performed to the royal cause. Some of these letters,
containing allusions to the circumstance, had for-
merly been printed, though in a less authentic form ;
but now for the first time appeared one, dated the
13th of jSIarch 1661, in which he exphcitly grounds
his claim to additional remuneration, ' not on what
was known to the world under my name, but what
goes under the late blessed king's name, the Ikon or
Portraiture of his majesty in his solitudes and suflTer-
ings. This book and figure,' he adds, ' was wholly
and only my invention, making, and design ; in
order to vindicate the king's wisdom, honour, and
piety.' Clarendon had before this learnt the secret
from his own intimate friend, IVIorley, bishop of
Worcester, and had otherwise ample means of in-
vestigating its truth : and not only does he, in a
letter to Gauden, fully acquiesce in the unpalatable
statement, but, in his ' History of the Rebellion,'
written at the desire of Charles I., and avowedly
intended as a vindication of the royal character and
cause, he maintains the most rigid silence with re-
spect to the ' Ikon Basilike' — a fact altogether un-
accountable, on the supposition that he knew Charles
to be the author of what had brought so much ad-
vantage to the royal party, and that he was aware
of the falsity of the report current among the oppo-
site faction. Nor is it easy, on that supposition,
to conceive for what reason the troublesome solicita-
tions of Gauden were so effectual as to lead to his
promotion, in 1662, to the bisliopric of Worcester-,
a dignity, however, of which he did not long enjoy
the fruits, for he died in the same year, througli dia-
289
20
FROM 1558
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1 649
ai)pointnient, it is said, at not luiving obtained the
richer see of Winchester, which Clarendon had be-
stowed upon Morley. Notwithstanding the cogency
of the evidence above-mentioned, and of many cor-
roborative circumstances which it is impossible to
detail here, the controversy as to the authorsliip of
tte * Ikon Basilike' is by some still decided in favour
ol the king. Such is the conclusion arrived at in a
W3rk entitled ' Who wrote Ikon Basilike?' published
in 1824 by Dr Wordsworth, master of Trinity col-
lege, Cambridge ; and a writer in the Quarterly
Review* has ranged himself on the same side. But
in a masterly article by Sir James Mackintosh, in
the Edinburgh Review, the question, notwithstand-
ing some difficulties which still adhere to it, has, we
think, been finally and satisfactorily set at rest in
favour of Gauden.f
As a sample of the ' Ikon,' we present the follow-
ing meditations upon
[The Variom Events of the Civil War.]
The various successes of this unhappy war have at
least afforded me variety of good meditations. Some-
times God was pleased to try me with victory, by
worsting my enemies, that I might know how with
moderation and thanks to own and use his power,
who is only the true Lord of Hosts, able, when he
pleases, to repress the confidence of those that fought
against me with so great advantages for power and
number.
From small beginnings on my part, he let me see
that I was not wholly forsaken by my people's love or
his protection.
Other times God was pleased to exercise my pa-
tience, and teach me not to trust in the arm of flesh,
but in the living God.
My sins sometimes prevailed against the justice of
my cause ; and those that were with me wanted not
matter and occasion for his just chastisement both of
them and me. Nor were my enemies less punished
by that prosperity, which hardened them to continue
that injustice by open hostility, which was begun by
most riotous and unparliamentary tumults.
There is no doubt but personal and private sins
may ofttimes overbalance the justice of public engage-
ments ; nor doth God account every gallant man (in
the worM's esteem) a fit instrument to assert in the
way of war a righteous cause. The more men are
prone to arrogate to their own skill, valour, and
strength, the less doth God ordinarily work by them
for his own glory.
I am sure the event or success can never state the
justice of any cause, nor the peace of men's con-
sciences, nor the eternal fate of their souls.
Those with me had, I think, clearly and undoubt-
edly for their justification the word of God and the
laws of the land, together with their own oaths ; all
requiring obedience to my just commands ; but to
none other under heaven without me, or against me,
in the point of raising arms.
Those on the other side are forced to fly to the
shifts of some pretended fears, and wild fundamentals
of state, as they call them, which actually overthrow
the present fabric both of church and state ; bein"
such imaginary reasons for self-defence as are most
impertinent for those n.eu to allege, who, being my
subjects, were manifestly the first assaulters of me
and the laws, first by unsuppressed tunmlts, after by
listed forces. The same allegations they use, will fit
any faction that hath but power and confidence
enough to second with the sword all their demands
• Vol. xxxa p. 467.
t Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p. 1. The same opinion
h«<l previously been supported with great ability by Mr Laiug,
te his * History of Scotland/ toL i. pp. 390 and 516.
against the present laws and governors, which can
never be such as some side or other will not find fault
with, so as to urge what they call a reformation of
them to a rebellion against them.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
The English churet at this time was honoured
by the services of many able and profound theolo-
gians ; men who had both studied and thought
deeply, and possessed a vigorous and original cha-
racter of intellect. The most eloquent and inagi-
Jeremy Taylor.
native of all her divines was, however, Jeremy
Taylor, who has been styled by some the Shakspcure,
and by others the Spenser, of our theological lite-
rature. He seems to be closely allied, in tiie com-
plexion of his taste and genius, to the poet of the
'Faery Queen.' He has not the unity and energy,
or the profound mental philosophy, of the great
dramatist ; while he strongly resembles Spenser in
his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical ar
rangementand sweetness of expression, in prolongec
description, and in delicious musings and reveries
suggested by some favourite image or metaphor
on which he dwells with the fondness and entliu
siasm of a young poet. In these passages he it
also apt to run into excess ; epithet is heaped ujiou
epithet, and figure upon figure ; all the quaint con
ceits of his fancy, and the curious stores of his learn-
ing, are dragged in, till both precision and proprietj
are sometimes lost. He writes like an orator, anc
produces his efi'ect by reiterated strokes and multi-
plied impressions. His picture of the Resurrection
in one of his sermons, is in the highest style of
poetry, but generally he deals with the gentle ana
familiar; and his allusions to natural objects — at
trees, birds, and flowers, the rising or setting sun.
the charms of youthful innocence and beauty, and
the helplessness of infancy and childhood — possess
an almost angelic purity of feeling and delicacy ol
fancy. When presenting rules for morning medi-
tation and prayer, he stops to indulge his love ol
nature. ' Sometimes,' he says, ' be curious to see
the preparation which the sun makes when he is
coming forth from his chambers of the east.' He
compares a young man to a dancing bubble, ' empty
and gay, and shining like a dove's neck, or the image
of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose
290
PROSE WRITEBS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JEREMY TAYLOR
ver3' imaprery and colours are fantastical.' The ful-
IJlment of our duties he calls ' presenting a rosary
or chaplet of good works to our i\Iaker ;' and he
dresses even the grave with the flowers of fancy.
This freshness of feeling and imagination remained
with him to the last, amidst all the strife and vio-
lence of the civil war (in which he was an anxious
participator and sufferer), and tlie still more deaden-
ing effects ot polemical controversy and systems of
casuistry and metaphysics. The stormy vicissitudes
eth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves,
and the madness of liis people, had provided a plank
for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of
content or study; but I know not wliether I have
been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends,
or the gentleness and mercies of a noble euemy.'
This fine passage is in the dedication to Taylor's
Liberty of Proiihe-sying, a discourse published in
1647, showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing
to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting
of his life seem only to have taught him greziev \ Differing Opinions. By 'prophesying' he means
gentleness, resignation, toleration for human failings, preaching or expounding. 'I'he "work has been
and a more ardent love of humankind
Jeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridge (bap-
tised on the loth of August, 1613), and descended
of gentle, and even heroic blood. He was the
lineal representative of Dr Rowland Taylor, who
suffered martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary;
and his family had been one of some distinction in
the county of Gloucester. The Taylors, liowever,
had ' fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn
faces,' to use an expression of their most illustrious
member, and Jeremy's father followed the humble
occupation of a barber in Cambridge. lie put his
son to college, as a sisar, in his thirteentli year,
having himself previously tauglit him tlie rudiments
of grammar and m.ithematics, and given him the
advantages of the Free Grammar school. In 16.31,
Jeremy Taylor took his degree of bachelor of arts
in Cains college, and entering into sacred orders,
removed to London, to deliver some lectures for a
college friend in St Paul's cathedral. His eloquent
discourses, aided liy what a contemporary calls ' his
florid and youthful beauty, and pleasant air,' en-
tranceil all hearers, and procured him the patronage
of Archbishop Laud, the friend of learning, if not of
liberty. By Laud's assistance, Taylor obtained a
fellowsliip in All Souls college, Oxford ; became
chaplain to the archbishop, and rector of Upping-
I'l ham, in Rutlandshire. In 1639 he married Phoebe
Langdale, a female of whom we know nothing but
her musical name, and that she bore three sons to
her accomplislied husband, and died three 3'ears
after her marriage. The sons of Taylor also died
before their fatlier, clouding with melancholy and
regret his late and troubled years. The turmoil of
the civil war now agitated tlie country, and Jeremy
Taylor embarked his fortunes in the fate of the
royalists. By virtue of the king's mandate, he was
made a Doctor of Divinity; and at the command of
Charles, he wrote a defence of Episcopacy, to which
he was by principle and profession strongly attached.
In 1644, while accompanying the royal army as
chaplain, Jeremy Taylor was taken prisoner by the
parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before
the castle of Cardigan, in Wales. He was soon re-
leased, but the tide of war had turned against the
royalists, and in the wreck of the church, Taylor
resolved to continue in Wales, and, in conjunction
with two learned and ecclesiastical friends, to esta-
blish a school at Newton-hall, county of Caermar-
then. He appears to have been twice imprisoned
by the do.minant party, but treated with no marked
severity.
' In the great storm,' he says, ' which dashed the
vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been cast on
the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to
have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in Eng-
land, in a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I
cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm
followed me with so impetuous violence, that it
broke a cable, and I lost my anchor. And here
again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the
gentleness of an element that could neither distin-
guish things nor persons : and, but that He that still-
justly described as ' perhaps, of all Taylor's writ-
ings, that wliich shows him fartliest in advance ot
the age in wliich he lived, and of the ecclesiastical
system in which he had been reared— as the first
distinct and avowed defence of toleration which had
been ventured on in England, perhaps in Christen-
dom.' He builds the right of private judgment upon
tlie diflSculty of expounding Scripture — the insufla-
ciency and uncertainty of tradition— the fallibility
of councils, the pope, ecclesiastical writers, and the
church as a body, as arbiters of controverted points
— and the consequent necessity of letting every man
choose his own guideor judge of the meaning of Scrip-
ture for himself; since, says he, 'any man may be
better trusted for himself, than any man can be for
another — for in this case his own interest is most con-
cerned, and ability is not so necessary as honesty,
which certainly every man will best preserve in his
own case, and to himself (and if he does not, it's he
that must smart for it); and it is not required of us
not to be in error, but that Ave endeavour to avoid it.'
Milton, in his scheme of toleration, excludes all
Roman Catholics — a trait of the persecuting cha-
racter of his times ; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish
some standard of truth, and prevent anarchy, as he
alleges, proposes the confession of the apostles' creed
as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union
among Christians. The principles he advocates go
to destroy this limitation, and are applicable to uni-
versal toleration, which he dared hardly then avow,
even if he had entertained such a desire or convic-
tion. The style of his masterly ' Discourse' is more
argumentative and less ornate than that of his ser-
mons and devotional treatises; but his enlightened
zeal often breaks forth in striking condemnation of
those who are ' curiously busy about trifles and
imjiertinences, while they reject those glorious pre-
cepts of Christianity and holy life which are the
glories of our religion, and would enable us to gain
a happy eternity.' He closes the work with the
following interesting and instructive ajiologue, which
he had found, he says, in the Jews' books : —
' When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to
his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied
an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary
with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a
hundred years of age. He received him kindly,
washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to
sit down; but observing that the old man ate and
prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat,
asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven «
The old man told him that he worshijiped the fire
only, and acknowledged no other God ; at which an-
swer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust
the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to ali
the evils of the night and an unguarded condition.
When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham,
and asked him where the stranger was? lie replied,
I thrust him away because he did not worship thee :
God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred
years, although he dishonoured me, and couldst thou
not endure him one night, when he gave thee no
trouble ! Upon this, salth the story, Abraham fetched
KiOM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO lb"4J).
him hack again, and gave him hospitable entertain-
ment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise,
and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of
Abraham.'
In "Wales, Jeremy Taylor -was married to IMrs
Joanna Bridges, a natural daughter of Charles I.,
and mistress of an estate in the county of Caer-
martlien. He was thus relieved from the irksome
duties of a schoolmaster ; but the fines and seques-
trations imposed by the parliamentary party on
the property of the royalists, are sujiposed to have
dilapidated his wife's fortune. It is known that he
received a pension from the patriotic and excellent
John Evelyn, and the literary labours of Taylor
were never relaxed. Soon after the publication of
the ' Liberty of Prophesying,' he wrote an Apology
for Authorised and Set Forms of Litiirgi/, and in 1648
The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a valuable
and highly popular work. These were follov\'ed by
liis treatises of Ilohi Living and Holy I>ying, Tiventy-
seven Sennons for the Summer Half- Year, and other
minor productions. He wrote also an excellent little
manual of devotion, entitled the Golden Grove, so
called after the mansion of his neighbour and patron
the Earl of Carberry, in whose family he had spent
many of his happiest leisure hours. In the preface
to this work, Taylor had reflected on the ruling
powers in church and state, for wliich he was, for a
short time, committed to prison in Chepstow Castle.
He next completed his Course of Sermons for the
Year, and published some controversial tracts on
the doctrine of Original Sin, respecting which his
opinions were rather latitudinarian, inclining to the
Pelagian heresy. He was attacked both by High
Churchmen and Calvinists, but defended himself
with warmth and spirit — the only instance in which
his bland and benevolent disposition was betrayed
into anything approaching to personal asperity.
He went to London in 1657, and officiated in a pri-
vate congregation of Episcopalians, till an offer was
made him by the Earl of Conway to accompany him
to Ireland, and act as lecturer in a churcli at Lis-
burn. Thither he accordingly repaired, fixing his
residence at Portmore, on the banks of Lough
Neagh, about eight miles from Lisburn. Two years
appear to have been spent in this happy retirement,
when, in 1660, Taylor made a visit to London, to pub-
lish his Dttctor Dubitantium, or Cases of Conscience,
the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his
works. His journey, however, was made at an aus-
picious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve
of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Crom-
well, and the hopes of the cavaliers were fanned
by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy
Taylor signed the declaration of the loyalists of
London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of
May Charles II. entered London in triumphal pro-
cession, to ascend the throne ; and in August follow-
ing, our author was appointed bishop of Down and
Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless
parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist;
let us be thankful that it was the cause of the mitre
descending on the head of at least one pure and pious
churchman ! Taylor was afterwards made chancellor
of the university of Dublin, and a member of the
Irish privy council. The see of Dromore was also
annexed to his other bishopric, ' on account of his
virtue, wisdom, and industry.' These well-bestowed
honours he enjoyed only about six years. The
duties of his episcopal function were discharged with
zeal, mingled with charity ; and the few sermons
which we po.ssess delivered by him in Ireland are
truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. The
evil days and evil tongues on which he had fallen never
caused him to swerve from his eidightened toleration
or fervent piety. Any remains of a controversial
spirit which might have survived the period of his
busy manhood, were now entirely repressed bj- tlie
calm dictates of a wise experience, sanctified by af-
fliction, and by his onerous and important duties as
a guide and director of the Protestant church. He
died at Lisburn of a fever on the 13th of August,
1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. A finer
pattern of a Christian divine never perhaps existed.
His learning dignified the high station he at last at-
tained; his gentleness and courtesy shed a graco
over his whole conduct and demeanour; while his
commanding genius and energy in the cause of truth
and virtue, render him worthy of everlasting affeC'
tion and veneration. We have alluded to the ge
neral character and style of Jeremy Taylor's works.
A late eminent scholar, Dr Parr, has eulogised his
controversial writings: 'fraught as they are,' he
says, ' witli guileless ardour, witli peerless eloquence,
and with the richest stores of knowledge— historical,
classical, scholastic, and theological— they may be
considered as irrefragable proofs of his pure, aflTec-
tionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed
church of England.' His uncontroversial writings,
however, form the noblest monument to his memory.
Ilis peculiar tenets may be dlfierently judged of by
difFerent sects. He was perhaps too prone to specu-
lation in matters of doctrine, and lie was certainly no
blindly-devoted adherent of the church. His mind
loved to expatiate on the higher ^.hings of time,
death, and eternity, which concern men of all par-
ties, and to draw from the divine revelation its
hopes, terrors, and injunctions (it\ his hands irre-
sistible as the flaming sword), as a means of purify-
ing the human mind, and fitting it for a more exalted
destiny. ' Theology is rather a divine life than a
divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we shall first
see, and then love ; but here on earth, we must first
love, and love will open our eyes as well as our
hearts ; and we shall then see, and perceive, and un-
derstand.' *
The folloAving passages are selected as being among
the most characteristic or beautiful in Bishop Tay-
lor's works : —
[The Age of Reason and Discretion.']
"We must not think that the life of a man begins
when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can
fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with
a camel or a cow ; but he is first a man when he
comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to
his proportion ; and when that is, all the world of
men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at
fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never ; but
all men late enough ; for the life of a man comes upon
him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun ap-
proaching towards the gates of the morning, he first
opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits
of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the
lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a
cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out
his golden horns like those which decked the brows of
Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because
himself had seen the face of God ; and still, while a
man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he
shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines
one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes
weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly :
so is a man's reason and his life. lie first begins to
perceive himself, to see or taste, making little reflec-
tions upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of
flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty : but
when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little
* ' Via Intelligentiac,' a sermon preached by Jeremy Taylor to
the university of Dublin.
292
PROSE WB ITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JEREMY TAYLO»t.
institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and
impertinent things, not because he needs them, but
because his understanding is no bigger, and little
images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat
to a whale, only to play withal : but, before a man
comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts and con-
sumption, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and
worn-out body. So that, if we must not reckon the
life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is
long before his soul be dressed ; and he is not to be
called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a
soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards
his well-being.
And now let us consider what that thing is which
we call years of discretion. The young man is passed
his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitifl'
spirit ; he is run from discipline, and is let loose to
passion. The man by this time hath wit enough to
choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress,
to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually ;
to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite,
to do things that, when he is indeed a man, he must
for ever be ashamed of ; for this is all the discretion
that most men show in the first stage of their man-
hood. They can discern good from evil ; and they
prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wal-
lowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite.
And by this time the young man hath contracted
vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and there-
fore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of
his life ; he is a fool in his understanding, and that
is a sad death.
\_ThePomp of Death.']
Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises,
and solemn bugbears, and the actings by candlelight,
and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the minstrels
and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers,
the swoonlngs and the shriekings, the nurses and the
physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kin-
dred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready,
and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It
is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suf-
fered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day ; and at
the same time in which you die, in that very night a
thousand creatures die with j-ou, some wise men and
many fools ; and the wisdom of the first will not quit
him, and the folly of the latter does not make him
unable to die.
[Marriage.]
They that enter into the state of marriage cast a
die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest
interest in the world, next to the last throw for eter-
nity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are
in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ven-
tures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from
an evil husband ; she must dwell upon her sorrow,
and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity
hath produced ; and she is more under it, because her
tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the
woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant
princes ; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the
causes of unkindness. And though the man can run
from many hours of his sadness, j'et he must return
to it again ; and when he sits among his neighbours,
he remembers the objection that is in his bosom,
and he sighs deeply. The bo3's, and the pedlars, and
<Lc fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried
to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched
person.
The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were
clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came
down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw
their joints with the waters of the stream ; but there
the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice,
till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger
snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, find-
ing many inconveniences upon the mountains of single
life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to re-
fresh their troubles ; and there they enter into fetters,
and are bounil to sorrow by the cords of a man's or
woman's peevishness. * *
Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all
ofl^ences of each other in the beginning of their con-
versation ; every little thing can blast an infant blos-
som ; and the breath of the south can shake the little
rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like
the locks of a new-weaned boy : but when by age and
consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem,
and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the
kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can
endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of
a tempest, and yet never be broken : so are the early
unions of an unfixed marriage ; watchful and obser-
vant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and
apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the
hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and
hardened by a mutual confidence and experience,
longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a
great many remembrances, and some things present,
that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces. * *
There is nothing can please a man without love ;
and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the
apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a pri-
vate fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he
hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest
flowers of Paradise ; for nothing can sweeten felicity
itself but love ; but when a man dwells in love, then
the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings
upon the hill of Hermon ; her eyes are fair as the light
of heaven ; she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench
his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows
down upon her lap, and can retire liome to his sanc-
tuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and
chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that
loves his children, how many delicious accents make
a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of
those dear pledges ; their childishness, their stammer-
ing, their little angers, their innocence, their imper-
fections, their necessities, are so many hale emana-
tions of joy and comfort to him that delights in their
persons and society. * * It is fit that I should
infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and,
after the Egv'ptian manner, serve up a dead man's
bones at a feast : I will only show it, and take it
away again ; it will make the wine bitter, but whole-
some. But those married pairs that live as remem-
bering that they must part again, and give an account
how they treat themselves and each other, shall, at
that day of their death, be admitted to glorious
esiiuusals ; and when they shall live again, be married
to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abra-
ham and Joseph, St Peter and St Paul, and all the
maiTied saints. All those things that now please us
shall pass from us, or we from them ; but those things
that concern the other life are permanent as the
numbers of eternity. And although at the refurrec-
tion there shall be no relation of husband and wife,
and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage
of the Lamb, yet then shall be remembered how men
and women passed through this state, which is a type
of that; and from this sacramental union all lioly
pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where
love shall be their portion, and jo\s shall crown their
heads, and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and
in the heart of God, to eternal ages.
\TJie Progress of Sin.']
I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through
the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubbun.
293
FROM l^oS
CYCLOPJKDIA OF
TO I64j>.
pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression
of a child's foot ; and it was despised, like the de-
scending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened
its way and made a stream large enough to carry away
the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the
uei'^hbouring gardens: but then the despised drops
wer^ <T0wii into an artificial river, and an intolerable
niisclnef. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped
with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into
sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels
of a single sermon : but when such beginnings are
neMected, and our religion hath not in it so much phi-
los'ophy as to think anything evil as long as we can
endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential
evils ; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at
their first entry might have been killed with the pres-
sure of a little finger.
He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to
prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be
very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the
remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the
fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the
Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the liesh-
pots, they longed to taste and to return.
So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder for-
agings, is shut up and taught to eat civil meat, and
suffer the authority of a man, he sits do\vn tamely
in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence
for his meat ; but if he chance to come again, and
taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into
his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating
those hands that brought him discipline and food.*
So is the nature of a man made tame and gentle by the
grace of God, and reduced to reason, and kept in awe
by religion and laws, and by an aw-ful virtue is taught
to forget those alluring and sottish relishes of sin ; but
if he diverts from his path, and snatches handfuls
from the wanton vineyards, and remembers the lasci-
viousness of his unwholesome food that pleased his
childish palate, then he grows sick again, and hungry
after unwholesome diet, and longs for the apples of
Sodom.
The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart
in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the
wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike
the deadly barb deej)er, and cannot be quit from that
fatal steel, but in flying bear along that which them-
selves make the instrument of a more hasty death : so
is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound,
and his own hands force it into the entertainments of
the heart ; and because it is painful to draw it forth
by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls and
turns upon his wound, and carries his death in his
bowels, where it first entered by choice, and then
dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the tragedy by
divine judgments and an unalterable decree.
[TTic Resunxction of Sinners.']
So have we seen a poor condemned criminal, the
weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily upon his soul,
hath benumbed him into a deep sleep, till he hath for-
gotten his groans, and laid aside his deep sighings :
but on a sudden comes the messenger of death, and
unbinds the poppy garland, scatters the heavy cloud
that encircled his miserable head, and makes him re-
turn to acts of life, that he may quickly descend into
* Admonita>que tument gustato sanguine fauces :
Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro.
' But let the taste of sLiughter be renewed.
And their fell jaws again with gore imbrued ;
Then dre:Mlfully their wakening furies rise,
And gUiring fires rekindle in their eyes ;
VViih wrathful roar their echiiing dens they tear,
And hardly ev'n the well-known keeiKT spare ;
The chuddering keeper shakoH, and stands aloof for fear.'
death, and be no more. So is every sinner that lies
doOTi in shame, and makes his grave with the wicked ;
he shall, indeed, rise again, and be called upon by the
voice of the archangel ; but then he shall descend into
sorrows greater than the reason and the patience of a
man, weeping and shrieking louder than the groans of
the miserable children in the valley of Hinnom.
[Sinfid Pleasur-e,]
Look upon pleasures not upon that side which is
next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is,
as they come towards you to be enjoyed : for then they
paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and
glass gems and counterfeit imagery ; but when thou
hast rifled and discomposed them with enjoying their
false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then be-
hold them in their nakedness and weariness. See
what a sigh and sorrow, what naked unhandsome pro-
portions and a filthy carcass they discover ; and the
next time they counterfeit, remember what you have
already discovered, and be no more abused.
[Useful Studies.]
Spend not your time in that which profits not ; for
your labour and your health, your time and your
studies, are very valuable ; and it is a thousand pities
to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in
gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling
sands upon the shores, and making garlands of use-
less daisies.* Study that which is profitable, that
which will make you useful to churches and com-
monwealths, that which will make you desirable and
wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning
there are variety of things as well as in religion : there
is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty
things of the law ; so there are studies more and less
useful, and everything that is useful will be required
in its time : and 1 may in this also use the words of
our blessed Saviour, ' These things ought you to look
after, and not to leave the other unregarded.' But
your great care is to be in the things of God and of
religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering
the saying of Origen, ' That the knowledge that arises
from goodness is something that is more certain and
more divine than all demonstration,' than all otJier
learnings of the world.
\_Comforting the AfU'.cica.]
Certain it is, that as notLing can better do it, so
there is nothing greater, for which God made our
tongues, next to reciti'ig his praises, than to minister
comfort to a weary boul. And what greater measure
can we have, than that we should bring joy to our
brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and
round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay
his eyelids close together — than that thy tongue
should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the
weary soul to listen for light and ease ; and when he
perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and
* Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, 'I don't
know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or
a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth
lay all undiscovered before nie." — Spence's Anecdotes, p. 54.
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or sviperior,
( And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek ?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains;
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself,
Crude or into.\icate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,
As children gathering pebbles on llie shure
Paradite Regained, book It.
294
PnCSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITEHATURE.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to
break out from the prison of his sorrows at the door
of si^hs and tears, and by little and little melt into
showers and refreshment ? This is glory to thy voice,
and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so
have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was
bound up with the images of death, and the colder
breath of the north ; and then the waters break from
their enclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful
channels ; and the flies do rise again from their little
graves in walls, and dance a while in the air, to
tell that there is joy within, and that the great mo-
ther of creatures will open the stock of her new re-
freshment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises
to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man
under the discourses of a wise comforter ; he breaks
from the despairs of the grave, and the fetters and
chains of sorrow ; he blesses God, and he blesses thee,
and he feels his life returning ; for to be miserable is
death, but nothing is life but to be comforted ; and
God is pleased with no music from below so much
as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of
supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and
thankful persons.
[Heal and Apparent Happiness.^
If we should look under the skirt of the prosperous
and prevailing tjTant, we should find, even in the days
of his joj-s, such allays and abatements of his plea-
sure, as may serve to represent him presently miser-
able, besides his final infelicities. For I have seen a
young and healthful person warm and ruddy under a
poor and a thin garment, when at the same time an
old rich person hath been cold and paralytic under a
load of sables, and the skins of foxes. It is the body
that makes the clothes warm, not the clothes the body ;
and the spirit of a man makes felicity and content,
not any spoils of a rich fortune wrapt about a sickly
and an luieasy soul. Apollodorus was a traitor and
a tyrant, and the world wondered to see a bad man
have so good a fortune, but knew not that he nour-
ished scorpions in his breast, and that his liver and
his heart were eaten up with spectres and images of
death ; his thoughts were full of interruptions, his
dreams of illusions : his fancy was abused with real
troubles and fantastic images, imagining that he saw
the Scythians flaying him alive, his daughters like
pillars of fire, dancing round about a cauldron in
which himself was boiling, and that his heart ac-
cused itself to be the cause of all these evils.
Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his bever-
age in an earthen vessel, than he that looks and
searches into his golden chalices, for fear of poison,
and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in
armour, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God
for his safety ?
Can a man bind a thought with chains, or carry
imaginations in the palm of his hand ? can the beauty
of the peacock's train, or the ostrich plume, be deli-
cious to the palate and the throat ? does the hand in-
termeddle with the joys of the heart ! or darkness,
that hides the naked, make him warm ] does the body
live, as does the spirit ? or can the body of Christ be
like to common food ? Indeed, the sun shines upon
the good and bad ; and the vines give wine to the
drunkard, as well as to the sober man ; pirates have
fair winds and a calm sea, at the same time when the
just and jieaceful merchantman hath them. Rut,
although the things of this world are common to good
and bad, yet sacraments and spiritual joys, the food
of the soui, and the blessing of Christ, are the peculiar
right of saints.
[Adve>-siti/.]
All is well as long as the >un shines, and the fair
breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own purj)0se8.
Rut if you will try the excellency and feel the work
of faitli, place the man in a persecution ; let him ride
in a storm ; let his bones be broken with sorrow, and
his eyelids loosed with sickness; let his bread be dip-
ped with tears, and all the daughters of music be
brought low ; let us come to sit upon the margin of
our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our for-
tunes, and dwell upon our ^v^ong ; let the storm arise,
and the keels toss till the cordage crack, or that all
our hopes bulge under us, and descend into the hol-
lowness of sad misfortunes.
[Miseries of Man's Life.]
How few men in the world are prosperous ! "What
an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of persecuted
and oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth with
groans, and heaven itself with weeping, prayers, and
sad remembrances ! How many provinces and king-
doms are afllicted by a violent war, or made desolate
by popular diseases ! Some whole countries are re-
marked with fatal evils, or periodical sicknesses.
Grand Cairo, in Egv-pt, feels the plague everj' three
years returning like a quartan ague, and destroying
many thousands of persons. All the inhabitants of
Arabia the desert are in continual fear of being buried
in huge heaps of sand, and therefore dwell in tents
and ambulatory houses, or retire to unfruitful moun-
tains, to prolong an uneasy and wilder life. And all
the countries round about the Adriatic sea feel such
violent convulsions, by tempests and intolerable earth-
quakes, that sometimes whole cities find a tomb, and
every man sinks with his o^vn house, made ready to
become his monument, and his bed is crushed into
the disorders of a grave.
It were too sad if I should tell how many persons
are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres and illu-
sions of the night.
He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be
in love with this world, we need not despair but that
a witty man might reconcile him with tortures, and
make him think charitably of the rack, and be brought
to dwell with vipers and dragons, and entertain his
guests with the shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and screech-
owls, with the filing of iron and the harshness of rend-
ing of silk, or to admire the harmony that is made by
a herd of evening wolves, when they miss their draught
of blood in their midnight revels. The groans of a
man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these ;
and the distractions of a troubled conscience are
worse than those groans ; and yet a merry careless
sinner is worse than all that. Rut if we could, from
one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many men
and women at this time lie fainting and dying for
want of bread ; how many young men are hewn down
by the sword of war ; how many poor orphans are now
weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life
they were enabled to eat ; if we could but hear how
mariners and passengers are at this present in a
storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes
against a rock, or bulges under them ; how many
people there are that weep with want, and are mad
with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense
of a constant infelicity; in all reason we should be
glad to be out of the noise and participation of so
many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of
so great evils and a constant calamity ; let us remove
from hence, at least in affections and preparation of
mind.
[On Prayer.]
Prayer is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost,
the spirit of gentleness and dove-like simplicity ; an
imitation of the Holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek, up
to the greatness of "the biggest examiilc, and a con-
formity to God ; whose anger is always just, and
-293
PRUM 1558
CYCLOP/EDIA OF
TO 164.0.
marches slowly, and is without transportation, and
Dlten hindered', and never hasty, and is full of mercy:
prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our
thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of
meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our
tempest : prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of un-
troubled thoughts ; it is the daughter of charity, and
the sister of meekness ; and he that prays to God with
an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed
spirit, is' like him that retires into a battle to medi-
tate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an
armv, and chooses a frontier-garrison to be wise in.
Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer,
and therefore is contrary to that attention which pre-
sents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have
I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring
upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to
heaven, and climb above the clouds ; but the poor
bird was beaten back with the loud sighlngs of an
eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and in-
constant, descending more at every breath of the
tempest, than it could recover by the libration and
frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature
was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the
storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight,
and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and
motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through
the air, about his ministries here below. So is the
prayer of a good man : when his affairs have required
business, and his business was matter of discipline,
and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person,
or had a design of charity, his duty met with the in-
firmities of a man, and anger was its instrument ; and
the instrument became stronger than the prime agent,
and raised a tempest, and overruled the man ; and
then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were
troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud ; and
his thoughts pulled them back again, and made them
without intention ; and the good man sighs for his
infirmity, but must be content to lose that prayer, and
he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his
spirit Is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus,
and smooth like the heart of God ; and then it
ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove,
and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful
bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.
[On Death.]
Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things
which are the instruments of acting it; and God, by all
the variety of his providence, makes us see death every-
where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up
for all the fancies, and the expectation of every single
person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year,
but death hath two ; and the spring and the autumn
send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses ;
and all the summerlong, men are recovering from their
evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then
the Sirian star makes the summer deadly ; and the
fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year's provi-
sion, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits,
and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up
for eternity ; and he that escapes till winter, only
stays for another opportunity, which the distempers
of that quarter minister to him with great variety.
Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The
autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and
the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and
the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the
summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon
our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and a^ues
are the four quarters of the year ; and you can "o no
whither, but you tread upon a dead man's bones.
The wild fellow in Petronius, that escaped upon a
broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he
was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a
man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted
with sand in the folds of his garment, and carried by
his civil enemy, the sea, towards the shore to find a
grave. And it cast him Into some sad thoughts, that
peradventure this man's wife, in some part of the
continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the
good man's return ; or, it may be, his son knows
nothing of the tempest ; or his father thinks of that
affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good
old man's cheek, ever since he took a kind farewell,
and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall
be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his
father's arms. These are the thoughts of mortals;
this is the end and sum of all their designs. A dark
night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken
cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in pieces
the fortune of a whole family ; and they that shall
weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into
the storm, and yet have suffered shii)wreck. Then,
looking upon the carcass, he knew it, and found it to
be the master of the ship, who, the day before, cast
up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade, and
named the day when he thought to be at home. See
how the man swims, who was so angry two days since !
His passions are becalmed with the storm, his accounts
cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, and his
gains are the strange events of death, which, whether
they be good or evil, the men that are alive seldom
trouble themselves concerning the Interest of the dead.
It is a mighty change that is made by the death of
every person, and it is visible to us who are alive.
Reckon but from the sprlghtfulness of 3'outh, and the
fair cheeks .and full eyes of childhood ; from the vigo-
rousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-
twenty, to the hollowness and deadly paleness, to the
loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and
we shall perceive the distance to be very grejvt and very
strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing
from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as
the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a
lamb's fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced
open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youth-
ful and unripe retirements, it began to put on dark-
ness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of
a sickly age ; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk ;
and at night, having lost some of its leaves, and all
its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out-
worn faces. The same is the portion of every man
and every woman ; the heritage of worms and ser-
pents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty
80 changed, that our acquaintance quickly knew us
not ; and that change mingled with so much horror,
or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings,
that they who, six hours ago, tended upon us either
with charitable or ambitious services, cannot, without
some regret, stay in the room alone, where the body
lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of a
fair young German gentleman, who, living, often re-
fused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of
his friends' desire by giving wa}', that, after a few days'
burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if
they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death
unto the life. They did so, and found his face half
eaten, and his midriff and back -bone full of serpents ;
and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors.
So does the fairest beauty change ; and it will be as
bad with you and me ; and then what servants shall
we have to wait upon us in the grave ? what friends
to visit us? what ofiicious people to cleanse away the
moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces
from the sides of the weej)ing vaults, which are the
longest weepers for our funeral.
A man may read a sermon, the best and most pas-
sionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter
into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial
296
mOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JEREMY TaVLOB.
where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power,
and decree war or peace, tliey have wisely {ilaceda
cemetery, where their ashes and their glory shall sleep
till time shall be no more ; and where our kings have
been crowned their ancestors lie interred, and they
must walk over their grandsire's head to take his
cro^vn. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the
copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from
ceiled roofs to arched cotfins, from living like gods to
die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of
lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch
of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissem-
bling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary
beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the for-
tunate and the miserable, the beloved and the de-
spised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their
symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that, when
vre die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our ac-
counts easier, and our pains for our crowns shall be less.
[T7ie Day of Ju.dgment.']
Even j'ou and I, and all the world, kings and
priests, nobles and learned, the crafty and the easy,
the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, the
prevailing tyrant and the oppressed party, shall all
appear to receive their symbol ; and this is so far
from abating anything of its ten-or and our dear con-
cernment, that it much increases it. For although
concerning precepts and discourses we are apt to
neglect in particular what is recommended in general,
and in incidences of mortality and sad events, the
singularity of the chance heightens the apprehension
of the evil ; yet it is so by accident, and only in re-
gard of our imperfection ; it being an effect of self-
love, or some little creeping envy, which adheres too
often to the unfortunate and miserable ; or being ap-
prehended to be in a rare case, and a singular unwor-
thiness in him who is afflicted otherwise than is
common to the sons of men, companions of his sin,
and brethren of his nature, and partners of his usual
accidents ; yet in final and extreme events, the mul-
titude of sufferers does not lessen, but increase the
sufferings ; and when the first day of judgment hap-
pened, that, I mean, of the universal deluge of waters
upon the old world, the calamity swelled like the
flood, and every man saw his friend perish, and the
neighbours of his dwelling, and the relatives of his
house, and the sharers of his joys, and yesterday's
bride, and the new born heir, the priest of the family,
and the honour of the kindred, all dying or dead,
drenched in water and the divine vengeance ; and then
they had no place to flee unto, no man cared for their
souls ; they had none to go unto for counsel, no sanc-
tuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance
that rained down from heaven ; and so it shall be at
the day of judgment, when that world and this, and
all that shall be born hereafter, shall pass through the
same Red Sea, and be all baptised with the same fire,
and be involved in the same cloud, in vrhich shall be
thunderiu^s and terrors infinite. Every man's fear
shall be increased by his neighbour's shrieks, and the
amazement that all the world shall be in, shall unite
as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire,
and roll upon its own principle, and increase by direct
appearances and intolerable reflections. He that
stands in a churchyard in the time of a great plague,
and hears the passing bell perpetually tolling the sad
stories of death, and sees crowds of infected bodies
pressing to their graves, and others sick and tremulous,
and death dressed up in all the images of sorrow
round about him, is not supported in his spirit by the
variety of his sorrow ; and at doomsday, when the
terrors are universal, besides that it is in itself so
much greater, because it can affright the whole world,
it It also made greater by communication and a sor-
rowful influence ; grief being tlien strongly infectious,
when there is no variety of state, but an entire king-
dom of fear ; and amazement is the king .)f all our
passions, and all the world its subjects. And that
shriek must needs be terrible, when millions of men
and women, at the same instant, shall fearfully cry
out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet of
the archangel, with the thunders of tlie dying and
groaning heavens, and the crack of the dissolving
world, when the whole fabric of nature shall shake
into dissolution and eternal ashes !
Consider what an infinite multitude of angels, and
men, and women, shall then appear ! It is a huge
assembly when the men of one kingdom, the men of
one age in a single province are gathered together into
heaps and confusion of disorder ; but then, all king-
doms of all ages, all the armies that ever mus-
tered, all that world that Augustus Ctesar taxed, all
those hundreds of millions that were slain in all t!ie
Roman wars, from Numa's time till Italy was broken
into principalities and small exarchates : all these, and
all that can come into numbers, and that did desc't-iid
from the loins of Adam, shall at once be represented ;
to which account, if we add the armies of heaven, the
nine orders of blessed spirits, and the infinite num-
bers in every order, we may suppose the numbers tit
to express the majesty of that God, and the terror of
that Judge, who is the Lord and Father of all that
unimaginable multitude ! * * The majesty of the
Judge, and the terrors of the judgment, shall be
spoken aloud by the immediate forerunning accidents,
which shall be so great violences to the old constitu-
tions of nature, that it shall break her very bones,
and disorder her till she be destroyed. Saint Jerome
relates out of the Jews' books, that their doctors used
to account fifteen days of prodigy immediately before
Christ's coming, and to every day assign a wonder,
any one of which, if we should chance to see in the
days of our flesh, it would affright us ini ) the like
thoughts which the old world had, when tlicy saw the
countries round about them covered with M'ater and
the divine vengeance ; or as these poor people near
Adria and the Mediterranean sea, when their houses
and cities were entering into graves, and the bowels of
the earth rent with convulsions and horrid tremblings.
The sea, they say, shall rise fifteen cubits above the
highest mountains, and thence descend into liollow-
ness and a prodigious drought ; and when they are
reduced again to their usual proportions, then all the
beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the
usual inhabitants of the sea, shall be gathered to-
gether, and make fearful noises to distract mankind :
the birds shall mourn and ;hange their song into
threnes and sad accents ; rivers of fire shall rise from
east to west, and the stars shall be rent into threads
of light, and scatter like the beards of comets ; then
shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend
in pieces, the trees shall distil blood, and the moun-
tains and fairest structures shall return into their
primitive dust ; the wild beasts shall leave their dens,
and shall come into the companies of men, so that
you shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of men
or congregations of beasts ; then shall the graves open
and give up their dead, and those which are alive in
nature and dead in fear shall be forced from the rocks
whither they went to hide them, and from cave.ns of
the earth where they would fain have been concealed ;
because their retirements are dismantled, and their
rocks are broken into wider ruptures, and admit a
strange liglit into their secret bowels ; and the men
being forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors,
shall run up and do\vn distracted, and at tlieir wits'
end ; and then some shall die, and some shall be
changed ; and by this time the elect shall be gathered
together from the four quarters of the world, au'i
Christ shall come along with them to judgment.
297
ruoM I008
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164J>
[Riliffioii^ Toleration.']
The infinite variety of opinions in matters of reli-
gion, .OS they have troubled Christendom with inte-
rests, factions, and partialities, so have they caused
pi-eat divisions of the heart, and variety of thoughts
and designs, amongst pious and prudent men. For
thevall, seeing the inconveniences which the disunion
of persuasions and opinions have produced, directly
or accidentally, have thought themselves obliged to
stop this inundation of mischiefs, and have made
attempts accordingly. But it hath happened to most
of them as to a mistaken physician, who gives excel-
lent physic, but misapplies it, and so misses of his
cure. So have these men ; their attempts have, there-
fore, been ineftbctual ; for they put their help to a
wrong part, or they have endeavoured to cure the
symjitoms, and have let the disease alone till it seemed
incurable. Some have endeavoured to re-unite these
fractions, by propounding such a guide which they
were all bound to follow ; hoping that the unity of a
guide would have persuaded unity of minds ; but who
this guide should be, at last became such a question,
that it was made part of the fire that was to be
quenched, so far was it from extinguishing any part
of tbe flame. Others thought of a rule, and this must
be the means of union, or nothing could do it. But,
supposing all the world had been agreed of this rule,
yet the interpretation of it was so full of variety, that
this also became part of the disease for which the cure
was pretended. All men resolved upon this, that,
though they yet had not hit upon the right, yet some
way must be thought upon to reconcile diflferences in
opinion ; thinking, so long as this variety should last,
Christ's kingdom was not advanced, and the work of
the gospel went on but slowly. Few men, in the mean
time, considered, that so long as men had such variety
of principles, such several constitutions, educations,
tempers, and distempers, hopes, interests, and weak-
nesses, degrees of light and degrees of understanding,
it was impossible all should be of one mind. And
what is impossible to be done, is not necessary it should
be done. And, therefore, although variety of opinions
was impossible to be cured, and they who atteinjited
it did like him who claps his shoulder to the ground
to stop an earthquake ; yet the inconveniences arising
from it might possibly be cured, not by uniting their
beliefs, that was to be despaired of, but by curing that
which caused these mischiefs, and accidental incon-
veniences, of their dlsagreeings. For although these
inconveniences, which every man sees and feels, were
consequent to this diversity of persuasions, yet it was
but accidentally and by chance ; inasmuch as we see
that in many things, and they of great concernment,
men allow to themselves and to each other a liberty
of disagreeing, and no hurt neither. And certainly,
if diversity of opinions were, of itself, the cause of
mischiefs, it would be so ever ; that is, regularly and
universally. But that we see it is not. For there
are disputes in Christendom concerning matters of
greater concernment than most of those opinions that
distinguish sects and make factions ; and yet, because
men are permitted to differ in those great matters,
such evils are not consequent to such differences, as
are to the uncharitable managing of smaller and more
inconsiderable questions. Since, then, if men are quiet
and charitable in some dlsagreeings, that then and
there the inconvenience ceases ; if they were so in all
others where lawfully they might, and they may in
most, Christendom should be no longer rent in pieces
but would be redintegrated in a new pentecost.
SIR THOSIAS BROWNE.
Sir Thomas Browne, anotlier of tlie eloquent
tnd poetical writers of this great literary era, diflers
from Bishop Taylor in several marked particu-
lars. There is greater quaintness and obscurity
in liis style ; he is fond of discussing abstruse and
conjectural points, such as only a humorist can
seriously trouble himself about ; and he displays
throughout his writings the mind rather of a^
Sir Thomas Browne.
amiable and eccentric scholar, than of a man who
takes an interest in the great concerns of hunianit}'.
Browne was born in London in 1605, and, after being
educated at Winchester and Oxford, proceeded to
travel, first in Ireland, and subsequently in France,
Italy, and Holland. He belonged to the medical
profession, and having obtained his doctor's degree
at Leyden, settled finally as a practitioner at Nor-
wich. His first work, entitled lieliijio Medici — ' The
Religion of a Physician' — was published in 1642, and
immediately rendered him famous as a literary man.
In this singular production, he gives a minute account
of his opinions not only on religious, but on a variety
of philosophical and fanciful points, besides affording
the reader many glimpses into the eccentricities of
his personal character. The language of that work
is bold and poetical, adorned with picturesque ima-
gery, but frequently pedantic, rugged, and obscure.
His next publication, entitled Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
or 'Treatise on Vulgar Errors,' appeared in 1646.
It is much more philosophical in its character than
the ' lleligio Medici,' and is considered the most solid
and useful of his productions. The following enume-
ration of some of the errors which he endeavours to
dispel, will serve both to show the kind of matters
he was fond of investigating, and to exemplify the
notions which prevailed in the seventeenth century.
' That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly con-
gealed ; that a diamond is softened or broken by the
blood of a goat ; that a pot full of ashes will contain
as much water as it would without them ; that bays
preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder ;
that an elephant hath no joints ; that a wolf, first
seeing a man, begets a dumbness in him ; that moles
are blind; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not;
that storks will only live in republics and free states;
that the chicken is made out of the yolk of the egg ;
that men weigh heavier dead than alive, and before
meat than after; that Jews stink; that the forbidden
fruit was an apple; that there was no rainbow before
the flood ; that Jolm the Baptist sliould not die.' He
treats also of the ring-finger ; saluting upon sneez-
ing ; pigmies; the canicular, or dog-days; the pic-
ture of Moses with horns; the blackness of negroes;
298
PUOSE WRITERS,
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS BROWNK.
tlie river Nilus ; gipsies ; Methuseluh ; tlie food of
J')hn the Baptist; the cessation of oracles; Friar
Bacon's Vjrazen head that spoke ; tlie jioverty of
Belisarins ; and the wish of Pliiloxenus to have the
neck of a crane. In 1658, Browne publislied his
Hi/f/riotaphiu, or Urn Burial; a Discourse on the Se-
pulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk, a work not
inferior, in ideality of style, to the" KeliRio Medici.'
Here the author's learning appears in the details
which he gives concerning the modes in which the
bodies of the dead have been disposed of in different
ages and countries ; while his reflections on death,
oblivion, and immortality, are, for solemnity and
grandeur, probably unsurpassed in Englisli litera-
ture. The occasion woulil hardly have called forth
a work from any less meditative mind. In a field
at Walsingham were dug up between forty and fifty
urns, containing the remains of human bones, some
small brass instruments, boxes, and other fragmen-
tary relics. Coals and burnt substances were found
near the same plot of ground, and hence it was con-
jectured that this was the Ustrina, or place of burn-
ing, or the spot whereon the Druidical sacrifices
were made. Furnished with a theme for his philo-
sophic musings. Sir Thomas Browne then comments
on that vast charnel-house, the earth.
' Nature,' he says, ' hath furnished one part of
the earth, and man another. The treasures of time
lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce be-
low the roots of some vegetables. Time hath end-
less rarities, and shows of all varieties ; which re-
veals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries
in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That
great antiquity, America, lay buried for a thousand
years ; and a large part of the earth is still in the
urn unto us. Though, if Adam were made out of
an extract of the eaith, all parts might challenge a
restitution, yet few have returned their bones far
lower than they might receive them ; not affecting
the graves of giants, under hilly and heavy cover-
ings, but content with less than their own depth,
have wished their bones might lie soft, and the earth
be light upon them ; even such as hope to rise again
would not be content with central interment, or so
desperately to place their relics as to lie beyond dis-
covery, and in no way to be seen again ; which
happy contrivance hath made communication with
our forefathers, and left unto our view some parts
"which they never beheld themselves.'
He then successively describes and comments
upon the different modes of interment and decom-
position — whether by fire (' some apprehending a
purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser commix-
ture, and firing out the ethereal particles so deeply
immersed in it') ; by makinj. their graves in the air,
like the Scj-thians, ' who swoi > by wind and sword ;'
or in the sea, like some of the nations about Egypt.
' Men,' he finely remarks, ' have lost their reason
in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones
and clouts make martyrs ; and since the religion of
one seems madness unto another, to afford an ac-
count or rational of old rights, requires no rigid
reader. That they kindled the pj're aversely, or
turning their face from it, was a handsome symbol
of unwilling ministration ; that they washed their
bones with wine and milk ; that the mother wrapt
them in linen and dried them in her bosom, the first
fostering part, and place of their nourishment ; that
they opened their eyes towards heaven, before they
kindled the fire, as the place of their hopes or origi-
nal, were no improper ceremonies. Their last vale-
diction, thrice uttered by the attendants, was also
very solemn, and somewhat answered by Christians,
who thought it too little if they threw not the earth
thrice upon the interred body. That, in strewing
their tombs, the Romans affected tlie rose, the Greeks
amar.antlius and myrtle ; tliat the funeral pyre con-
sisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees
perpetually verdant, "lay silent expressions of tlieir
surviving hopes ; wherein Christians, wliich deck
their coffins with bays, have found a more elegant
emblem — for that it seeming dead, will restore itself
from the root, and its dry and exsuccous leaves
resume their verdure again ; which, if we mistake
not, we have also observed in furze. AVhcther the
planting of yew in clmrehyards hold not its original
from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resur-
rection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit
conjecture.' Among the beauties of expression in
Browne, may be quoted the following eloquent defi-
nition : ' Nature is not at variance with art, nor art
with nature — they being both the servants of his
providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were
the world now as it was the sixth day, there were
yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art
another. In belief, all things are artificial, for nature
is the art of God.' This seems the essence of true
philosophy. To the 'Ilydriotapliia' is appended a
small treatise, called The Garden of Cyrus; or the
Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network riuntations of the An-
cients, Artificially, Naturally, and Mystically Considered.
This is written in a similar style, and displays much
of the author's whimsical fancy and propensity to
laborious trifling. One of the most striking of these
fancies has been often quoted. Wishing to denote
that it is late, or that he was writing at a late hour,
he says that ' the Hyades (the quincunx of heaven)
run low — that we are unwilling to spin out our
awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep— that
to keep our eyes open longer were but to act our
antipodes — that the huntsmen are up in America —
and that they are already past their first sleep in
Persia.' This is fantastic, but it is the offspring of
genius. Browne lived in a world of ideal contem-
plation, but before surrendering himself up to his
reveries, he had stored his mind with vast and mul-
tifarious learning. In presenting its results to the
public, he painted to the eye and imagination more
than he conveyed to the understanding. Among his
posthumous pieces is a collection of aphorisms, en-
titled Christian Morals, to which Dr Johnson prefixed
a life of the author. He left, also, various essays,
on antiquarian and other subjects. Sir Thomas
Browne died in 1682, at the age of seventy-seven.
He was of a modest and clieerful disposition, retir-
ing in his habits, and sympathised little with the
pursuits and feelings of tlie busy multitude. His
opinions were, in some respects, tinged with the
credulity of his age. He believed in witchcraft,
apparitions, and diabolical illusions ; and gravely
observes, ' that to those who would attempt to teach
animals the art of speech, the dogs and cats that
usually speak unto witches may aflTord some encour-
agement.'
In the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, the prac-
tice of employing Latin words with English ternii-
nations is carried to such excess, that, to persons
acquainted only with their native tongue, many
of liis sentences must be nearly unintelligible. Thus,
speaking in his ' Vulgar Errors' of the nature of
ice, he says : ' Ice is only water congealed by the
frigidity of the air, whereby it acquireth no new
form, but rather a consistence or determination ol
its diffluency, and amitteth not its essence, but con-
dition of fluidity. Neither doth tliere anytliing
properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity;
for the determination of quicksilver is properly fixa-
tion, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and
unctious bodies only incrassation.' He uses abun-
dantly such words as dilucidate, ampliate, manii-
2; 9
FROM l.ioii
CVflXH'/LDIA Or
TO 1649.
ducti'.in, imliuitatc, rcniinisceiitial evocation, farra-
ginous, ailvetiieiit, ariolation, lapitidical.
Those who arc acquainted witli l)r Johnson's st.yle,
will at once perceive tlie rescipblance, particuhirly
in respect to the abundance of Latin words, which
it bears to that of ^ir Thomas Browne. Indeed there
can be no doubt that the author of the ' Rambler'
acquired much of his fondness for pompous and
sounding expressions from the writings of the learned
knight of Norwich. Coleridge, who was so well
qualified to appreciate the writings of Browne, has
numbered him among his first favourites. ' Rich in
Tarious knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and
conceits ; contemplative, imaginative, often truly
great and magnificent in his style and diction,
though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyper-
Latinhtic. He is a quiet and sublime erithuniast,
with a strong tinge of the fanlast : the humorist
constantly mingling with, and flashing across, the
philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play
upon tlie main dye.' The same writer has pointed
out the eritireness of Browne in every subject before
hini. He never wanders from it, and he has no
occasion to wander; for whatever happens to be his
subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. We
may add the complete originality of his mind. He
seems like no other writer, and his vast and solitary
abstractions, stamped with his peculiar style, like
the hieroglyphic characters of the East, carry the
imagination back into the primeval ages of the
world, or forward into the depths of eternity.
[Oblivion.']
What song the s^Tens sang, or what name Achilles
assumed when he hid himself among women, though
puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the
famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes
and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But
who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what
bodies these ashes made up, were a question above
antiquarianism ; not to be resolved by man, nor easily
perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial
guardians, or tutelaiy observators. Had they made
as good provision for their names as they have done
for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the
art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be
but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.
Vain ashes, which, in the oblivion of names, persons,
times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruit-
less continuation, and only arise tmto late posterity,
as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride,
vain-glory, and maddening vices. Pagan vain-glories,
which thought the world might last for ever, had en-
couragement for ambition, and finding no Atropos
unto the immortality of their names, were never
damped with the necessity of oblivion. Even old am-
bitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of
their vain-glories, who, acting early, and before the
probable meridian of time, have by this time found
great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the
ancient heroes have already outlasted their monu-
ments and mechanical preservations. But in this
latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies
unto our memories, when ambition may fear the pro-
I'hecy of Elias ;' and Charles V. can never hope to live
within two Methuselahs of IIector.2
And therefore restless inquietude for the diutumity
of our memories unto present considerations, seems a
vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of
folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names
' That the world may last but six thousand years.
■ Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah, before
tkat famous prince was extant.
as some have done in their persons ; one face of Janus
holds no proportion unto the other. It is too late to
be ambitious. The great nmtations of the world are
acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To
extend our memories by monuments, whose death we
daily praj' for, and whose duration we cannot hope,
without injury to our expectations, in the advent of
the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs.
We, whose generations are ordained in this setting
part of time, are providentially taken ofi" from such
imaginations ; and being necessitated to eye the re-
maining particle of futurit}', are naturally constituted
unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excus-
ably decline the consideration of that duration, which
maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that is past
a moment.
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies,
and the mortal right-lined circle' must conclude and
shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium
of time, which temporally considereth all things. Our
fathers find their graves in our short memories, and
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.
Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Genera-
tions pass while some trjes stand, and old families
last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions
like many in Gruter,^ to hope for eternity by enig-
matical epithets, or first letters of our names, to be
studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new
names given us, like many of the nmmmies, are cold
consolations unto the students of perjietuity, even by
everlasting languages.
To be content that times to come should only know
there was such a man, not caring whether they knew
more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan ; dis-
paraging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of
himself, who cares to subsist, like H ippocrates' patients,
or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nomina-
tions, without deserts and noble acts, which are the
balsam of our memories, the enteUchia and soul of our
subsistences. To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds
an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives
more happily without a name than Herodias with one.
And who had not rather have been the good thief,
than Pilate?
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her
poppy, and deals with the memory- of men without
distinction to merit of perpetuity : who can but pity
the founder of the pyramids ? llerostratus lives that
bunit the temple of Diana ; he is almost lost tliat
built it : time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's
horse ; confounded that of himself. In vain we com-
pute our felicities by the advantage of our good names,
since bad have equal durations ; and Thersites is like
to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favour of
the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best
of men be known ? or whether there be not more re-
markable persons forgot than any that stand remem-
bered in the known account of time? Without the
favour of the everlasting register, the first man had
been as unknown as the last, and ^lethuselah's long
life had been his only chronicle.
Oblivion is not to be hired : the greatest part must
be content to be as tliough they had not been ; to
be found in the register of God, not in the record of
man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story
before the flood ; and the recorded names ever since
contain not one living century. The number of
the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The
night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows
when was the equinox ! Every hour adds unto that
current arithmetic which scarce stands one moment.
And since death nmst be the Lucina of life ; and even
Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die ;
• The character of death.
' Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquae.
300
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR THOMAS BROWNK.
since our longest sun sets at right desccnsions, and
makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be
long before we lie down in darkness, and have our
light in ashes ; since the brother of death daily haunts
us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old in
itself, bids us hope no long duration ; diuturnity ia a
dream, and folly of expectation.
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and
oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our
living beings ; we slightly remember our felicities, and
the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows
destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are
fables. Afflictions induce callosities ; miseries are
slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwith-
standing, is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of
evils to ome, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful
provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of
our few and evil days ; and our delivered senses not
relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are
not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part
of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with
a transmigration of their souls — a good way to contiime
their memories, while, having the advantage of plural
successions, they could not but act something remark-
able in S'.Jch variety of beings ; and, enjoying the fame
of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory
unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in
the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to
recede into the common being, and make one particle
of the public soul of all things, which was no more
than to return into their unknown and divine original
again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied,
contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend
the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding
the wind, and folly. The Egj'ptian mummies, which
Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consum-
eth. Mummy is become merchandise ; Mizraim cures
wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. * *
There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality.
Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no
end, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence
that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of
omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to
sufier even from the power of itself ; all others have a
dependent being, and within the reach of destruction.
But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates
all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after
death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God,
who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our
resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath
airectly promised no duration ; wherein there is so
much of chance, that the boldest expectants have
found unhappy frustration, and to hold long subsist-
ence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a
noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the
grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal
lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the in-
famy of his nature. * * ♦
Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregula-
rities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient
magnanimity. But the most magnanimous resolution
rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon
pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pur-
suing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others
must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in
angles of contingency.
Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of
futurity, made little more of this world than the world
that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos
of pre-ordination and night of their fore-beings. And
if any have been so happy as truly to understand Chris-
tian annihilation, ecstacies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God,
and ingression into the divine shadow, they have
already had a handsome anticipation of heaven : the
glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in
ashes unto them.
To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their
productions, to exist in their names, and predicament
of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expecta-
tions, and made one part of their elysiums. But all
this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To
live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not
only a hope but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis
all one to lie in St Innocent's churchyard, as in the
sands of Egj'pt ; ready to be anything in the ecstacy
of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles
of Adrianus.
[Light the Shadow of OocL]
Light that makes things seen makes some things
invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shado>y
of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained
unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the
fourth day, when they were created above the horizon
with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them.
The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by ad-
umbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish t^^ies
we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life
itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed
hut the shadows of the living. All things fall under
this name. The sun itself is but the dark Simula-
chrum, and light but the shadow of God.
[Toleration.']
I could never divide myself from any man upon the
difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judg-
ment for not agreeing with me in that from which
within a few days I should dissent myself.
[Death.]
I thank God I have not those strait ligaments
or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life,
or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death.
Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror
thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of the deceased,
continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous
relics, like vespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become
stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality ;
but that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplat-
ing the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein
able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-
resolved Christian. And therefore am not angry at
the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a
part of this common fate, and like the best of them
to die, that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell
of the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a moment,
to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a
full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable
moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do con-
ceive myself the mlserablest person extant. Were
there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities
of this world should not intreat a moment's breath
for me ; could the devil work my belief to imagine I
could never die, I would not outlive that very thought ;
I have so abject a conceit of this common way of ex-
istence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I can-
not think this is to be a man, or to live according
to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a bet-
ter, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my
best meditations do often desire death. I honour any
man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that
is afraid of it : this makes me naturally love a soldier,
and honour those tattered and contemptible regiments,
that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a
Pagan there may be some motives to be in love with
life ; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see
not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too
sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come. * *
301
FKOM 1558
CYCLOP JEDIA OF
TO 1649.
It is a brave act of valour to contemn death ; but
where life is more terrible than death, it is then the
truest valour to dare to live ; and herein religion hath
taunjht us a noble example. For all the valiant acts
of Curtius, Scacvola, or Codrus, do not parallel or
match that one of Job ; and sure there is no torture
to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death
itself, like those in the way or prologue to it. ' Emori
nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil euro' — [' I would not
die,but carenotto bedead']. Were I of Cmsar's religion,
I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at
one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating
torture of a disease. Men that look no further than
tlieir outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life,
and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick ;
but I that have examined the parts of man, and know
ui)on what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do
wonder that we are not always so ; and considering the
thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God
that we can die but once. It is not only the mischief
of diseases, and villany of poisons, that make an end
of us : we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new
mventions of death ; it is in the power of every hand
to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one
we meet he doth not kill us. There is, therefore, but
•ne comfort left, that though it be in the power of the
weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest
to deprive us of death : God would not exempt him-
self from that, the misery cf immortality in the flesh ;
he undertook not that was immortal. Certainly there
is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in
the optics of those eyes to behold felicity ; the first
day of our jubilee is death. The devil hath therefore
failed of his desires ; we are happier with death, than
we should have been without it. There is no misery
but in himself, where there is no end of misery ; and
so, indeed, in his own sense, the stoic is in the right.
He forgets that he can die who complains of misery ;
we are in the power of no calamity while death is in
our own.
[Stiidij of God's Woris.]
The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but
studied and contemplated by man ; it is the debt of
our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay
for not being beasts ; without this, the world is still
as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth
day, when as yet there was not a creature that could
conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of
God receives small honour from those vulgar heads
that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity
admire his works ; those highly magnify him whose
judicious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate research
into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and
learned admiration.
[Ghosts.]
I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth
perish, and is left in the same state after death as
before it was materialed unto life ; that the souls of
men know neither contrary nor corruption ; th.at they
subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by the
privilege of their proper natures, and without a mi-
racle ; that the souls of the faithful, as they leave
earth, take possession of heaven ; that those appa-
ritions and ghosts of departed persons are not the
wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of
devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief,
blood, and villany, instilling and stealing into our
hearts ; that the blessed spirits are not at rest in
their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the
world ; but that those phantasms appear often, and
do frequent cemeteries, chanicl-liouses, and churches,
it is because those are the dormitories of the dead,
▼here the devil, ke an inscilcnt champion, beholds
with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over
Adam.
[Of Myself.]
For my life it is a miracle of thirty years, which to
relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and
would sound to common ears like a fable. For the
world, I count it not an inn but a hospital, and a
place not to live but to die in. The world that I re-
gard is myself ; it is the microcosm of my own frame
that I can cast mine eye on — for the other I use it but
like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my
recreation. * * The earth is a point not only in
respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly
and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that
circumscribes me, limits not my mind. That surface
that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade
me I have any. * * Whilst I study to find how
I am a microcosm or little world, I find myself some-
thing more than the great. There is surely a piece
of divinity in us— something that was before the
heavens, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature
tells me I am the image of God as well as Scripture.
He that understands not thus much, hath not his in-
troduction or first lesson, and hath yet to begin the
alphabet of man.
[Charity.']
But to return from philosophy to charity : I hold
not so narrow a conceit of this virtue, as to conceive
that to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a
piece of liberality can comprehend the total of charity.
Divinity hath wisely divided the acts thereof into
many branches, and hath taught us in this narrow
way many paths unto goodness : as many ways as we
may do good, so many ways we may be charitable ;
there are infirmities, not only of body, but of soul and
fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our
abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but
behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is
no greater charity to clothe his body, than .apparel the
nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to
see the reasons of other men wear our liveries, and
their borrowed understandings do homage to the
bounty of ours. It is the cheapest w.ay of beneficence,
and, like the natural charity of the sun, illuminates
another without obscuring itself. To be reserved and
caitiff in this part of goodness, is the sordidcst piece
of covetousness, and more contemptible than pecu-
niary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar)
I am obliged by the duty of my condition : I make
not, therefore, my head a grave, but a treasure of
knowledge ; I intend no monopoly, but a community
in learning ; I study not for my own sake only, but i
for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no
man that knows more than myself, but pity them
that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of
my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish
and keep it alive in mine own head, than beget and
propagate it in his ; and in the midst of all my en-
deavours, there is but one thought that dejects me,
that my accjuired parts must perish with myself, nor
can be legacied among my honoured friends. I can-
not fall out, or contemn a man for an error, or con-
ceive why a difference in opinion should divide an
affection : for controversies, disputes, and argumenta-
tions, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet
with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe
the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there
is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the pur-
pose ; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon
a false scent, and forsakes the question first started.
And this is one reason why controversies are never
determined ; for though they be amply proposed, they
are scarce at all handled, they do so swell with un-
necessary digressions ; and the parenthesis on the
302
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN KNOX.
party is often as large as the main discourse upon
the subject.
JOHN KNOX.
The Scottish prose writers of this period are few,
and, in general, not only in language and style, but
in tlie extent of their learning and whole strain of
their genius, they fall strikingly below the first class
of their English contemporaries.
At the commencement of the period, we find the
name of a writer whose true eminence lies in a dif-
ferent field, that of vigorous political movement.
John Knox, the celebrated reformer, was born at
Haddington, in 1505. Bred a friar, he early em-
bracfcd tiie doctrines of the Reformation, and while
Birthplace of Knox.
disseminating them at St Andrews, was carried pri-
soner to France in 1547. Being set at liberty two
years afterwards, he preached in England till the
accession of Mary in 1554 induced him to retire to
the continent, where he resided chiefly at Geneva
and Frankfort. Visiting Scotland in 1555, he greatly
strengthened the Protestant cause by his exertions
in Edinburgh ; but at the earnest solicitation of the
English TOngregation in Geneva, he once more took
up his aJode there in 1556. At Geneva he pub-
lishod The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the
Monstrous Regiment^ of Women, directed principally
against Mary of England and the queen regent of
Scotland, Returning to Scotland in 1559, he conti-
' Regimen or government.
nued his exertions in behalf of Protestantism, which,
by tlie aid of an English army, finally triumphed
in the following year. He died in 1572, and when
laid in tlie grave, was characterised by tlie P^arl of
Morton as one ' wlio never feared the face of man.'
The theological works of Knox are numerous, but
his fliief production is a History of the Reformation
of lirll/wn u-ithin the liealm of Scotland, printed after
his death. Although, from having been written at
intervals, and amid the distractions of a busy life,
much of it is in a confused and ill-digested state,
it still maintains its value as a chief source of infor-
mation on tlie ecclesiastical history of the eventfuV
period during which the author Hved; and, though
sometimes inaccurate, and the production of a parti-
zan, it has, in the main, been confirmed by the re-
searches of later historians. As a specimen of tliis
celebrated work, we select the account of the
\^Assaisination of Cardinal Beaton.]
After the death of Master Wifihart, the cardinal
was cried up by his flatterers, and all the rabble of
the corrupt clergy, as the only defender of tlie Catho-
lic Church, and punisher of heretics, neglecting the
authority of the sluggish governor. And it was said
by them, that if the great prelates of latter days, both
at home and abroad, had been so stout and zealous
of the credit of the Catholic Church, they had not
only suppressed all heretics, but also kept under the
laymen, who were so froward and stubborn. On the
other side, when that the people belield the great
tormenting of that innocent, they could not withhold
from piteous mourning and complaining of the inno-
cent lamb's slaughter. After the death of this blessed
martyr of C!od, began the people in plain speaking
to damn and detest the cruelty tliat was used ; yea,
men of great birth, and estimation, and honour, at
open tables avowed, that the blood of the said IMastcr
George should be revenged, or else it shoul 1 cost life
for life. And that, in a short time, they should be like
hogs kept for slaughter, by this vicious priest, which
neither minded God nor cared for man. Araon"-st
those that spake against the cardinal's crueltv, John
Lesley, brother to the fiarl of Kothes, was chief, with
his cousin Norman Lesley, who had been a great fol-
lower of the cardinal, and very .active for him, but a
little before fell so foul with him, that they came to
high reproaches one with another. The occasion of
their falling out was a private business, wherein Nor-
man Lesley said he was wronged by the cardinal. On
the other side, the cardinal said he was not with re-
spect used by Norman Lesley, his inferior. The said
John Lesley in all companies spared not to say, that
that same dagger (showing forth his dagger), and that
same hand, should be put in the cardinal's breast.
These bruits came to the cardinal's ears ; hut he
thought himself stout enough for all Scotland ; for
in Babylon, that is, in his new block-house,* he was
sure, as he thought, and upon the fields he was able
to niatch all his enemies. * * Many purposes were
devised how that wicked man might have been taken
away ; but all faileth, till Friday the 2Rth of Mny,
anno 154G, when the aforesaid Norman came at night
to Saint Andrews. William Kirkcaldy of (irange,
younger, was in the to^vn before, waiting upon tlie
purpose. Last came John Lesley, as aforesaid, wlio
was most suspected. What conclusion they took that
night, it was not known, but by the issue that fol-
lowed. But early upon the Saturday, in the morning,
the 29th of May, were they in suntlry companies in
the abbey churchyard, not far distant from the castle.
* The archiepiscopal palace of St Andrewg, in which the
cardinal resided, was a fortified building, to which, it appear*,
he had recently made some important additions for fartbei
security,
303
FROM 1658
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO \6ih
First, the gates being open, and the drawbridge letten
down, for receiving of iinie and stones, and other
things necessary for building (for Babylon was almost
finished), tirst, we say, essayed William Kirkcaldy
of Grange, younger, and with him six persons, and
getting entry, held purpose with the porter. If my
lord was waking? wlio answered. No. While the
said William and the porter talketh, and his ser-
Tauts made them to look at the work and workmen,
approached Is'orman Lesley with his company ; and
because they were in great number, they easily gat
entry. They address to the midst of the court ; and
immediately came John Lesley, somewhat rudely,
and four persons with him. The porter fearing, would
have drawn the bridge ; but the said John, being en-
tered thereon, stayed it, and leaped in ; and while
the porter made him for defence, his head was broken,
the keys taken from him, and he cast into the ditch,
and so the place was seized. The shout ariseth ; the
workmen, to the number of more than a hundred, ran
off the walls, and were without hurt put forth at the
wicket gate. The first thing that ever was done, Wil-
liam Kirkcaldy took the guard of the privy postern,
fearing lest the fox should have escaped. Then go the
rest to the gentlemen's chambers, and without violence
done to any man, they put more than fifty persons to
the gate : the number that enterprised and did this,
was but sixteen persons. The cardinal, wakened with
the shouts, asked from his window, What meant that
noise ? It was answered, that Norman Lesley had
taken his castle : which understood, he ran to the
postern, but perceiving the passage to be kept without,
he returned quickly to his chamber, took his two-
handed sword, and caused his chamberlain to cast
chests and other impediments to the door. In this
meantime came John Lesley unto it, and bids open.
The cardinal asking. Who calls ? he answered, JMy
name is Lesley. He demanded. Is that Norman ?
The other saith, Nay, my name is John. I will have
Norman, saith the cardinal, for he is my friend. Con-
tent yourself with such as are here, for other you shall
have none. There were with the said John, James
Melvin, a man familiarly acquainted with Master
George Wishart, and Peter Carmichael, a stout gen-
tleman. In this meantime, while they force at the
door, the cardinal hides a box of gold under coals
that were laid in a secret corner. At length he
a.sketh. Will ye save my life 1 The said John an-
swered, It may be that we will. Nay, saith the car-
dinal, swear unto me by God's wounds, and I will
oi)en to you. Then answered the said John, It that
was said is unsaid ; and so cried. Fire, fire (for the
door was very strong), and so was brought a chimley-
fuU of burning coals ; which perceived, the cardinal
or his chamberlain (it is uncertain) opened the door,
and the cardinal sat down in a chair, and cried, I
am a priest, I am a priest ; ye will not slay me. The
said John Lesley (according to his former vows) struck
him first once or twice, and so did the said Peter.
But James Melvin (a man of nature most gentle and
most modest), perceiving them both in choler, with-
drew them, and said. This work and judgment of God
(although it be secret) ought to be done with greater
gravity. And presenting unto him the point of the
sword, said. Repent thee of thy former wicked life,
but especially of the shedding of the blood of that
notable instrument of God, Master George Wishart,
which albeit the flame of fire consumed before men,
yet cries it for vengeance upon thee, and we from
God are sent to revenge it. For here, before my God,
I protest, that neither the hatred of thy person, the
love of thy riches, nor the fear of any trouble thou
couldst have done to me in particular, moved or
moreth me to strike thee ; but only because thou \<'4S>
been, and remainest, an obstinate enemy against
Christ Jesus and his holy gospel. And so he struck
him twice or thrice through with a stng-sword : and
so he fell, never word heard out of his mouth, but, I
am a priest, fie, fie, all is gone.
While they were thus busied with the cardinal, the
fray rose in the to\Mi ; the provost assembles the com-
monalty, and comes to the house-side, crying, What
have ye done with my lord cardinal ? where is my
lord cardinal? hare ye slain my lord cardinal!
They that were within answered gently. Best it were
for you to return to your own houses, for the man ye
call the cardinal hath received his reward, and in his
own person will trouble the world no more. But then
more enragedly they cry. We shall never depart till
that we see him. And so was he brouglit to the east
block-house head, and showed dead over the wall to
the faithless multitude, which would not believe be-
fore they saw, and so they departed without Requiem
cetcrnam, et rcquicscat in 2xtce, sung for his soul. * *
These things we vrrite merrily, but we would that the
reader should obsen'e God's just judgments, and how
that he can deprehend the worldly-wise in their own
wisdom, make their table to be a snare to trap their own
feet, and their own purposed strength to be their ovni
destruction. These are the works of our God, whereby
he would admonish the tyrants of this earth, that in
the end he will be revenged of their cruelty, what
strength soever they make in the contrary.
DAVID CALDERWOOD SIR JABIES MELVII,.
In the reign of James VI., a work similar to that
of Knox, but on a much more extensive scale, more
minute, and involving many public documents, was
written by David Calderavood, another zealous
Presbyterian divine. An abridgment of this work
has been printed under the title of T/ie True History
of the Church of Scotland : the original, in six folio
volumes of manuscript, reposes in the library of
the university of Glasgow. For his resolute oppo-
sition to Episcopacy, Calderwood was imprisoned
in 1617, and afterwards banished from Scotland.
On his return, he became minister of Pencaitland,
in Haddingtonshire. The style of his work deserves
little commendation ; but though tinged with party-
feeling, it has always been valued as a repertory of
historical facts.
Sir James Melvil, privy councillor and gentle-
man of the bed-chamber to Mary Queen of Scots,
was born at Hall-hill, in Fifeshire, in the year 1530,
and died in 1606. He left in manuscript a historical
work, which for a considerable time lay unknown
in the castle of Edinburgh, but having at length
been discovered, was published in 1683, under the
title of Memoirs of Sir James Melvil of Hall-hill,
containing an Impartial Account of the Most Remark-
able Affairs of State during the Last Age, not men-
tioned by other Historians ; more particularly Relating
to the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, under the
Reigns of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, and
King James. In alhvhich Transactions the Author was
Personally and Publicly Concerned. This work is es-
teemed for the simplicity of its style, and as the sole
authority for the history of many important events.
JOHN LESLEY.
John Lesley, bishop of Ross, was a zealous
partisan of Queen Mary, whom he accompanied
on her return from France to Scotland in 1561,
and in whose behalf he actively exerted himself
during her imprisonment in England. Forced by
Elizabeth to withdraw to the continent on account
of the conspiracies against her in which be en-
gaged, he was appointed bishop of Constance in
1593, and in that situation employed his wealth
and influence in founding three colleges for the in-
304
PRObE WRITERS.
ExNGLlSll LITEKATURE.
JOHN LESLET.
struction of his countrymen, at Rome, Paris, and
Douay. Being now, liowever, advanced in years,
he shortly afterwards resigned tlie mitre, and re-
tired to a monastery in the Netherlands, where
he died in 1590. His chief publications are, a
treatise in defence of Queen Mary and her title to
the English crown ; a Description of Scotland and the
Scottish Isles ; and a work on the Origin, Manners,
and Exploits of the Scotch. All these are in Latin ;
the last two forming a volume which he published at
Rome in 1578. He wrote in the Scottish language
a History of Scotland from 143G to 1561, of which
only a Latin translation (contained in the volume
just mentioned) was published by himself; the ori-
ginal, however, was printed by the Bannatyne Club
in 1830. In 1842 appeared a work entitled Vestia-
rium Scoticum,* the body of which consisted of a
catalogue of the tartans peculiar to Scottish families,
composed by Bishop Lesley in the Scottish language,
and whicli had long been preserved in manuscript
in the college of Douay,
[Character of James F.]
^From Lesley's ' History of Scotland.']
[^Original Spelling. — Thier wes gryt dule and meane maid for
him throw all the partis of his realme, because he was a nobill
prince, and travaillet mekill all his dayis for maintening of
hissubjectisin peace, justice, andquietnes. lie was a man, ic]
There was great dole and moan made for him through
all the parts of his realm, because he was a noble
prince, and travailed mickle all his days for main-
taining of his subjects in peace, justice, and quietness.
He was a man of personage and stature convenient,
albeit mighty and strong therewith, of countenance
amiable and lovely, specially in his communication ;
his eyes gray and sharp of sight, that whomsoever he
did once see and mark, he would perfectly know in
all times thereafter ; of wit in all things quick and
prompt ; of a princely stomach and high courage in
great perils, doubtful affairs, and matters of weighty
importance : he had, in a manner, a divine foresight,
for in such things as he went about to do, he did them
advisedly and with great deliberation, to the intent
that amongst all men his wit and prudence might be
noted and regarded, and as far excel and pass all
others Ln estate and dignity. Besides this, he was
sober, moderate, honest, affable, courteous, and so far
abhorred pride and arrogance, that he was ever sharp
and quick to them which were spotted or noted with
that crime. He was also a good and sure justiciar,!
by the which one thing he allured to him the hearts
of all the people, because they lived quietly and in
rest, out of all oppression and molestation of the nobi-
lity and rich persons ; and to this severity of his was
joined and annexed a certain merciful pity, which he
did ofttimes show to such as had offended, taking
rather compositions of money nor^ men's lives ; which
was a plain argument that he did use his rigour only
(as he said himself) to bow and abate the high and
wrongous hearts of the people, specially Irishmen^
and borderers, and others, nursed and brought up in
seditious factions and civil rebellions ; and not for
greedy desire of riches or hunger of money, although
such as were afflicted would cry out ; and surely this
good and modest prince did. not devour and consume
the riches of his country ; for he by his high policy mar-
vellously riched his realm and himself, both with gold
and silver, all kind of rich substance, whereof he
left great store and quantity in all his palaces at his
departing. And so this king, living all his time in
the favour of fortune, in high honour, riches, and glory,
and, for his noble acts and prudent policies, worthy
* Edited by John Sobieslti Stuart. 4to. Tait : Edinburgh.
1 Criminal judge. ^ Than. ^ jj^rgemen, or Iligblanders.
21
to be registered in the book of fame, gave up and
rendered his sj)irit into tlie hands of Almighty God,
where I doubt not but he has sure fruition of the joy
that is prepared for these as shall sit on the right
hand of our Saviour.
[Burning of Edinburgh and Lcith by the English
ill 1544.]
Now will I return to the earnest ambition of King
Henry of England, who ceased not to search by all
means possible to attain to his desire,' and therefore
sent a great army by sea into Scotland, with the Earl
of Hertford, his lieutenant, and the Viscount Lisle, his
admiral, with two liundred great ships, besides boats
and crears that carried their victuals, whereof there
was great number ; and the whole fleet arrived in the
firth foment'- Leith the third day of May, and landed
at the New Haven about xx thousand men, with great
artillery and all kind of munition, the fourth of May.
In the meantime, the Governor being in the town of
Edinburgh, hearing of their sudden arrival, departed
forth of the town toward Leith, accompanied with the
Cardinal, Earls of Huntly, Argyll, Bothwell, and
others, with their own household men only, purposing
to stop the landing of the enemy ; but frae^* they were
surely advertised of the great number of their enemies,
wherethrough they were not able to withstand their
forces, they returned to Edinburgh, and sent Sir Adam
Otterburne, provost of the towi^ and two of the bailies,
to the said Earl Hertford, lieutenant, desiring to know
for what cause he was come with such an army to
invade, considering there was no war proclaimed be-
twixt the two realms ; and if there was any injuries
or ^VTongs done whereu])on the King of England was
offended, they would appoint commissioners to treat
with them thereupon, and to that effect thankfully
would receive them witliin tlie town of P^dinburgh.
The said Earl of llertfonl answered, that he had no
commission to treat upon any matters, but only to
receive the Queen of Scotland, to be convoyed in Eng-
land to be married with Prince Edward ; and if they
would deliver her, he would abstain from all pursuit,
otherwise he would burn and destroy the towns of
Edinburgh, Leith, and all others where he might be
master within the realm of Scotland, and desired
therefore the hailH men, wives, bairns, and others,
being within the town of Edinburgh, to come forth of
the same, and present them before him as lieutenant,
and offer them into the king's will, or else he would
proceed as he had spoken. To the which the provost,
by the command of the Goveniorand council, answered,
that they would abide all extremity rather or^ they ful-
filled his desires ; and so the Governor caused furnish
the castle of Edinburgh with all kind of necessary fur-
niture, and departed to Striveling.<> In the meantime,
the English army lodged that night in Leith. Upon
the morn, being the fifth of May, they marched for-
ward toward Edinburgh by the Canongate, and or^ their
entering therein, there came to them six thousand
horsemen of English men from Berwick by land, who
joined with them, and passed up the Canongate, of
purpose to enter at the Nether Bow ; where some re-
sistance was made unto them by certain Scottish
men, and divers of the English men were suiin, and
some also of the Scottish side, and so held them that
day occupied skirmishing, till the night came, which
compelled them to return unto their camp. And on
the next day, being the sixth of May, the great army
came forward with the haill ordinances,? and assailed
the town, which they found void of all resistance,
saving the ports of the town were closed, which they
' To enforce a marriage between his son and the in ant
Queen Mary of Scotland.
2 Opposite. 3 When, from the time when. * \t'b<]ile.
s Ere. 6 Stirling. ^ Whole ordnance.
FEOM 155n
UYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 164.9.
broke up with great artillery, and entered thereat,
carrj'ing carted ordinances before them till they came
in sight of the castle, where they placed them, pur-
posing to siege the castle. But the laird of Stane-
house, captain thereof, caused shoot at them in so
^eat abundance, and with so good measure, that
they slew a great number of Knglish men, amongst
whom there was some principal captains and gentle-
men ; and one of the greatest pieces of the English
ordinances was broken ; wherethrough they were con-
strained to raise the siege shortly and retire them.
The same day the English men set fire in divers
places of the town, but was not sufFere.d to maintain
it, through continual shooting of ordinance forth of
the castle, wherewith they were so sore troubled, that
they were constrained to return to their camp at Leith.
But the next day they returned again, and did that
they could to consume all the town with fires. So
likewise they continued some days after, so that the
most part of the town was burnt in cruel manner ;
during the which time their horsemen did great hurt
in the country, spoiling and burning sundry places
thereabout, and in special all the castle and place of
Craigmillar, where the most part of the whole riches
of Edinburgh was put by the merchants of the town
in keeping, which not without fraud of the keepers,
as was reported, was betrayed to the English men for
a part of the booty and spoil thereof.
When the English men of war was thus occupied in
burning and spoiling, the Governor sent and relieved
the Earl of Angus, Lord Maxwell, master of Glen-
cairn, and Sir George Douglas, forth of ward, and put
them to liberty ; and made such speedy preparation
as he could to set forward an army for expelling the
English men forth of the realm ; who hearing thereof,
upon the xiiij day of Way, they broke down the pier
of Leith haven, burned and destroyed the same ; and
shipping their great artillery, they sent their ships
away homeward, laden with the spoil of Edinburgh
and Leith, taking with them certain Scottish ships
which was in the haven, amongst the which the ships
called Salamander and the Unicom were carried in
England. Upon the xv day of May their army and
their fleet departed from Leith at one time, the town
of Leith being set in fire the same morning ; and their
said army that night lodged at Seaton, the next night
beside Dunbar, the third night at Renton in the
Merse, and the 18 day of May they entered in Ber-
wick. In all this time, the borderers and certain
others Scottish men, albeit they were not of sufficient
number to give battle, yet they held them busy with
daily skirmishing, that sundry of their men and horse
were taken, and therefore none of them durst in any
wise stir from the great army in all their pa.ssage
from Edinburgh to Berwick.*
* A 8 some of our readers may be pleaaed to see Bishop Lesley's
Latin version of this atrocious narrative, we here transcribe
the greater part of it from his volume printed at Rome in 1578.
It will be observed that the style is much more concise than in
the original :-7-
' Anglorum copiae Leythi pemoctant. Postero autem die
Edinburgum versus per vicum qui k canonicis nomen habet
progredientes, sex millibus equitum, qui terrestri itinere Ber-
vico vcnerant, se conjungunt. Ad infcrinrem urbis portam
Angli tofa die levibus praeliis a Scotis lacessiti sistere coguntur.
Repuisi, nocte appetente, se in castra recipiunt ; sequenti die
ad oppidum jam desertum ab omnibus qppugnandum universi
prodcunt. Portis igitur, qui clausx erant, diruptis, in urbem
irruunt, ac tormentis, qua ex arce prospici potest, dispositis,
obsidionem parant. Interea D. Stanhousius arcis preefectus
magna vi tormenta bcllica displodens, rupta ingenti hostium
machina, Anglos circiter quingentos transverbcrat Quam ob
rem soluta obsidiono, Angli cadcm die in varias oppidi partes
Ignes injecerunt Verum illud incendlum latiua spargere non
potcrant ; quod propter assiduam castii ejaculationem ita fue-
lant disturbati, utcoucti pedem in castra retulerint. Postero
lamen die oppidum eumma hostium diligentia inflammatum
JOHN SPOTISWOOD.
John Spotiswood, successively archbishop of
Glasgow and of St Andrews in the reign of James
VI., was born in 1565. A strenuous and active pro-
moter of James's scheme for the establishment of
Episcopacy in Scotland, lie stood high in the favour
of that king, as well as of Charles I., by whom he was
made chancellor of Scotland in 1635. His death took
place four years afterwards in London, whither the
Archbishop Spotiswood.
popular commotions had obliged him to retire. He
wrote, at the command of James, a History of the
Church of Scotland, from a.d. 203 to 1625. Wlien
the king, on expressing his wish for the composition
of that work, was told that some passages in it might
possibly beartoo hard upon the memory of his mother,
he desired Spotiswood to ' write and spare not ;' and
yet, says Bishop Nicolson, the historian ' ventured
not so far with a commission as Buclianan did with-
out one.'* The history was published in London in
1655, and is considered to be, on the whole, a faith-
ful and impartial narrative.
[Destruction of Religious Edifices in 1559.]
Whilst these things passed, John Knox returned
from Geneva into Scotland, and, joining with the con-
gregation, did preach to them at Perth. In his ser-
mon, he took occasion to speak against the adoration
of images, showed that the same tended to God's dis-
honour, and that such idols and monuments of super-
par quatuor dies miserabili incendio conflagravit. Foris ab
equite, aliisque militibus tam Anglis quam Scotis, tanquam k
furiis omnia vastata et diruta fuerunt. Gubemator hoc tem-
pore Comitem Angusium, D. Maxuellum, ac Georgium Doug-
lasium educi excustodiis jubet ; exercitum quam accuratissimA
cogit, ut Anglos regno ejiciat. Quod cum illi cognovissent,
pridie Id. Mail castra movent ; aggerem portus Leythi diruunt,
et alios in adverso littore portus, oppidaque incendio consumunt,
ac naves spoliis onustas in Angliam traduount. Quasdam
etiam Scoticas naves, inter quas duoe prxcipus et insignes erant,
Salamander et Unicornis dicta;, secura auferunt. Id. Mail sol-
vunt Exercitus, qui terra ducebatiu-, prima nocte, Sctonii
castra locat, secunda Dumbarri: tertia Rentoni in Merchia;
quarta ad xv Kal. Junii Hervicum pervenit. Scoti hostes in-
sequi, infestare, aliquos etiam capcre, illos denique ita agitare,
ut toto itincris hujus spatio vix quisqiuun segregare se a tola
agmine auderet.'
* Nicolsou'B Scottish Historical Library, 1736, p. 68
306
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE BUCHANAN.
stition as were erected in churches ought to be pulled
do\™, as being offensive to good and godly people.
The sermon ended, and the better sort gone to dinner,
a priest, rather to try men's affections than out of any
devotion, prepared to say mass, opening a great case,
wherein was the history of divers saints exquisitely
carved. A young boy that stood by, saying that such
boldness was unsufferable, the priest gave him a blow.
The boy, in an anger, casting a stone at the priest,
happened to break one of the pictures, whereupon stir
was presently raised, some of the common sort falling
upon the priest, others running to the altar and break-
ing the images, so as in a moment all was pulled down
in the church that carried any mark of idolatry. The
people, upon the noise thereof, assembled in great
numbers, and, invading the cloisters, made spoil of all
they found therein. The Franciscans had store of pro-
vision, both of victuals and household stuff; amongst
the Dominicans the like wealth was not found, yet so
much there was as might show the profession they
made of poverty to be feigned and counterfeit. The
Carthusians, who passed both these in wealth, were
used in like manner ; j'et was the prior permitted to
take with him what he might carry of gold and silver
plate. All the spoil was given to the poor, the rich
sort forbearing to meddle with any part thereof. But
that which was most admired was the speed they made
in demolishing these edifices. For the Charterhouse
(a building of exceeding cost and largeness) was not
only ruined, but the stones and timber so quickly
taken away, as, in less than two days' space, a vestige
thereof was scarce remaining to be seen. They of
Cupar in Fife, hearing what was done at Perth, went
in like manner to their church, and defaced all the
images, altars, and other instruments of idolatry;
which the curate took so heavily, aa the night follow-
ing he put violent hands on himself. * *
The noblemen remained at that time in St Andrews ;
and because they foresaw this their answer would not
be well accepied, and feared some sudden attempt
(for the queen with her Frenchmen lay then at Falk-
land), they sent to the lords of Dun and Pittarrow,
and others that favoured religion in the countries of
Angus and Meams, and requested them to meet at
St Andrews the 4th day of June. Meanwhile, they
themselves went to the town of Crail, whither all
that had warning came, showing great forwardness
and resolutions ; and were not a little encouraged by
John Knox, who, in a sermon made unto them at the
same time, put them in mind of that he foretold at
Perth, how there was no sincerity in the Queen Re-
gent's dealing, and that conditions would not be kept,
as they had found. Therefore did he exhort them not
to be any longer deluded with fair promises, seeing
there was no peace to be hoped for at their hands, who
took no regard of contracts and covenants solemnly
sworn. And because there would be no quietness till
one of the parties were masters, and strangers expulsed
out of the kingdom, he wished them to prepare them-
selves either to die as men, or to live victorious.
By this exhortation the hearers were so moved, as
they fell immediately to the pulling do^vn of altars
and images, and destroyed all the monuments which
were abused to idolatry in the town. The like they
did the next day in Anstruther, and from thence came
directly to St Andrews. The bishop hearing what
they had done in the coast-towns, and suspecting they
would attempt the same reformation in the city, came
to it well accompanied, of purpose to withstand them ;
but after he had tried th<^ affections of the townsmen,
and found them all inclining to the congregation, he
•went away early the next morning towards Falkland
to the queen.
That day being Sunday, John Knox preached in
the parish cliurch, taking for his theme the history of
the Gospel touching our Saviour's purging of the
temple ; and applying the corruption which was at
that time in Jerusalem to the present estate in the
church, and declaring what was the duty of those to
whom God had given authority and power, he did so
incite the auditors, as, the sermon being ended, they
went all and made spoil of the churches, rasing the
monasteries of thje Black and Gray Friars to the
ground.
[James VI. and a Refractory Preacher.l
The king perceiving by all these letters that the
death of his mother was determined, called back his
ambassadors, and at home gave order to the ministers
to remember her in their public prayers : which they
denied to do, though the form prescribed was most
Christian and lawful ; which was, ' That it might
please God to illuminate her with the light of his
truth, and save her from the apparent danger wherein
she was cast.' Upon their denial, charges were di-
rected to command all bishops, ministers, and other
office-bearers in the church, to make mention of her
distress in their public prayers, and commend her to
God in the form appointed. But of all the number, Mr
David Lindsay at Leith, and the king's own ministers,
gave obedience. At Edinburgh, where the disobedience
was most public, the king, purposing to have their
fault amended, did appoint the 3d of February for
solemn prayers to be made in her behalf, command-
ing the bishop of St Andrews to prepare himself for
that day ; which when the ministers understood, they
stirred up Mr John Cowper, a young man not entered
as yet in the function, to take the pulpit before the
time, and exclude the bishop. The king coming at
the hour appointed, and seeing him in the place,
called to him from his seat, and said, ' Mr John, that
place was destinate for another ; yet, since you are
there, if you will obey the charge that is given, and
remember my mother in your prayers, you shall go
on.' He replying, ' he would do as the Spirit of God
should direct him,' was commanded to leave the
place. And making as though he would stay, the
captain of the guard went to pull him out ; where-
upon he burst forth in these speeches, ' This day shall
be a witness against the king in the great day of the
Lord :' and then denouncing a woe to the inhabitants
of Edinburgh, he went down, and the bishop of St
Andrews entering the pulpit, did perform the duty
required. The noise was great for a while amongst
the people ; but after they were quieted, and had
heard the bishop (as he was a most powerful preacher)
out of that text to Timothy, discourse of the duty lif
Christians in ' praying for all men,' they grieved soie
to see their teachers so far overtaken, and condemned
their obstinacy in that point. In the afternoon,
Co>vper was called before the council, where Mr Wal-
ter Balcanquel and Mr William Watson, ministers,
accompanying him, for some idle speeches that es^
caped them, were both discharged from preaching in
Edinburgh during his majesty's pleasure, and Cowper
sent prisoner to Blackness.
GEORGE BUCHANAN.
George Buchanan is more distinguished as a
writer of classical Latinity than for his produc-
tions in the English tongue. He was born in Dum-
bartonshire in L506, studied at Paris and St An-
drews, and afterwards acted as tutor to the Earl
of Murray. While so employed, he gave offence
to the clergy by a satirical poem, and was obliged
to take refuge on the continent, from which he did
not return to Scotland till 1560. Though he had
embraced the Protestant doctrines, his reception at
tlie court of Mary was favourable : he assisted her
in her studies, was eTiployed to regulate the uni-
307
rROM 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 164!c.
versities, and became principal of St Leonard's
college in the iiniversity of St Andrews. He joined,
however, the Earl of Murray's party against the
queen, and was appointed tutor to James VI., whose
fedantry was probably in some degree the result of
is instructions, and 'on whom he is said to have
occasionally bestowed a hearty whipping. In 1571
he violently attacked the conduct and cliaracter of
the queen,'in a Latin work entitled Detect'io Maria
Begina. After the assassination of his patron, Regent
Murray, he still continued to enjoy the favour of
the dominant party, whose opinion that the people
are entitled to judge of and control the conduct of
their governors, he maintained with great spirit and
ability in a treatise J)e Jure Begni, published in 1579.
Having by this book offended his royal pupil, he
spent in retirement the last few years of his life,
during which he composed in Latin his well-known
' History of Scotland,' published in Edinburgh in
1582, under the title of Bertim Scoticarum Hisioria.
He died in the same year, so poor, that his funeral
took place at the public expense. Buchanan's re-
putation as a writer of Latin stands very high ; the
general excellence of his poetical compositions in
this language has been already adverted to. As a
historian, his style is held to vmite the excellences of
Livy and Sallust. Like the former, however, he is
sometimes too declamatory, and largely embellishes
his narrative with fable. ' If his accuracy and im-
partiahty,' says Dr Robertson, ' had been in any
degree equal to the elegance of his taste, and to the
purity and vigour of his style, his history might
be placed on a level with the most admired com-
positions of the ancients. But, instead of rejecting
the improbable tales of chronicle writers, he was at
the utmost pains to adorn them ; and hath clothed
with all the beauties and graces of fiction, those
legends which formerly had only its wildness and
extravagance.'
In those who are accustomed to peruse the ele-
gant Latin compositions of Buchanan, a specimen of
his vernacular prose is calculated to excite great
surprise. One exists in a tract called the Chamaleon,
which he designed as a satire upon the slippery
statesman. Secretary Maitland, of Lethington, whose
final desertion to the queen's party he could never
forgive. A glance at this work, or even at the brief
extract from it here subjoined, will suffice to extin-
guish all lamentation for the fact of his other writ-
ings being in a dead language. Yet this ungainly
strain must have been that of the familiar daily
speech of this rival of Horace and of Virgil.
[The ChamcEleon.']
Thair is a certane kynd of Beist callit Chamseleon,
engenderit in sic Countreis as the Sone hes mair
Strenth in than in this Yle of Brettane, the quhilk'
albeit it be small of Corporance, noghttheless it is of
ane strange Nature, the quhilk makis it to be na less
celebrat and spoken of than sum Beastis of greittar
Quantitie. The Proprieties^ is niarvalous, for quat
Thing evir it be applicat to, it semis to be of the
8amyn3 Cullour, and imitatis all Hewis, excepte onelie
the Quhyte and Ueid ; and for this caus anciene
Writtaris commonlie coniparis it to ane Flatterare,
quhilk imitatis all the haill Maneris of quhome he
fenzeis* him self to be Freind to, except Quhyte,
quhilk is taken to be the Symboll and Tokin gevin
commonlie in Devise of Colouris to signifie Sempil-
nes and Loyaltie, and Reld signifying Manliness and
hcroyicall Courage. This Applicatioun being so usit,
Zit^ peradventure mony that hes uowther 8eue<> the
' WTiich. * Properties. * Same. * Wbom he feigns.
* Yet. * Has neither seen.
said Beist, nor na perfyte Portraict of it, wald beleif
sick 1 thing not to be trew. I will thairfore set furth
schortlie the Descriptioun of sic an Monsture not lang
ago engendrit in Scotland in the Cuntre of Lowthiane,
not far from Hadingtoun, to that effect that the forme
knawin, the moist pestiferus Nature of the said Mon-
sture maybe moir easelie evited r^ For this Monsture
being under coverture of a Manis Figure, may easeliar
endommage"* and wers be eschapit* than gif it wer
moir deforme and strange of Face, Behaviour, Schap,
and Membris. Praying the Reidar to apardoun the
Febilnes of my waike Spreit and EngjTie,^ gif it can
not expreme perfytelie aue strange Creature, maid by
Nature, other willing to schaw hir greit Strenth,^ or
be sum accident turnit be Force frome the common
Trade and Course.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND.
William Drummond of Ilawthomden, who has
already been introduced as an eminent Scottish poet,
wrote several pieces in prose, the chief of wliich are,
The History of the Five Jameses, and A Cypress Grove,
or Philosophical Bejlectlons against the Fear of Death.
In tlie former, which has very little merit as a
historical production, he inculcates to the fullest
extent the absolute supremacy of kings, and the
duty of passive obedience of subjects. The ' Cypress
Grove ' is written in a pleasing and solemn strain,
and contains much striking imagery; but the au-
thor's reflections are frequently trite, and his posi-
tions inconsistent. He thus argues
[Against Repining at Death.']
If on the great theatre of this earth, amongst the
numberless number of men, to die were only proper
to thee and thine, then, undoubtedly, thou hadst
reason to repine at so severe and partial a law : but
since it is a necessity, from which never any age by-
past hath been exempted, and unto which tliey which
be, and so many as are to come, are thralled (no
consequent of life being more common and familiar),
why shouldst thou, with unprofitable and nought-
availing stubbornness, oppose so inevitable and ne-
cessary a condition 1 This is the high way of mor-
tality, and our general home : behold what millions
have trode it before thee ! what multitudes shall
after thee, with them which at that .same instant run !
In so universal a calamity (if death be one), private
complaints cannot be heard : with so many royal
palaces, it is no loss to see thy poor cabin burn. Shall
the heavens stay their ever-rolling wheels (for what
is the motion of them but the motion of a swift and
ever-whirling wheel, which twineth forth, and again
uprolleth our life), and hold still time to prolong thy
miserable days, as if the highest of their working
were to do homage unto thee. Thy death is a pace
of the order of this all, a part of the life of this world ;
for while the world is the world, some creatures must
die, and others take life. Eternal things are raised
far above this sphere of generation and corruption,
where the first matter, like an ever-fiowing and ebbing
sea, with divers waves, but the same water, keepeth a
restless and never-tiring current ; what is below, in
the universality of the kind, not in itself doth abide :
man a long line of years hath continued, this man
every hundred is swept away. * "' This earth is as
a table-book, and men are the notes ; the first are
washen out, that new may be written in. They who
fore-went us did leave a room for us ; and should we
grieve to do the same to those who should come after
us ? Who, being suffered to see the exquisite rarities
' Such. - More easily avoided. •* D.image.
* Worse be escaped. ° Weak spirit and iiigine.
' Kitlier willing to show her great strength.
308
REMARKS ON THE
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
STYLE OF THIS PERIOD.
of an antiquary's cabinet, is grieved that the curtain
be drawn, and to give place to new pilgrims ? And
when the Lord of this universe hath showed us the
amazing wonders of his various frame, should we take
it to heart, when he thinketh time, to dislodge ? This
is his unalterable and inevitable decree : as we had
no part of our will in our entrance into this life, we
should not presume to any in our leaving it, but
soberly learn to will that which he wills, whose very
will giveth being to all that it wills ; and reverencing
the orderer, not repine at the order and laws, which
ail-where and always are so perfectly established, that
who would essay to correct and amend any of them,
he should either make them worse, or desire things
beyond the level of possibility.
REMARKS ON' THE STYLE OF THIS PERIOD.
The poetry of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and the
prose of that of her successor, were much disfigured
through the operation of a strong propensity, on the
part of the authors, to false wit; a propensitj% as Sir
Waller Scott explains it, ' to substitute strange and
unexpected connections of sound, or of idea, for real
humour, and even for the effusions of tlie stronger
passions. It seems likely,' he adds, ' that this fashion
arose at court ; a sphere in which its denizens never
think they move with due lustre, until tliey have
adopted a form of expression, as well as a system
of manners, different from that which is proper to
mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court
language was for some time formed on the plan of
one Lyly, a pedantic courtier, who ^vrote a book
entitled " Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy
of Wit ;" which quality he makes to consist in the
indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained con-
ceit that can be engendered by a strong memory and
a heated brain, applied to the absurd purpose of
hatching unnatural conceits.* It appears that this
fantastical person had a considerable share in deter-
mining the false taste of his age, which soon became
so general, that the tares which sprung from it are
to be found even among the choicest of the wheat.
* * These outrages upon language were committed
without regard to time and place. They were held
good arguments at the bar, though Bacon sat on the
woolsack ; and eloquence irresistible by the most
hardened sinner, when King or Corbet were in the
pulpit.f Where grave and learned professions set
the example, the poets, it will readily be believed,
ran headlong into an error, for which they could plead
such respectable example. The affectation " of the
word" and " of the letter" (for alliteration was almost
as fashionable as punning) seemed in some degree
to bring back English composition to the barbarous
rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons, the merit of whose
poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint
arrangement of the words, and the regular recur-
rence of some favourite sound or letter.' J
* For an account of Lylj* as a dramatic poet, see p. 166.
f ' Witness a sermon preached at St Mary's before the uni-
versity of Oxford. It is true the preacher was a laj-man, and
harangued in a gold chain, and girt with a sword, as high
sheriff of the county ; but his eloquence was highly applauded
by the learned body whom he addressed, although it would
have startled a modem audience at least as much as the dress
of the orator. " Arriving," said he, " at the Mount of St
Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought
you some fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully
conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the
spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation." " Which way of
preaching," says Anthony Wood, the reporter of the homily,
"was tlien mostly in fashion, and commended by the gene-
rality of scholars." " — Athirne Oxon. vol. i. p. 18.1.
% Scott's Life of Dryden, section i.— The extracts which we
During the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and
Charles, literary language received large accessions
of Greek and Latin, and also of the modern Erench
have given from Overbury and Fuller may serve to illustrate
the remarks quoted above. In our opinion, Sir Walter Scott
has considerably exaggerated the faults of Lyiy's ' Euphues,"
which, however, are certainly of the kind described. Let us
take, for example, two passages at random, the first on vigour
of mind, and the second on grief for the death of a daughter : —
IPrerequisiki of Mental Vigour.']
There are three things which cause perfection in a man —
nature, reason, use. Reason I call discipline: use, exercise:
if any one of these branches want, certainly the tree of virtue
must needs wither ; for nature without discipline is of small
force, and discipline without nature more feeble: if exercise
or study be void of any of these, it availeth nothing. For as in
tilling of the ground in husbandry there is first chosen a fertile '
soil, then a cunning sower, then good seed, even so must we
compare nature to the fat earth, the expert husbandman to
the schoolmaster, the faculties and sciences to the pure seeds.
If tills order had not been in our predecessors, Pythagoraa,
Socrates, Plato, and whosoever was renowned in Greece for the
glory of wisdom, they had never been eternised for vase men,
neither canonised, as it were, for saints, among those that study
sciences. It is therefore a most evident sign of God's singular
favour towards him, that he is endued with all these qualities,
without the which man is most miserable. But if there be any
one that thinketh wit not necessary to the obtaining of wisdom,
after he hath gotten the way to virtue, and industry, and exer-
cise, he is a heretic, in my opinion, touching the true faith in
learning; for if nature play not her part, in vain is labour;
and, as it is said before, if study be not employed, in vain it
nature : sloth tumeth the edge of wit, study sharpeneth the
mind ; a thing, be it never so ea^y, is hard to the idle ; a thing,
be it never so hard, is easy to ■sWt well employed. And most
plainly we may see in many things the efficacy of industry and
labour. The little drops of rain pierce the hard marble ; iron,
with often handling, is worn to nothing. Besides this, industry
showeth herself in other things : the fertile soil, if it be never
tUled, doth wax barren, and that which is most noble by nature
is made most vile by negligence. AMiat tree, if it be not topped,
beareth any fruit? A^'hat vine, if it be not pruned, bringcth
forth grapes? Is not the strength of the body turned to weak-
ness with too much delicacy ? Were nol Milo his arms brawn-
fallen for want of wrestling ? Moreover, by labour the fierce
unicorn is tamed, the wildest falcon is reclaimed, the greatest
bulwark is sacked. It was well answered of that man of Thes-
saly, who bemg demanded who among the Thessalians were
reputed most vile, ' Those,' he said, ' that live at quiet and
ease, never giving themselves to martial affairs.' But why
should one use many words in a thing already proved ? It is
custom, use, and exercise, that brings a young man to virtue,
and virtue to his perfection.
lA Father's Grief/or the Death of his Daughter.']
Thou weepest for the death of thy daughter, and I laugh at
the foUy of the father ; for greater vanity is there in the mind
of the mourner, than bitterness in the death of the deceased.
' But she was amiable' — but yet sinful: ' but she was young,
and might have lived' — but she was mortal, and must have
died. ' Ay, but her youth made thee often merry' — Ay, but
thine age should once make thee wise. ' Ay, but her green years
were unfit for death' — Ay, but thy hoary hairs should despise
life. Knowest thou not, Eubulus, that life is the gift of God,
death is the due of nature; as we receive the one as a bene-
fit, 60 must we abide the other of necessity. Wise men have
found that by learning, which old men should know by exi"?-
rience, that in life there is nothing sweet, in death nothing
sour. The philosophers accounted it the chiefest felicit\' nover
to be born ; the second, soon to die. And what hath death in
it so hard, that we should take it so heavily ? Is it strange to
see that cut off which, by nature, is made to be cut off? or that
melted which is fit to be melted ? or that burnt which is apt
to be burnt ? or man to pass that Ls bom to perish ? But thou
grantest that she should have died, and yet art thou sorrowful
because she is dead. Is the death the better if it be the longer ?
No, truly. For as neither he that singeth most, or prayeth
longest, or ruleth the stem oftenest, but he that doth it best,
300
FBOH 1558
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1649.
and Italian. The prevalence of Greek and Ro-
man learning was the chief cause of the introduc-
tion of so many -words from those languages. Vain
of their new scholarship, the learned writers de-
lighted in parading Greek and Latin words, and
even whole sentences ; so that some specimens of
the composition of that time seem to he a mixture of
various tongues. Bacon, Burton, and Browne, were
among those who most frequently adopted long
passages from Latin authors ; and of Ben Jonson it
is remarked by Dryden, that he ' did a little too
mucli to Komanise our tongue, leaving the words
which he translated almost as much Latin as he
found them.' It would appear that the rage, as it
may be called, for originality, which marked this
period, was one of the causes of this change in our
language. ' Many think,' says Dr Heylin in 1658,
' that they can never speak elegantly, nor write sig-
nificantly, except they do it in a language of their
own devising; as if tliey were asliamed of their
mother tongue, and thought it not sufficiently cu-
rious to express tlieir fancies. By means whereof,
more French and Latin words have gained ground
upon us since the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
than were admitted by our ancestors (whether we
look upon them as the British or Saxon race), not
only since the Norman, but the Roman conquest.'
And Sir Thomas Browne about the same time ob-
serves, that ' if elegancy still proceedeth, and English
pens maintain that stream we have of late observed
to flow from many, we shall, within few years, be
fain to learn Latin to understand English, and a
work will prove of equal facility in either.' To so
great an extent was Latin thus naturalised among
English authors, that Milton at length, in his prose
works, and also partly in his poetry, introduced the
idiom or peculiar construction of that language ;
which, however, was not destined to take a perma-
nent hold of English literature ; for we find imme-
diately after, that the writings of Clarendon, Dryden,
and Barrow, were not affected by it.
In looking back upon the style of the Avriters of
whose works we have given an account in the pre-
sent section, it will be perceived that no standard
and regular form of composition had as yet been re-
cognised. ' Each author,' says Dr Drake, ' arrogated
to himself the right of innovation, and their respec-
tive works may be considered as experiments how
far their peculiar and often very adverse styles were
calculated to improve their native tongue. That
they have completely failed to fix a standard for its
structure, cannot be a subject of regret to any man
who has impartially weighed the merits and defects
Df their diction. A want of neatness, precision, and
simplicit}', is usually observable in their periods,
which are either eminently enervated and loose, or
descrveth greatest praise : bo he, not that hath most yoare, but
many virtues, nor he that hath grayest hairs, but greatest
goodness, livetli longest. The chief beauty of life consisteth
not in the numbering of many days, but in the using of vir-
tuous doings. Amongst plants, those bo best esteemed that in
shortest time bring fortli much fruit.
The follow ing sentence affords a sample of Lyly's most affected
manner in the ' F.uphues' : —
■\\Tien parents have more care how to leave their children
wealthy than wise, and are more desirous to have them main-
tain the name than the nature of a gentleman ; when they
put gold into the hands of youth, where they should put a rod
under their girdle ; when, instead of awe, they make thei..
past grace, and leave them rich executors of goods, and poor
executors of godliness ; then it is no marvel that the son, being
left rich by his father, will become retchless in his own will.
The ' Euphues' consists of two publications — one entitled
' Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit,' 1580; and the other, 'Eu-
phues and his England,' 158L
pedantic, implicated, and obscure. Notlung can be
more incompact and nerveless than the style of
Sidney ; nothing more harsh and quaint, from an af-
fectation of foreign and technical terms, than the
diction of Browne. If we allow to Hooker and
IMilton occasional majesty and strength, and some-
times a peculiar felicity of expression, it must yet
be admitted, that though using pure English words,
the elaboration and inversion of their periods are
such as to create, in the mere Englisli reader, no
small difficulty in the comprehension of their mean-
ing ; a fault, surely, of the most serious nature, and
ever productive of aversion and fatigue. To Raleigh,
Bacon, and Burton, we are indebted for a style which,
though never rivalling the sublime energy and force
occasionally discoverable in the prose of Milton,
makes a nearer approach to tlie just idiom of our
tongue than any other which their age afforded. It
is to the Restoration, however, that we must look
for that period when our language, with few excep-
tions, assumed a facility and clearness, a fluency and
grace, hitherto strangers to its structure.' *
ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.
Before concluding the present section, it may be
proper to notice the rise of a very important branch
of modern literature. We allude to newspapers,
which, at least in a printed form, had their origin in
England. Among the ancient Romans, reports (called
Acta Diuma) of what was done in the senate were
frequently published. This practice seems to have
existed before tlie time of Julius Ca?sar, who, when
consvd, gave orders that it should be attended to.
The publication was, however, prohibited by Augus-
tus. ' Acta Diurna,' containing more general in-
telligence of passing events, appear to have been
common both during the republic and under the
emperors ; of one of these, the following specimen is
given by Petronius : —
On the 26th of July, 30 boys and 40 girls were
born at Trimalchi's estate at Cuma.
At the same time a slave was put to death for
uttering disrespectful words against his lord.
The same day a fire broke out in Pompey's gardens,
which began in the night, in the steward's apartment.
In modern times, nothing similar appears to have
been known before the middle of the sixteenth
century. The Venetian government were, in the
year 1563, during a war with tlie Turks, in tlie
habit of communicating to the public, by means of
written sheets, the military and commercial infor-
mation received. These sheets were read in a par-
ticular place to those desirous to learn the news, who
paid for this privilege a coin called gazetta — a name
which, by degrees, was transferred to the newspaper
itself in Italy and France, and passed over into Eng-
land. The Venetian government eventually gave
these announcements in a regular manner once a-
month ; but they were too jealous to allow tliem to
be printed. Only a few copies were transmitted to
various places, and read to those who paid to liear.
Tliirty volumes of these manuscript newspapers exist
in the Magliabechian library at Florence.
About tlie same time, offices were established in
France, at the suggestion of the fatlier of the cele-
brated Montaigne, for making tlie wants of indivi-
duals known to each other. The advertisements
received at these offices were sometimes pasted on
walls in public places, in order to attract more atten-
tion, and were thence called afficbes. This led iu
time to a systematic and periodical publication of
advertisements m sheets ; and these sheets M'ere
* Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, &c. vol. i. p. ."W.
31C
ORIGIN OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
NEWSPAPERS.
termed affiches, in consequence of their contents
having been orifjinully fixed up as placards.
' After inquiring in various countries,' saj-s Mr
George Chalmers, ' for the origin of newspapers, I
had the satisfaction to find what I souglit for in
England. It may gratify our national pride to be
tuld, that mankind are indebted to the wisdom of
Elizabeth, and the prudence of Burleigh, for the
first newspaper. The epoch of tlie Spanish Armada
is also the epoch of a genuine newspaper. In the
British Museum there are several newspapers, which
had been printed vrhile the Spanish fleet was in the
English channel, during the year 1588. It vras a
wise policy to prevent, during the moment of general
anxiety, the danger of false reports, by publishing
real information. And the earliest newspaper is
entitled The English Mercurie, wliich, by autliority,
was " imprinted at London, by CluMstopher Barker,
her highness's printer, 1588." Burleigli's newspapers
were all Extraordinary Gazettes, wliich were pub-
lished from time to time, as that profound statesman
wished either to inform or terrify the people. The
Mercuries were probably first printed in April 1588,
when the Armada approached tlie shores of England.
After the Spanish ships had been dispersed by a
wonderful exertion of prudence and spirit, these ex-
traordinary gazettes very seldom appeared. The
Mercurie, Xo. 54, which is dated on IVIonday, Novem-
ber the 24th, 1588, informed the public that the
solemn thanksgiving for the successes which had
been obtained against the Spanish Armada was tliis
day strictly observed. This number contains also
an article of news from Madrid, which speaks of
putting the queen to death, and of the instruments of
torture that were on board the Spanish fleet. We
may suppose that such paragraphs were designed by
the policy of Burleigh, who understood all the arti-
fices of printing, to excite the terrors of the Englisli
people, to point their resentment against Spain, and
to inflame their love for Elizabeth.' It is almost
a pity to mar the effect of this passage by adding,
that doubts are entertained of tlie genuineness of
' The English Mercurie.' Of tlie three numbers
preserved, two are printed in modern type, and no
originals are known ; while the third is ' in manu-
script of the eighteenth century, altered and inter-
polated with changes in old language such as only
an author would make.'*
In the reign of James I., packets of news were
occasionally published in the shape of small quarto
pamphlets. These were entitled Aewes from Italy,
Ilunyary, &c., as they happened to refer to the
transactions of those respective countries, and gene-
rally purported to be translations from the Low
Dutch. In the year 1622, when the thirty years'
war, and the exploits of Gustavus Adolphus, ex-
cited curiosity, these occasional pamphlets were con-
verted into a regular weekly publication, entitled
The Certain Neives of this Present Week, edited by
Nathaniel Butter, and which may be deemed the
first journal of the kind in I^ngland. Other weekly
papers speedily followed ; and the avidity with which
such publications were sought after by the people,
may Ije inferred from the complaint of Burton, in his
' Anatomy of Melancholy,' that ' if any read now-a-
days, it is a play-book, or a pamphlet of newes.'
Lord Clarendon mentions, in iUustration of the dis-
regard of Scottish affairs in England during the
early part of Charles I.'s reign, ' that when the whole
nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in
Grermany and Poland, and all other jiarts of Europe,
no man ever inquired what wa.s doing in Scotland,
nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page
of any gazette.'
* Penny Cyclopsedia, ivi I'M.
It was during the civil war that newspapers first
acquired that political importance wliich they have
ever since retained. Whole flights of ' Diurnals' and
' Mercuries,' in small quarto, then began to be disse-
minated by the diflerent parties into which the state
was divided. Nearly a score are said to have been
started in 1643, when the war was at its height.
Peter Ileylin, in the preface to his 'Cosmography,'
mentions tliat ' the affairs of each town or war were
better presented in tlie weekh' newsbooks.' Accord-
ingly, we find some ]iapers entitled News from Hull,
Truths from York, Warranted Tidings from Ireland,
and Special Passages from other places. As the con-
test proceeded, the impatience of the public for early
intelligence led to the shortening of the intervals of
publication, and papers began to be distributed twice
or thrice in every week. Among these were The
French Intelligencer, The Dutch Spy, The Irish Mer-
cury, The Scots Dove, The Parliament Kite, and The
Secret Owl. There were likewise weekly papers of
a humorous character, sucli as Mercurius Achercn-
ticiis, or News from Hell ; Mercurius Democrilus,
bringing wonderful news from the world in the moon ;
The Laughing Mercury, with perfect news from the
antipodes ; and Mercurius Mastix, faithfully lashing
all Scouts, IVIercuries. Posts, Spies, and other intel-
ligencers. On one side was The Weekly Discoverer,
and on the other The Weekly Discoverer Stripped
Naked. So important an auxiliary was the press
considered, that each of the rival armies carried a
printer along with it.
The first newspaper ever printed in Scotland was
issued under the ausjiices of a party of Cromwell's
troops at Leith, who caused their attendant printer
to furnish impressions of a London Diurnal for their
information and amusement. It bore the title of
Mercurius PoUticus, and the first number of the
Scotch reprint appeared on the 26th of October, 1653.
In November of the following year, the establish-
ment was transferred to Edinburgh, where tliis re-
printing system was continued till the 11th of April,
1660. About nine months afterwards was esta-
blished the Mercurius Culedonius, of which the ten
numbers published contain some curious traits of
the extravagant feeling of joy occasioned by the
Restoration, along with much that must be set down
as only the product of a very poor wit trying to say
clever and amusing things.* It was succeeded by
The Kingdom's Intelligencer, the duration of which is
said to have been at least seven years. After this,
the Scotch had only reprints of the English news-
papers till 1699, when The Edinburgh Gazette was
established.
* For example — • March 1, 1661. A report fron London of
a new gallows, the supporters to be of stones, and beautified
with statues of the three Grand Traitors, Cromwell, Bradshaw,
and Ireton.' ' As our old laws are renewed, so likewise are our
good honest customs ; for nobility in streets a-e known by
brave retinues of their relations ; when, during the Captivity
[the Commonwealtli], a lord was scarcely to be distinguished
from a commoner. Nay, the old hospitality returns; for that
laudable custom of suppers, which was covenanted out with
raisins and roasted cheese, is again in fashion ; and where
before a peevish nurse would have been seen tripping up stairs
and down stairs with a posset for the lord or the lady, you
shall now see sturdy jackmen groaning with the weight of
surloins of beef, and chargers loaden with wild fowl and capon.'
On the day of the king's coronation — ' But of all our bontadoes
and capriceios, that of the immortal .lanet Geddes, princess of
the Tron adventurers [herb-women], was the most jileasant ;
for she was not only content to assemble all lier creels, baskets,
creepies, furms, and other ingredients that composed her shop,
but even her weather chair of state where she used to dispense
justice to her lang-kale vassals, [which] were all very orderly
burnt, she herself countenancing the action with a high-flown
spirit and vennilion majesty.' •^\^
FBOH 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
THE COMMONWEALTH AND REIGNS OF CHARLES II. AND JAMES II. [1649 TO 1089.]
POETS.
HE forty years
comprehended
in this period
produced some
great names ;
but, considering
the mighty
events which
then agitated
the country, and
must have in-
fluenced the
national feel-
ings — such as
the abolition of
the ancient mo-
narchy of Eng-
land, and the
establishment of
the commonwealth— there was less change in tlie
taste and literature of the nation than miglit have
been anticipated. Authors were still a select class,
and literature, the delight of the learned and in-
genious, had not become food for the multitude. The
chivalrous and romantic spirit whicli prevailed in
the reign of Ehzabeth, had even, before her death,
begun to yield to more sober and practical views of
human life and society : a spirit of inquiry was fast
spreading among the people. The long period of
peace under James, and the progress of commerce,
gave scope to domestic improvement, and fostered
the reasoning faculties and mechanical powers, rather
than the imagination. The reign of Charles I., a
prince of taste and accomplishments, partially re-
vived the style of the Elizabethan era, but its lustre
extended little beyond the court and the nobility.
During the civil war and the protectorate, poetry
and the drama were buried under the strife and
anxiety of contending factions. Cromwell, with a
just and generous spirit, boasted that he would make
the name of an Englishman as great as ever that of
a Roman had been. He realised his wish in the naval
victories of Blake, and the unquestioned supremacy
of England abroad ; but neither the time nor inclina-
tion of the Protector permitted him to be a patron
of literature. Charles II. was better fitted for such a
task, by natural powers, birth, and education ; but
he had imbibed a false and perverted taste, which,
added to his indolent and sensual disposition, was as
injurious to art and literature as to the public morals.
Poetry declined from the date of the Restoration, and
was degraded from a high and noble art to a mere
courtly anmsement, or pander to immorality. The
whole atmosphere of genius was not, however, tainted
by this public degeneracy. Science was assiduously
cultivated, and to this period belong some of the
proudest triumphs of English poetry, learning, and
philosophy. Milton produced his long-cherished
epic, the greatest poem which our language can
boast; Butler his inimitable burlesque of Hudibras ;
and Dryden his matchless satire and versification.
In the department of divinity, Jeremy Taylor, Bar-
row, and Tillotson, laid the sure foundations of Pro-
testantism, and the best defences of revealed religion.
In speculative philosophy, we have the illustrious
name of Locke ; in history and polite literature.
Clarendon, Burnet, and Temple. In this period, too,
Bunyan composed his inimitable religious allegory,
and gave the first conspicuous example of native
force of mind and powers of imagination rising suc-
cessful over all the obstructions caused by a low
station in life, and a miserably defective education.
The world has never been, for any length of time,
without some great men to guide and illuminate the
onward course of society ; and, happily, some of them
were found at this period to serve as beacons to
their contemporaries and to all future ages.
ABRAHAM COWLEY.
Abraham Cowley was perhaps the most popular
English poet of his times. Waller stood next in
public estimation. Dryden had as yet done nothing
to stamp his name, and Milton's minor poems had
not earned for him a national reputation : the same
year that witnessed the death of Cowley ushered the
' Paradise Lost' into the world. Cowley was born in
^L''^\^t^UM
London in the ye.ar 1618, and was the posthumous
son of a respectable grocer. His mother had influence
enough to procure .admission for him as a king's
scholar at Westminster ; and in his eighteenth year
he was elected of Trinity college, Cambridge. Cowley
' lisped in numbers ;' he published a volume of poem*
312
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ABRAHAM COW ,ET.
in liis thirteenth j'ear. A copy of Spenser used to
lie in his mother's parlonr, witli which he Avas in-
finitely delighted, and which helped to make him a
poet. The intensity of his youthful ambition may
be seen from the two first lines in his miscellanies —
What shall I do to be for ever knouii,
And make the age to come my own ?
Cowley, beine; a royalist, was ejected from Cam-
bridge, and afterwards studied at Oxford. He went
with the queen-mother to France, where he remained
twelve years. He was sent on various embassies,
and deciphered the correspondence of Charles and
his queen, which, for some years, took up all his
days, and two or three nights every week. At last
the Restoration came with all its hopes and fears.
England looked for happy days, and loyalty for its
reward, but in both cases the cup of joy was dashed
with disappointment. Cowley expected to be made
master of the Savoy, or to receive some other ap-
pointment, but his claims were overlooked. In his
youth he had written an ode to Brutus, which was
remembered to his disadvantage ; and a dramatic
production, the Cutter of Coleman Street, which Cow-
ley brought out shortly after the Restoration, and in
which the jollity and debauchery of the cavaliers are
painted in strong colours, was misrepresented or
misconstrued at court. It is certain that Cowley
felt his disappointment keenly, and he resolved to
retire into the country. He had only just passed
his fortieth year, but the greater part of his time had
been spent in incessant labour, amidst dangers and
suspense. ' He always professed,' says Dr Sprat, his
biographer, ' that he went out of the world as it was
man's, into the same world as it was nature's and as
it was God's. The whole compass of the creation,
and all the wonderful eflfects of the divine wisdom,
were the constant prospect of his senses and his
thoughts. And, indeed, he entered with great ad-
vantage on the studies of nature, even as the first
great men of antiquity did, who were generally both
poets and philosophers.' Cowley had obtained,
through Lord St Albans and the Duke of Bucking-
ham, the lease of some lands belonging to the queen,
worth about £300 per annum — a decent provision
for his retirement. The poet finally settled at Chert-
sey, on the banks of the Thames, where his house
still remains. Here he cultivated his fields, his gar-
den, and his plants ; he wrote of solitude and obscu-
rity, of the perils of greatness, and the happiness of
liberty. He renewed his acquaintance with the be-
loved poets of antiquity, whom he rivalled occa-
sionally in ease and elegance, and in commemorating
the charms of a country life ; and he composed his
fine prose discourses, so full of gentle thoughts and
well-digested knowledge, heightened by a delightful
bon-hmnmie and communicativeness worthy of Horace
or Montaigne. The style of these discourses is pure,
natural, and lively. Sprat mentions that Cowley
excelled in letter-writing, and that he and Mr M.
Clifford had a large collection of his letters, but they
had decided that nothing of that kind should be
pubHshed. This is much to be regretted. The
private letters of a distinguished author are gene-
rally read with as much interest as his works, and
Cowper and others owe much of their fame to such
confidential disclosures of their habits, opinions, and
daily hfe. Cowley was not happy in his retirement.
Solitude, that had so long wooed him to her arms,
was a phantom that vanished in his embrace. He
had attained the long-wished object of Ids studious
youth and busy manhood ; the woods and fields at
length enclosed the ' melancholy Cowley' in their
shades. But happiness was still distant. He had
quitted the ' monster London ;' he had gone out from
Sodom, hut had not found the little Zoar of his
dreams. The place of his retreat was ill selected,
and his health was affected by the change of situa-
tion. The people of the country, he found, were not
House of Cowley at Chertsey.
a whit better or more innocent than those of the
town. He could get no money from his tenants, and
his meadows were eaten up every night by cattle
put in by his neighbours. Dr Johnson, who would
have preferred Fleet Street to all the charms of
Arcadia and the golden age, has published, with a
sort of malicious satisfaction, a letter of Cowley's,
dated from Chertsey, in which the poet makes a
querulous and rueful complaint over the downfall of
his rural prospects and enjoyment. His retirement
extended over a period of only seven years. One
day, in the heat of summer, he had stayed too long
amongst his labourers in the meadows, and was
seized with a cold, which, being neglected, proved
fatal in a fortnight. The death of this amiable and
accomphshed man of genius took place on the 28th
of July, 1667. His remains were taken by water to
Westminster, and interred with great pomp in the
abbey. ' The king himself,' says Sprat, ' was pleased
to bestow on him tlie best epitaph, when, upon the
news of his death, his majesty declared tliat Mr
Cowley had not left a better man behind him.'
Cowley's poetical works are divided into four
parts — ' Miscellanies,' the ' Mistress or Love Verses,'
' Pindaric Odes,' and the ' Davideis, a heroical poem
of the Troubles of David.' The character tf his
genius is well expressed by Pope —
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.
Cowper has also drawn a sketch of Cowley in his
' Task,' in which he laments that his ' splendid wit'
should have been ' entangled in the cobwebs of the
schools.' The manners of the court and the age
inspired Cowley with a portion of gallantry, but he
seems to have had no deep or permanent passion.
Ho expresses his love in a style almost as fantastic
as the euphuism of old Lyly or Sir Percie ^^aftoa
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO l(i89.
' Poets,' he says, * are scarce thought freemen of their
company, without payinpc some duties, and obliging
tlieniselvcs to be true to love ;' and it is evident that
he himself composed his ' Mistress' as a sort of task-
work. There is so much of this wit-writing in Cow-
ley's poetry, that the reader is generally glad to
escape froni it into his prose, where he has good
sense and right feeling, instead of cold though glitter-
ing conceits, forced analogies, and counterfeited pas-
sion. Ilis anacreontic pieces are the happiest of his
poems ; in them he is easy, lively, and full of spirit.
They are redolent of joy and youth, and of images
of natural and poetic beauty, that touch the feelings
as well as the fancy. His ' Pindaric Odes,' tiiough
deformed bj' metaphysical conceits, though they do
not roll the full flood of Pindar's unnavigable song,
though we admit that even tlie art of Gray was
higher, yet contain some noble lines and illustrations.
The best pieces of his ' Miscellanies,' next to the ' Ana-
creontics,' are his lines on the death of his college
companion, Harvey, and his elegy on the religious
poet, Crashaw, which are tender and imaginative.
The ' Davideis' is tedious and unfinished, but we have
extracted a specimen to show how well Cowley could
sometimes write in the heroic couplet. It is evident
that JSIilton had read this neglected poem.
On the Death of Mr Crashaw, ,
Poet and Saint ! To thee alone are given
The two most sacred names of earth and heaven ;
The hard and rarest union which can be,
Next that of Godhead, with humanity.
Long did the Muses banish'd slaves abide,
And built vain pyramids to mortal pride ;
Like iSIoses thou (though spells and cliarms withstand)
Hast brought them nobly home, back to their holy land.
♦ « *
How well, blest swan, did Fate contrive thy death,
And made thee render up thy tuneful breath
In thy great mistress' arms !* Thou most divine
And richest offering of Loretto's shrine.
Where, like some holy sacrifice t' expire,
A fever bums thee, and Love lights the fire.
Angels, they say, brought the famed cliapel there,
And bore the sacred load in triumph through the air.
'Tis surer much they brought thee there, and they
And thou, their charge, went singing all the way.
Pardon, my mother church, if 1 consent
That angels led him when from thee he went ;
For even in error sure no danger is.
When join'd with so much piety as his.
Ah, mighty God, vi'ith shame I speak't and grief;
Ai, that our greatest faults were in belief!
And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet.
Rather than thus our wills too strong for it.
Yi'isi faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong ; his life, I'm sure, was in the right ;
And I myself a Catholic will be.
So far, at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail bard triumphant, and some care bestow
On us the poets militant below,
Oppos'd by our old enemy, advei-se chance,
Attack'd by envy and by ignorance,
Enchain'd by beauty, tortured by desires,
Expos'd by tyrant love to savage beasts and fires ;
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise.
And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies !
Heaven and Hell.
[From the ' Davideis."]
bleep on ! Rest, quiet as thy conscience, take,
For though thou sleep'st thyself, thy God's awake.
* Mr Crasliaw died of a fever at Loretto, being newly chosen
nanua of that church.
Above the subtle foldings of the sky.
Above the well-set orbs' soft harmony ;
Above those petty lamps that gild the night,
There is a place o'erflown with hallowed light ;
■Where Heaven, as if it left itself behind,
Is stretched out far, nor its own bounds can find :
Here peaceful flames swell up the sacred place,
Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space
For there no twilight of the sun's dull ray
Glimmers upon the pure and native day.
No pale-faced moon does in stolen beams appear.
Or with dim tapers scatter darkness there.
On no smooth sjihere the restless seasons slide,
No circling motion doth swift time divide ;
Nothing is there to come, and nothing ^a^f,
But an eternal now does always last.
Beneath the silent chambers of the earth.
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth.
Where he the growth of fatal gold does see- —
Gold which above more influence has than he —
Beneath the dens where unfledg'd tempest>i lie.
And infant winds their tender voices try ;
Beneath the mighty ocean's wealthy caves ;
Beneath the eternal fountain of the waves,
Where their vast court the mother-waters keep.
And, undisturb'd by moons, in silence sleep,
There is a place, deep, wondrous deep below,
Which genuine Night and Horror does o'erflow :
No bound controls the imwearied space but hell,
Endless as those dire pains that in it dwell.
Here no dear glimpse of the sun's lovely face
Strikes through the solid darkness of the place ;
No dawning morn does her kind red display ;
One slight weak beam would here be thought the day ;
No gentle stars, with their fair gems of light.
Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night.
Here Lucifer, the mighty captive, reigns,
Proud 'midst his woes, and tyrant in his chains.
Once general of a gilded host of sprites.
Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights ;
But down like lightning which him struck he came.
And roar'd at his first plunge into the flame.
Myriads of spirits fell wounded round him there ;
With dropping lights thick shone the singed air.
♦ * •
A dreadful silence fill'd the hollow place,
Doubling the native terror of hell's face ;
Rivers of flaming brimstone, which before
So loudly raged, crept softly by the shore ;
No hiss of snakes, no clank of chains was knowi',
The souls amidst their tortures durst not groan.
To Pyrrha.
In imitation of Horace's Ode, Lib. i. Od. 5.
To whom now, Pyrrha, art thou kind ?
To what heart-ravish'd lover
Dost tliou thy golden lock unbind.
Thy hidden sweets discover,
And, with large bounty, open set
All the bright stores of thy rich cabinet ?
Ah, simple youth ! how oft will he
Of thy chang'd faith complain !
And his own fortunes find to be
So airy and so vain ;
Of so cameleon-like a hue,
That still their colour changes with it too !
How oft, alas ! will he admire
The blackness of the skies ;
Trembling to hear the winds sound higher,
And sec the billows rise !
Poor unexperienc'd he,
Who ne'er, alas, had been before at sea !
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ABRAHAM COWLET.
H' enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,
And no breath stirring hears;
[n the clear heaven of thy brow
No smallest cloud appears.
He sees thee gentle, fair, and gay.
And trusts the faithless April of thv May.
Unhappy ! thrice unhappy he,
T' whom thou untried dost shine !
But there's no danger now for me,
Since o'er Loretto's shrine,
In witness of the ship^vreck past,
My consecrated vessel hangs at last.
Anacreontics.
Or eome copies of verses translated paraphrastically out of
Anacreon.
Drinking.
The thirsty earth soaks up the rain.
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The plants suck in the earth, and are
'With constant drinking fresh and fair.
The sea itself, which one would think
Should have but little need of drink,
Drinks ten thousand rivers up,
So fill'd that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By 's drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he has done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothinir in nature 's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I,
Why, men of morals, tell me why ?
Age.
Oft am I by the women told,
Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old !
Look how thy hairs are falling all ;
Poor Anacreon, how they fall !
"Whether I grow old or no,
Bv th' effects I do not know.
This I know, without being told,
'Tis time to live if I grow old.
'Tis time short pleasures now to take.
Of little life the best to make.
And manage wisely the last stake.
Gold.
A mighty pain to love it is.
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss,
But of all pain the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.
Virtue now nor noble blood,
Nor wit, by love is understood.
Gold alone does passion move;
Gold monopolises love !
A curse on her and on the man
Who this traffic first began !
A curse on him who found the ore !
A curse on him who digg'd the store !
A curse on him who did refine it !
A curse on him who first did coin it !
A curse all curses else above
On him who us'd it first in love !
Gold begets in brethren hate ;
Gold, in families debate ;
Gold does friendship separat ; ;
Gold does civil wars create.
These the smallest harms of »t ;
Gold, alas ! does love beget.
The Epicure.
Fill the bowl with rosy wine,
Around our temples roses twine.
And let us cheerfully a while,
Like the wine and roses smile.
Crown 'd with roses, we contemn
Gyges' wealthy diadem.
To-day is ours ; what do we fear ?
To-day is ours ; we have it here.
Let's treat it kindly, that it may
Wish at least with us to stay.
Let's banish business, banish sorrow ;
To the gods belongs to-morrow.
The Grasshopper.
Happy insect, what can be
In happiness compared to thee ?
Fed with nourishment divine.
The dewy morning's gentle wine!
Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill ;
'Tis fill'd wherever thou dost tread.
Nature self 's thy Ganymede.
Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing.
Happier than the happiest king !
All the fields which thou dost see.
All the plants belong to thee ;
'All that summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee does sow and plough;
Farmer he, and landlord thou !
Thou dost innocently enjoy ;
Nor does thy luxury destroy.
The shepherd gladly heareth thee.
More harmonious than he.
Thee country hinds with gladness hear.
Prophet of the ripen'd year !
Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire ;
Phoebus is himself thy sire.
To thee, of all things upon earth.
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect ! happy thou,
Dost neither Jige nor winter know.
But when thou'st drunk, and danc'd, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,
(Voluptuous and wise withal.
Epicurean animal !)
Satiated with thy summer feast.
Thou retir'st to endless rest.
The Resurrection.
Begin the song, and strike the living lyre !
Lo, how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted
quire,
All hand in hand do decently advance,
And to my song with smooth and equal measures
dance !
While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,
My music's voice shall bear it company.
Till all gentle notes be drown'd
In the last trumpet's dreadful sound.
That to the spheres themselves shall silence bring,
L^ntune the universal string ;
Then all the wide-extended sky.
And all the hannonious worlds on high.
And Virgil's sacred work shall die ;
And he himself shall see in one fire shine
Rich Nature's ancient Troy, though built by handi
divine.
Whom thunder's dismal noise.
And all that prophets and apostles louder spake.
And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice
Could not whilst they lived awake,
I This mightier sound shall make
SIS
FROM 1649
cyclop.^^:dia of
TO 1689.
U'hen dead to arise.
And open tombs, and open eyes,
To the lonjr sluggards of five thousand years.
This mightier sound shall wake its hearers' ears ;
Then shall the scattered atoms crowding come
Back to their ancient home ;
Some from birds, from fishes some,
Some from earth, and some from seas.
Some from beasts, and some from trees,
Some descend from clouds on high,
Some from metals upwards fly ;
And, when the attending soul naked and shivering
stands,
Meet, salute, and join their hands.
As dispersed soldiers, at the trumpet's call,
Haste to their colours all.
Unhappy most, like tortured men.
Their joints new set to be new rack'd again.
To mountains they for shelter pray ;
The mountains shake, and run about no less confused
than they.
The Shortness of Life ami Uncertainty of Riches.
Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
Or, what is worse, be left by it ?
"Why 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 1
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see,
For Death, alas ! is reaping thee.
Suppose thou Fortune couldst to tameness bring,
And clip or pinion her wing ;
Suppose thou couldst on Fate so far prevail,
As not to cut off thy entail ;
Yet Death at all that subtlety will laugh ;
Death will that foolish gard'ner mock.
Who does a slight and annual plant ingrafF
Upon a lasting stock.
Thou dost thyself wise and industrious deem ;
A mighty husband thou wouldst seem ;
Fond man ! like a bought slave, thou all the while
Dost but for others sweat and toil.
Officious fool ! that needs must meddling be
In bus'ness that concerns not thee ;
For when to future years thou extend'st thy cares,
Thou deal'st in other men's affairs.
Ev'n 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 lino.
Wisely the ant against poor winter hoards
The stock which summer's wealth affords ;
In grasshoppers, that must at autumn die.
How vain were such an industry !
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 sunshine all the day.
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.
Oh, scene of fortune ! which dost fair appear
Only to men that stand not near :
Proud Poverty, that tinsel brav'ry wears,
And, like a rainbow, painted tears !
Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep !
In a weak boat trust not the deep ;
Plac'd beneath envy — above envying rise ;
"ity great men — great things despise.
The wise example of the heav'nly lark,
Thy fellow-poet, Cowley ! mark ;
Above the clouds let thy proud music sound ;
Thy humble nest build on the ground.
The Wish.
Well, then, I now do plainly see
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree ;
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy.
And they, methinks, deserve my pity,
Who for it can endure the stings.
The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings
Of this great hive, the city.
Ah ! yet ere I descend to th' grave,
^lay I a small house and large garden have.
And a few friends, and many books both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too !
And since love ne'er will from me flee,
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only belov'd, and loving me !
Oh fountains ! when in you shall I
Myself, eas'd of unpeaceful thoughts, espj- 1
Oh fields ! oh woods ! when, when shall I be made
The happy tenant of your shade ?
Here's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood,
Where all the riches lie, that she
Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.
Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear ;
Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter.
And nought but Echo flatter.
The gods, when they descended hither
From heav'n, did alwaj's choose their way ;
And therefore we may boldly say.
That 'tis the way too thither.
How happy here should I,
And one dear She live, and embracing die!
She who is all the world, and can exclude
In deserts solitude.
I should have then this only fear.
Lest men, when they my pleasures see.
Should hither throng to live like me.
And so make a city here.
The Chronicle.
Margarita first possest.
If I remember well, ray breast.
Margarita first of all ;
But when a while the wanton maid
With my restless heart had play'd,
Martha took the flying ball.
Martha soon did it resign
To the beauteous Catherine.
Beauteous Catherine gave place
(Though loath and angry she to part
With the possession of my heart)
To Eliza's conquering face.
Eliza till this hour might reign,
Had she not evil counsels ta'en;
Fundamental laws she broke.
And still new favourites she chose.
Till up in arms my passions rose.
And cast away her yoke.
Mary then, and gentle Anne,
Both to reign at once began :
Alternately they sway'd ;
And sometimes Mary was the fair.
And sometimes Anne the crown did wear.
And sometimes both I obey'd.
^16
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ABRAHAM COWLET.
Another Mary then arose,
And did rigorous laws impose ;
A mighty tyrant she !
Long, alas ! should I have been
Under that iron-seepter'd queen,
Had not Rebecca set me free.
When fair Rebecca set me free,
'Twas then a golden time with me.
But soon those pleasures fled ;
For the gracious princess died
In her youth and beauty's pride,
And Judith reigned in her stead.
One month, three days, and half an hour,
Judith held the sovereign power.
Wondrous beautiful her face ;
But so weak and small her wit.
That she to govern was unfit,
And so Susanna took her place.
But when Isabella came,
Arm'd with a resistless flame,
And th' artillery of her eye,
Whilst she proudly march'd about,
Greater conquests to find out,
She beat out Susan by the bye.
But in her place I then obey'd
Black -eyed Bess, her viceroy maid,
To whom ensued a vacancy.
Thousand worse passions then possest
The interregnum of my breast :
Bless me from such an anarchy !
Gentle Henrietta then.
And a third Mary next began.
Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria,
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Catherine,
And then a long ' et cetera.'
But should I now to you relate
The strength and riches of their state,
The powder, patches, and the pins.
The ribbons, jewels, and the rings.
The lace, the paint, and warlike things
That make up all their magazines :
If I should tell the politic arts
To take and keep men's hearts ;
The letters, embassies, and spies.
The frowns, and smiles, and flatteries,
The quarrels, tears, and perjuries.
Numberless, nameless mysteries;
And all the little lime-twigs laid
By Machiavel, the waiting-maid ;
I more voluminous should grow
(Chiefly if I like them should tell
All change of weathers that befell)
Than Holinshed or Stow.
But I will briefer with them be,
Since few of them were long with me.
A higher and a nobler strain
My present emperess does claim,
Heleonora, first o' th' name.
Whom God grant long to reign !
ILord Bacon.']
[From ' Ode to the Royal Society.*]
From these and all long errors of the way.
In which our wandering predecessors went.
And like th' old Hebrews many years did stray
In deserts but of small extent.
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last ;
The barren wilderness he Dass'd
Did on ''he very border stand
Of the blest promis'd land.
And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and show'd us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds and conquer to > ;
Nor can so short a line sufticient be.
To fathom the vast depths of nature's sea :
The work he did we ought t' admire.
And we're unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided 'twixt the excess
Of low affliction and high happiness
For who on things remote can fix his sight,
That's always in a triumph or a fight ?
Ode on the Death of Mr William Harcey.
It was a dismal and a fearful night.
Scarce could the mom drive on th' unwilling light,
When sleep, death's image, left my troubled breast,
By something liker death possest.
My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,
And on my soul hung the dull weight
Of some intolerable fate.
■WTiat bell was that ? Ah me ! too much I know.
My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here.
Thy end for ever, and my life to moan ?
O thou hast left me all alone !
Thy soul and body, when death's agony
Besieged around thy noble heart,
Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.
My dearest friend, would I had died for thee !
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be.
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do.
If once my griefs prove tedious too.
Silent and sad I walk about all day.
As sullen ghosts stalk speechless by
Where their hid treasures lie ;
Alas, my treasure's gone ! why do I stay 1
He was my friend, the truest friend on eanh ;
A strong and mighty influence join'd our birtb.
Nor did we envy the most sounding name
By friendship given of old to fame.
None but his brethren he, and sisters, knew.
Whom the kind youth preferred to me ;
And ev'n in that we did agree.
For much above myself I loved them too.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights?
Till the Ledsean stars, so fam'd for love,
Wonder'd at us from above.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy.
Wit, eloquence, and poetry ;
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thina
Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day ?
Was there a tree about, which did not know
The love betwixt us two ?
Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade ;
Or your sad branches thicker join,
And into darksome shade^ combine ;
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.
* * *
To him my muse made haste with every strain.
Whilst it was new, and warm yet from the brain.
He lov'd my worthless rhymes, and like a friend
Would find out something to commciul.
Hence now, my muse, thou canst not me delight;
Be this my latest verse,
With which I now adom his hearse ;
And this my grief, without thy help shall write.
* * *
317
FROM 1649
CYCLOP^TiDIA OF
TO IfiJW.
His mirth was the pure spirits of Tardus wit,
Yet never did his Ciod or friends forget ;
And when deep talk ard wisdom came in view,
.Retir'd and gave to thcra their due.
For the rich help of books he always took,
Though his own searching mind before
Was so with notions written o'er,
As if wise nature had made that her book.
* * *
With as much zeal, devotion, piety.
He always liv'd as other saints do die ;
Still with his soul severe account he kept.
Weeping all debts out ere he slept.
Then dovra in peace and innocence he lay,
Like the sun's laborious light.
Which still in Avater sets at night.
Unsullied with his journey of the day.
Wondrous young man, why wert thou made so good.
To be snatcht hence ere better understood ?
Snatcht before half enough of thee was seen !
Thou ripe, and yet thy life but green !
Nor could thy friends take their last sad farewell,
But danger and infectious death.
Maliciously seized on that breath
Where life, spirit, pleasure, always used to dwell.
Epitaph on the Living Author.
Here, stranger, in this humble nest,
Here Cowley sleeps ; here lies.
Scaped all 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 lie that earth,' good stranger, pray,
* Nor thorn upon it breed !'
With flowers, fit emblem of his fame,
Compass your poet round ;
With flowers of every fragrant name,
Be his warm ashes crown 'd !
Clavdian's Old Man of Verona.
Happy the man who his whole time doth bound
Within the enclosure of his little ground.
Happy the man whom the same humble place
(The 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 wanderings 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.
No change of consuls mark to him the year;
The change of seasons is his calendar.
The cold and heat winter and summer snows ;
Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers he knows
He measures time by land-marks, and has foun 1
For the whole day the dial of his ground.
A neighbouring wood, boni 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.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
Henry Vaughan (1614-1695) published in 1651
a volume of miscellaneous poems, evincing consider-
able strength and originality of thought and copious
imagery, though tinged Avith a gloomy sectarianism
and marred by crabbed rhymes. Mr Campbell
scarcely does justice to Vaughan, in styling him
' one of the harshest even of the inferior order of the
school of conceit,' though he admits that he has
' some few scattered thoughts that meet our eye
amidst his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren
heath.' As a sacred poet, Vaughan has an inten-
sity of feeling only inferior to Crashaw. He was a
Welshman (born in Brecknockshire), and had a dash
of Celtic enthusiasm. He first followed the profes-
sion of the law, but afterwards adopted that ol a
physician. He does not seem to have attained to a
competence in either, for he complains much of the
proverbial poverty and suffering of poets —
As they were merely thrown upon the stage,
The mirth of fools, and legends of the age.
In his latter days Vaughan grew deeply serious and
devout, and published a volume of religious poetry,
containing his happiest effusions. The poet was not
without hopes of renown, and he wished the river of
his native vale to share in the distinction —
When I am laid to rest hard by thy streams,
And my sun sets where first it sprang in beams,
I'll leave behind me such a large kind light
As shall redeem thee from oblivious night,
And in these vows which (living yet) I pay.
Shed such a precious and enduring ray,
As shall from age to age thy fair name lead
Till rivers leave to run, and men to read !
Early Rising and Prayer.
[From ' Silex Scintillans, or Sacred PoemB.']
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like ; our bodies but forerun
The spirit's duty : true hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun :
Give him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in him sleep.
Yet never sleep the sun up ; prayer should
Dawn with the day : there are set avrful hours
'Twixt heaven and us ; the manna was not good
After sun-rising ; far diiy sullies flowers :
Rise to prevent the sun ; sleep doth sins glut,
And heaven's gate opens when the world's is shut.
Walk with thy fellow-creatures ; note the hush
And whisperings amongst them. Not a spring
Or leaf but hath his morning hymn ; each bush
And oak doth know I am. Canst thou not sing !
leave thy cares and follies ! Go this way,
And thou art sure to prosper all the day.
Serve God before the world ; let him not go
Until thou hast a blessing ; then resign
The whole unto him, and remember who
Prevail'd by wrestling ere the sun did shine ;
Pour oil upon the stones, weep for thy sin.
Then journey on, and have an eye to heav'n.
Mornings are mysteries ; the first, the world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud.
Shroud in their births ; the crown of life, light, truths
Is styled their star ; the stone and hidden food :
31S
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS STANIET.
Throe blessings wait upon them, one of which
Should move — they make us holy, happy, rich.
'WTien the world's up, and every swarm abroad,
Keep well thy temper, mix not with each clay ;
Despatch necessities ; life hath a load
Which must be carried on, and safely may ;
Yet keep those cares without thee ; let the heart
Be God's alone, and choose the better part.
The liainhow.
[From the same.]
Still young and fine, but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnish'd flaming arch did first descry ;
When Zerah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers, in one knot
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower !
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair;
Forms turn to music, clou<ls to smiles and air ;
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sunshine, the sure tie
Of thy Lord's hand, the object of his eye !
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distinct, and low, I can in thine see him.
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant betwixt all and One.
The Story of Endymion.
[Written after reading M. Gombauld's Romance
of ' Endjinion.']
I've read thy soul's fair night-piece, and have seen
The amours and courtship of the silent queen ;
Her stol'n descents to earth, and what did move her
To juggle first with heav'n, then with a lover ;
With Latmos' louder rescue, and (alas !)
To find her out, a hue and cry in brass ;
Thy journal of deep mysteries, and sad
Nocturnal pilgrimage ; with thy dreams, clad
In fancies darker than thy cave ; thy glass
Of sleepy draughts ; and as thy soul did pass
In her calm voj'age, what discourse she heard
Of spirits ; what dark groves and ill-shap'd guard
Ismena led thee through ; with thy proud flight
O'er Periardes, and deep-musing night
Near fair Eurotas' banks ; what solemn green
The neighbour shades wear ; and what forms are seen
In their large bowers ; with that sad path and seat
Which none but light-heel'd nymphs and fairies beat ;
Their solitary life, and how exempt
From common frailty — the severe contempt
They have of man — their privilege to live
A tree or fountain, and in that reprieve
What ages they consume : with the sad vale
Of Diophania ; and the mournful tale
Of the bleeding, vocal myrtle : these and more,
Thy richer thoughts, we are upon the score
To thy rare fancy for. Nor dost thou fall
From thy first majesty, or ought at all
Betray consumption. Thy full vigorous baya
Wear the same green, and scorn the lean decays
Of style or matter; just as I have known
Some crystal spring, that from the neighbour down
Dcriv'd her birth, in gentle murmurs steal
To the next vale, and proudly there reveal
Her streams in louder accents, adding still
More noise and waters to her channel, till
At last, swoU'n with increase, she glides along
The lawns and meadows, in a wanton throng
Of frothy billows, and in one great name
Swallows the tributary brooks' drown'd fame.
Nor are they mere inventions, for we
In the same piece find scatter'd philosophy,
And hidden, dispers'd truths, that folded lie
In the dark shades of deep allegory,
So neatly weav'd, like arras, they descry
Fables with truth, fancy with history.
So that thou hast, in this thy curious mould,
Cast that commended mixture wish'd of old,
Which shall these contemplations render far
Less mutable, and lasting as their star ;
And while there is a people, or a sun,
Endymion's story with the moon shall run.
Timber.
Sure thou didst flourish once, and many springs,
^lany bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass'd o'er thy head ; many light hearts and wings
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living towers.
And still a new succession sings and flies,
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
"While the low violet thrives at their root.
THOMAS STANLEY.
Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of jSHschylus,
and author of a History of Philosophy, apj)ears early
in tliis period as a poet, having published a vohinie
of his verses in 1651. The only son of Sir Thomas
Stanley, knight, of Camberlow-Green, in Hertford-
shire, be was educated at Pembroke college, Oxford ;
spent part of his youth in travelling; and afterwards
lived in the Middle Temple. His poems, whether
original or translated, are remarkable for a rich style
of thought and expression, though deformed to some
extent by the conceits of his age.
T/ie Tomh.
When, cruel fair one, I am slain
By thy disdain,
And, as a trophy of thy scorn.
To some old tomb am borne.
Thy fetters must their power bequeath
To those of Death ;
Nor can thy flame immortal bum,
Like monumental fires within an urn :
Thus freed from thy proud empire, I shall prove
There is more liberty in Death than Love.
And when forsaken lovers come
To see ray tomb.
Take heed thou mix not with the crowd.
And (as a victor) proud.
To view the spoils thy beauty made,
Press near my shade.
Lest thy too cruel breath or name
Should fan my ashes back into a flame.
And thou, devour'd by this revengeful fire.
His sacrifice, who died as thine, expire.
But if cold earth, or marble, must
Conceal my dust,
Whilst hid in some dark ruins, I,
Dumb and forgotten, lie,
The pride of all thy victory
Will sleep with me ;
And they who should attest thy glory,
Will, or forget, or not believe this story.
Then to increase th}- triumph, let me rest.
Since by thine ev'e slain, buried in thy breast.
•^ ai»
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
The Exequies.
Draw near.
You lovers that complain
Of Fortune or Disdain,
And to my ashes lend a tear ;
Melt the hard marble with your f^-oans,
And soften the relentless stones,
Whose cold embraces the sad subject hide,
Of all loTc's cruelties and beauty's pride I
No verse,
No epicedium bring,
Nor peaceful requiem sing,
To charm the terrors of my hearse ;
No profane numbers must flow near
The sacred silence that dwells here.
Vast griefs are dumb ; softly, oh, softly mourn,
Lest you disturb the peace attends my urn.
Yet strew
Upon my dismal grave
Such olferings as you have —
Forsaken cypress and sad yew ;
For kinder flowers can take no birth.
Or growth, from such unhappy earth.
Weep only o'er my dust, and say, Here lies
To Love and Fate an equal sacrifice.
The Loss.
Yet ere I go.
Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be
So wretched as to know
What joys thou fling'st away with me.
A faith so bright,
As Time or Fortune could not rust ;
So firm, that lovers might
Have read thy story in my dust,
And crown'd thy name
With laurel verdant as thy youth.
Whilst the shrill voice of Fame
Spread wide thy beauty and my truth.
This thou hast lost,
For all true lovers, when they find
That my just aims were crost,
Will speak thee lighter than the wind.
And none will lay
Any oblation on thy shrine,
But such as would betray
Thy faith to faiths as false as thine.
Yet, if thou choose
On such thy freedom to bestow,
Affection may excuse.
For love from sympathy doth flow.
Note on Anacreon.
[The following piece is a translation by Stanley from a poem
by St Amant, in which that writer had employed his utmost
genius to expand and enforce one of the over-free sentiments
of the bard of Teios.]
Let's not rhyme the hours away ;
Friends ! we must no longer play :
Brisk Lyoeus — see ! — invites
To more ravishing delights.
Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,
Nor his fiddle longdr follow :
Fie upon his forked hill.
With his fiddle-stick and quill ;
And the Muses, though they're gamesome,
They arc neither young nor handsome;
And their freaks in sober sadness
Arc a mere poetic madness :
Pegasus is but a horse ;
He that fallows him is worse.
See, the rain soaks to the skin.
Make it rain as well within.
Wine, my boy ; we'll sing and laugh.
All night revel, rant, and quaft';
Till the morn stealing behind us.
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones (alas !) shall have
A cold lodging in the grave ;
When swift death shall overtake us.
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine
Make our breasts Lyoeus' shrine;
Bacchus, our debauch beholding.
By thy image I am moulding.
Whilst my brains I do replenish
With this draught of unmix'd Rhenish ;
By thy full-branch'd ivy twine ;
By this sparkling glass of wine ;
By thy Thyrsus so renown'd ;
By the healths with which th' art crown'd ;
By the feasts which thou dost prize ;
By thy numerous victories ;
By the howls by Moenads made ;
By this haut-gout carbonade ;
By thy colours red and white ;
By the tavern, thy delight ;
By the sound thy orgies spread ;
By the shine of noses red ;
By thy table free for all ;
By the jovial carnival ;
By thy language cabalistic ;
By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick ;
By the tunes thy quartrpots strike up ;
By thy sighs, the broken hiccup ;
By thy mystic set of ranters ;
By thy never-tamed panthers ;
By this sweet, this fresh and free air ;
By thy goat, as chaste as we are ;
By thy fulsome Cretan lass ;
By the old man on the ass ;
By thy cousins in mix'd shapes ;
By the flower of fairest grapes ;
By thy bisks fam'd far and wide ;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dry'd ;
By thy incense, Indian smoke ;
By the joys thou dost provoke ;
By this salt Westphalia gammon ;
By these sausages that inflame one ;
By thy tall majestic flaggons ;
By mass, tope, and thy flap-dragons ;
By this olive's unctuous savour ;
By this orange, the wines' flavour ;
By this cheese o'errun with mites ;
By thy dearest favourites ;
To thy frolic order call us.
Knights of the deep bowl install us j
And to show thyself divine.
Never let it want for wine.
Note to Moschus.
[Stanley here translates a poem of Marino, in which thai
ViTiter had in his eye the second idyl of Moschus.]
Along the mead Europa walks,
To choose the fairest of its gems,
Which, plucking from their slender stalks,
She weaves in fragrant diadems.
Where'er the beauteous virgin treads,
The common people of the field.
To kiss her feet bowing their heads,
Homage as to their goddess yield.
'Twixt whom ambitious wars arise,
Wliich to the queen shall first present
A gift Arabian spice outvies.
The votive offering of their scent.
320
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR JOHN DENHAM.
When deathless Amaranth, this strife,
Greedy by dying to decide,
Regs she would her green thread oC lite,
As lore's fair destiny, divide.
Pliant Acanthus now the Tine
And ivy enviously beholds,
Wishing her odorous arms might twine
About this fair in such strict folds.
The Violet, by her foot opprest.
Doth from that touch enamour'd rise,
But, losing straight what made her blest,
Hangs do'wn her head, looks pale, and dies.
Clitia, to new devotion won.
Doth now her former faith deny,
Sees in her face a double sun,
And glories in apostacy.
The Gillyflower, which mocks the skies,
(The meadow's painted rainbow) seeks
A brighter lustre from her eyes,
And richer scarlet from her cheeks.
The jocund flower-de-luce appears,
Because neglected, discontent ;
The morning furnish'd her with tears ;
Her sighs expiring odours vent.
Narcissus in her eyes, once more.
Seems his o^yl\ beauty to admire ;
In water not so clear before,
As represented now in fire.
The Crocus, who would gladly claim
A privilege above the rest,
Begs with his triple tongue of flame,
To be transplanted to her breast.
The Hyacinth, in whose pale leaves
The hand of Nature writ his fate,
With a glad smile his sigh deceives
In hopes to be more fortunate.
His head the drowsy Poppy rais'd,
Awak'd by this approaching morn,
And view'd her purple light amaz'd,
Though his, alas ! was but her scorn.
None of this aromatic crowd.
But for their kind death humbly call,
Courting her hand, like martyrs proud,
By so divine a fate to fall.
The royal maid th' applause disdains
Of vulgar flowers, and only chose
The bashful glory of the plains,
Sweet daughter of the spring, the Rose.
She, like herself, a queen appears,
Rais'd on a verdant thorny throne.
Guarded by amorous winds, and wears
A purple robe, a golden crown.
SIR JOHN DENHAM.
Sir John Denhaji (1615-1668) was the son of the
chief baron of exchequer in Ireland, but was educated
at Oxford, then the chief resort of all the poetical
and high-spirited cavaliers. Denliam was wild and
dissolute in his youth, and squandered away great
part of his patrimony at the gaming-table. He was
made governor of Farnham castle by Charles I. ;
and after the monarch had been delivered into the
hands of the army, his secret correspondence was
partly carried on by Denham, who was furnished
with nine several ciphers for the purpose. Charles
had a respect for literature, as well as the arts ; and
Wilton records of him ;hat he made Shakspeare's
plays the closet-compan.i>n of his solitude. It would
appear, however, that the king wished to keep
poetry apart from state affairs ; for he told Denham,
on seeing one of his pieces, ' that when men are
young, and have little else to do, tliey may vent the
overflowings of their fancy in that way ; but when
they are thouglit fit for more serious employ-
ments, if they still persisted in that course, it looked
as if they minded not the way to any better.' The
poet stood corrected and bridled in his muse. In
1648 Denham conveyed the Duke of York to France,
and resided in that countrj- some time. Ilis estate
was sold by tlie Long rarlianient ; but the Restora-
tion revived his fallen dignity and fortunes. He
was made surveyor of the king's buildings, and a
knight of the bath. In domestic life the poet does
not seem to have been happy. lie had freed him-
self from his early excesses and follies, but an unfor-
tunate marriage darkened his closing years, which
were unhappily visited by insanity. He recovered,
to receive the congratulations of IJutler, his fellow-
poet, and to conmiemorate the death of Cowley, ir
one of his happiest effusions.
Cooper's Hill, the poem by which Denham is now
best known, consists of between three and four hun-
dred lines, written in the heroic couplet. The de-
scriptions are interspersed with sentimental digres-
sions, suggested by the objects around — the river
Thames, a ruined abbey, Windsor forest, and the
field of Runnymede. The view from Cooper's Hill
is rich and luxuriant, but the muse of Denham was
more reflective than descriptive. Dr Johnson assigns
to this poet the praise of being ' the author of a
species of composition that may be denominated
local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is
some particular landscape, to be poetically described,
with the addition of such embellishments as may be
supplied by historical retrospection or incidental
meditation.' Ben Jonson's fine poem on Penshurst
may dispute the palm of originality on this point
with the ' Cooper's Hill,' but Jonson could not have
written with such correctness, or with such intense
and pointed expression, as Denham. The versifica-
tion of this poet is generally smooth and flowing,
but he had no pretensions to the genius of Cowley,
or to the depth and delicacy of feeling possessed by
the old dramatists, or the poets of the Elizabethan
period. He reasoned fluently in verse, without
glaring faults of stjde, and hence obtained the appro-
bation of Dr Johnson far above his deserts. Denham
could not, like his contemporary, Chamberlajme,
have described the beauty of a summer morning —
The morning hath not lost her virgin blush.
Nor step, but mine, soil'd the earth's tinsell'd robe.
How full of heaven this solitude appears.
This healthful comfort of the happy swain ;
Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,
In's morning exercise saluted is
By a full quire of feather'd choristers.
Wedding their notes to the enamour'd air !
Here nature in her unaffected dress
Plaited with valleys, and emboss'd with hills
Enchas'd with silver streams, and fring'd with woods.
Sits lovely in her native russet.""
Chamberlayne is comparatively unknown, and has
never been included in any edition of the poets, yet
every reader of taste or sensibility must feel that the
above picture far transcends the cold sketches of
Denham, and is imbued with a poetical spirit toAvhich
he was a stranger. ' That Sir John Denham began a
reformation in our verse,' says Southey, ' is one of
the most groundless assertions that ever obtained
belief in literature. More thought and more skill
had been exercised before his time in the construc-
tion of English metre than he ever bestowed on the
* Chamberlayne's ' Love's Victory.'
321
22
PROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO ie«}».
subject, and by men of far greater attainments, and
far higber p^'wers. To improve, indeed, either upon
tlie versification or the diction of our great writers
was impossible ; it was impossible to exceed them in
the knowledge or in tlie practice of their art, but it
was easv to avoid the more obvious faults of inferior
authors": and in this way he succeeded, just so far
as not to be included in
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease ;
nor consigned to oblivion with the " persons of qua-
lity" who contributed their vapid eflfusions to tlie
miscellanies of those daj-s. His proper place is
among those of his contemporaries and successors
who called themselves wits, and have since been en-
titled poets by the courtesy of England.' * Denham,
nevertlieless, deserves a place in English literature,
though not that high one which has heretofore been
assigned to him. The traveller who crosses tlie
Alps or Pyrenees finds pleasure in the contrast af-
forded by level plains and calm streams, and so Den-
ham's correctness pleases, after the wild imaginations
and irregular liarmon}^ of the greater masters of the
lyre who preceded him. In reading him, we feel that
we are descending into a difTerent scene — the ro-
mance is over, and we must be content with smooth-
ness, regularity, and order.
[Tlie Thames and Windsor Forest.']
[From ' Cooper's Hill.']
My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton valleys straj's ;
Thames, the most lov'd of all the ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Though with those streams he no remembrance hold,
Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth to explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for th' ensuing spring,
And then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay ;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,
But Godlike his unwearied bounty flows ;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free and common, as the sea or wind.
When he to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours :
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants,
Cities in deserts, wo' ds in cities plants ;
So that to us no thing, no place is strange.
While his fair bosom is the world's exchano'e.
0, could I flow like thee, and make thy sti-eam
My great example, as it is my theme/
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not didl.
Strong without rage, vnthout overflowing full.
* * »
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows
While winds and storms his lofty forehead bent,
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac'd,
Rotween the mountain and the stream einbrac'd,
* Southey's Cowper, toL ii. p. 130.
Wlilch shade and shelter from the hi! derives,
Willie the kind river wealth and beauty gives ;
And In the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.
This scene had some bold Greek or British baru
Belield of old, what stories had we heard
Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames.
Their feasts, their revels, and their amorous flames !
'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.
Tlie four lines printed in Italics liave been praisei'
by every critic from Dryden to the present day.
[77ie Reformation — Monks and Puritans.']
Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise,
But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays.
Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late
A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate
Th' adjoining abbey fell. INIay no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform !
Tell me, my muse, what monstrous dire ollence,
What crime could any Christian king incense
To such a rage ? Was't luxury or lust ?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?
Were these their crimes ? They were his own much
more ;
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor,
Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
No crime so bold, but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good.
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name.
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils :
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends.
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell.
In emptj% airy contemplation dwell ;
And like the block unmoved lay ; but ours.
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temperate region can be known,
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme I
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture ?
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance ?
And rather in the dark to grope our way.
Than, led by a false guide, to err by day.
Denham had just and enlightened notions of the
duty of a translator. ' It is not his business alone,
lie sa3-s, ' to translate language into language, Ini*
poesy into poesy ; and poesy is so subtle a sjiirit,
that, in pouring out of one language into another,
it will all evaporate ; and if a new spirit be not
added in the translation, there will remain no-
thing but a caput mortuum ; there being certain
graces and happinesses peculiar to every language,
which give life and energy to the words.' Hence, in
his poetical address to Sir Richard Fanshawe, on his
translation of ' Pastor Fido,' our poet says —
That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains.
Not the effect of poetry, but pains.
Chcaj) vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYMlt
Tliey hut preserve the ashes, thou thejiame.
True to his sense, hut t7nter to his fame.
The two last lines are very happily conceived and
expressed. Denham wrote a tragedy, the Soph;/,
which is but a tatne commonplace plot of Turkish
jealous}', treacher}-, and murder. Occasionally, there
is a vigorous thought or line, as when tlie envious
king asks Haly —
Have not I performed actions
As great, and with as great a moderation 1
The other replies —
Ay, sir, but that's forgotten ;
Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last
year.
This sentiment was too truly felt by many of the
cavaliers in the days of Charles II. AVe subjoin
part of Denhara's elegy on the death of Cowley, in
which it will be seen that the poet forgot tliat Sliak-
speare was buried on the banks of his native Avon,
not in Westminster Abbey, and that both he and
Fletcher died long ere time had ' blasted their baj-s.'
On Mr A hraham Cowky.
His Death and Burial amongst the Ancient Poets.
ll i
i.^'^
Poets' Comer, 'Westminster Abbey.
Old Chaucer, like the morning star,
To us discovers day from far.
His light those missts and clouds dissolv'd
Which our dark nation long involv'd ;
But he, descending to the shades,
Darkness again the age invades ;
Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose.
Whose purple blush the day foreshows ;
The other three with his own fires
Phoebus, the poet's god, inspires :
By Shakspeare's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
Our stage's lustre Rome's outsliines.
These poets near our princes sleep,
And in one grave their mansion keep.
They lived to see so many days.
Till time had blasted all their bays ;
But cursed be the fatal hour
That pluck'd the fairest sweetest flower
That in the Muses' garden grew,
And amongst wither'd laurels threw.
Time, which made them their fame outlive,
To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.
Old mother wit and nature gave
Shakspeare and Fletcher all they have :
In Spenser and in Jonson, art
Of slower nature got the start ;
But both in him so equal are.
None knows which bears the happiest share ;
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own ;
He melted not the ancient gold,
Nor with Ben Jonson did make bold
To plunder all the Roman stores
Of poets and of orators :
Horace his wit and Virgil's state
He did not steal, but emulate ;
And when he would like them appear.
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear :
He not from Rome alone, but Greece,
Like .lason brought the golden fleece ;
To him that language (though to none
Of th' others) as his omi was kno\ni.
On a stifl'gale, as Flaccus sings,
The Theban swan extends his wings,
When through th' ethereal clouds he flies
To the same pitch our swan doth rise ;
Old Pindar's heights by him are reach'd,
■When on that gale his wings are stretch'd ;
His fancy and his judgment such,
Each to th' other seem'd too much ;
His severe judgment giving law,
His modest fancy kept it ■iwe.
Song to Mo-i-pkeiis.
[From the ' Sophy,' Act v.]
INIorpheus, the humble god, that dwells
In cottages and smoky cells.
Hates gilded roofs and beds of down ;
And, though he fears no prince's fro^vn,
Flies from the circle of a crown.
Come, I say, thou powerful nod,
And thy leaden charming rod,
Dipt in the Lethean lake.
O'er his wakeful temples shake.
Lest he should sleep and never wake.
Nature, alas ! why art thou so
Obliged to thy greatest foe ?
Sleep, that is thy best repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.
WILLIAM CHAMBERLATNE.
William Chamberlatne (1619-1689) descriDes
himself in the title-page to his works as ' of Shaftes-
bury, in the county of Dorset.' The poet practised
as a physician at Shaftesbury ; but he appears to
have wielded the sword as well as the lancet, for
he was present among the royalists at tlie battle of
Newbury. His circumstances must have been far
from flourisliing, as, like Vaughan, he complains
keenly of the poverty of poets, and states that he
was debarred from the society of the wits of his
daj\ The works of Chamberlayne consist of two
poems — Love's Victort/, a tragi-comedy published in
1 658 ; and Pharonnida, a Heroic Poevi. published in
1659. The scene of the first is laid in Sicily, and
that of 'Pharonnida' is also partly in Sicily, but
chiefly in Greece. With no court connexion, no
light or witty copies of verses to float him into
{topularity, relying solely on his two long and com*
paratively unattractive works — to appreciate whicii.
FBOH 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168».
through all the -windings of romantic love, plots,
escapes, and adventures, more time is required than
the author's busy age could afford— we need hardly
■wonder that Clianiberlayne was an unsuccessful
poet. His works were almost totally forgotten, till,
in our own day, an author no less remarkable for
the beauty of his original compositions than for his
literary research and sound criticism, Mr Campbell,
in his ' Specimens of the Poets,' in 1819, by quoting
largely from 'Pharonnida,' and pointing out the ' rich
breadth and variety of its scenes,' and the power and
pathos of its characters and situations, drew atten-
tion to the passion, imagery, purity of sentiment,
and tenderness of description, which lay, ' like
metals in the mine,' in the neglected volume of
Chamberlayne. We cannot, however, suppose that
tlie works of this poet can ever be popular; his
beauties are marred by infelicity of execution :
though not deficient in the genius of a poet, he had
little of the skill of the artist The heroic couplet
then wandered at will, sometimes into a ' wilderness
of sweets,' but at other times into tediousness, man-
nerism, and absurdity. The sense was not com-
pressed by the form of the verse, or by any correct
rules of metrical harmony. Chamberlayne also
laboured under the disadvantage of his story being
long and intricate, and his style such — from the
prolonged tenderness and pathos of his scenes — as
could not be appreciated except on a careful and
attentive perusal. Denham was patent to all — short,
Beutentious, and perspicuous.
The dissatisfaction of the poet with his obscure
and neglected situation, depressed by poverty,
breaks out in the following passage descriptive of a
rich simpleton : —
How purblind is the world, that such a monster,
In a few dirty acres swaddled, must
Be mounted, in opinion's empty scale,
Above the noblest virtues that adorn
Souls that make worth their centre, and to that
Draw all the lines of action ? Woni with age,
The noble soldier sits, whilst, in his cell.
The scholar stews his catholic brains for food.
The traveller retum'd, and poor may go
A second pilgrimage to farmers' doors, or end
His journey in a hospital ; few being
So generous to relieve, where virtue doth
Necessitate to crave. Harsh poverty,
That moth, which frets the sacred robe of wit.
Thousands of noble spirits blunts, that else
Had spun rich threads of fancy from the brain :
But they are souls too much sublim'd to thrive.
The following description of a dream is finely
executed, and seems to have suggested, or at least
bears a close resemblance to, the splendid opening
lines of Dryden's ' lieligio Laici :' —
A strong prophetic dream,
Diverting by enigmas nature's stream,
Long hovering through the portals of her mind
On vain fantastic wings, at length did find
The glimmerings of obstructed reason, by
A brighter beam of pure divinity
Led into supernatural light, whose rays
As much transcended reason's, as the day's
Dull mortal fires, faith appreliends to be
Beneath the glimmerings of divinity.
Her unimprison'd soul, disrob'd of all
Terrestrial thoughts (like its original
In heaven, pure and immaculate), a fit
Companion for those bright angels' wit
Which the gods made their messengers, to bear
This sacred truth, seeming transported where,
rix'd in the flauiing centre of the world,
The heart o' th' microcosm, about which is hurl'd
The spangled curtains of the sky, within
A^'hose boundless orbs the circling planets spin
Those threads of time upon whose strength rely
The pond'rous burdens of mortality.
An adamantine world she sees, more pure,
]\Iore glorious far than this — fram'd to endure
The shock of dooms-day's darts.
Chamberlayne, like Milton, was fond of describing
the charms of morning. We have cojned one j)as-
sage in the previous notice of Denham, and nume-
rous brief sketches,
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round,
are interspersed throughout his works. For ex-
ample —
Where every bough
Maintain'd a feather'd chorister to sing
Soft panegyrics, and the rude wings bring
Into a murmuring slumber, whilst the calm
Mom on each leaf did hang her liquid balm,
With an intent, before the next sun's birth,
To drop it in those wounds, which the cleft earth
Receiv'd from last day's beams.
Of virgin purity he says, with singular beauty of
expression —
The morning pearls,
Dropt in the lily's spotless bosom, are
Less chastely cool, ere the meridian sun
Hath kiss'd them into heat.
In a grave narrative passage of ' Pharonnida,' he
stops to note the beauties of the morning —
The glad birds had sung
A lullaby to-night, the lark was fled.
On dropping wings, up from his dewy bed,
To fan them in the rising suubeams.
Unhappy Love,
[Frojn « Pharomiida.T
' Is't a sin to he
Bom high, that robs me of my liberty ?
Or is't the curse of greatness to behold
Virtue through such false optics as unfold
No splendour, 'less from equal oibs they shine ?
What heaven made free, ambitious nien confine
In regular degrees. Poor Love must dwell
Within no climate but what's parallel
Unto our honour'd births ; the envied fate
Of princes oft these burdens find from state.
When lowly swains, knowing no parent's voice
A negative, make a free happy choice.'
And here she sighed ; then with some drops, distill'd
From Love's most sovereign elixir, fiU'd
The crystal fountains of her eyes, which, ere
Dropp'd down, she thus recalls again : ' But ne'er,
Ne'er, my Argalia, shall these fears destroy
My hopes of thee : Heaven ! let me but enjoy
So much of all those blessings, which their birth
Can take from frail mortality ; and Earth,
Contracting all her curses, cannot make
A storm of danger loud enough to shake
Me to a trembling penitence ; a curse,
To make the horror of my suffering worse,
Sent in a father's name, like vengeance fell
From angry Heav'n, upon my head may dwell
In an eternal stain — my honour'd name
With pale disgrace may languish — busy fame
My re])utatlon spot — affection be
Term'd uncommanded lust — sharp poverty.
That weed that kills the gentle flow'r of love,
As the result of all these ills, may prove
My greatest misery — unless to find
Myself unpitied. Yet not so unkfnd
324
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMUND WALLEK.
U'oald I esteem this mercenary band,
As tliorie far more malignant powers that stand,
Arm'd with dissuas.ons, to obstruct the way
Fancy directs ; but let those souls obey
Their harsh commands, that stand in fear to shed
Repentant tears : I am resolved to tread
Those doubtful paths, through all the shades of fear
That now benights them. Love, with pity hear
Thy suppliant's prayer, and when my clouded eyes
Shall cease to weep, in smiles I'll sacrifice
To thee" such offerings, that the utmost date
Of death's rough hands shall never violate.'
EDMCND WALLEEU
Edjiund Waller (1605-1687) was a cdiirtly and
amatory poet, inferior to Herrick or Suckling in
natural feeling and poetic fancy, but superior to
them in correctness and in general powers of versi-
fication. The poems of Waller have all the smooth-
Edmund Waller.
ness and polish of modern verse, and hence a high,
perhajjs too high, rank has been claimed for him
as one of the first refiners and improvers of poetical
diction. One cause of Waller's refinement was
doubtless his early and familiar intercourse with the
court and nobilit\', and the light conversational na-
ture of most of his productions. He wrote for the
world of fashion and of taste — consigning
The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade.
And he wrote in the same strain till he was upwards
of fourscore ! His life has more romance than his
poetry. Waller was born at Coleshill, in Hertford-
shire, and in his infancy was left heir to an estate
of £3000 per annum. His mother was a sister of
the celebrated John Hampden, but was a royalist in
feeling, and used to lecture Cromwell for his share
in the death of Charles I. Her son, the poet, was
either a roundhead or a royalist, as the time served.
He entered parliament and wrote his first poem
when he was eighteen. At twenty-five, he married
a rich heiress of London, who died the same year,
and the poet immediately became a suitor of Lady
Dorothea Sidney, eldest daugliter of the Earl of
Leicester. To this proud and peerless fair one
Waller dedicated the better portion of his poetry,
and the groves of Penshurst echoed to the praises
of liis Sacharissa. Lady Dorothea, however, was
inexorable, and bestowed her hand on the Earl of
Sunderland. It is said that, meeting her long after-
wards, when she was far advanced in years, tlie lady
asked him when he would again write such verses
upon her. ' When you are as young, madam, and
as handsome, as j'ou were then,' replied the ungal
lant poet. The incident affords a key to Waller's
character. He was easy, witty, and accomplished,
but cold and selfish ; destitute alike of high prin-
ciple and deep feeling. As a member of parliament,
Waller distinguished himself on the popular side,
and was chosen to conduct the prosecution against
Judge Crawley for his opinion in fiivour of levying
sliip-money. His speech, on delivering the impeach-
ment, was printed, and 20,000 copies of it sold in one
day. Shortly afterwards, however. Waller joined
in a plot to surprise the city militia, and let in tlie
king's forces, for which he was tried and sentenced
to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of
£10.000. His conduct on this occasion was mean
and abject. At the expiration of his imprisonment,
the poet went abfoad. and resided, amidst much
splendour and hospitality, in France. He returned
during the jiroteetorate, and when Cromwell died,
•Waller celebrated tlie event in one of his most
vigorous and impressive poems. The image of the
commonwealth, though reared by no common hands,
soon fell to pieces under Richard Cromwell, and
Waller was ready with a congratulatory address to
Charles 11. The royal offering was considered in-
ferior to the paneg3'ric on Cromwell, and the king
liiniself (wlio admitted the poet to terms of courtly
intimacy) is said to have told iiim of the disparity.
' Poets, sire,' replied the witty, self-possessed Waller,
' succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In the
first parliament summoned by Charles, Waller sat
for the town of Hastings, and he served for different
jilaces in all the parliaments of that reign. Bishop
Burnet says he was the delight of the house of
commons. At the accession of James II. in 1 685,
the venerable poet, then eighty years of age, was
elected representative for a borough in Cornwall
The mad career of James in seeking to subvert tl:e
national church and constitution was foreseen by
this wary and sagacious observer-, "he will be left,'
said he, ' like a whale upon the strand.' Feeling
his long-protracted life drawing to a close. Waller
purchased a small property at Coleshill, saying, ' he
would be glad to die like the stag, where he was
roused.' The wish was not fulfilled ; he died at
Beaconsfield on the 21st of October 1687, and in the
churchyard of that place (where also rest the ashes
of Edmund Burke) a monument has been erected to
his memory.
The first collection of Waller's poems was made
by himself, and published in the year 1664. It
went through numerous editions in his lifetime ; and
in 1690 a second collection was made of such pieces
as he had produced in his latter years. In a poetical
dedication to Lady Harley, prefixed to this edition,
and written by Elijah Fenton, Waller is styled the
Maker and model of melodious verse.
This eulogium seems to embody the opinion of
Waller's contemporaries, and it was afterwards con-
firmed by Dryden and Pope, who had not sufficiently
studied the excellent models of versification fur-
nished by the old poets, and their rich poetical diction.
The smootluiess of his versification, his good sense,
and uniform elegance, rendered him popular with
critics as with the multitude; wliile his prominence
as a public man, fur so man^' years, would increase
curiosity as to his works. Waller is now seldom
read. The iilayfulness of hi.s fancy, and the absence
of any striking defects, are but poor substitutes fa
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168i.
genuine feeling and the language of nature. His
poems are cliietly short and incidental, but he wrote
a poem on Divine Love, in six eantos. Cowley had
written his 'Davideis,' and recommended sacred sub-
jects as adapted for poetry; but neither he nor
WaUer succeeded iu this new and higher walk of
AValler's Tomb,
the muse. Such an employment of their talents
was graceful and becoming in advanced life, but
their fame must ever rest on tlieir light, airy, and
occasional poems, dictated by tliat gallantry, adula-
tion, and play of fancy, which characterised the
cavalier jjoets.
On Love.
Anger, in hasty words or Wows,
Itself discharges on our foes ;
And sorrow, too, finds some relief
In tears, which wait upon our grief:
So ev'ry i)assion, but fond love,
Unto its own redress does move ;
But that alone the wretch inclines
To what prevents his own designs ;
Makes liini lament, and sigh, and weep,
Disorder'd, tremble, fawn, and creep ;
Postures which render him despis'd,
Where he endeavours to be priz'd.
For women (born to be controU'd)
Stoop to the forward and the bold ;
Affect the haughty and the proud.
The gay, the frolic, and the loud.
Who iirst the gen'rous steed opprest.
Not kncf'ling did salute the beast ;
But with high courage, life, and force,
Apprcaching, tam'd th' unruly horse.
Unwisely we the wiser East
Pity, supposing them ojiprest
With tyrants' force, whose law is will,
By which they govern, spoil, and kill ;
Each nymph, but moderately fair.
Commands with no less rigour here.
Should some brave Turk, that walks among
His twenty lasses, bright and young,
Behold as many gallants here,
With modest guise and silent fear,
All to one female idol bend.
While her high pride does scarce descend
To mark their follies, he would swear
That these her guard of eunuchs were,
And that a more majestic queen.
Or humbler slaves, he had not seen.
All this with indignation spoke.
In vain I struggled with the yoke
Of mighty Love: that conqu'ring look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
My blasted soul, and made me bow
Lower than those I pitied now.
So the tall stag, upon the brink
Of some smooth stream about to drink,
Surveying there his armed head.
With shame remembers that he fled
The scorned dogs, resolves to try
The combat next ; but if their cry
Invades again his trembling car.
He straight resumes his wonted care ;
Leaves the untasted spring behind.
And, wing'd with fear, outflies the wind.
On a Girdle.
That which her slender waist confin'd
Shall now my joyful temples bind :
It was my heav'n's extremest sphere.
The pale which held that lovely deer ;
My joy, my grief, my hope, iny love,
Did all within this circle move !
A narrow compass ! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair.
Give me but what this ribbon bound.
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
Ori the Mamage of the Dwarfs.
Design or chance makes others wive.
But Nature did this match contrive :
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she denied her little bed
To him, for whom Heav'n seem'd to frame
And measure out this only dame.
Thrice happy is that humble pair.
Beneath the level of all care !
Over whose heads those arrows fly
Of sad distrust and jealousy ;
Secured in as high extreme.
As if the world held none but them.
To him the fairest nymphs do show
Like moving mountains topp'd with snow;
And ev'ry man a Polypheme
Does to his Galatea seem.
Ah ! Chloris, that kind Nature thus
From all the world had sever'd us ;
Creating for ourselves us two,
As Love has me for only you !
A Pancgyiic to the Lord Protector,
While with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves^ and from the foe.
Make us unite, and make us conquer too ;
Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Thiidi themselves injur'd that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.
Above the waves, as Neptune show'd liis face,
To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
So has your Ilighnoss, raised above the rest.
Storms of ambition tossing us repress'd.
° ^ 326
rOET^.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDMUND WALLEtt.
Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restor'd by yi>ii, is made a glorious state ;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come.
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.
The sea's our own ; and now all nations greet,
AVith bending sails, each vessel of our fleet ;
Your power extends as far as winds can blow.
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.
Heav'ii, that hath plac'd this island to give law,
To balance Europe, and its states to awe.
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,
The greatest leader, and the greatest isle !
Whether this portion of the world were rent
By the rude ocean from the continent,
Or thus created, it was sure design'd
To be the sacred refuge of manliind.
Hither the oppressed shall henceforth resort,
Justict to crave, and succour at your court ;
And then youi Highness, not for our's alone,
But for the world's Protector shall be known.
* * »
Still as you rise, the state exalted too.
Finds no distemper while 'tis chang'd by you ;
Chang'd like the world's great scene ! when, without
noise,
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.
Had you, some ages past, this race of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your story ;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
jMeets envy still to grapple with at last.
This Cfesar found ; and that ungrateful age.
With losing him, went back to blood and rage ;
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.
That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars ;
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your mighty arm prevent the fall.
If Rome's great senate could not wield that sword.
Which of the conquer'd world had made them lord,
What hope had ours, while yet their power was new.
To rule victorious armies, but by you 1
You, that had taught them to subdue their foes,
Could order teach, and their high sp'rits compose ;
To every duty could their minds engage.
Provoke their courage, and command their rage.
So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane.
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth approach the haugiity beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.
As the vex'd world, to tind repose, at last
Itself into Augustus' arms did cast ;
So England now does, ^vith like toil opprest,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest.
Then let the Muses, with such notes as these.
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace.
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight.
lEnglish Genius.']
[From a prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Maid's
Tragedy."]
Scarce should we have the boldness to pretend
So long-renown'd a tragedy to mend.
Had not already some deserv'd your praise
With like attempt. Of all our elder plays,
This and Philaster have the loudest fame:
Great are their faults, and glorious is their flame.
In both our English genius is express'd ;
Lofty and bold, but negligently dress'd.
Above our neighbours our conceptions are ;
But faultless writing is the effect of care.
Our lines reform'd, and not compos'd in haste,
I'olish'd like marble, would like marble last.
But as the present, so the last age writ :
In both we find like negligence and wit.
Were we but less indulgent to our faults.
And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.
Our Muse would flourish, and a nobler rage
Would honour this than did the Grecian stage.
[The British Navy.]
When Britain, looking with a just disdain
Upon this gilded majesty of Spain,
And knowing well that empire must decline
A\'hose chief support and sinews are of coin,
Our nation's solid virtue did oppose
To the rich troublers of the world's repose.
And now some months, encamping on the main.
Our naval army had besieged Spain :
They that the whole world's monarchy desjgn'd.
Are to their ports by our bold fleet confin'd,
From whence our Red Cross they triumphant see,
Riding without a rival on the sea.
Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode.
Whose ready sails with every wind can fly,
And make a covenant with the inconstant sky:
Our oaks secure, as if they there took root.
We tread on billows with a steady foot.
At Peiishurst.
While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear ;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,
]More deaf than trees, and prouder than the hoav'nl
Love's foe profess'd ! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sidney ? from which noble strain
He sprung,! that could so far exalt the name
Of Love, and warm our nation with his flame ;
That all we can of love or high desire.
Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney's fire.
Nor call her mother who so well does prove
One breast may hold both chastity and love.
Never can she, that so exceeds the spring
In joy and bounty, be suppos'd to bring
One so destructive. To no human stock
We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock ;
That cloven rock produc'd thee, by whose side
Nature, to recompense the fatal pride
Of such stern beauty, plac'd those healing springs2
Which not more help than that destruction brings.
Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone,
I might, like Orpheus, with my num'rous moan
]Melt to compassion ; now my trait'rous song
With thee conspires to do the singer wrong ;
While thus I suffer not myself to lose
The memory of what augments my woes ;
But with my own breath still foment the fire,
Which flames as high as fancy can aspire !
This last complaint the indulgent ears did pierce
Of just Apollo, president of verse ;
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing :
Thus he advis'd me : ' On yon aged tree
Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea.
That there with wonders thy diverted mind
Some truce, at least, may with tliis passion find.'
Ah, cruel nymph ! from whoiu her humble swain
' Sir Philip Sidney.
2 Tunbridge Well*
327
FBOU 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Flies for relief unto the raging main,
And from the winds and tempests does expect
A milder fate than from her cold neglect !
Yet there he'll pray that the unkind may prove
Blest in her choice ; and vows this endless love
Springs from no hope of what she can confer,
But from those gifts which Heav'n has heap'd on her.
TheBvd.
Lately on yonder swelling bush,
Big with many a coming rose,
This early bud began to blush,
And did but half itself disclose ;
I plucked it though no better grown.
And now you see how full 'tis blo^vn.
Still, as I did the leaves inspire.
With such a purple light they shone,
As if they had been made of fire,
And spreading so would flame anon.
All that was meant by air or sun.
To the young tlow'r my breath has done.
If our loose breath so much can do.
What may the same in forms of love,
Of purest love and music too,
AVhen Flavia it aspires to move ?
When that which lifeless buds persuades
To wax more soft, her j'outh invades 2
Say, Lovely Dream — a Song.
Say, lovely dream ! where couldst thou find
Shades to counterfeit that face ?
Colours of this glorious kind
Come not from any mortal place.
In heav'n itself thou sure wert dress'd
With that angel-like disguise ;
Thus deluded, am I blest.
And see my joy with closed eyes.
But, ah ! this image is too kind
To be other than a dream ;
Cruel Sacharissa's mind
Ne'er put on that sweet extreme.
Fair dream ! If thou intend'st me grace.
Change that heavenly face of thine ;
Paint despis'd love in thy face.
And make it t' appear like mine.
Pale, wan, and meagre, let it look.
With a pity-moving shape.
Such as wander by the brook
Of Lethe, or from graves escape.
Then to that matchless nymph appear.
In whose shape thou shinest so ;
Softly in her sleeping ear
With humble words express my wo.
Perhaps from greatness, state, and pride,
Thus surprised, she may fall ;
Sleep does disproportion hide.
And, death resembling, equals all.
Go, Lovely Rose — a Song.
Go, lovely rose !
Tell her that wastes her time and me.
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee.
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her, that's young.
And shuns to have her graces spied.
That, had'st thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide.
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light ret.r'd ;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desir'd.
And not blush so to be admir'd.
Then die ! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee,
Ilow small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair 1
Old Age and Death.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are wo when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made ;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become.
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
JOHN MILTOX.
Above all the poets of this age, and, in the whole
range of English poetry, inferior only to Shakspeare,
was John Milton, born in London, December 9,
1 G08. His father was of an ancient Catholic family,
but having embraced the Protestant faitli, he was
ilisinherited, and had recourse, as a means of support,
to the profession of a scrivener — one who draws legal
contracts, and places money at interest. The firmness
and the sufferings of the father for conscience' sake,
tinctured the early feelings and sentiments of the
son, who was a stern unbending champion of reli-
gious freedom. The paternal example may also have
had some eflect on the poet's taste and accomplish-
ments. The elder Milton was distinguished as a
musical composer, and the son was well skilled in
the same soot?,'«g and delightful art. The variety
and harmony oY ^is versification may no doubt be
partly traced to the ■^ame source. Coleridge styles
Milton a musical, nov, a picturesque, poet. The
saying, however, is more pointed than correct. In
the most musical passages o\ IMilton (as the lyrics in
' Comas'), the pictures presented to the mind are as
distinct and vivid as the paintii'<):s of Titian oi
,328
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTOM.
Rp.phael. Milton was educated with great care. At
fifteen, he was sent (even then an accomplished
scholar) to St Paul's school, London, and two years
afterwards to Christ's college, Cambridge. He was
a severe student, of a nice and haughty temper, and
jealous of constraint or control. He comj)lained
that the fields around Cambridge had no soft shades
to attract the muse, as Robert Ilall, a centurj' and a
half afterwards, attributed his first attack of insanity
to the flatness of the scenery, and the want of woods
in that part of England ! Milton was designed for
the church, but he preferred a ' blameless silence' to
what he considered ' servitude and forswearing.' At
this time, in his twenty-first year, he had written
his grand Hymn on the Nativity, any one verse of
which was sufiicient to show that a new and great
light was about to rise on English poetry. In
1632 he retired from the university, having taken
his degree of M.A., and went to the house of his
father, who had relinquished business, and pur-
chased a small property at Horton, in Buckingham-
shire. Here he lived five years, studying classical
literature, and here he wrote his Arcades, Counts,
and Lycidas. The ' Arcades' formed part of a
masque, presented to the Countess Dowager of
Derby, at Harefield, near Horton, by some noble
persons of her family. ' Comus,' also a masque, was
presented at Ludlow castle in 1634, before the Earl
Ludlow Castle.
of Bridgewater, then president of Wales. This
drama was founded on an actual occurrence. The
Earl of Bridgewater then resided at Ludlow castle ;
his sons, Lord Brackley and Mr Egerton, and Lady
Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through Hay-
wood forest in Herefordshire, on their way to
Ludlow, were benighted, and the lady was for a short
time lost. This accident being related to their father
upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the re-
quest of his friend Henry Lawes, the musician (who
taught music in the family), wrote the masque.
Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michael-
mas night, 1G34, the two brothers, the young lady,
and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the re-
presentation. ' Comus' is better entitled to the ap-
pellation of a 77iorul masque than any by Jonson,
Ford, or Massinger. It is a pure dream of Elysium.
The reader is transported, as in Shakspcare's ' Tem-
pest,' to scenes of fairy enchantment, but no gross-
ness mingles with the poet's creations, and his muse
is ever ready to ' moralise the song' with strains of
solemn imagery and lofty sentiment. ' Comus' was
first published in 1C37, not by its author, but by
Henry Lawes, who, in a dedication to Lord Bridge-
water, says, ' although not openly acknowledged by
the author, yet it is a legitimate ofTspring, so lovely,
and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath
tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction.'
' Lycidas' was also published in the same year. This
exquisite poem is a monody on a college companion
of Milton's, Edward King, who perished by sliip-
wreck on his passage from Chester to Ireland.
Milton's descriptive poems, L'Allcyro and // Peii-
seroso, are generally referred to the same hap])y
period of his life ; but from the cast of the imagery,
we suspect they were sketclicd in at college, when he
walked the ' studious cloisters pale,' amidst ' storied
windows,' and ' pealing anthems.' And, indeed,
there is a tradition that the scenery depicted in
' L'Allegro' is that around a country college retire-
ment of the poet, at Forest Hill, about three miles
from Oxford. In 1638 tlie poet left the paternal
roof, and travelled for fifteen months in France and
Italy, returning homewards by the ' Leman lake'
to Geneva and Paris. His society was courted by
the ' choicest Italian wits,' and he visited Galileo,
then a prisoner of the Inquisition. The statuesque
grace and beauty of some of Jlilton's poetical crea-
tions (the figures of Adam and Eve, the angel
Raphael, and parts of Paradise Regained) were pro-
bably suggested by his study of the works of art
in Florence and Rome. The poet had been with
difficulty restrained from testifying against popery
within the verge of tlie Vatican ; and on his return
to his native country, he engaged in controversy
against the prelates and the royalists, and vindi-
cated, with characteristic ardour, the utmost free-
dom of thought and cx])ression. His prose works
are noticed in anotlier part of tliis volume. In 1643
ililton went to the country, and married INIarv, tlie
daughter of Ricliard I'owell, a high cavalier of Ox-
fordshire, to whom the X'oet was probably known,
as Mr Powell had, many years before, borrowed
£500 from his father. He brought his wife to Lon-
don, but in the short period of a month, the studious
habits and philosopliical seclusion of the repubh-
can poet proved so distasteful to the cavaliers fair
daugliter, that she left his house on a visit to her
parents, and refused to return. Milton resolved to
repudiate her, and published some treatises on di-
vorce, in which he argues tliat the law of Moses,
which allowed of divorcement for undeanness, was
not adultery only, but undeanness of the mind as
well as the body. This dangerous doctrine lie
maintained through life ; but the year after her de-
sertion (when the poet was practically enforcing his
opinions by soliciting the hand of another lady), his
erring and repentant wife fell on her knees before
him, ' submissive in distress,' and Milton, like his
own Adam, was 'fondly overcome with female
charm.' He also behaved with great generosity to
her parents when the further progress of the civil
war involved them in ruin. In 1649 Milton was,
unsolicited, appointed foreign or I^atin secretary to
the council of state. His salary was about £300 per
annum, which was afterwards reduced cue halfi
329
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO ifir.9.
wIku the duties were shared, first with Philip Mea-
dowes, and afterwards -witli the excellent Andrew
Marvell. He served Cromwell when Cromwell had
thrown off the mask and assumed all but the name
of king, and it is to be regretted tliat, like his friend
Bradsliaw, the poet had not disclaimed this new and
usurped tyranny, though dignified by a master mind,
^e was probably luirried along by the stormy tide of
events, till he could not well recede.
For ten years Milton's eyesight had been failing,
owing to the 'wearisome studies and midnight watch-
ings' of his youth. The last remains of it Avere
sacrificed in the composition of his Defensio Popttli
(he was willing and proud to make the sacrifice), and
by the close of the year 1652, he was totally blind,
' JDark, dark, irrecoverably dark.' His wife died about
the same time; but he soon married again. His se-
cond partner died within a year, and he conse-
crated to her memory one of his simple, but
solemn and touching sonnets : —
him greater leisure; it was completed in 1665, at a
cottage at Chalfont, in Bucks, to which the poet
had withdrawn from the plague, then raging in the
metropolis ; but it was not published till two years
afterwards, when the copyright was ]nirchascd by
Samuel Simmons, abookseller, on the following terms:
— An immediate payment of £5, and £5 more when
1300 copies should be sold; the like sum after the
same number of the second edition (each edition to
consist of 1500 copies), and other £5 after the sale of
the third. The third edition was not p\iblished till
1678 (when the poet was no more), and his widow
(Milton married a third time, about 1660) sold all
her claims to Simmons for £8. It appears that in
the comparatively short period of two years, the
poet became entitled to his second payment, so that
1300 copies of 'Paradise Lost' had been sold in the
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by fprce, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind ;
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, goodness, sweetness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But, oh ! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.
The Eestoration deprived Milton of his public
employment, and exposed him to danger, but by the
interest of Davenant and Marvell (as has been said),
his name was included in the general amnesty. The
great poet was now at liberty to pursue his private
studies, and to realise the devout aspirations of his
Ua
C<n^c/i
''S^^^i^
Milton's Cottage at Chalfont
youth for an immortality of literary fame. His
spirit was unsubdued. Paradixe Lost was begun in
165S, when the divisioa of the secretaryship gave
Fac-simile of Milton's Second Receipt to Simmons.
two first years of its publication — a proof that the
nation was not, as has been vulgarly supposed, in-
sensible to the merits of the divine poem then enter-
ing on its course of immortality. In eleven years
from the date of its publication, 3000 copies had
been sold ; and a modern critic has expressed a doubt
whether ' Paradise Lost,' published eleven j'ears
since, would have met with a greater demand ! The
fall of man was a theme suited to the serious part
of the community in that age, independently of the
claims of a work of genius. The Puritans had not
yet wholly died out — their beatific visions were not
quenched by the gross sensualism of the times. Com-
pared with Dryden's plays, how pure, how lofty and
sanctified, must have appeared the epic strains of
Milton ! The blank- verse of ' Paradise Lost' was,
however, a stumblingblock to the reading public.
So long a poem in this measure had not before been
attempted, and ere the second edition was publislied,
Samuel Simmons procured from Milton a short and
spirited explanation of liis reasons for departing
from the ' troublesome bondage of rhyming.' In
1671 the poet produced his Paradise liegained and
Samson Agonistes. The severe simplicity and the
restricted plan of these poems have rendered them
less popular than ' Comus' or ' Paradise Lost ;' but
they exhibit the intensity and force of Milton's
genius : they were ' the ebb of a mighty tide.' The
survey of Greece and Rome in ' Paradise liegained,
and the poet's description of the banquet in the
grove, are as rich and exuberant as anything in
' Paradise Lost;' while his brief sketch of the thun-
der-storm in the wilderness, in the same poem, is
perhaps the most strikingly dramatic and effective
passage of the kind in all his works. The active
and studious life of the poet was now near a close.
It is pleasing to reflect that Poverty, in lier worst
shape, never entered liis dweUing, irradiated by
330
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTC^.
visions of paradise ; and that, thougli long a suffurer
from hereditary disease, his mind was calm and
briy;ht to the last. lie died ■without a strujrgle on
Sunday the 8th of November, 1G74. By his first
rash and ill-assorted marriage, IVIilton left three
daughters, whom, it is said, he tauglitto read and
pronounce several languages, though they only un-
derstood their native tongue. He complained that
the children were ' undutiful and unkind' to him;
and they were all living apart from their illustrious
parent for some j'ears before his dcatli. His widow
inherited a fortune of aliout £1500, of which she
{(ave £100 to each of his daughters.
Milton's early poems have much of the manner
of Spenser, particularly his ' Lyeidas.' In ' Comus'
there are various traces of Fletcher, Shakspeare,
and other poets.* Single words, epithets, and images,
he freely borrowed, but they were so combined and
improved by his own splendid and absorbing ima-
g nation, as not to detract from his originality.
His imperial fancy (as was said of Burke) laid all
art and nature under tribute, yet never lost ' its
own original brightness.' Milton's diction is pecu-
liarly rich and pictorial in effect. In force and dig-
nity he towers over all his contemporaries. He
is of no class of poets : ' his soul was like a star,
and dwelt apart.' The style of Milton's verse was
moulded on classic models, chiefly the Greek tra-
gedians ; but his musical taste, his love of Italian
literature, and the lofty and solemn cast of his own
mind, gave strength and harmony to tlie whole. His
minor poems alone would have rendered his name
immortal, but there still wanted his great epic to
complete the measure of his fame and the glory of
his country.
' Paradise Lost,' or the fall of man, had long been
familiar to IMilton as a subject for poetry. He at
first intended it as a drama, and two draughts of his
sclieme are preserved among his manuscripts in
Trinity college library, Cambridge. His genius, how-
ever, was better adapted for an epic than a dramatic
poem. His ' Samson,' though cast in a dramatic
form, has little of dramatic interest or variety of
character. His multifarious learning and uniform
dignity of manner would have been too weighty for
dialogue; whereas in the epic form, his erudition was
-veil employed in episode and illustration. He was
perhaps too profuse of learned illustration, yet there
is something very striking and imposing even in his
long catalogues of names and cities. They are gene-
rally sonorous and musical. ' The subject of Para-
dise Lost,' says Mr Campbell, 'was the origin of
evil — an era in existence — an event more than all
others dividing past from future time — an isthmus
in the ocean of eternity. The theme was in its
nature connected with everything important in the
circumstances of human history ; and amidst these
circumstances Milton saw that the fables of Pagan-
ism were too important and poetical to be omitted.
As a Christian, he was entitled wholly to neglect
them ; but as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as
dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of
infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful
propriety for all classical allusions, thus connecting
and reconciling the co-existence of fable and truth,
and thus identifying his fallen angels with ^the
deities of " gay religions full of pomp and gold," he
yoked the heathen mythology in triumph to his
subject, and clothed himself in the spoils of super-
stition.' The two first books of ' Paradise Lost' are
* Drj-den, in his preface to the ' Fahles," says, ' Milton has
acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original." Browne,
Fletcher, Burton, and Drummond, also assisted : Milton, as
has been happily remarked, was a great collector of sweets
from these wild flowers.
remarkable for their grandeur and sublimity. The
delineation of Satan and the fallen angels ' hurled
headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,' and their
assembled deliberations in the infernal council, are
astonishing efforts of human genius — ' their appear-
ance dwarfs every other poetical conception.' At a
time when the common superstition of the country
presented the Spirit of Evil in the most low and
debasing shapes, Milton invested him with colossal
strength and majesty, with unconquerable pride and
daring, with passion and remorse, sorrow and tears —
' the archangel ruined, and the excess of glory ob-
scured.' Pope has censured the dialogues in heaven
as too metaphysical, and every reader feels that they
are prolix, and, in some instances, unnecessary and
unbecoming. The taste of Milton for argumentative
speech and theology had overpowered his poetical
imagination. It has also been objected, that there is
a want of human interest in the poem. This objec-
tion, however, is not felt. The poet has drawn the
characters of Adam and Eve with such surpassing
art and beauty, and has invested their residence in
Paradise with such an accumulation of charms, that
our sympathy with them is strong and unbroken ;
it accompanies them in their life of innocence, their
daily employment among fruits and flowers, their
purity, affection, and piet}', and it continues after
the ruins of the fall. More perfect and entire sym-
pathy could not be excited by any living agents.
In these tender and descriptive scenes, the force and
occasional stifliiess of Milton's style, and the march
of his stately sonorous verse, are tempered and
modulated with exquisite skill. The allegorical
figures of Sin and Death have been found fault
with : ' they will not bear exact criticism,' says
Hallam, ' yet we do not wish them away.' They
appear to us to be among the grandest of Milton's
conceptions — terrific, repulsive, j'et sublime, and
sternly moral in their effects. "Who but must enter-
tain disgust and hatred at sin thus portrayed?
The battle of the angels in the sixth book is perhaps
open to censure. The material machinery is out of
place in heaven, and seems to violate even poetical
probability. The reader is sensible ho^c the combat
must end, and -wishes that the whole had been more
veiled and obscure. ' The martial demons,' remarks
Campbell, ' who charmed us in the shades of hell,
lose some portion of their sublimity when their
artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven.'
The discourses of the angel Raphael, and the vision
of Michael in the two last books — leading the reader
gently and slowly, as it were, from the empyrean
heights down to earth — ha-\e a tranqiiil dignity of
tone and pathos that are deeply touching and im-
pressive. The Christian poet triumphs and predo-
minates at the close.
[Hymn on the Natmty.'\
It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wtapt in the rude manger lies ;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doff'd her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathise :
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air.
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow ;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw t
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
FROU 1649.
CYCLOPiEUIA OF
TO 1689.
But he. her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-ev'd Peace ;
She, c^o^vn'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere.
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing ;
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound.
Was heard the world around :
The idle spear and shield were high up hung ;
The hooked chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood ;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng ;
And kings sat still with awful eye.
As if they surely knew their sov'reign lord was by.
But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began :
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kiss'd.
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze.
Bending one way their precious influence ;
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often wam'd them thence ;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow.
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room.
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed.
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlighten'd world no more should need ;
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axletree, could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn.
Or ere the point of dawn.
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they then
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below ;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep.
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet.
As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise.
As all their souls in blissful rapture took :
The air, such pleasure loath to lose.
With thousand echoesstill prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature, that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won.
To think her part was done.
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling ;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light.
That with long beams the shamefac'd night array'd ;
The helmed cherubim,
And sworded seraphim.
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
VV'ith uii expressive notes, to Heaven's new-bom heir.
Such music, as 'tis said.
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
.\nd the well-balanc'd world on hinges hung.
And cast the dark foundations deep.
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears.
If 3'e have power to touch our senses so ;
And let your silver chime
^love in melodious time ;
And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow ;
And, with your ninefold harmony,
]\Iake up full concert to the angelic symphony.
For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long.
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold ;
.\nd speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die.
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould ;
And Hell itself will pass away.
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow ; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Thron'd in celestial sheen.
With radiant feet the tissued clouds do^vn steering ;
And Heaven, a* at some festival.
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
Rut wisest Fate says no,
This must not yet be so.
The babe yet lies in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Mlist redeem our loss.
So both himself and us to glorify :
Yet first, to those ychain'd in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through
the deep.
With such a horrid clang
As on mount Sinai rang.
While the red fire and smould'ring clouds out brake ;
The aged earth aghast.
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake ;
^^'hen, at the world's last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his
throne.
And then at last our bliss.
Full and perfect is,
But now begins ; for, from this happy day,
The old dragon, under ground.
In straiter limits bound.
Not half so fiir casts his usurped sway ;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail.
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
The oracles are dumb ;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine.
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell.
Inspires the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o'er.
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament ;
From haunted spring and dale,
Fdg'd with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent ;
332
POETS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTOH.
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets
mouni.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemurs mourn with midnight plaint ;
In uni3 and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint ;
And the chill marble seems to sweat.
While each peculiar power foregoes Ivis wonted seat.
Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim.
With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine ;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both.
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy ^^hine ;
The Libyac Ilammon shrinks his lioni ;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
mourn.
And sullen Moloch, fled.
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue ;
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue :
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubio, haste.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud :
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest ;
Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud ;
In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.
He feels from Judah's land
The dreaded infant's hand.
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn ;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine :
Our babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red.
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale,
Troop to the infernal jail.
Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave ;
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their raoon-lov'd
maze.
But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest ;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending :
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car.
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending ;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-hamess'd angels sit in order serviceable.
On May Morning.
Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger.
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail bounteous May ! tliat dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire ;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with vuir early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
Sonnet on Ms own Blindness.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to liide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
' Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ?'
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed.
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait !'
[/)t Anticipation of the AtfacTc of the Royalists upon
the City.]
Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms.
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please.
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
He can requite thee ; for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower :
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground : And the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.
[On the Massacre of the Protestants in PiccBaont.l
Avenge, Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old.
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget not : in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who, having leam'd thy way.
Early may fly the Babylonian wo.
\_Scenefrom Comus.'\
The Lady enters.
This way the noise was, if mine ear be true.
My best guide now : methought it was the sounl
Of riot and ill-manag'd merriment.
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unletter'd hinds,
When for their teeming flocks, and granges ful .,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath
To meet the rudeness and swill'd insolence
Of such late wassailers ; yet ! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood 1
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stept, as they said, to the next thicket side,
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then, when the gray-hooded E»en,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back.
rROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1C89.
Is now the labour of my thoughts ; 'tis likeliest
They had engag'd their wandering steps too far ;
And envious darkness, ere they could return,
Had stole them from me : else, thievish night,
Why should'st thou, lyit for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars.
That nature hung in heaven, and fiU'd their lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller?
This is the place, as well as I may guess,
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth
Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear;
Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
What might this be 1 A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire.
And airy tongues, that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound,
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
Bj' a strong-siding champion. Conscience.
welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,
And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity !
1 see ye visibly, and now believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance.
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassail'd.
IVas I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?
I did not err ; there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove :
I cannot halloo to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest,
I'll venture ; for my new enliven'd spirits
Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.
Song.
Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen
Within thy airy shell.
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroider'd vale,
Where the love-lorn nightingale
•Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are?
O, if thou have
Hid them in some flowery cave.
Tell me but where,
Sweet queen of parly, daughter of the sphere ?
So may'st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies.
Enter Com us.
Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast.
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence :
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness, till it smil'd ! I have oft heard
My mother Circe, with the Syrens three,
Aniidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul
And lap it in Elysium : Scylla wept.
And chid her barking waves into attention.
And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause.
Yet they in pleasing slumber luU'd the sense.
And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Su( h sober certainty of waking bliss,
' neve» "leard till now.
IPraise of Chwstiti/,]
[From Conius.]
'Tis Chastity, my brother. Chastity ;
She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharbour'd heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds.
Where, through the sacred rays of Chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity :
Yea, there, where very desolation dwells,
By grots and caverns shagg'd with horriil shades,
She may pass on with unblench'd majesty,
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
Some say no evil thing that walks by night
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time ;
No goblin or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
To testify the arms of Chastity?.
Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shafted queen, for ever chaste.
Wherewith she tam'd the brinded lioness
And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought
The frivolous bolt of Cupid ; gods and men
Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen o' th' woi ds
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield
That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd virgin,
Wherewith she frecz'd her foes to congeal'd stone,
But rigid looks of chaste austerity.
And noble grace that dash'd brute violence
With sudden adoration and blank awe ?
So dear to heaven is saintly Chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lacquey her.
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind.
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.
[27(6 Spirits Epilogue in Coniii^.'\
To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky :
There I suck the liquid air
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree :
Along the crisped shades and bowel's
Revels the spruce and jocund sj)ring ;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd hour*.
Thither all their bounties bring ;
There eternal summer dwells.
And west-winds, with musky wing.
About the cedar 'n alleys fling
Nard and Cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can shew ;
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
IJeds of hyacinth and roses.
Where young Adonis oft reposes.
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
3.34
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTON.
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen :
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her fam'd son, adyanc'd,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranc'd.
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
^lake her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run,
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend ;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free :
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if V'rtue feeble were.
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
Remains of Milton's House at Forest Hill, near Oxford ;
the scenery around which is described in L' Allegro.
V Allegro.
Hence loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born.
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy ;
Find out some uncouth cell.
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous
wings.
And the night-raven sings ;
There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth,
With two sister Graces more.
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore ;
Or whether (as some sages sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora pLaying,
As he met her once a-maying,
There on beds of violets blue.
And fresh blown-roses wash'd in dew,
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair.
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youtliful Jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles.
Nods, and becks, and -wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek ;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come and trip it as you go
On the light fontastic toe ;
And in thy right-hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty :
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee.
In unreproved pleasures free :
To hear the lark begin his flight.
And singing startle'the dull night.
From his watch-tower in the skies.
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow.
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine.
Or the twisted eglantine :
While the cock with lively din.
Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before :
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering ,norn.
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill :
Sometimes walking not unseen
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Vvliere the great sun begins his state.
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight ;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milk-maid singeth blithe.
And the mower whets his scythe.
And every shepherd tells his tale.
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught newplea^ijres,
Whilst the landscape round it measures :
Russet laAvns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest ;
Meadows trim with daisies pied :
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide :
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies.
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by a cottage-chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country-messes.
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses ;
And then in haste her oower she lea-^ea.
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ;
Or, if the earlier season lead.
To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with secure delight.
The upland hamlets will invite,
^Vhcn tlie merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound q^k
r'
PROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
ro 1689^
To nmiiy a youth and many a maid,
Dnuciiig in the cht-quer'd shade ;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong daylight fail ;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Fairy Mab the junkets eat ;
She was pinch'd, and pulPd, she said,
And he by friar's lantern led ;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shado^vy flail had thrasli'd the corn.
That ten day-lab'rers could not end,
Then lays him doivn the lubber fiend,
And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength ;
And cropful out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep.
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear.
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted streivm.
Then to the well-trod stage anon.
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse.
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running ;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony ;
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumbers on a bed
Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
n Penseroso.
Hence vain deluding joys,
The brood of Folly, without father bred !
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys !
Dwell in some idle brain ;
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likcst hovering dreams.
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight ;
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue j
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem ;
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their pow'rs ofVended:
Yet thou art higher far descended.
Thee, bright-hair'd Vesta, long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore ;
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain),
Oft, in glimmering bowers and glades.
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of .7ovo.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure.
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cyprcss-la^vIl,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state.
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes :
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till.
With a sad leaden downward cast.
Thou fix them on the earth as fast ;
And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring.
Aye round about Jove's altar sing ;
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne.
The cherub Contemplation :
And the mute silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night ;
While Cynthia checks her dragon-yoke.
Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak.
Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly.
Most musical, most melancholy !
Thee, chantrcss, oft the woods camong
I woo, to hear thy ev'ning song :
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green.
To behold the wand'ring moon,
Riding near her highest noon.
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heav'ns' wide pathless wayj
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.
Or if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth.
Save the cricket on the hearth.
Or the bellman's drowsy charm,
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tow'r.
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes ; or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions, hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook :
338
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN JIILTOS.
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.
Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.
But, sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musasus from his bower;
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek.
And made hell grant what love did seek.
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarfife,
And who had Canace to wife.
That o\vn'd the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wond'rous horse of brass.
On which the Tartar king did ride ;
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of toumej's and of trophies hung.
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited ^lom appear:
Not trick'd and frounc'd as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kerchief'd in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud.
Or usher'd with a shower still.
When the gust hath blo^vn his fill.
Ending on the rustling leaves.
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me. Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt
There in close covert by some brook.
Where no profaner eye may look ;
Hide me from day's garish eye.
While the bee with honey'd thigh.
That at her flow'ry work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring.
With such concert as they keep.
Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep :
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture display'd.
Softly on my eye-lids laid.
And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or th' unseen Genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale ;
And love the high embowed roof.
With antic pillars massy proof.
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voic'd quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all heav'n before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful henuitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell.
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of ev'ry star that heav'n doth shew,
And ev'ry herb that sips the dew :
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, IMelancholy, give.
And I with thee will choose to live.
[From Li/cidas.]
Yet once more, ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude ;
And, with forc'd fingers rude.
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year :
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear.
Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime.
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well.
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string :
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse ;
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destin'd urn;
And, as he passes, turn.
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill.
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the mom.
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds lier sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of ni^ht.
Oft till the star, that rose, at evening, bright,
Toward heaven's descent had slop'd his westerin"
wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute ;
Rough satyrs danc'd, and fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent lone;
And old Pamoetas lov'd to hear our song.
But, the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Xow thou art gone, and never must return !
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown.
And all their echoes mourn :
The willows, and the hazel copses green.
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that nraze
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white-thom blows ;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remoraeless
deep
Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep.
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high.
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream :
Ah me ! I fondly dream !
Had ye been there — for what could that have done!
What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore.
The muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar.
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Dovra the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
.•537
23
FROM 1649
CYCL0PJ5DIA OF
TO lG8y.
Alas ! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the lioniely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Netera's hair ?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To sconi delights, and live laborious days ;
But the lair guerdon, when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze.
Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears.
And slits the thin-spun life. ' But not the praise,'
Phcebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears ;
' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set oft" to the world, nor in broad rumour lies ;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes.
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed.
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'
[^Satan's Address to the Sun.']
[From ' Paradise Lost.']
thou, that, with surpassing glory crown'd,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the fiod
Of this new world ; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their dimiuish'd heads ; to thee I call.
But witli no friendly voice ; and add thy name,
Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
1 fell, how glorious once — above thy sphere ;
Till pride and worse ambition threw nie down.
Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless king.
Ah, wherefore ? He deserv'd no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that brigf/ «Tiinence, and with his good
Upbraided no/,e, nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks ?
How due ! — yet all his good prov'd ill in me,
And wrought but malice ; lifted up so high,
I 'sdained subjection, and thought one step highe/
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude.
So burdensome still paying, still to owe :
Forgetful what from him 1 still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged : what burden theni
0, had his powerful destiny ordain'd
Me some inferior angel, I had stood
Then happy ; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition ! Yet why not? — some other power
As great might have aspir'd, and me, though mean,
Dra>™ to liis part ; but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations arm'd.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand ?
Thou hadst : whom hast thou, then, or what to accuse,
But heaven's free love dealt equally to all ?
Be then his love accurst ; since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal wo :
Nay, curs'd be thou ; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable ! — which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide;
To which the hell I sufl^er seems a heaven.
0, then at last relent ; is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left 1
None left but by submission ; and that word
D'sdain forbids me, and my dread o" shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me ! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain ;
Under what torments inwardly I groan.
While they adore me on the throne of liell.
With diadem and sceptre liigh advanced.
The lower still I fall ; only supreme
In misery : such joy ambition \inds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain
By act of grace my former state ; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
Wliat feign'd submission swore ! Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierc'd so deep ;
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall : so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher ; therefore as, far
From granting he, as I from begging peaee:
All hope excluded thus, behold, in stead
Of us outcast, exil'd, his new delight.
Mankind, created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope ; and with hope, farewell fear;
Farewell remorse : all good to me is lost ;
Evil, be thou my good ; by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's king I hold.
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign ;
As man ere long and this new world shall know.
lAsisemhlini) of the Fallen Anf/ds.1
[From the same.]
AH these and more came flocking ; but with looks
Down cast and damp, j'et such wherein appoar'd
Obscure some glimpse of joy, t' have foan<i their chief
Not in despair, t' have found themselves not lost
In loss itself; which on his countenance cast
Like doubtful hue : but he, his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised
Their fainting courage, and dispell'd their tVars.
Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound
Of trumpets loud and clarions, be uprear'd
His mighty standard ; that proud honour claiin'd
Azazel as his right, a cherub tall ;
Who forthwith from the glitt'ring staft' unfurl'd
Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc'd.
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind.
With gems and golden lustre rich emblaz'd
Seraphic arms and trophies, all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds :
At which the universal host up sent
A shout, that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air
With orient colours waving : with them rose
A forest huge of spears ; and thronging helms
Appear'd, and serried shields in thick array.
Of depth immeasurable : anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Or flutes and soft recorders ; such as rais'd
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle ; and, instead of rage.
Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd.
With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat ;
Nor wanting {)ower to mitigate and 'suage,
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chas^
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain,
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they.
Breathing united force, with fixed thought
Mov'd on in silence to soft jiipes, that charm'd
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil ; and now
338
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTOS.
Advaiic'J in view, they stand, a horrid front
Of dreadful length, and dazzling arms, in guise
Of warriors old with order'd spear, and shield,
Awaiting what command their mighty chief
Had to impose : he through the armed files
Darts his experienc'd eye, and soon traverse
The whole battalion, views their order due.
Their visages and statures as of Gods ;
Their number last he sums. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hard'ning in his strength
Glories ; for never since created man
Met such embodied force as, nam'd with these,
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warr'd on by cranes ; though all the giant brood
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were join'd.
That fought at Thebes, and Ilium on each side
Mix'd with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Annoric knights ;
And all who since, baptis'd or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco or Morocco, or Trebisond ;
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlem.ain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd
Their dread commander ; he, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent.
Stood like a tow'r ; his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than Archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd : as when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air.
Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all th' Archangel : but his fiice
Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows^
Of dauntless courage and considerate pride.
Waiting revenge : cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather,
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn'd
For ever now to have their lot in pain ;
Millions of spirits for his fault amerc'd
Of Heav'n, and from eternal splendours flung
For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood,
Their o-lory wither'd : as when Heav'n's fire
Hath scati'd the forest oaks, or mountain pines.
With singed top their stately growth, though bare.
Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepar'd
To speak : whereat their doubled ranks they bend
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round
With all his peers : attention held them mute.
Thrice he assay'd ; and thrice, in spite of scorn.
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth ; at last
Words, interwove with sighs, found out their way.
[The Garden of Eden.'}
[From tlie same.]
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her inclosure green.
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Ac':es3 denied ; and overhead upgrew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade.
Cedar and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend.
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verd'rous wall of Paradise up-sprung :
^\'hich to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neiglib'ring round.
And higher than tliat wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit.
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appear'd, with gay enamel'd colours mix'd ;
Of which the sun more glad impress'd his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath shower'd the earth ; so lovely seem'd
That landscape ; and of pure, now purer air
IMeets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Venial delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair ; now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils : as when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-west winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest ; with such delay
Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many •
league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
\_Ere's Account of her Creatmi.J
[From the same.]
I first awak'd, and found myself repos'd
Under a shade of flow'rs, much wond'ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murm'ring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and sj)read
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov'd,
Pure as the expanse of Heav'n ; I thither went
With inexperienc'd thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem'd another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the wat'ry gleam appear'd,
Bending to look on me ; I started back.
It started back : but pleas'd I soon retum'd,
Pleas'd it retum'd as soon with answ'ring looks
Of sympathy and love : there I had fix'd
Mine eyes till now, and pin'd with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warn'd me ; ' What thou seeafc,
What there thou seest, fiiir creature, is thyself:
With thee it came and goes ; but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming and thy soft embraces ; he
Whose image thou art ; him thou shalt enjoy.
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear
^lultitudes like thyself, and thence be call'd
Mother of human race.' What could I do.
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall.
Under a plantain ; yet methought less fair.
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth wat'ry image : back I tum'd ,
Thou following cry'st aloud, ' Return, fair Eve,
Whom fly'st thou? whom thou fly'st of him thou aie,
His flesh, his bone : to give thee being I lent.
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart.
Substantial life, to have thee by my side
Henceforth an individual solace dear;
Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half.' With that thy gentle hand
Seiz'd mine ; I yielded, and from that time see
How beauty is excell'd by manly grace
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.
So spake our general mother, and with eyeo
Of conjugal attraction, unreprov'd.
And meek surrender, half embracing, lean'd
On our first father ; half her swelling breast
Naked met his under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid ; he in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms,
339
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO letih.
Smil'd with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flow'rs ; and press'd her matron lip
With kisses pure.
[Morning in Paradise.'\
[From the same.]
Now mom her rosy steps in th' eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so custom'd, for his sleep
Was airy light from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan.
Lightly dispers'd, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on ev'ry bough ; so much the more
His wonder was to find unawaken'd Eve,
With tresses discompos'd and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest : he on his side
Leaning half rais'd, with looks of cordial love,
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep.
Shot forth peculiar graces ; then with voice
Jlild as when Zephyrus or Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus : ' Awake,
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,
Heav'n's last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake : the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us ; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed.
How nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sita on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.'
» * *
To the field they haste.
But first, from under shady arb'rous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the sun, Avho scarce up-risen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean brim,
Shot parallel to th' earth his dewy ray.
Discovering in wide landscape all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains,
Lowly they bow'd adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style ; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced or sung
Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence
Flow'd from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,
More tunable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness ; and they thus began :
' These are thy glorious works. Parent of good.
Almighty, thine this universal frame,
Thus wond'rous fair ; thyself how wondrous then !
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heav'ns
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak ye who best can tell, ye sons of light,
Angels ! for ye behold 11 im, and with songs.
And choral symphonies, day without night.
Circle His throne rejoicing; ye in heav'n :
On earth join all ye creatures, to extol
Him first, llim last. Him midst, and without end !
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to tlie dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise Him in tliy sj)here
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou sun ! of this world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge Him thy greater ; sound His pmise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hasgain'd, and when thou fall'st.
Moon ! that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st
With the fix'd stars, fix'd in their orb that flies j
And ye five other wand'ring fires ! that more
In mystic dance not without song, resound
His praise, who out of darkness call'd up liglit.
Air, and ye elements ! the eldest birth
Of nature's womb, that in quaternian run
Perpetual circle, multiform ; and mix.
And nourish all things ; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye mists, and exhalations ! that now rise
From hill, or steaming lake, dusky, or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise ;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncolour'd sky.
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling show'rs,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds ! that from four quarters blow.
Breathe soft or loud ; and wave your tops, ye pines ;
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow.
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices all, ye living souls ; ye birds
That singing up to Heav'n gate ascend.
Bear on your wings and in your notes His praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep.
Witness if I be silent, morn or even.
To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade.
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord ! be bounteous still
To give us only good ; and, if the night
Have gather'd aught of evil or conceal'd.
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.'
So pray'd they innocent, and to their thoughts
Firm peace recover'd soon and wonted calm.
On to their morning's rural work they haste
Among sweet dews and flow'rs ; where any row
Of fruit-trees over-woody reach'd too far
Their pamper'd boughs, and needed hands to check
Fruitless embraces : or they led the vine
To wed her elm ; she, 'spous'd, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings
Her dow'r, th' adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves.
[Evening in Paradise.']
[From the same.]
Now came still evening on, and tTilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things c\ad ;
Silence accompanied : for beast and bird.
They to their grassy couch, these to theit nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleas'd : now glow'd the firmament
With living sapphires ; Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, imvcil'd her peerless light.
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
When Adam thus to Eve : ' Fair Consort, th' hou»
Of night, and all things now retir'd to rest,
Mind us of like repose, since God hath set
Labour and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive ; and the timely dew of sleep
Now falling with soft slumb'rous weight, inclines
Our eye-lids : other creatures all day long
Rove idle uneniploy'd, and less need rest ;
Man hath his daily work of body or mind
Appointed, which declares his dignity.
And the regard of Heav'n on all his ways ;
While other animals unactive range.
And of their doings God takes no account.
To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the east
With first approach of light, we must be risen.
And at our pleasant labour, to reform
Yon flow'ry arbours, yonder alleys green.
Our walk at noon, with branches overgroTm,
340
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN MILTON.
That mock our scant manuring, and require '
JMore hands than ours to lop their wanton growth ;
Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums
That lie bestrewn, unsightly and unsmooth.
Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease :
Meanwhile, as Nature wills, night bids us rest.'
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn'd :
' My Author and Disposer ; what thou bidst
Unargued I obey ; so God ordains ;
God is thy law, thou mine : to whom no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.
With thee conversing I forget all time :
All seasons and their change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds ; pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew ; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft show'rs ; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild ; then silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of Heav'n, her starry train ;
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With chann of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night.
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon.
Or glitt'ring starlight, without thee is sweet.
But wherefore all night long shine these ? for whom
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes V
To whom our general ancestor reply'd :
' Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve,
These have their course to finish round the earth
By morrow evening, and from land to land
In order, though to nations yet unborn,
Minist'ring light prepared, they set and rise;
Lest total darkness should by night regain
Her old possession, and extinguish life
In nature and all things, which these soft fires
Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat
Of various influence, foment and warm.
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down
Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow
On earth, made hereby apter to receive
Perfection from the sun's more potent ray.
These, then, though unbeheld in deep of night.
Shine not in vain ; nor think, tho' men were none.
That Heav'n would want spectators, God want praise.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep :
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold
Both day and night. How often from the steep
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air.
Sole or responsive each to other's note,
Singing their great Creator? oft in bands.
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With Heav'nly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic numbers join'd, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our souls to Heaven.'
Thus talking hand in hand alone they pass'd
On to their blissful bow'r ; it was a place
Chos'n by the sov'reign Planter, when he fram'd
All things to man's delightful use ; the roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenc'd up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower.
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine,
Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought
Mosaic ; underfoot the violet.
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone
Of costliest emblem : other creatures here.
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none ;
Such was their awe of Man. In shadier bow'r,
iSIore sacred and sequester'd, though but feigu'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph.
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess.
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed.
And heav'nly choirs the hymenrean sung,
\Vhat day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorn'd.
More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods
Endow'd with all their gifts, and, O too like
In sad event, when to the unwiser son
Of Japhet, brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd
Mankind with her fair looks, to^be aveng'd
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
Thus, at their shady lodge arriv'd, both stood,
Both turn'd, and under open sky ador'd
The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven.
Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe.
And starry pole : ' Thou also mad'st the night.
Maker omnipotent, and thou tlie day.
Which we in our appointed work euiploy'd
Have finish'd happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the crown of all bliss
Ctrdain'd by thee, and this delicious place
For us too large, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.
But thou hast promis'd from us two a race
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol
Thy goodness infinite, both when we Avake,
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.
[Expulsion from Paradise.']
[From the same.]
He ended ; and the Archangel soon drew nigh.
Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man ; over his lucid arms
A military vest of purple flow'd,
Livelier than jMeliboean, or the grain
Of Sarrah, worn by kings and heroes old
In time of truce ; Iris had dipt the woof;
His starry helm unbuckled show'd him prime
In manhood where j'outh ended ; by his side.
As in a glist'ring zodiac, hung the sword,
Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the spear.
Adam bow'd low; he kingly, from his state
Inclin'd not, but his coming thus declared : —
' Adam, Heaven's high behest no preface needs :
Sufiicient that thy pray'rs are heard, and death
Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress,
Defeated of his seizure many days,
Giv'n thee of grace, wherein thou may'st repent.
And one bad act with many deeds well done
May'st cover : well may then thy Lord appeas'J
Redeem thee quite from Death's rapacious claim ■
But longer in this Paradise to dwell
Permits not ; to remove thee I am come.
And send thee from the garden forth to till
The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil.'
He added not, for Adam at the news
Heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrow stooct.
That all his senses bound ; Eve, wlio unseen.
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
' unexpected stroke ; worse than of death !
Must I thus leave thee. Paradise I thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades.
Fit haunt of gods ? where I had hope to spend.
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. ( ) flowers I
That never will in other climate grow.
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred uji witii tcuder hand
From the first onening bud, and gave ye names!
341
KROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee lastly, nuptial bow'r, by me adorn'd
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild I how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustoni'd to immortal fruits ?'
Whom thus the Angel interrupted mild : —
' Lament not, Ere, but patiently resign
\\'hat justly thou hast lost ; nor set thy heart.
Thus over-fond, on that which is not thine:
Thy going is not lonely ; with thee goes
Thy husband ; him to follow thou art bound ;
Where he abides, thhik there thy native soil.'
Adam by this from the cold suddeu damp
Recovering, and his seatter'd spirits return'd,
To Michael thus his humble words address'd : —
'Celestial, whether among the thrones, or nam'd
Of them the highest, for such of shape may seem
Prince above princes, gently hast thou told
Thy message, which might else in telling wound,
And in performing end us ; what besides
Of sorrow, and dejection, and despair,
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring ;
Departure from that happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes, all places else
Inhospitable appear and desolate.
Nor knowing us, nor known : and if by prayer
Incessant, I could hope to change the will
Of him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary him with my assiduous cries :
But pray'r against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind.
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth :
Therefore to his great bidding I submit.
This most afflicts me, that, departing hence.
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv'd
His blessed count'nance ; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsafed
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,
On this mount he appear'd, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines his voice
1 heard, here with him at this fountain talk'd :
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory,
Or monument to ages, and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling ,gums, and fruits, and flowers.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footstep trace 1
For though I fled him angry, yet recall'd
To life prolong'd and promis'd race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far ofl' his steps adore.'
« * ♦
Now too nigh
Th' Archangel stood, and from the other hill
To their fix'd station, all in bright arr.iy.
The cherubim descended ; on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist
Kis'n from a river o'er the marish glides,
And gathers ground fast at the lab'rer's heel
Homeward returning. High in front advanc'd.
The brandish'd sword of God before them blaz'd
Fierce as a comet ; which with torrid heat,
And vapours as the Libyan air adust.
Began to parch that tenip'rate clime : whereat
In either hand the hast'ning Angel caught
Our ling'ring parent?, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliflf as f:xst
To the subjected plain ; then disappear'd.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their hapjiy seat,
VVavM over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms :
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow.
Through Eden took their solitary way.
ISatan^s Sim-ei/ of Greece.']
[From Paradise Regained.]
Westward, much nearer by southwest, behold,
Where on the iEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream : within the walls, then view
The schools of ancient sages ; his, who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand ; and various-measur'd verse,
-Si^olian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his, who gave them breath, but higher sung.
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challeng'd for his own :
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or Iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing :
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic.
Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece,
To ^Macedon and Artaxerxcs' throne :
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear.
From heaven descended to the low-roof 'd house
Of Socrates ; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd
Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued f<)rth
Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Sumam'd Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe ;
These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home.
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight ;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire join'd.
ANDREW MARTELL.
Andrew ISIarvell (1620-1678) is better known
as a prose writer than a poet, and is still more cele-
brated as a patriotic member of parliament. He
was associated with Milton in friendship and in
public service. Marvell was born in Hull, where
his father, a clergyman, resided. A romantic story
is related of the elder Marvell, and of the circum-
stances attending his death. He embarked in a
boat with a youthful pair whom he was to marry in
Lincolnshire. The weather was calm, but the
clergj-man had a presentiment of danger ; and on
entering the boat, he threw his cane ashore, and
cried out, ' Ho, for heaven !' His fears were but too
truly verified ; the boat went down, and the wiiole
party perished. The son was educated at Cam-
842
POETS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ANDREW MARTELL.
bridge, and travelled abroad for some time. Milton
and he became acquainted, it is said, in Rome.
Marvell was afterwards secretary to the embassy
at Constantinople. A letter from Milton to secre-
tary Bradshaw was, in 182.3, discovered in the State
Paper Office, in which the poet recommends Mar-
veil as a person well fitted to assist himself in his
Andrew Marvell.
office of Latin secretary, he being a good scholar, and
lately engaged by General Fairfax to give instruc-
tions in the languages to his daughter. The letter
is dated February 1652. Marvell, however, was not
engaged as Milton's assistant till 1657. Shortly
before the Restoration, he was elected member of
parliament for his native city. He was not, like
Waller, an eloquent speaker, but his consistency
and integrity made him highly esteemed and re-
spected. Jlarvell is supposed to have been the last
English member who received wages from his con-
stituents.* Charles II. delighted in his society,
and believing, like Sir Robert Walpole, that every
man had his price, he sent Lord Danby, his trea-
surer, to wait upon Marvell, with an offer of a
place at court, and an immediate present of a tliou-
sand pounds. The inflexible member for Hull re-
sisted his offers, and it is said humorously illustrated
his independence by calling his servant to witness
that he had dined for three days successively on a
shoulder of mutton ! When the treasurer was gone,
Marvell was forced to send to a friend to borrow a
guinea! The patriot preserved his integrity to the
last, and satirised the profligacy and arbitrary mea-
sures of the court witli much wit and pungency.
He died on the 16th of August 1678, without any
previous illness or visible decay, which gave rise to
a report that he had been poisoned. The town of
Hull voted a sum of money to erect a monument to
Marvell's memory, but the court interfered, and
forbade the votive tribute.
Marvell's prose writings were exceedingly popular
in their day, but being written for temporary pur-
* The ancient wages of a burgess, for serving in parliament,
was 23. a-day ; tliose of a knight for the shire, 43. They were
reduced to this certain sum the 16th of Edward II. We have
Been the original of an agreement between a member and his
constituents, dated September 1645, in which the former stipu-
lated to serve without ' any manner of wages or pay' from the
mayor, aldermen, and burgesses of the town. The excitement
»t the civil war had increased the desire of many to ait in
parliament.
poses, tliey have mostly gone out of mind with the
circumstances that produced them. In 1672 he at-
tacked Doctor, afterwards Bishop, Parker, in a piece
entitled T/ie Rehearsal Transposed. In this production
he vindicates the fair fame of Milton, wlio, he says,
' was and is a man of as great learning and sharp-
ness of wit as any man.' One of Marvell's treatises,
An Account of the Groicth of Popery and Arbitrary
Government in England, was considered so formid-
able, that a reward was oflTered for the discovery of
the author and printer. Among the first, if not'the
very first, traces of that vein of sportive humour
and raillery on national manners and absurdities,
which wa« afterward carried to perfection by Addi-
son, Steele, and otiiers, may be found in MarveU.
He wrote with great liveliness, point, and vigour,
though often coarse and personal. Ilis poetry is
elegant rather than forcible : it was an cmbellish-
ment to his character of patriot and controversialist,
but not a substantive ground of honour arJ distinc-
tion. ' There is at least one advantage in the
poetical inclination,' says Henry ^Mackenzie, in his
I\Ian of Feeling, ' that it is an incentive to philan-
thropy. There is a certain poetic ground on wliich
a man cannot tread without feelings that enlarge
tlie heart. The causes of human depravity vanish
before the entliusiasm he professes ; and many who
are not able to reach the Parnassian heights, may
yet approach so near as to be bettered by tlie air of
the climate.' Tliis appears to have been the case
with Andrew Marvell. Only a good and amiable
man could have written his verses on The Emigrants
in the Bermudas, so full of tenderness and pathos.
His poem on The Nymph Complaining for the Death
of her Fawn, is also finely conceived and expressed.
The Emigrants in Bermudas.
Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom unesj)ied,
From a small boat that row'd along.
The list'ning winds received their soii^r.
* What should we do but sing His i)niise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own ?
Where He the huge sea monsters racks,
That lift the deep upon their backs ;
He lands us on a grassy stage.
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything.
And sends tlie fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in tlie pomegranate's close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the tigs our mouths to laett,
And throws the melons at our feet.
But apples, plants of such <a pi ice.
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand.
From Lebanon he stores the land ;
And makes the hollow seas that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coa-t ; '
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh let our voice his praise c.xalt.
Till it aiTive at Heaven's vault,
^Vhich then perliaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
Thus sang they in the Englisli bojit
A holy and a cheerful note,
:^8
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689
And all the way, to ^uide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.*
TJie Xympk Complaining for the Death of her Faicn.
The wanton troopers riding by
Have shot my lawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men 1 They cannot thrive
Who kill'd thee. Thou ne'er didst, alive,
Them any harm ; alas ! nor could
Thy death to them do any good.
I'm sure I never vvish'd them ill,
Nor do I for all this ; nor will :
But, if my simple pray'rs may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears
Rather than fail. But my fears !
It cannot die so. Heaven's king
Keeps register of everything.
And nothing may we use in vain ;
Ev'n beasts must be with justice slain ;
Else men are made their deodands.
Though they should wash their guilty hands
In this warm life-blood, which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart.
Yet could they not be clean ; their stain
Is dyed in such a purple grain.
There is not such another in
The world to offer for their sin.
Inconstant Sylvio, when yet
I had not found him counterfeit.
One moniing, I remember well,
Tied in this silver chain and bell,
Gave it to me : nay, and I know
What he said then — I'm sure I do.
Said he, ' Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer.'
But Sylvio soon had me beguil'd :
This waxed tame, while he grew wild,
And, quite regardless of my smart.
Left me his fawn, but took his heart.
Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away
With this ; and very well content
Could so mine idle life have spent ;
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot and heart, and did invite
Me to its game : it seem'd to bless
Itself in me. How could I less
Than love it ? Oh, I cannot be
Unkind to a beast that loveth me !
Had it liv'd long, I do not know
Whether it, too, might have done e«
As Sylvio did ; his gifts might be
Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
For I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was for more better than
The love of false and cruel man.
With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at mine own fingers nurs'd ;
And as it grew so every day.
It wax'd more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a breath ! and oft
I blush'd to see its foot more soft.
And wliite, sliall I say ? than my hand —
Than any lady's of the land !
It was a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet.
• Thi3 piece of Marvell's, particularly the last verse, seems to
have been in the mind of a distinguished poet of our own day,
Mr Tlimnas .Mwre, when he composed his fine lyric, ' The
Canadiiin Boat Song.'
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race ;
And when 't had left me far away,
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hiuda,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my o^vn.
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness ;
And all the spring-time of the year
It loved only to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft, where it should lie ;
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes ;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade.
It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed.
Until its lips ev'n seem'd to bleed ;
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill ;
And its pure virgin lips to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it liv'd long, it would have beea
Lilies without, roses within.
Tlwvghts in a Garden.
How vainly men themselves amaze.
To win the palm, the oak, or bays :
And their incessant labours see
Crown'd from some single herb, or tree,
W^hose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ;
While all the flow'rs, and trees, do close,
To weave the garlands of repose.
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear ?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below.
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So am'rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame.
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know or heed.
How far these beauties her exceed !
Fair trees ! where'er your barks I wound.
No name shall but your own be found.
W^hat wond'rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach.
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure lee*
Withdraws into its haj)[)iness.
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates transcending these.
Far other worlds and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
S44
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAMUEL liObER.
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide ;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepar'd for lenger flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was the happy garden state.
While man there walk'd without a mate :
After a place so pure and sweet,
AV'hat other help could yet be meet !
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there :
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.
IIow well the skilful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new !
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run :
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers I
[4 Whimsical Satire on IToUand.*']
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land.
As but th' off-scouring of the British sand ;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav'd the lead ;
Or what by th' ocean's slow alluvion fell.
Of shipwreck'd cockle and the muscle-shell ;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore.
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shore :
And div'd as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if 't had been of Ambergrease ;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay.
Less than what building swallows bear away ;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl.
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles ;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
W^here barking waves still bait the forced grounil ;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To reach, the sea, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injur'd ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples playM ;
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil ;
The earth and water play at level-coyl.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossess'd,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest ;
And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch serv'd up for Cabillau ;
Or, as they over the new level rang'd.
For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang'd.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake.
Would throw their land away at duck and drake.
Therefore necessity, that first made kings.
Something like government among them brings.
For, as with Pigmies, who best kills the crane.
Among thfi hnngry he that treasures grain.
Among the blind the one-ey'd blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Kot who first see the rising sun commands :
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord, and country's father, speak.
* Holland was the enemy of the oomnionwoalth, and pro-
tector of the exiled king ; therefon idious to MarvelJ.
To nuike a bank was a great plot of state ;
Invent a shov'l, and be a magistrate.
Hence some small dike grave, unperceiv'd invades
The pow'r, and grows, as 'twere, a king of spades ;
But, for less envy some join'd states endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewers :
For these half-anders, half-wet, and half-dry,
Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.
'Tis probable religion, after this,
Came next in order ; which they could not miss.
IIow could the Dutch but be converted, when
Th' apostles were so many fishermen ?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did re-baptise ;
Though herring for their God few voices miss'd,
And Poor-John to have been th' Evangelist.
Faith, that could never twins conceive before,
Never so fertile, spawn'd upon this shore
jSlore pregnant tlian their Marg'ret, that laid down
For Ilands-in-Kelder of a whole Ilans-Town.
Sure, when religion did itself embark.
And from the east would westward steer its ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground.
Each one thence pillag'd the first piece he found:
Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew ;
That bank of conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion, but finds credit, and exchange.
In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear :
The universal church is only there. * *
SAMUEL CUTLER,
It is rarely that a pasquinade, written to satirise
living characters or systems, outlives its own age -,
and, where such is the case, we may well suj)pose
something very remarkable in the work, if uot in
Samuel Butler,
tlie merits of its author. Such a work is Hudlhi^t .
a cavalier burlesque of the extravag-ant ideas and
rigid manners of the English Puritans of the civil
war and commonwealth. Borne up by a felicity of
versification and an intensity of wit never excelled in
our literature, this poem still retains its place amongst
the classic productions of the English muse, although,
perhaps, rarely read through at once, for which, in-
deed, its incessant brilliancy in some measure unfits
it. Samuel Butler, tlie author of this extraordinary
satire, was born in Ifiia at Stresham, in Worcester-
shire, His father was a farmer, possessing a small
345
raoH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 16b J.
estate of his own; in short, an English yeoman.
The poet, having received some eilucation at the
grammar-school of ^Yorcester, removed to Cam-
bridge, probably with the design of prosecuting his
studies there; but, as he is ascertained to have never
matriculated, it is supposed that the limited cir-
cumstances of his parents had forbidden him to
advance in the learned career to which his tastes
directed him. On this, as on all other parts of
Butler's life, there rests great obscurity. It appears
that he spent some years of his youth in performing
the duties of clerk to a justice of the peace in his
native district, and that in this situation he found
means of cultivating his mind. His talents may be
presumed to have interested some of his friends and
neighbours in his behalf, for he is afterwards found
in the family of the Countess of Kent, where he had
the use of a library, and the advantage of conver-
sation with the celebrated Selden, who often em-
ployed the poet as his amanuensis and transcriber.
Thus ran on the j-ears of Butler's youth and early
manhood, and so far he cannot be considered as un-
fortunate, if we are to presume that he found his
chief enjoyment, as scholars generally do, in oppor-
tunities of intellectual improvement. He is next
found in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, a Bedford-
shire gentleman, whom it is probable he served in
the capacity of tutor. Luke was one of Cromwell's
principal officers, marked probably — perhaps to an
unusual degree — by the well-known peculiarities of
his party.- The situation could not be a very agree-
able one to a man whose disposition was so much
towards wit and humour, even though those quali-
ties had not made their owner a roj-alist, which in
such an age they could scarcely fail to do. Daily
exposed to association with persons whose character,
from antagonism to his own, he could not but loathe,
it is not surprising that the now mature muse of
Butler should have conceived the design of a general
satire on the sectarian party. Perhaps personal
grievances of his own might add to the poignancy
of his feelings regarding the Cromwellians. The
matchless fiction of Cervantes supplied him with
a model, in which he had only to substitute tlie
extravagances of a political and religious fanaticism
for those of chivalry. Luke himself is understood
to be depicted in Sir Hudibras, and for this Butler
has been accused of a breach of the laws of hospi-
tality : Ave are not disposed decidedly *o rebut the
charge ; but we think it may in candour ^3 allowed
to hang in doubt, until we know something more
precise as to the circumstances attending the con-
nexion of the poet with his patron, and, more par-
ticularly, those attending their parting.
The Restoration threw a faint and brief sunshine
upon the life of Butler. He was appointed secretary
to the Earl of Carbury, President of the principality
of Wales; and when the wardenship of the Marches
was revived, the earl made his secretary steward of
Ludlow castle. The poet, now fifty years of age,
seemed to add to his security for the future by marry-
ing a widow named Herbert, wlio was of good family
and fortune; but this prospect proved delusive, in
consequence of the failure of parties on whom the
lady's fortune depended. It was now that Butler
first became an author. The first part of ' Hudibras'
appeared in 1 G63, and inmiediately became poj)ular.
Its wit, so pat to the taste of the time, and the
breadth of the satiric pictures which it presented,
each of which had hundreds of prototypes within
the recollection of all men then living, could not
fail to give it extensive currency. By the Earl of
Dorset, an accomplished friend of letters, it was
introduced to tlie notice of the court ; and the king
is said to have done it the honour of often quoting
it. A second part appeared in 1664, and a third
fourteen years later. IBut though the poet and hi.>;
work were the praise of all ranks, from royaltj'
downwards, he was himself little benefited by it.
What emoluments he derived from his stewardship,
or whether he derived any emoluments from it at
all, does not appear ; but it seems tolerably clear
that the latter part of his life was spent in-mean
and struggling circumstances in London. The Earl
of Clarendon promised him a place at court, but he
never obtained it. The king ordered him a present
of £300,* which was insufficient to discharge the
debts pressing upon him at the time. He was fa-
voured with an interview by the Duke of Bucking-
ham, who, however, seeing two court ladies pass,
ran out to them, and did not come back, so that
Butler had to go home disappointed. Such are tlie
only circumstances related as chequering a twenty-
3'ears' life of obscure misery which befell the most
brilliant comic genius which perhaps our country
has ever produced. Butler died in 1680, in a mean
street near Covent Garden,f and was buried at the
expense of a friend.
Rose Street, London ; in which Butler died.
' Hudibras' is not only the best burlesque poem
written against the Puritans of that age, so fertile
in satire, but is the best burlesque in the English
language. The same amount of learning, wit,
shrewdness, ingenious and deep thought, felicitous
illustration, and irresistible drollery, has never been
comprised in the same limits. The idea of the knight.
Sir Hudibras, going out 'a-colonelling' withhis Squire
Ralph, is of course copied from Cervantes ; but the
filling up of the story is different. Don Quixote pre-
sents us with a wide range of adventures, which in-
* It is usually stated that this order was for £3000, hut that
a figure was cut off, and only £300 paid. It is to us quite in-
conceivable that so huge a sum should have ever been ordered
by the l<ing, all the circumstances considered ; and we there-
fore do not allude to it in the text.
t Hutler died in Rose Street, Covent Garden, one of the
meanest streets of that part of tlie city, lie was buried at the
west end of the cliurchyard of St Paul's, Covent Ganien, on
tlie south side, under the wall of the church. — Pilffrimaget in
London.
346
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAMUEL BUTLSR.
terest the imagination and the feelings. There is a
freshness and a romance ahout the Spanish hero,
and a tone of high honour and chivalry, whicli
Butler did not attempt to imitate. Ilis object was
to cast ridicule on the whole body of tlie En^lisli
Puritans, especially their leaders, and to debase them
by low and vulgar associations. It must be confessed,
that in many of their acts there was scope for sar-
casm. Their affected dress, language, and manners,
their absurd and fanatical legislation against walk-
ing in the tields on Sundays, village May-poles, and
other subjects beneath the dignity of public notice,
■were fair subjects for the satirical poet. Their reli-
gious enthusiasm also led them into intolerance and
absurdity. Contending for so dear a prize as liberty
of conscience, and believing that they were specially
appointed to shake and overturn the old corruptions
of the kingdom, the Puritans were little guided by
considerations of prudence, policy, or forbearance.
Even Milton, the friend and associate of the party,
was forced to admit
That New Presbjter was but Old Priest writ large.
The higher qualities of these men, their indomitable
courage and lofty zeal, were of course overlooked
or despised by the royalists, their opponents, and
Butler did not choose to remember them. His
burlesque was read M-ith delight, and was popular
for generations after the Puritans had merged into
the more sober and discreet English dissenters. The
plot or action of ' Hudibras' is limited and defective,
and seems only to have been used as a sort of peg
on which he could hang his satirical portraits and
allusions. The first cantos were written early, when
the civil war commenced, but we are immediately
conveyed to the death of Cromwell, at least fifteen
years later, and have a sketch of public affairs to
the dissolution of the Rump Parliament. The
bare idea of a Presbyterian justice sallying out with
his attendant, an Independent clerk, to redress
superstition and correct abuses, has an air of ridi-
cule, and this is kept up by the dialogues between
the parties, which are highly witty and ludicrous ;
by their attack on the bear and the fiddle ; their
imprisonment in the stocks; the voluntary penance
of whipping submitted to by the knight, and his
adventures with his lady.
The love of Hudibras is almost as rich as that of
Falstaff, and he argues in the same manner for the
utmost freedom, me:^ having, he says, nothing but
' frail vows' to oppose to the stratagems of tlie fair.
He moralises as follows : —
For women first were made for men,
Not men for them : It follows, then,
That men have right to every one,
And they no freedom of their own ;
And therefore men have power to choose.
But they no charter to refuse.
Hence 'tis apparent that, what course
Soe'er we take to your amours,
Though by the indirectest way,
'Tis no injustice nor foul play ;
And that you ought to take that course
As we take you, for better or worse,
And gratefully submit to those
Who you, before another, chose.
The poem was left unfinished, but more of it
would hardly have been read even in the days of
Charles. There is, in fact, a plethora of wit in
'Hudibras,' and a condensation of thought and
style, which become oppressiA-e and tiresome. The
faculties of the reader cannot be kept in a state of
constant tension; and after perusing some thirty or
forty pages, he is fain to relin(iuish the task, and
seek out for the simplicity of nature, tjorae of the
short burlesque descriptions are inimitable. For ex-
ample, of IMorning —
The sun had long since, in the lap
Of Thetis, taken out his nap.
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn.
Of Night—
The sun grew low and left the skies.
Put down, some write, by ladies' eyes ;
The moon pull'd oft' her veil of light.
That hides her face by day from sight,
(Mysterious veil, of brightness made.
That's both her lustre and her shade),
And in the lantern of the night,
^\'ith shining horns hung out her light ;
For darkness is the proper sphere,
Where all false glories use t' appear.
The twinkling stars began to muster.
And glitter with their borrow'd lustre ;
While sleep the wearied world reliev'd.
By counterfeiting death reviv'd.
. Many of the lines and similes in ' Iludibrns' are
completely identified with the language, and can
never be separated from it. Such are tlie oldening
lines of Part II. canto three —
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat ;
As lookers on feel most delight
That least perceive a juggler's sleight;
And still the less they understand,
The more they admire his sleight-of-hand.
Or where the knight remarks, respecting the im-
portance of money —
For what in worth is anything.
But so much money as 'Wnl Iring ?
Butler says of his brother poets —
Those that write in rhyme, still make
The one verse for the other's sake ;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think 's sufficient at one time.
There are a few such compelled rhymes in ' \Iudi-
bras,' but the number is astonishingly small
[Accomplishments of HudUmiiJ]
When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why :
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears.
And made them fight, like mad or drunk.
For Dame Religion as for punk ;
Whose honesty they all durst swear for.
Though not a man of them knew wherefore :
When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded.
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick :
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling.
And out he rode a-colonelling.
A wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him, mirror of knighthood ;
That never bow'd his stubborn knee
To anything but chivalry ;
Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right-worshipful on shoulder-blade :
Chief of domestic knights and errant,
Kither for chartel or for warrant :
Great on the bench, great on the saiMle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle ■
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styl'd of war as well as peace.
(So some rats, of amphibious nature,
Are either for the land or water.)
347
PBOM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 1689.
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise or stout ;
Some hold the one, and some the other :
But howsoe'er they make a pother,
The dirt"'rcnce was so small, his brain
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain ;
■\Vhich made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, call'd a fool.
For 't has been held by many, that
As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
iluch more she would Sir Hudibras.
(For that's the name our xaliant kuight
To all his challenges did write.)
But they're mistaken very much ;
'Tis plain enough he was no such :
We grant, although he had much wit,
He was very shy of using it ;
As being loath to wear it out.
And therefore bore it not about ;
Unless on holidays, or so.
As men their best apparel do ;
Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak ;
That Latin was no more difficile,
Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle :
Being rich in both, he never scanted
His bounty unto such as wanted ;
But much of either would afford
To many, that had not one word. * *
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic ;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side ;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute ;
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument a man's no horse ;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl,
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice.
And rooks committee-men and trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation.
And pay with ratiocination :
All this by syllogism, true
In mood and figure, he would do.
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by :
Else, when with greatest art he spoke.
You'd think he talk'd like other folk ;
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
But, when he pleas'd to show't, his speech
In loftiness of sound was rich ;
A Babylonish dialect.
Which learned pedants much affect :
It was a party-colour'd dress
Of patch'd and piebald languages ;
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone.
As if he had talk'd three parts in one ;
Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th' had heard three labourers of Babel ;
Or Cerberus himself pronounce
A leash of languages at once.
This he as volubly would vent
As if his stock would ne'er be spent ;
And truly, to support that charge.
He had supplies as vast and large :
For he could coin or counterfeit
N'ejr words, with little or no wit ;
Words so debas'd and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch them on :
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em ;
That had the orator, who once
Did fill his mouth with pebble stones
When he harangu'd, but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.
[Religion of Hiidilras.']
For his religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit.
'Twas Presbyterian true blue ;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true church militant ;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun ;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ;
Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation.
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended ;
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies ;
In falling out with that or this.
And finding somewhat still amiss ;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distraught or monkey sick ;
That with more care keep holiday
The •(vrong, than others the right way ;
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to.
By damning those they have no mind to.
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipp'd God for spite ;
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for ;
Freewill they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow ;
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin ;
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly ;
Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose.
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
Th' apostles of this fierce religion,
Like Mahomet's, were ass and widgeon.
To whom our knight, by fast instinct
Of wit and temper, was so link'd,
As if hypocrisy and nonsense
Had got th' advowson of his conscience.
[^Personal Ajq^earance of Hudibras.}
His tawny beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face ;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile ;
The upper part thereof was whey,
The nether, orange, mix'd with gray.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns ;
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government ;
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state's were made.
Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
lu time to make a nation rue ;
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SAMUEL BUTLKB.
Though it contributed its OTm fall.
To wait upon the public downfall ;
It was monastic, and did grow
In holy orders by strict tow ;
Of rule as sullen and severe,
As that of rigid Cordelier ;
'Twas bound to suffer persecution,
And martyrdom with resolution ;
T' oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of th' incensed state,
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn ;
With red hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd ;
Maugre all which 'twas to stand fust
As long as monarchy should last ;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel.
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state ;
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with its whiskers.
And twine so close, that Time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever ;
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow. * *
His doublet was of sturdy buff,
And though not sword, yet cudgel proof;
Whereby 'twas fitter for his use,
Who fear'd no bk.ws but such as bruise.
His breeches were of rugged woollen,
And had been at the siege of Bullen ;
To old king Harry so well-known.
Some writers held they were his own ;
Though they were lin'd -n-ith many a piece
Of ammunition, bread and cheese.
And fat black puddings, proper food
For warriors that delight in blood;
For, as we said, he always chose
To carry victual in his hose.
That often tempted rats and mice
Th' ammunition to surprise ;
And when he put a hand but in
The one or t' other magazine,
They stoutly on defence on't stood.
And from the wounded foe drew blood ;
And till they were storm'd and beaten out.
Ne'er left the fortified redoubt ;
And though knights-errant, as some think,
Of old did neither eat nor drink,
Because when thorough deserts vast, f
And regions desolate they pass'd.
Where belly-timber above ground,
Or under, was not to be found.
Unless they graz'd, there's not one word
Of their provision on record ;
Which made some confidently write
They had no stomachs but to fight.
'Tis false ; for Arthur wore in hall
Round table like a farthingal ;
On which, with shirt puU'd out behind.
And eke before, his good knights din'd ;
Though 'twas no table some suppose.
But a huge pair of round trunk hose,
In which he carried as much meat
As he and all the knights could eat ;
When layi-Ti^ by their swords 4.nd truncheons.
They took tn^ir breakfasts or their luncheons.
But let that pass a.t present, lest
We should forget where we digress'd,
As learned authors use, to whom
We leave it, and to the purpose come.
His puissant sword unto his side,
Near his undaunted heart, was tied,
With basket hilt that would hold broth,
And serve for fight and dinner both ;
In it he melted lead for bullets
To shoot at foes, and sometimes pullets,
To whom he bore so fell a grutch,
He ne'er gave quarter t' any such.
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty.
For want of fighting, was grown rusty.
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack :
The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt,
The rancour of its edge had felt ;
For of the lower end two handful
It had devour'd, it was so manful.
And so much scorn'd to lurk in case,
As if it durst not show its face.
In many desperate attempts
Of warrants, exigents, contempts.
It had appear'd with courage bolder
Than Serjeant Bum invading shoulder:
Oft had it ta'en possession.
And prisoners too, or made them run.
This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age ;
And therefore waited on him so
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do :
It was a serviceable dudgeon.
Either for fighting, or for drudging :
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread ;
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse-trap, would not care :
'T would make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions. And so forth :
It had been 'prentice to a brewer.
Where this and more it did endure.
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done on the same score.l
T^ie Elephant in the Moon.
[Designed as a satire upon the Royal Society, whose philoso-
phical researches appeared to iJutler, and the wits in general,
to be in many instances whimsical and absurd.]
A leani'd society of late,
The glory of a foreign state.
Agreed, upon a summer's night,
To search the moon by her own light ;
To take an invent'ry of all
Her real estate, and personal ;
And make an accurate survey
Of all her lands, and how they lay.
As true as that of Ireland, where
The sly surveyors stole a shire ;
T' observe her country how 'twas planted,
With what sh' abounded most, or wanted ;
And make the prop'rest observations
For settling of new plantations.
If the society should incline
T' attempt so glorious a design.
This was the purpose of their meetinj^.
For which they chose a time as fitting,
When, at the full, her radiant light
And influence too were at their height.
And now the lofty tube, the scale
With which they heav'n itself assail.
Was mounted full against the moon.
And all stood readj' to fall on,
Impatient who should have the honour
To plant an ensign first upon her.
When one, who for his deep belief
Was virtuoso then in chief,
Approv'd the most profound, and wise.
To solve impossibilities,
1 An allusion to Cromwell. It is doubtful whethei OUtb*
ever carried on the brewing business, but his parents undoubt*
edljr did, in the town of Uuntingdon.
349
i FROM 1649 CYCLOPEDIA OF to 1689.
Adiancing gravely, to apply
They still retain the antique course j
To th' optic glass "his judging eye,
And custom of their ancestors, 1
Cried, Strange ! then reinforc'd his sight
And always sing and fiddle to |
Against the moon with all his might,
Things of the greatest weight they do.
And bent his penetrating brow
^^'hile thus the learn 'd man entertains '
As if he meant to gaze her through :
Th' assembly with the Prevolvans,
When all the rest began t' admire,
Another, of as great renown,
And, like a train, from him took fire,
And solid judgment, in the moon.
Surpris'd with wonder, beforehand,
That understood her various soils.
At what they did not understand,
And which produc'd best gennet-moyles,!
Cried out, impatient to know what
And in the register of fame
The matter was they wondcr'd at.
Had enter'd his long-living name, 1
Quoth he, Th' inhabitants o' th' moon.
After he had por'd long and hard
Who, when the sun shines hot at noon,
r th' engine, gave a start, and star'd —
Do live in cellars under ground,
Quoth he, A stranger sight appears
Of eight miles deep and eighty round.
Than e'er was seen in all the spheres ;
(In which at once they fortify
A wonder more unparallel'd
Against the sun and th' enemy),
Than ever mortal tube beheld ;
Which they count towns and cities there,
An elephant from one of those
Because their people's civiller
Two mighty armies is broke loose,
Than those rude peasants that are found
And with the horror of the fight
To live upon the upper ground,
Appears amaz'd, and in a fright :
Call'd Prevolvans, with whom they are
Look quickly, lest the sight of us
Perpetually in open war ;
Should cause the startled beast t' emboss.
And now both armies, highly enrag'd.
It is a large one, far more great
Are in a bloody fight engag'd,
Than e'er was bred in Afric yet,
And many fall on both sides slain,
From which we boldly may infer
As by the glass 'tis clear and plain.
The moon is much the fruitfuller.
Look quickly then, that every one
And since the mighty Pyrrhus brought
May see the fight before 'tis done.
Those living castles first, 'tis thought.
With that a great philosopher.
Against the Romans in the field.
Admir'd and famous far and near,
It may an argument be held
As one of singular invention,
(Arcadia being but a piece,
But universal comprehension.
As his dominions were, of Greece),
Applied one eye and half a nose
To prove what this illustrious person
Unto the optic engine close ;
Has made so noble a discourse on.
For he had lately undertook
And amply satisfied us all
To prove and publish in a book.
Of th' Prevolvans' original.
That men whose nat'ral eyes are out.
That elephants are in the moon,
May, by more powerful art, be brought
Though we had now discover'd none,
To see with th' empty holes, as plain
Is easily made manifest.
As if their eyes were in again !
Since, from the greatest to the least.
And if they chanc'd to fail of those,
All other stars and constellations
To make an optic of a nose,
Have cattle of all sorts of nations.
As clearly it may, by those that wear
And heaven, like a Tartar's hoard, ,
But spectacles, be made appear.
With great and numerous droves is stor'd ;
By which both senses being united,
And if the moon produce by nature
Does render them much better sighted.
A people of so vast a stature, j
This great man, having fix'd both sights
'Tis consequent she should bring forth
To view the formidable fights.
Far greater beasts, too, than the earth,
Observ'd his best, and then cried out.
(As by the best accounts appears
The battle's desperately fought ;
* Of all our great'st discoverers),
The gallant Subvolvani rally,
And that those monstrous creatures there.
And from their trenches make a sally
Are not such rarities as here.
Upon the stubborn enemy,
^Meanwhile the rest had had a sight
Who now begin to route and fly.
Of all particulars o' the fight,
These silly ranting Prevolvans
And ev'ry man, with equal care,
Have ev'ry summer their campaigns.
Perus'd of th' elephant his share ;
And muster, like the warlike sons
When one, who, for his excellence
Of Rawhead and of Bloodybones,
In height'ning words and shad'wing sense,
As numerous as Solan geese.
And magnifying all he writ
r th' islands of the Orcades,
With curious microscopic wit.
Courageously to make a stand.
Was magnified himself no less
And face their neighbours hand to hand.
In home and foreign colleges.
Until the long'd-for winter's come,
Began, transported with the twang
And then return in triumph home.
Of his own trillo, thus t' harangue :
And spend the rest o' th' year in lies.
Most excellent and virtuous frienda,
And vap'ring of their victories ;
This great discov'ry makes amends
From th' old Arcadians they're believ'd
For all our unsuccessful pains.
To be, before the moon, deriv'd.
And lost expense of time and brains;
And when her orb was new created.
For, by this sole phenomenon.
To people her were thence translated :
We've gotten ground upon the moon.
For as th' Arcadians were reputed
And gain'd a pass, to hold dispute
Of all the Grecians the most stupid.
With all the planets that stand out ;
Whom nothing in the world could bring
To civil life, but fiddling,
1 Mules.
} . —
850
POETS. ENGLISH LITERATURE. samcel BUTiaa.
To carry this most virtuous war
And rather his own eyes condemn.
Home to the door of even' star,
Than question what he 'ad seen with theia.
And plant the artillery of our tubes
While all were thus resolv'd, a man
Against their proudest magnitudes ;
Of great renown there thus began : —
To stretch our victories beyond
'Tis strange, I grant, but who can say
Th' extent of planetary ground,
What cannot be, what can, and may!
And fix our engines, and our ensigns,
Especially at so hugely vast
Upon the fix'd stars' vast dimensions,
A distance as this wonder 's jdac'd,
(Which Archimede, so long ago,
Where the least error of the sight
Durst not presume to wish to do).
May show things false, but never right ;
And prove if they are other suns.
Nor can we trj- them, so far off,
As some have held opinions,
By any sublunary proof:
Or windows in the empjreum.
For who can say that Nature there
From whence those bright effluvias come
Has the same laws she goes by here ?
Like flames of fire (as others guess)
Nor is it like she has infus'd,
That shine i' th' mouths of furnace^.
In ev'ry species there produc'd,
Nor is this all we have achiev'd.
The same efforts she does confer
But more, henceforth to be believ'd,
Upon the same productions here.
And have no more our best designs,
Since those with us, of sev'ral nations,
Because they're ours, believ'd ill signs.
Have such jirodigious variations,
T' out-throw, and stretch, and to enlarge,
And she affects so much to use
Shall now no more be laid t' our charge ;
Variety in all she does.
Nor shall our ablest virtuosis
Hence may b' inferr'd that, though I grant
Prove arguments for coftee-houses ;
W'e've seen i' th' moon an elephant.
Nor those devices, that are laid
That elephant may differ so
Too truly on us, nor those made
From those upon the earth below.
Hereafter, gain belief among
Both in his bulk, and force, and speed,
Our strictest judges, right or wrong;
As being of a ditf'rent breed.
Kor shall our past misfortunes more
That though our own are but slow-pac'd.
Be charg'd upon the ancient score ;
Theirs there may fly, or run as fast,
No more our making old dogs young
And yet be elephants no less
^lake men suspect us still 1' th' wrong ;
Than those of Indian pedigrees.
Nor new invented chariots draw
This said, another of great worth.
The boys to course us without law ;
Fam'd for his learned works put forth.
Nor putting pigs t' a bitch to nurse,
Look'd wise, then said — All this is trae^
To turn 'em into mongrel curs.
And learnedly observ'd by you ;
Make them suspect our skulls are brittle,
But there's another reason for 't.
And hold too much wit, or too little ;
That falls but very little short
Nor shall our speculations, whether
Of mathematic demonstrati \n,
An elder-stick will save the leather
Upon an accurate calculai ic i ;
Of schoolboy's breeches from the rod,
And that is — as the earth and moon
Make all we do appear as odd.
Do both move contrary upon
This one discover}- 's enough
Their axes, the rapidity
To take all former scandals off ;
Of both their motions cannot be
But since the world's incredulous
But so prodigiously fast,
Of all our scrutinies, and us.
That vaster spaces may be past
And with a prejudice prevents
In less time than the beast has gone,
Our best and worst experiments.
Though he'd no motion of his own,
(As if they were destin'd to miscarry,
Which we can take no measure of,
In concert tried, or solitary).
As you have clear'd by learned proof.
And since it is uncertain when
This granted, we may boldl} thence
Such wonders will occur again,
Lay claim t' a nobler inference.
Let us as cautiously contrive
And make this great phenomenon
To draw an exact narrative
(Were there no other) serve alone
Of what we ev'ry one can swear
To clear the grand hypothesis
Our eyes themselves have seen appear,
Of th' motion of the earth from this.
That, when we publish the account,
With this they all were satisfied.
We all may take our oaths upon't.
As men are wont o' th' bias'd side,
This said, they all with one consent
Applauded the profound dispute,
Agreed to draw up th' instrument,
And grew more gay and resolute.
And, for the gen'ral satisfaction,
By having overcome all doubt.
To print it in the next transaction ;
Than if it never had fall'n out ;
But whilst the chiefs were drawing up
And, to complete their narrative.
This strange memoir o' th' telescope,
Agreed t' insert this strange retrieve.
One, peeping in the tube by chance,
But while they were diverted all
Beheld the elephant advance.
With wording the memorial,
And from the west side of the moon
The footboys, for diversion too,
To th' east was in a moment gone.
As having nothing else to do.
This being related, gave a stop
Seeing the telescope at leisure,
To what the rest were drawing up ;
Tum'd virtuosis for their pleasure :
And ev'ry man, amaz'd anew
Began to gaze upon the moon.
How it could possibly be true.
As those they waited on had done,
That any beast should run a race
With monkeys' ingenuity.
So monstrous, in so short a space.
That love to practise what they see ;
Resolv'd, howe'er, to make it good.
When one, whose turn it was to peep,
At least as possible as he could.
Saw something in the engine creep,
Sol
r
PROM 1649 CYCLOPEDIA OF to 1685.
i
And, viewing well, discover'd more
And, like the nation's patriots.
Than all the leani'd had done before.
To find, or make, the truth by votes :
Quoth he, A little thing is slunk
Others conceiv'd it much more fit
Into the long star-gazing trunk,
T' unmount the tube, and open it.
And now is gotten down so nigh,
And for their private satisfaction.
I hare him just against mine eye.
To re-examine the transaction.
This being overheard by one
And after explicate the rest.
Who was not so far overgrown
As they should find cause for the best.
In any virtuous speculation,
To this, as th' only expedient.
To judge with mere imagination,
The whole assembly gave consent ;
Immediately he made a guess
But ere the tube was half let down,
At solving all appearances.
It clear'd the first phenomenon ;
A way far more significant
For, at the end, prodigious swarms
Than all their hints of th' elephant,
Of flies and gnats, like men in arms,
And found, upon a second view,
Had all pass'd muster, by mischance,
His o>vn hypothesis most true ;
Both for the Sub- and Prevolvans.
For he had scarce applied his eye
This being discovered, put them all
To th' engine, but immediately
Into a fresh and fiercer brawl,
He found a mouse was gotten in
Asham'd that men so grave and wise
The hollow tube, and, shut between
Should be chaldes'd by gnats and flies.
The two glass windows in restraint,
And take the feeble insects' swarms
Was swell'd into an elephant,
For mighty troops of men at arms ;
And prov'd the virtuous occasion
As vain as those who, when the moon
Of all this learned dissertation :
Bright in a crystal river shone.
And, as a mountain heretofore
Threw casting nets as subtily at her.
Was great with child they say, and bore,
To catch and pull her out o' the water.
A silly mouse, this mouse, as strange,
But when they had unscrew'd the glass.
Brought forth a mountain in exchange.
To find out where the impostor was,
Aleanwhile the rest in consultation
And saw the mouse, that, by mishap,
Had penn'd the wonderful narration.
Had made the telescope a trap,
And set their hands, and seals, and wit,
Amaz'd, confounded, and afllicted,
T' attest the truth of what they 'ad writ.
To be so openly convicted.
When this accurs'd phenomenon
Immediately they get them gone.
Confounded all they'd said or done :
With this discovery alone.
For 'twas no sooner hinted at.
That those who greedily pursue
But they all were in a tumult straight,
Things wonderful, instead of true,
iMore furiously enrag'd by far.
That in their speculations choose
Than those that in the moon made war.
To make discoveries strange news,
To find so admirable a hint.
And natural history a gazette
When they had all agieed to have seen't.
Of tales stupendous and far-fet ;
And were engag'd to make it out,
Hold no truth worthy to be known,
Obstructed with a paltry doubt.
That is not huge and overgrown.
[At this crisis, a learned member, devoted to natural history,
And explicate appearances.
told his brethren that Truth was of a coy character, and so
Not as they are, but as they please ;
obscure, that mistakes were often made about her, and he was
In vain strive nature to suborn,
of opinion that each man should In the meantime restrict
And, for their pains, are paid with scorn.
himself to one department of science, and not pretend to de-
cide on things half made out by others.]
\_MisccUaiieous Thoughts.^
This said, the whole assembly allow'd
[From Butler's Remains.]
The doctrine to be right and good,
And, from the truth of what they 'ad heard.
The truest characters of ignorance
Resolv'd to give truth no regard.
Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;
But what was for their turn to vouch,
As blind men use to bear their noses higher
And either find, or make it such :
Than those that have their eyes and sigiit entire.
That 'twas more noble to create
Things like truth out of strong conceit,
All wit and fancy, like a diamond,
Than with vexatious pains and doubt
The more exact and curious 'tis ground.
To find, or think t' have found, her out.
Is forc'd for every carat to abate
This being resolv'd, they, one by one.
As much in value as it wants in weight.
Review'd the tube, the mouse, and moon ;
But still the narrower they pried.
Love is too great a happiness
The more they were unsatisfied,
For wretched mortals to possess ;
In no one thing they saw agreeing,
For could it hold inviolate
As if they 'ad sev'ral faiths of seeing;
Against those cruelties of fate
Some swore, upon a second view,
Which all felicities below
That all they 'ad seen before was true,
By rigid laws are subject to.
And that they never would recant
It would become a bliss too high
One syllable of th' elephant ;
For perishing mortality ;
Avow'd his snout could be no mouse's,
Translate to earth the joys above ;
But a true elephant's proboscis.
For nothing goes to Heaven but Love.
Others began to doubt and waver.
All love at first, like generous wine.
Uncertain which o' th* two to favour,
Ferments and frets until 'tis fine ;
And knew not whether to espouse
For when 'tis settled on the lee.
The cause of th' elephant or mouse.
And from the inipurer matter free,
Some held no way so ortliodox
Becomes the richer still the older,
To try it, as the ballet-box,
And proves the pleasanter the colder.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CHARLES COTTOII.
As at the approach of winter, all
The leaves of great trees use to fall,
And leave them naked, to engage
With storms and tempests when they rage,
While humbler plants are found to wear
Tlieir fresh green liveries all the year ;
So when their glorious season's gone
With great men, and hard times come on,
The greatest calamities oppress
The greatest still, and spare the less.
In Rome no temple was so low
As that of Honour, built to show
How humble honour ought to be,
Though there 'twas all authority.
All smatterers are more brisk and pert
Than those that understand an art ;
As little sparkles shine more bright
Than glowing coals that give them light.
[To Jiis Mistress.]
Do not unjustly blame
My guiltless breast.
For venturing to disclose a flame
It had so long supprest.
In its o«Ti ashes it design 'J
For ever to have lain ;
But that my sighs, like blasts of wind,
Made it break out agaiu.
CHARLES COTTON.
The name of Charles Cotton (1630-1687) calls
up a number of agreeable associations. It is best
known from its piscatory and affectionate union
with that of good old Izaak Walton; but Cotton
was a cheerful, witty, accomplished man, and only
wanted wealth and prudence to have made him one
of the leading characters of his day. His father.
Sir George Cotton, died in 1658, leaving the poet
an estate at Ashbourne, in Derbysliire, near the
river Dove, so celebrated in the annals of trout-
fishing. The property was much encumbered, and
the poet soon added to its burdens. As a means of
pecuniary relief, as well as recreation. Cotton tran-
slated several works from the French and Italian,
including Montaigne's Essays. In his fortieth
year he obtained a captain's commission in the
army ; and afterwards made a fortunate second
marriage with the Countess Dowager of Ardglass,
■who possessed a jointure of £1500 a-year. It does
not appear, however, that Cotton ever got out of
his difficulties. The lady's fortune was secured
from his mismanagement, and the poet died insol-
vent. His happy, careless disposition, seems to have
enabled liim to study, angle, and delight his friends,
amidst all his embarrassments. He published seve-
ral burlesques and travesties, some of tliem grossly
indelicate ; but he wrote, also, some copies of verses
full of genuine poetry. One of his humorous pieces,
a journey to Ireland, seems to have anticipated, as
Mr Campbell remarks, the manner of Anstey in the
' New Bath Guide.' As a poet, Cotton may be ranked
with Andrew MarvelL
[The New Year.']
Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himselfs not far ;
And see, where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear.
Peeping into the future year.
With such a look, as seems to say
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see.
And 'gainst ourselves to prophecy ;
When the proj)hetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight.
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His reversed face ma}' show distaste.
And frown upon the ills are past ;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the Xew-bom Year.
He looks, too, from a place so high.
The year lies open to his eye ;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year.
So smiles upon us the first mom.
And speaks us good as soon as bom ?
Plague on't ! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof ;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
The last, why so we may this too ;
And then the next in reason should
Be super-excellently good :
For the worst ills, we daily see.
Have no more perpetuity
Than the best fortunes that do fall ;
Which also brings us wherewithal
Longer their being to support.
Than those do of the other sort :
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case.
And merits not tlie good he has.
Then let us welcome the new guest
With lusty brimmers of the best :
iMirth always should good fortune meet.
And renders e'en disaster sweet ;
And though the princess turn her back.
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out
Till the next year she face ab, ut.
[Imitation to Izaalc Walton.']
[In his eighty-third year, AValton professed a resolution U.
hegin a pilgrimage of more tlian a hundred miles into a countrj
then the most difficult and hazardous that can be conceived foi
an aged man to travel in, to visit his friend Cotton, and, doubt-
less, to enjoy his favourite diversion of angling in the delightful
streams of the Dove. To this journey he seems to have been
invited by Mr Cotton in the following beautiful stanzas, printed
with other of his poems in 16119, and addressed to his dear and
most worthy friend, Mr Izaak Walton.]
Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl, and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time
Has been of many years before ;
Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The chillest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made ;
Whilst all the ills are so improv'd
Of this dead quarter of the year.
That even you, so much belov'd.
We would not now wish with us here:
In this estate, I say, it is
Some comfort to us to suppose.
That in a better clime than this.
You, our dear friend, have more repose ; .^
24
FBOH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
And some delight to me the while,
Though nature now does weep in rain,
To think thiit 1 have seen her smile,
And haply may 1 do again.
If the all-ruling Power please
We lire to see another May,
"We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day.
We then shall have a day or two.
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly.
A day with not too bright a beam ;
A warm, but not a scorching sun ;
A southern gale to curl the stream ;
And, master, half our work is done.
Then, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray.
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait,
To make the preying trout our prey ;
And think ourselves, in such an hour,
Happier than those, though not so high.
Who, like leviathans, devour
Of meaner men the smaller fry.
This, my best friend, at my poor home.
Shall be our pastime and our theme ;
But then — should you not deign to come,
You make all this a flattering dream.
[A Welsh Guide.']
[From ' A Voyage to Ireland."]
The 6un in the morning disclosed his light,
With complexion as ruddy as mine over night ;
And o'er th' eastern mountains peeping up's head,
The casement being open, espied me in bed ;
With his rays he so tickled my lids, I awaked.
And was half asham'd, for I found myself naked ;
But up I soon start, and was dress'd in a trice.
And call'd for a draught of ale, sugar, and spice ;
Which having turn'd off, I then call to pay.
And packing my nawls, whipt to horse, and away.
A guide I had got who demanded great vails.
For conducting me over the mountains of Wales :
Twenty good shillings, which sure very large is ;
Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges ;
And yet for all that, rode astride on a beast,
The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest ;
It certainly was the most ugly of jades ;
His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades ;
His sides were two ladders, well spur-gall'd withal ;
His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall ;
For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare,
For the creature was wholly denuded of hair ;
And, except for two things, as bare as my nail,
A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail ;
Now, such as the beast was, even such was the rider,
With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider;
A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat.
The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat ;
Ev'n such was my guide and his beast; let them pass.
The one for a horse, and the other an ass.
T/ie Retirement,
Stanzas Irregulicrs, to Mr Izaak Walton.
Farewell, thou busy world, and may
We never meet again ;
Here I can eat, and sleep, and pray,
And do more good in one short day
Than he who his whole age out-wears
Upon the most conspicuous theatres.
Where nought but vanity and vice appears.
Good God ! how sweet are all things here !
How beautiful the fields appear !
How cleanly do we feed and lie !
Lord ! what good hours do we keep !
How quietly we sleep 1
What peace, what unanimity !
How innocent from the lewd fashion,
la all our business, all our recreation !
Oh, how happy here's our leisure !
Oh, how innocent our pleasure !
ye valleys ! O ye mountains !
ye groves, and crystal fountains !
How I love, at liberty.
By turns to come and visit ye !
Dear Solitude, the soul's best friend.
That man acquainted with himself dost make.
And all his Maker's wonders to intend.
With thee I here converse at will.
And would be glad to do so still,
For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.
How calm and quiet a delight
Is it, alone.
To read, and meditate, and write,
By none ofl^ended, and otFendlng none !
To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own tase,
And, pleasing a man's self, none other to dis2)lea9e.
ray beloved nymph, fair Dove,
Princess of rivers, how I love
Upon thy flowery banks to lie,
And view thj' silver stream.
When gilded by a summer's beam !
And in it all thy wanton fry,
Playing at liberty ;
And with my angle, upon them
The all of treachery
I ever learn'd, industriously to try !
Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show ;
The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po,
The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine,
Are puddle water all compared with thine ;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
A\'ith thine, much purer to compare ;
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,
Beloved Dove, with thee
To vie priority ;
Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.
my beloved rocks, that rise
To awe the earth and brave the skies,
From some aspiring mountain's crown,
How dearly do I love.
Giddy with pleasure, to look down ;
And, from the vales, to view the noble heights above |
my beloved caves ! from dog-star's heat.
And all .anxieties, my safe retreat ;
What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In the artificial night.
Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take !
How oft, when grief has made me fly,
To hide me from society,
E'en of my dearest friends, have I,
In your recesses' friendly shade,
All my sorrows open laid.
And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy !
Lord ! would men let me alone,
What an over-happy one
Should I think myself to be ;
Might I in this desert place
(Which most men in discourse disgrace)
Live but undisturb'd and free ! „,,
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EARL OF ROSCOMMOX.
Here, in this despis'd recess,
Would I, maugre winter's cold,
And the summer's worst excess,
Try to live out to sixty full years old ;
And, all the while,
Without an envious eye
On any thriving under fortune's smile,
Contented live, and then contented die.
EARL OF ROSCOMMON.
The reign of Charles IT. was a period fraught with
evil and danger to all the sober restraints, the de-
cencies, and home-bred virtues of domestic life.
Poetry suffered in the general deterioration, and
Pope has said, that
In all Charles's daj's
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays.
The Earl of Roscommon (1633-1684) was the
nephew and godson of the celebrated Earl of Straf-
ford. He travelled abroad during the civil war, and
returned at the time of the Restoration, when he
was made captain of the band of pensioners, and
subsequently master of the horse to the Duchess of
York. Roscommon, like Denham, was addicted to
gambling ; but he cultivated his taste for literature,
and produced a poetical Essay on Translated Verse,
a translation of Horace's ' Art of Poetry,' and some
other minor pieces. He planned, in conjunction with
Dryden, a scheme for refining our language and
fixing its standard ; but, while meditating on this
and similar topics connected with literature, the
arbitrary measures of James II. caused public alarm
and commotion. Roscommon, dreading the result,
prepared to retire to Rome, saying — ' It was best to
sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked.'
An attack of gout prevented the poet's departure,
and he died in 1684. 'At the moment in which he
expired,' says Johnson, ' he uttered, with an energy
of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion,
two lines of his own version of " Dies Iras" —
My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end.'
The only work of Roscommon's which may be said
to elevate him above mediocrity, is his ' Essay on
Translated Verse,' in which he inculcates in didactic
poetry the rational principles of translation pre-
viously laid down by Cowley and Denham. It was
published in 1681 ; and it is worthy of remark, that
Roscommon notices the sixth book of ' Paradise
Lost' (published only four years before) for its sub-
limity. Dryden has heaped on Roscommon the
most lavish praise, and Pope has said that ' every
author's merit was his own.' Posterity has not
confirmed these judgments. Roscommon stands on
the same ground with Denham — elegant and sen-
sible, but cold and unimpassioned. We shall sub-
join a few passages from his ' Essay on Translated
Verse :' —
\_The Modest Mme.']
With how much ease is a young maid betray'd —
How nice the reputation of the maid !
Your early kind paternal care appears
By chaste instruction of her tender years.
The first impression in her infant breast
Will be the deepest, and should be the best.
Let not austerity breed servile fear;
No wanton sound offend her virgin ear.
Secure from foolish pride's affected state.
And specious flattery's more pernicious bait ;
Habitual innocence adorns her thoughts ;
But your neglect must answer for her faults.
Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.
What moderate fop would rake the park or stews.
Who among troops of faultless nymphs imiy clioose 1
Variety of such, then, is to be found ;
Take then a subject proper to expound,
But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice,
For men of sense despise a trivial choice :
And such applause it must expect to meet,
As would some painter busy in a street
To cop3' bulls and bears, and every sign
That calls the staring sots to nasty wine.
Yet 'tis not all to have a subject good ;
It must delight us when 'tis understood,
lie that brings fulsome objects to niv view
(As many old have done, and many new).
With nauseous images my fanc}- fills.
And all goes do\vn like oxymel of squills.
Instruct the listening world how ]\Iaro sings
Of useful subjects and of lofty things.
These will such true, such bright ideas raise.
As merit gratitude, as well as praise.
But foul descriptions are offensive still.
Either for being like or being ill.
For who without a qualm hath ever look'd
On holy garbage, though by Homer cook'd ?
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods.
Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.
But I oifend — Virgil begins to frown.
And Horace looks with indignation down :
My blushing Muse, with conscious fear retires.
And whom they like implicitly admires.
\_Caution against False Pride.']
On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise ;
Not by affected meretricious arts.
But strict harmonious symmetry of parts ;
Which through the whole insensibly must pass
With vital heat, to animate the mass.
A pure, an active, an auspicious flame.
And bright as heaven, from whence the blessing cavaCi
But few — few ! souls pre-ordain'd by fate,
The race of gods have reach'd that envied height.
No rebel Titan's sacrilegious crime.
By heaping hills on hills, can hither climb :
The grisly ferryman of hell denied
j^neas entrance, till he knew his guide.
How justly then will impious mortals fall.
Whose pride would soar to heaven without a call.
Pride (of all others the most dangerous fault)
Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought
The men who labour and digest things most.
Will be much ai>ter to despond than boast ;
For if your author be profoundly good,
'Twill cost you dear before he's understood.
How many ages since has Virgil writ !
How few are they who understand him yet !
Approach his altars with religious fear;
No vulgar deity inhabits there.
Heaven shakes not more at Jove's imperial nod
Than poets should before their Mantuan god.
Hail mighty Maro ! may that sacred name
Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame,
Sublime ideas and apt words infuse ;
The Muse instructs my voice, and thou inspire tb
Muse !
[An Author must Feel what he Writes.]
I pity, from my soul, unhappy men,
Compell'd by want to prostitute the pen ;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead.
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead 1
But you, Pompilian, wealthy pamper'd heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares ;
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO i689.
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse ;
'Tis very dangerous tampering with the Muse ;
The protit's small, and you have much to lose;
For though true wit adorns your birth or place,
Degenerate lines degrade the attainted race.
No poet any passion can excite,
But what they feel transport them when they write.
Have you been led through the Cumsean cave.
And heard th' impatient maid divinely ravel
I hear her now ; I see her rolling eyes ;
And panting, Lo, the god, the god. ! she cries :
With words not hers, and more than human sound,
She makes th' obedient ghosts peep trembling through
the ground.
But though we must obey when heaven commands,
And man in vain the sacred call withstands.
Beware what spirit ragea in your breast ;
For ten inspir'd, ten thousand are possess'd :
Thus make the proper use of each extreme.
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
As when the cheerful hours too freely pass,
And sparkling wine smiles in the tempting glass.
Your pulse advises, and begins to beat
Through every swelling vein a loud retreat :
So when a Muse propitiously invites.
Improve her favours, and indulge her flights ;
But when you find that vigorous heat abate.
Leave off, and for another summoTis wait.
Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp.
Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp
Appear not meaner than mere human lines,
Compar'd with those whose inspiration shines :
These nervous, bold ; those languid and remiss ;
There, cold salutes ; but here, a lover's kiss.
Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide,
With foaming waves the passive Saone divide,
Whose lazy waters without motion lay,
While he with eager force urg'd his impetuous way !
On the Day of Judgment.
[Version of the ' Dies Irae.']
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
Shall the whole world in ashes lay,
As David and the Sibyls say.
What horror will invade the mind.
When the strict Judge, who would be kind.
Shall have few venial faults to find !
The last loud trumpet's wondrous sound,
Shall through the rending tombs rebound.
And wake the nations under ground.
Nature and Death shall, with surprise,
Behold the pale offender rise.
And view the Judge with conscious eyes.
Then shall, with universal dread,
The sacred mystic book be read.
To try the living and the dead.
The Judge ascends his awful throne ;
He makes each secret sin be known,
And all with shame confess their own.
then, what interest shall I make
To save my last important stake,
When the most just have cause to quake?
Thou mighty formidable King,
Thou mercy's unexhausted spring,
Some comfortable pity bring !
Forget not what my ransom cost,
Nor let my dear-bought soul be lost
In f torms of guilty terror tost.
Prostrate my contrite heart I rend,
My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end '
Well may they curse their second breath,
Who rise to a reviving death.
Thou great Creator of mankind,
Let guilty man compassion find !
earl of rochester.
John Wilmot, Earl of Eochester (1647-1680),
is known principally from his having (to use the
figurative language of Johnson) ' blazed out his
youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness,' and
died from pliysical exhaustion and decay at the age
of thirty-tliree. Like most of the courtiers of the
day, Rochester travelled in France and Italy. He
was at sea with the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Ed-
ward Spragge, and distinguished himself for bravery.
In the heat of an engagement, he went to carry a
message in an open boat amidst a storm of shot.
This manliness of character forsook Rochester in
England, for he was accused of betraying cowardice
in street quarrels, and he refused to fight with the
Duke of Buckingham. In the profligate court of
Charles, Rochester was the most profligate; his
intrigues, his low amours and disguises, his erecting
a stage and playing the mountebank on Tower-hill,
and his having been^ce years in a state of inebriety,
are circumstances well-known and partly admitted
by himself. It is remarkable, however, that his
domestic letters, ■which were published a few years
ago, show him in a totally different light — ' tender
playful, and alive to all the affections of a husband,
a father, and a son.' His repentance itself says
something for the natural character of the unfor-
tunate profligate. To judge from the memoir left
by Dr Burnet, who was his lordship's spiritual guide
on his deathbed, it was sincere and unreserved. AVe
may, therefore, with some confidence, set down
Rochester as one of those whose vices are less the
effect of an inborn tendency, than of external cor-
rupting circumstances. It may fairly be said of
him, ' Notliing in his life became him like the leav-
ing it.' His poems consist of slight effusions, thrown
off" without labour. Many of them are so very licen-
tious as to be unfit for publication ; but in one of
these, lie has given in ojie line a happy character of
Charles II.—
A merry monarch, scandalous, and poor.
His songs are sweet and musical. Rochester wTote
a poem Upon Nothing, which is merely a string of
puns and conceits. It opens, however, with a fine
image —
Nothing ! thou elder brother ev'n to shade,
That hadst a being ere the world was made.
And, well fix'd, art alone of ending not afraid.
Song.
While on those lovely looks I gaze,
To see a wretch pursuing,
In raj)tures of a bless'd amaze,
His pleasing happy ruin ;
'TIS not for pity that I move;
His fate is too aspiring,
Whose heart, broke with a load of love,
Dies wishing and admiring.
But if this murder you'd forego.
Your slave from death removing,
Let me your art of charming know.
Or learn you mine of loving.
But whether life or death betide,
In love 'tis equal measure ;
The victor lives with empty pride.
The ranquish'd die with pleasure.
356
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EARL OF ROCHESTER.
[Constancy — a Song.l
I cannot change as others do,
Though you unjustly scorn ;
Since that poor swain that sighs for you,
For you alone was born.
No, Phillis, no ; your heart to move
A surer way I'll try ;
And, to revenge my slighted love.
Will still love on, will still love on, and die.
When kill'd with grief Amyntas lies.
And you to mind shall call
The sighs that now unpitied rise,
The tears that vainly fall ;
That welcome hour that ends this smart
Will then begin your pain,
For such a faithful tender heart
Can never break, can never break in vain.
Song,
Too late, alas ! I must confess.
You need not arts to move me ;
Such charms by nature you possess,
'Twere madness not to love you.
Then spare a heart you may surprise,
And give my tongue the glory
To boast, though my unfaithful eyes
Betray a tender story.
Song.
My dear mistress has a heart
Soft as those kind looks she gave me.
When, with love's resistless art,
And her eyes, she did enslave me.
But her constancy's so weak,
She's so wild and apt to wander.
That my jealous heart would break.
Should we live one day asunder.
Melting joys about her move.
Killing pleasures, wounding blisses ;
She can dress her eyes in love.
And her lips can warm with kisses.
Angels listen when she speaks ;
She's my delight, all mankind's wonder ;
But my jealous heart would break.
Should we live one day asunder.
A few specimens of Rochester's letters to his wife
and son are subjoined : —
I am very glad to hear news from you, and I think
it verv good when I hear you are well ; pray be pleased
to send me word what you are apt to be pleased with,
that I may show you how good a husband I can be ;
I would not have you so formal as to judge of the
kindness of a letter by the length of it, but believe of
everything that it is as you would have it.
'Tis not an easy thing to be entirely happy; but to
be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest measure
of haiipiness. I say not this to put you in mind of
being kind to me ; you have practised that so long,
that I have a joyful confidence you will never forget
it ; but to show that I myself have a sense of what
the methods of my life seemed so utterly to contradict,
I must not be too wise about my own follies, or else this
letter had been a book dedicated to you, and published
to the world. It will be more pertinent to tell you,
that very shortly the king goes to Neivmarket, and
then I shall wait on you at Adderbury ; in the mean
time, think of anything you would have me do, and
I shall thank you for the occasion of pleasing you.
Mr Morgan I have sent in this errand, because he
plays the rogue here in town so extremely, that he is
not to be endured ; pray, if he behaves himself so at
Adderbury, send me word, and let hira stay till I
send for him. Pray, let Ned come up to town ; I have
a little business with him, and he shall be back in a
week.
Wonder not that I have not ^VTitten to you all this
while, for it was hard for me to know what to write upon
several accounts ; but in this I will only desire j'ou
not to be too much amazed at the thoughts my mother
has of you, since, being mere imaginations, they will
as easily vanish, as they were groundlessly erected ;
for my o\vn part, I will make it my endeavour they
may. What you desired of me in your other letter,
shall punctually have performed. You must, I think,
obey my mother in her commands to wait on her at
Aylesbury, as I told you in my last letter. I am very
dull at this time, and therefore think it pity in this
humour to testify myself to you any farther ; only,
dear wife, I am your humble servant — Rochester.
Run away like a rascal, without taking leave, dear
wife ; it is an unpolite way of proceeding, which a
modest man ought to be ashamed of. I have left you
a prey to your own imaginations, amongst my relations
— the worst of damnations ; but there will come an
hour of deliverance, till when, may my mother b&
merciful to you ; so I commit you to what shall ensue,
woman to woman, wife to mother, in hopes of a future
appearance in glory. The small share I could spare
3'ou out of my pocket, I have sent as a debt to Mrs
Rowse. Within a week or ten days I will return you
more : pray write as often as you have leisure to
your Rochester.
Remember me to Nan and my Lord Wilmot.
You must present my service to my cousins. I in-
tend to be at the wedding of my niece Ellen, if I
hear of it. Excuse my ill paper, and very ill man-
ners to my mother ; they are both the best the place
and age could afford.
My Wife — The difficulties of pleasing your lady-
ship do increase so fast upon me, and are grown so
numerous, that, to a man less resolved than myself
never to give it over, it would appear a madness ever
to attempt it more ; but through your frailties mine
ought not to multiply ; you may, therefore, secure
j-ourself that it will not be easy for you to put me out
of my constant resolutions to satisfy you in all I can.
I confess there is nothing will so much contribute to
my assistance in this as your dealing freely with me ;
for since you have thought it a wise thing to trust me
less and have reserves, it has been out of my power
to make the best of my proceedings effectual to what
I intended them. At a distance, I am likeliest to leam
your mind, for you have not a very obliging way of
"delivering it by word of mouth ; if, therefore, you will
let me know the particulars in which I may bi useful
to you, I will show my readiness as to my owi. part ;
and if I fail of the success I wish, it shall not be the
fault of — Your humble servant, Rochester.
I intend to be at Adderbury sometime next week.
I hope, Charles, when you receive this, and know
that I have sent this gentleman to be your tutor, you
will be very glad to see I take such care of you, and
be very grateful, which is best shown in being obedient
and diligent. You are now grown big enough to be
a man, and you can be wise enough ; for the way to
be truly wise is to serve God, learn your hook, and
observe the instructions of your parents fii-st, and next
your tutor, to whom I have entirely resigned you for
this seven years, and according as you employ that
time, you are to be happy or unhappy for ever ; but I
have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to
think you will never deceive me ; dear cliild, learn
your book and be obedient, and you shall see what a
father I will be to you. You shall want no pleasure
while you are good, and that you may be so are my
constant prayers. Rocuesteh.
FROM 1649
CYCLOP JEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Charles, I take it very kindly that you write me
(though seldom), and wish heartily you would behave
youi-self so us that I might show how much I lore you
without being ashamed. Obedience to your grand-
mother, and those who instruct you in good things, is
the way to make you happy here and for ever. Avoid
idleness, scorn lying, and God will bless you.
ROCHESTEH.
SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.
Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701) was one of the
brightest satellites of the court of Charles II. — as
witty and gallant as Kochester, as fine a poet, and a
better man. lie was the son of a Kentish baronet,
Sir John Sedley of Aylesford. The Kestoration
drew him to London, and he became such a favourite
for his taste and accomplishments, that Charles
is said to have asked him if he had not obtained
from Nature a patent to be Apollo's viceroy. His
estate, his time, and morals, were squandered away
at court; but latterly the poet redeemed himself, be-
came a constant attender of parliament, in which he
had a seat, opposed the arbitrary measures of James
II., and assisted to bring about the Revolution.
James had seduced Sedley's daughter, and created
her Countess of Dorchester — a circumstance wliich
probably quickened the poet's zeal against the court.
' I hate ingratitude,' said the Avitty Sedley ; ' and as
the king has made my daughter a countess, I will
endeavour to make his daughter a queen' — alluding
to the Princess Mary, married to the Prince of
Orange. Sir Charles wrote plays and poems, which
were extravagantly praised by his contemporaries.
Buckingham eulogised the witchcraft of Sedley, and
Rochester spoke of his ' gentle prevailing art.' His
songs are light and graceful, with a more studied
and felicitous diction than is seen in most of the
court poets. One of the finest, ' Ah ! Chloris, could
I now but sit,' has been often printed as the compo-
sition of the Scottish patriot, Duncan Forbes of
Culloden, Lord President of the court of session :
the verses occur in Sedley's play, The Mulberry
Garden. Sedley's conversation was highly prized,
and he lived on, delighting all his friends, till past
his sixtieth year. As he says of one of his own
heroines, he
Bloom'd in the winter of his days.
Like Glastonbury thorn.
Song.
Ah, Chloris ! could I now but sit
As unconcern'd as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No happiness or pain.
When I tills dawning did admire,
And praised the coming day,
I little thought the rising fire
Would take my rest away.
Your charms in harmless childhood lay
Like metals in a mine ;
Age from no face takes more away,
Than youth conceal'd in thine.
But as your charms insensibly
To their perfection prest,
So love as unpercciv'd did fly.
And center'd in my breast.
My passion with your beauty grew.
While Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favour'd you,
Threw a new flaming dart.
Each gloried in their wanton p.art ;
To make a lover, he
Employ'd the utmost of his art —
To make a beauty, she.
Hong.
Love still has something of the sea.
From whence his mother rose ;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.
They are becalm'd in clearest d.ays,
And in rough weather toss'd ;
They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.
One while they seem to touch the port,
Then straight into the main
Some angry wind, in cruel sport,
The vessel drives again.
At first disdain and pride they fear.
Which, if they chance to 'scape.
Rivals and falsehood soon appear
In a more cruel shape.
By such decrees to joy they come,
And are so long withstood ;
So slowly they receive the sun.
It hardly does them good.
'Tis cruel to prolong a pain ;
And to defer a joy.
Believe me, gentle Celemene,
Offends the winged boy.
A hundred thousand oaths your fears
Perhaps would not remove ;
And if I gaz'd a thousand years,
I could not deeper love.
Song.
Phillis, men say that all my vows
Are to thy fortune paid ;
Alas ! my heart he little knows,
Who thinks my love a trade.
Were I of all these woods the lord,
One berry from thy hand
^lore real pleasure would afford
Than all my large command.
Jily humble love has learn'd to live
On what the nicest maid,
Without a conscious blush, may give
Beneath the myiile shade.
DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who died in
1673, was distinguished for her faithful attachment
to her lord in his long exile during the time of the
commonwealth, and for her indefatigable pursuit of
literature. She was the daughter of Sir Charles
Lucas, and one of the maids of honour to Henrietta
Maria. Having accompanied tlie queen to France,
she met with the IMarquis of Newcastle, and was
married to him at Paris in 1645. The marquis took
up his residence at Antwerp, till the troubles were
over, and there his lady wrote and published (1653)
a volume, entitled Poems and Fancies. The marquis
assisted her in her compositions, a circumstance
which Horace Walpole has ridiculed in his ' Royal
and Noble Authors ;' and so indefatigable were the
noble pair, that they filled nearly twelve volumes,
folio, with plays, poems, orations, philosophical dis-
courses, &c. On the restoration of Charles II., the
marquis and his lady returned to England. The pic-
ture of domestic happiness and devoted loyalty pre-
sented by the life of these personages, creates a strong
prepossession in favour of the poetry of the duchess.
She had invention, knowledge, and imagination, but
wanted energy and taste. The Pastime and liecrca-
tion of the Queen of Fairies in Fairy Land is her
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDKN.
most popular piece. It often echoes the imagery of
^hakspeare, but has some fine lines, descriptive of
Ihe elvish queen —
She on a dewy leaf doth bathe,
And as she sits, the leaf doth w.ave ;
There like a new-fallen flake of snow,
Doth her white limbs in beauty show.
Her garments fair her maids put on,
Made of the pure light from the sun.
Miith and Melancholy is another of these fanciful
personifications. The former woos the poetess to
dwell ■with her, promising sport and pleasure, and
drawing a gloomy but forcible and poetical sketch
of her rival. Melancholy : —
Her voice is low, and gives .a hollow sound ;
She hates the light, and is in darkness found ;
Or sits with blinking lamps, or tapers small,
Which various shadows make against the wall.
She loA es nought else but noise which discord makes,
As croaking frogs whose dwelling is in lakes ;
The raven's hoarse, the mandrake's hollow groan,
And shrieking owls which fly i' the night alone ;
The tolling bell, which for the dead rings out ;
A mill, where rushing waters run about ;
The roaring winds, which shake the cedars tall.
Plough upthe seas, and beat the rocks withal.
She loves to walk in the still moonshine night,
And in a thick dark grove she takes delight ;
In hollow caves, thatch'd houses, and low cells,
She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.
Melancholy thus describes her own dwelling : —
I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun ;
Sit on tlie banks by which cbar waters run ;
In summers hot down in a shade I lie ;
My music is the buzzing of a fly ;
I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass ;
In fields, where com is high, I often pass ;
Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see.
Some brushy woods, and some all champaigns be ;
Returning back, I in fresh pastures go.
To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low ;
In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on,
Then I do live in a small house alone ;
Although 'tis plain, yet cleanly 'tis within,
Like to a soul that's pure, and clear from sin ;
And there I dwell in quiet and still peace.
Not fiU'd with cares how riches to increase ;
I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures ;
No riches are, but what the mind intreasures.
Thus am I solitary, live alone,
Yet better lov'd, the more that I am known ;
And though my face ill-favour'd at first sight.
After acquaintance, it will give delight.
Refuse me not, for I shall constant be;
Maintain your credit and your dignity.
KATHERINE PHLLIPS.
Mrs Katherine Rhilips (1631-1664) was ho-
noured with the praise of Cowley and Dryden, and
Jeremy Taylor addressed to her a 'Discourse on
Friendship.' Her poetical name of Orinda was
highly popular with her contemporaries; but her
eflflisi'ons are said to have been published without
her consent. This amiable lady was the wife of
James Pliilips of the Priory, Cardigan. She died
of small-pox, a distemper then prevalent and fatal.
[Against Pleasure — an Ode.}
There's no such thing as pleasure here,
'Tis all a perfect cheat,
Which docs but shine and disappear.
Whose charm is but deceit ;
The empty bribe of yielding souls.
Which first betrays and then controls.
'Tis true, it looks at distance fair ;
But if we do approach.
The fruit of Sodom will impair.
And perish at a touch ;
It being tlian in fancy less.
And we expect more than possess.
For by our pleasures we are cloy'd,
And so desire is done ;
Or else, like rivers, they make wide
The channels where they run ;
And either way true bliss destroys,
Making us narrow, or our jovs.
We covet pleasure easily,
But ne'er true bliss possess ;
For many things nmst make it be.
But one may make it less ;
Nay, Were our state as we could choosp -♦
'Twould be consum'd by fear to lose it.
What art thou, then, thou winged air.
More weak and swift tlian fame !
Whose next successor is despair,
And its attendant shame.
Th' experienc'd prince then reason had,
Who said of Pleasure — ' It is mad.'
[^4 Country Life.]
How sacred and how innocent
A country-life appears.
How free from tumult, discontent.
From flattery or fears !
This was the first and happiest life,
A\'hen man enjoy'd himself.
Till pride exchanged peace for strife,
And happiness for pelf.
'Twas here the poets were inspir'd,
Here taught the multitude ;
The brave they here with honour fir'd,
And civilis'd the rude.
That golden age did entertain
No passion but of love :
The thoughts of ruling and of gain
Did ne'er their fancies move.
Them that do covet only rest,
A cottage will suftice :
It is not brave to be possess'd
Of earth, but to despise.
Opinion is the rate of things,
From hence our peace doth flow ;
I have a better fate than kings,
Because I think it so.
^^'hen all the stormy world doth roai'.
How unconcern'd am I !
I cannot fear to tumble lower,
Who never could be high.
Secure in these unenvied walls,
I think not on the state,
And pit}' no man's ease that falls
From his ambition's height.
Silence and iimocence are safe ;
A heart that's nobly true.
At all these little arts can laugh,
That do the world subdue !
JOHN DRYDEN.
John Drvden, one of the great masters of Eng-
lish verse, and whose masculine satire has never been
ex(;elled, was born at Oldwinckle, in Northampton-
sliire, in August 16.'51. His father, Erasmus Driden
[the poet first spelled the name witli a y], was a
strict Puritan, of an ancient family, long established
iu Northamptonshire. John was one of fourteen
359
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1689.
childruti, but he was the eldest son, and received a
good education, first at Westminster, and afterwards
at Trinity college, Cambridge. Drydeu's first poetical
production was a set of ' licroic stanzas' on the death
of Cromwell, which possess a certain ripeness of style
and versification that promised future excellence. In
all Waller's poem on the same subject, there is no-
tliing equal to such verses as the following : —
His grandeur he derlv'd from heaven alone,
For he was great ere Fortune made him so ;
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.
Nor was he like those stars which only shine
When to pale mariners they storms portend ;
He had his calmer influence, and his mien
Did love and majesty together blend.
"Wlien monarchy was restored, Dryden went over
with the tuneful throng who welcomed in Charles XL
He had done with the Puritans, and he wrote poetical
addresses to the king and the lord chancellor. The
amusements of the drama revived after the Restora-
tion, and Dryden became a candidate for theatrical
laurels. In 1662, and two following years, he pro-
duced The Wild Gallant, The Rival Ladies, and
The Indian Emperor ; the last was very successful.
Dryden's name was now conspicuous ; and in 1665
he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter
of the Earl of Berkshire. The match added
neither to his wealth nor his happiness, and the
poet afterwards revenged himself by constantly
inveighing against matrimony. When his wife
wished to be a book, that she might enjoy more
of his company, Dryden is said to have replied,
' Be an almanac then, my dear, that I may change
you once a-year.' In liis play of the Spanish Friar,
he most unpolitely states, that ' woman was made
from the dross and refuse of a man ;' upon which
his antagonist, Jeremy Collier, remarks, with some
humour and smartness, ' I did not know before that
a man's dross lay in his ribs ; I believe it sometimes
lies higher.' All Dryden's plays are marked with
licentiousness, that vice of the age, wliicli he fostered,
"ather than attempted to check. In 1667 he pub-
lished a long poem, Annits Mirabilis, being an account
of the events of the year 1666. The style and versi-
fication seem to have been Copied from Davenant ;
but Dryden's piece fully sustained his reputation.
About the same time he wrote an Essay on Dramatic
Poesij, in which he vindicates the use of rhyme in
tragedy. The style of his prose was easy, natural,
and graceful. The poet now undertook to write for
the king's players no less than three plaj's a year,
for which he was to receive one share and a quarter
in the profits of the theatre, said to be about £300
per annum. He was afterwards made poet-laureate
and royal historiographer, with a salary of £200.
These were golden days ; but they did not last. Dry-
den, however, went on manufacturing his rhyming
plays, in accordance with the vitiated French taste
which then prevailed. He got involved in contro-
versies and quarrels, chiefly at the instigation of
Rochester, who set up a wretched rhymster, Elkanah
Settle, in opposition to Dryden. The great poet was
also successfully ridiculed by Buckingham in his
' Rehearsal.' In 1681, Dryden published the satire
of Absalom and Achitophel, written in the style of a
scriptural narrative, the names and situations of per-
sonages in the holy text being applied to those con-
temporaries, to whom the author assigned places in
his poem. The Duke of Monmouth was Absalom,
and the Earl of Shaftesbury Achitophel ; while the
Duke of Buckingham was drawn under tlie character
of Zimri. The success of this bold political satire —
the most vigorous and elastic, the most finely versi-
fied, varied, and beautiful, which the English lan-
guage can boast — was almost unprecedented. Drj'den
was now placed above all his poetical contemporaries.
Shortly afterwards, he continued the feeling against
Shaftesbury in a poem called The Medal, a Satire
against Seditioyi. The attacks of a rival poet. Shad-
well, drew another vigorous satire from Dryden,
Mac-Flecknoe. A second part of ' Absalom and
Achitophel' was published in 1684, but the body of
the poem was written by Nahum Tate. Dryden con-
tributed about two hundred lines, containing highly-
wrought characters of Settle and Shad well, under
the names of Doeg and Og. ' His antagonists,' says
Scott, 'came on with infinite zeal and fury, dis-
charged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and ex-
hausted their strength in violent and ineffectual
rage ; but the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden
never makes a thrust in vain, and never strikes but
at a vulnerable point.' In the same year was pub-
lished Dryden's Religio Laid, a poem written to de-
fend the church of England against the dissenters,
yet evincing a sceptical spirit with regard to revealed
religion. The opening of this poem is singularly
solemn and majestic —
Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul ; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here ; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear.
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight ;
So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light.
Dryden's doubts about religion were soon dispelled
by his embracing the Roman Catholic faith. Satis-
fied or overpowered by the prospect of an infallible
guide, he closed in with the court of James II., and
gladly exclaimed —
Good life be now my task — my doubts are done.
His change of religion happening at a time when it
I suited his interests to become a Catholic, was looked
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHX DRTDEN
upon with suspicion. The candour evinced by Dr
Johnson on this subject, and tlie patient inquiry of
Sir Walter Scott, have settled the point. We may
lament the fall of the great poet, but his conduct is j
not fairly open to the charge of sordid and unprin-
cipled selfishness. He brought up his family and
died in his new belief. The first public fruits of
Dryden's change of creed were his allegorical poem
of the Iliiid and Panther, in which the main argument
of the Roman church, all that has or can be said
for tradition and authority, is fully stated. ' The
wit in the Hind and Panther,' says Hallam, 'is
sharp, ready, and pleasant ; the reasoning is some-
times admirably close and strong ; it is the energy
of Bossuet in verse.' The Hind is the church of
Rome, the Panther the church of England, while
the Independents, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other
sects, are represented as bears, hares, boars, &c. The
Calvinists are strongly but coarsely caricatured —
More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race
Appear, with belly gaunt and famish'd face —
Never was so deform'd a beast of grace.
His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,
Close clapp'd for shame, but his rough crest he rears,
And pricks up his predestinating ears.
The obloquy and censure which Dryden's change of
religion entailed upon him, is glanced at in the
' Hind and Panther,' with more depth of feeling than
he usually evinced —
If joys hereafter must be purchas'd here
With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,
Then welcome infamy and public shame,
And last, a long farewell to worldly fame !
'Tis said with ease, but, oh, how hardly tried
By haughty souls to human honour tied !
sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride !
Doivn, then, thou rebel, never more to rise.
And what thou did'st, and dost so dearly prize,
That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice !
'Tis nothing thou hast given ; then add thy tears
For a long race of unrepenting years :
'Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give ;
Then add those may-be years thou hast to live :
Yet nothing still ; then poor and naked come ;
Thy Father will receive his unthrift home.
And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum.
He had previously, in the same poem, alluded to the
' weight of ancient witness,' or tradition, which had
prevailed over private reason ; and his feelings were
strongly excited —
But, gracious God ! how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide !
Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
teach me to believe thee thus conceal'd,
And search no farther than thyself reveal'd ;
But her alone for my director take.
Whom thou hast promised never to forsake I
My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
FoUow'd false lights, and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I ; such by nature still I am ;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame !
The Revolution in 1688 deprived Dryden of his
office of laureate. But the want of independent
income seems only to have stimulated his faculties,
and his latter unendowed years produced the noblest
of his works. Besides several plays, he now gave to
khe world versions of Juvenal and Persius, and — a
still weightier task — a translation of Virgil. The
latter is considered the least happy of all his great
works. Dryden was deficient in sensibility, while
Virgil excels in tenderness and in a calm and serene
dignitj'. This laborious undertaking brought the
poet a sum of about £1200. His publisher, Tonson,
endeavoured in vain to get the poet to inscribe the
translation to King William, and, failing in this, he
Burleigh House,
where part of the translation of Virgil was executed.
took care to make the engraver ' aggravate tlie nose
of jEneas in the plates, into a sufficient resemblance
of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's counte-
nance.' The immortal Ode to St Cecilia, commonly
called Alexander's Feast, was Dryden's next work |
and it is the loftiest and most imaginative of all his
compositions. ' No one has ever qualified his ad-
miration of this noble poem.' In 1699 Dryden pub-
lished his Fables, 7500 verses, more or less, as the
contract with Tonson bears, being a partial delivery
to account of 10,000 verses, which he agreed to fur-
nish for the sum of 250 guineas, to be made up to
£300 upon publication of a second edition. The poet
was now in his sixty-eighth year, but bis fancy was
brighter and more prolific than ever; it was like a
brilliant sunset, or a river that expands in breadth,
and fertilises a wider tract of country, ere it is finally
engulfed in the ocean. The ' Fables' are imitations
of Boccaccio and Chaucer, and afford the finest spe-
cimens of Dryden's happy versification. No narra-
tive-poems in the language have been more generaUy
admired or read. "They shed a glory on the last
days of the poet, who died on the 1st of May 1700.
A subscription was made for a public funeral ; and
his remains, after being embalmed, and lying in state
twelve d.ays, were interred with great pomp in West
minster Abbey.
DrA'den has been very fortunate in his critics in-
notators, and biograjjhers. His life by Johnson is
the most carefully written, the most eloquent and
discriminating of all the ' Lives of the Poets.' Malone
collected and edited his essays and other prose writ-
ings ; and Sir Walter Scott wrote a copious life of the
poet, and edited a complete edition of his works, tlio
whole extending to eigliteen vohunes.
It has become the fashion to print the works of
some of our poets in the order in which they were
written, not as arranged and published by tiiemselvts.
Coveper and Burns have been presented in this shape
36'
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689
and the consequence is, that light ephemeral trifles,
or personal sallies, are thrust in between the more
durable memorials of genius, disturbing their sym-
metry and effect. In the case of Dryden, however,
such" a chronological survey would be instructive ;
for, between the * Annus Mirabilis' and the ' Ode to
St Cecilia' or the ' Fables,' through the plays and
poems, how varied is the range in style and taste !
It is lilce the progress of Spenser's ' Good Knight,'
through labyrinths of uncertainty, fantastic conceits,
flowery vice, and unnatural splendour, to the sober
daylight of truth, virtue, and reason. Dryden never
attained to finished excellence in composition. His
genius was debased by the false taste of the age, and
his mind vitiated by its bad morals. He mangled
•tlie natural delicacy and simplicity of Shakspeare's
' Tempest ;' and where even Chaucer is pure, Dryden
is impure. ' This great high-priest of all the nine,'
remarks Mr Campbell, ' was not a confessor to the
finer secrets of the human breast. Had the subject
of " Eloisa" fallen into his hands, he would have left
but a coarse draught of her passion.' But if Dryden
•was deficient in the higher emotions of love and ten-
derness, their absence is partly atoned for in his late
works, by wide surveys of nature and mankind, by
elevated reasoning and declamation, and by the
hearty individuality of his satire. The ' brave negli-
gence' of his versification, and his ' long resounding
line,' have an indescribable charm. His style is like
his own Panther, of the ' spotted kind,' and its faults
and virtues lie equally mixed ; but it is beloved in
spite of spots and blemishes, and pleases longer than
the verse of Pope, which, like the milk-wliite liind,
is ' immortal and unchanged.' The satirical portraits
of Pope, excepting those of Addison and Lord Her-
Tey, are feeble compared with tliose of Drj-den, whom
he acknowledged to be his master and instructor in
versification. The bard of Twickenliam is too subtile,
polished, and refined. Dryden drew from tlie life,
and hit off strong likenesses. Pope, like Sir Joshua
Reynolds, refined in his colours, and many of his
pictures are faint and vanishing delineations. Dry-
den, with his tried and homely materials, and bold
pencil, was true to nature ; his sketclies are still
fresh as a genuine Vandyke or Rembrandt. His lan-
guage, like his thoughts, was truly English. He
was sometimes Gallicised by the prevailing taste of
the day ; but he felt that Ibis was a license to be
sparingly used. ' If too many foreign words are
poured in upon us,' said he, ' it looks as if they were
designed not to assist the natives, but to conquer
them.' His lines, like tlie Sibyl's prophecies, must
be read in the order in which they lie. In better
times, and with more careful culture, Dryden's
genius would have avoided tlie vulgar descents which
he seldom escaped, except in his most finished pas-
sages and his choicest lyrical odes. As it is, his
muse was a fallen angel, cast down for manifold sins
and impurities, yet radiant with light from heaven.
The natural freedom and magnificence of his verse
it would be vain to eulogise.
[Character of Shafteshiry.']
[From * Absalom and Achitophel."]
Of these the false Achitophel was first ;
A name to all succeeding ages curst :
For close designs and crooked counsels fit ;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ;
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place ;
In power unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-inforni'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity ;
Pleas'd with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied.
And thin partitions do their bounds divide ; *
Else why should he, with wealth and hor ur blest.
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease 1
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son :
Got, while his soul did huddled notions trj'.
And bom a shapeless lump, like anivrchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state :
To compass this, the triple bond he broke.
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke :
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves, in factious times.
With public zeal to cancel private crimes ;
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill
Where none can sin against the people's will !
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt thej' find their own !
Yet fame deserv'd no enemy can grudge ;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbrib'd, unsought, the wTCtched to redress.
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.
Oh ! had he been content to serve the crown
With virtues only proper for the goT\Ti ;
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppress'd the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand ;
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.
Achitophel, groAvn weary to possess
A la^vful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdain'd the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
[Cliarader of Yillicrs, Dvle of BucJdngTiam.']
[From the same.]
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land :
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand ;
A man so various that he seem'd to be.
Not one, but all mankind's epitome :
Stiff" in opinions, always in the >vrong,
Was ev'rk'thing by starts, and nothing long ;
But, in the course of one revolving moon.
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking.
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman ! who could ev'ry hour employ
With something new to wish, or to enjoy.
Railing and praising were his usual themes ;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes ;
So over-violent, or over-civil,
That ev'ry man with him was God or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert :
* The proposition of Dryden, that great wit is allied to mad-
ness, will not bear the test of scrutiny. It has been successfully
combated by H;izlitt and Charles Lamb. ' The greatest wits,'
says Lamb, ' will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It ja
impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspearc. Tho
greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is herechiefly to be
understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the
faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess
of any one of tliem.' Shaftesbury's restlessness was owing to his
ambition and his vanity ; to a want of judgment and principle,
not an excess of wit.
362
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DnYDK."*,
Begjrar'il by fools, iThom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate ;
He laugh'd himself from court, then sought reliuf
]5y fonning parties, but could ne'er be chief;
V:t, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel :
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
J^t left not faction, but of that was left.
[Skafteshiry^s Address to Monmouth.']
[From the same.]
Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire ;
Theii second Closes, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land ;
Whose da^vning day in every distant age
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage :
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
Thee, saviour, thee, the nation's vows confess,
And, never satisfied with seeing, bless :
Swift unbespoken pomps thy steps proclaim.
And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name :
How long wilt thou the general joy detain.
Starve and defraud the people of thy reign ;
Content ingloriousl}' to pass thy days,
Like one of Virtue's fools, that feed on praise ;
Till thy fresh glories, which now shine so bright,
Grow stale, and tarnish with our daily sight ;
Believe me, royal youth, thy fruit must be
Or gather'd ripe, or rot upon the tree :
Heaven has to all allotted, soon or late.
Some lucky revolution of their fate ;
Whose motions, if we watch and guide with skill
(For human good depends on human will).
Our fortune rolls as from a smooth descent,
And from the first impression takes the bent ;
But if unseiz'd, she glides away like wind.
And leaves repenting folly far behind.
Now, now she meets you with a glorious prize,
And spreads her locks before you as she flies !
Had thus old David, from whose loins you spring,
Not dared, when fortune call'd him to be king,
At Gath an exile he might still remain,
And heaven's anointing oil had been in vain.
Let his successful youth your hopes engage,
But shun th' example of declining age ;
Behold him setting in his western skies,
The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.
He is not now as when on Jordan's sand.
The joyful people throng'd to see him land.
Covering the beach, and blackening all the strand !
Mac-Flecknoe.
[The design of this poem is the sublime of personal satire.
The leading idea is to represent the solemn inauguration of one
inferior \ioet as the successor of another in the monarchy of
nonsense. The title involves this idea \v\Va a happy reference
to the nation of the resigning sovereign — Mac, in Celtic, being
son.]
All human things are subject to decay ;
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe' found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govem'd long ;
In prose and verse was own'd, without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute. .
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase.
Worn out with bus'ness, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state ;
' Richard Flecknoe, an Irish Roman Catholic priest, and a
well -known hackneyed poetaster of the day.
And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with ^\'it,
Cried, 'Tis resolved ; for Nature pleads, that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell,' alone, my perfect image bears,
^Mature in dulness from his tender years:
Shadwell, alone, of all my sons, was he,
M'ho stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence ;
Rut Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall.
Strike through, and make a lucid interval ;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray;
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye.
And seems design 'd for thoughtless majesty:
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of Tautology !
Y.\\\ I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was seiit before but to prepare thv way ;
And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came
To teach the nations in thy greater name.
My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung,
When to King John of Portugal I sung,
■Was but the prelude to that glorious day,
When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy Avay,
With well-tim'd oars, before the royal barge,
Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge ;
And, big with hymn, commander of a host.
The like was ne'er in Epsom-blankets toss'd.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail,
The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.
At thy well-sharpen'd thumb, from shore to shore,
The trebles squeak for fear, the bases roar :
About thy boat the little fishes throng.
As at the morning toast that floats along.
Sometimes, as prince of thy harmonious band,
Thou Avield'st thy papers in thy thrashing hand.
St Andre's feet'' ne'er kept more equal time ;
Not e'en the feet of thine own Psyche's rhyme r*
Though they in number as in sense excel ;
So just, so like Tautology they fell,
That, pale with envy. Singleton'* forswore
The lute and sword, which he in triumph bort,
And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more
Here stopp'd the good old sire, and wept for jo/,
In silent raptures of the hopeful boy.
All arguments, but most his plays, persuade,
That for anointed dulness he was made.
Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind
(The fair Augusta, much to fears inclin'd)
An ancient fabric, raised t' inform the sight.
There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight,
A watch-tower once ; but now, so fate ordains.
Of all the pile an empty name remains : * *
Near these a nursery erects its head.
Where queens are form'd, and future heroes
bred ;
^^'here unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry.
Where infant punks their tender voices try.
And little Maximins the gods defy,
fireat Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear ;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds ,
1 Thomas Shadwell, the dramatic author, was a rival ot
Prjdeii's both in politics and poetry. Ilis scenes of low comedy
evince considerable talent in the style of Ben Jcnson, whom
ho also resembled in his person and habits,
* A fashionable dancing-master.
3 Psycho was the name of one of Shadwell's opcnas.
* An actor in operas, celebrated for his perform.-uice cf Vel-
lerius in Davenant's ' Siege of Rhodes.'
303
FKOM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Pure clinches the suburban muse affords,
And Panton' waging harmless war with words.
Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well-known,
Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne :
For ancient Dekker prophesied, long since,
That in this pile should reigii a mighty prince,
Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense ;
To whom true dulness should some Psjxhes owe;
But worlds of misers from his pen should flow ;
Humorists and hypocrites it should produce ;
Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce.2
Now empress Fame had publish'd the renown
Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Rous'd by report of Fame, the nations meet,
From near Bun Hill, and distant Watling Street;
No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,
But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay : * *
Bilk'd stationers for yeomen stood prepar'd,
And Herringman^ was captain of the guard.
The hoary prince in majesty aj)pear'd.
High on a throne of his ovra labours rear'd.
At his right hand our young Ascanius sat,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state ;
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace.
And lambent dulness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come.
Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome,
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain.
That he, till death, true dulness would maintain ;
And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,
Ne'er to have peace with Wit, nor truce with Sense.
The king himself the sacred unction made,
As king by oflUce, and as priest by trade.
In his sinister hand, instead of ball,
He placed a mighty mug of potent ale ;
' Love's Kingdom''* to his right he did convey
At once his sceptre and his rule of sway ;
Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young,
And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung :
His temples last with poppies were o'erspread.
That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.
Just at the point of time, if fame not lie.
On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.
So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook.
Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make.
And omens of his future empire take.
The fire then shook the honours of his head,
And from his brows damps of oblivion shed
Full on the filial dulness : long he stood,
Repelling from his breast the raging god ;
At length burst out in this prophetic mood :
' Heav'n bless my son, from Ireland let him reign,
To far Rarbadoes on the western main ;
Of his dominion may no end be known,
And greater than his father's be his throne ;
Beyond Love's Kingdom let him stretch his pen !'
He paus'd ; and all the people cried. Amen.
Then thus continued he : ' My son, advance
Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let others teach ; learn thou, from me,
Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ ;
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage.
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage ;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling,-'' charm the pit,
And, in their folly, show the writer's wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence.
And justify their author's want of sense,
• A well-known punster.
* Characters in Shadwell's dramas. ^ A dramatic piibH«her.
*' Love's Kingdom" is the name of a pastoral drama by
Richard Flecknoe.
' Characters in Sir George Etherego's ' Maa of Mode," and
'iOve in a Tub.'
Let 'em be all by thy own model made
C)f dulness, and desire no foreign aid ;
That they to future ages may be knovra,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,
All full of thee, and dift"'ring but in name.
But let no alien Sedley intei-pose.
To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose. i
And, when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull,
Trust nature, do not labour to be dull ;
But write thy best, and top ; and, in each line.
Sir Formal's oratory will be thine :
Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,
And does thy northern dedications fill.
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,
By arrogating Jonson's hostile name.
Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part :
What share have we in nature or in Jirt ?
Where did his wit on learning fix a brand.
And rail at arts he did not understand ?
Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,
Or swept the dust in Psj'che's humble strain ?
When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
As thou whole Etherege dost transfuse to thine?
But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow ;
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
This is thy province, this thy wondrous w.ay,
New humours to invent for each new play :
This is that boasted bias of thy mind,
By which one way to dulness 'tis inclin'd ;
Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,
And, in all changes, that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence
Of likeness ; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ ;
But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep ;
Thy tragic muse gives smiles ; thy comic, sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite.
In thy felonious heart, though venom lies.
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise.
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or, if thou wouldst thy dift''rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'
He said : but his last words were scarcely heard ;
For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd f
And do^vn they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art.
The Hind and Panther.
A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang'd,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd ;
Without, unspotted ; innocent, within ;
She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin :
Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds
Aim'd at her heart ; was often forc'd to fly.
And doom'd to death, though fated not to die.
' Sir Charles Sedley was imderstood to have assisted Sliad-
wcU in his play of ' Epsom Wells.'
2 Two of the characters in Shadwell's ' Virtuoso,' who play a
trick on Sir X^'ormal Trifle by means of a trap-door. Tlie con-
clusion of Dryden's satire, as well as the general design of the
poem, waa olosely copied by Pope in bis Sunciad.
364
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOUy DRYDEN.
Panting and pensive, now she ranged alone,
And wander'd in the kingdoms once her o\Tt\ :
The common hunt, though from their rage restrain'd
By sovereign power, her company disdaiu'd,
Grinn'd as they pass'd, and with a glaring eye
Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity.
'Tis true she bounded by, and tripp'd so light,
They had not time to take a steady sight :
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be lov'd, needs only to be seen.
* * *
The Panther, sure the noblest next the Hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind ;
Oh, could her in-born stains be wash'd away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey !
How can I praise, or blame, and not offend,
O"" how divide the frail tj^ from the friend ?
Her faults and virtues lie so mix'd, that she
Nor wholly stands condemn'd nor wholly free;
Then like her injur'd lion, let me speak ;
He cannot bend her, and he would not break.
Unkind already, and estrang'd in part.
The wolf begins to share her wandering heart :
Though unpolluted yet with actual ill,
She half commits who sins but in her will.
If, as our dreaming Platonists report,
There could be spirits of a middle sort,
Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell.
Who just dropt half way down, nor lower fell ;
So poi.-i'd, so gently, she descends from high.
It seems a soft dismission from the sky.
[The Sivallow.'\
[From the same.]
The swallow, privileg'd above the rest
Of all the birds as man's familiar guest,
Pursues the sun in summer, brisk and bold,
But wisely shuns the persecuting cold ;
Is well to chancels and to chimneys known.
Though 'tis not thought she feeds on smoke alone.
From hence she has been held of heavenly line.
Endued with particles of soul divine :
This merry chorister had long possesa'd
Her summer seat, and feather'd well her nest,
Till frowning skies began to change their cheer,
And time turn'd up the wrong side of the year;
The shedding trees began the ground to strow
With yellow leaves, and bitter blasts to blow :
Such auguries of winter thence she drew.
Which by instinct or prophecy she knew ;
When prudence wam'd her to remove betimes,
And seek a better heaven and warmer climes.
Her sons were summon'd on a steeple's height,
And, call'd in common council, vote a flight.
The day was nam'd, the next that should be fair ;
All to the general rendezvous repair ;
They try their fluttering wings, and trust themselves
in air.
Who but the swallow now triumphs alone ?
The canopy of heaven is all her o^vn :
Her youthful offspring to their haunts repair.
And glide along in glades, and skim in air,
And dip for insects in the purling springs.
And stoop on rivers, to refresh their wings.
Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne KiUigrew.
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest ;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from paradise.
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest :
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Moy'st with the heaven-majestic pace ;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss :
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space ;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear, then, a mortal JNIuse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse ;
But such as thine own voice did practice here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given ;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there :
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.
If by traduction came thy mind.
Our wonder is the less to find
A soul so charming from a stock so good ;
Thy father was transfus'd into thy blood :
So wert thou bom into a tuneful strain.
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul
Was form'd at first with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,
And was that Sappho last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, heaven-born rniud !
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore :
Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find
Than was the beauteous frame she left behind.
Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kiud
* * *
gracious God ! how far have we
Profan'd thy heav'nly gift of poesy ?
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debas'd to each obscene and impious use.
Whose harmony was first ordain'd above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love ?
wretched we ! why were we hurried down
This lubrique and adulterate age,
(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own)
T' increase the steaming ordures of the stage?
What can we say t' excuse our second fall i
Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all ;
Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd,
Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefil'd ;
Her wit was more than man ; her innocence a child.
* * «
When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground ;
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate ;
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake, and those who sleep ;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound.
And foremost from the tomb shall bound.
For they are cover'd with the lightest ground ;
And straight, with in-bom vigour, on the wing,
Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shall go.
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learnt below.
[On Milton.']
Three poets, in three distant ages bom,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought suqmss'd,
The next in majesty ; in both the last.
The force of nature could no furtlier go ;
To make a third, she join'd the other two.
To my Honoured Kinsman, John Dryden, Esq. of Cliea-
teiion, in the Cotmly of Huntingdon.
IIow bless'd is he who leads a country life,
Unvex'd with anxious cares, and void of strife!
Who, studying peace, and shunning civil rage,
Enjoy'd his youth, and now enjoys his age !
365
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
All who deserve his love he makes his own,
And to be lov'd himself needs only to be known.
Just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come,
From your award, to wait their final doom,
And, foes before, return in friendship home.
Without their cost you tenninate the cause,
And save th' expense of long litigious laws ;
Where suits are travers'd, and so little won.
That he who conquers is but least undone.
Such are not your decrees ; but, so design'd,
The sanction leaves a lasting peace behind,
Like your own soul serene, a pattern of your mind.
Promoting concord, and composing strife,
Lord of yourself, uncumber'd with a wife ; * *
No porter guards the passage of your door.
To admit the wealthy and exclude the poor ;
For God, who gave the riches, gave the heart.
To sanctify the whole by giving part.
Heaven, who foresaw the will, the means has wrought,
And to the second son a blessing brought :
The first begotten had his father's share.
But you, like Jacob, are Rebecca's heir.
So may your stores and fruitful fields increase,
And ever be you bless'd who live to bless.
As Ceres sow'd where'er her chariot flew ;
As heaven in deserts rain'd the bread of dew ;
So free to manj', to relations most.
You feed with manna your oivn Israel host.
With crowds attended of your ancient race.
You seek the champaign sports or sylvan chase :
With well-breath'd beagles you surround the wood,
E'en then industrious of the common good ;
And often have you brought the wily fox
To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks ;
Chas'd e'en amid the folds, and made to bleed.
Like felons where they did the murderous deed.
This fiery game your active youth maintain'd.
Not yet "by years extinguish'd, though restrain'd ;
You season still with sports your serious hours ;
For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
The hare in pastures or in plains is found.
Emblem of human life, who runs the round,
And, after all his wandering ways are done,
His circle fills, and ends where he begun.
Just as the setting meets the rising sun. =* *
A patriot both the king and country sen-es,
Prerogative and privilege preserves ;
Of each our laws the certain limit show;
One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow :
Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand,
The barriers of the state on either hand
May neither overflow, for then they drown the land.
When both are full they feed our bless'd abode.
Like those that water'd once the Paradise of God.
Some overpoise of sway, by tunis, they share ;
In peace the people ; and the prince in war :
Consuls of moderate power in calms were made ;
When the Gauls came, one sole Dictator sway'd.
Patriots in peace assert the people's right,
With noble stubbornness resisting might ;
No lawless mandates from the court receive,
Nor lend by force, but in a body give.
Such was your generous grandsire, free to grant.
In parliaments that weigh'd their prince's want ;
But so tenacious of the common cause.
As not to lend the king against the laws ;
And in a loathsome dungeon doom'd to lie,
In bonds retain'd his birthriglit liberty.
And sham'd oppression till it set him free.
0, irue descendant of a patriot line !
Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them
thine ;
Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see,
•Tis 80 far good, as it resembles thee ;
The beauties to the original I owe,
'Vliich, when 1 miss my own delects, I show.
Nor think the kindred muses thy disgrace ;
A poet is not bom in every race :
Two of a house few ages can aftbrd.
One to perform, another to record.
Praiseworth}' actions are by thee embrac'd.
And 'tis my praise to make thy praises last :
For even when death dissolves our human frame,
The soul returns to heaven, from whence it came;
Earth keeps the body ; verse preserves the fame.
Alexander's Feast.
'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won,
By Philip's warlike son :
Aloft in a^^-ful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne :
His valiant peers were plac'd around.
Their brows with roses and with myrtle bound ;
So should desert in anus be crown'd.
The lovely Thais by his side
Sat, like a blooming Eastern bride.
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair ;
None but the brave.
None but the brave.
None but the brave deserves the fair.
Timotheus, plac'd on high
Amid the tuneful quire.
With flying fingers touch'd the lyre :
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
'Who left his blissful seats above.
Such is the power of mighty Love !
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spheres he rode.
When he to fair Olympia press'd ;
And while he sought her snowy breast,
Then round her slender waist he curl'd.
And stamp'd an image of himself, a sov'reign of tha
world.
The list'ning crowd admire the lofty sound ;
A present deity, they shout around;
A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound :
With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god.
Affects to nod.
And seems to shake the spheres.
The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young :
The jolly god in triumph comes ;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ;
Flush'd with a purple grace
He shows his honest face.
Now, give the hautboys breath ; he comes ! he comes !
Bacchus, ever fiiir and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain :
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure;
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure :
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure ;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain :
Fought all his battles o'er again :
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he sleir
the slain.
The master saw the madness rise ;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes ;
And, while he heav'n and earth defied,
Chang'd his hand, and check'd his prides
He chose a mournful muse.
Soft pity to infuse :
366
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDBN.
He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate
Fall'n, fall'n, fall'n, fall'n,
Fall'n from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood ;
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,
AYith not a friend to close his eyes.
With do^vllcast look the joyless rictor sate,
Revolving in his alter'd soul
The various turns of fate below ;
And now and then a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.
The mighty master smil'd to see
That love was in the next degree :
'Twas but a kindred sound to move ;
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet in Lydian measures,
Soon'he sooth'd his soul to pleasures;
AVar, he sung, is toil and trouble ;
Honour but an empty bubble ;
Never ending, still beginning.
Fighting still, and still destroying ;
If the world be worth thy winning.
Think, think it worth enjoying !
Lovelv Thais sits beside thee.
Take "the good the gods provide thee.
The many rend the skies with loud applause ;
So love was cro^vn'd, but music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care.
And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again.
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.
Now strike the golden lyre again ; _
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder.
And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark ! hark ! the horrid sound
Has rais'd up his head.
As awak'd from the dead,
And, amaz'd, he stares around.
Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries ;
See the Furies arise ;
See the snakes that they rear !
How they hiss in the air.
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes !
Behold a ghastly band.
Each a torch in his hand !
These are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were
slain.
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain ;
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew :
Behold how they toss their torches on high !
How they point to the Persian abodes.
And glitt'ring temples of their hostile gods !
The Princes applaud, with a furious joy ;
And the king seiz'd a flambeau, with zeal to destroy ;
Thais led the way.
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy.
Thus long ago.
Ere lieaving bellows leam'd to blow,
While organs yet were mute,
Timotheus to his breathing fluta
And sounding lyre.
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame :
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarg'd the former narrow bounds.
And added length to solemn sounds.
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown :
He rais'd a mortal to the skies ;
She drew an angel down.
Tlieodore and Honoria.
Of all the cities in Romanian lands.
The chief, and most renown'd, Ravenna stands,
Adom'd in ancient times with arras and arts,
And rich inhabitants, with generous hearts.
But Theodore the brave, above the rest,
With gifts of fortune and of nature bless'd.
The foremost place for wealth and honour held.
And all in feats of chivalry escell'd.
This noble youth to madness lov'd a dame
Of high degree, Honoria was her name ;
Fair as the fairest, but of haughty mind.
And fiercer than became so soft a kind.
Proud of her birth (for equal she had none),
The rest she scom'd, but hated him alone.
His gifts, his constant courtship, nothing gain'd ;
For she, the more he lov'd, the more disdain'd.
He liv'd with all the pomp he could devise,
At tilts and tournaments obtain'd the prize,
But found no favour in his lady's eyes :
Relentless as a rock, the lofty maid
Tum'd all to poison that he did or said :
Nor prayers, nor tears, nor offer'd vows, could move ;
The work went backward ; and the more he strove
T' advance his suit, the farther from her love.
Wearied at length, and wanting remedy,
He doubted oft, and oft resolv'd to die.
But pride stood ready to prevent the blow.
For who would die to gratify a foe \
His generous mind disdain'd so mean a fatfej
That pass'd, his next endeavour was to hate.
But vainer that relief than all the rest.
The less he hop'd, with more desire possess'd ;
Love stood the siege, and would not yield his breast.
Change was the next, but change deceiv'd his care ;
He sought a fairer, but found none so fair.
He would have worn her out by slow degrees,
As men by fasting starve th' untam'd disease :
But present love requir'd a present ease.
Looking, he feeds alone his famish'd eyes,
Feeds lingering death, but looking not, he lies.
Yet still he chose the longest way to fate.
Wasting at once his life and his estate.
His friends beheld, and pitied him in vain,
For what advice can ease a lover's pain!
Absence, the best expedient they could find.
Might save the fortune, if not cure the mind :
This means they long propos'd, but little gaiu'd,
Yet, after much pursuit, at length obtain'd.
Hard you may think it was to give consent.
But struggling with his own desires he went.
With large expense, and with a pompous traiii.
Provided as to visit France and Spain,
Or for some distant voyage o'er the main.
But love had clipp'd his wings, and cut him short ;
Confin'd within the purlieus of the court.
Three miles he went, no farther could retreat ;
His travels ended at his country-seat :
To Chassis' pleasing plains he took his way.
There pitch'd his tents, and there resolv'd to stay.
The spring was in the prime ; the neighbouring gro>«
Supplied with birds, the choristers of love:
Music unbought, that minister'd delight
To morning walks, and lull'd his cares by night :
There he discharg'd his friends, but not th' espenso
Of frequent treats and proud magnificence.
367
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO lt589.
He lir'd as kings retire, though more at large
From public business, yet with equal charge ;
With house and heart still open to receive ;
As well content as love would give him leave :
lie would have liv'd more free ; but many a guest,
Who could forsake the friend, pursu'd the feast.
It liapt one moniing, as his fancy led,
Before his usual hour he left his bed ;
To walk within a lonely lawn, that stood
On every side surrounded by a wood ;
Alone he walk'd, to please his pensive mind,
And sought the deepest solitude to find ;
'Twas in a grove of spreading pines he stray'd ;
The winds within the quivering branches play'd,
And dancing trees a mournful music made.
The place itself was suiting to his care.
Uncouth and savage, as the cruel fair.
He wander'd on, unknowing where he went.
Lost in the wood, and all on love intent :
The day already half his race had run.
And summon 'd him to due repast at noon,
But love could feel no hunger but his own.
Whilst listening to the murmuring leaves he stood,
More than a mile immers'd within the wood,
At once the wind was laid ; the whispering sound
Was dumb ; a rising earthquake rock'd the groui'd ;
\\'ith deeper brown the grove was overspread ;
A sudden horror seiz'd his giddy head,
And his ears tinkled, and his colour fled ;
Nature was in alarm ; some danger nigh
Seem'd threaten'd, though unseen to mortal eye.
Unus'd to fear, he summon'd all his soul,
And stood collected in himself, and whole ;
Not long : for soon a whirlwind rose around.
And from afar he heard a screaming sound,
As of a dame distress'd, who cried for aid.
And fill'd with loud laments the secret shade.
A thicket close beside the grove there stood.
With briers and brambles chok'd, and dwai-fish wood;
From thence the noise, which now, approaching near.
With more distinguish'd notes invades his ear ;
He rais'd his head, and saw a beauteous maid.
With hair dishevell'd, issuing through the shade ;
Stripp'd of her clothes, and ev'n those parts reveal 'd
Which modest nature keeps from sight conceal'd.
Her face, her hands, her naked limbs were torn.
With passing through the brakes and prickly thorn ;
Two mastiffs gaunt and grim her flight pursu'd,
And oft their fastened fangs in blood imbru'd :
Oft they came up, and pinch'd her tender side;
Mercy, mercy, heaven ! she ran, and cried ;
When heaven was nam'd, they loos'd their hold
again.
Then sprang she forth, they follow'd her amain.
Not far behind, a knight of swarthy face,
High on a coal-black steed pursu'd the chase ;
With flashing flames his ardent eyes were fill'd.
And in his hand a naked sword he held :
He cheer'd the dogs to follow her who fled,
And vow'd revenge on her devoted head.
As Theodore was bom of noble kind.
The brutal action rous'd his manly mind ;
Mov'd with unworthy usage of the maid.
He, though unarm'd, resolv'd to give her aid.
A sapling pine he wrcnch'd from out the groun-d.
The readiest weapon that his fury found.
Thus fumish'd for offence, he cross'd the way
Betwixt the graceless villain and his prey.
The knight came thundering on, but, from afar.
Thus in imperious tone forbade the war :
Cease, Theodore, to proffer vain relief.
Nor stop the vengeance of so just a grief;
But give me leave to seize my destin'd prey,
And let eternal justice take the way:
1 but revenge my fate, disdain'd, betray'd,
Asd suffering death for this ungrateful maid.
He said, at once dismounting from the steed ;
For now the hell-hounds with superior speed
Had reach'd the dame, and, fastening on her side.
The ground with issuing streams of purple dyed ;
Stood Theodore surpris'd in deadly fright,
With chattering teeth, and bristling hair upright ;
Yet arm'd with inborn worth, Whate'er, said he,
Thou art, who know'st me better than I thee ;
Or prove thy rightful cause, or be defied ;
The spectre, fiercely staring, thus replied :
Know, Theodore, thy ancestry I claim.
And Guido Cavalcanti was my name.
One common sire our fathers did beget;
My name and story some remember yet :
Thee, then a boy, witliin my arms I laid,
When for my sins I lov'd this haughty maid ;
Not less ador'd in life, nor serv'd by me,
Than proud Honoria now is lov'd by thee.
What did I not her stubborn heart to gain !
But all my vows were answer'd with disdain :
She seorn'd my sorrows, and despls'd my pain.
Long time I dragg'd my days in fruitless care ;
Then, loathing life, and plung'd in deep despair.
To finish my unhappy life, 1 fell
On this sharp sword, and now am damn'd in hell.
Short was her joy ; for soon the insulting maid
By heaven's decree in this cold grave was laid.
And as in unrepented sin she died,
Doom'd to the same bad place is punish'd for her
pride ;
Because she deem'd I well deserv'd to die,
And made a merit of her cruelty.
There, then, we met ; both tried, and both were cast,
And this irrevocable sentence pass'd :
That she, whom I so long pursued in vain,
Should suffer from my hands a lingering pain :
Renew'd to life, that she might daily die,
I daily doom'd to follow, she to fly ;
No more a lover, but a mortal foe,
I seek her life (for love is none below) :
As often as my dogs with better speed
Arrest her flight, is she to death decreed :
Then with this fatal sword, on which I died,
I pierce her open back or tender side.
And tear that harden'd heart from out her breast.
Which, with her entrails, makes my hungrj' hounds a
feast.
Nor lies she long, but, as her fates ordain.
Springs up to life, and fresh to second pain.
Is sav'd to-day, to-morrow to be slain.
This, vers'd in death, th' infernal knight relates,
And then for proof fulfill'd the common fates ;
Her heart and bowels through her back he drew,
And fed the hounds that help'd him to pursue;
Stem look'd the fiend, as frustrate of his will,
Not half suffic'd, and greedy yet to kul.
And now the soul, expiring through the wound,
Had left the body breathless on the ground.
When thus the grisly spectre spoke again :
Behold the fruit of ill-rewarded pain :
As many months as I sustain'd her hate,
So many years is she condemn'd by fate
To daily death ; and every several place.
Conscious of her disdain and my disgrace,
Must witness her just punishment, and be
A scene of triumph and revenge to me !
As in this grove I took my last farewell.
As on this very spot of earth I fell.
As Friday saw me die, so she my prey
Becomes even here, on this revolving day.
Thus, while he spoke, the virgin from the ground
Upstarted fresh, already clos'd the wound.
And unconcem'd for all she felt before,
Precipitates her flight along the shore :
The hell-hounds, as ungorg'd with flesh and blood,
Pursue their prey, and seek their wonted food :
363
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN pnVDEN,
The fiend remounts his courser, mends his pace,
And all the vision vanish'd from the place.
Long stood the noble youth oppress'd with awe,
And stupid at the wondrous things he saw,
Surpassing common faith, transgressing nature's law.
He would hare been asleep, and wish'd to wake,
But dreams, he knew, no long impression make,
Though strong at first ; if vision, to what end,
But such as must his future state portend ?
His love the damsel, and himself the fiend.
But yet, reflecting that it could not be
From heaven, which cannot impious acts decree,
Resolv'd within himself to shun the snare
Which hell for his destruction did prepare ;
And, as his better genius should direct.
From an ill cause to draw a good effect.
Inspir'd from heaven, he homeward took his way,
Nor pall'd his new design with long delay :
But of his train a trusty servant sent
To call his friends together at his tent.
They came, and, usual salutations paid,
With words premeditated thus he said :
What you have often counsell'd, to remove
My vain pursuit of unregarded love.
By thrift my sinking fortune to repair.
Though late, yet is at last become m}' care :
My heart shall be my own ; my vast expense
Reduc'd to bounds by timely providence ;
This only I require ; invite for me
llonorja, with her fivther's family.
Her friends, and mine ; the cause I shall display
On Friday next, for that's th' appointed day.
Well pleased were all his friends, the task was liglit ;
The father, mother, daughter, they invite ;
Hardly the dame was drawn to this repast ;
But yet resolv'd, because it was the last.
The day was come, the guests invited came,
And, with the rest, th' inexorable dame :
A feast prepar'd with riotous expense,
Much cost, more care, and most magnificence.
The place ordain'd was in that haunted grove
Where the revenging ghost pursu'd his love :
The tables in a proud pavilion spread.
With flowers below, and tissue overhead :
The rest in rank, Honoria chief in place,
Was artfully contriv'd to set her face
To front the thicket, and behold the chase.
The feast was serv'd, the time so well forecast.
That just when the dessert and fruits were plac'd,
The fiend's alarm began ; the hollow sound
Sung in the leaves, the forest shook around.
Air blacken'd, roll'd the thunder, groan'd the ground.
Nor long before the loud laments arise
Of one distress'd, and mastiffs' mingled cries ;
And first the dame came rushing through the wood.
And next the famish'd hounds that sought their food.
And grip'd her flanks, and oft essay 'd their jaws in
blood.
Last came the felon on hi.s sable steed,
Arm'd with his naked sword, and urg'd his doga to
speed.
She ran, and cried, her flight directly bent
(A guest unbidden) to the fatal tent.
The scene of death, and place ordain'd for punishment.
Loud was the noise, aghast was every guest.
The women shriek'd, the men forsook the feast ;
The hounds at nearer distance hoarsely bay'd ;
The hunter close pursu'd the visionary maid ;
She rent the heaven with loud laments, imploring aid.
The gallants, to protect the lady's right.
Their falchions brandish'd at the grisly sprite;
High on his stirrups he provok'd the fight.
Then on the crowd he cast a furious look,
And wither'd all their strength before he spoke :
Back, on your lives ; let be, said he, my prey.
And let my vengeance take the destin'd way :
Vain are your arras, and vainer your defence,
Against th' eternal doom of Providence :
Mine is th' ungrateful maid by heaven design'd :
Mercy she would not give, nor mercy shall she find.
At this the former tale again he told
\\'ith thundering tone, and dreadful to behold :
Sunk were their hearts with horror of the crime.
Nor needed to be warn'd a second time.
But bore each other back : some knew the face.
And all had heard the much lamented case
Of him who fell for love, and this the fatal place.
And now th' infernal minister advanc'd,
Seiz'd the due victim, and with fury launch'd
Her back, and, piercing through her inmost heart,
Drew backward, as before, th' offending part.
The reeking entrails next he tore away.
And to his meagre mastiffs made a prey.
The pale assistants on each other star'd.
With gaping mouths for issuing words pre])ar'd;
The still-born sounds upon the palate hung.
And died imperfect on the faltering tongue.
The fright was general ; but the female band
(A helpless train) in more confusion stand:
With horror shuddering, on a heap they run.
Sick at the sight of hateful justice done ;
For conscience rung th' alarm, and made the case
their own.
So, spread upon a lake with upward eye,
A plump of fowl behold their foe on high ;
They close their trembling troop ; and all attend
On whom the sousing eagle will descend.
But most the j)roud Honoria fear'd th' event.
And thought to her alone the vision sent.
Her giiilt jjresents to her distracted mind
Heaven's justice, Theodore's revengeful kind,
And the same fate to the same sin assign'd ;
Already sees herself the n»onster's prey.
And feels her heart and entrails torn away.
'Twas a mute scene of sorrow, mix'd with fear J
Still on the table lay th' unfinish'd cheer:
The knight and hungry tnastiffs stood aroand ;
The mangled dame lay breathless on the ground :
When on a sudden, re-inspir'd with breath,
Again she rose, again to suffer death ;
Nor staid the hell-hounds, nor the hunter staid.
But follow'd, as before, the flying maid :
Th' avenger took from earth th' avenging sword,
And mounting light as air, his sable steed he spurrM
The clouds dispell'd, the sky resum'd her light.
And nature stood recover'd of her fright.
But fear, the last of ills, remain'd behind.
And horror heavy sat on every mii.d.
Nor Theodore encourag'd more the feast.
But sternly look'd, as hatching in his breast
Some deep designs ; which, when Honoria view'd,
The fresh impulse her former fright renew'd ;
She thought herself the trembling dame who fled.
And him the grisly ghost that spurr'dth' infernal steed :
The more dismay'd, for when the guests withdrew.
Their courteous host, saluting all the crew,
Regardless pass'd her o'er ; nor grac'd with kind adieu ;
That sting infix'd within her haughty mind
The downfall of her empire she divin'd.
And her proud heart with secret sorrow pin'd.
Home as they went, the sad discourse renew'd
Of the relentless dame to death pursu'd.
And of the sight obscene so lately view'd.
None dost arraign the righteous doom she bore;
Ev'n they who pitied most, 3-et blam'd her more;
The parallel they needed not to name.
But in the dead they damn'd tlie living dame.
At every little noise she look'd behind.
For still the knight was present to her mind :
And anxious oft she started on the way.
And thought the horseman ghost came tlmnderinjr ior
his prey.
369
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
Ti) Ki'ci'J
Return 'd, she took her bed with little rest,
But in short slumbers dreamt the funeral feast:
Awak'd, she tiirn'd her side, and slept again ;
The same black vapours mounted in her brain,
Aiid the same dreams return'd with double pain.
Now forc'd to wake, because afraid to sleep,
Her blood all fever'd, with a furious leap
She sprang from bed, distracted in her mind,
And fear'd, at every step, a twitching sprite behind.
Darkling and desperate, with a staggering pace.
Of death afraid, and conscious of disgrace ;
Fear, pride, remorse, at once her heart assail'd ;
Pride put remorse to flight, but fear prevail'd.
Friday, the fatal day, when next it came,
Her soul forethought the fiend would change his game,
And her pursue, or Theodore be slain,
And two ghosts join their packs to hunt her o'er the
plain.
This dreadful image so possess'd her mind,
That, desperate any succour else to find.
She ceas'd all farther hope ; and now began
To make reflection on th' unhappy man.
Rich, brave, and young, who past expression lov'd ;
Proof to disdain, and not to be remov'd :
Of all the men respected and admir'd;
Of all the dames, except herself, desir'd :
Why not of her ? preferr'd above the rest
By him with knightly deeds, and open love profess'd?
So had another been, where he his vows address'd
This quell'd her pride, yet other doubts remain'd.
That, once disdaining, she might be disdain'd.
The fear was just, but greater fear prevail'd ;
Fear of her life by hellish hounds assail'd :
He took a lowering leave ; but who can tell
What outward hate might inward love conceal ?
Her sex's arts she knew; and why not, then.
Might deep dissembling have a place in men ?
Here hope began to dawn ; resolv'd to try,
She fix'd on this her utmost remedy :
Death was behind, but hard it was to die.
"Twas time enough at last on death to call,
The precipice in sight : a shrub was all
That kindly stood betwixt to break the fatal fall.
One maid she had, belov'd above the rest ;
Secure of her, the secret she confess'd ;
And now the cheerful light her fears dispell'd ;
She with no winding turns the truth conceal'd,
But put the woman off, and stood reveal'd :
With faults confess'd commission'd her to go,
If pity yet had place, and reconcile her foe ;
The welcome message made, was soon receiv'd ;
'Twas to be wish'd, and hop'd, but scarce b'eliev'J ;
Fate seem'd a fair occasion to present ;
He knew the sex, and fear'd she might repent,
Should he delay the moment of consent.
There yet remain'd to gain her friends (a care
The modesty of maidens well might spare) ;
But she with such a zeal the cause embrac'd
(As women, where they will, are all in haste).
The father, mother, and the kin beside.
Were overborne by fury of the tide ;
With full consent of all, she chang'd her state ;
Resistless in her love, as in her hate.
By her example warn'd, the rest beware ;
More easy, less imperious, were the fair ;
And that one hunting, which the devil desi"-n'd
For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
77ie Cock and the Fox,
[Being the Nun'e Priest's Tale, from Chaucer.]
There liv'd, as authors tell, in days of yore,
A widow somewhat old, and very poor :
Deep in her cell her cottage lonely stood,
Well thatch'd, and under covert of a wood.
This dowager, on whom my tale I found.
Since last she laid her husband in the ground,
A simple sober life, in patience, led,
And had but just enough to buy her bread :
But huswifing the little Heaven had lent,
She duly paid a groat for quarter rent ;
And pinch'd her belly, with her daughters two.
To bring the year about with much ado.
The cattle in her homestead were three sows,
A ewe call'd Molly, and three brinded cows.
Her parlour window stuck with herbs around.
Of savoury smell ; and rushes strew'd the ground
A maple-dresser in her hall she had.
On which full many a slender meal she made ;
For no delicious morsel pass'd her throat ;
According to her cloth she cut her coat ;
No poignant sauce she knew, nor costly treat ;
Her hunger gave a relish to her meat :
A sparing diet did her health assure ;
Or, sick, a pepper posset was her cure.
Before the day was done, her work slie sped.
And never went by candle-light to bed :
With exercise she sweat ill humours out ;
Her dancing was not hinder'd by the gout.
Her poverty was glad ; her heart content ;
Nor knew she what the spleen or vapours meant.
Of wine she never tasted through the yeiir.
But white and black was all her homely clieer :
Brown bread and milk (but first she skini'd ter
bowls).
And rashers of sing'd bacon on the coals.
On holidays, an egg, or two at most ;
But her ambition never reach'd to roast.
A yard she had with jiales inclos'd about,
Some high, some low, and a dry ditch without.
Within this homestead liv'd, without a peer
For crowing loud, the noble Chanticleer ;
So hight her cock, whose singing did surpass
The merry notes of organs at the mass.
More certain was the crowing of the cock
To number hours, than is an abbey-clock ;
And sooner than the matin-bell was rung.
He clapt his wings upon his roost, and sung :
For when degrees fifteen ascended right.
By sure instinct he knew 'twas one at night.
High was his comb, and coral-red withal,
In dents embattled like a castle wall ;
His bill was raven-black, and shone like jet ;
Blue were his legs, and orient were his feet:
White were his nails, like silver to behold ;
His body glittering like the burnish'd gold. * *
It happ'd that, perching on the parlour-beam
Amidst his wives, he had a deadly dream.
Just at the dawn ; and sigh'd, and groan'd so fast,
As every breath he drew would be his last.
Dame Partlet, e%'er nearest to his side.
Heard all his piteous moan, and how he cried
For help from gods and men ; and sore aghast
She peck'd and puU'd, and waken'd him at last.
Dear heart, said she, for love of Heaven, declare
Your pain, and make me partner of your care.
You groan, sir, ever since the morning-light.
As something had disturb'd your noble spright.
And, madam, well I might, said Chanticleer;
Never was shrovetide cock in such a fear ;
Ev'n still I run all over in a sweat.
My princely senses not recover'd yet.
For such a dream I had of dire portent.
That much I fear my body will be shent :
It bodes I shall have wars and woful strife,
Or in a loathsome dungeon end my life.
Know, dame, I dreamt within my troubled breast,
Tliat in our yard I saw a murderous beast.
That on my body would have made arrest ;
With waking eyes I ne'er beheld his fellow;
His colour was betwixt a red and yellow :
370
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDEM.
Tipp'd was Lis tail, and both his pricking ears
Were black, and much unlike his other hairs:
The rest, in shape a beagle's whelp throughout,
With broader forehead, and a sharper snout :
Deep in his front were sunk his glowing eyes.
That yet methinks I see him with surprise.
Reach out your hand, I drop with clammy sweat.
And lay it to my heart, and feel it beat.
Now, fie for shame, quoth she, by Heaven above,
Thou hast for ever lost thy lady's love ;
No woman can endure a recreant knight ;
He must be bold by day, and free by night :
Our sex desires a husband or a friend.
Who can our honour and his own defend ;
Wise, hardy, secret, liberal of his purse ;
A fool is nauseous, but a coward worse :
No bragging coxcomb, yet no baffled knight.
How dar'st thou talk of love, and dar'sfc not
fight?
How dar'st thou tell thy dame thou art aff'ear'd {
Hast thou no manly heart, and hast a beard 1
If ought from feartul dreams may be divin'd,
They signify a cock of dunghill kind.
All dreams, as in old Galen I have read,
Are from repletion and complexion bred ;
From rising fumes of indigested food,
And noxious humours that infect the blood :
And sure, my lord, if I can read aright.
These foolish fancies you have had to-night
Are certain symptoms (in the canting style)
Of boiling choler, and abounding bile ;
This yellow gall that in your stomach floats.
Engenders all these visionary thoughts.
When choler overflows, then dreams are bred
Of flames, and all the family of red ;
Red dragons and red beasts in sleep we view,
For humours are distinguish'd by their hue.
From hence we dream of wars and warlike things,
And wasps and hornets with their double wings.
Choler adust congeals our blood with fear.
Then black bulls toss us, and black devils tear.
In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound,
With rheums oppress'd we sink in rivers drown'd.
More I could say, but thus conclude my theme,
The dominating humour makes the dream.
Cato was in his time accounted wise.
And he condemns them all for empty lies.
Take my advice, and when we fly to ground,
With laxatives preserve your body sound.
And purge the peccant humours that abound.
I should be loath to lay you on a bier ;
And though there lives no 'pothecary near,
I dare for once prescribe for your disease.
And save long bills, and a damn'd doctor's fees.
Two sovereign herbs which I by practice know.
And both at hand (for in our yard they grow),
On peril of my soul, shall rid you wholly
Of yellow choler and of melancholy ;
You must both purge and vomit ; but obey,
And for the love of heaven make no delay.
Since hot and dry in your complexion join,
Beware the sun when in a vernal sign ;
For when he mounts exalted in the ram,
If then he finds your body in a flame.
Replete with choler, I dare lay a groat,
A tertian ague is at least your lot.
Perhaps a fever (which the gods forefend)
May bring your youth to some untimely end :
And therefore, sir, as you desire to live,
A day or two before your laxative.
Take just three worms, nor under nor above,
Because the gods unequal numbers love.
These digestives prepare you for your purge ;
Of fumetery, centaury, and spurge.
And of ground-ivy, add a leaf or two,
All which within our yard or garden grow.
Kat these, and be, my lord, of better cheer ;
Your father's son was never born to fear.
Madam, quoth he, gramercy for your care.
But Cato, whom you quoted, you may spare :
'Tis true, a wise and worthy man he seems.
And, as you saj', gave no belief to dreams :
But other men of more authority.
And, by th' immortal powers, as wise as he.
Maintain, with sounder sense, that dreams for'K"i9i
For Homer plainly says they come from God.
Nor Cato said it : but some modern fool
Impos'd in Cato's name on boys at school.
Believe me, madam, morning dreams foreshow
Th' events of things, and future weal or wo :
Some truths are not by reason to be tried.
But we have sure experience for our guide. * *
Much more I know, which I forbear to speak.
For see the ruddy day begins to break ;
Let this suflice, that plainly I foresee
My dream was bad, and bodes adversity :
But neither pills nor laxatives I like.
They only serve to make the well man sick :
0{ these "his gain the sharp physician makes,
And often gives a purge, but seldom takes :
They not correct, but poison all the blood.
And ne'er did any but the doctors good.
Their tribe, trade, trinkets, I defy them all ;
With every work of 'pothecary's hall.
These melancholy matters I forbear :
But let me tell thee, Partlet mine, and swear.
That when I view the beauties of thy face,
I fear not death, nor dangers, nor disg«ace :
So may my soul have bliss, as when I spy
The scarlet red about thy partridge eye.
While thou art constant to thy own true knight.
While thou art mine, and I am thy delight.
All sorrows at thy presence take their flight.
For true it is, as ' in principio,
Mulier est hominis confusio.'
Madam, the meaning of this Latin is,
That woman is to man hi» sovereign bliss. * *
He said, and downward flew from ofl' the beam,
For day-light now began apace to spring.
The thrush to whistle, and the lark to sing.
Then crowing clapp'd his wings, th' appointed call,
To chuck his wives together in the hall.
By this the widow had unbarr'd tlie door,
And Chanticleer went strutting out before.
With ro^'al courage, and with heart so light.
As show'd he scorn'd the visions of the night.
Now loaming in the yard he spuni'd the ground.
And gave to Partlet the first grain he found. * *
He chuck'd again, when other corns he found.
And scarcely deign 'd to set a foot to ground ;
But swagger'd like a lord about his hall.
And his seven wives came running at his calf.
'Twas now the montli in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man) :
And since the vernal equinox, the sun,
In Aries twelve degrees, or more, had run ;
When casting up his eyes against the light.
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right :
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris :
For art may err, but nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second Grooving the third hour confess'd.
Then turning, said to Partlet, See, my dear,
How lavish nature has adorn 'd the year ;
How the pale primrose and blue vinlct spring,
And birds essay their throats disus'd to sing :
All these are ours ; and I with pleasure see
Man strutting on two legs, and aping ine:
An unfledg'd creature, of a lumpish frame,
Endow'd with fewer particles of flame :
Our dame sits cow'ring o'er a kitchen fire ;
I draw fresh air, and nature's works admire :
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And ev'n this day in more delight abound,
Than, since I was an egg, 1 ever found.
The time shall come when Chanticleer shaL ;ylsh
His words unsaid, and hate his boasted blis« :
The crested bird shall bj experience know
JoTC made not him his master-piece below,
And learn the latter end of joy is wo.
The vessel of his bliss to dregs is run,
And Heaven will have him taste his other tun.
Ye wise, draw near, and hearken to my tale,
Which proves, that oft the proud by flattery fall :
The legend is as true, I undertake.
As Tristram is, and Launcelot of the Lake ;
Which all our ladies in such reverence hold,
As if in book of martyrs it were told.
A fox full fraught with seeming sanctity.
That fear'd an oath, but, like the devil, would lie;
Who look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer.
And durst not sin before he said his prayer ;
This pious cheat, that never suck'd the blood,
Nor chew'd the flesh of lambs, but when he could,
Had pass'd three summers in the neighbouring
wood :
And musing long whom next to circumvent,
On Chanticleer his wicked fancy bent ;
And in his high imagination cast,
By stratagem to gratify his taste.
The plot contriv'd, before the break of day
Saint Reynard through the hedge had made his way :
The pale was next, but proudly with a bound
He leapt the fence of the forbidden ground :
Yet, fearing to be seen, within a bed
Of coleworts he conceal'd his wily head ;
Then skulk'd till afternoon, and watch'd his time
(As murderers use) to perpetrate his crime. * *
Now to continue what my tale begun :
Lay Madam Partlet basking in the sun,
Breast-high in sand : her sisters, in a row,
Enjoy'd the beams above, the warmth below ;
The cock, that of his flesh was ever free.
Sung merrier than the mermaid in the sea :
And so befell, that as he cast his eye
Among the coleworts on a butterfly.
He saw false Reynard where he lay full low :
I need not swear he had no list to crow :
But cried, cock, cock, and gave a sudden start.
As sore dismay'd and frighted at his heart ;
For birds and beasts, inform'd by nature, know
Kinds opposite to theirs, and fly their foe ;
So Chanticleer, who never saw a fox.
Yet shunn'd him as a sailor shuns the rocks.
But the false loon, who could not work his will
By open force, employ'd his flattering skill :
I hope, my lord, said he, I not offend ;
Are you afraid of me that am your friend ?
I were a beast indeed to do you wrong,
I, who have lov'd and honour'd you so long :
Stay, gentle sir, nor take a false alarm.
For on my soul I never meant you harm.
I come to spy, nor as a traitor press,
To leani the secrets of your soft recess :
Far be from Reynard so profane a thought.
But by the sweetness of your voice was brought :
For, as I bid my beads, by chance I heard
Tho song as of an angel in the yard ;
A song that would have charm'd th' infernal gods,
And banish'd horror from the dark abodes ;
Had Orpheus sung it in the nether sj)here.
So much the hymn had pleas'd the tyrant's ear,
The wife had been detain'd, to keep the husband there.
My lord, your sire familiarly I knew,
A peer deserving such .a son as you :
He, with your lady mother (whom Heaven rest)
Has often grac'd my house, and been my guest :
To view his living features does me good ;
VoT I am your poor neighbour in the wood j
And in my cottage should be proud to see
The worthy heir of my friend's family.
But since I speak of singing, let me say,
As with an upright heart I safely may.
That, save yourself, there breathes not on the ground
One like your father for a silver sound.
So sweetly would he wake the winter day.
That matrons to the church mistook their way.
And thought they heard the merry organ play.
And he, to raise his voice with artful care,
(What will not beaux attempt to please the fair 1)
On tiptoe stood to sing with greater strength.
And stretch'd his comely neck at all the length :
And while he strain'd his voice to pierce the skies.
As saints in raptures use, would shut his eyes,
That the sound striving through the narrow throat,
His winking might avail to mend the note.
By this, in song, he never had his peer.
From sweet Cecilia down to Chanticleer ;
Not Maro's muse, who sung the mighty man.
Nor Pindar's heavenly lyre, nor Horace when a ivvan.
Your ancestors proceed from race divine :
From Brennus and Belinus is your line ;
Who gave to sovereign Rome such loud alarms.
That ev'n the priests were not excus'd from arms.
Besides, a famous monk of modern times
Has left of cocks recorded in his rhymes,
That of a parish priest the son and heir
(When sons of priests were from the proverb clear)
Affronted once a cock of noble kind.
And either lam'd his legs, or struck him blind;
For which the clerk, his father, was disgrac'd,
And in his beneflce another plac'd.
Now sing, my lord, if not for love of me.
Yet for the sake of sweet Saint Charity ;
Make hills and dales, and earth and heaven rejoice,
And emulate your father's angel voice.
The cock was pleas'd to hear him speak so fair,
And proud, beside, as solar people are ;
Nor could the treason from the truth descry,
So was he ravish'd with this flattery :
So much the more, as from a little elf.
He had a high opinion of himself ;
Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb,
Concluding all the world was made" for him.
Ye princes rais'd by poets to the gods,
And Alexander'd up in lying odes.
Believe not every flattering knave's report.
There's many a Reynard lurking in the court ;
And he shall be receiv'd with more regard.
And listened to, than modest truth is heard.
This Chanticleer, of whom the story sinws.
Stood high upon his toes, and clapp'd his win^s ;
Then stretch'd his neck, and wink'd with both his eyet,
Ambitious, as he sought th' Olympic prize.
But while he pain'd himself to raise his note.
False Reynard rush'd, and caught him by the throat.
Then on his back he laid the precious load.
And sought his wonted shelter of the wood ;
Swiftly he made his way, the mischief done.
Of all unheeded, and pursued by none. * *
Not louder cries, when Ilium was in flames,
Were sent to heaven by woful Trojan dames.
When Pyrrhus toss'd on high his burnish'd blade,
And offer'd Priam to his father's shade,
Thau for the cock the widow'd poultry made.
Fair Partlet first, when he was borne from sisxht,
With sovereign shrieks bewail'd her captive knii^ht
Far louder than the Carthaginian wife,
When Asdrubal, her husband, lost his life.
When she beheld the smouldering flames ascend,
And all the Punic glories at an end :
Willing into the fires she plung'd her head,
With greater ease than others seek their bed.
Not more aghast the matrons of renown,
When tyrant Nero burnt th' imperial town,
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ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRYDEN
Shi-iek'd for the domifall in a doleful cry,
For which theii guiltless lords were doom'd to die.
Now to ray a'ory I return again :
The trembling widow, and her daughters twain,
This woful cackling cry with horror heard,
Of those distracted damsels in the yard ;
And starting up, beheld the heavy sight,
How Reynard to the forest took his flight ;
And, cross his back, as in triumphant scorn.
The hope and pillar of the house was borne.
The fox, the wicked fox, was all the cry ;
Out from his house ran every neighbour nigh ;
The vicar first, and after him the crew
With forks and staves, the felon to pursue.
Ran Coll our dog, and Talbot with the band,
And Malkin with her distaff in her hand ;
Ran cow and calf, and family of hogs,
In panic horror of pursuing dogs ;
With many a deadly grunt and doleful squeak.
Poor swine, as if their pretty hearts would break.
The shouts of men, the women in dismay,
With shrieks augment the horror of the day.
The ducks, that heard the proclamation cried.
And fear'd a persecution might betide.
Full twenty mile from town their voyage take.
Obscure in rushes of the liquid lake ;
The geese fly o'er the barn ; the bees in arms,
Drive headlong from their waxen cells in swarms.
Jack Straw at London-stone, with all his rout.
Struck not the city with so loud a shout ;
Not when with English hate they did pursue
A Frenchman, or an unbelieving Jew :
Not when the welkin rung with one and all.
And echoes bounded back from Fox's hall.
Earth seem'd to sink beneath, and heaven above to fall.
With might and main they chas'd the murderous fox,
W^ith brazen trumpets, and inflated box,
To kindle Mars with military sounds ;
Nor wanted horns t' inspire sagacious hounds.
But see how fortune can confound the wise.
And, when they least expect it, turn the dice.
The captive cock, who scarce could draw his breath,
And lay within the very jaws of death,
Yet in this agony his fancy -ivi-ought.
And fear supplied him with this happy thought :
Yours is the prize, victorious prince, said he ;
Thi vicar my defeat, and all the village see ;
Enjoy your friendly fortune while you may.
And bid the churls that envy jou the prey
Call back their mongrel curs, and cease their cry ;
See, fools, the shelter of the wood is nigh.
And Chanticleer in your despite shall die;
He shall be pluck'd and eaten to the bone.
'Tis well advis'd, in faith it shall be done.
This Reynard said ; but, as the word he spoke.
The prisoner with a spring from prison broke ;
Then stretch'd his feather'd fans with all his might,
And to the neighbouring maple wing'd his flight.
Whom when the traitor safe on tree beheld.
He curs'd the gods, with shame and sorrow fiU'd ;
Shama for his folly, sorrow out of time.
For plotting an unprofitable crime ;
Yet, mastering both, th' artificer of lies
Renews th' assault, and his last battery tries.
Though I, said he, did ne'er in thought oflTend,
How justly may ray lord suspect his friend !
Th' appearance is against rae, I confess.
Who seemingly have put you in distress :
You, if your goodness does not plead my cause.
May think I broke all hospitable laws,
To bear you from your palace-yard by might.
And put your noble person in a friglit :
This, since you take it ill, I must repent,
Though, Heaven can witness, with no bad intent ;
I practis'd it, to make you taste your cheer
With double pleasure, first prepar'd by fear.
So loyal subjects often seize their prince,
Forc'd (for his good) to seeming violence.
Yet mean his sacred person not the least olfence.
Descend ; so help nie Jove, as you shall find
That Reynard comes of no dissembling kind.
Nay, quoth the cock ; but I beshrew us both.
If I believe a saint upon his oath :
An honest man may take a knave's advice.
But idiots only may be cozen'd twice :
Once wani'd is well bewar'd ; not flattering lies
Shall soothe me more to sing with winking eyes
And open mouth, for fear of catching flies.
Who blin<lfol(l walks upon a river's brim,
When he should see, has he deserv'd to swim ?
Better, sir cock, let all contention cease.
Come downi, said Reynard, let us treat of peace.
A peace with all my soul, said Chanticleer,
But, with your favour, I will treat it here :
And, lest the truce with treason should be mixt,
'Tis my concern to have the tree betwixt.
THE MORAL.
In this plain fable you th' effect may see
Of negligence and fond credulity :
And learn, besides, of flatterers to beware.
Then most pernicious when they speak too fair.
The cock and fox the fool and knave imply ;
The truth is moral, though the tale a lie.
Who spoke in parables, I dare not say ;
But sure he knew it was a pleasing way,
Sound sense, by plain example, to convey.
And in a heathen author we may find,
That pleasure with iiistruction should be join'd .
So take the com, and leave the chaff behind.
[Inconveniences of Life in EoTneJ]
[From Juvenal.]
Who fears in country towns a house's fall.
Or to be caught betwixt a riven wall ?
But we inhabit a weak city here.
Which buttresses and props but scarcely bear*
And 'tis the village mason's daily calling,
To keep the world's metropolis from falling ;
To cleanse the gutters, and the chinks to close
And, for one night, secure his lord's repose.
At Cumse we can sleep quite round the year,
Nor falls, nor fires, nor nightly dangers fear;
While rolling flames from Roman turrets fly,
And the pale citizens for buckets cry.
Thy neighbour has remov'd his wretched store,
(Few hands will rid the lumber of the poor)
Thy own third stoi'ey smokes, while thou, supine.
Art drench'd in fumes of undigested wine.
For if the lowest floors already burn.
Cock-loft and garrets soon will take the turn.
Where thy tame pigeons next the tiles were bred,
Which, in their nests unsafe, are timely fled,
Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot.
That his short wife's short legs hung dangling out ;
His cupboard's head six earthen pitchers gi'ac'd.
Beneath them was his trusty tankard plac'd.
And, to support this noble plate, there lay
A bended Chiron cast from honest clay ;
His few Greek books a rotten chest contain'd,
Whose covers much of mouldiness complaiu'd;
Where mice and rats devour'd poetic bread.
And with heroic verse luxuriously were fed.
'Tis true poor Codrus nothing had to boast,
And yet poor Codrus all that nothing lost,
Begg'd naked through the streets of wealthy Rome,
And found not one to feed, or take him home.
But if the palace of Arturius burn,
The nobles change their clothes, tlie matrons mourn ;
Tlie city prajtor will no pleadings hear;
The very name of fire we hate and fear.
And look aghast, as if the Gauls were here.
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While yet it bums, th' ofBcious nation flies,
Some to condole, and some to bring supplies :
One sends him marble to rebuild, and one
"With naked statues of the Parian stone,
The work of Polvclete, that seem to live ;
While other images for altars give ;
One books and screens, and Pallas to the breast :
Another bags of gold, and he gives best.
Childless Arturius, vastly rich before.
Thus by his losses multiplies his store :
Suspected for accomplice to the fire,
That burnt his palace but to build it higher.
But could you be content to bid adieu
To the dear play-house and the players too,
Sweet country seats are purchas'd everywhere,
With lands and gardens, at less price than here
You hire a darksome dog-hole by the year ;
A small convenience decently prepar'd,
A shallow well that rises in your yard,
That spreads his easy crystal streams around,
And waters all the pretty spot of ground.
There, love the fork, thy garden cultivate.
And give thy frugal friends a Pythagorean treat ;
'Tis somewhat to be lord of some small ground,
In which a lizard may, at least, turn round.
'Tis frequent here, for want of sleep, to die.
Which fumes of undigested feasts deny ;
And, with imperfect heat, in languid stomachs fry.
What house secure from noise the poor can keep,
When ev'n the rich can scarce afford to sleep ;
So dear it costs to purchase rest in Rome ;
And hence the sources of diseases come.
The drover who his fellow drover meets
In narrow passages of winding streets ;
The wagoners that curse their standing teams,
Would wake ev'n drowsy Drusius from his dreams.
And yet the wealthy will not brook delay.
But sweep above our heads, and make their way.
In lofty litters borne, and read and write,
Or sleep at ease : the shutters make it night.
Yet still he reaches, first, the public place ;
The press before him stops the client's pace :
The crowd that follows crush his panting sides,
And trip his heels ; he walks not, but he rides.
One elbows him, one justles in the shoal :
A rafter breaks his head, or chairman's pole ;
Stocking'd with loads of fat town-dirt he goes ;
And some rogue soldier, with his hob-nail'd shoes,
Indents his legs behind in bloody rows.
See with what smoke our doles we celebrate ;
A hundred guests, invited, walk in state ;
A hundred hungry slaves, with their Dutch kitchens,
wait.
Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear.
Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear ;
Yet they must walk upright beneath the load :
Nay, run, and running, blow the sparkling flames
abroad ;
Their coats, from botching newly bought, are torn.
Unwieldy timber-trees in wagons borne,
Stretch'd at their length, beyond their carriage lie,
That nod, and threaten ruin from on high.
For should their axle break, its overthrow
Would crush, and pound to dust, the crowd below:
Nor friends their friends, nor sires their sons could
know:
Nor limbs, nor bones, nor carcass would remain.
But a mash'd heap, a hotch-potch of the slain.
One vast destruction ; not the soul alone,
But bodies, like the soul, visibly are flovm.
Meantime, unknowing of their fellows' fate,
I'he servants wash the platter, scour the plate.
Then blow the fire, with puffing cheeks, and lay
The rubbers, and the bathing sheets display ;
\nd oil them first; and each is handy in his
way.
But he, for whom this busy care they take,
Poor ghost 1 is wandering by the Stygian lake :
Affrighted with the ferryman's grim face ;
New to the horrors of that uncouth place ;
His passage begs with unregarded prayer.
And wants two farthings to discharge his fare.
Return we to the dangers of the night ;
And, first, behold our houses' dreadful height,
From whence come broken potsherds tumbling do\vn.
And leaky ware, from garret-windows thrown ;
Well may they break our heads, and mark the flinty
stone.
'Tis want of sense to sup abroad too late.
Unless thou first hast settled thy estate.
As many fates attend thy steps to meet.
As there are waking windows in the street.
The scouring drunkard, if he does not fight
Before his bed-time, takes no rest that night ;
Passing the tedious hours in greater pain
Than stem Achilles, when his friend was slain :
'Tis so ridiculous, but so true withal,
A bully cannot sleep without a brawl :
Yet, though his youthful blood be fir'd with wine,
He wants not wit the danger to decline :
Is cautious to avoid the coach-and-six.
And on the lacqueys will no quarrel fix.
His train of flambeaux, and embroider'd coat.
May privilege my lord to walk secure on foot ;
But me, who must by moonlight homeward bend,
Or lighted only with ,a candle's end.
Poor me he fights, if that be fighting, where
He only cudgels, and I only bear.
He stands, and bids me stand : I must abide ;
For he's the stronger, and is drunk beside.
Where did you whet your knife to-night, he cries.
And shred the leeks that in your stomach rise !
With what companion-cobbler have you fed
On old ox-cheeks, or he-goat's tougher head ?
What ! are you dumb ? Quick with your answer, quick,
Before my foot salutes you with a kick.
Say in what nasty cellar under ground.
Or what church porch your rogueship may be foun 1 ?
Answer, or answer not, 'tis all the same ;
He lays me on, and makes me bear the blame.
Before the bar, for beating him you come ;
This is a poor man's liberty in Rome.
You beg his pardon, happy to retreat
With some remaining teeth to chew your meat.
Nor is this all ; for when retired, you think
To sleep securely ; when the candles wink.
When every door with iron chains is barr'd.
And roaring taverns are no longer heard ;
The ruffian-robbers by no justice aw'd.
And unpaid cut-throat soldiers are abroad ;
Those venal souls, who, harden'd in each ill.
To save complaints and persecution, kill.
Chas'd from their woods and bogs, the padders coine
To this vast city as their native home ;
To live at ease, and safely skulk in Rome.
The forge in fetters only is em ploy 'd ;
Our iron mines exhausted and destroy'd
In shackles ; for these villains scarce allow
Goads for teams, and ploughshares for the plough.
Oh, happy ages of our ancestors.
Beneath the kings and tribuniti.al powers !
One jail did all their criminals restrain,
Which now the walls of Rome can scarce contain.
More I could say, more causes I could show
For my departure ; but the sun is low :
The wagoner grows weary of my stay.
And whips his horses forwards on their way.
Farewell ; and when, like me, o'crv.'helm'd with care,
You to your own Aquinum shall repair,
To take a mouthful of sweet country air.
Be mindful of your friend ; and send me word
What joys your fountains and cool shades aflbrd ;
374
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHfr r-HILIPS.
Then, to assist your satires, I will come,
And add new venom when you write of Rome.
[Enjoyment of the Present Hour Becomincndeil.l
[From the twenty-ninth ode of tlie First Book of Horace.]
Enjoy the present smiling hour.
And put it out of Fortune's pow'r :
The tide of husiness, like the running stream,
[s sometimes high, and sometimes low,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed ;
Anon it lifts aloft the head.
And bears down all before it with impetuous force ;
And trunks of trees come rolling down ;
Sheep and their folds together drowTi :
Both house and homestead into seas are borne ;
And rocks are from their old foundations torn ;
And woods, made thin with winds, their scatter'd
honours mourn.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own :
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.
Be fair or foul, or rain or shine.
The joys I have possess'd, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power ;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my
hour.
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleas'd to bless :
Still various, and inconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind ;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes her wings, and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away :
The little or the much shegave is quietly resign 'd :
Content with poverty, my soul I arm ;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
What is't to me.
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea.
If storms arise, and clouds grow black ;
If the mast split, and threaten wreck ?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain ;
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows.
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail.
Contemning all the blustering roar ;
And running with a merry gale,
With friendly stars my safety seek,
Within some little winding creek.
And see the storm ashore.
JOHN PHILIPS.
Mr Southey has said that the age from Dryden to
Pope is the worst age of English poetry. In this
interval, which was but short, for Dryden bore fruit
to tlie last, and Pope was early in blossom, there
were about twenty poets, most of whom might be
blotted from our literature, without being missed
or regretted. The names of Smith, Duke, King,
Sprat, Garth, Hughes, Blackmore, Penton, Yalden,
Hainmond, Savage, &c., have been preserved by
Dr Johnson, but they excite no poetical associations.
Tiieir works jiresent a dead-level of tame and unin-
teresting mediocrity. The artificial taste introduced
in tlie reign of Charles II., to the exclusion of the
romantic spirit which animated the previous reign,
sunk at last into a mere collocation of certain phrases
and images, of which each repetition was more
weak than the last. Pope revived the notional sjiirit
by his polished satire and splendid versification; but
the true poetical feeling lay dormant till Thomson's
Seasons and Percy's Relics of Ancient Poetry spoke
to the heart of the people, and recalled the public
taste from art to nature.
Of the artificial poets of this age, John Philips
(1676-1708) evinced considerable talent in his
Sfttendid Shilling, a parody on the style of Milton.
He was the son of Dr Philips, archdeacon of Salop,
who officiated as minister of Bampton, in Oxford-
shire. He intended to follow the medical profes-
sion, and studied natural history, but was cut off
at the early age of thirty-three. Philips wrote a
poem on the victory of Blenheim, and another on
Cider, tlie latter in imitation of the Georgics. The
whole are in blank verse. He was an avowed
imitator of Milton, but regretted that, like his own
Alidiel, the great poet had not been ' faithful
found' —
But he — however let the muse abstain.
Nor hlaM his fame, from whom she learnt to sing
In much inferior strains, grovelling beneath
Th' Olympian hill, on. plains and vales intent —
Mean follower.
The notion, that Philips was able, by whatever he
might write, to blast the fame of Milton, is one of
those preposterous conceits which even able men
will sometimes entertain.
TJic Splendid Shilling.
' Sing, heavenly muse !
Things unattempted yet, in prose or rhyme,
A shilling, breeches, and chimeras dire.
Happy the man, who, void of care and strife,
In .silken or in leathern purse retains
A Splendid Shilling : he nor hears with paiu
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale ;
But witli his friends, when nightly mists arise,
To Juniper's Magpie, or Town-hall' repairs :
Where, mindful of the nymph, whose wanton eye
Transfi.x'd his soul, and kindled amorous flames,
Chloe or Phillis, he each circling glass
Wishes her health, and joy, and equal love.
Meanwhile he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint.
But I, whom griping penury surrounds.
And hunger, sure attendant upon want.
With scanty offals, and small acid tiff,
Wretched repast ! my meagre corpse sustain :
Then solitary walk, or doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chill'd fingers ; or from tube as black
As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet.
Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent :
Not blacker tube, nor of a shorter size.
Smokes Cambro-IJritain (versed in pedigree,
Sprung from Cadwallader and Arthur, kings
Full famous in romantic tale) when he
O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff,
Upon a cargo of fam'd Cestrian cheese.
High over-shadovvliig rides, with a design
To vend his wares, or at th' Avoniaii mart,
Or Maridunuiu, or the ancient town
1 Two noted alehouses in Oxford, 1700. ,,_ .
PROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Yclep'd Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream
Encircles Aricoiiiuni, fruitful soil !
Whence flows ncctareous wines, that well mav vie
With Massic, Setiii, or renown'd Falem.
Thus, while my joyless minutes tedious flow
With looks demure, and silent pace, a dun,
Hon-ible monster ! hated by gods and men,
To my aerial citadel ascends :
With vocal heel thrice thundering at my gate ;
With hideous accent thrice he calls ; I know
The voice ill-boding, and the solemn sound.
What should I do ? or whither turn 1 Amaz'd,
Confounded, to the dark recess I fly
Of wood-hole ; straight my bristling hairs erect
Through sudden fear : a chilly sweat bedews
My shuddering limbs, and (wonderful to tell !)
My tongue forgets her faculty of speech ;
So horrible he seems ! His faded brow
Intrench'd with many a frown, and conic beard,
And spreading band, admir'd by modern saints.
Disastrous acts forebode ; in his right hand
Long scrolls of paper solemnly he waves.
With characters and figures dire inscribed.
Grievous to mortal eyes (ye gods, avert
Such plagues from righteous men !) Behind him stalks
Another monster, not unlike himself.
Sullen of aspect, by the vulgar call'd
A catchpole, whos; polluted hands the gods
With force incredible, and magic charms,
First have endued : if he his ample palm
Should haply on ill-fated shoulder lay
Of debtor, straight his body, to the touch
Obsequious (as whilom knights were wont),
To some enchanted castle is convey'd.
Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains.
In durance strict detain him, till, in form
Of money, Pallas sets the captive free.
Beware, ye debtors ! when ye walk, beware,
Be circumspect ; oft with insidious ken
This caitiff eyes your steps aloof, and oft
Lies perdue in a nook or gloomy cave,
i'rompt to enchant some inadvertent wi-etch
W'th his unhallow'd touch. So (poets sinj)
Grimalkin, to domestic vermin sworn
An everlasting foe, with watchful eye
Lies nightly brooding o'er a chinky gap,
Portending her fell claws, to thoughtless mice
Sure ruin. So her disembowell'd web
Araehue, in a hall or kitchen, spreads
Obvious to vagrant flies : she secret stands
Within her woven cell ; the humming prey,
Regardless of their ftite, rush on the toils
inextricable ; nor will aught avail
Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue ;
The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone.
And butterfly, proud of expanded wings
Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares,
Useless resistance make : with eager strides,
She tow'ring flies to her expected spoils :
Then, with envcnom'd jaws, the vital blood
Drinks of reluctant foes, and to her cave
Their bulky carcasses triumphant drags.
So pass my days. But, w^hen nocturnal shades
This world envelop'd, and th' inclement air
Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
With pleasant wines and crackling blaze of wood.
Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
Of loving friend, delights ; distress'd, forlorn.
Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
Mv anxious mind ; or sometimes mounjful verse
Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades.
Or desperate lady near a purling stream.
Or lover pendent on a willow-tree.
Mfianwhile 1 liiTio\ir with eternal drought.
And restless wish, and rave ; my parched throat
Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose :
But if a slumber haply does invade
My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake ;
Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream,
Tipples imaginary pots of ale
In viiin ; aw.ake, I find the settled thirst
Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.
Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarr'd,
Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial ray*
Mature, John-apple, nor the downy peach,
Nor walnut in rough-furrow'd coat secure,
Nor medlar, fruit delicious in decay.
Afflictions great ! yet greater still remain :
My galligaskins, that have long withstood
The winter's fury and encroaching frosts.
By time subdued (what will not time subdue !)
A horrid chasm disclos'd with orifice
Wide, di.scontinuous ; at which the winds
flurus and Auster, and the dreadful force
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves,
Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts.
Portending agues. Thus, a well-fraught ship,
Long sail'd secure, or through th' JEgcvM deep.
Or the Ionian, till, cruising near
The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush
On Scylla or Charybdis (dangerous rocks !)
She strikes rebounding ; whence the shatter'd oak,
So fierce a shock unable to withstand,
Admits the sea ; in at the gaping side
The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage,
Ilesistless, overwhelming! horrors seize
The mariners ; death in their eyes appears ;
They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they
pray ;
(Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in,
Implacable ; till, delug'd by the foam.
The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss.
JOH>f POMFRET.
John Pomfret (1667-1703) was the son of a
clergyman, rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire, and
himself a minister of the church of England, He
obtained the rectory of Maiden, also in Bedfordshire,
and had the prospect of preferment ; but the bishop
of London considered, unjustly, his poem. The Choice,
as conveying an immoral sentiment, and rejected
the poetical candidate. Detained in London by tliis
unsuccessful negotiation, Pomfret caught the small-
pox, and died. The works of this amiable ill-fated
man consist of occasional poems and some Pindaric
Essai/s, the latter evidently copied from Cowley.
The only piece of Pomfret's now remembered (we
can hardly say read) is 'The Choice.' Dr Johnson
remarks that no composition in our language has
been oftener perused ; and Mr Southey asks why
Pomfret's ' Choice' is the most popular poem in the
English language ? To the latter observation Mr
Campbell makes a quaint reply — ' It might have
been demanded with equal propriety, Avhy London
bridge is built of Parian marble.' It is difficult
in the present day, wlien the English muse has
awakened to so much higher a strain of thought and
expression, and a large body of poetry, full of passion,
natural description, and emotion, lies between us
and the times of Pomfret, to conceive that the
' Choice' could ever have been a very popular poem.
It is tame and commonplace. Tlie idea, however,
of a country retirement, a private seat, with a wood,
garden, and stream, a clear and competent estate,
and the enjoyment of lettered ease and happiness, is
so grateful and agreeable to the mind of man, espe-
cially in large cities, that we can hardly forbear
liking a poem that recalls so beloved an image to
our recollection. Swift has drawn a similar picture
376
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EARL OF DORSET.
ill his exquisite imitation of Horace's sixth satire ;
and Thomson and Cowper, by tiieir descriptions of
rural life, have compIetel\^ obliterated from the
public mind the feeble draught of Pomfret.
[Extract from The ClioiceJ]
If Heaven the grateful liberty would give
That I might choose my method how to live ;
And all those hours propitious fate should lend,
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend ;
Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform, not little, nor too great ;
Better, if on a ris-ing ground it stood ;
On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.
It should within no other things contain
But what are useful, necessary, plain ;
Methinks 'tis nauseous ; and I'd ne'er endure
The needless pomp of gaudy furniture.
A little garden grateful to the eye,
And a cool rivulet run murmuring by;
On whose delicious banks a stately row
Of shady limes or sycamores should grow.
At th' end of which a silent study plac'd.
Should be with all the noblest authors grac'd :
Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty lines
Immortal wit and solid learning shines ;
Sharp Juvenal, and amorous Ovid too,
Who all the turns of love's soft passion knew :
He that with judgment reads his charming«lines,
In which strong art with stronger nature joins,
Must grant his fancy does the best excel*^
His thoughts so tender, and express'd so well :
With all those moderns, men of steady sense,
Esteem'd for learning and for eloquence.
In some of these, as fancy should advise,
I'd always take my morning exercise ;
For sure no minutes bring us more content
Than those in pleasing useful studies spent.
I'd have a clear and competent estate.
That I might live genteely, but not great ;
As much as I could moderately spend ;
A little more, sometimes t' oblige a friend.
Nor should the sons of poverty repine
Too much at fortune ; they should taste of mine ;
And all that objects of true pity were.
Should be reliev'd with what my wants could spare :
For that our Maker has too largely given
Should be return'd in gratitude to Heaven.
A frugal plenty should my table spread ;
With healthy, not luxurious, dishes spread ;
Enough to satisfy, and something more,
To feed the stranger, and the neighbouring poor.
Strong meat indulges vice, and pampering food
Creates diseases, and Inflames the blood.
But what's sufhcient to make nature strong.
And the bright lamp of life continue long,
I'd freely take ; and, as I did possess.
The bounteous Author of my plenty bless.
earl of dorset.
Charles Sackville,EarlofDorset(1637-170G),
wrote little, but was capable of doing more, and
being a liberal patron of poets, was a nobleman
highly popular in his day. Coming very young to
the possession of two plentiful estates, and in an age
when pleasure was more in fasliion than business,
he applied his talents rather to books and conversation
than to politics. In the first Dutch war he went a
volunteer under the Duke of York, and wrote or
finished a song (his best composition, ' one of the
prettiest that ever was made,' according to Prior)
the nijjht before the naval engagement in which
Opdatn, the Dutch admiral, was blown up, with all
his crew. He was a lord of the bedchamber to
Charles II., and was chamberlain of the household
to William and Mary. Prior relates, that when
Dorset, as lord cliainberlain, was obliged to take the
king's pension from Dryden, he allowed him an
equivalent out of his own estate. He introduced
Butler's Iludibras to the notice of tlie court, was
consulted by Waller, and almost idolised by Dryden.
Hospitable, generous, and refined, we need not
wonder at the incense which was heaped upon
Dorset by his contemporaries. His works are
trifling; a fiiw satires and songs make up tlie cata-
logue. They are elegant, and sometimes forcible ;
but when a man like Prior writes of them, 'there
is a lustre in his verses like that of the sun in Claude
Lorraine's landscapes,' it is impossible not to lie
struck with that gross adulation of rank and fashion
which disgr.aced the literature of the age. Dorsut'a
satire on Mr Edward Howard has some pointed lines:
They lie, dear Ned, wlio say thy brain is barren.
When deep conceits, like maggots, breed in carrion.
Thy stumbling founder'd jade can trot as hii^h
As any other Pegasus can fly ;
So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud
Than all the swift-fiiin'd racers of the tlood.
As skilful divers to the bottom fall
Sooner than those who cannot swim at all.
So in this way of writing, without thinking.
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinkiug.
#*
S07lf/.
Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes,
United, cast too fierce a light,
Which blazes high, but quickly dies ;
Pains not the heart, but hurts the sight.
Love is a calmer, gentler joy ;
Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace.
Her Cupid is a blackguard boy.
That runs his link full in your facOr
Sonr/.
Written at sea, the first Dutch war, 1665, the night befor'
an engagement.
To all you ladies now at land.
We men at sea indite ;
But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write ;
The Muses now, and Neptune too,
V\'e must implore to write to you.
With a fa la, la, la, la.
For though the Muses should prove kind,
And fill our empty brain ;
Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind,
To wave the azure main,
Our paper, pen, and ink, and we.
Roll up and down our ships at sea.
With a fa, &c.
Then, if we ■vvi-ite not by each post,
Think not we are unkind ;
Nor yet conclude our ships are lost
By Dutchmen or by wind :
Our tears we'll send a speedier way ;
The tide shall bring them twice a-day.
With a fa, &c.
The king with wonder and surprise.
Will swear the seas grow bold ;
Because the tides will lilgher rise
Than e'er they did of old :
But let him know it is our tears
Bring floods of grief to Whitehall-stairt.
With a fa, kc.
37'»
rKOM 11)49
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
rShould foc;,£ry Opdam chance to know
Our sad and dismal stor}-,
The Dutcli would scorn so weak a foe,
And quit their fort at Goree ;
For what resistance can they find
From men who've left their hearts behind?
With a fa, &c.
Let wind and weather do its worst.
Be you to us but kind ;
Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse,
No sorrow we shall find :
'Tis then no matter how things go,
Or who's our friend, or who's our foe.
With a ta, &c.
To pass our tedious hours away.
We throw a merry main ;
Or else at serious ombre play ;
But why should we in vain
Each other's ruin thus pursue 1
We were undone when we left you.
With a fa, &c.
But now our fears tempestuous gi^ow,
And cast our hopes away ;
Whilst you, regardless of our wo.
Sit careless at a play :
Perhaps permit some happier man
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.
With a fa, &c.
When any mournful tune you hear, ^^l
That dies in every note, V^^
As if it sigh'd with each man's care
For being so remote :
Think then how often love we've made
To you, when all those tunes were play'd.
With a fa, kc.
In justice, you cannot refuse
To think of our distr'?ss.
When we for hopes of honour lose
Our certain happiness ;
All those designs are but to prove
Ourselves more worthy of your love.
With a fa, &c.
And now we've told you all our loves,
And likewise all our fears.
In hopes this declaration moves
Some pity for our tears ;
Let's hear of no inconstancy.
We have too much of that at sea.
With a fa la, la, la, la.
duke of buckinghamshire.
John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire
(1649-1721) was associated in his latter days with
the wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, but
he properly belongs to the previous age. He went
with Prince Rupert against the Dutch, and was
afterwards colonel of a regiment of foot. In order
to learn the art of war under Marshall Turenne, he
made a campaign in the French service. The lite-
rary taste of Sheffield was never neglected amidst
the din of arms, and he made himself an accomplished
scholar. He was a member of the privy council of
James II., but acquiesced in the Kevolution, and was
afterwards a member of the cabinet council of
William and Mary, with a pension of £3000. Shef-
field is said to have 'made love' to Queen Anne
when they were both young, and her majesty heaped
honours on the favourite immediately on her acces-
sion to the throne. He was an opponent of the
court of George I., and continued actively engaged
in public atliiirs till his death. Sheffield wrote
several poems and copies of verses. Among the
former is an Essay on Satire, which Dryden is
reported to have revised. His principal work, how-
ever, is his JSssat/ on Poetry, which received the
praises of Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope. It is
written in the heroic couplet, and seems to have
suggested Pope's ' Essay on Criticism.' It is of the
style of Denham and Roscommon, plain, perspicuous,
and sensible, but contains as little true poetry, or
less, than any of Dryden's prose essays.
[Extract from the Essay on Poetry. 1
Of all those arts in which the wise excel.
Nature's chief master-piece is writing well ;
No writing lifts exalted man so high,
As sacred and soul-moving poesy :
No kini of work requires so nice a touch.
And, if well finisli'd, nothing shines so much.
But heaven forbid we should be so profane
To grace the vulgar with that noble name.
'Tis not a flash of fancy, which, sometimes
Dazzling our minds, sets otf the slightest rhymes ;
Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done :
True wit is everlasting like the sun.
Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retir'd,
Breaks out again, and is by all admir'd.
Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound
Which not the nicest ear with harshness wound,
Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts ;
And all in vain these superficial parts
Contribute to the structure of the whole ;
VVithout^^^nius, too, for that's the soul :
A spirit ^^n inspires the work throughout,
As that o^BTture moves the world about ;
A flame ^Bt glows amidst conceptions fit.
Even something of divine, and more than wit ;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it showii,
Describing all men, but describ'd by none.
Where dost thou dwell ? what caverns of the brain
Can such a vast and mighty thing contain ?
When I at vacant hours in vain thy absence mourn,
where dost thou retire! and why dost thou return.
Sometimes with powerful charms, to hurry me away
From pleasures of the night and business of the day !
Ev'n now too far transported, I am fain
To check thy course, and use the needful rein.
As all is dulness when the fancy 's had.
So without judgment fancy is but mad :
And judgment has a boundless influence.
Not only in the choice of words or sense,
But on the world, on manners, and on men :
Fancy is but the feather of the pen ;
Reason is that substantial useful part
Which gains the head, while t'other wins the hcs.it.
* ♦ *
First, then, of songs, which now so much abound ;
Without his song no fop is to be found.
A most offensive weapon which he draws
On all he meets, against Apollo's laws ;
Though nothing seems more easy, yet no part
Of poetry requires a nicer art ;
For as in rows of richest pearl there lies
Many a blemish that escapes our eyes.
The least of which defects is plainly shown
In one small ring, and brings (^le value dovra :
So songs should be to just perfection ^vrought;
Yet when can one be seen without a fault i
Exact propriety of words and thought ;
Expression easy, and the fancy high ;
Yet that not seem to creep, nor this to fly ;
No words transpos'd, but in such ci-der all.
As wrought with care, yet seem by chance to falL
* « »
Of all the ways that wisest men could find
To mend the age, and mortify mankind.
Satire well writ has most successful prov'd,
And cures, because the remedy is lov'd.
37P
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DUTDEy.
i
'Tis hard to wi'ite on such a subject more,
Withcut repeating things oft said before.
Some vulgar errors only we'll remove.
That stain a beauty which we so much love.
Of chosen words some t<ake not care enough,
And think they should be, as the subject, rough ;
This poem must be more exactly made,
And shai-pest thoughts in smoothest words convey'd.
Some think, if sharp enough, they cannot fail,
As if their only business was to rail ;
But human frailty, nicely to unfold.
Distinguishes a satire from a scold.
Rage you must hide, and prejudice lay down ;
A Satyr's smile is sharper than his frown ;
So, while you seem to slight some rival youth,
Malice itself may pass sometimes for truth.
« « * '
By painful steps at last we labour up
Parnassus' hill, on whose bright airy top
The epic poets so divinely show.
And with just pride behold the rest below.
Heroic poems have just a pretence
To be the utmost stretch of human sense ;
A work of such inestimable worth.
There are but two the world has yet brought forth —
Homer and Virgil ; with what sacred awe
Do those mere sounds the world's attention draw !
Just as a changeling seems below the rest
Of men, or rather as a two-legg'd beast,
So these gigantic souls, amaz'd we find
As much above the rest of human kind !
Nature's whole strength united ! endless j
And universal shouts attend their name !
Read Homer once, and you can read no m|^
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose ; but still persist to read.
And Homer will be all the books you need.
Had Bossu never writ, the world had still,
Like Indians, view'd this wondrous piece of skill ;
As something of divine the work admir'd,
Not hope to be instructed, but inspir'd ;
But he, disclosing sacred mysteries.
Has shown where all their mighty magic lies ;
Describ'd the seeds, and in what order sovra.
That have to such a vast proportion grown.
Sure from some angel he the secret knew.
Who through this labyrinth has lent the clue.
But what, alas ! avails it, poor mankind.
To see this promis'd land, yet stay behind ?
The way is shown, but who has strength to go ?
Who can all sciences profoundly know ?
Whose fancy flies beyond weak reason's sight,
And yet has judgment to direct it right I
Whose just discernment, Virgil-like, is such,
Never to say too little or too much ?
Let such a man begin without delay ;
But he must do beyond what I can say ;
Must above Tasso's lofty heights prevail ;
Succeed when Spenser, and ev'n Milton fail.
DRAMATISTS.
JOHN DRYDEN.
At the restoration of the monarchy the drama was
also restored, and with new lustre, though less
decency. Two theatres were licensed in the metro-
polis, one under the direction of Sir William Dave-
nant, who, as already mentioned, had been permitted
to act plays even during the general proscription of
the drama, and whose performers were now (in com-
pliment to the Duke of York) named the Duke's
Company. The other establishment was managed
by Thomas Killigrev/, a well-known wit and courtier,
whose company took the name of the King's Servants.
Davenant efiFected two gre2,t improvements ia thea-
trical representation — the regular introduction of
actresses, or female jtlayers, and the use of moveable
scenery and appropriate decorations. Females had
performed on the stage previous to the Restoration,
and considerable splendour and variety of scenery
had been exhibited in the Court ]\Iasques and Revels.
Neither, however, had been familiar to the public,
and they now formed a great attraction to the two
patent theatres. Unfortunately, these powerful auxi-
liaries were not brought in aid of the good old dramas
of the age of Elizabeth and James. Instead of adding
grace and splendour to the creations of Shakspeare
and Jonson, they were lavished to support a new
and degenerate dramatic taste, which Charles II. had
brouglit with him from the continent. Rhyming or
lieroic plays had long been fashionable in France,
and were dignified by the genius of Corneille and
Racine. They had little truth of colouring or na-
tural passion, but dealt exclusively with personages
in high life and of transcendent virtue or ambition ;
with fierce combats and splendid processions ; with
superhuman love and beauty ; and with long dia-
logues alternately formed of metaphysical subtlety
and the most extravagant and bombastic expression.
' Blank verse,' says Dryden, ' is acknowledged to be
too loiv for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses ;
but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much
more for tragedy !' Accordingly, the heroic plays
were all in rhyme, set off not only with superb
dresses ^d decorations, but with 'the richest and
most oj^B^kind of verse, and the farthest removed
from oWmiary colloquial diction.' The comedies were
degenerate in a different way. They were framed
after the model of the Spanish stage, au 1 adapted to
the taste of the king, as exhibiting a variety of
complicated intrigues, succvssful disguises, and con-
stantly-shifting scenes and adventures. The old
native English virtues of sincerity, conjugal fidelity,
and prudence, were held up to constant ridicule,
as if amusement could only be obtained by oblite-
rating the moral feelings. Dryden ascrib( s the licen-
tiousness of the stage to the example of the king.
Part, however, must be assigned to the earlier come-
dies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and part to the as-
cetic Puritanism and denial of all public amuse-
ments during the time of the commonwealth. If the
Puritans had contented themselves with regulating
and purifying the theatres, they would have con-
ferred a benefit on the nation ; but, by slmtting them
up entirely, and denouncing all public recreations,
they provoked a counteraction in the taste and
manners of the people. The over-austerity of one
period led naturally to the shameless degeneracy of
the succeeding period ; and deeply is it to be de-
plored, that the great talents of Dryden were the
most instrumental in extending and prokmging this
depravation of the national taste.
The operas and comedies of Sir William Davenant
were the first pieces brought out on the stage after
the Restoration. He wrote twenty-five in all ; but,
notwithstanding the partial revival of the old dra-
matists, none of Davenant's productions have been
reprinted. ' His last work,' says Southey, ' was his
worst ; it was an alteration of the Tempest, exe-
cuted in conjunction with Dryden ; and marvedous
indeed it is, that two men of such great and indu-
bitable genius shoidd have combined to debase, and
vulgarise, and pollute such a poem as the Tempest.'
The marvel is enhanced when we consider that
Dryden writes of their joint labour with evident
complacency, at the same time that his prologue
to the adapted play contains the following just and
beautiful character of liis great predecessor : —
As when a tree's cut down, the secret root
Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot ;
379
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 68!».
So, fri.iii old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day
Siiiln^s up and buds a new reviving play.
Shakspeare, wlio (taught by none) did first impart
To Fletcher icit ; to labouring Jonson art;
He, monarch-like, gave these his subjects law,
And is that nature which they paint and draw.
Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,
\Vhilst Jonson crept and gather'd all below.
Tliis did his love and this his mirth digest ;
One imitates him most ; the other best.
If they have since outwTit all other men,
'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen.
The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore.
Was taught by Shakspeare's Tempest first to roar.
That innocence and beauty which did smile
In Fletcher, grew on this Enchanted Isle.
But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk hut he.
Dryden was in the full tide of his theatrical popu-
larity when Davenant died, in 1688. The great poet
commenced writing for the stage in 1662, when he
produced his Wild Gallant, which was followed next
3'ear by the Rival Ladies, the serious parts of which
are in rhyme. He then joined Sir Robert Howard
in composing the Indian Queen, a rhyming heroic
play, brought cut iu 1664, with a splendour never
before seen in Jhigland upon a public stage. A con-
tinuation of this piece was shortly afterwards written
by Dryden, entitled the Indian Emperor, and both
were received with great applause. All the defects
of his style, and many of the choicest specimens of
his smooth and easy versification, are to be found in
tliese inflated tragedies. In 1667 was represented
his 3Iaiden Queen, a tragi-comedy; and shortly after-
wards the Tempest. These were followed by two
comedies copied from the French of Moliere and
Corneille ; by the Royal Martyr, another furious tra-
gedjs and by his Conquest of Granada, m two parts,
in which he concentrated the wild magnificence,
incongruous splendour, and absurd fable that run
through allhis heroic plaj'S, mixed up with occasional
gleams of true genius. The extravagance and un-
bounded popularity of the heroic drama, now at its
height, prompted the Duke of Buckingham to
compose a lively and amusing farce, in ridicule of
Dryden and the prevailing taste of the public, which
was produced in 1671, under the title of the Rehearsal.
The success of the ' Rehearsal' was unbounded ; ' the
very popularity of the plays ridiculed aiding,' as Sir
Walter Scott has remarked, * the efiect of the satire,
since everybody had in their recollection the origi-
nals of the passages parodied.' There is little genuine
wit or dramatic art in the ' Rehearsal,' but it is a clever
travesty, and it was well-timed. A fatal blow was
struck at the rhyming plays, and at the rant and
fustian to which they gave birth. Dryden now
resorted to comedy, and produced Marriage a-la-
Mode, and the Assignation. In 1673 he constructed
a dramatic poem, the State of Innocence, or the Fall
of Man, out of the great epic of Milton, destroying,
of course, nearly all that is sublime, simple, and pure,
in the originaL His next play, Aureng-Zebe (1675),
was also 'heroic,' stilted, and unnatural; but this was
the last great literary sin of Dryden. He was now
engaged in his immortal satires and fables, and he
abandoned henceforward the false and glittering
taste which had so long deluded him. His All for
Love, and Troilus and Cressida, are able adaptations
from Shakspeare in blank verse. The Spanish Friar
is a good comedy, remarkable for its happy union of
two plots, and its delineation of comic character.
His principal remaining j)lays are Don Sebastian
(\mo), Amphitryon(l690), Cleomencs(\ 692), andLove
Triumphant (1694). 'Don Sebastian' is his highest
effort in dramatic composition, and though de-
formed, like all his other plays, by scenes of sjju-
rious and licentious comedy, it contains passages
that approach closely to Shakspeare. The quarrel
and reconciliation of Sebastian and Dorax is a mas-
terly copy from the similar scene between Brutus
and Cassius. In the altercation between Ventidius
and Antony in ' All for Love,' he has also challenged
comparison with the great poet, and seems to have
been inspired to new vigour by the competition. This
latter triumph in the genius of Dryden was com-
pleted bj' his ' Ode to St Cecilia' and the 'Fables,' pub-
lished together in the spring of 1700, a few weeks
before his death — thus realising a saying of his own
Sebastian —
A setting sun
Shoulf^ leave a track of glory in the skies.
Dryden's plays have fallen completely into oblivion.
He could reason powerfully in verse, and had the
command of rich stores of language, information,
and imagery. Strong energetic characters and pas-
sions he could portray with considerable success,
but he had not art or judgment to construct an inte-
resting or consistent drama, or to preserve himself
from extravagance and absurdity. The female cha-
racter and softer passions seem to have been entirely
beyond his reach. His love is always licentiousness
— his tenderness a mere trick of the stage. Like
Voltaire, he probably never drew a tear from reader
or spectator. His merit consists in a sort of Eastern
magnificence of style, and in the richness of his ver-
sification«The bowl and dagger — glory, ambition,
lust, and^rinie — are the staple materials of his
tragedy, .and lead occasionally to poetical grandeur
and brilliancy of fancy. His comedy is, with scarce
an exception, false to nature, improbable and ill-
arranged, and subversive equally of taste and mo-
rality.
Before presenting a scene from Dryden, we shall
string together a few of those similes or detached
sentiments which relieve the great mass of his
turgid dramatic verse : —
Love is that madness which all lovers have ;
But yet 'tis sweet and pleasing so to rave.
'Tis an enchantment, where the reason's bound;
But Paradise is in th' enchanted ground.
A palace void of envy, cares, and strife ;
Where gentle hours delude so much of life.
To take those charms away, and set me free,
Is but to send me into misery.
And prudence, of whose cure so much you boast,
Restores those pains which that sweet folly lost.
Conquest of Gratyxda, Part II.
As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress'd.
Shrinks up, and folds its silken arms to rest ;
And bending to the blast, all pale and dead,
Hears from within the wind sing round its head :
So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears ;
Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears.
The storm that caus'd your fright is past and done.
Ibid. Part I.
That friendship which from wither'd love doth shoot,
Like the faint herbage on a rock, wants root ;
Love is a tender amity, refin'd :
Grafted on friendship, it exalts the mind ;
But when the graff no longer does remain.
The dull stock lives, but never bears again.
Ibid. Part II.
So Venus moves, when to the Thunderer,
In smiles or tears, she would some suit prefer.
When with her cestus girt.
And drawn by doves, she cuts the liquid skies,
To every eye a goddess is confest :
*^ 380
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOH' DRTDES.
By all the heayenly nations she is blest,
And each with secret joy admits her to his breast.
Ibid. Part T.
Love various minds does variously inspire :
He stirs in gentle natures gentle fire,
Like that of incense on the altars laid ;
But raging flames tempestuous souls invade.
A fire which every windy passion blows ;
With pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows.
Tyrannic Love.
[Savage Freedo7n.'\
No man has more contempt than I of breath ;
But whence hast thou the right to give me death?
I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
Conquest ofGranmla, Part I.
[Love and Beauty.']
A change so swift what heart did ever feel !
It rush'd upon me like a mighty stream.
And bore me in a moment far from shore.
I've loved away myself; in one short hour
Already am I gone an age of passion.
Was it his youth, his valour, or success?
These might, perhaps, be found in other men.
'Twas that respect, that awful homage paid me ;
TJiat fearful love which trembled in his eyes.
And with a silent earthquake shook his soul.
But when he spoke, what tender words he said I
So softly, that, like flakes of feather'd snow,
The / melted as they fell.
Spanish Friar.
[Midnight Bepose.]
All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead;
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head.
The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.
And sleeping flowers beneath the night-dew sweat ;
Even lust and envy sleep, yet love denies
Best to my soul and slumber to my eyes.
Three days I promis'd to attend my doom.
And two long days and nights are yet to come ;
'Tis sure the noise of a tumultuous fight ;
[Noise ivithin.
They break the truce, and sally out by night.
Indian Emperor.
[Wordsworth has remarked that these lines, once
highly celebrated, are ' vague, bombastic, and sense-
less.' Their charm consists in their melody.]
[Tears.']
What precious drops are those
Which silently each others track pursue.
Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew ?
Conquest of Granada, Part II.
[Manhind.']
Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain ;
And yet the soul shut up in her dark room,
Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing ;
But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind,
Works all her folly up, and casts it outward
To the world's open view.
All for Love.
!ftfan is but man ; unconstant still, and yarious ;
There's no to-morrow in him like to-day.
Perhaps the atoms rolling in his brain
Make him think honestly this present hour;
The next a swarm of base ungrateful thoughts
May mount aloft ; and where's our Egypt then ?
Who would trust chance ] since all men have tlie seeds
Of good and ill, which should work upward first.
Clcmnenet.
[Fear of Death.']
Bbrenfcb. Saint Cathebjme.
Ber. Now death draws near, a strange perplexity
Creeps coldly on me, like a fear to die :
Courage uncertain dangers may abate.
But who can bear th' approach of certain fate ?
St. C'ath. The wisest and the best some fear may show.
And wish to stay, though they resolve to go.
Bcr. As some faint pilgrim, standing on the shore(
First views the torrent he would venture o'er,
And then his inn upon the farther ground.
Loath to wade through, and leather to go round :
Then dipping in his staff, does trial make
How deep it is, and, sighing, pulls it back :
Sometimes resolved to fetch his leap ; and then
Runs to the bank, but there stops short again :
So I at once
Both heavenly faith and human fear obey ;
And feel before me in an unkno^vn way.
For this blest voyage 1 with joy prepare,
Yet am asham'd to be a stranger there.
Tyrannic Love.
[Lore Anticipated after Death.]
PoBPHVRius. Berenice.
Por. You either this divorce must seek, or die.
Ber. Then death from all my griefs shall set me free.
Por. And would you rather choose your death than
me ?
Ber. My earthy part.
Which is my tyrant's right, death will remove.
I'll come all soul and spirit to your love.
With silent steps I'll follow you all day.
Or else before you in the sunbeams play ;
I'll lead you thence to melancholy groves.
And there repeat the scenes of our past loves.
At night, I will within your curtains peep;
With empty arms embrace you while you sleep.
In gentle dreams I often will be by.
And sweep along before your closing eye.
All dangers from j'our bed I will remove,
But guard it most from any future love.
And when, at last, in pity, you will die,
I'll watch your birth of immortality ;
Then, turtle-Uke, I'll to my mate repair.
And teach you your first flight in open air.
Ibid.
[Adam after the Fall.~\
Adam. Raphael. Eve.
Adam. Heaven is all mercy ; labour I would choose;
And could sustain this Paradise to lose :
The bliss ; but not the place. ' Here,' could I say,
' Heaven's winged messenger did pass the day ;
Under this pine the glorious angel stay'd :'
Then show my wondering progeny the shade.
In woods and lawns, where'er thou didst appear,
Each place some monument of thee should bear.
I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise.
And heaven, with gums and ofter'd incense, praise
Llaph. Where'er tliou art. He is ; th' eternal minu
Acts through all j)lacos ; is to none confined :
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above.
And through the universal mass docs move.
Thou canst be no where distant : yet this place
Had been thy kingly scat, and here thy race.
From all the ends of peopled earth, had come
To reverence thee, and see their native home.
.381
PROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Immortal then ; now sickness, care, and age,
And war, and luxurj-'s more direful rage.
Thy crimes have brought, to shorten mortal breath.
With all the numerous family of death.
• ♦ *
Aditm. The deaths thou show'st are forced and full
o: strife.
Cast headlong from the precipice of life.
Is there no smooth descent — no painless way
Of kindly mixing with our native clay?
Rapk.There is — but rarely shall that path be trod,
Which, without horror, leads to death's abode.
Some few, by temperance taught, approaching slow.
To distant fate by easy journeys go ;
Gently they lay them down, as evening sheep
On their own wootly fleeces softly sleep.
Adam. So noiseless would 1 live, such death to find,
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough,
And, dying, nothing to myself would owe.
Eve. Thus daily changing, with a duller taste
Of lessening joys, I, by degrees, would waste :
Still quitting ground, by unperceived decay,
And steal myself from life, and melt awa}'.
State of Innocence.
[Scenebetween Mark Antony and Ventidius, Jiis (jena-al.}
[Brj'dcn says he preferred this scene to an>-thing which he
had written of that kind. It occurs in the first act of ' All for
Love,' a trasedy founded on the story of Antony and Cleopatra,
and avowedly written in imitation of Shakspeare. ' All for
Love' was the only play Dryden ever wrote for himself ; the
rest, he says, were given to the people. It will he observed that
this scene, as also that between Dorax and Sebastian, is copied
from the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius in ' Julius
Ca?sar.']
Ant. They tell me 'tis my birth-day, and I'll keep it
With double pomp of sadness.
'Tis what the day deserves, which gave me breath.
Why was I rais'd the meteor of the world,
Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travell'd,
Till all my fires were spent, and then cast downward
To be trod out by Cfesar ?
Vent. [Aside] On my soul
'Tis mournful, wondrous mournful !
Ant. Count thy gains,
Now, Antony : wouldst thou be bom for this ?
Glutton of fortune, thy devouring youth
Has starv'd thy wanting age.
Vent. [.Aside.] How sorrow shakes him !
So now the tempest tears him by th' roots.
And on the ground extends the noble ruin.
Ant. [Having throun himself dozon.] Lie there, thou
shadow of an emperor ;
The place thou pressest on thy mother earth
Is all thy empire now : now it contains thee ;
Some few days hence, and then 'twill be too large,
When thou'rt contracted in thy narrow urn.
Shrunk to a few cold ashes ; then Octavia
(For Cleopatra will not live to see it),
Octavia then will have thee all her own.
And bear thee in her widow'd hand to Cassar.
Caesar will weep, the crocodile will weep,
To see his rival of the universe
Lie still and peaceful there. I'll think no more on't.
Give me some music ; look that it be sad ;
I'll sooth my melancholy, till I swell,
And burst myself with sighing.
'Tis somewhat to my humour. Stay, I fancy
I'm now tum'd wild, a commoner of nature ;
Of all forsaken, and forsaking all ;
Live in a shady forest's sylvan scene ;
Stretch'd at my length beneath some blasted oak,
I lean mj head upon the mossy bark,
And look just of a piece, as I grew from it :
My uncomb'd locks, matted like mistletoe,
Hang o'er my hoary face ; a murm'ring brook
Runs at my foot
Vent. ^lethinks I fancy
Myself there too.
Ant. The herd come jumping by me.
And, fearless, quench their thirst, while I look on
And take me for their fellow-citizen.
More of this image; more ; it lulls my thoughts.
Vait. I must disturb him. I can hold no longer.
[Stands before him.
Ant. IStai-fing up.] Art thou Ventidius !
Vent. Are }-ou Antony ?
I'm liker what I was, than you to him
I left 3'ou last.
Ant. I'm angry.
Vent. So am I.
A7it. I would be private. Leave me.
Vent. Sir, I love you,
And therefore will not leave you.
Ant. Will not leave me !
Where have you learn 'd that answer ? Who am I f
Vent. My emperor ; the man I lore next heay'n.
If I said more, I think 'twere scarce a sin :
You're all that's good and godlike.
Ant. All that's \vretched.
You will not leave me, then ?
Vent. 'Twas too presuming
To say I would not : but I dare not leave you ;
And 'tis unkind in you to chide me hence
So soon, when I so far have come to see you.
A nt. Now thou hast seen me, art thou satisfied ?
For, if a friend, thou hast beheld enough.
And, if a foe, too much.
Vent. Look, emperor, this is no common dew;
I have not wept this forty years ; but now
My mother comes afresh unto my eyes ;
I cannot help her softness.
Ant. By heav'n, he weeps! poor good old man, ho
weeps !
The big round drops course one another down
The furrows of his cheeks. Stop 'em, Ventidius,
Or I shall blush to death ; they set my shame,
That caus'd 'em, full before me.
Vent. I'll do my best.
A7it. Sure there's contagion in the tears of frienls'
See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not
For my own griefs, but thine Nay, father •
Vent. Emperor !
Ant. Emperor ! Why that's the style of victory.
The conqu'ring soldier, and with unfelt wounds.
Salutes his general so : but never more
Shall that sound reach my ears.
Vejit. I warrant j'ou.
Ant. Actium, Actium ! Oh
Vent. It sits too near you.
A7it. Here, here it lies ; a lump of lead by day ;
And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers,
The hag that rides my dreams
Vent. Out with it ; give it vent.
Ant. Urge not my shame —
I lost a battle.
Vent. So has .lulius done.
Ant. Tliou favour'st me, and speak'st not half thou
think'st ;
For Julius fought it out, and lost it fairly;
But Antony
Vent. Nay, stop not.
Ant. Antony
(Well, thou wilt have it), like a coward, fled,
Fled while his soldiers fought ! fled first, Ventidius.
Thou long'st to curse me, and I give thee leave.
I know thou cam'st prepared to rail.
Vent. I did.
Ant. I'll help thee — I have been a man, Ventidius.
Veni. Yes, and a brave one ; but
S82
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDKlf.
Ant. I know thy meaning.
But I have lost my reason, have disgrac'd
The name of soldier with inglorious ease ;
In the full vintage of my flowing honours
Sat still, and saw it press'd by other hands.
Fortune came smiling to my youth, and woo'd it.
And purple greatness met my ripen'd years.
When first 1 came to empire, I was borne
On tides of people, crowding to my triumphs.
The wish of nations, and the willing world,
Receiv'd me as its pledge of future peace.
I was so great, so happy, so belov'd,
Fate could not ruin me ; till I took pains,
And work'd against my fortune, chid her from me.
And tuni'd her loose : yet still she came again.
My careless days and my luxurious nights
At length have wearied her, and now she's gone ;
Gone, gone, divorc'd for ever. Help me, soldier,
To curse this madman, this industrious fool,
Who laboured to be wretched. Pr'ythee curse me.
Vent. No.
Ant. Why ?
Vent. You are too sensible already
Of what you've done ; too conscious of your failings.
And like a scorpion, whipp'd by others first
To fury, sting yourself in mad revenge.
I would bring balm, and pour it in your wounds,
Cure your distemper'd mind, and heal your fortunes.
Ant. I know thou wouldst.
Vent. I will.
Ant. Ila, ha, ha, ha !
Vent. You laugh.
Ant. 1 do, to see officious love
Give cordials to the dead.
Vent. You would be lost, then 1
Ant. I am.
Ve7it. I say you are not. Try your fortune.
Ant. I have to th' utmost. Dost thou think mc
desperate
Without just cause 1 No ; when I found all lost
Beyond repair, I hid me from the world.
And learn'd to scorn it here ; which now I do
So heartily, I think it is not worth
The cost of keeping.
Vent. Ca;sar thinks not so :
He'll thank you for the gift he could not take.
You would be kill'd like Tully, would you ? Do
Hold out your throat to CiBsar, and die tamely.
Ant. No, I can kill myself; and so resolve.
Vent. I can die with you, too, when time shall
serve;
But fortune calls upon us now to live,
To fight, to conquer.
Aiit. Sure thou dream'st, Ventidius ?
Vent. No ; 'tis you dream ; you sleep away your hours
In desperate sloth, miscall'd philosophy.
Up, up, for honour's sake ; twelve legions wait you,
And long to call you chief. By painful journeys
I led 'era patient both of heat and hunger,
Down from the Parthian marches to the Nile.
'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces.
Their scarr'd cheeks, and chopt hands ; there's virtue
in 'em :
They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates
Than yon trim bands can buy.
Ant. Where left you them I
Veyit. I said in Lower Syria.
Ant. Bring 'em hither ;
There may be life in these.
Vent. They will not come.
Ant. Why didst thou mock my hopes with pro-
mis'd aids.
To double my despair ? They're mutinous.
Vfiit. Most firm and loyal.
Ant Yet they will not march
To succour me. Oh, trifler !
Vent. They petition
You would make haste to head 'em.
Ant. I'm besieg'd.
Vent. There's but one way shut up. How came I
^?if. I will not stir. [hither 1
Vent. They would perhaps desire
A better reason.
Ant. I have never us'd
My soldiers to demand a reason of
My actions. Why did they refuse to march ?
Ve7it. They said they would not fight for Cleopatra.
Ant. What was't they said ?
Vent. They said they would not fight for Cleopatra.
Why should they fight, indeed, to make her conquer,
And make you more a slave ? To gain you kingdoma
Which, for a kiss, at your next midnight feast
You'll sell to her ? Then she new names her jf^wels,
And calls this diamond such or such a tax.
Each pendant in her ear shall be a province.
Ant. Ventidius, I allow your tongue free license
On all my other faults ; but, on your life.
No word of Cleopatra ; she deserves
More worlds than I can lose.
Vent. Behold, you pow'rs,
To whom you have intrusted humankind ;
See Europe, Afric, Asia put in balance.
And all weigh'd down by one light worthless woman )
I think the gods are Antonies, and give.
Like prodigals, this nether world away
To none but wasteful hands.
Ant. You grow presumptuous.
Vent. I take the jirivilege of plain love to speak.
Ant. Plain love ! plain arrogance, plain insolence •
Thy men are cowards, thou an envious traitor ;
Who, under seeming honesty, hath vented
The burden of thy rank o'erflowing gall.
Oh, that thou wert my equal ; great in arms
As the first Coesar was, that I might kill thee
Without stain to my honour !
Ve7U. You may kill me.
You have done more already — call'd me traitor.
Ant. Art thou not one ?
Ve7it. For showing you yourself,
Which none else durst have done. But had I been
That name which I disdain to speak again,
I needed not have sought your abject fortunes.
Come to partake j'our fate, to die with you.
What hinder'd me to 've led my conqu'ring eagles
To fill Octavius' bands 1 I could have been
A traitor then, a glorious happy traitor.
And not have been so call'd.
Ant. Forgive me, soldier ;
I've been too passionate.
Vent. You thought me false ;
Thought my old age betray'd you. Kill me, sir;
Pray, kill me ; yet you need not ; your unkindness
Has left your sword no work.
Ant. I did not think so ;
I said it in my rage ; pr'ythee forgive me.
Why didst thou tempt my anger, by discovery
Of wliat I would not hear ?
Vent. No prince but you
Could merit that sincerity I us'd ;
Nor durst another man have ventur'd it ;
But 3'ou, ere love misled your wand'ring eyes,
Were sure the chief and best of human race,
Fram'd in the very pride and boast of nature.
A7it. But Cleopatra — ■ — •
Go on ; for I can bear it now.
Ve7it. No more.
AtU. Thou dar'st not trust my passion ; but thou
may'st ;
Thou only lov'st, the rest have flatter'd me.
Vent. Heaven's blessing on your heart for that kind
word.
May I believe you love me ? Speak again.
383
r,
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 16j«9.
Ant. Indeed I do. Speak this, and this, and this.
Thy praises were unjust ; but I'll deserve 'em.
And yet mend all. Do with me what thou wilt ;
Lead me to victorj' ; thou know'st the way.
Vent. And will you leave this
A nt. Pry thee, do not curse her.
And I will leave her; though, heav'n knows, I love
Beyond life, conquest, empire, all, but honour ;
But I will leave her.
Vent. That's ray royal master.
And shall we fight ?
Ant. I warrant thee, old soldier ;
Thou shalt behold me once again in iron,
And, at the head of our old troops, that beat
The Parthians, cry aloud, ' Come, follow me.'
Vent. Oh, now I hear my emperor ! In that word
Octavius fell. Gods, let me see that day.
And, if I have ten years behind, take all ;
I'll thank you for th' exchange.
Ant. Oh, Cleopatra !
Vent. Again !
Ant. I've done. In that last sigh she went ;
CsEsar shall know what 'tis to force a lover
From all he holds most dear.
Vent. Methinks you breathe
Another soul ; your looks are more divine ;
You speak a hero, and you move a god.
Ant. Oh, thou hast fir'd me ; my soul's up in arms.
And man's each part about me. Once again
That noble eagerness of fight has seiz'd me ;
That eagerness with which I darted upward
To Cassius' camp. In vain the steepy hill
Oppos'd my way ; in vain a war of spears
Sung round my head, and planted all my shield ;
I won the trenches, while my foremost men
Lagg'd on the plain below.
Vent. Ye gods, ye gods,
For such another honour 1
Ant. Come on, my soldier;
Our hearts and arms are still the same. I long
Once more to meet our foes ; that thou and I,
Like Time and Death, marching before our troops,
May taste fate to 'em, mow 'em on a passage.
And, ent'ring where the utmost squadrons yield.
Begin the noble harvest of the field.
[_Scene hetvxen Dorax and Sebastian.']
[Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, is defeated in battle, and
taken prisoner by tlie Moors. He is saved from death by
Dorax, a noble Portuguese, then a renegade in the court of
the Emperor of Barbary, but formerly Don Alonzo of Alcazar.
The train being dismissed, Dorax takes off his turban, and
assumes his Portuguese dress and manner.]
Dor. Now, do you know me ?
Seb. Thou shouldst be Alonzo,
Dor. So you should be Sebastian ;
But when Sebastian ceas'd to be himself,
I ceased to be Alonzo.
Seb. As in a dream
I see thee here, and scarce believe mine ej'es.
Dor. Is it so strange to find me where my wrongs,
I And your inhuman tyranny, have sent me ?
Think not you dream : or, if you did, my injuries
' Shall call so loud, that lethargy should wake,
And death should give you back to answer me.
j A thousand nights have brush'd their balmy wings
I Over these eyes ; but ever when they clos'd.
Your tyrant image forc'd them ope again,
And dried the dews they brought.
The long-expected hour is come at length,
i By manly vengeance to redeem my fame :
t And that once clcar'd, eternal sleep is welcome.
Seb. I have not yet forgot I am a king.
Whose royal office is redress of wrongs :
If I have wrong'd thee, charge me face to face ;
I have not yet forgot 1 am a soldier.
Dor. 'Tis the first justice thou hast ever done ire;
Then, though I loathe this woman's war of tongues,
Yet shall my cause of vengeance first be clear;
And, Honour, be thou judge.
Seb. Honour befriend us both.
Beware, 1 warn thee yet, to tell thy griefs
In terms becoming majesty to hear :
I warn thee thus, because I know thy temper
Is insolent and haughty to superiors :
How often hast thou brav'd my peaceful court,
Fill'd it with noisy brawls and windy boasts ;
And with past service, nauseously repeated,
Reproach'd ev'n me, thy prince ?
Dor. And well I might, when you forgot reward,
The part of heav'n in kings ; for punishment
Is hangman's work, and drudgery for devils.
I must and will reproach thee with my service.
Tyrant ! It irks me so to call my prince ;
But just resentment and hard usage coin'd
Th' unwilling word, and, grating as it is,
Take it, for 'tis thy due.
Seb. How, tyrant?
Dor. Tyrant !
Stb. Traitor ! that name thou canst not echo back .
That robe of infamy, that circumcision,
111 hid beneath that robe, proclaim thee traitor;
And if a name
More foul than traitor be, 'tis renegade.
Dor. If I'm a traitor, think, and blush, thou tyrant,
Whose injuries betray'd me into treason,
Effac'd my loyalty, unhing'd my faith.
And hurried me from hopes of heav'n to hell ;
All these, and all my yet unfinish'd crimes.
When I shall rise to plead before the saints,
I charge on thee, to make thy damning sure.
Seb. Thy old presumptuous arrogance again.
That bred my first dislike, and then my loathing ;
Once more be wani'd, and know me for thy king.
Dor. Too well I know thee, but for king no more:
This is not Lisbon, nor the circle this,
Where, like a statue, thou hast stood besieg'd
By sycophants, and fools, the growth of courts ;
Where thy gull'd eyes, in all the gaudy round,
Met nothing but a lie in every face ;
And the gross flattery of a gaping crowd.
Envious who first should catch, and first applaud
The stuff or royal nonsense: when I spoke.
My honest homely words were carp'd, and censur'd,
For want of courtly style : related actions.
Though modestly reported, pass'd for boasts :
Secure of merit, if I ask'd reward.
Thy hungry minions thought their rights invaded.
And the bread snatch'd from pimps and pariiaite«(.
Henriquez answer'd, with a ready lie,
To save his king's, the boon was begg'd before.
Seb. What say'st thou of Henriquez 1 Now, by
heav'n.
Thou mov'st me more by barely naming him,
Than all thy foul, unmanner'd, scurril taunts.
Dor. And therefore 'twas to gall thee that I nara'd
him ;
That thing, that nothing, but a cringe and smile;
That woman, but more daub'd ; or if a man,
Corrupted to a woman ; thy man-mistress.
Seb. All false as hell or thou.
Dor. Yes ; full as false
As that I serv'd thee fifteen hard campaigns.
And pitch'd thy standard in these foreign fields:
By me thy greatness grew ; thy years grew with it ;
But thy ingratitude outgrew them both.
Seb. I see to what thou tend'st ; V)ut tell me first,
If those great acts were done alone for me :
If love produc'd not some, and pride the rest ?
Dor. Why, love does all that's noble here below:
But all th' advantage of that love was thiiie:
For, coming fraughted back, in either hand
384
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDBIf.
With palm and olive, victory and peace,
I was indeed prepar'd to ask my own
(For Violante's vows were mine before) :
Thy malice had prevention, ere I spoke ;
And ask'd me Violante for llenriquez.
Seb. I meant thee a reward of greater worth.
Dor. Where justice wanted, could reward be hop'dl
Could the robb'd passenger expect a bounty
From those rapacious hands who stripp'd him first ?
Scb. He had my promise ere I knew thy love.
Dor. Mj' services deserv'd thou shouldst revoke it.
Seb. Thy insolence had cancell'd all thy service ;
To violate my laws, even in my court,
5acred to peace, and safe from all affronts ;
Ev'n to my face, and done in my despite,
Under the wing of awful majesty
To strike the man I lov'd !
Dor. Ev'n in the face of heav'n, a place more sacred,
Would I have struck the man who, prompt by power.
Would seize my right, and rob me of my love :
But, for a blow provoked by thy injustice,
The hasty product of a just despair.
When he refus'd to meet me in the field,
That thou shouldst make a coward's cause thy O'wn !
Seb. He durst : nay, more, desir'd and hegg'd with
tears,
To meet thy challenge fairly ; 'twas thy fault
To make it public ; but my duty, then
To interpose, on pain of my displeasure.
Betwixt your swords.
Dor. On pain of infamy
He should have disobey'd.
Seb. Th' indignity thou didst was meant to me :
Thy gloomy eyes were cast on me with scorn,
As who should say, the blow was there intended ;
But that thou didst not dare to lift thy hands
Against anointed power : so was I forc'd
To do a sovereign justice to myself,
And spurn thee from my presence.
Dor. Thou hast dar'd
To tell me what I durst not tell myself:
I durst not think that I was spurn 'd, and live '
And live to hear it boasted to my face.
All my long avarice of honour lost,
Heap'd up in youth, and hoarded up for age :
Has Honour's fountain then suck'd back the stream ?
He has ; and hooting boys may dry-shod pass,
And gather pebbles from the naked ford.
Give me my love, my honour ; give them back —
Give me revenge, while I have breath to ask it.
Seb. Now, by this honour'd order which I wear.
More gladly would I give than thou dar'st ask it.
Nor shall the sacred character of king
Be urg'd to shield me from thy bold appeal.
If I have injur'd thee, that makes us equal :
The wrong, if done, debas'd me down to thee :
But thou hast chargM me with ingratitude ;
Hast thou not charg'd me ? Speak.
Dor. Thou know'st I have :
If thou disown'st that imputation, draw.
And prove my charge a lie.
Scb. No ; to disprove that lie, I must not draw :
Be conscious to thy worth, and tell thy soul
What thou hast done this day in my defence :
To fight thee, after this, what were it else
Than owning that ingratitude thou urgest ?
That isthmus stands between two rushing seas;
Which, mounting, view each other from afar.
And strive in vain to meet.
Dor. I'll cut that isthmus :
Thou know'st I meant not to preserve thy life,
But to reprieve it, for my own revenge.
I sav'd thee out of honourable malice :
Now draw ; I should be loath to think thou dar'st not :
Beware of such another vile excuse.
Scb. Oh, patience, heav'n !
Dor. Beware of patience too ;
That's a suspicious word : it had been proper.
Before thy foot had spuni'd me ; now 'tis base :
Yet, to disarm thee of thy last defence,
I have thy oath for my security :
The only boon I begg'd was this fair combat :
Fight, or be perjur'd now ; that's all thy choice.
Seb. Now can I thank thee as thou wouldst be
thank'd : [Drambvj.
Never was vow of honour better paid.
If my true sword but hold, than this shall be.
The sprightly bridegroom, on his wedding-night,
More gladly enters not the lists of love.
Why, 'tis enjoyment to be summon'd thus.
Go ; bear my message to Henriquez' ghost ;
And say his master and his friend reveng'd liim.
Dor. His ghost ! then is my hated rival dead ?
Seb. The question is beside our present purpose ;
Thou seest me ready ; we delay too long.
Dor. A minute is not much in cither's life.
When there's but one betwixt us ; throw it in,
And give it him of us who is to fall.
Seb. He's dead : make haste, and thou may'st yet
o'ertake him.
Dor. When I was hasty, thou delay'dst me longer.
I pr'ythee, let me hedge one moment more
Into thy promise : for thy life preserved,
Be kind ; and tell me how that rival died,
W^hose death, next thine, I wish'd.
Seb. If it would please thee, thou shouldst never
But thou, like jealousy, inquir'st a truth, [know.
Which found, will torture thee : -he died in fight :
Fought next my person ; as in concert fought :'
Kept pace for pace, and blow for every blow ;
Save when he heav'd his shield in my defenc* ,
And on his naked side received my wound :
Then, when he could no more, he fell at once.
But roll'd his falling body cross their way,
And made a bulwark of it for his prince.
Dor. I never can forgive him such a death!
Seb. I prophesied thy proud soul could not War it.
Now, judge thyself, who best deserv'd my love.
I knew you both ; and, durst I say, as heav'n
Foreknew among the shining angel host
W'ho should stand firm, who fall.
Dor. Had he been tempted so, so had he fall'n ;
And so had I been favour'd, had I stood.
Seb. What had been, is unkno^vn ; what is, appears ;
Confess he justly was preferr'd to thee.
Dor. Had I been born with his indulgent stars,
My fortune had been his, and his been mine.
Oh, worse than hell ! what glory have I lost,
And what has he acquir'd by such a death !
I should have fallen by Sebastian's side ;
My corpse had been the bulwark of my king.
His glorious end was a patch'd work of fate.
Ill-sorted with a soft effeminate life :
It suited better with my life than his
So to have died : mine had been of a piece.
Spent in your service, dying at your feet.
Stb. The more effeminate and soft his life.
The more his fame, to struggle to the field.
And meet his glorious fate : confess, proud spirit
(For I will have it from thy very mouth).
That better he deserv'd my love than thou.
Dor. Oh, whither would you drive me ! I must grant
Yes, I must grant, but with a swelling soul,
Henriquez had your love with more desert :
For you he fought and died ; I fought against you ;
Through all the mazes of the bloody field
Hunted your sacred life ; which that I miss'd.
Was the propitious error of my fate,
Not of my soul ; my soul's a regicide.
Seb. Thou mightst have given it a niorcgent»t :iam« ;
Thou meant'st to kill a tyrant, not a king.
Speak ; didst thou not, Alonzo ?
385
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
]6hH.
Dor. Can I speak ?
Alas ! I cannot answer to Alonzo :
No, Dorax cannot answer to Alonzo :
Alonzo was too kind a name for me.
Then when I fought and conquer'd with your arras,
In that bless'd age I was the man you nam'd ;
Till rage and pride debas'd me into Dorax,
And lost, like Lucifer, my name above.
Seh. Yet thrice this day I ow'd my life to Dorax.
Dor. I sav'd you but to kill you : there's my grief.
Seb. Nay, if thou canst be griev'd, thou canst repent ;
Thou couldst not be a villain, though thou wouldst :
Thou own'st too much, in owning thou hast err'd ;
And I too little, who provok'd thy crime.
Dor. Oh, stop this headlong torrent of your goodness;
it comes too fast upon a feeble soul
Half dro^vn'd in tears before ; spare my confusion :
For pity, spare, and say not first 3-ou err'd.
For yet' I have not dar'd, through guilt and shame,
To throw myself beneath your royal feet.
Now spurn this rebel, this proud renegade :
'Tis just you should, nor will I more complain.
Seh. Indeed thou shouldst not ask forgiveness first ;
But thou prevent'st me still, in all that's noble.
Yes, I will raise thee up with better news :
Thy Violante's heart was ever thine ;
Compeird to wed, because she was my ward.
Her soul was absent when she gave her hand :
Nor could my threats, or his pursuing courtship,
Effect the consummation of his love :
So, still indulging tears, she pines for thee,
A widow and a maid.*
Dor. Have I been cursing heav'n, while heaven
bless'd mel
I shall run mad with ecstacy of joy:
What, in one moment to be reconcil'd
To heav'n, and to my king, and to my love !
But pity is my friend, and stops me short,
For my unhappy rival. Poor Henriquez!
Seb. Art thou so generous, too, to pity him ?
Nay, then, I was unjust to love him better.
Here let me ever hold thee in ray arms ;
And all our quarrels be but such as these.
Who shall love best, and closest shall embrace :
Be what Henriquez was : be my Alonzo.
Dor. What ! ray Alonzo, said you 1 My Alonzo \
Let my tears thank you ; for I cannot speak ;
And if I could.
Words were not made to rent such thoughts as mine.
Seb. Thou canst not speak, and I can ne'er be silent.
Some strange reverse of fate must sure attend
This vast profusion, this extravagance
Of heav'n to bless rae thus. 'Tis gold so pure,
It cannot bear the stamp, without alloy.
Be kind, ye pow'rs, and take but half away :
With ease the gifts of fortune 1 resign ;
But let my love, and friend, be ever mine.
THOMAS OTWAT.
Wliere Drj'den failed, one of his young contempo-
raries succeeded. The tones of domestic tragedy
and the deepest distress were Bounded, with a power
and intenseness of feeling never surpassed, by the
unfortunate Thomas Otway ; a brilliant name asso-
^'iated with the most melancholy history. Otway
was bom at Trotting in Sussex, Marcli 3, 1651, the
son of a clergyman. He was educated first at Win-
chester school and afterwards at Oxford, but left
college withou*- taKing his degree. In 1672 he
made his appearance as an actor on the London
Jtage. To this profession his talents were ill adapted,
but he probably acquired a knowledge of dramatic
art, which was serviceable to him when he began to
■write for the theatre. He produced three tragedies,
4lcib'ades, Don Carlos, aud Titus and B enice, which
were successfully performed ; but Otway was always
in povert}'. In 1677 the Earl of Plymouth procured
him an appointment as a cornet of dragoons, and
tlie poet went with his regiment to Flanders. He
was soon cashiered, in consequence of his irregula-
rities, and, returning to England, he resumed writing
for the stage. lu 1680 he produced Caiiis Marcius
and the Orphan, tragedies; in 1681 the Soldier's
Fortune; and in 1682 Venice Preserved. The short
eventful life of Otway, chequered by want and ex-
Thomas otway.
travagance, was prematurely closed in 1685. One
of his biographers relates, that the immediate cause
j of his death was his hastily swallowing, after a long
fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied.
According to another account he died of fever, occa-
I sioned by fatigue, or by drinking water when violently
i heated. Whatever was the immediate cause of his
I death, he was at the time in circumstances of great
I poverty.
I The fame of Otway now rests on his two tragedies,
the 'Orphan,' and 'Venice Preserved ;' but on these it
rests as on the pillars of Hercules. His talents in
scenes of passionate affection ' rival, at least, and
sometimes excel, those of Sliakspeare : more tears
have been shed, probably, for the sorrows of Bel-
videra and Monimia than for those of Juliet and
Desdemona.'* The plot of the ' Orphan,' from its in-
herent indelicacy and painful associations, has driven
this play from the theatres ; but 'Venice Preserved' is
still one of the most popular and effective tragedies.
The stern plotting character of Pierre is well con-
trasted with the irresolute, sensitive, and affectionate
nature of JaflBer ; and the harsh unnatural cruelty of
Priuli serves as a dark shade, to set off the bright
purity and tenderness of his daughter. The patlietic
and harrowing plot is well managed, and deepens
towards the close ; and the genius of Otway shines
in his delineation of tlie passions of the heart, the
ardour of love, and the excess of misery and despair.
The versification of these dramas is sometimes rugged
and irregular, and there are occasional redundancies
and inflated expressions, which a more correct taste
would have expunged ; yet, even in propriety of style
and character, how much does this young and care-
less poet excel the great master Dryden !
* Sir Walter Scott
386
PKAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS OTWAT.
\_Sccnesfrom Venice Preservcd.l
Scene— St Mark's. Enter Priuli and Jaffier.
Pri. No more ! I'll hear no more ! begone, and
leave me !
Jaf. Not hear me ! by my sufferings but you sliall :
My lord — my lord ! I'm not that abject wretch
You think me. Patience ! where's the distance throws
Me back so far, but I may boldly speak
In right, though proud oppression will not hear me 1
Pn. Have you not wrong'd me?
/('/. Could my nature e'er
Have brook'd injustice, or the doing wrongs,
I need not now thus low have bent myself
To gain a hearing from a cruel father.
Wrong'd you 1
Pri. Yes, wrong'd me ! in the nicest point,
The honour of my house, you've done me wrong.
You may remember (for I now will speak,
And urge its baseness) when you first came home
From travel, with such hopes as made you look'd on
By all men's eyes, a youth of expectation ;
Pleas'd with your growing virtue, I receiv'd you ;
Couited, and sought to raise you to your merits ;
My house, my table, nay, my fortune too,
Jly very self, was yours ; you might have us'd me
To your best service ; like an open friend
I treated, trusted you, and thought you mine ;
When, in requital of my best endeavours,
You treacherously practis'd to undo me ;
Seduc'd the weakness of my age's darling,
My only child, and stole her from my bosom.
Oh! Belvidera!
Jaf. 'Tis to me you owe her :
Childless had you been else, and in the grave
Your name extinct ; no more Priuli heard of.
You may remember, scarce five years are past,
Since in your brigantine you sail'd to see
The Adriatic wedded by our duke ;
And I was with you : your unskilful pilot
Dash'd us upon a rock ; when to your boat
You made for safety : enter'd first yourself;
Th' affrighted Belvidera, following next.
As she stood trembling on the vessel's side,
Was by a wave wash'd off into the deep ;
When instantly I plung'd into the sea.
And buffeting the billows to her rescue,
Redeem'd her life with half the loss of mine.
Like a rich conquest, in one hand I bore her,
And with the other dash'd the saucy waves.
That throng'd and press'd to rob me of my prize.
I brought her, gave her to your despairing arms :
Indeed you thank'd me ; but a nobler gratitude
Rose in her soul : for from that hour she lov'd me.
Till for her life she paid me with herself.
Pri. You stole her from me ; like a thief you stole
her, .
At dead of night ! that cursed hour you chose
To rifle me of all ray heart held dear.
May all your joys in her prove false, like mine !
A sterile fortune and a barren bed
Attend you both : continual discord make
Your daj's and nights bitter, and grievous still :
May the hard hand of a vexatious need
Oppress and grind you ; till at last you find
The curse of disobedience all your portion.
Jaf. Half of your curse you have bestow'd in vain.
Heav'n has already crown'd our faithful loves
With a young boy, sweet as his mother's beauty :
May he live to prove more gentle than his grandsire.
And happier than his father !
Pri. Rather live
To bait thee for his bread, and din your ears
With hungry cries ; whilst his unhappy mother
Sits doim ijid weeps in bitterness of want,.
Jaf. You talk as if 'twould please you.
Pri. 'Twould, by heaven!
Jaf. ^^'ould I were in my grave !
PH. And she, too, with thee ;
For living here, you 're but my curs'd remembrancers
I once was happv !
Jaf. You use me thus, because you know my soul
Is fond of Belvidera. You perceive
My life feeds on her, therefore thus you treat me.
Were I that thief, the doer of such wronn's
As you upbraid me with, what hinders me
But I might send her back to you with contumely,
And court my fortune where she would be kinder.
Pri. You dare not do't.
Jaf. Indeed, my lord, I dare not.
My heart, that awes me, is too much my master :
Three years are past since first our vows were
plighted,
During which time the world must bear me witness
I've treated Belvidera like your daughter,
The daughter of a senator of Venice :
Distinction, place, attendance, and observance,
Due to her birth, she always has commanded :
Out of my little fortune I've done this ;
Because (though hopeless e'er to win your nature)
The world might see 1 lov'd her for herself;
Not as the heiress of the great Priuli.
Pri. No more.
Jaf. Yes, all, and then adieu for ever.
There's not a wretch that lives on common charity
But's happier than me ; for I have known
The luscious sweets of plenty ; every night
Have slept with soft content about my head.
And never wak'd but to a joj-ful morning :
Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn,
Whose blossom 'scap'd, yet's wither'd in the ripening.
Pri. Home, and be humble ; study to retrench ;
Discharge the lazy vermin in thy hall,
Those pageants of thy folly :
Reduce the glitt'ring trappings of thy wife
To humble weeds, fit for thy little state :
Then to some suburb cottage both retire ;
Drudge to feed loathsome life ; get brats and starve.
Home, home, I say. \_Exit.
Jaf. Yes, if my heart would let me —
This proud, this swelling heart : home I would go.
But that my doors are hateful to my e3es,
Fill'd and damm'd up with gaping creditors :
I've now not fifty ducats in the world,
Yet still I am in love, and pleas'd with ruin.
Belvidera ! Oh ! she is my wife —
And we will bear our wayward fate together,
But ne'er know comfort more.
Enter Belvidera.
Bel. My lord, my love, my refuge !
Happy my eyes when they behold thy face !
My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating
At sight of thee, and bound with sprightly joys.
Oh, smile, as when our loves were in their spring,
And cheer my fainting soul !
Jaf. As when our loves
Were in their spring ! Has, then, my fortune chang'd
thee?
Art thou not, Belvidera, still the same,
Kind, good, and tender, as my arms first found
thee?
If thou art alter'd, where shall I have harbour*
Where ease my loaded heart ? Oh ! wliere complain f
Bel. Does this appear like change, or love decaying,
When thus I throw myself into thy bosom,
With all the resolution of strong truth ?
I joy more in thee
Tlian did thy mother, when she hugg'd thee first.
And bless'd the gods for all her travail past.
387
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TO 1689.
Jaf. Can there in woman be such glorious faith ?
Sure, all ill stories of thy sex are false !
Oh, woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thee
To temper man : we had been brutes without you !
j^n^els are painted fair, to look like you :
There's in you all that we believe of Heav'n ;
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love !
Bel. If love be treasure, we'll be wondrous rich ;
Oh ! lead me to some desert, wide and wild,
Barren as our misfortunes, where my soul
May have its vent, where I may tell aloud
To the high heavens, and ev'ry list'ning planet,
With what a boundless stock my bosom's fraught.
Jaf. Oh, Belvidera ! doubly I'm a beggar :
Undone by fortune, and in debt to thee.
Want, worldly want, that hungry meagre fiend.
Is at my heels, and chases me in view.
Canst thou bear cold and hunger ? Can these limbs,
Fram'd for the tender offices of love.
Endure the bitter gripes of smarting poverty ?
When banish 'd by our miseries abroad
(As suddenly we shall be), to seek out
In some far climate, where our names are strangers,
For charitable succour, wilt thou then.
When in a bed of straw we shrink together.
And the bleak winds shall whistle round our heads ;
Wilt thou then talk thus to me ? Wilt thou then
Hush my cares thus, and shelter me with love \
Bel. Oh ! I will love, even in madness love thee !
Though my distracted senses should forsake me,
I'd find some intervals when my poor heart
Should 'suage itself, and be let loose to thine.
Though the bare earth be all our resting place,
Its roots our food, some cliff our habitation,
I'll make this arm a pillow for thine head ;
And, as thou sighing liest, and swell'd with sorrow,
Creep to thy bosom, pour the balm of love
Into thy soul, and kiss thee to thy rest ;
Then praise our God, and watch thee till the morning.
Jaf. Hear this, you Heav'ns, and wonder how you
made her !
Reign, reign, ye monarchs, that divide the world ;
Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know
Tranquillity and happiness like mine ;
Like gaudy ships, the obsequious billows fall.
And rise again, to lift you in your pride ;
They wait but for a storm, and then devour you !
I, in my private bark already wreck'd.
Like a poor merchant, driven to unknown land.
That had, by chance, pack'd up his choicest treasure
In one dear casket, and sav'd only that :
Since I must wander farther on the shore,
Thus hug my little, but my precious store,
Resolv'd to scorn and trust my fate no more. [Exeunt.
[Jaflfier joins with Pierre and others in a conspiracy against
the senate. He communicates tlie secret to Belvidera, and
she, anxious to save her father's life, prevails on Jaftier to dis-
close the whole to the senators. The betrayed conspirators are
condeomed to death.]
Scene — A Street. Enter Jaffier.
Jaf. Final destruction seize on all the world !
Bend down, ye heav'ns, and, shutting round the earth,
Crush the vile globe into its own confusion !
Enter Belvidera.
Bel. My life
Jaf. My plague
Bel. Nay, then, I see my ruin.
If 1 must die !
Jaf. No, death's this day too busy ;
Thy father's ill-tim'd mtrcy came too late.
I thank thee for thy labours, though ; and him too.
But all my poor, betrayed, unhappy friends,
Have summons to prepare for Fate's black hour.
Yet, Belvidera, do not fear my cruelty.
Nor let the thoughts of death perplex thy fancy :
But answer me to what I shall demand.
With a firm temper and unshaken spirit.
Bel. I will, when I've done weeping •
Jaf. Fie, no more on't !
How long is't since the miserable day
We wedded first ?
Bel. Oh, Oh !
Jaf. Nay, keep in thy tears.
Lest they unman me too.
Bel. Heaven knows I cannot ;
The words you utter sound so very sadly,
The streams will follow
Jaf. Come, I'll kiss them dry.
Bel. But was't a miserable day 1
Jaf. A curs'd one.
Bel. I thought it otherwise ; and you have often
sworn,
^^^len sure you spoke the truth, you've sworn, you
bless'd it.
Jaf. 'Twas a rash oath.
Bel. Then why am I not curs'd too.
Jaf. No, Belvidera; by th' eternal truth,
I dote vnih too much fondness.
Bel. Still so kind ?
Still, then, do you love me?
Jaf. Man ne'er was bless'd,
Since the first pair first met, as I have been.
Bel. Then sure you will not curse me ?
Jaf. No, I'll bless thee.
I came on purpose, Belvidera, to bless thee.
'Tis now, I think, three years we've liv'd together.
Bel. And may no fatal minute ever part us.
Till, reverend grown, for age and love, we go
Down to one grave, as our last bed, together ;
There sleep in peace till an eternal morning.
Jaf. Did not I say 1 came to bless thee ?
Bel. You did.
Jaf. Then hear me, bounteous Heaven,
Pour down your blessings on this beauteous head.
Where everlasting sweets are always springing,
With a continual giving hand : let peace,
Honour, and safety, always hover round her:
Feed her with plenty; let her eyes ne'er see
A sight of sorrow, nor her heart know mourning ;
Cro^^^l all her days with joy, her nights with rest.
Harmless as her own thoughts ; and prop her virtue,
To bear the loss of one that too much lov'd ;
And comfort her with patience in our parting.
Bel. How ? parting, parting ?
Jaf. Yes, for ever parting !
I have sworn, Belvidera, by yon Heav'n,
That best can tell how much I lose to leave thee.
We part this hour for ever.
Bel. Oh ! call back
Your cruel blessing ; stay with me, and curse me.
Jaf. Now hold, heart, or never.
Bel. By all the tender days we've liv'd together.
Pity my sad condition ; speak, but speak.
Jaf. Murder ! unhold me :
Or by th' immortal destiny that doom'd me
[Draws his dagger.
To this curs'd minute, I'll not live one longer:
Resolve to let me go, or see me fall
Hark — the dismal bell [Passing hell tolls.
Tolls out for death ! I must attend its call too ;
For my poor friend, my dying Pierre, expects me :
He sent a message to require I'd see him
Before he died, and take his last forgiveness.
Farewell for ever !
Bel. Leave thy dagger with mc :
Bequeath me something. Not one kiss at parting!
Oh, my poor heart, when wilt thou break !
Jaf. Yet stay :
We have a child, as yet a tender infant :
Be a kind mother to him when I am goiie :
388
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS OTWAT.
lireed him in virtue, and the paths of honour,
But never let him know his father's story :
I charge thee, guard him from the wrongs my fate
May do his future fortune or his name.
Now — nearer yet —
Oh, that my arms were riveted
Thus round thee ever ! But my friends ! ray oath !
This, and no more. [Kisses lier.
Bel. Another, sure another,
For that poor little one, you've ta'en such care of.
I'll give't him truly.
Jaf. So — now, farewell !
Bel. For ever ?
Jaf. Heav'n knows, for ever! all good angels guard
thee! [E.rit.
Bel. All ill ones, sure, had charge of me this moment.
Oh, give me daggers, fire or water :
How I could bleed, how bum, how drown, the waves
Huzzing and foaming round my sinking head.
Till I descended to the peaceful bottom!
Oh! there's all quiet — here, all rage and fury!
The air's too thin, and pierces my weak brain ;
I long for thick substantial sleep : Hell! hell!
Burst from the centre, rage and roar aloud.
If thou art half so hot, so mad as I am. {Exit.
Scene — St Mark's Place — Scaffold and a AMieel prepared for
the Execution of Pierre.
Enter Caftain, Pierre, Guards, Execctioneb, and
Rabble.
Pier. My ^iend not yet come ?
Enter Jaffier.
Jaf. Oh, Pierre!
Pier. Dear to my arms, though thou'st undone my
fame,
I can't forget to love thee. Pt'ythee, Jaffier,
Forgive that filthy blow my passion dealt thee 1
I am now preparing for the land of peace.
And fain would have the charitable wishes
Of all good men, like thee, to bless my journey.
Capt. The time grows short ; your friends are dead
already
Jaf. Dead!
Pier. Yes, dead, Jaffier ; they've all died like men
too,
Worthy their character.
Jaf. And what must Idol
Pier. Oh, Jaffier!
Jaf. Speak aloud thy burden'd soul,
And' tell thy troubles to thy tortur'd friend.
Pier. Friend ! Couldst thou yet be a friend, a gene-
rous friend,
I might hope comfort from thy noble sorrows.
Heaven knows I want a friend!
Jaf. And I a kind one.
That would not thus scorn my repenting virtue,
Or think, when he's to die, my thoughts are idle.
Pier. No! live, I charge thee, Jaffier.
Jaf. Yes, I will live :
But it shall be to see thy fall reveng'd.
At such a rate, as Venice long shall groan for.
Pier. Wilt thou ?
Jaf. I will, by Heaven I
Pier. Then still thou'rt noble.
And I forgive thee. Oh! — yet— shall I trust thee!
Jaf. No ; I've been false already.
Pier. Dost thou love me?
Jaf. Rip up my heart, and satisfy thy doubtings.
Pier, Curse on this weakness !
Jaf. Tears ? Amazement ! Tears ?
I never saw thee melted thus before ;
And know there's something labouring in thy bosom.
That must have vent ; though I'm a villain, tell me.
Pier. Seest thou that engine ? [Pointing to the wheel.
Jaf. Whyl
' Pier. Is't fit a soldier, who has liv'd with honour.
Fought nations' quarrels, and been crown 'd with con-
quest.
Be expos'd a common carcass, on a wheel ?
Jaf Hah!
Pier. Speak ! is't fitting ?
Jaf Fitting?
Pier. I'd have thee undertake
Something that's noble, to preserve my memory
From the disgrace that's ready to attaint it.
Capt. The day grows late, sir.
Pier. I'll make haste. Oh, Jaffier
Though thou hast betray'd me, do me someway justice.
Jaf What's to be done ?
Pier. This, and no more. [He whispers Jap.
Jaf. Hah! is't then sol
Pier. Most certainly.
Jof I'll do't.
Pier. Remember.
Capt. Sir
Pier. Come, now I'm ready.
Captain, you should be a ^-entleman of honour :
Keep oft' the rabble, that I may have room
To entertain mv fate, and die with decency.
You'll think on't ? [To Jaf.
Jaf. 'Twont grow stale before to-morrow.
[Pierre and Jaffier ascend the scaffold. —
Executioner binds Pierre.
Pier. Now, Jaffier ! now I'm going! Now —
Jaf. Have at thee.
Thou honest heart, then! — there — [Stahs him.
And this is well too. [_Stabs himself.
Pier. Now thou hast indeed been faithful !
This was nobly done! — We have deceived the senate.
Jaf. Bravely.
Pier. Ha, ha, ha oh ! oh !
[Falls down on the scaffold, and dies,
Jaf. Now, ye curs'd rulers.
Thus of the blood ye've shed, I make libation,
And sprinkle it mingling, ilay it rest upon you
And all your race. Oh, poor Belvidera!
Sir, I have a wife ; bear this in safety to her,
A token that, with my dying breath, I bless'd her,
And the dear little infant left behind me.
I'm sick — I'm quiet. [Dies,
[The scene closes upon them.
Scene — Apartment in Priuli's House.
Enter Priuli, Belvidera distracted, and two of her
women.
Pri. Strengthen her heart with patience, pitying
Heaven.
Btl. Come, come, come, come, come ; nav, come to
bed,
Pr'vthee, my love. The winds ! hark how they whistle !
And the rain beats ! Oh, how the weather shrinks me !
I say you shall not go ; you shall not :
AVhip your ill-nature ; get you gone, then. Oh !
Are you returned ? See, father, here he's come agaia :
Am I to blame to love him ? 0, thou dear one,
\\'hy do you fly ine ? are you angry still, then ?
Jaffier, where art thou ? Father, why do you do tniw 1
Stand off" — don't hide him from me. He's there some-
where.
Stand off", I say ! "VATiat ! gone ? Remember, tyrant,
I may revenge myself for this trick one day.
Enter Captain, and whispers Priuli.
Pri. News — what news ?
Capt. Most sad, sir ;
Jaffier, upon the scaffold, to prevent
A shameful death, stabb'd Pierre, and next himselt ,
Both fell together.
Btl. Ha ! look there !
My husband bloody, and his friend too! Murder !
Who has done this ! Speak to nie, thou sad vision
On these poor trembling knees I beg it. Vaiiisli"d !
3S9
FBOH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1685/
Here they went down. — Oh, I'll dig, dig the deu up!,
Hoa, Jaffier, Jaffier!
Peep up, and give ine but a look. I have him!
I have got him, father! Oh!
Aly love! my dear! my blessing! help me! help me!
They've hold of me, and drag me to the bottom!
^say — now they pull so hard — farewell [Dies.
Pri. Oh! lead me into some place that's fit for
mourning :
Where the free air, light, and the cheerful sun,
Jlay never enter ; hang it round with black.
Set up one taper, that may light a day
As long as I've to live ; and there all leave me :
Sparing no tears when you this tale relate.
But bid all cruel fathers dread my fate.
[Exetmt Omiies.
[Parting.]
Where am 1 1 Sure I wander 'midst enchantment.
And never more shall find the way to rest.
But Monimia ! art thou indeed resolv'd
To punish me with everlasting absence ?
Why turn'st thou from me ? I'm alone already !
Methinks I stand upon a naked beach
Sighing to winds and to the seas complaining ;
Whilst afar off the vessel sails away,
Where all the treasure of my soul's embark'd I
Wilt thou not turn 1 could those eyes but speak !
I should know all, for love is pregnant in tlieiu I
They swell, they press their beams upon me still !
Wilt thou not speak ? If we must part for ever.
Give me but one kind word to think upon,
And please myself with, while my heart is breaking.
T/ie Orp/iuii.
\_Picture of a Witch.']
Through a close lane as I pursued my journey,
And meditating on the last night's vision,
I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red.
And palsy shook her head ; her hands seemed wither'd ;
And on her crooked shoulder had she >vi-app'd
The tatter'd remnant of an old striped hanging.
Which served to keep her carcass from the cold.
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched
With different coloured rags — black, red, white, yellow.
And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness.
I ask'd her of the way, which she informed me ;
Then craved my charity, and bade me hasten
To save a sister.
[Desmption of Morning.]
Wish'd Morning 's come ; and now upon the plains.
And distant mountains, where they feed their flocks,
The hapi)y shepherds leave their homely huts.
And with their pipes proclaim the new-born day.
The lusty swain comes with his well-fiU'd scrip
Of healthful viands, which, when hunger calls,
With much content and appetite he eats,
To follow in the field his daily toil.
And dress the grateful glebe that yields him fruits.
The beasts that under the warm hedges slept.
And weather'd out the cold bleak night, are up ;
And, looking towards the neighbouring pastures, raise
Their voice, and bid their fellow-brutes good morrow.
The cheerful birds, too, on the tops of trees.
Assemble all in choirs ; and with their notes
Salute and welcome up the rising sun.
[Killing a Boar.}
Forth from the thicket rush'd another boar,
^o large, he seem'd the tyrant of the woods.
With all his dreadful bristles raised on high ;
They seem'd a grove of spears upon his back :
Foaming, he came at me, where I was posted.
Whetting his huge long tusks, and gaping wide.
As he already had me for his prey ;
Till, brandishing my well-pois'd javelin high,
With this bold executing arm I struck
The ugly brindled monster to the heart.
NATHANIEL LEE.
Another tragic poet of this period was Nathanikl
Lee, wlio possessed no small portion of the fire of ge-
nius, though unfortunately 'near allied' to madness.
Lee was the son of a Hertfordshire clergyman, and
received a classical education, first at Westminster
school, and afterwards at Trinity college, Cambridge.
He tried the stage both as an actor and autlior,
was four years in bedlam from wild insanity ; but
recovering his reason, resumed his labours as a dra-
matist, and though subject to fits of partial derange-
ment, continued to write till the end of his life. He
was the author of eleven tragedies, besides assisting
Dryden in the composition of two pieces, ^dipus
and the Duke of Guise. The unfortunate poet was
in his latter days supported by charity : he died in
London, and was buried in St Clement's church,
April 6, 1692. The best of Lee's tragedies are the
liival Queens, or Alexander the Great, Mithridates,
Thcodosius, and Lucius Junius Brutus. In praising
Alexander, Uryden alludes to the power of his friend
in moving the passions, and counsels him to despise
those critics who condemn
The too much vigour of his youthful muse.
We have here indicated the source both of Lee's
strength and of his weakness. In tenderness and
genuine passion, he excels Dryden ; but his style often
degenerates into bombast and extravagant frenzy —
a defect which was heightened in his late productions
by his mental malady. The author was aware of his
weakness. 'It has often been observed against me,'
he says in his dedication of Thcodosius, 'that I
abound in ungoverried fancy; but I hope tlie world will
pardon the sallies of youth: age, despondency, and
dulness, come too fast of themselves. I discommend
no man for keeping the beaten road ; but I am sure
tlie noble hunters that follow the game must leap
hedges and ditches sometimes, and run at all, or
never come into the fall of a quarry.' He wanted
discretion to temper his tropical genius, and reduce
his poetical conceptions to consistency and order;
yet among his Avild ardour and martial enthusiasm
are very soft and graceful lines. Dryden himself has
no finer image than the following : —
Speech is morning to the mind ;
It spreads the beauteous images abroad.
Which else lie furled and clouded in the soul.
Or this declaration of love : —
I disdain
All pomp when thou art by : far be the noise
Of kings and courts from us, whose gentle souls
Our kinder stars have steer'd another way.
Free as the forest-birds we'll pair together.
Fly to the arbours, grots, and flowery meads.
And, in soft murmurs, interchange our souls :
Together drink the crystal of the stream,
Or taste the yellow fruit which autumn yields ;
And when the golden evening calls us home,
Wing to our downy nest, and sleep till mom.
The heroic style of Lee (verging upon rliodomon-
tade) may be seen in such lines as the fijllowing,
descriptive of Junius Brutus throwing off his dis-
390 :
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MATHANtEL I.HR.
guise of idiocy after the rape of Lucrece by Tar-
quin : —
As from night's ■womb the glorious day breaks forth,
And seems to kindle from the setting stars ;
So, from the blackness of young Tarquin's crime
And furnace of his lust, the virtuous soul
Of Junius Brutus catches bright occasion.
I see the pillars of his kingdom totter :
The rape of Lucrece is the midnight lantern
That lights my genius down to the foundation.
Leave me to work, my Titus, my son !
For from this spark a lightning shall arise,
That must ere night purge all the Roman air,
And then the thunder of his ruin follows.
\_Scetie Ictween Brutiis and Tihis, his son.^
[Titus having joined the Tarquin conspiracy, is condemned
by his own father to suffer the death of a traitor. Brutus takes
(I last farewell of him.]
Brutiis. Well, Titus, speak ; how is it with thee now ?
I would attend awhile this mighty motion.
Wait till the tempest were quite overblown,
That I might take thee in the calm of nature
With all thy gentler virtues brooding on theo.
So hush'd a stillness, as if all the gods
Look'd down and listcn'd to what we were saying :
Speak, then, and tell me, my best beloved,
My son, my Titus, is all well again ?
Titus. So well, that saying how, must make it no-
thing;
So well, that I could wish to die this moment.
For so my heart with powerful throbs persuades me :
That were indeed to make you reparation —
That were, my lord, to thank you home, to die ;
And that for Titus too, would be most happy.
B7-U. How's that, my son i would death for thee be
happy ?
Tit. Most certain, sir ; for in my grave I 'scape
All those affronts which I in life must look for.
All those reproaches which the eyes, and fingers,
And tongues of Rome will daily cast upon me ;
From whom, to a soul so sensible as mine.
Each single scorn would be far worse than dying :
Besides, I 'scape the stings of my own conscience.
Which will for ever rack me with remembrance,
Haunt me by day, and torture me by night.
Casting my blotted honour in the way
Where'er my melancholy thoughts shall guide me.
Bni. But is not death a very dreadful thing I
Tit. Not to a mind resolv'd. No, sir ; to me
It seems as natural as to be bom :
Groans, and convulsions, and discolour'd faces.
Friends weeping round us, blacks, and obsequies.
Make it a dreadful thing ; the pomp of death
Is far more terrible than death itself.
Yes, sir ; I call the powers of heaven to witness,
Titus dares die, if so you have decreed ;
Nay, he shall die with joy, to honour Brutus,
To make your justice famous through the world.
And fix the liberty of Rome for ever.
Not but I must confess my weakness too :
Yet it is great thus to resolve against it,
To have the frailty of a mortal man.
But the security of the immortal gods.
Bru. Titus, thou absolute young man !
Thou flattering mirror of thy father's image,
Where 1 behold myself at such advantage !
Thou perfect glory of the Junian race I
Let me endear thee once more to my bosom ;
Groan an eternal farewell to thy soul ;
Instead of tears, weep blood, if possible :
Blood, the heart-blood of Brutus, on his chihl ;
For thou must die, my Titus ; die, my son :
I swear the gods have doom'd thee to the grave.
The violated genius of thy country
Rears his sad head, and passes sentence on thee :
This morning sun, that lights thy sorrows on
To the tribunal of this horrid vengeance.
Shall never see thee more.
Tit. Alas ! my lord.
Why art thou moved thus ? why am I worthy of thy
sorrow t
Why should the godlike Brutus shake to doom me ?
Why all these trappings for a traitor's hearse ?
The gods will have it so.
Bru. They will, my Titus ;
Nor Heaven, nor earth, can have it otherwise ;
Nay, Titus, mark ; the deeper that I search.
My harass'd soul returns the more confirm'd.
Methinks I see the very hand of fire
Moving the dreadful wheels of this affair.
That whirl thee, like a machine, to thy fate;
It seems as if the gods had pre-ordain'd it,
To fix the reeling spirits of the people,
And settle the loose liberty of Rome.
'Tis fix'd : 0, therefore, let not fancy fond thee :
So fix'd thy death, that 'tis not in the power
Of gods or men to save thee from the axe.
I'it. The axe ? heaven ! Then must I fall so liasoly ?
What ! Shall I perish by the common hangman ]
Bru. If thou deny me this, thou giv'st me nothing.
Yes, Titus, since the gods have so decreed
That I must lose thee, I will take th' advantage
Of thy important fate — cement Rome's flaws.
And heal their wounded freedom with thy blood ;
1 will ascend myself the sad tribunal.
And sit upon my sons ; on thee, my Titus :
Behold thee suffer all the shame of death,
The lictor'." !<ishes bleed before the people ;
Then with thy hopes and all thy 3'outh upon thee,
See thy head taken by the common axe.
Without a groan, without one pitying tear.
If that the gods can hold me to my purpose.
To make my justice quite transcend example.
Tit. Scourg'd like a bondman ? Ha ! a beaten slave I
But I deserve it all : yet here I fail ;
The image of this suffering quite unmans me.
sir, Brutus, must I call you father.
Yet have no token of your tenderness 1
No sign of mercy ? What ! not bate me that ?
Can you resolve on all th' extremity
Of cruel rigour ? to behold me too ?
To sit uiimov'd and see me whipt to death ?
Where are your bowels now ? Is this a father?
Ah ! sir, why should you make my heart suspect
That all your late compassion was dissembled ?
How can I think that you did ever love me 1
Bru. Think that I love thee by my present passion.
By these unmanly tears, these earthquakes here.
These sighs that twitch the very strings of life :
Think that no other cause on earth could move mo
To tremble thus, to sob, or shed a tear.
Nor shake my solid virtue from her point.
But Titus' death : 0, do not call it shameful,
That thus shall fix the glory of the world.
1 ovm thy sutterings ought t' unman me thus.
To make me throw my body on the ground.
To bellow like a beast, to gnaw the earth,
To tear my hair, to curse the cruel fates
That force a father thus to drag his bowels.
Tit. rise, thou violated majesty.
Rise from the earth ; or I shall beg those fates
Which you would curse, to bolt nie to the centre.
I now submit to all your threaten'd vengeance :
Come forth, you executioners of justice,
Nay, all you lictors, slaves, and common hangmen;
Come, strip me bare, unrobe me in his sight,
And lash me till I bleed ; whip nie like furies ;
And when you'll have scourg"d me till 1 foam aud
fall,
391
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
For want of spirits, grovelling in the dust,
Then take my head, and give it his revenge :
By all the gods, I greedily resign it.
Bru. No more— farewell — eternally farewell :
[f there be gods, they will reserve a room,
A throne for thee in Heaven. One last embrace —
What is it makes my eyes thus swim again \
[Sdf-Murder.']
"WTiat torments are allotted those sad spirits.
Who, groaning with the burden of despair,
No longer will endure the cares of life,
But boldly set themselves at liberty,
Through the dark caves of death to wander on,
Like wilder'd travellers, without a guide ;
Eternal rovers in the gloomy maze.
Where scarce the twilight of an infant mom.
By a faint glimmer check'ring through the trees,
Reflects to dismal view the walking ghosts.
That never hope to reach the blessed fields.
Thcodosius.
JOHN CROWNE.
John Crowne was patronised by Rochester, in
opposition to Dryden, as a dramatic poet. Between
1661 and 1698, he wrote seventeen pieces, two of
which, namely, the tragedy of Thijestes, and. the
comedy of Sir Courtly Nice, evince considerable
talent. The former is, indeed, founded on a repul-
sive classical story. Atreus invites his banished
brother, Thyestes, to the court of Argos, and there
at a banquet sets before him the mangled limbs and
blood of his own son, of which the father uncon-
ciously partakes. The return of Thyestes from his
retirement, with the fears and misgivings which fol-
low, are vividly described: —
[Extract from, Thyestes.']
Thyestes. Philisthenes. Peneus.
Thy. wondrous pleasure to a banish'i man,
I feel my lov'd long look'd-for native soil !
And oh ! my weary ej-es, that all the day
Had from some mountain travell'd toward this place,
Now rest themselves upon the royal towers
Of that great palace where 1 had my birth.
sacred towers, sacred in your height.
Mingling with clouds, the villas of the gods,
Whither for sacred pleasures they retire :
Sacred, because you are the work of gods ;
Your lofty looks boast your divine descent ;
And the proud city which lies at your feet,
And would give place to nothing but to you,
<)\vns her original is short of yours.
And now a thousand objects more ride fast
On morning beams, and meet my eyes in throngs :
And see, all Argos meets me with loud shouts !
Phil. joyful sound !
Thy. But with them Atreus too
Phil. What ails my father that he stops, and shakes,
And now retires ?
Thy. Return with me, my son,
And old friend Peneus, to the honest beasts,
And faithful desert, and well-seated caves ;
Trees shelter man, by whom they often die.
And never seek revenge ; no villany
Lies in the prospect of a humble cave.
Pen. Talk you of villany, of foes, and fraud ?
Thy. I talk of Atreus.
Pen. What are these to him ?
Thy. Nearer than I am, for they are himself.
Pen. Gods drive these impious thoughts out of your
mind.
TJnj. The gods for all our safety put them there.
Ketum, return with me.
Pen. Against our oaths ?
1 cannot stem the vengeance of the gods.
Thy. Here are no gods ; they've left this dire abode.
Pen. True race of Tantalus ! who parent-like
Are doom'd in midst of plenty to be starved.
His hell and yours differ alone in this :
When he would catch at joys, they fly from him;
When glories catch at you, you fly from them.
Thy. A fit comparison ; our joys and his
Are lying shadows, which to trust is hell.
[Wishes for Obscurity.}
How miserable a thing is a great man !
Take noisy vexing greatness they that please ;
Give me obscure and safe and silent ease.
Acquaintance and commerce let me have none
With any powerful thing but Time alone ;
My rest let Time be fearful to oflfend.
And creep by me as by a slumbering friend;
Till, with ease glutted, to my bed 1 steal,
As men to sleep after a plenteous meal.
Oh, wretched he who, call'd abroad by power,
To know himself can never find an hour !
Strange to himself, but to all others known.
Lends every one his life, but uses none ;
So, e'er he tasted life, to death he goes.
And himself loses ere himself he knows.
[Passions.l
We oft by lightning read in darkest nights ;
And by your passions I read all your natures,
Though you at other times can keep them dark.
[Love in Women.']
These are great maxims, sir, it is confess'd ;
Too stately for a woman's narrow breast.
Poor love isjost in men's capacious minds;
In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.
[Inconstancy of the Multitude.l
I'll not such favour to rebellion show.
To wear a crown the people do bestow ;
Who, when their giddy violence is past,
Shall from the king, the Ador'd, revolt at last ;
And then the throne they gave they shall invade,
And scorn the idol which themselves have made.
[Warriors.]
1 hate these potent madmen, who keep all
Mankind awake, while they, by their great deeds.
Are drumming hard upon this hollow world,
Only to make a sound to last for ages.
THOMAS SHADWELL — SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE WIL
LIAM WYCHERLEY — MRS APHRA BEHN.
A more popular rival and enemy of Dryden was
Thomas Shadwell (1640-1692), who also wrote
seventeen plays, chiefly comedies, in which he affected
to follow Ben Jonson. Shadwell, though only known
now as the Mac-Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, possessed
no inconsiderable comic power. His pictures of
society are too coarse for quotation, but they are
often true and well-drawn. When the Revolution
threw Dryden and other excessive loyalists into the
shade, Shadwell was promoted to the office of poet-
laureate. Sir George Etherege (1636-1694) gave
a more sprightly air to the comic drama by his Man
nf Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter, a play which contains
the first runnings of that vein of lively humour and
witty dialogue which were afterwards displayed by
Congreve and Farquhar. Six George was a gay
libertine, and whilst taking leave of a festive party
392
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
one evening at his house in Ratisbon (where he re-
sided as British plenipotentiary), he fell down the
stairs and killed himself. The greatest of the comic
dramatists was Williaji Wycherlf.y, born in the
year 1640, in Shropshire, where his father possessed
a handsome property. Though bred to the law,
Wycherley did not practise his profession, but lived
gaily 'upon town.' Pope says he had 'a true noble-
man look,' and he was one of the favourites of the
abandoned Duchess of Cleveland. He wrote various
comedies. Love in a Wood (1672), the Gentleman
Dancing Master (1673), the Countrt/ Wife (1675), and
the Plain Dealer (1677). In 1704 he published a
volume of miscellaneous poems, of which it has been
said ' the style and versification are beneath criti-
cism ; the morals are those of Rochester.' In ad-
vanced age, Wycherley continued to exhibit the follies
and vices of youth. His name, however, stood high
as a dramatist, and Pope was proud to receive the
notice of the author of the 'Country Wife.' Their
published correspondence is well-known, and is in-
teresting from the marked superiority maintained
in their intercourse by the boy-poet of sixteen over
his mentor of sixty -four. The pupil grew too great
for his master, and the unnatural friendship was
dissolved. At the age of seventy-five, Wycherley mar-
ried a young girl, in order to defeat the expectations
of his nephew, and died ten days afterwards, in
December 1715. Thesubjectsof most ofWycherley's
plays were borrowed from the Spanish or French
stage. He wrought up his dialogues and scenes
with great care, and with considerable liveliness and
wit. but without sufficient attention to character or
probability. Destitute himself of moral feeling or
propriety of conduct, his characters are equally
objectionable, and his once fashionable plays may be
said to be ' quietly inurned' in their own corruption
and profligacy. A female Wycherley appeared in
Mrs Aphra Behn, celebrated in her day under the
name of Astra;a —
The stage how loosely does Astrcea tread !
Pope.
The comedies of Sirs Behn are grossly indelicate ;
and of the whole seventeen which she wrote (besides
various novels and poems), not one is now read or
remembered. The history of Mrs Behn is remarkable.
She was daughter of the governor of Surinam, where
she resided some time, .and became acquainted with
Prince Oroonoko, on whose story she founded a
novel, that supplied Southerne with materials for a
tragedy on the unhappy fate of the African prince.
She was employed as a political spy by Charles 11.,
and, while residing at Antwerp, she was enabled, by
the aid of her lovers and admirers, to give infor-
mation to the British government as to the intended
Dutch attack on Chatham. She died in 1689.
[^Scenefrom Sir George EtTierege's Comical Revenge."]
[A portion of thft comedy is written in rhj-me. Although
the versification of the French dramatic poets is mostly so,
its effect in our o\vti language is far from good, especially in
passages of rapid action. In the following scene, the hero and
his second arrived at the place of meeting for a duel ; but are
set upon by hired assassins. Their adversaries opportiuiely
appear, and set upon them.]
Enter Beaufort and Sir Frederick, and traverse the stage.
Enter Bruce and Levis at another door.
Bruce. Your friendship, noble youth, 's too prodigal ;
For one already lost you veuture all :
Your present happiness, your future joy ;
You for the hopeless your great hopes destroy.
Lovis. What can I venture for so brave a friend !
\ have no hopes but what on you depend.
Shouhl I your friendship and my honour rate
Below the value of a j>oor estate ?
A heap of dirt. Our family has been
To blame, my blood must here atone the sm.
Enter the five villains with drawn swords.
\st Villain, pulling off his vizard. — Bruce, look on nie,
and then ])repare to die.
Bruce. treacherous villain !
\st Villain. Fall on and sacrifice his blood to my
revenge.
Lovis. More hearts than one shall bleed if he must
die. [Theyjiyht.
Enter Beaufort and Sir Frederick.
Beau. Heavens ! what is this I see ? Sir Frederick,
draw.
Their blood's too good to grace such villains' swords.
Courage, brave men ; now we can match their force !
Lovis. We'll make you slaves repent this treachery.
Beau. So. [The villains run.
Bruce. They are not worth pursuit ; we'll let theui
go.
Brave men ! this action makes it well appear
'Tis honour, and not envy, brings you here.
Beau. We come to conquer, Bruce, and not to see
Such villains rob us of our victory.
Your lives our fatal swords claim as their due ;
We'd wrong'd ourselves had we not righted you.
Song.
[In Mrs Behn's ' Abdelazer, or the floor's Revenge."]
Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow'd,
For whom fresh pains he did create.
And strange tyrannic power he show'd.
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurl'd
But 'twas from mine he took desires
Enough t' undo the amorous world.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty ;
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee :
Thus thou, and I, the god have arm'd,
And set him up a deity ;
But my poor heart alone is harm'd,
While thine the victor is, and free.
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES OF THE PERIOD 1649-1689.
[JTallo my Fancy.]
[Anonymous.]
In melancholic fancy,
Out of myself.
In the vulcan dancy,
All the world surveying.
No where staying.
Just like a fairy elf;
Out o'er the tops of highest mountains skipping.
Out o'er the hills, the trees and valleys tripping,
Out o'er the ocean seas, without an oar or shipping.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go 1
Amidst the misty vapours,
Fain would I know
What doth cause the tapers ;
Why the clouds benight us
And affright us,
While we travel here below.
Fain would I know what nuikes the roaring thunder,
And what these lightnings be that rend the cloudj
asunder.
And what these comets are on which we gaze vai
wonder.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
399
FROM 1649
CYCLOP-ffiDlA OF
TO 168».
Fain would I know the reason
Why the little ant,
All the summer season,
Layeth up prorision,
On condition
To know no winter's want :
And how housewives, that are so good and painful.
Do unto their husbands prove so good and gainful ;
And why the lazy drones to them do prove disdainful.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
Ships, ships, I will descry you
Amidst the main ;
I will come and try you
What you are protecting,
And projecting.
What's your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealth of lading.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
WTien I look before me.
There I do behold
There's none that sees or knows me ;
All the world's a-gadding.
Running madding ;
None doth his station hold.
He that is below envieth him that riseth.
And hf that is above, him that's below despiseth,
So every man his plo'. and counter-plot deviseth.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go I
Look, look, what bustling
Here I do espy ;
'Each another jostling.
Every one turmoiling,
Th' other spoiling,
As I did pass them by.
One sitteth musing in a dumpish passion,
Another hangs his head, because he's out of fashion,
A third is fully bent on sport and recreation.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go 1
Amidst the foamy ocean,
Fain would I know
What doth cause the motion,
And returning
In its journeying.
And doth so seldom swerve !
And how these little fishes that swim beneath salt
water,
Do never blind their eye ; methinks it Is a matter
An inch above the reach of old Erra Pater !
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go 1
Fain would I be resolved
How things are done ;
And where the bull was calved
Of bloody Phalaris,
And where the tailor is
That works to the man i' the moon !
Fain would I know how Cupid aims so rightly ;
And how these little fairies do dance anJ leap bo
lightly ;
And where fair Cynthia makes her ambles nightly.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go 2
In conceit like PhnKton,
I'll mount Phoebus' chair.
Having ne'er a hat on.
All my hair a-buniing
In my journeying.
Hurrying through the air.
Fain would I hear his fiery horses neighing,
And see how they on foamy bits are playing ;
\li the stars and planets 1 will be surveying!
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
O, from what ground of nature
Doth the pelican.
That self-devouring creature,
Prove so froward
And untoward.
Her vitals for to strain 1
Andwhy the subtle fox, while in death's wounds is lying.
Doth not lament his pangs by howling and by crying ;
And why the milk-white swan doth sing when she's
a-dying.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
Fain would I conclude this,
At least make essay,
What similitude is ;
Why fowls of a feather
Flock and fly together,
And lambs know beasts of prey :
How Nature's alchymists, these small laborious crea
tures.
Acknowledge still a prince in ordering their matters.
And suffer none to live, who slothing lose their feature*
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou ^o ?
I'm rapt with admiration.
When I do ruminate.
Men of an occupation.
How each one calls him brother.
Yet each envieth other.
And yet still intimate !
Yea, I admire to see some natures farther sund'red,
Than antipodes to us. Is it not to be wonJ'red,
In myriads ye'll find, of one mind scarce a hundred !
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go i
What multitude of notions
Doth perturb my pate.
Considering the motions.
How the heavens are preserved,
And this world served.
In moisture, light, and heat !
If one spirit sits the outmost circle turning.
Or one turns another continuing in journeying.
If rapid circles' motion be that which they call burning!
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ]
Fain also would I prove this.
By considering
What that, which you call love, is :
Whether it be a folly
Or a melancholy.
Or some heroic thing !
Fain I'd have it proved, by one whom love hath
wounded.
And fully upon one his desire hath founded.
Whom nothing else could please though the world
were rounded.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
To know this world's centre.
Height, depth, breadth, and length,
Fain would 1 adventure
To search the hid attractions
Of magnetic actions,
And adamantic strength!
Fain would I know, if in some lofty mountain.
Where the moon sojourns, if there be trees or fountain ;
If there be beasts of prey, or yet be fields to hunt in.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?
Fain would I have it tried
By experiment,
By none can be denied ;
If in this bulk of nature.
There be voids less or greater,
Or all remains complete 1
Fain would I know if beasts have any reason ;
If falcons killing eagles do commit a treason ;
If fear of winter's want make swallows fly the seasoti.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go ?
391
mSCELLANEOTTS PIECES.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MISCELLA.NE »US PIECES.
Hallo my fancy, hallo,
Stay, stay at home with me,
I can thee no longer follow,
For thou hast betray'd me,
And bewray'd me ;
It is too much for thee.
Stay, stay at home with mej leave off thy lofty
soaring ;
Stay thou at home with me, and on thy books be
poring ;
For he that goes abroad, lays little up in storing :
Thou'rt welcome home, my fancy, welcome home to me.
Alas, poor Scholar/
Whither uilt thou got
or
Strange Alterations which at this time he,
The>-^s many did think they never should see,
[Fror\ a Collection of poems entitled 'Iter Boreale," by R.
WUd, D.D. 1668.]
In a melancholy study,
None but myself,
Methought my IMuse grew muddy ;
After seven years' reading,
And costly breeding,
I felt, but could find no pelf :
Into learned rags
I've rent my plush and satin.
And now am fit to beg
In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin ;
Instead of Aristotle,
Would I had got a patten :
Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?
Cambridge, now I must leave thee,
AJid follow Fate,
College hopes do deceive me ;
I oft expected
To have been elected,
But desert is reprobate/
Masters of colleges
Have no common graces.
And they that have fellowships
Have but common places ;
And those that scholars are.
They must have handsome faces :
Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt tliou go?
I have bow'd, I have bended,
And all in hope
One day to be befriended :
I have preach'd, I have printed
Whate'er I hinted,
To please our English pope :
I worship'd towards the east,
But the sun doth now forsake me ;
I find that I am falling ;
The northern winds do shake me :
"Would I had been upright.
For bowing now will break me :
Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?
At great preferment I aimed.
Witness my silk ;
But now my hopes are maimed :
I looked lately
To live most stately.
And have a dairy of bell-ropes' milk;
But now, alas!
Myself I must not flatter;
Bigamy of steeples
Is a laughing matter ;
Each man must have but one.
And curates will grow fatter :
^las, poor scholar! whither wilt thou got
Into some country village
Now I must go,
Where neither tithe nor tillage
The greedy patron
And parched matron
Swear to the church they owe ;
Yet if I can preach,
.\nd pray, too, on a sudden,
And confute the pope
At adventure, without studying,
Then ten pounds a-year,
Besides a Sunday pudding :
Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go!
All the arts I have skill in.
Divine and humane.
Yet all's not worth a shilling:
When the women hear me.
They do but jeer me,
And say I am profane.
Once, I remember,
I preached with a weaver;
I quoted Austin,
He quoted Dod and Clever;
I nothing got,
He got a cloak and beaver :
Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou got
Ships, ships, ships, I can discover.
Crossing the main ;
Shall I in, and go over.
Turn Jew or Atheist,
Turk or Papist,
To Geneva, or Amsterdam ?
Bishoprics are void
In Scotland ; shall I thither ?
Or follow Hindebank
And Finch, to see if either
Do want a priest to shrive them?
no, 'tis blust'ring weatlicr :
Alas, poor scholar! whithi r wilt thou go I
Ho, ho, ho, I have hit it ;
Peace, Goodman Fool ;
Thou hast a trade will fit it ;
Draw th}- indenture.
Be bound at adventure
An apprentice to a free-school ;
There thou may'st command.
By \\'illiam Lilly's charter :
There thou may'st whip, strip.
And hang, and draw, and quarter.
And commit to the red rod
Both Will, and Tom, and Arthur :
Ay, ay, 'tis thither, thither will I go.
The Fairy Queen.
[AnonjTnous, from the ' Mysteries of Love and IZloqiienoF.
1658.]
Come, follow, follow me.
You, fairy elves that be ;
Which circle on the green.
Come, follow Mab, your queen.
Hand in hand let's dance aroiuid.
For this place is fairy ground.
When mortals are at rest.
And snoring in their nest ;
Unheard and unespied.
Through keyholes we do glide;
Over tables, stools, and shelves.
We trip it with our fairy elves.
And if the house be foul
With platter, dish, or bowl.
Up stairs we nimbly creep.
And find the sluts asleep :
There we pinch their arms and thighs;
None escapes, nor none espies.
395
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Rut if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid,
And duly she is paid ;
For we use, before we go,
To drop a tester in her shoe.
Upon a mushroom's head
Our tablecloth we spread ;
A grain of rye or wheat
Is manchet which we eat ;
Pearly drops of dew we drink.
In acorn cups fiU'd to the brink.
The brains of nightingales.
With unctuous fat of snails,
Between two cockles stew'd.
Is meat that's easily chew'd ;
Tails of worms, and marrow of mice.
Do make a dish that's wondrous nice.
The grasshopper, gnat, and fly,
Serve us for our minstrelsy ;
Grace said, we dance a while.
And so the time beguile ;
And if the moon doth hide /lei head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.
On tops of dewy grass
So nimbly do we pass,
The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when we do walk ;
Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.
PROSE WRITERS.
HE productions of this
period, in the department
of prose, bear a high cha-
racter. Possessing much
of the nervous force and
originalitj' of the preced-
ing era, they make a nearer
approach to that elegance
in the choice and arrange-
jnient of words, which has
since been attained in
English composition. The
chief writers in philosophi-
cal and political disserta-
tion are Milton and Cow-
ley (already introduced as
l)oets), Sidney, Temple, Thomas Burnet, and Locke;
in history, the Earl of Clarendon, and Bishop Burnet ;
in divinity. Barrow, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Sherlock,
South, Calamy, Baxter, and Barclay ; in miscella-
neous literature. Fuller, Walton, L'Estrange, Dryden,
and Tom Brown. Bunyan, author of the ' Pilgrim's
Progress,' stands in a class by himself. Physical
science, or a knowledge of nature, was at the same
time cultivated with great success by the Honourable
Robert Boyle, Dr Barrow, Sir Isaac Newton, and
some others, whose writings, however, were chiefly in
Latin. An association of men devoted to the study
of nature, which included these persons, was formed
in 1662, under the appellation of the Royal Society
— a proof that tliis branch of knowledge was be-
girniing to attract a due share of attention.
Milton began, at the commencement of the civil
war, to write pamphlets against the established Epis-
copal church, and continued througli the whole of
the ensuing troublous period to devote his pen to
the service of his party, even to the defence of tliat
boldest of their measures, the execution of the king.
His stern and inflexible principles, both in regard to
religion and to civil government, are displayed in
these essays; some of which were composed in Latin,
in order that they might be read in foreign countries
as well as in his own. Milton wrote a history of
England, down to the time of the Norman Conquest,
which does not possess much merit, and in which he
has inserted the fables of tlie old chroniclers, as use-
ful to poets and orators, and possibly ' containing in
them many footsteps and relics of something true ;*
an eloquent and vigorous discourse, entitled Areopa-
gitica — a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,
to the Parliament of England ; A Tractate of Education,
addressed to his friend Master Samuel Hartlib, and
containing some highly rational and advanced views
on that subject; and^ Treatise on Christian Doctrine,
which lay undiscovered in manuscript till 1823, two
years after which an English translation was pub-
lished by Mr Sumner. The subject of divorce was
also discussed by Milton at great length, in three
publications, namely. The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce; The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning
Divorce ; and Tetrachordon, or Expositions upon the
four chief places in Scripture which treat of Marriage.
Of these, the first two were printed in 1644, and the
last in 1645. The occasion which drew them forth
Avas the desertion of his first wife, as already related.
Another celebrated work of Milton is a reply which
he published to the 'Ikon Basilike,' under the title
of Iconoclastes,* a production to which we have
already alluded in speaking of Dr Gauden. Sub-
sequently, he engaged in a Latin controversy with
Salmasius, a professor of Leyden, who had published
a defence of Charles I. ; and the war on both sides
was carried on with a degree of virulent abuse
and personality which, though common in the age
of the disputants, is calculated to strike a modern
reader with astonishment. Salmasius triumphantly
ascribes the loss of ^Milton's sight to the fatigues of
the controversy ; while Milton, on the other hand, is
said to have boasted that his severities had tended
to shorten the life of Salmasius.
Milton's prose style is lofty, clear, vigorous, ex-
pressive, and frequently adorned with profuse and
glowing imagery. Like many other productions of
the age, it is, however, deficient in simplicity and
smoothness — qualities whose occasional absence is
in some degree attributable to his fondness for the
Latin idiom in the construction of his sentences.
' It is to be regretted,' says a modern critic, ' that
the prose Avritings of Milton should, in our time, be
so little read. As compositions, they deserve the
attention of every man who wishes to become ac-
quainted with the full power of the English lan-
guage. They abound with passages, compared with
which the finest declamations of Burke sink into
insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of
gold. The style is stiff" with gorgeous embroidery.
Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost
has he ever risen higher than in those parts of his
controversial works in which his feelings, excited by
conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric
rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language,
"a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sym-
phonies." 't
The following extracts are taken respectively from
Milton's work called ' Tlie Reason of Church Govern-
ment urged against Prelacy' (1642), his 'Tractate of
Education' (1644), and the ' Areopagitica' (1644),
The first of them is peculiarly interesting, as an
* rkon Bculliki, signifies in Greek, The Royal Imaes or
Portraiture ; Iconoclastes, The Image-hreaker.
t Edinbui^h Review, vol. lUi. p. 345.
S9R
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
gnnouncement of the author's intention to publisli
his immortal poem.
[Milton^s Literary Mtisings.}
After I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless
diligence and care of my father, whom ''rod recom-
pense, been exercised to the tongues, and sonis sciences,
as my age would sutfer, by sundry masters and teachers,
both at home and at the schools, it was found that
whether aught was imposed me by them that had
the overlooking, or betaken to of my own choice in
English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but
chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it
had, was likely to live. But much latelier, in the
private academies of Italy, whither I was favoured to
resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had in
memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout (for
the manner is, that every one must give some proof of
his wit and reading there), met with acceptance above
■what was looked for ; and other things which I had
shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch
up among them, were received with written encomiums,
which the Italian is not fonvard to bestow on men of
this side the Alps, I began thus far to assent both to
them and divers of my friends here at home ; and not
less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily
upon me, that by labour and intent study (which I
take to be my portion in this life), joined to the
strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written, to after times, as they should
not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once pos-
sessed me, and these other, that if I were certain to
write as men buy leases, for three lives and down-
ward, there ought no regard be sooner had than to
God's glory, by the honour and instruction of my
country. For which cause, and not only for that I
knew it would be hard to an-ive at the second rank
among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution
which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of
Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite
to the adorning of my native tongue ; not to make
verbal curiosities the end, that were a toilsome vanity ;
but to be an interpreter, and relater of the best and
safest things among mine o^vn citizens throughout this
island, in the mother dialect. That what the greatest
and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy,
and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I in
my proportion, with this over and above, of being a
Christian, might do for mine ; not caring to be once
named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that,
but content with these British islands as my world,
whose fortune hath hitlierto been, that if the Athenians,
as some say, made their small deeds great and re-
novraed by their eloquent writers, England hath had
her noble achievements made small by the unskilful
handling of monks and mechanics.
Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too
profuse, to give any certain account of what the mind
at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath
liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope
and hardest attempting. Whether that epic form,
whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two
of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the book of Job
a brief model ; or whether the rules of Aristotle herein
are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which
in them that know art, and use judgment, is no trans-
gression, but an enriching of art. And lastly, what
king or knight before the conquest might be chosen,
in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And
as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice, whether
he would command him to write of Godfrey's expedi-
tion against the infidels, or Bellsarius against the
Goths, or Charlemagne against the Lombards ; if to
the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art
•ught niay be trusted, and that there be nothing ad-
verse in our climate, or the fiite of this aire, it haply
would be no rashness, from an equal diligence and
inclination, to present the like offer in our own an-
cient stories. Or whether those dramatic constitutions,
wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be found
more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation. The
Scripture also affords us a fine pastoral drama in the
Song of Solomon, consisting of two persons, and a
double chorus, as Origen rightly judges ; and the
Apocalypse of St John is the majestic image of a high
and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermingling
her solemn scenes and acts with a seven-fold chorus of
hallelujahs and harping symphonies. And this my
opinion, the grave authority of Parens, commenting
that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if occasion
shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and hymns,
wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in most things
worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in their
matter most, and end faulty. But those frequent
songs throughout the law and prophets, beyond all
these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the
very critical art of composition, may be easily made
appear, over all the kinds of lyric poesy, to be incom-
parable. These abilities, wheresoever they be found,
are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, but yet
to some (though most abuse) in everj' nation : and are
of power, besides the office of a pulpit, to inbreed and
cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public
civility ; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and
set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glo-
rious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of
God's almightiness, and what he suffers to be wrought
with high providence in his church ; to sing victorious
agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs
of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through
faith against the enemies of Christ ; to deplore the
general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice
and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in reli-
gion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave,
whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the
changes of that which is called fortune from without,
or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts
from within ; all these things, with a solid and treat-
able smoothness, to paint out and describe. Teaching
over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all
the instances of example, with such delight to those,
especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so
much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her
elegantly dressed ; that whereas the paths of honesty
and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though
they be indeed easy and pleasant, they would then
appear to all men both easy and pleasant, though
they were rugged and difficult indeed. And what a
benefit would this be to our j'outh and gentry, maybe
soon guessed by what we know of the corruption and
bane which they suck in daily from the writings and
interludes of libidinous and itrn >rant poetasters, who
having scarce ever heard of that which is the main
consistence of a true poem, the choice of such persons
as they ought to introduce, and what is moral and
decent to each one, do for the most part lay up vicious
principles in sweet pills, to be swallowed down, and
make the taste of virtuous documents harsh and sour.
But because the spirit of man cannot demean itself
lively in this body without some repeating intermis-
sion of labour and serious things, it were happy for
the commonwealth if our magistrates, as in those
famous governments of old, would take into their care
not only the deciding of our contentious law cases and
brawls, but the managing of our public sports and
festival pastimes, that they might be, not sucli as were
authorised awhile since, the provocations of drunk-
enness and lust, but such as may inure and harden
our bodies, by martial exercises, to all warlike skill
and performances ; and may civilise, adoni, and make
discreet our minds, by the learned and affable me«'t-
397
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OP
TO 1689.
ing of frequent academies, and the procurement of
wise and artful recitations, sweetened >nth eloquent
and graceful enticements to the love and practice of
justice, temperance, and fortitude ; instructing and
betteriiiir the nation at all opportunities, that the call
of wisdom and virtue may be heard everywhere, as
Solomon saith : ' She crieth without, she uttereth her
voice in the streets, in the top of high places, in the
chief concourse, and in the openings of the gates.'
Whether this may be not only in pulpits, but after
another persuasive method, at set and solemn pane-
guries, in theatres, porches, or what other place or way
may win most upon the people, to receive at once both
recreation and instruction, let them in authority con-
sult. The thin^ which I had to say, and those inten-
tions which have lived within me ever since I could
conceive myself anything worth to my country, I re-
turn to crave excuse, that urgent reason hath plucked
from me, by an abortive and fore-dated discovery. And
the accomplishment of them lies not but in a power
above man's to promise ; but that none hath by more
studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied
spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of m}'-
self, as far as life and free leisure will extend ; and
that the land had once enfranchised herself from this
impertinent yoke of prelacy, under whose inquisito-
rious and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit
can flourish. Neither do I think it shame to covenant
with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet
I may go on trust with him toward the payment of
what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be
raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine ;
like that which flows at waste from the pen of some
vulgar amorist, or the trencher-fury of a rhyming
parasite ; nor to be obtained by the invocation of
dame memory and her syren daughters ; but by de-
vout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with
all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his sera-
phim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and
purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be
added industrious and select reading, steady observa-
tion, insight into all seemly arts and affairs ; till
which in some measure be compassed, at mine own
peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation
from as many as are not loath to hazard so much cre-
dulity upon the best pledges that I can give them.
Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus
much beforehand, but that I trust hereby to make it
manifest with what small willingness I endure to in-
terrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and
leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheer-
ful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled
sea of noises and hoarse disputes ; from beholding the
bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air
of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection
of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and
there be fain to club quotations with men whose learn-
ing and belief lies in marginal stuffings ; who when
they have, like good sumpters, laid you down their
horse-load of citations and fathers at your door, with a
rhapsody of who and who were bishops here or there,
you may take off their pack-saddles, their day's work
is done, and episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindi-
cated. Let any gentle apprehension that can distin-
guish learned pains from unlearned drudgery, imagine
what pleasure or profoundness can be in this, or what
honour to deal against such adversaries.
[^Education,]
And seeing every nation afl^ords not experience and
tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore
we are chiefly taught the languages of those people
who have at any time been most industrious after
wisdom ; so that language is but the instrument con-
veying to us things useful to be known. And though
a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues
that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not
studied the solid things in them, as well as the words
and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed
a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman compe-
tently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear
the many mistakes which have made learning gene-
rail}' so unpleasing and so unsuccessful : first, we do
amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scrap-
ing together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as
might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in
one year.
And that which casts our proficiency therein so
much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle
vacancies given both to schools and universities ;
partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty
wits of children to compose themes, verses, and ora-
tions, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the
final work of a head filled by long reading and observ-
ing, with elegant maxims and copious invention.
These are not matters to be wrung from poor strip-
lings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of
untimely fruit ; besides the ill habit which they get
of wretched barbarising against the Latin and Greek
idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be
read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued
and judicious conversing among pure authors digested,
which they scarce taste ; whereas, if after some pre-
paratory grounds of speech by their certain forms got
into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in
some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them,
they might then forthwith proceed to learn the sub-
stance of good things and arts in due order, which
would bring the whole language quickly into their
power. This I take to be the most rational and most
profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we
may best hope to give account to God of our youth
spent herein.
And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem
it to be an old error of universities, not yet well re-
covered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous
ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy
(and those be such as are most obvious to the sense),
they present their young unmatriculated novices at
first coming with the most intellective abstractions of
logic and metaphysics, so that they having but newly
left those grammatic flats and shallows where they
stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lament-
able construction, and now on the sudden transported
under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled
with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet
deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into
hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded
all this while with ragged notions and babblements,
while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge ;
till poverty or youthful years call them importunately
their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway
of friends, cither to an ambitious and mercenary, or
ignorantly zealous divinity ; some allured to the
trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the
prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and
equity, which was never taught them, but on the pro-
mising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat
contentions, and flowing fees ; others betake them to
state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and
true generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts,
and tyrannous aphorisms, appear to them the highest
points of wisdom ; instilling their barren hearts with
a conscientious slavery ; if, as I rather think, it be
not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and
airy spirit, retire themselves (knowing no better) to
the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their
days in feasts and jollity ; which, indeed, is the wisest
and the safest course of all these, unless they were
with more integrity undertaken. And these are the
erroi-8, and these are the fruits of mispending our
398
PROSE WRITERi
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
prime youth at schools and universities as we do,
either in learning mere words, or such things chie&y
as were better unlearned.
I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstra-
tion of what we should not do, but straight conduct
you to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right
path of a yirti^ous and noble education ; laborious,
indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so
green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious
sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was
not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have
more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our
stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a
happy nurture, than we have now to halo and drag
our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast
of sowthistles and brambles which is commonly set
before them, as all the food and entertainment of
their tenderest and most docile age.
I call, therefore, a complete and generous educa-
tion, that which fits a man to perfo»-m justly, skil-
fully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private
and publi'-, of peace and war.
[^Liberty of the Press.'\
I deny not but that it is of the greatest concern-
ment in the church and commonwealth, to have a
"igilant eye how books demean themselves as well as
men ; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do
sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books
are not absclutely dead things, but do contain a
potency of lir> in them, to be as active as that soul
whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in
a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living
intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively,
and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dra-
gons' teeth ; and being so^vn up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other
hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a
man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a
reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys
a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of
God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a bur-
den to the earth ; but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured
up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true no age
can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great
loss ; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the
loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole
nations fare the worse. We should be wary, there-
fore, what persecution we raise against the living
labours of public men, how spill that seasoned life of
man, preserved and stored up in books ; since we see
a kind of homicide may be thus committed, some-
times a kind of martyrdom ; and if it extend to the
whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the
execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental
life, but strikes at that ethereal and soft essence, the
breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather
than a life. * *
Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little
or nothing from unwholesome ; and best books to a
naughty mind are not unapplicable to occasions of
evil. I3ad meats will scarce breed good nourishment
in the healthiest concoction ; but herein the differ-
ence is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judi-
cious reader serve in many respects to discover, to
confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. * * Good
iind evil, we know, in the field of this world grow up
together almost inseparably ; and the knowledge of
good is so involved and interwoven with the know-
ledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances
hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds
which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant
labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more
intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple
tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two
twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.
And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into
of knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing
good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is,
what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence
to forbear, without the knowledge of evil ? He that
can apprehend and consider vice, with all her baits
and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet dis-
tinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he
is the true war-faring Christian. I cannot praise a
fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and un-
breathed, that never sallies out and sees her adver-
sary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we
bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us
is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That vir-
tue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the con-
templation of evil, and knows not the utmost that
vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a
blank virtue, not a pure ; her whiteness is but an ex-
cremental whiteness : which was the reason why our
sage and serious poet, Spenser (whom I dare be known
to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas),
describing true temperance under the person of Guion,
brings him in with his Palmer through the cave of
Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he
might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, there-
fore, the knowledge and surt'ey of vice is in this world
so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and
the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth,
how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout
into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading
all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of
reason ? * *
I lastly proceed, from the no good it can do, to the
manifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest dis-
couragement and affront that can be offered to learn-
ing and to learned men. It was a complaint and
lamentation of prelates, upon every least breath of a
motion to remove pluralities, and distribute more
equally church revenues, that then all learning would
be for ever dashed and discouraged. But as for that
opinion, I never found cause to think that the tenth
part of learning stood or fell with the clergy ; nor
could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy
speech of any churchman who had a competency left
him. If, therefore, ye be loath to dishearten utterly
and discontent, not the mercenary crew and false pre-
tenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort
of such as evidently were born to study and love
learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but
the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that last-
ing fame and perpetuity of praise which God and
good men have consented shall be the reward of those
whose published labours advance the good of man
kind ; then know, that so far to distrust the judg-
ment and honesty of one who hath but a common
repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not to
count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and
examiner, lest he should drop a schism, or something
of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity,
to a free and knowing spirit, that can be put upon
him. What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to
be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula
to come under the fescue of an imprimatur ? — if serious
and elaborate ^vritings, as if they were no more than
the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must
not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporising
and extemporising licenser 1 He who is not trusted with
his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil,
and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no
great argument to think himself reputed in the com-
monwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool
or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, be
399
FBOM 1649
CYCLOP^^DIA OF
TO 168<J
summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist
him ; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely
consults and confers with his judicious friends ; after
all which is done, he takes himself to be informed in
what he wTites, as well as any that writ before him ;
if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and
ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his
abilities can bring him to that state of maturity, as
not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he
carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight
watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty
riew of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his
younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, per-
haps one who never knew the labour of book-writing ;
and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in
print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's
hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety
that he is no idiot or seducer ; it cannot be but a dis-
honour and derogation to the .author, to the book, to
the privilege and dignity of learning. * * And
how can a man teach with authority, which is the life
of teaching ; how can he be a doctor in his book, as
he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas
all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition,
under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot
or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound
humour which he calls his judgment ? When every
acute reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic license,
will be ready with these like words to ding the book
^ quoit's distance from him, I hate a pupil teacher, I
endure not an instructor that comes to me under the
wardship of an overseeing fist. * *
And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Com-
mons, that these arguments of learned men's discour-
agement at this your order are mere flourishes, and
not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard
in other countries, where this kind of inquisition
tyrannises ; when I have sat among their learned men
(for that honour I had), and been counted happy to
be bom in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they
supposed England was, while themselves did nothing
but bemoan the servile condition into which learning
amongst them was brought ; that this was it which had
damped the glory of Italian wits ; that nothing had
been there written now these many years but flattery
and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the
famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the inquisition,
for thinking in astronomy othervrise than the Francis-
can and Dominican licensers thought. And though I
knew that England then was groaning loudest under
the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge
of future happiness that other nations were so per-
suaded of her liberty. Yet it was beyond my hope
that those worthies were then breathing in her air,
who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as
shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time
that this world hath to finish.
Lords and Commons of England ! consider what
nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the
governors ; a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick,
ingenious, and jjiercing spirit ; acute to invent, subtile
and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any
point that human capacity can soar to. * *
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep,
and shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see her
as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam ; purg-
ing and unsealing her long-abused sight at the foun-
tain itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise
of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that
love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she
means. * *
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do
'.jyuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt i
her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple ; who
ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open
encounter? Tier confuting is the best and surest sup-
pressing. He who hears what praying there is for
light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us,
would think of other matters to be constituted be-
yond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked
already to our hands. Yet when tlie new light
which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who
envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their case-
ments. What a collusion is this, whenas we are ex-
horted by the wise man to use diligence, ' to seek for
wisdom as for hidden treasures,' early and late, that
another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by
statute ! When a man hath been labouring the
hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath
furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn
forth his reasons, as it were a battle ranged, scattered
and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his
adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of
wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the
matter by dint of argument ; for his opponents then
to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge
of licensing where the challenger should pass, though
it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness
and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows
not that Truth is strong, next to the Almiglity ?
She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings,
to make her victorious ; those are the shifts and the
defences that error uses against her power ; give her
but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.
This appeal of Milton was unsuccessful, and it
was not till 1694 that England was set free from the
censors of the press.
[The Reformation.]
When I recall to mind, at last, after so many dark
ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error
had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament
of the church ; how the bright and blissful Reforma-
tion, by Divine power, strook through the black and
settled night of ignorance and Anti-Christian tyraimy,
methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must noedj
rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and
the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his
soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the
sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners, where
profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the
schools opened, divine and human learning raked out
of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and
cities trooping apace to the new-erected banner of
salvation, the martyrs, with the unresistible might ot
weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorn-
ing the fiery rage of the old red dragon. — Of Rffovnia
tion in England,
ITnith.']
Truth, indeed, came once into the world with hei
Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, moat glorious
to look on ; but when he ascended, and his apostles
after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a
wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the
Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they
dealt with the god Osiris, took the virgin Truth,
hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces and
scattered them to the four winds. From that time
ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst ap-
pear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for
the mangled body of Osiris, went up and domi gather-
ing up limb by limb, still as they could find tliem.
We have not yet found them all. Lords and Commons !
nor ever shall do, till her master's second coming ; he
shall bring together every joint and member, and
mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness
and perfection. — Areopayltka.
400
rilOSli WKITKM.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ABRAHAM COWLET.
[Exptralirm of the Roman Power in Britain.']
Thus expired this great eiujiiru of the Romans ; first
in Britain, soon after in Italy itself; having borne
chief sway in this island (though never thoroughly
subdued, or all at once in subjection), if we reckon
from the coming in of Julius to the taking of Rome
by Alaric, in v/hich j'ear Ilonorius wrote those letters
of discharge into Britain, the space of four hundred
and sixty-two year?. And with the empire fell also
what before in this western world was chiefly Roman —
learning, valour, eloquence, history, civility, and even
language Itself — all these together, as it were with
equal pace, diminishing and decaying. Henceforth
we are to steer by another sort of authors, near enough
to the times they write, as in their own country, if
that would serve, in time not much belated, some of
equal age, in expression barbarous ; and to say how
judicious, I suspend awhile. This we must expect ; in
civil matters to fnd them dubious relators, and still
to the best advantage of what they term Mother
Church, meaning indeed themselves ; in most other
matters of religion blind, astonished, and strook with
superstition as with a planet ; in one word, monks.
Yet these guides, where can be had no better, must
be followed ; in gri ?s it may be true enough ; in cir-
cumstance each man, as Jiis judgment gives him, may
reserve his faith or bestow it.* — Ilist. of Britain.
ABRAHAM COWLEY.
CoM'LKY holds a distinguished position among
tlie prose Avriters of this age. Indeed he has been
placed at the head of those who cultivated that
clear, easy, and natural style which was siibse-
quentlj- emploj'ed and improved by Dryden, Tillot-
son. Sir William Temple, and Addison. Dr Johnson
has, with reason, pointed out as remarkable the
contrast between the simplicity of Cowley's prose,
and the stiff formality and affectation of his poetry.
' No author,' says he, ' ever kept his verse and his
prose at a greater distance from each other. His
thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and
placid equability, which has never yet obtained its
due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-
laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and
* ' Milton's History,' saysAVarburton, in a letter to Dr Birch,
• is -wrote with great simplicity, contrary to his custom in his
prose works ; and is the better for it. But he sometimes rises
to a surprising grandeur in the sentiments and expression, as
at the conclusion of the second book : " Henceforth we are to
steer," Itc. I never saw anything equal to this, but the conclu-
sion of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.' This praise
of the acute and critical prelate appears to us to be rather over-
strained ; but the reader has here the passage before him, and
may decide for liimself.- The conclusion of Sir Walter Raleigh's
history is as follows : —
' By this which we have already set down, is seen the begin-
ning and end of the three first monarchies of the world ;
whei'eof the founders and erectors thought that they could
never have ended. That of Rome, which made the fourth, was
also at this time almost at the highest. We have left it flou-
rishing in the middle of the field, having rooted up or cut down
all that kept it from tlie eyes and admiration of the world.
But after some continuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it
had ; the storms of Ambition shall beat her great boughs and
branches one against another ; her leaves sliall fall off, her
limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field,
and cut her down.
eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could ad-
vise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast
done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast
cast out of the world and despised : thou hast drawn together
all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and am-
bition of man, and covered all over with these two narrow
words, //if Jacet !'
familiar without grossness.'* The prose works of
Cowley extend but to sixty folio pages, and consist
chiefly of his Essays, wliic-h treat of the following
subjects: — Liberty, Solitude, Obscurity, Agriculture,
The Garden, Greatness, Avarice, The Dangers of
an Honest Man in much Company, The Shortness
of Life and Uncertainty of Riches, The Danger of
Procrastination, Of jMyself In these essays, the
author's craving for peace and retirement is a fre-
quently recurring theme.
Of Myself
It is a hard and nice subject for a man to ivrite o,'
himself; it grates his own heart to say anything of
disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear anythin<»
of praise from him. There is no danger from me of
offending him in this kind ; neither my mind, nor
my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for
that vanity. It is sufficient, 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 discourses, and shall be
likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise un
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 world, or
glories, or business of it were, the natural affections
of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them,
as some plants are said to turn away from others, by
an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and in-
scrutable to man's understan ling. Even when I was
a very young boy at school, instead of running about
on holidays, and playing with my fellow^s, 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 constraint, that my masters
could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or en-
couragements, 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 mmd as I am now
(which, I confess, I wonder at myself), may appear at
the latter end of an ode which I made when 1 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 dowii (if a very little
were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed.
This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
Th' 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 choiie of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the nio^ht.
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 Sabine field.
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 unbouglit sports, that happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,
Rut boldly say each night.
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them ; I liave liv'd to-day.
♦ Johnson's ' Life of Cowley.'
40]
27
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 168b
You may see by it I was even then acquainted
with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of
Horace) ; and jjcrhaps it was the immature and im-
moderate love of them which stamped first, or rather
cn'Taved, the cliaractcrs in me. They were like let-
ters cut in the bark of a young tree, which, with the
tree, still grow proportionably Biit how this love
came to be produced in me so early, is a hard ques-
tion : I believe I can tell 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 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 happened to fall upon,
and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the
knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses,
which I found everywhere there (though my under-
standing had little to do with all this) ; and by de-
grees, with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of
the numbers ; so that I think I had read him f>ll over
before I was twelve years old. With these affections
of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went
to the university ; but was soon torn from thence by
that public violent storm, which would suffer no-
thing 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
i.he court of one of the best princesses in the world.
Now, though I was here engaged in ways most con-
trary 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 the
French courts) ; yet all this was so far from altering
my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of
reason to that which was before but natural inclina-
tion. 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 was
real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I
saw it was adulterate. I met with several great per-
sons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive
that any part of their greatness was to be liked or
desired, no more than I would be glad or content to
be in a storm, though 1 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
anywhere, though 1 was in business of great and
honourable trust, though I eat at the best table,
and enjoyed the best conveniences for present sub-
Bistence 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 schoolboy'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 ad-
vantdge 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 ar-
rived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before
written a shrewd prophesy against myself, and I
think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in
the elegance of it :
Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,
Nor at the Exchange shalt be, nor at the wangling bar;
Contoit thyself with the small barren praise
Whiti thy neglected verse does raise, &c
However, by the failing of the forces which I had ex-
pected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved
on ; I cast myself into it a corptis pcnlitum, without
making cajiitulations, or taking counsel of fortune.
Rut Uod laughs at man, who says to his soul. Take
thy ease : 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 luy course ; Non e<jo
perjiduiii did sacramcntum.^ 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, didcisifima m undi
Nomina, vos muscv, libertas, otia, librl,
Hortique, sylixeque, anliiia renianente rdinquam.
Nor by me e'er shall vou.
You of all names tlie sweetest and the best.
You muses, books, and liberty, and rest ;
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,
As Ion<r as life itself forsakes not me.
[Poetry and Poets.']
It is, I confess, but seldom seen that the poet dies
before the man ; for when we once fall in love with
that bewitching art, we do not use to court it as a
mistress, but marry it as a wife, and take it for better
or worse as an inseparable companion of our whole
life. But as the marriages of infants do but rarely
prosper, so no man ought to wonder at the diminution
or decay of my affection to poesy, to which I had con-
tracted myself so much under age, and so much to my
own prejudice, in regard of those more profitable
matches which I might have made among the richer
sciences. As for the portion which this brings of
fame, it is an estate (if it be any, for men are not
oftener deceived in their hopes of widows than in their
opinion oic.cegi mmiumentum cere peivnimis) that hardly
ever comes in whilst we are living to enjoy it, but is
a fantastical kind of reversion to our own selves.
Neither ought any man to envy poets this posthumous
and imagiiuiry happiness, since they find commonly
so little in present, that it may be truly applied to
them which St Paul speaks of the first Christians, ' if
their reward be in this life, they are of all men the
most miserable.'
And if in quiet and flourishing times they meet
with so small encouragement, what are they to expect
in rough and troubled ones ? If wit be such a plant
that it scarce receives heat enough to preserve it alive
even in the summer of our cold climate, how can it
choose but wither in a long and sharp winter ? A war-
like, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but
worst to wi-ite in.
There is nothing that requires so much serenity
and cheerfulness of spirit ; it must not be either over-
whelmed with the cares of life, or overcast with the
clouds of melancholy and sorrow, or shaken and dis-
turbed with the storms of injurious fortune : it must,
like the halcyon, have fair weather to breed in. The
soul must be filled with bright and delightful ideas,
when it undertakes to communicate delight to others,
which is the main end of poesy. One may see through
the style of Ovid de Trist. the humbled and dejected
condition of spirit with which he wrote it ; there
scarce remains any footsteps of that genius Quern nee
Jovis ira, nee ignes, kc. The cold of the country had
stricken through all his faculties, and benumbed the
very feet of his verses. — frcfacc to his Miscellanies.
I have not falsely sworn.
403
I ROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ABRAHAM COWLET.
Of Obicurity.
What a brave privilege is it to be free from all
contentious, from all envying or being envied, from
receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies ! It
is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two
good and agreeable friends to travel up and down to-
gether, in places where they are by nobody known, nor
know anybody. It was the case of j'Eneas and his
Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields
and streets of Carthage. Venus herself
A veil of thicken 'd air around them cast,
That none might know, or see them, as they pass'd.
The common storj' of Demosthenes' confession, that he
had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-
woman say, as he passed, ' This is that Demosthenes,'
is wonderfully 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. Demo-
critus 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 gard<ns, 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 kno^vn or more generally celebrated. If
we engage into a large acquaintance and various fami-
liarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most
of our time ; we expose our life to a quotidian ague
of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man
tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much
by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend 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
truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a
much more honourable beast than his master, and
more deserving the consilship 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 1 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 conver-
sation 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 anybody ; 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 actors that fill the stage
with show and noise ; nay, even than Augustus him-
self, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had
not played his farce very well.
Of Procrastination.
I am glad that you approve and applaud my design
of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business
of the world, and consecrating 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 hut is a;rtujo mcra,^ a rust which spoils
the good metal it grows upon. But you say) you
would advise me not to precipitate that resolution,
but to sta}' a while longer with patience and com-
plaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might
afibrd me (according to the saying of that person,
whom you and 1 love very much, and would believe as
soon as another man) cum difjmtatc otium.^ This were
excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun
stay too. But there is no foo">ng with life, when it is
once turned beyond forty . tht, seeking for a fortune
then is but a desperate after-game ; it is a hundred
to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all ; espe-
cially 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
m.en rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he
desired might be made a rich man too ; ' but I intreat
3'ou that you would not do it just the same way as you
have done to many less deserving persons ; but in the
most gentlemanly manner of obliging him which is,
not to add anything to his estate, but to take some-
thing from his desires.'
The sum of this is, that for the uncertain hopes of
some conveniences, we ought not to defer tlio execu-
tion 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 re-
covered ; nay, farther yet, though we were sure co ob-
tain all that we had a mind to, though we wert. sure
of getting never so nmch 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 chandellc'- — [ihe
play is not worth the expense of the candle] ; after
having beeji long tossed 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 jiande sinus."
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 periwig: he would escape like a
person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble
martyr of ceremony and gentility.
[ Vkion of Oliver Cromwell.']
I was interrupted by a strange and terrible appari-
tion ; for there appeared to me (arising out of tho
earth as I conceived) the figure of a man, taller than a
giant, or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the
evening. His body was naked, but that nakedness
adorned, or rather deformed, all over with several
1 Hor. 1 Sat. iv. 100.
* Dignified leisure.
403
KROM 1G49
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168&
figures, after the niaiiiicr of the aneieiit Rritoiis,
piiiiited ujioii it ; and 1 ]>eiceive(l that most of tliein
were the representation of the late battles in our civil
wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) 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 njetal (as 1 guessed), and that
looked as red-hot, too, upon his head. He held in his
right hand a sword that was yet bloody, and never-
theless, the motto of it was Pax qv.teritur hdlo ;' and in
his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was
written, in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protesta-
tions, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remon-
strances, &c.
Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object
might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so
it pleased (iod (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 V And he
said, '1 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 I am that Angel to whom the Almighty
has committed the government of those three king-
doms, which thou seest from this place.' And I an-
swered and said, ' If it be so, sir, it seems to me that
for almost 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 ab-
solutely lost our way ; but, instead of v'our highness,
we have had since such a protector, as was his prede-
cessor Richard III. to the king, his nejjhew ; for he
presently slew the comnior.wealth, which he pre-
tended 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 protector 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 protector, as
man is to his flocks which he shears, 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 .ill his foreign correspondences, had ever held
any with angels. However, 1 was not hardened enough
yet to venture a quarrel with him then ; and therefore
(as if 1 had spoken to the protector himself in White-
hall) I desired him ' that his highness would please
to pardon me, if I h.ad unwittingly spoken anything
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 concernment
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 naturalised English
angel, by having had so long the management of the
affairs of that country. And pray, countryman,' 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
' We war for peace.
' Meaning the commonwealth.
body, which have sometimes, or of mind, wLich have
ofttn, raised men to the highest dignities, should have
the courage to atteni]it, and the liappincss to succeed
in, so improbable a design, as the destru(^tion of on<>
of the most ancient and most solidly-founded mo-
narchies upon the earth ? that he should have the
power or Ijoldness to put his jirince 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 ujjon
them, too, as he pleased, and spuni them out of doors
when he grew weary of them ; to raise up a new and
unheard-of mer.ster out of their ashes ; to stifle that
in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things
that ever were called so\ -reign in England ; to oppress
all his enemies by arms, a.nd 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 jien, 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 s))ending of them ; and
lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his
glory),, to bequeath all this with oi>e word to his j)os-
terity ; 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 praises, so might
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.'*
The civil war naturally directed the minds of many
philosophical men to the subject of civil government,
in which it seemed desirable that some fixed funda-
mental principles might be arrived at as a means of
preventing future contests of the same kind. Neither
at that time nor since, has it been found ])Ossible to
lay down a theory of government to which all man-
kind would subscribe ; but the period under our
notice nevertheless produced some political works
which considerably narrowed the debateable ground.
The ' Leviathan' of Ilobbes, which we have found it
convenient to mention in a former page, was the
most distinguished work on the monarchical side of
the question ; while Harrington's ' (Oceana,' published
during the protectorate of Cromwell, and some of the
treatises of Milton, are the best works in favour of
the republican doctrines.
JAMES HARRINGTON.
James Harrington was a native of Northamp-
tonshire, where he was born in 1611. lie studied at
Oxford, and for some time was a pupil of the cele-
brated Chillingworth. Afterwards, he went abroad
for several years, which were mostly spent at the j
* Mr n;:me has inserted this cliaractcr of CromweH, but
altered, as lie says, in some parliadars , from the original, in his
history of Great Britain. I know not why he should tliink any
alterations necessary. They are chiefly in the style which
surely wanted no improvement; or, if it did, posterity would
be more pleased to have this curious fragment transniitteil to
them in tlie author's own words, than in the choiccbt pliraao
of the historian. — Jlurd.
404
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITEIIATUKE.
ALGERNON SIDKEY.
courts of Holland and Denmark. While resident at
the Hague, and subsciiuently at Venice, he imbibed
many of those republican views whicli afterwards
distinguislied his writings. Visiting Rome, he at-
tracted some attention by refusing on a public occa-
sion to kiss tlie pope's toe ; conduct whicli he after-
wards adroitly defended to the king of England, by
saying, tliat, 'having had the honour of kissing his
majesty's hand, he thought it beneatli him to kiss
the toe of any other monarch.' During tlie civil
war, he was appointed by tlie parliamentary com-
missioners to be one of the personal attendants of
KingCliarles, who, in 1647, nominated him oneof the
grooms of his bedchamber. Except upon politics,
the king was fond of Harrington's conversation ; and
the impression made on the latter by the royal
condescension and familiarity was such, as to render
him very desirous that a reconciliation between his
majesty and the parliament might be etTected, and
to excite in him the most violent grief when the
king was brought to the scaffold. He has, neverthe-
less, in his writings, placed Charles in an unfavour-
able light, and spoken of his execution as the conse-
quence of a divine judgment. During the sway of
Cromwell, Harrington occupied himself in composing
the Occaiin, which was published in 1656, and led
to several controversies. This work is a political
romance, illustrating the author's idea of a republic
constituted so as to secure that general freedom of
•which he was so ardent an admirer. It is thus cha-
racterised by Hume : — ' Harrington's Oceana was
■well adapted to that age, when the plans of imaginary
republics were the dail}' subjects of debate and con-
versation ; and even in our time, it is justly admired
as a work of genius and invention. The style of this
author wants ease and fluency, but tlie good matter
which his work contains makes compensation.' After
the publication of the ' Oceana,' Harrington con-
tinued to exert hi nself in diffusing liis republican
opinions, by foundmg a debating club, called the
Kota, and holding conversations with visitors at his
own house. This brought him under the suspicion
of government soon after the Restoration, and, on
pretence of treasonable practices, he was put into
confinement, which lasted nntil an attack of mental
derangement made it necessary that he should be
uelivered to his friends. His death took place in
1677. After a careful search, we have been unable
to find in the ' Oceana' a passage of moderate length,
which, apart from the C(jntext, would probably be
interesting to the reader.
ALGERNON SIDNEY.
Algernon Sidney, the son of Robert, Earl of
Leicester, is another celebrated republican writer of
this age. He was born about 1621. and during his
father's lieutenancy in Ireland, served in the army
against the rebels in that kingdom. In 1643, when
the civil war between the king and parliament broke
out, he was permitted to return to England, where
he immediately joined the parliamentary forces,
and, as colonel of a regiment of horse, was present at
several engagements. He was likewise successively
the governor of Ciiichester, Dublin, and Dover. In
1648 he was named a member of the court for trying
the king, which, however, he did not attend, though
apparently not from any disapproval of the intentions
of those who composedit. The usurpation of Crom-
well gave much offence to Sidney, who declined to
accept office under either him or his son Richard ;
but when the Long rarliament recovered its power,
he readily consented to act as one of the council of
state. At the time of the Restoration, he was en-
gaged in a continental embassy ; and, apprehensive of
the vengeance of tlie royalists, he remained abroad for
seventeen years, at the end of whicli his father, who
was anxious to see him before leaving the world,
])rocured his pardon from the king. After his re-
turn to England in 1G77, he ojiposed the measures
Algernun SiJnv.,.
of the conrt, and has thus subjected himself to the
censure of Hume, Avho held that such conduct, after
the royal p;'.rdon, was ungTateful. Probably Sidney
himself regarded the pardon as rather a cessation
of injustice than as an obligation to an implicit
submission for the future. A more serious charge
against the memorj- of this patriot was presented in
Dalrymjile's ' Memoirs of Great Kritain,' jniblislied
nearly a centur}^ after his death. The English
patriots, with Lord William Russell at their head,
intrigued with BarilUm, tlie French ambassador, to
prevent tlie war between France and England, their
j)urpose being to prevent Charles II. from having
the command of the large funds which on such an
occasion must be intrusted to him, lest he should
use it against the lilierties of the nation ; while
Louis was not less anxious to ]>revent the English
from, joining tlie list of his enemies. The associa-
tion was a strange one ; but it never would have
been held as a moral stain against the patriots, it
Sir John Dalrymple had not discovernl amongst
Barillon's papers one containing a list of jiersons
receiving bribes from the French monarch, amongst
whom appears the name of Sitlney, together with
those of several other leading Whig members of par-
liament. It has been suggested that Barillon might
embezzle the money, and account for it by a ficti-
tious list ; but, as Dr Aiken has candidly remarked,
' sacrificing the reputation of one who was never
suspected, in order to save that of another, is not a
very equitable proceeding.' Yet, when we consider
the consummate virtue shown by Sidney in other
circumstances, and reflect that it is a charge to
which the accused has not had an opportunity of
replying, wc may well allow much doulit to rest on
the point. Sidney took a consjiicudus part in the
proceedings by which the Whigs endeavoured to ex-
clude the Duke of York from the lln-one ; and when
that attemj)t failed, he joined in the consjiiracT for
an insurrection, to accomplish the same object.
This, as is well known, was exposed in conse-
quence of the detection of an inferior plot for
the assassination of the king, in whicli the pa-
triots Russell, Sidne.y, and otliers, were dexterously
inculpated by the court Sidney was tried for high
40.5
FROM 1649
cyclop.i^:dia of
TO Ifi8<»
treason before the infamous Chief-Justice Jeffries.
Althoug:h tlie only witness against him was that
abandoned character, Lord Howard, and notliing;
could be produced tliat even ostensibly strengtliened
the evidence, except some manuscripts in which the
lawfulness of resisting tyrants was maintained, and
a i>reference given to a free over an arbitrary govern-
ment, the jury were servile enough to obey the direc-
tions of the judge, and pronounce him guilty. He
was beheaded on the 7th of December 1683, glorying
in his martyrdom for that 'old cause' in which he
had been engaged from his youth. His character is
thus described by Bishop Burnet : — ' He was a man
of most extraordinary courage ; a steady man even
to obstinacy ; sincere, but of a rough and boisterous
temper, that could not bear contradiction. He seemed
to be a Christian, but in a particular form of his own.
He thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in
the mind ; but he was against all public worship, and
everything that looked like a church. He was stiff
to all republican principles ; and such an enemy to
everything that looked like a monarchy, that he set
himself in a high opposition against Cromwell, when
he was made protector. He had studied the history
of government in all its branches, beyond any man
I ever knew. He had a particular way of insinuating
himself into people that would hearken to his notions
and not contradict him.'
Except some of his letters, the only published work
of Algernon Sidney is Discourses on Government,
■which first appeared in 1698. Of these discourses
Lord Orrery observes, that ' they are admirably
"written, and contain great historical knowledge, and
a remarkable propriety of diction ; so that his name,
in my opinion, ought to be much higher established
in the temple of literature than I have hitherto
found it placed.'* As a specimen, we give the follow-
ing observations on
[Liberty and Govei~ament.1
Such as enter into society must, in some degree,
diminish their liberty. Reason leads them to this.
No one man or family is able to provide that which
is requisite for their convenience or security, whilst
every one has an equal right to everything, and none
acknowledges a superior to determine the controversies
that upon such occasions must continually arise, and
will probably be so raiiny and great, that mankind
cannot bear them. Therefore, though I do not believe
that Bellarmine said a commonwealth could not exer-
cise its power ; for he could not be ignorant, that
Rome and Athens did exercise theirs, and that all the
regular kingdoms in the world are commonwealths ;
yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying, that man
cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition
of the liberty that God hath given him. The liberty
of one is thwarted by that of another ; and whilst
they are all equal, none will yield to any, otherwise
than by a general consent. This is the ground of all
iust governments ; for violence or fraud can create no
fight ; and the same consent gives the form to them
all, how much soever they differ from each other.
Some small numbers of men, living within the pre-
cincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common
stock the right which they had of governing themselves
and children, and, by common consent joining in one
body, exercised such power over every single person
fts seemed beneficial to the whole ; and this men call
perfect democracy. Others choose rather to be governed
by a select number of such aa most excelled in wisdom
and virtue ; and this, according to the signification of
the word, was called aristocracy ; or when one man
••xcelled all others, the government was put into his
* Remarks on thi Life and Writings of Swift, p. 236.
hands, under the name of monarchy. But the wisest,
best, and far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting
these simple species, did form governments mixed or
composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter,
which commonly received their respective denomina-
tion from the part that prevailed, and did deserve
praise or blame as they were well or ill proportioned.
It were a folly hereupon to say, that the liberty for
which we contend is of no use to us, since we cannot
endure the solitude, barbarity, weakness, want, misery,
and dangers that accompany it whilst we live alone,
nor can enter into a society without resigning it ; for
the choice of that society, and the liberty of framing
it according to our own wills, for our own good, is all
we seek. This remains to us whilst we form govern-
ments, that we ourselves are judges how far it is good
for us to recede from our natural liberty ; which is of
so great importance, that from thence only we can
know whether we are freemen or slaves ; .and the dif-
ference between the best government and the worst
doth wholly depend on a right or wrong exercise of
that power. If men are naturally free, such as have
wisdom and understanding will always frame good
governments : but if they are born under the necessity
of a perpetual slavery, no wisdom can be of use to them ;
but all must for ever depend on the will of their lords,
how cruel, mad, proud, or wicked soever they be. * *
The Grecians, amongst others who followed the light
of reason, knew no other original title to the govern-
ment of a nation, than that wisdom, valour, and jus-
tice, which was beneficial to the people. These quali-
ties gave beginning to those governments which we
call Herouni Reyna [the governments of the Heroes] ;
and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them, pro-
ceeded from a grateful sense of the good received from
them : they were thought to be descended from the
gods, who in virtue and beneficence suqiassed other
men : the same attended their descendants, till they
came to abuse their power, and by their vices showed
themselves like to, or worse than others, who could
best perform their duty.
Upon the same grounds we may conclude, that no
privilege is peculiarly annexed to any form of govern-
ment ; but that all magistrates are equally the mini-
sters of God, who perform the work for which they
are instituted ; and that the people which institutes
them may proportion, regulate, and terminate their
power as to time, measure, and number of persons,
as seems most convenient to themselves, which can be
no other than their own good. Tor it cannot be ima-
gined that a multitude of people should send for
Numa, or any other person to whom they owed no-
thing, to reign over them, that he might live in glory
and pleasure ; or for any other reason, than that it
might be good for them and their posterity. This
shows the work of all magistrates to be always and
everywhere the same, even the doing of justice, and
procuring the welfare of those that create them. This
we learn from common sense : Plato, Aristotle, Cicei-o,
and the best human authors, lay it as an immovable
foundation, upon which they build their arguments
relating to matters of that nature.
LADY RACHEL RUSSELL.
The letters of this lady have secured her a place
in literature not much less elevated than that niche
in history which she has won by heroism and con-
jugal attachment. Rachel Wriothesley was the se-
cond daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of South-
ampton. In 1667, when widow of Lord Vaughan,
she married Lord William Russell, a son of the first
Duke of Bedford. She was the senior of her second
husband by five years, and it is said that her
amiable and prudent character was the means of
reclaiming him from youthful follies into which he
406
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LADY RACHEL RtTSSELL.
had jtluiiijed at tlie time of the Restoration. His
siibseqticnt political career is known to every reader
of Englisli history. If ever a man opposed the course
of a government in a pure and unselfish spirit, that
m.an was Lord William Russell. The suspicious
correspondence with J5arillon, alluded to in the pre-
<:e'Iing article, leaves him unsullied, for the ambas-
Lady Rachel Russell.
Bador distinctly mentions him and Lord Ilollis as
two who would not accept bribes. When brought
to trial (July 1683) under the same circumstances
as those which have been related in Sidney's case —
with a packed jury and a brutal judge — and refused
a counsel to conduct his defence, the only grace that
was allowed him was to have an amanuensis. His
lady stepped forth to undertake this oflBce, to the
admiration of .all present. After the condemnation of
her husband, she personally implored his pardon,
without avail. lie loved her as such a wife de-
I served to be loved; and when he took his final fare-
well of her, remarked, ' The bitterness of death is
now past!' Her ladyship died in 1723, at the age
of eighty-seven. Fifty years afterwards, appeared
that collection of her letters which gives her a name
in our literary history.
[_To Dr Fitzwilliani — On her Soitow.']
WoBORNE Abbey, 27<A Nov. 1685.
As you profess, good doctor, to take ])Ieasure in j-our
writings to me, from the testimony of a conscience to
forward my spiritual welfare, so do I to receive them
as one to me of your friendship in both worldly and
spiritual concernments ; doing so, I need not waste
my time nor yours to tell you they are very valuable
to me. That you are so contented to read mine, I make
the just allowance for ; not for the worthiness of them,
I know it cannot be ; but, however, it enables me to
keep up an advantageous conversation without scruple
of being too troublesome. You say something some-
times, by which I should think you seasoned or rather
tainted with being so much where compliment or
praising is best learned ; but I conclude, that often
what one heartily wishes to be in a friend, one is apt
to believe is so. The effect is not nought towards me,
whom it animates to have a true, not false title to
the least virtue you are disposed to attribute to me.
Yet I am far from such a vigour of mind as surmounts
the secret discontent so hard a destiny as mine has
fixe<I in my breast ; but there are times the mind can
hardly feel displeasure, as while such friendly conrer-
sation entertained it ; tlien a grateful sense moves one
to express the courtesy.
It I could contemplate the conducts of providence
with the uses you do, it would give e.ase indeed, and
no disastrous events should much aflect us. The new
scenes of each day make me often conclude myself
very void of temper and reason, that I still shed tears
of sorrow and not of joy, that so good a man is landed
safe on the hapjiy shore of a blessed etcrnitv ; doubt-
less he is at rest, though I find none without him, so
true a jjartner he wae 'r. all my joys and griefs ; I
trust the Almighty will pass by this "my infirmity; I
sjieak it in respect to the world, from whose enticing
delights I can now be better weaned. I was too rich
in j)ossession9 whilst I possessed liim : all relish is
now gone, I bless God for it, and pray, and ask of all
good people (do it for me from such you know are so)
also to pray that I may more and more turn the stream
of my afiections upwards, and set my heart upon the
ever-satisfying perfections of God ; not starting at
his darkest providences, but remembering continually
either his glory, justice, or power is advanced by
every one of them, and that mercy is over all his
works, as we shall one day with ravishing delight see :
in the meantime, I endeavour to suppress all wild
imaginations a melancholy fancy is apt to let in ; and
say with the man in the gospel, ' I believe, help thou
my unbelief.'
[To the Earl of Galway — On Fncnd^hlp.l
1 have before me, my good lord, two of your letters,
both partially and tenderly kind, and coming from a
sincere heart and honest mind (the last a plain word,
but, if I mistake not, very significant), are very com-
fortable to me, who, I hope, have no proud thought*
ofmys°U .' to any sort. The opinion of an esteemed
friend, ..lat one is not very wrong, assists to strengthen
a weak and willing mind to do her duty towards that
Almighty Being who has, from infinite bounty and
goodness, so chequered my days on this earth, as I
can thankfully reflect I felt many, I may say many
years of pure, and, I trust, innocent, pleasant content,
and happy enjoyments as this world can afford, par-
ticularly that "biggest blessing of loving and being
loved by those I loved and respected ; on earth no
enjoyment certainly to be put in the balance with it.
All other are like wine, intoxicates for a time, but the
end is bitterness, at least not profitable. Mr Waller
(whose picture you look upon) has, I long remember,
these words : —
All we know they ilo above
Is, tliat they sing, and that tiicy love.
The best news I have heard is, you have two good
companions with you, which, I trust, will contribute
to divert you this sharp season, when, after so sore a
fit as I apprehend you have felt, the air even of your
improving pleasant garden cannot be enjoyed without
hazard.
[T'o I)v Fitzwilliani — Domestic Misfo) tunes.]
If you have heard of the dismal accident in this
neighbourhood, you will easily believe Tuesday night
was not a quiet one with us. About one o'clock in
the night, I heard a great noise in the square, so little
ordinary, I called up a servant, and sent her down to
learn the occasion. She brought up a very sad one,
that Montague House was on fire; and it was so in-
deed ; it burnt with so great violence, the whole house
was consumed by five o'clock. The wind blew strong
this way, so that we lay under fire a great part of the
time, the sj)arks and flames continually covering the
house, and filling the court. My boy awaked, and
said he was almost stifled with smoke, but being told
407
FBOM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 168S.
the reason, would see it, and so was satisfied without
fear; took a strange bedfellow very willingly, Lady De-
vonshire's youngest boy, whoni his nurse had brought
wi-appcd in a blanket. Lady Devonshire came towards
morning, and lay here ; and had done so still, but for
R second ill accident. Her brother. Lord Arran, who
has been ill of a fever twelve days, was despaired of
yesterday morning, and spots appeared; so she resolved
to sec him, and not to return hither, but to Somerset
House, where the queen offered her lodgings. He is
said to be dead, and I hear this morning it is a great
blow to the family ; and that he was a most dutiful
son and kind friend to all his famil}'.
Thus we see what a day brings forth ! and how mo-
mentary the things we set our hearts upon. 0, I could
heartily cry out, ' When will longed-for eternity come !'
but our duty is to possess our souls with patience.
I am unwilling to shake off all hopes about the
brief, though I know them that went to the chan-
cellor since the refusal to seal it, and his answer does-
not encourage one's hopes. But he is not a lover of
smooth language, so in that respect we may not so
soon despair. '
I fancy I saw the young man you mentioned to be
about my son. One brought me sis prayer-books as
from you ; also distributed three or four in the house.
I sent for him, and asked him if there was no mistake.
He said no. And after some other questions, I con-
cluded him the same person. Doctor, I do assure
you I put an entire trust in your sincerity to advise ;
but, as I told you, 1 shall ever take Lord Bedford
along in all the concerns of the child. He thinks it
early yet to put him to learn in earnest ; so do you, I
believe. My lord is afraid, if we take one for it, he
will put him to it ; yet I think perhaps to overcome
my lord in that, and assure him he shall not be
pressed. But I am much advised, and indeed in-
clined, if I could be fitted to my mind, to take a
Frenchman ; so I shall do a charity, and profit the
child also, who shall learn French. Here are many
scholars come over, as are of all kinds, God knows.
1 have still a charge with me. Lady Devonshire's
daughter, who is just come into my chamber ; so must
break off. I am, sir, truly your faithful servant.
The young lady tells me Lord Arran is not dead,
but rather better.
[To Lord Cavendish — Bereavement.']
Though I know my letters do Lord Cavendish no
service, yet, as a respect I love to pay him, and to
thank him also for his last from Limbeck, 1 had not
been so long silent, if the death of two persons, both
very near and dear to me, had not made me so un-
comfortable to myself, that I knew I was utterly unfit
to converse where I would never be ill company. The
separation of friends is grievous. My sister Montague
was one I loved tenderly ; my Lord Gainsborough was
the only son of a sister I loved with too much pas-
sion : they both deserved to be remembered kindly by
all that knew them. They both began their race lon'f
after me, and I hoped should have ended it so too ;
but the great and wise Disposer of all things, and who
knows where it is best to place his creatures, either in
this or in the other world, has ordered it otherwise.
The best improvement we can make in these cases,
and you, my dear lord, rather than I, whose glass
runs low, while you are young, and I hope have many
happy years to come, is, I say, tliat we should all
reflect there is no passing through this to a better
world witliout some crosses; and the scene sometimes
shifts so fast, our course of life may be ended before
we think we have gone half way ; and tliat a happy
eternity depends on our spending well or ill that time
allotted us here for j)rol)ation.
T ive virtuously, my lord, and you cannot die too
soon, nor live too long. I hope the last shall be your
lot, with many blessings attending it.
SAMUEL BUTLER.
Samuel Butler, whose wit is so conspicuous in
his ' Hudibras,' exhibited it with no less brilliancy
in some prose works which were published a con-
siderable time after his death.* The most interest-
ing of them are Characters, resembling in style those
of Overbury, Earle, and HalL
A Small Poet
Is one that would fain make himself that which
nature never meant him ; like a fanatic that inspires
himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haber-
dasher of small poetry, with a very small stock, and
no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find
out other men's wit ; and whatsoever he lights upon,
either ia books or company, he makes bold with as
his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that
you may perceive his own wit has the rickets, by the
swelling disproportion of the joints. You may "know
his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and trouble-
some in him : for as those that have money but sel-
dom, are always shaking their pockets when they
have it, so does he, when he thinks he has got some-
thing that will make him appear. He is a perpetual
talker ; and you may know by the freedom of his dis-
course that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend
freely what they get. He is like an Italian thief,
that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery ;
so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he pur-
loins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsus-
pected. He appears so over-concerned in all men's
wits, as if they were but disparagements of his own ;
and cries down all they do, as if they were encroach-
ments upon him. lie takes jests from the owners and
breaks them, as justices do false weights, and pots
that want measure. When he meets with anything
that is very good, he changes it into small money,
like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occa-
sions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things
in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be
very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for
epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin
to the sense. Such matches are unla^\■ful, and not fit
to be made by a Christian poet ; and therefore all his
care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden
leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or
two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into
the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of
supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest
and most obscure best ; for as ladies wear black
patches to make their complexions seem fairer than
they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than
the sense that went before it, it must of necessity
make it appear clearer than it did ; for contraries are
best set otf with contraries. He has found out a new
sort of poetical Georgics — a trick of sowing wit like
clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield
nothing before. This is very useful for the times,
wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new
invention. He will take three grains of wit, like the
elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it
immediately into gold. All the business of numkind
* ' The Genuine Remains, in Prose and Verse, of Mr Samuel
Butler, author of Iludibras. Published from the Original
MSS., formerly in the iMisscssiim of W. Longueville, Ksq. ; with
Notes by R. Thyer, Keeper of tlio Public Library at Manches-
ter. London: 17.09.' We have specified tliis title fully, bo-
cause there is a spurious compilation, entitled ' Butler's Pos-
thumous Works. London: 1720." Only three out of fifty
pieces, whieli make up the latter collection, are genuine pro-
ductions of ISutler.
408
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WALTER CriARLETON.
nas presently vanished, the whole world has kept holi-
day ; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no
women but nymphs and shepherdesses : trees have
borne fritters, and rivers flowed j>lum-]irrridi:e. When
he writes, he commonly steers the sense of liis lines
by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers
do calves by the tail. For when he has made one
line, which is easy enough, and has found out some
sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will
hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron
upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is
no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry ; a
whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them ; for
there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit
in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a
term of art in poetry. By this means, small poets
have such a stock of able hard words lying by them,
as drj'ades, hamadryades, aouides, fauni, nymphoa,
sylvani, &;c., that signify nothing at all ; and such a
world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may
serve to furnish all the new inventions and 'thorough
reformations' thai nn happen between this and Plato's
great year.
A Yinlncr
Hangs out his bush to show he has not good wine ;
for that, the proverb says, needs it not. He had
rather sell bad wine than good, that stands him in
no more ; for it makes men sooner drunk, and then
they are the easier over-reckoned. By the knaveries
he acts above-board, which every man sees, one may
easily take a measure of those he does under-ground
in his cellar ; for he that will pick a man's pocket to
his face, will not stick to use him worse in private,
when he knows nothing of it. He does not only spoil
and destroy his wines, but an ancient reverend pro-
verb, with brewing and racking, that says, ' In vino
Veritas ;' for there is no truth in his, but all false and
sophisticated ; for he can counterfeit wine as cun-
ningly as Apelles did grapes, and cheat men with it,
as he did birds. He is an Antichristian cheat, for
Christ turned water into wine, and he turns wine into
water. He scores all hia reckonings upon two tables,
made like those of the Ten Commandments, that he
may be put in mind to break them as oft as possibly
he can ; especially that of stealing and bearing false
witness against his neighbour, when he draws him
bad wine, and swears it is good, and that he can take
more for the pipe than the wine will yield him by the
bottle — a trick that a Jesuit taught him to cheat his
own conscience with. When he is found to over-
reckon notoriously, he has one common evasion for
all, and that is, to say it was a mistake ; by which
he means, that he thought they had not been sober
enough to discover it ; for if it had passed, there had
been no error at all in the case.
A Prater
Is a common nuisance, and as great a grievance to
those that come near him, as a pewterer is to his
neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a
mortar, the more impertinent, tlie more voluble and
loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung
on the sides of a mortar, than when it stamps down-
right, and hits upon the business. A dog that opens
upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that
never opens but upon a right. He is as long-winded as
a ventiduct, that fills as fast as it empties ; or a trade-
wind, that blows one way for half a year together, and
another as long, as if it drew in its breath for six
months, and blew it out again for six more. He has
no mercy on any man's ears or patience that he can
get within his sphere of activity, but tortures him, as
they correct bovs in Scotland, by stretching their lugs
without remorse. He is like an ear- wig, when be gets
withir. a man's car, he is not easily to be got cut
again. He is a siren to himself, and has no way to
escape shipwreck but by having his mouth stopped
instead of his ears. He plays with his tongue as a
cat does with her tail, and is transported with the
delight he gives himself of liis own making.
An Antiquanj
Is one that has his being in this age, but his life
and conversation is in the days of old. He despises
the present age as an innovation, and sliglits the
future ; but has a great value for that which is past
and gone, like the madman that fell in love with
Cleopatra.
All his curiosities take place of one another accord-
ing to their seniority, and he values them not by
their abilities, but their standing. He has a gr. jit
veneration for words that are stricken in ycar.t, jind
are grown so aged that the}' have outlived their em-
ployments. These he uses with a respect agrer;ilile
to their antiquity, and the good services tlicy Iv.ve
done. He is a great time-server, but it is of time cut
of mind to which he conforms exactly, but is wliolly
retired from the present. His days were spent iuid
gone long before he came into the world ; and since,
his only business is to collect what he can out of the
ruins of them. He has so strong a natural atfcction
to anything that is old, that he may truly say to
dust and worms, 'you are my father,' and to rotten-
ness, 'thou art my mother.' lie has no j>rovidence
nor foresight, for all his contemplations look back-
ward upon the days of old, and his brains arc turned
with them, as if he walked backwards. He values
things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting
that the most modern are really the most ancient of
all things in the world, like those that reckon their
pounds before their shillings and pience, of which they
are made up. He esteems no customs but such as
have outlived themselves, and are long since out of
use ; as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as
are dead, and the i'anatics, in opposition, of none but
the living.
WALTER CHARLETON.
Another lively deseriber of human character, who
flourished in this period, was Dr Walter Charle-
TO\ (1619-1707), physician to Charles II.. a friend of
Ilobbes, and for sevcnd years president of the College
of Physicians in London. He wrote many works
on theology, natural history, natnnil piiilosopliy,
medicine, and antiquities; in which last department
his most noted production is a treatise published
in 1663, maintaining the Danish origin of Stone-
henge on Salisbury Plain, in opposition to Inigc
Jones, wlio attributed tliat remarkable structure to
the Romans. The work, however, which seems to
deserve more particularly our attention in this jilace
is, A Brief Discourse cvnccrning the Different Witi
of Men, published by l)r Charleton in 1675. It is
interesting, both on account of the lively and accu-
rate sketelies of character which it contains, and
because the author, like a sect whose opinions have
lately attracted much notice, attributes the varieties
of talent wliich are found among men to differences
in the form, size, and quality of their brains.* Wc
shall give two of his happiest sketches.
The Ready and Nimble Wit.
Such as are endowed wherewith have a certain ox-
temporarv acutcness of conceit, accompanied with a
quick delivery of their thoughts, so as they can at
♦ Bee Plirenologic;U Journal, vii. S97.
409
FSOM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA O*'
TO 1689.
pleasure entertain their auditors with facetious pas-
Bages ana fluent discourses even upon slight occasions ;
bu^t being generally impatient of second thoughts and
deliberations, they seem fitter for pleasant colloquies
and drollery than for counsel and design ; like fly-
boats, good only in fair weather and shallow waters,
and then, too, more for pleasure than traffic. If they
be, as for the most p.art they are, narrow in the hold,
and destitute of ballast sufficient to counterpoise
their Jiirge sails, they reel with every blast of argu-
ment, and are often driven upon the sands of a ' non-
plus ;' but where favoured with the breath of common
applause, they sail smoothly and proudly, and, like
the city pageants, discharge whole volleys of squibs
and cr.ackers, and skirmish most furiously. But take
them from their familiar and private conversation
into grave and severe assemblies, whence all extem-
porary flashes of wit, all fantastic allusions, all per-
sonal reflections, are excluded, and there engage
them in an encounter witli solid wisdom, not in light
skirmishes, but a pitched field of long and serious
debate concerning any important question, and then
you shall soon discover their weakness, and contenm
that barrenness of understanding which is incapable
of struggling with the difficulties of apodictical know-
ledge, and the deduction of truth from a long series
of reasons. Again, if those very concise sayings and
lucky repartees, wherein they are so happy, and which
at first hearing were entertained with so much of
pleasure and admiration, be written down, and brought
to a strict examination of their pertinency, coherence,
and verity, how shallow, how frothy, how forced will
they be found ! how much will they lose of that
applause, which their tickling of the ear and present
flight through the imagination had gained ! In the
greatest part, therefore, of such men, you ought to
expect no deep or continued river of wit, but only a
few plashes, and those, too, not altogether free from
mud and putrefaction.
The Slow hut Sure Wit.
Some heads there are of a certain close and reserved
constitution, which makes them at first sight to pro-
mise as little of the virtue wherewith they are en-
dowed, as the former appear to be above the imper-
fections to which they are subject. Somewhat slow
they are, indeed, of both conception and expression ;
yet no whit the less provided with solid prudence.
When they are engaged to speak, their tongue doth
not readily interpret the dictates of their mind, so
that their langu.ige comes, as it were, dropping from
their lips, even where they are encouraged by familiar
intreaties, or provoked by the smartness of jests,
which sudden and nimble wits have newly darted at
them. Costive they are also in invention ; so that
when they would deliver somewhat solid and re-
markable, they are long in seeking what is fit, and as
long in determining in what manner and words to
utter it. But, after a little consideration, they pene-
trate deeply into the substance of things and marrow
of business, and conceive proper and emphatic words
by which to express their sentiments. Barren they
are not, but a little heavy and retentive. Their gifts
lie deep and concealed ; but being furnished with
notions, not airy and umbratil ones borrowed from the
pedantism of the schools, but true and useful — and if
they have been manured with good learning, and the
habit of exercising their pen — oftentimes they produce
many excellent conceptions, worthy to be transmitted
to posterity. Having, however, an aspect very like to
narrow and dull capacities, at first sight most men
take them to be really such, and strangers look upon
them with the eyes of neglect and contempt. Hence
it comes, that excellent parts remaining unknown,
irfilen want the favour and patronage of great persons,
whereby they might be redeemed from obscurity, and
raised to employments answerable to their faculties,
and crowned with honours proportionate to their
merits. The best course, therefore, for these to over-
come that eclipse which prejudice usually brings upon
them, is to contend against their own modesty, and
either, by frequent converse with noble and discern-
ing spirits, to enlarge the windows of their minds,
and dispel those clouds of reservedness that darken
the lustre of their faculties ; or by writing on some
new and useful subject, to lay open their talent, so
that the world may be convinced of their intrinsic
value.
In 1670 Dr Charleton published a vigorous trans-
lation of Epicurus's ' jNIorals,' prefaced by an earnest
vindication of that philosopher. We extract one
of the chapters, as a specimen of the style in which
the ancient classics were ' faithfully EngUshed' in
the middle of the seventeenth century.
Of Modesty, opposed to Amhltiop..
Concerning this great virtue, which is the fourth
branch of temperance, there is very little need of say-
ing more than what we have formerly intimated, when
we declared it not to be the part of a wise man to afl^ect
greatness, or power, or honours in a cf mmonwealth ;
but so to contain himself, as rather tr live not only
privately, but even obscurely and concealed in some
secure comer. And therefore the advice we shall
chiefly inculcate in this place shall be the very same
we usually give to our best friends. Live private and
concealed (unless some circumstance of state call you
forth to the assistance of the public), insomuch as ex-
perience frequently confirms the truth of that prover-
bial saying, ' lie hath well lived who hath well con-
cealed himself.'
Certainly, it hath been too familiarly observed, that
many, who had mounted up to the highest pinnacle
of honour, have been on a sudden, and, as it were,
with a thunderbolt, thrown down to the bottom of
misery and contempt ; and so been brought, though
too late, to acknowledge, that it is much better for a
man quietly and peaceably to obey, than, by laborious
climbing up the craggy rocks of ambition, to asj)ire
to command and sovereignty; and to set his foot
rather upon the plain and humble ground, than upon
that slippery height, from which all that can be with
reason expected, is a precipitous and ruinous downfall.
Besides, are not those grandees, upon whom the ad-
miring multitude gaze, as upon refulgent comets, and
prodigies of glory and honour ; are tliey not, we say,
of all men the most unhappy, in this one respect, that
their breasts swarm with most weighty and trouble-
some cares, that incessantly gall and corrode their
very hearts ? Beware, therefore, how you believe that
such live securely and tranquilly; since it is impos-
sible but those who are feared by many should them-
selves be in contiimal fear of some.
Though you see them to be in a manner environed
with power, to have navies numerous enough to send
abroad into all seas, to be in the heads of mighty and
victorious armies, to be guarded with well armed and
faithful legions ; yet, for all this, t.ake heed you do
not conceive them to be the only happy men, nay,
that they partake so much as of one sincere pleasure ;
for all these things are mere pageantry, shadows gilded,
and ridiculous dreams, insomuch as fear and care are
not things that are afraid of the noise of arms, or re-
gard the brightness of gold, or the sj)lendour of purple,
but boldly intrude themselves even into the hearts of
princes and potentates, and, like the poet's vulture,
daily gnaw and consume them.
Beware, likewise, that you do not conceive that the
body is made one whit the more strong, or healthy, by
the glory, greatness, and treasures of monarchy, espe-
410
I'ROSF. WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS FULLEE.
cially when you may daily obsen-e, that a fever doth
as violently and long hold hini who lies upon a bed
of tissue, under a covering of Tyriun scarlet, as liim
that lies upon a mattress, and liatli no covering but
rags ; and that we have no reason to complain of the
want of scarlet robes, of golden embroideries, jewels,
and ropes of pearl, while we have a coarse and easy
garment to keep away the cold. And what if you,
lying cheerfully and serenely upon a truss of clean
fitraw, covered with rags, should gravely instruct men
how vain those are who, with astonished and turbu-
lent minds, gape and thirst after the trifles of magni-
ficence, not understanding how few ami small those
things are which are requisite to a happy life ] believe
me, your discourse would be truly magnificent and
high, because delivered by one whose own happy ex-
perience confirms it.
What though your house do not shine with silver
and gold hatchments ; nor your arched roofs resound
with the multiplied echoes of loud music ; nor your
walls be not thickly beset with golden figures of beau-
tiful youths, holding great lamps in their extended
arms, to give light to your nightly revels and sump-
tuous banquets ; why yet, truly, it is not a whit less
(if not much more) pleasant to repose your wearied
limbs upon the green grass, to sit by some cleanly and
purling stream, under the refreshing shade of some
well-branched tree, especially in the spring time, when
the head of everv- plant is crowned with beautiful and
fragrant flowers, the merry birds entertaining you with
the music of their wild notes, the fresh western winds
continually fanning your heats, and all nature smil-
ing upon you.
Wherefore, when any mai- may, if he please, thus
live at peace and liberty .abroad in the open fields, or
his own gardens, what reijjin is there why he should
affect and pursue honours, and not rather modestly
bound his desires with the calmness and security of
that condition ? For, to hunt after gloiT by the os-
tentation of virtue, of science, of eloquence, of nobi-
lity, of wealth, of attendants, of rich cloths, of beauty,
of garb, and the like, seriously, it is altogether the
fame of ridiculous vanity; and in all things modesty
exacts no more than this, that we do not, through
rusticity, want of a decent garb, or too much negli-
gence, do anything that doth not correspond with
civility and decorum. For it is equally vile, and
doth as much denote a base or abject mind, to grow
insolent and lofty upon the possession of these ad-
juncts of magnificence, as to become dejected, or sink
in spirit, at the loss or want of them.
Now, according to this rule, if a wise man chance
to have the statues or images of his ancestors, or
other renowned persons of former ages, he will be very
far from being proud of them, from showing them as
badges of honour, from affecting a glory from the
generosity of their actions and achievemenis ; and as
far from wholly neglecting them, but will place them
(as memorials of virtue) indifferently either in his
porch or gallery, or elsewhere.
Nor will he be solicitous about the manner or place
of his sepulture, or command his executors to bestow
any great cost, or pomp and ceremony, at his funeral.
The chief subject of his care will be, what may be
beneficial and pleasant to his successors ; being well
assured that, as for his dead corpse, it will little con-
cern him what becomes of it. For to propagate vanity
even beyond death is the highest madness ; and not
much inferior thereto is the fancy of some, who in
their lives are afraid to have their carcasses torn by
the teeth of wild beasts after their death. For if
that be an evil, why is it not likewise an evil to have
the dead corpse burned, embalmed, and immersed in
honey, to grow cold and stiff under a ponderous
marble, to be pressed down by the weight of earth
and passengers i
THOMAS FULLER.
A conspicuous place in the prose literature of this
age is due to 1)r Thomas Fuller ( 1 608-1 6G 1 ), author
of various works in practical divinit}' and history.
Fuller was tlie son of a clergyman of the same name
settled at Aldwinkle, in Northampton : he and Dry-
den thus were natives of tlie same place. A quick
intellect, and uncommon jxjwers of memory, made
Thomas Fuller.
him a scholar almost in his boyhood ; his studies
at Queen's college, Cambridge, were attended with
the highest triumphs of tlie university, and on
entering life as a preacher in that city, he acquired
the greatest popularity. He afterwards passed
through a rapid succession of promotions, until he
acquired the lecturesliip of the Savoy in London.
Meanwhile, he -puhVishcdhis II Uiori/nf ilie Holy War.
On the breaking out of the civil war, F' idler attached
himself to the king's party at Oxford, and he seems
to have accompanied the army in active service for
some years as chaplain to Lord Hopton. Even in
these circumstances, his active mind busied itself
in collecting materials for some of the works which
he subsequently published. His comjiany was at the
same time much courted, on account of the extraordi-
nary amount of intelligence which he had acquired,
and a strain of lively humour which seems to have
been quite irrepressible. The quaint and fan)ihar
nature of his mind disposed him to be less nice in
the selection of materials, and also in their arrange-
ment, than scholarly men generally are. He would
sit patiently for hours listening to the prattle of old
women, in order to obtain snatches of local history,
traditionary anecdote, and proverbial wisdom. And
these he has wrought up in his work entitled 77i(
Worthies of England, which is a strange melange
of topography, biography, and popular antiquities.
■WTien tlie heat of the war was past. Fuller returned
to London, and became lecturer at St Bride's church.
He was now engaged in his Church History of Britain,
which was given to the world in 1656, in one volume
folio. Afterwards, he devoted himself to the prepa-
ration of his ' Worthies,' wliich he did not complete
till 16C0. Meanwhile, he had passed through some
other situations in the church, the last of wliich was
tliat of cl:aplain to Charles II. It was thought that
he would liave been made a bishop, if he had not been
prematurely cut off by fever, a year after tlie Kesto-
ration. This extraordinary man possessed a tall and
handsome person, and great conversational powers.
411
Rou 1G49
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
He was of kind dispositions, and amiable in all the
domestic relations of life. He was twice married ;
on the second occasion, to a sister of Viscount Bal-
OldSt Bride's Church, Fleet Street.
tinglufs. As proofs of his wonderful memory, it is
stated that he could repeat five hundred unconnected
words after twice hearing them, and recite the whole
of the signs in tlie principal thorouglifare of London
after once passing tlirougli it and back again. His
only other works of the least importance are The
Profane and Holy States, iuid A I'lsgah View of
Palestine.
The principal work, tlie ' Worthies,' is rather a
collection of brief memoranda tlian a regular com-
position, so tliat it does not admit of extract for
these pages. While a modern reader smiles at the
vast quantity of gossip which it contains, he must
also be sensible that it ha.s preserved much curious
information, which would have otlierwise been lost.
The eminent men whose lives lie records, are ar-
ranged l>y Fuller according to their native counties,
of which he mentions also the natural i)roductions,
manufactures, medicinal waters, herbs, wonders,
buildings, local proverbs, sheriffs, and modern battles.
The style of all Fuller's works is extreniely quaint
and jocular; and in the power of drawing humo-
rous comparisons, he is little, if at all, inferior to
Butler liimself. Bishop Nicolson, speaking of his
'Cliurch History,' accuses liim of being fonder of a
joke than of correctness, and says that he is not scru-
pulous in his inquiry into the foundation of any
good story that comes in his way. 'Even the most
serious and authentic parts of it are so interlaced
•with pun and quibble, that it looks as if the man
had designed to ridicule the amuds of our church
into fable and romance.'* These animadversions,
however, are accounted too strong. Fuller's ' Holy
and Profane States' contains admiralily drawn cha-
racters, which are held fortli as examples to be re-
*pretively imitated and avoided ; such as the Good
* Kn;;lish IlUtoi.cat l^ibrary, p. lib.
Father, the Good Soldier, the Good IMaster, and so
on. In this and the other productions of Fuller,
there is a vast fund of sagacity and good sense, fre-
quently expressed in language so pitliy, that a large
collection of admirable and striking maxims might
easily be extracted from his pages. We shall give
samples of these, after presenting the character which
he has beautifully drawn of
TliC Good Schoolmaster.
There is scarce any profes.sion in the commonwealth
more necessary, which is so slightly performed. The
reasons whereof I conceive to be these : — First, young
scholars make this calling their refuge ; yea,])erchaiice,
before they have taken any degree in the university,
conmicnce schoohnasters in the country, as if nothing
else were required to set up this profession but only
a rod and a ferula. Secondly, others v.ho are able,
use it oidy as a passage to better preferment, to patch
the rents in their present fortune, till they can pro-
vide a new one, and betake themselves to some more
gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheartened from
doing their best with the miserable reward which in
some places they receive, being masters to their chil-
dren and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being
grown rich they grow negligent, and scorn to touch
the school but by the proxy of the usher. But see
how well our schoolmaster behaves himself.
His genius inclines him with delight to his profes-
sion. Some men liad as well be schoolboys as school-
masters, to be tied to the school, as Cooper's Dictionary
and Scapula's Lexicon are chained to the desk therein ,
and though great scholars, and skilful in other arts,
arc bunglers in this. But God, of his goodness, hath
fitted several men for several callings, that the neces-
sity of church and state, in all conditions, may be
provided for. So that he who beholds the fabric
thereof, may say, God hewed out the stone, and ap-
pointed it to lie in this very place, for it would tit
none other so well, and here it doth most excellent.
And thus God mouldeth some for a schoolmaster's
life, undertaking it with desire and delight, and dis-
charging it with dexterity and happy success.
He studieth his scliolars' natures as carefully as
they their books ; and ranks their dispositions into
several forms. And though it may seem difficult for
him in a great school to descend to all particulars,
yet experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a
granunar of boys' natures, and reduce them all (sav-
ing some few exceptions) to these general rules:
1. Those that are ingenious and industrious. Tlie
conjunction of two such planets in a youth presage
nuich good unto him. To such a lad a frown may be
a whipping, and a whipping a death ; yea, where their
master whips them once, shame whips them all the
week after. Such natures he useth with all gentleness.
'2. Those that are ingenious and idle. These think
with the hare in the fable, that miming with snails
(so they count the rest of their schoolfellows), they
shall come soon enough to the post, though sleeping
a good while before their starting. Oh, a good rod
would finely take them napping.
3. Those that are dull and diligent. Wines, the
stronger they be, the more lees they have when they
are new. Many boys are muddy-headed till they be
clarified with age, and such afterwards prove the best.
Bristol diamonds arc both bright, and squared, and
pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless ;
whereas orient ones in India are rough and rugged
naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth,
acquit themselves afterwards the jewels of the country,
and therefore their dulnes.s at first is to be borne
with, if they be diligent. That schoolmaster deserves
to be beaten b!msclf, who beats nature in a boy Tor
a faiUt. ..•'Uid I question whether all the whipping in
412
PROSE AVRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS FULLER.
the world can make their parts which are naturally
sluggish, rise one minute before the hour nature hafh
appointed.
4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent
also. Correction may reform the hitter, not amend
the former. All the whetting in the world can never
set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it.
Such boys he consigneth over to other professions.
Shipm-ights and boat-makers will choose those crooked
j)ieces of timber which other carpenters refuse. Those
may mako excellent merchants and mechanics which
will not serve for scholars.
He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teach-
ing ; not leading them rather in a circle than forwards.
He minces his precepts for children to swalloAV, hang-
ing clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his
scholars may go along with him.
He is and will be known to be an absolute monarch
in his school. If cockering mothers proffer him money
to purchase their sons' exemption from liis rod (to
live, as it were, in a peculiar, out of their master's
jurisdiction), with disdain he refuseth it, and scorns
the late custom in some places of commuting whip-
ping into money, and ransoming boys from the rod
at a set price. If he hath a stubborn youth, correc-
tion-proof, he debaseth not his authority by contesting
with him, but fairly, if he can, puts him away before
his obstinacy hath infected others.
He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction.
Man}' a schoolmaster better answcreth the name
paidotribcs than paidagogor,, rather tearing his scho-
lars' flesh with whipping than giving them good edu-
cation. No wonder if his scholars hate the muses,
being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends and
furies.
Such an Orbilius mars more scholars than he makes.
Their tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer
which spake plain by nature, and whose stuttering
at first was nothing else but fears quavering on their
speech at their master's presence. And whose maul-
ing them about their heads hath dulled those who in
quickness exceeded their master.
He makes his school free to him who sues to him
in forma pauperis. And surely learning is the greatest
alms that can be given. But he is a beast who, be-
cause the poor scholar cannot pay hira his wages, pays
the scholar in his whipping; rather are diligent lads
to be encouraged with all excitements to learning.
This minds me of what I have heard concerning Mr
Bust, tliat worthy late schoolmaster of Eton, who
would never suffer any wandering begging scholar
(such as justly the statute hath ranked in the fore-
front of rogues) to come into his school, but would
thrust him out with earnestness (however privately
charitable unto him), lest his schoolboys should be dis-
heartened from their books, by seeing some scholars
after their studying in the university preferred to
beggary.
He spoils not a good school to make thereof a bad
college, therein to teach his scholars logic. For, be-
sides that logic may have an action of trespass against
grammar for encroaching on her liberties, syllogisms
are solecisms taught in the school, and oftentimes
they are forced afterwards in the university, to unlearn
the fumbling skill they had before.
Out of his school he is no way pedantical in carriage
or discourse ; contenting himself to be rich in Latin,
though he doth not gingle with it in every company
wherein he comes.
To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make
Bchoolmasters careful in their place — that the emi-
nences of their scholars have commended the memories
of their schoolmasters to posterity, who, otherwise in
obscurity, had altogether been forgotten. A\'ho had
ever heard of II. Bond, in Lanca'iure, but for tlie
breeding of learned Ascham, his scholar ? or of Hart-
grave, in Brundly school, in the same county, but be-
cause he was tlie first did teach worthy Dr Whitaker %
Nor do I honour the memory of IMulcaster for any-
tliing so much as liis scholar, tliat gulf of learning,
Bishop Andrews. This nuule tlie Athenians, the day
before the great feast of 'J'lieseus, tlielr founder, to
sacrifice a ram to the memory of Conidas, his school-
master, that iirst instructed him,
\^RccreatlonJ\
Recreation is a second creation, when weariness
liath almost annihilated one's spirits. It is the
breathing of the soul, which othenvise would be stifled
with continual business. • * *
Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day)
in recreation ; for sleep itself is a recreation. Add
not therefore sauce to sauces ; and he cannot properly
have any title to be refreshed who was not first faint.
Pastime, like wine, is poison in the morning. It is
then good husbandry to sow the head, which hath
lain fallow all night, with some serious work. Chiefly,
intrench not on the Lord's day to use unlawful sports ;
this were to spare thine own flock, and to slicar tiod's
lamb. * *
• Take heed of boisterous aTid over-violent exercises.
Ringing ofttimes hath made good music on tlie bells,
and put men's bodies out of tune, so that, by over-
heating themselves, they have rung their own passing
bell.
[Bool-s.]
It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much
learning by getting a great library. As soon shall I
believe every one is valiant that hatli a well-furnished
armoury. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking,
not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many
of them (built merely for uniformity) are without
chimneys, and more without fires. * *
Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of :
namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's
life to read them over ; secondly, auxiliary books,
only to be repaired to on occasions ; thirdly, such as
are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on
them you look through tlicm, and he that peei)s
through the casement of the index, sees as nmcli as if
he were in the house. But the laziness of those can-
not be excused, wlio perfunctorily pass over authors
of consequence, and only trade in their tables and
contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten
the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people
believe they have long lived in tliose places where
they never were, and flourish with skill in those au-
thors they never seriously studied.
\_Educalion confined too much to Language.}
Our conmion education is not intended to render us
good and wise, but learned : it hath not taught us to
follow and embrace virtue aiul prudence, but hath
imprinted in us their derivation ai;d "tymology ; it
hath chosen out for us not such bocks as contain the
soundest and truest opinions, but these that speak the
best Cireek and Latin ; and, by these rules, has in>tilled
into our fancy tlic vainest humours of antiquity. But a
good cducKtion alters the judgment and manners. * '*
'Tis a silly conceit that men without languages are
also witliout understanding. It 's apparent, in all
ages, that some such have been even prodigies for
ability; for it's not to be believed that \Visdom
speaks to her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew.
[Rules for Improving the Memory.']
First, soundly infix in tliy mind what thou deairesl
to remember. VVhat wonder is it if agitation of busi-
413
FROH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
ness jog that out of thy head, which was there rather
tacked than fastened ? whereas those notions which g»^t
in by ' violenta possessio,' will abide there till ' ejectio
firma,' slcknessi, or extreme age, dispossess them. It
is best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching
it the next moniing.
Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a
•pr\-ant a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have
as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy
full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be over full that
it cannot shut, all will drop out of it : take heed of a
gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the
greediness of the appetite of thy memorj' spoil the
digestion thereof. Beza's case was peculiar and memo-
rable ; being above fourscore years of age, he perfectly
could say by heart any Greek chapter in St Paul's
epistles, or anything else which he had learnt long
before, iDut forgot whatsoever was newlj- told him ; his
memory, like an inn, retaining old guests, but having
no room to entertain new.
Spoil not thy memory by thine own jealousy, nor
make it bad by suspecting it. How canst thou find
that true which thou wilt not trust ? St Augustine
tells us of his friend Simplicius, who, being asked,
could tell all Virgil's verses backward and forward,
and j-et the same party avowed to God that he knew
not that he could do it till they did try him. Sure
there is concealed strength in men's memories, which
they take no notice of.
Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One
will carr}' twice more weight trussed and packed up
in bundles, than when it lies untoward flapping and
hanging about his shouWers. Things orderly fardled
up under heads are most portable.
Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, but
divide it betwixt thy memory and thy note-books. He
that with Bias carries all his learning about him in
his head, will utterly be beggared and bankrupt, if a
violent disease, a merciless thief, should rob and strip
him. I know some have a common-place against
common-place books, and yet, perchance, will privately
make use of what they publicly declaim against. A
common-place book contains many notions in garrison,
whence the owner may draw out an army into the
field on competent warning.
[Terrors of a Guilty Conscience.}
Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience
drives it. One that owed much monej', and had raanj'
creditors, as he walked London streets in the evening, a
tenterhook catched his cloak : ' At whose suit ?' said
he, conceiving some bailiff' had arrested him. Thus
guilty consciences are afraid where no fear is, and
count every creature they meet a sergeant sent from
God to punish them.
[Marriage.]
Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in
the married state. Look not therein for contentment
greater than God will give, or a creature in this world
can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences.
Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear,
without clouds. Remember the nightingales, which
sing only some months in the spring, but commonly
are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if
their mirth were turned into care for their young
ones.
[ Conversation.}
The study of books is a languishing and feeble
motion, that heats not ; whereas conference teaches
and exercises at once. If I confer with an understand-
in" nrian and a rude jester, he presses hard upon me on
botht.ides ; his imaginations raise up mine to more than
ordinary pitch. Jealousy, glory, and contention, sti-
mulate and raise me up to something above myself;
and a consent of judgment is a quality totally oifen-
sive in conference. But, as our minds fortify them-
selves by the communication of vigorous and regular
understandings, 'tis not to be expressed how much
they lose and degenerate by the continual commerce
and frequentation we have with those that are mean
and low. There is no contagion that spreads like that. I
know sufficiently, by experience, what 'tis worth a yard.
I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with few men,
and for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and enter-
tainment to great persons, and to vaunt of a man's
wit and eloquence, is in my opinion very unbecoming
a man of honour. Impertinency is a scurvy quality ;
but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex at it,
as I do, is another sort of disease, little inferior to
impertinence itself, and is the thing that I will now
accuse in myself. I enter into conference and dispute
with great liberty and facility, forasmuch as opinion
meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and
wherein to take any deep root : no propositions asto-
nish me, no belief off'i'nds me, though never so contrary
to my own. There is no so frivolous and extravagant
fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the pro-
duct of human wit. * * The contradictions of judg-
ments, then, do neither offend nor alter, they only
rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas
we ought to ofl^er and present ourselves to it, espe-
cially when it appears in the form of conference, and
not of authority. At every opposition, we do not con-
sider whether or no it be just, but right or wrong how
to disengage ourselves ; instead of extending the arms,
we thrust out our claws. I could suffer myself to be
rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell me
that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love
stout expressions amongst brave men, and to have
them speak as they think. We must fortify and
harden our hearing against this tenderness of the
ceremonious sound of words. I love a strong and manly
familiarity in conversation ; a friendship that flatters
itself in the sharpness and vigour of its communica-
tion, like love in biting and scratching. It is not
vigorous and generous enough if it be not quarrelsome ;
if civilised and artificial, if it treads nicely, and fears
the shock. When any one contradicts me, he raises
my attention, not my anger; I advance towards him
that controverts, that instructs me. The cause of
truth ought to be the common cause both of one and
the other. « * j embrace and caress truth in
what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender
myself and my conquered arms, as far oft' as I can dis-
cover it ; and, provided it be not too imperiousl}', take
a pleasure in being reproved ; and accommodate my-
self to my accusers, very often more by reason of
civility than amendment, loving to gratify and nou-
rish the liberty of admonition by my facility of sub-
mitting to it. * * In earnest, I rather choose the
frequentation of those that ruflile me than those that
fear me. 'Tis a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to
do with people who admire us, and approve of all we
say.
[Domestic Eco)iomy.'\
The most tiseful and honourable knowledge for the
mother of a family, is the science of good housewifery.
I see some that are ''ovetous, indeed, but very few
that are saving. 'Tis the supreme quality' of a woman,
and that a man ought to seek after beyond any other,
as the only dowry that must ruin or preserve our
houses. Let men say what they will, according to the
experience I have learned, I require in married women
the economical virtue above all other virtues ; I put
my wife to't as a concern of her own, leaving her, by
my absence, the whole government of my aflriirs. I
sec, and am ashamed to see, in several families 1 know,
414
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
IZAAK WALTOS,
monsieur about dinner time come home all dirt, and
in ^reat disorder, from trotting about amongst his
husbandmen and labourers, when madam is perhaps
scarce out of her bed, and afterwards is pouncing and
tricking up herself, forsooth, in her closet. This is for
queens to do, and that's a question too. 'Tis ridicu-
lous and unjust that the laziness of our wives should
be maintained with our sweat and labour.
IMisccUancoits ApJtorisms.'j
It is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the
banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in : yea,
they which play with the devil's rattles will be
brought by degrees to wield his sword ; and from
making of sport, they come to doing of mischief.
Heat gotten by degrees, with motion and exercise,
is more natural, and staj'S longer by one, tlian what is
gotten all at once by coming to the fire. Goods
acquired by industry prove commonly more lasting
than lands by descent.
A public office is a guest which receives the best
usage from them who never invited it.
Scoff not at the natural defects of any, which are
not in their power to amend. Oh ! 'tis cruelty to beat
a cripple with his own crutches.
Anger is one of the sinews of the soul : he that
wants it hath a maimed mind.
Generally, nature hangs out a sign of simplicity in
the fiice of a fool, and there is enough in his coun-
tenance for a hue and cry to take him on susj)icion ;
or else it is stamped in the figure of his body : their
heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for
wit ; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much
.oom.
They that marry ancient people, merely in expecta-
tion to bury them, hang themselves, in hope that one
will come and cut the halter.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which
the printers have lost.
Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep
but by worrying him to death ?
Moderation is the silken string running through the
pearl-chain of all virtues.
IZAAK WALTOX.
One of the most interesting and popular of onr
early writers was Izaak Walton, an Knglish u-ortlii/
of the simple antique cast, who retained in tlie
heart of London, and in the midst of close and suc-
cessful application to business, an unworldly simpli-
city of character, and an inextinguishable fondness
for country scenes, pastimes, and recreations. lie
had also a power of natural description and lively
dialogue that has rarely been surpassed. His Com-
plete Angler is a rich storehouse of rural pictures
and pastoral poetry, of quaint but wise thoughts, of
agreeable and humorous fancies, and of truly apostolic
purity and benevolence. Tlie slight tincture of su-
perstitious credulity and innocent eccentricity wliicli
pervades his works gives them a finer zest, and ori-
ginal flavoiir, without detracting from their higher
power to soothe, instruct, and delight. Walton was
born in the town of Stafford in August 1.193. Of
his education or his early years nothing is related ;
but according to Anthony Wood, he acquired a
moderate competency, by following in London the
occupation of a sempster or linen-draper. He had
a shop in the Roy.al Burse in Cornhill, which was
seven feet and a-lialf long, and five wide. Lord Bacon
has a punning remark, that a small room helps a
studious man to condense liis tlioughts, and cer-
tainly Izaak Walton was not destitute of tliis intel-
lectual succedaneum. He had a more pleasant and
•pacious study, however, in the fields and rivers in
the neighbourhood of London, ' in such days and
times as he laid asiJe business, and went a-fishing
with honest Nat. and R. Roe.' From the Royal
Burse Izaak (for so he always wrote his name) re-
moved to Fleet Street, where he had one half of a
shop, the other half being occupied by a hosier.
Wfilton's House.
About the year 1 G32, he was married to Anne, ths
daughter of Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inn, and
sister of Dr Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells. This
respectable connexion probably introduceii Walton
to the acquaintance of the eminent men and digni-
taries of the church, at whose lumscs he spetit much
of his time in his latter years, especially after the
death of his wife, ' a woman of lemarkable prudence,
415
r
FUOM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689
and of the primitive piety.' Walton retired from
business in 1 G43, and lived forty years afterwards in
uninterrnpteil leisure. His first work was a Life of
Dr Donne, prefixed to a collection of the doctor's
sermons, published in 1640. Sir Henry Wotton was
to have written Donne's life, Walton merely collect-
ing the materials ; but Sir Henry dying before he liad
begun to execute the task, Izaak ' reviewed his for-
saken collections, and resolved that the world should
see the best plain picture of the author's life that his
artless pencil, guided by the hand of trutli, could
present.' Tlie memoir is circumstantial and deeply
interesting. He next wrote a Life of Sir Henry
Wotton, and edited his literary remains. liis prin-
cipal production. The Complete Angler, or Contem-
plative Mcnis Recreation, appeared in 1653, and
four other editions of it were called for during his
life, namely, in 1655, 1664, 1668, and 1676. Walton
also wrote a Life of Richard Hooker (1662), a Life
of George Herbert (1670), and a Life of Bishop
Sanderson (1678). They are all exquisitely simple,
touching, and impressive. Though no man seems
to have possessed his soul more patiently during the
troublous times in which he lived, the A-enerable
Izaak -was tempted, in 1680, to write and publish
anonymously two letters on the Distempers of the
Times, ' written from a quiet and conformable citizen
of London to two busie and factious shopkeepers in
Coventry.' In 1683, when in his ninetieth year, he
published the Thcalma and Clearchus of Chalkhill,
■which we have previously noticed ; and he died at
Winchester on the 15th December of the same year,
■while residing with his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins,
prebendary of Winchester cathedral.
The ' Complete Angler' of Walton is a production
unique in our literature. In writing it, he says he
made ' a recreation of a recreation,' and, by mingling
innocent mirth and pleasant scenes with the graver
parts of his discourse, he designed it as a picture of
his own disposition. The ■ivork is, indeed, essentially
autobiographical in spirit and execution. A hunter
and falconer are introduced as parties in the dia-
logues, but they serve only as foils to the venerable
and complacent Piscator, in whom the interest of
the piece wholly centres. The opening scene lets us
at once into the genial character of the work and its
hero. The three interlocutors meet accidentally on
Tottenham hill, near London, on a ' fine fresh May
morning.' The}' are open and cheerful as the day.
Piscator is going towards Ware, Venator to meet a
pack of other dogs upon Amwell hill, and Auceps to
Theobald's, to see a hawk that a friend there mews
or moults for him. Piscator willingly joins with the
lover of hounds in helping to destroy otters, for he
' hates them i)erfectly, because they love fish so well,
and destroy so much.' The sportsmen proceed on-
■wards together, and they agree each to ' commend his
recreation' or favourite pursuit. Piscator alludes to
the virtue and contentcdness of anglers, but gives
the precedence to his companions in discom-sing on
their different crafts. The lover of hawking is elo-
quent on the virtues of air, the element that he
trades in, and on its various winged inhabitants. He
describes the falcon ' making her liighway over the
steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and, in her
glorious career, looking with contempt upon those
high steejjles and magnificent palaces which we adore
and wonder at.' The singing birds, ' those little
nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their
curious ditties with which nature hath furnished
them to the shame of art,' are descanted upon with
pure poetical feelirig and expression.
* At first the lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer
herself and those that hear her, she then quits the
earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air ; and
having ended her heavenly emplo_ynient, grows then
mute and sad, to think slie must descend to the dull
earth, which she would not touch but for necessity.
Ilow do the bl.ackbird and throsscl (song-thrush),
with their melodious voices, bid welcome to the cheer-
ful spring, and in their fixed mouths warble forth such
ditties as no art or instrument can reach to !
Nay, the .smaller birds also do tlie like in their p.ar-
ticular seasons, as, namely, the laverock (skylark), the
titlark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that
loves mankind both alive and dead.
But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures,
breathes such sweet loud music out of lier little in-
strumental throat, that it might make mankind to
think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight,
when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as
I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants,
the natural rising and falling, the doubling and re-
doubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth,
and say, " Lord, what music hast thou provided for the
saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such
music on earth !'"
The lover of hunting next takes his turn, and
comments, though ■with less force (for here Walton
himself must have been at fault), on the perfection ot
smell possessed by the hoimd, and the joyous music
made by a pack of dogs in full chase. Piscator then
unfolds his long-treasured and highly-prized lore on
the virtues of water — sea, river, and brook ; and on
the antiquity and excellence of fishing and angling.
The latter, he says, is ^somewhat like poetnj : men
must he born so.' He quotes Scripture, and numbers
the prophets who allude to fishing. He also remeni-
bers with pride that four of the twelve apostles were
fishermen, and that our Saviour never reproved them
for their employment or calling, as he did the Scribes
and money-changers ; for ' He foimd that the hearts
of such men, by nature, were fitted for contemplation
and quietness ; men of mild, and sweet, and peace-
able spirits, as, indeed, most anglers are.' The idea of
angling seems to have unconsciously mixed itself
with all Izaak Walton's speculations on goodness,
loyalty, and veneration. Even ■worldly enjoyment
he appears to have grudged to any less gifted
mortals. A finely-dressed dish of fish, or a rich drink,
he pronounces too good for any but anglers or very
honest men : and his parting benediction is ujion
' all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in Pro-
vidence, and be quiet, and go a- angling.' The last
condition would, in his ordinary mood, when not
pecidiarly solenm or earnest, be quite equivalent to
any of the others. The rhetoric and knowledge of
Piscator at length fairly overcome Venator, and
make him a convert to the superiority of angling, as
compared with his more savage pursuit of hunting.
He agrees to accompany Piscator in his sport, adopts
him as his nuister and guide, and in time becomes
initiated into the practice and mj'steries of the gentle
craft. The angling excursions of the pair give occa-
sion to the practical lessons and descrijitions in the
book, and elicit what is its greatest charm, the
minute and vivid painting of rural objects, the dis-
play of character, both in action and conversation,
the flow of generous sentiment and feeling, and ths
associated recollections of picturesque poetry, na-
tural piety, and examples and precepts of morality.
Add to this the easy elegance of A\^alton's style,
sprinkled, but not obscured, by the antiquated idiom
and expression of his times, and clear and sjjarkling
as one of his own favourite summer streams. Not
an hour of the fishing day is wasted or ununprovcd.
Tlie master and scholar rise witli the early dawn,
and after four hours' fisliing, breakfast at nine inider
a sycamore that shades them from the sun's heat.
416
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
IZ.VAK WALTON.
Old Piscator reads his admiring scliolar a lesson on
fly-fisliing, and they sit and discourse while 'a
' smoking shower ' passes oif, freshening all the
meadow and the flowers.
• And now, scholar, I think it will be time to repair
to our angle rods, which we left in the water to fish
for themselves ; and you shall choose which shall be
\ours ; and it is an even lay, one of them catches.
And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a
dead rod, and laying night hooks, are like putting
money to use; for they both work for their owners
when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice, as
you know we have done this last hour, and sat as
quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore, as
Virgil's Tityrus and his IMeliboeus did under their
broad beech tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life
60 happy and so pleasant as the life of a well-governed
angler ; for when the la^vj-er is swallowed up with
business, and the statesman is preventing or contriv-
ing plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds
sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as
these silent silver streams which we now see glide so
quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say
of angling as Dr Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubt-
less God could have made a better berry, but doubt-
less God never did ;" and so (if I might be judge)
" God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent
recreation than angling."
ril tell you, scholar, Avhen I sat last on this prim-
rose bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought
of them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of
Florence, " that they were too pleasant to be looked
on but orly on holidays." As 1 then sat on this very
gi-ass, I turned my present thoughts into verse : 'twas
a wish, which ''11 repeat to you : —
Hie Angler^ s Wish.
I in these flowery meads would be ;
These crj-stal streams should solace me ;
To whose harmonious bubbling noise,
I with my angle would rejoice ;
Sit here, and see the turtle-dove
Court his chaste mate to acts of lore ;
Or on that bank feel the west wind
Breathe health and plenty : please my mind,
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers.
And then wash'd ofl^by April showers;
Here, hear my Kenna sing a song ;
There, see a blackbird feed her young,
Or a laverock build her nest :
Here, give my weary spirits rest.
And raise my low-pitched thoughts above
Earth, or what poor mortals love :
Thus, free from law-suits and the noise
Of princes' courts, I would rejoice.
Or, with my Brj-an' and a book,
Loiter long days near Shawford brook ;
There sit by him, and eat my meat.
There see the sun both rise and set.
There bid good morning to ne.xt day,
There meditate my time away.
And angle on ; and beg to have
A quiet passage to a welcome grave.'
The master and scholar, at another time, sit under
a honeysuckle hedge while a shower falls, and en-
counter a handsome milkmaid and her mother, who
sing to them ' that smooth song which was made by
Kit Marlow' —
Come live with me, and be my love ;
and the answer to it, 'which was made by Sir
Walter Raleigh in his younger days.' At night,
1 Supposed to be the name of his dog.
when sport and instruction are over, they repair to
the little alehouse, well-known to Piscator, where
the}' find ' a cleanly room, lavender in the windows,
and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.' The hostess
is cleanly, handsome, and civil, and knows how to
dress the fish after Piscator's own fashion (he is
learned in cookery) ; and having made a supper of
their gallant trout, they drink their ale, tell tales,
sing ballads, or join with a brother angler who drops
in, in a merry catch, till sleep overpowers them, am?
they retire to the hostess' two Iieds, ' the linen of
which looks white and smells of lavender.' All this
humble but hajjpy painting is fresh as nature her-
self, and instinct with moral feeling and beauty. Tlie
only speck upon the brightness of old Piscator's be-
nevolence is one arising from Ins entire devotion to
his art. He will allow no creature to take fish but
the angler, and concludes that any honest man may
make a just quarrel with swan, geese, ducks, the
sea-gull, heron, &c. His directions" for making live-
bait have subjected liim to the charge of cruelty,'^
and are certainly curious enough. Painted flies seem
not to have occurred to him ; and the use of snails,
worms, &c., induced no comp\nictious visitings. Tor
taking pike he recommends a perch, as the longest
lived fish on a hook, and the poor frog is treated with
elaborate and extravagant inhumanitj- : —
' And thus use your frog, that he may continue long
alive : put your hook into his mouth, which you mav
easily do from the middle of April till August ; anil
then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues so
for at least six months without eating, but is sustained
none but He whose name is 'Wonderful knows how.
I say, put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through
his mouth and out at his gills ; and with a fine needle
and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one
stitch, to the arming wire of your hook ; or tie the
frog's leg above the upper joint to tlie armed wire ;
and, in so doing, w.^'e him us though you loved him, that
is, harm him as little as you may possible, that he may
lire the longer.'
jModern taste and feeling would recoil from such
experiments as these, and we may oppose to the
aberrations of the venerable Walton the iihilosophical
maxim of Wordsworth —
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
If this observation falls into the opposite extreme
(seeing that it would, if rigidly interpreted, suppress
field sports and many of the luxiaies and amuse-
ments of life), we must claim, that it is an excess
more amiable than that into which Piscator was led
by his attachment to angling. Towards the conclu-
sion of his work, Walton indulges in the following
strain of moral reflection and admonition, and is as
philosophically just and wise in his counsels, as his
language and imagery are chaste, beautiful, and ani-
mated.
[Thankfulness for Worldly Blessings.]
' Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your
rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High
Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade
of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some
of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul
since we met together. And these thougbts shall be
told you, that you also may join with me in thankful-
ness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for
* ' And angling, too, that solitary vice,
■\Vh.atever lza,ik W.iltim sings or says;
The quaint, old, cruel co.xcomb, in liis gullet
Should have a book, and a small trout tn i)ull it.'
Don Juan, Canto x'm
417
2o
FKOM 1549
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO iG^H.
our happiness. And that our present happiness may
appear to be the greater, and we the more thankful
for it, I will beg you to consider with me how many
do, even at this very time, lie under the torment of
the stone, the gout, and toothache ; and this we are
free from. And every misery that I miss is a new
mercy ; and therefore let us be thankful. There have
been, since we met, others that have met disasters of
broken limbs ; some have been blasted, others thun-
der-strucken ; and we have been freed from these and
all those many other miseries that threaten human
nature : let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Nay,
which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the in-
supportable burden of an accusing, tormenting con-
science — a misery that none can bear ; and therefore
let us praise Him for his preventing grace, and say.
Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let
me tell you, there be many that have forty times our
estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be
healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense
of a little money, have eat, and drank, and laughed,
and angled, and sung, and slept securely ; and rose
next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed,
and angled again, which are blessings rich men can-
not purchase with all their money. Let me tell you,
eeholar, I have a rich neighbour that is always so
busy that he has no leisure to laugh ; the whole busi-
ness of his life is to get money, and more monej', that
he ma)' still get more and more money ; he is still
drudging on, and says that Solomon says, " The hand
of the diligent maketli rich;" and it is true indeed:
but he considers not that it is not in the power of
riches to make a man happy : for it was wisely said
by a man of great observation, "That there be as
many miseries beyond riches as on this side them."
And yet God deliver us from pinching poverty, and
grant that, having a competency, we may be content
acd thankful ! Let ue not repine, or so much as
think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see an-
other abound with riches, when, as God knows, the
cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang
often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they
clog him with weary days and restless nights, even
when others sleep quietly. We see but the outside of
the rich man's happiness ; few consider him to be like
the silkworm, that, when she seenss to play, is at the
very same time spinning her owb bowels, and con-
suming herself; and this many uieh men do, loading
themselves with corroding caroa, to keep what they
have, probably unconscionably got. Let us therefore
be thankful for health and competence, and, above
all, for a quiet conscience.
Let me tell you, scholar, tharf; Diogenes walked on
a day, with his friend, to see a country fair, where he
saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers,
and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other giin-
cracks ; and having observed them, and all tlie other
fiimimbruns that make «. lOiUplete country fair, he
said to his friend, " Lord, how many things are there
in this world of which Diogenes hath no need !" And
truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex
and toil themselves to get what they have no need of.
Can any man charge God that he hath not given him
enough to make his life happy ? No, doubtless ; for
nature is content with a little. And j'et you shall
hardly meet with a man that complains not of some
want, though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will ;
it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neighbour,
for not worshipping or not flattering him : and thus,
when we might be happy and quiet, we create trouble
to ourselves. I have heard of a man that was angry
with himself because he was no taller ; and of a wo-
man that broke her looking-glass because it would
not show her face to be as young and handsome as her
next neighbour's was. And I knew another to whom
(hi had given health and plenty, but a wife that
nature had made peevish, and her husband's riches
had made purse-proud ; and must, because she was
rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in
the church ; which being denied her, she engaged her
husband into a contention for it, and at last into a
law-suit with a dogged neighbour, who was as rich as
he, and had a wifa as peevish and purse-proud as the
other ; and this law-suit begot higher oppositions and
actionable words, and more vexations and law-suits ;
for you must remember that both were rich, and must
therefore have their wills, ^^'ell, this wilful purse-
proud law-suit lasted during the life of the first hus-
band, after which his wife vexed and chid, and chid
and vexed, till she also chid and vexed herself into
her grave ; and so the wealth of these poor rich people
was cursed into a punishment, because they wanted
meek and thankful hearts, for those only can make
us happy. I knew a man that had health and riches,
and several houses, all beautiful and ready-furnished,
and would often trouble himself and family to be re-
moving from one house to another ; and being asked
by a friend why he removed so often from one house
to another, replied, " It was to find content in some one
of them." But his friend knowing his temper, told
him, " If he would find content in any of his houses,
he must leave himself behind him ; for content will
never dwell but in a meek and quiet soul." And this
may appear, if we read and consider what our Savi-
our says in St Matthew's gospel, for he there says,
" Blessed be the merciful, for tliey shall obtain mercy.
Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see (Jod.
Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the king-
dom of heaven. And blessed be the meek, for they
shall possess the earth." Not that the meek shall
not also obtain mercy, and see God, and be com-
forted, and at last come to the kingdom of heaven ,
but, in the meantime, he, and he only, possesses the
earth, as he goes toward that kingdom of heaven, by
being humble and cheerful, and content with wliat
his good God has allotted him. He has no turbulent,
repining, vexatious thoughts that he deserves better-,
nor is vexed when he sees others possessed of more
honour or more riches than his wise God has allotted
for his share ; but he possesses what he has witli a
meek and contented quietness, such a quietness as
makes his very dreams pleasing, both to God and
himself.
My honest scholar, all this is told to incline you to
thankfulness ; and, to incline you the more, let me
tell you, that though the prophet David was guilty ol
murder and adultery, and many other of the most
deadly sins, yet he was said to be a man after God's
own heart, because he abounded more with thankful-
ness than iiny other that is mentioned in holy Scrip-
ture, as may appear in his book of Psalms, where
there is such a commixture of his confessing of his
sins and unworthiness, and such tliankfulness foi
God's pardon and mercies, as did make him to be
accounted, even by God himself, to be a man aftei
his own heart : and let us, in that, labour to be as
like him as we can ; let not the blessings we receive
daily from God make us not to value, or not praise
llim, because they be common ; let not us forget to
praise Him for the innocent mirth and pleasure wt
have met with since we met together. What would
a blind man give to see the pleasant rivers, and mea-
dows, and flowers, and fountains, that we have met
with since we met together ? I have been told, that
if a man that was born blind could obtain to have his
sight for but only one hour during his whole life, and
should, at the first opening of his eyes, fix his sighl
upon the sun when it was in his full glory, either at
the rising or setting of it, he would be so transported
and amazed, and so admire the glory of it, that ht
would not willingly turn his eyes from that first
ravishing object to behold all the other various beau
418
PROSE WRITERS.
EXGLTSIT LITERATURE.
JOHN EVELYN.
ties this world could present to him. And this, and
many other like blessings, we enjoy daily. And for
most of them, becau.-^e they be so common, most men
forget to pay their praises ; but let not us, because it
is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made that sun
and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers, and
showers, and stomachs, and meat, and content, and
leisure to go a-fishing.
I Well, scholar, I liave almost tired myself, and, I
fear, more than almost tired you. But I now see
Tottenham High Cross, and our short walk thither
will put a period to my too long discourse, in which
mj' meaning was, and is, to plant that in your mind
with which I labour to possess my ovn\ soul — that is,
a meek and thankful heart. And to that end I have
showed you that riches without them (meekness and
thankfulness) do not make an}- man happy. But let
me tell you that riches with them remove many fears
and cares. And therefore my advice is, that you
endeavour to be honestly rich, or contentedly poor ;
but be sure that your riches be justlj' got, or you spoil
all ; for it is well said by Caussin, " He that loses
his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping."
Therefore be sure you look to that. And, in the next
place, look to your health, and if you have it, praise
God, and value it next to a good conscience ; for
health is the second blessing that we mortals are
capable of — a blessing that money cannot buy — and
therefore value it, and be thankful for it. As for
money (which may be said to be the third blessing),
neglect it not ; but note, that there is no necessity of
being rich ; for I told you there be as many miseries
beyond riches as on this side them ; and if you have
a competence, enjoy it with a meek, cheerful, thank-
ful heart. I will tell you, scholar, I have heard a
grave divine say that God has two dwellings, one in
heaven, and tlie other in a meek and thankful heart;
which Almighty God gi-ant to me and to my honest
scholar ! And so you are welcome to Tottenham High
Cross.
Venator. Well, master, I thank you for all your
good directions, but for none more than this last, of
thankfulness, which I hope I shall never forget.'
To the fifth edition of the ' Complete Angler' was
added a second part by Charles Cotton, the poet,
and translator of ]Montaigne. It consisted of in-
structions how to angle fiir a trout or grayling in a
clear stream. Though the work was written in the
short space of ten days, Cotton, who had long been
familiar with fly-fishing, and was an adopted son
of Izaak Walton, produced a treatise valuable for
its technical knowledge and accuracy. Walton's
form of conveying instruction in dialogues is also
preserved, the autlmr being Piscator Junior, and his
companion a traveller (Viator), wlio had paid a
visit to the romantic scenery of Derbyshire, near
which the residence of Cotton was situated. This
traveller turns out to be the Venator of the first
part, 'wholly addicted to the chase' till 'Mr Izaak
Walton taught him ns good, a more quiet, iiniocent,
and less dangerous diversion. The friends embrace;
Piscator conducts his new associate to his ' beloved
river Dove,' extends to him the hosjiitalities of liis
mansion, and next morning shows him his fisliing
house, inscribed ' Piscatoribus Sacrum,' with the
prettily contrived' cipher including the two first
letters of father Walton's name and those of his son
Cotton. A delicate clear river flowed about the
house, which stood on a little peninsula, witli a
bowling-green close by, and fair meadows and moun-
tains in the neighbourhood. The ruins of this
building still remain, adding interest to the romantic
and beautiful scenery on the banks of the river
Dove, and recalling the memory of the venerable
angler and liis disciftlc, whose genuine love of nature,
atul moral and descriptive pages, have silently but
powerfully infliienced the taste and literature of
their native countrv.
JOHN EVELYN.
John Evelyn (1C20-1706). a gentleman of easy
fortune, and the most amiable personal character.
John EveljTi.
distinguished himself by several scieitific works
written in a popular stylo. His S?/lva, or a Discourse
of Forest Trees, and the J'ropac/ation of Timber in kia
Majesty's Domiiiious, ])ublislied in 1664, was written
in conseqtience of an apjilication to the Koj'al Society
by tlie commissioners of the navy, who Ireaded a
scarcity of timber in the country. This \s ork, aided
by the king's example, stimulated the landholders to
jjlant an immense number of oak trees, which, a
century after, proved of the greatest service to the
nation in the construction of ships of war. Terra,
a Discourse of the Earth, relatiiiij to the Culture and
Improvement of it, for Vegetation and tlie Propagation
of Plants, appeared in 1675 ; and a treatise on medals
is another i)roduction of the venerable author. There
has been jjrinted, also, a volume of his Miscellanies,
including a treatise in praise of 'Public; Employment
and an Active Life,' wliicli he wrote in reply to Sir
George Mackenzie's ' Essay on Solitude.' Evelyn
was one of the first in this country to treat garden-
ing and planting scientifically ; and his grounds at
Saves- Court, near Dcptford, wlwre he resided during
a great part of his life, attracted much admiration,
on account of the number (jf fircign plants tvhich
he reared in them, and the fine order in which they
were kept. Tlie czar, Feter, was tenant of that
mansion after the removal of Evelyn to another
estate; and the old man was mortified by the gross
manner in which his bouse and garden were abused
by the Russian potentate aiul bis retiinie. It was
one of Peter's anuisements to demolish a ' most
glorious and impenetrable holly hedge,' by riding
tlirough it on a wiieelbarrow.
Evelyn, throughout the greater part of his life,
kept a "diary, in which he entered every remarkable
event in which he was in any way concerned. This
was publislied in 1818 (two volumes quarto), and
proved to be a most valuable addition to our store
of historical nuiterials respecting ti»e latter half ol
419
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
the seventeenth century. Evelyn chronicles fami-
liar as well as important circumstances; but he does
it without loss of dignity, and everywhere preserves
^W!^,^^^^^
House of Evelyn at Deptford.
the tone of an educated and reflecting man. It is
curious to read, in tliis work, of great men going
after dinner to attend a council of state, or the busi-
ness of their particular offices, or tlie bowling-green,
or even the church ; of an liour's sermon being of
moderate length; of lailies ])ainting their faces being
a novelty; or of their receiving visits from gentle-
men whilst dressing, after liaving just risen out of
bed; of the female attendant of a lady of fashion
travelling on a pillion behind one of the footmen,
and the footmen riding with swords. The impres-
sion conveyed of the reign of Charles II. is, upon
the whole, unexpected, leading to the conviction, that
the dissoluteness of manners attributed to it aflected
a narrower circle of society than is usually sup-
posed ; and that even in tlie court there were many
bright exceptions from it. Of the following extracts
from the Diary, the first is given in the original
spelling : —
[Tlie Great Fire in London.']
1G66. 2d Sept. This fatal night about ten began
that deplorable fire near Fish Streete in London.
3d. The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach
with my wife and soini and went to the Bank side in
Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle,
the whole citty in dreadful flames near ye water side ;
all the houses from the Bri<Jge, all Thames Street,
and upwards towards Cheapeside, downe to the Three
Cranes, were now consum'd.
The fire having continu'd all this night (if I may
call that night which was light as day for 10 miles
round about, after a dread al manni;r), when conspir-
ing with a fierce eastern \ ,ind in a very drie season,
I went on foote to the same place, and saw the whole
south part of ye citty burning from Cheapside to ye
Thames, and all along Comehill (for it kindi'u oavk
against ye wind as well as forward), Tower btreete,
Fenchurch Streete, Gracious Streete, and so along lo
Bainard's Castle, and was now taking hold of St Pa iiie a
church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly.
The conflagration was so universal, and the people so
astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by
what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr'd to quench
it, so that there was nothing heard or scene but crying
out and lamentation, running about like distracted
creatures, without at all attempting to save even their
goods, such a strange consternation there was upon
them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the
churches, publiq halls, exchange, hospitals, monu-
ments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious
manner from house to house and streete to streete, at
greate distances one from ye other ; for ye heate with
a long set of faire and warme weather had even ignited
the air, and prcpar'd the materials to conceive the
fire, which devour'd, after <an incredible manner,
houses, furniture, .and everything. Here we saw the
Thames cover'd with goods floating, all the barges
and boates laden with what some had time and cou-
rage to save, as, on ye other, ye carts, &c. carrying out
to the fields, which for many miles were strew'd with
moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter
both people and what goods they could get away. Oh
the miserable and calamitous spectacle ! such as haply
the world had not seene the like since the foundation
of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagi-ation.
All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a
burning oven, the light seene above 40 miles round
about for many nights. God gi-ant my eyes may never
behold the like, now seeing above 10,000 houses all
in one flame : the noise, and cracking, and thunder
of the impetuous flames, ys shrieking of women and
children, the hurry of peo])le, the fall of towers, houses,
and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire
all about so hot and inflam'd, that at last one was not
able to approach it, so that they were forc'd to stand
still and let ye flames burn on, wch they did for neere
two miles in length and one in bredth. The clouds
of smoke were disnmll, and reach'd upon computation
neer 50 miles in length. Thus I left it this aftcr-
noone burning, a resemblance of Sodom or the last
day. London was, but is no more !
4th. The burning still rages, and it was now gotten
as far as the Inner Temple, all Fleete Streete, the Old
Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's
Chain, W'atling Streete, now flaming, and most of it
reduc'd to ashes ; the stones of Paules flew like gra-
nados, ye meaiting lead running downe the streetes in
a streame, and the very pavements glowing with fiery
rednesse, so as no horse nor man was able to tread on
them, and the demolition had stopp'd all the passages,
so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind
still more impetuously drove the flames forward. iVo-
thing but ye Almighty power of Gud was able to stop
them, for vaine was ye help of man.
5th. It crossed towards Whitehall : Oh the confu-
sion there was then at that court! It pleased his
jNIaty to command me among ye rest to lookc after the
quenching of Fetter Lane end, to preserve if possible,
that part of Ilolborn, whilst the rest of ye gentlemen
tooke their several posts (for now they began to bestir
themselves, and not till now, who hitherto had stood
as men intoxicated, with their hands acrosse), and
began to consider that nothing was likely to put a
stop but the blowing up of so inanj' liouses, as might
make a wider gap than any had yet ben made by the
ordinary method of pulling them down with engilu^s ;
this some stout seamen propos'd early enough to have
sav'd near ye whole citty, but this some tenacious and
avaritious men, aldermen, &.C., would not permit, be-
cause their houses must have ben of the first. It was
therefore now commanded to be practis'd, and my coa
420
PRCSE WRITERS.
fiNGLISII LITERATURE.
JOHN EVELYN.
cei-n being particularly for the hospital of St Bartho-
lomew, neere Sroithfield, where I had many woundt'd
and sick men, made me the more diligent to promote
it, nor was my care for the Savoy lesse. It now pleas'd
God, by abating the wind, and by the Industrie of ye
people, infusing a new spirit into them, that the fury
of it began sensibly to abate about noone, so as it
came no farther than ye Temple westward, nor than
ye entrance of Smithfield north. But continu'd all
this day and night so impetuous towards Cripplegate
and the Tower, as made us all despaire ; it also broke
out againe in the Temple, but the courage of the mul-
titude persisting, and many houses being blown up,
such gaps and desolations were soone made, as with
the former three days' consumption, the back fire did
not so vehementl}' urge upon the rest as formerly.
There was yet no standing neere the burning and
glowing ruines b}' neere a furlong's space.
The coale and wood wharfes and magazines of oyle,
rosin, &c., did infinite niischeife, so as the invective
which a little before I had dedicated to his Maty, and
publish'd, giving warning what might probably be the
issue of suffering those shops to be in the citty, was
look'd on as a prophecy.
The poore inhabitants were dispers'd about St
George's Fields, and Tdooreficlds, as far as Highgate,
and severall miles in circle, some under tents, some
under miserable hutts and hovells, many without a
rag or any necessary utensills, bed or board, who, from
delicatenesse, riches, and easy accommodations in
stately and well furnish 'd houses, were now reduc'd
to extreamest misery and poverty.
In this calamitous condition, I return'd with a sad
heart to my house, blessing and adoring the mercy of
God to me and mine, who in the midst of all this
ruine was like Lot, in my little Zoar, safe and sound.
7th. I went this morning on foote f™ Whitehall as
far as London Bridge, thro' the late Fleete Street,
Ludgate Hill, by St Paules, Cheapeside, Exchange,
Bishopgate, Aldersgate, and out to Moorefields, thence
thro' Cornehill, &c., with extraordinary difficulty,
clambering over heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and
frequently mistaking where 1 was. The ground under
my feete was so hot, that it even burnt the soles of
my shoes. In the meantime his jNIaty got to the Tower
by water, to demolish ye houses about the graff, which
being built intirely about it, had they taken fire and
attack'd the \\'hite Tower where the magazine of
powder lay, would undoubtedly not only have beaten
downe and destroy'd all ye bridge, but sunke and
tome the vessells in ye river, and render'd ye demo-
lition beyond all expression for several miles about
the countrey.
At my return, I was infinitely concern'd to find that
goodly church St Paules, now a sad ruine, and that
beautiful portico (for structure comparable to anj'
in Europe, as not long before repair'd by the king)
uow rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder,
And nothing remaining intire but the inscription in
the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which
had not one letter of it defac'd. It was astonishing
to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner
calcin'd, so that all ye ornaments, columns, freezes,
and projectures of massie Portland stone flew off, evt.n
to ye very roofe, where a sheet of lead covering a great
space was totally mealted ; the ruines of the vaulted
roofe falling broke into St Faith's, which being filled
with the magazines of bookes belonging to ye sta-
tioners, and carried thither for safety, they were all
consum'd, burning for a weeke following. It is also
observable, that the lead over ye altar at ye east end
was untouch'd, and among the ilivers monuments, the
body of one bishop remain'd intire. Tims lay in
ashes that most venerable church, one of the most
antient pieces of early piety in ye Christian world,
besides neere 100 more. The lead, yron worke, bells,
plate, &c., mealted ; the exquisitely wrought Mercers
Chapell, tlie sumptuous Exchange, ye august fabriq
of Christ Cliurcli, all ye rest of the Companies Halls,
sumptuous buildings, arches, all in dust; the foun-
taincs dried up and ruin'd, whilst the very waters re-
main'd boiling ; the vorago's of subterranean cellars,
wells, and dungeons, formerly warehouses, still burn-
ing in stench and dark clouds of smoke, so that in 5
or 6 miles, in traversing about, I did not see one load
of timber unconsum'd, nor many stones but what were
calcin'd white as snow. The people who now walk'd
about ye ruines appear'd like men in a dismal desart,
or rather in some greate citty laid waste by a cruel
enemy ; to which was added the stench that came
from some poore creatures bodies, beds, kc. Sir Tho.
Gressham's statute, tho' fallen from its nich in the
Roj'al Exchange, remain'd intire, when all those of
ye kings since ye Conquest were broken to pieces, also
the standard in Cornehill, and Q. Elizabeth's efiigies,
with some armes on Ludgate, continued with but
little detriment, whilst the vast yron chaines of the
citty streetes, hinges, barrs, and gates of prisons, were
many of them mealted and reduc'd to cinders by
ye vehement heate. I was not able to passe through
any of the narrow streetes, but kept the widest ; the
ground and air, smoake and fiery vapour continu'd so
intense, that my haire was almost sing'd, and my feete
unsufferably sur-heated. The bie lanes and narrower
streetes were quite fill'd up with rubbish, nor could
one have knowne where he was, but by ye ruines of
some church or hall, that had some remarkable tower
or pinnacle remaining. I then went towards Isling-
ton and Highgate, where one might have scene 200,000
people of all ranks and degrees dispers'd and lying
along by their heapes of what they could save from
the fire, deploring their losse ; and tho' ready to perish
for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny
for relief, which to me appear'd a stranger sight than
any I had yet beheld. His Majesty and Council in-
deede tooke all imaginable care for their rcliefe, by
proclamation for the country to come in aid refresh
them with provisions. In ye niidst of all this cala-
mity and confusion, there was, I know not how, an
alarrae begun that the French and Dutch, with whom
we were now in hostility, were not oncly landed, but
even entering the citty. There was, in truth, some days
before, gi'eate suspicion of those 2 nations joining;
and now, that they had ben the occasion of firing the
towne. Tliis report did so terrific, that on a suddaine
there was such an uproare and tumult, that they ran
from their goods, and taking what weapons they could
come at, they could not be stopp'd from falling on
some of those nations, whom they casualy met, with-
out sense or reason. The clamour and peril grew so
excessive, that it made tlie whole court amaz'd, and
they did with infinite paines and greate difliculty
reduce and appease the people, sending troops of
soldiers and guards to cause them to retire into
ye fields againe, where they were watch'd all this
night. I left them pretty quiet, and came home
sufliciently weary and broken. Their spirits thus a
little calmed, and the affright abated, they now began
to repairc into ye suburbs about the citty, where such
as had friends or opportunity got shelter for the pre-
sent, to wliich his ^latys proclamation also invited
them.
[A Fartunate Courtier not Envkd.]
Sept. 6 [1G80].— I dined with Sir Stephen Fox,
now one of the Lords Commissioners of the Trea.^ury.
This gentleman came first a poor boy from the cpiire
of Salisbury, then was taken notice of by Bishop
Duppa, and afterwards waited on my Lord Percy
(brother to Algernon, Earl of Northumbeiland), who
procured for him an inferior place amongst the clerks
421
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1GC9.
of the kitchen aiul green cloth side, where he was
found so humble, diligent, industrious, and prudent
in his behaviour, that his majesty being in exile, and
Mr Vox w-aiting, both the king and lords about him
frequently employed him about their affairs ; trusted
him both with receiving and paying the little money
they had. Returning with his majesty to England,
After great wants and great sufferings, his majesty
found him so honest and industrious, and withal so
capable and ready, that being advanced from Clerk of
the Kitchen to that of the Green Cloth, he procured
to be paymaster to the whole army ; and by his dex-
terity and punctual dealing, he obtained such credit
among the bankers, that he was in a short time able
to borrow vast sums of them upon any exigence. The
contiiiual turning thus of money, and the soldiers'
moderate allowance to him for his keeping touch with
them, did so enrich him, that he is believed to be
worth at least £200,000, honestly gotten and unenvied,
which is next to a miracle. ^Vith all this, he con-
tinues as humble and ready to do a courtesy as ever
he was. He is generous, and lives very honourably ;
of a sweet nature, well spoken, well bred, and is so
highly in his majesty's esteem, and so useful, that,
being long since made a knight, he is also advanced
to be one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury,
and has the reversion of the Cofferer's place after
Harry Brounker. lie has married his eldest daughter
to my Lord Cornwallis, and gave her £12,000, and
restored that entangled family besides. He matched
his eldest son to Mrs TroUope, who brings with her
(besides a great sum) near, if not altogether, £2000
per annum. Sir Stephen's lady, an excellent woman,
is sister to Mr Whittle, one of the king's chirurgeons.
In a word, never was man more fortunate than Sir
Stephen ; he is a handsome person, virtuous, and very
religious.*
[Evdyn^s Account of his Daurjlder il/a?-^. f ]
March 10. — She received the blessed sacrament ;
after which, disposing herself to suffer what God
should determine to inflict, she bore the remainder of
her sickness with extraordinary patience and piety,
and more than ordinary resignation and blessed frame
of mind. She died the 14th, to our unspeakable sor-
row and affliction ; and not to ours only, but that of
all who knew her, who were many of the best quality,
greatest and most virtuous persons. The justness of
her stature, person, comeliness of countenance, grace-
fulness of motion, unaffected though more than ordi-
narily beautiful, were the least of her ornaments, com-
pared with those of her mind. Of early piety, singu-
larly religious, spending a part of every day in private
devotion, reading, and other virtuous exercises ; she
had collected and written out many of the most use-
ful ajid judicious periods of the books she read in a
kind of common-place, as out of Dr Hammond on
the New Testament, and most of the best practical
treatises. She had read and digested a considerable
deal of history and of places [geography]. The French
tongue was as familiar to her as English ; she under-
stood Italian, and was able to render a laudable
account of what she read and observed, to which as-
sisted a most faithful memory and discernment ; and
she did make very prudent and discreet reflections
upon what she had observed of the conversations
among which she had at any time been, which bein"
continually of persons of the best quality, she thereby
improved. She had an excellent voice, to which she
played a thorough base on the harpsichord, in both
* Sir Stephen Fox was the progenitor of the noble liousc
of Holland, so rcniarkablo for the line of distinguished states-
men which it has given to England.
t This young lady died of sinaU-pox, March 1685, in her
titfentieth year.
which she arrived to that perfection, that of the sciio ■
lars of those famous two masters. Signers Pietro and
Bartholonieo, she was esteemed the best ; for the
sweetness of her voice and management of it added
such an agreeableness to her countenance, without
any constraint or concern, that when she sung, it was
as chaaming to the eye as to the ear; this I rather
note, because it was a universal remark, and for
which so many noble and judicious persons in music
desired to hear her, the last being at Lord Arundel
of Wardour's. What shall I say, or rather not say,
of the cheerfulness and agreeableness of her hu-
mour? Condescending to the meanest servant in the
family, or others, she still kept up respect, without
the least pride. She would often read to them, exa-
mine, instruct, and pray with them if they were sick,
so as she was exceedingly beloved of everybody. Piety
was so prevalent an ingredient in her constitution (as
1 may say), that even among equals and superiors, she
no sooner became intimately acquainted, but she
would endeavour to improve them by insinuating
something of religious, and that tended to bring them
to a love of devotion. She had one or two confidants,
with whom she used to pass whole days in fasting,
reading, and prayers, especially before the monthly
communion and other solemn occasions. She abhorred
flattery, and though she had abundance of wit, the
raillery was so innocent and ingenious, that it was
most agreeable ; she sometimes would see a play, but,
since the stage grew licentious, expressed herself
weary of them ; and the time spent at the theatre was
an unaccountable vanity. She never played at cards
without extreme importunity, and for the company •
but this was so very seldom, that I cannot number it
among anything she could name a fault. No one
could read prose or verse bettor or with more judg-
ment ; and, as she read, so she writ, not only most
coiTect orthography, [but] with that maturity of
judgment and exactness of the periods, choice of ex-
pressions, and familiarity of style, that some letters of
hers have astonished me and others to whom she has
occasionally written. She had a talent of rehearsing
any comical part or poem, as, to them she might be
decently free with, was more pleasing than heard on
the theatre. She danced with the greatest grace I
have ever seen, and so would her master say, who was
Monsieur Isaac ; but she seldom showed that perfec-
tion, save in gracefulness of her carriage, which was
with an air of spriglitly modesty not easily to be de-
scribed. Nothing afl'ected, but natural and easy in
her deportment as in her discourse, which was always
material, not trifling, and to which the extraordinary
sweetness of her tone, even in familiar speaking, was
very charming. Nothing was so pretty as her descend-
ing to play with little chiMren, whom she would caress
and humour with great delight. But she was most
affected to be with i^rave and sober men, of whom she
might learn something and improve herself. I have
been assisted by her in reading and praying by me ;
comprehensive of uncommon notions, curious of know-
ing everything to some excess, had I not sometimes
repressed it. Nothing was so delightful to her as to
go into my study, where she would willingly have
spent whole days, for, as I said, slie had read abun-
dance of history, and all the best poets ; even Terence,
Plautus, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid ; all the best
romances and modern poems ; she could compose
happily, as in tlie Muiuhis MuUcbrin, wherein is an
enumeration of the immense variety of the modes and
ornaments belonging to her sex ; but all these are vain
trifles to the virtues that adorned lier soul; she was
sincerely religious, most dutiful to her parents, whom
she loved with an afllcction tempered with great
esteem, so as we were easy and free, and never were so
well pleased as when she was with us, nor needed we
other conversation. She was kind to her sisters, and
4-22
FROSK WRITliKa.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR ROGER l'eSTRANGB.
Mas still improving them by her constant course of
piety. Oh dear, sweet, and desirable child ! how
sball I part with all this goodness and virtue without
the bitterness of sorrow and reluctancy of a tender
parent ? Thy affection, duty, and love to me, was that
of a friend as well as a child. Nor less dear to thy
mother, whose example and tender care of thee was un-
paralleled ; nor was thy return to her less conspicuous.
Oh, how .she mourns thy loss ! how desolate hast thou
left us ! to the grave shall we both carry thy memory.
[Fashions in DrcssS^
[From ' TjTannus, or the Mode.' *]
'Twas a witty expression of Malvezzi, / vcstimenti
neffli animali sono molto sicwi segni dclla loro natura;
nec/li huoiiiini del lor ccrnello; — garments (sa3's he)
in animals are infallible signs of their nature ; in
men, of their understanding. Though I would not
judge if the monk by the hood he wears, or celebrate
the humour of Julian's court, where the philosophic
mantle made all his officers appear like so many con-
jurors, 'tis worth the observing yet, that the people
of Rome left oft' the ioc/a, an ancient and noble gar-
ment, with their power, and that the vicissitude of
their habit was little better than a presage of that of
their fortune ; for the military sai/a, differencing
ihem from their slaves, was no small indication of
the d( ^lining of their courage, which shortly followed.
And I am of opinion that when once we shall see the
Venetian senate quit the gravity of their vests, the
state itself will not long subsist without some con-
siderable alteration. I am of opinion that the Swiss
had not been now a nation but for keeping to their
prodigious breeches. * *
Be it excusable in the French to alter and impose
the mode on others, 'tis no less a weakness and a
shame in the rest of the world, who have no depen-
dence on them, to admit them, at least to tliat degree
of levity as to turn into all their sliapes without dis-
crimination ; so as when the freak takes our Mon-
.sieurs to appear like so many farces or .Tack Puddings
on the stage, all the world should alter shape, and
play the pantomimes with them.
IMethinks a French tailor, with his ell in his hand,
looks the enchantress Circe over the companions of
Ulysses, and changes them into as man}' forms. One
while we are made to be so loose in our clothes * *,
and by and by appear like so many malefactors sewed
up in sacks, as of old they were wont to treat a parri-
cide, with a dog, an ape, and a serpent. Now, we are
all twist, and at a distance look like a pair of tongs,
and anon stuffed out behind like a Dutchman. This
gallant goes so pinched in the waist, as if he were pre-
pared for the question of the fiery plate in Turkey ;.
and that so loose in the middle, as if he would turn
insect, or drop in two ; now, the short waists and shirts
in Pye-court is the mode ; then the wide hose, or a
man in coats again. * * Methinks we should learn
to handle distaff" too : Hercules did so when he courted
Omphale ; and those who sacrificed to Ceres put on
the petticoat with much confidence. * *
It was a fine silken thing which I spied walking
totlier day through Westminster llall, that had as
nmch ribbon about him as would have plundered
six shops, and set up twenty country pedlars. All
his body was dressed like a May-pole, or a Tom-a-
Bedlam's cap. A frigate newly rigged kej)t not half
such a clatter in a storm, as this j)uppet's streamers
did when the wind was in his shrouds ; the motion
was wonderful to behold, and the well-chosen colours
were red, orange, blue, and well gummed satin, wliich
argued a happy fancy ; but so was our gallant over-
charged, [that] whether he did wear this garment, or
* A rare painjililet by Kvclyn.
as a porter bear It only, was not easily to be re-
solved. * *
For my part, 1 profess that I delight in a cheerful
gaiety, affect and cultivate variety. The universe it-
self were not beautiful to me without it ; but as that
is in constant and uniform succession in the natural,
where men do not disturb it, so would I have it also
in the artificial. If the kings of Mexico changed four
times a-day, it was but an upper vest, which they were
used to honour some meritorious servant with. Let
men change their habits as oft as they please, so the
change be for the better. I would have a summer
habit and a winter ; fortlie spring and for the autumn.
Something I would indulcre to youth ; something to
age and humour. lUit what have we to do with these
foreign butterfiiesi In God's name, let the cliange be
our o\vn, not borrowed of others ; for why should I
dance after a Monsieur's flageolet, that have a .set oi
English viols for my concert? We need no P'rench
inventions for the- stage, or for the back.
SIR eogkr l'kstrance.
Sir Roger L'Ivstrange (1616-1704) enjoyed, in
the reigns of Charles 11. and James VIL, great noto-
riety as an occasional political writer. During the
rebellion he had fought as a royalist soldier : being
captured by the parliamentary army, he was tried
and condemned to die, and lay in prison almost four
years, constantly expecting to be led forth to exe-
cution. He was at length set free, and lived in
almost total obscurity till the Restoration, when he
was rewarded with the invidious post of licenser of
the press. Prom this time, till a few years before
his death, lie was constantly occupied in the editing
Sir lloger L'Estrange.
of newsp.ajiers and writing of pamphlets, mostly
in behalf of the court, from which ho at l:i>T re-
ceived the honour of knij^lithood. He is gei.i'r.illy
considered to have been the first writer wlio s^/M Ins
services in di'fence of any measure, good or bad. As
a controversialist, ho was bold, lively, and vigorous,
but coarse, impudent, abusive, and by no means a
scrupulous regardir of truth. He is known .'dso
as a translator, iiaviiig produced versions of vF-sop's
Fables, Seneca's Morals, Cicero's OflSces, Krasnius's
423
FROM l649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO J 689.
Colloquies, Queveilo's Visions, and the works of
Josephus. Sir Kogcr was so anxious to acoonuno-
date his style to the taste of the common people, that
few of his works could now be read with any plea-
sure. The class whom he addressed were only begin-
ning to be readers, and as yet relished nothing but
the meanest ideas, presented in the meanest language.
What inuuediatcly follows is a chapter of his life of
.fflsop, prefixed to the translation of the Fables.
^sop's Invention to hrlnr) his Mistress bach again to her
Husband after she had left him.
The wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy,
but so proud and domineering withal, as if her for-
tune and her extraction had entitled her to the
breeches. She was horribly bold, meddling and ex-
pensive (as that sort of women commonly are), easily
put off the books, and monstrous hard to be pleased
a.-^ain ; perpetually chattering at her husband, and
ui.on all occasions of controversy threatening him to
be gone. It came to this at last, that Xanthus's
stock of patience being quite spent, he took up a
resolution of going another way to work with her,
and of trying a course of severity, since there was
nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this
experiment. Instead of mending the matter, made it
worse ; for, upon harder usage, the woman grew des-
perate, and went away from him in earnest. She
was as bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet
Xantlms had a kind of hankering for her still ; beside
that, there was matter of interest in the case ; and a
pestilent tongue she had, that the poor husband
dreaded above all things under the sun. But the
man was willing, however, to make the best of a bad
game, and so his wits and his friends were set at
work, in the fairest manner that might be, to get her
home again. But there was no good to be done in it,
it seems ; and Xanthus was so visibly out of humour
upon it, that iEsop in pure pity bethought himself
immediately how to comfort him. ' Come, master,'
saj's he, ' pluck up a good heart, for I have a project
in ray noddle, that shall bring my mistress to you
back again, with as good a will as ever she went from
you.' What does my .'Esop, but away immediately
to the market among the butchers, poulterers, fish-
mongers, confectioners, &c., for the best of everything
Shat was in season. Nay, he takes private people in
his way too, and chops into the very house of his uns-
tress's relations, as by mistake. This way of proceed-
ing set the whole town agog to know the meaning of
all this bustle ; and yEsop innocently told everybody
that his master's wife was run away from him, and
he had married another ; Ins friends up and down
were all invited to come and make merry with him,
and this was to be the wedding feast. The news flew
like lightning, and happy were they that could carry
the first tidings of it to the run-away lady (for every-
body knew TEsop to be a servant in that family). It
gathered in the rolling, as all otlier stories do in the
telling, especially where women's tongues and pas-
sions have the spreading of them. The wife, that was
ju her nature violent and unsteady, ordered her cha-
riot to be made ready immediately, aiul away she posts
back to her hvisband, falls upon him with outrages of
looks and language ; and after the easing of her mind
a little, ' No, Xanthus,' says slie, ' do not you Hatter
3-ourself with the hopes of enjoying another woman
while 1 am alive.' Xanthus looked upon this as one
of TEsop's iiiasteq)ieces ; and for that bout all was
well again betwixt master and mistress.
[The Popish Plot.]
lowing of execrations and revenge .against the accursed
bloody papists. It was imputed at first, and in the
general, to the principles of the religion ; and .a Roman
Catholic and a regicide were made one and the sair.e
thing. Nay, it was a saying frequent in some of our
great and holy mouths, that they were confident there
was not so much as one soul of the whole party, within
his majesty's dominions, that was not either an actor
in this plot, or a friend to't. In this heat, they fell to
picking up of priests and Jesuits as fast as they could
catch 'em, and so went on to consult their oracles the
witnesses (with all formalities of sifting and examining)
upon the particulars of place, time, manner, persons,
&:c. ; while Westminster Hall and the Court of Re-
quests were kept warm, and ringing still of new men
come in, corroborating proofs, and further discoveries,
&c. Under this train and method of reasoning, the
managers advanced, decently enough, to the finding
out of what they themselves had laid and concerted
beforehand ; and, to give the devil his due, the whole
story was but a farce of so many parts, and the noisy
informations no more than a lesson that they had much
ado to go through with, even with the help of diligent
and careful tutors, and of many and many a prompter,
to bring them off at a dead lift. But popery was so
dreadful a thing, and the danger of the king's life and
of the Protestant religion so astonishing a surprise
that people were almost bound in duty to be inconsi-
derate and outrageous upon 't ; and loyalty itself
would have looked a little cold and indiiferent if it
had not been intemperate ; insomuch that zeal, fierce-
ness, and jealousy were never more excusable than
upon this occasion. And now, having excellent matter
to work upon, and the passions of the people already
disposed for violence and tumult, there needed no
more than blowing the coal of Oates's narrative, to
put all into a flame: and in the mean time, all arts
and accidents were improved, as well toward the en-
tertainment of the humour, as to the kindling of it.
The people were first haired out of their senses with
tales and jelousies, and then made judges of the
danger, and consequently of the remedy ; which upon
the main, and briefly, came to no more than this : The
plot was laid all over the three kingdoms; France,
Spain, and Portugal, taxed their quotas to't ; we were
all to be burnt in our beds, and rise with our throats
cut ; and no way in the Avorld but exclusion* and
union to help us. The fancy of this exclusion spreai
immediately, like a gangrene, over the whole body of
the monarchy ; and no saving the life of his majesty
without cutting off every limb of the prerogative : the
device of union passed insensibly into a league of con-
spiracy ; and, instead of uniting protestants against
papists, concluded in an association of subjects
against their sovereign, confounding policy with reli-
gion. * •» ♦
I shall now pass some necessary reflections upon the
whole. There never was, perhaps, since the creation
of the world, so much confusion wrought by so mean,
so scaiulalous, so ridiculous instruments ; lousy, greasy
rogues, to he taken into the hands of princes ; porters,
and the coarsest of letter-carriers, to be made the con-
fidants of public ministers; starving indigent varlets,
that had not credit in the world for a Brumigen groat,
.and lived upon the common charity of the basket, to
be a matter of seven hundred pound out of pocket in
his majesty's service, as Gates and Bcdloe pretended ;
sots, to find treason in words, at length in common
))Ost-letters. The four ruffians to have but twenty
[lound a man for murdering the king by assault, and
Sir George Wakeman fifteen thousand pound only for
poisoning him, without running the fifteenth part of
the risk ; n.ay, and Bedloe fifteen hundred pound for
-At the first opcidng of this plot, .almost all people's * The exclusion of the heir-prosumptive, the Duke of York,
bcarts took fireat it, and nothing was heard but the bel- who was a Catholic, from the throne.— iiii.
421
IL
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR RALPH CUDWOKTH.
but Iciidiiig a hand to the helping away of a dead jus-
tice : these, and a thousand incredibilities more, must
be all bplieved, or the witnesses found to be most
damnably forsworn, unless it were for the evidence's
sake that they had credit given 'em ; for the matter
of fact, under such circumstances, was morally im-
possible to be true ; and for the probity of the wit-
nesses, they were already as well known as the whip-
ping-post, for a pack of swearing, lying, cheating, a
prostitute and an abandoned sort of mercenary vil-
lains : and yet such was the infatuated credulity of
the common people at that season, and such the bold
and shameless hj-pocrisy of the managers of that im-
posture, that there was no place for either truth or
honesty to appear. The inference I draw from this
preposterous way of proceeding is, that the whole story,
from end to end, was a practice ; that the suborners of
the perjury were also the protectors and the patrons
of it both under one ; and that they had their accom-
plices in the House of Comirwns upon this crisis of
state, that plaj^ed the same game which their fore-
fathers had done upwards of forty years before.
There is more good taste in the style of Sir Roger
L'Estraiige's translations of ancient authors than in
that of his original works. The following is a brief
f xtract from his version of ' Seneca's Morals :' —
l^Inc/ratltude.l
The principal causes of ingratitude are pride and
self-conceit, avarice, envy, &c. It is a familiar ex-
clamation, ' 'Tis true, he did this or that for me, but it
came so late, and it was so little, I had e'en as good
have been without it : If he had not given it to mo, he
must have given it to somebody else ; it was nothing
out of his own pocket.' Nay, we are so ungrateful, that
'le that gives us all we have, if he leaves anything to
limself, we reckon that he does us an injury. It cost
lulius Coasar his life the disappointment of his un-
latiable companions ; and yet he reserved nothing of
ill that he got to himself, but the liberty of dispos-
ng it. There is no benefit so large, but malignity
ft'ill still lessen it: none so narrow, which a good
•nterpretation will not enlarge. No man shall ever
be grateful that views a benefit on the wrong side, or
takes a good office by the wrong handle. The avari-
cious man is naturally ungrateful, for he never thinks
be has enough, but without considering what he has,
only minds what he covets. Some pretend want of
power to make a competent return, and you shall
find in others a kind of gi-aceless modesty, that makes
a man ashamed of requiting an obligation, because
'tis a confession that he has received one.
Not to return one good ofiice for another is in-
human ; but to return evil for good is diabolical. There
are too many even of this sort, who, the more they owe,
the more they hate. There's nothing more dangerous
than to oblige those people ; for when they are con-
scious of not paying the debt, they wish the creditor
out of the way. It is a mortal hatred that which arises
from the shame of an abused benefit. When we are
on the asking side, what a deal of cringing there is,
jmd profession. ' Well, I shall never forget this favour,
it will be an eternal obligation to me.' Cut, within a
while the note is changed, and we hear no more words
ou't, till by little and little it is all quite forgotten.
So long as we stand in need of a benefit, there is no-
thing dearer to us ; nor anything cheaper when wo
have received it. And yet a man may as well refuse
to deliver up a sum of money that's left him intrust,
without a suit, as not to return a good office without
asking; and when we have no value any further for
the benefit, we do commonly care as little for the
author. People follow their interest; one man is
grateful for his convenience, and another man is un-
grateful for the same reason.
DH RALPH CUDWORXn.
I)r Ralph Cuoworth (1G17-1C88) is celebrated
as a very learned divine and i)liilosop]ier of this ago.
He studied at the university of Cambridge, where,
during the thirty years succeeding 1645, he held the
office of regius j)rofess<ir of Hebrew. His ])rincij)al
work, which is entitled The True Intellectual Si/stem
of the Universe, was published in 1678, and is de-
signed as a refutation of the atheistical tenets which
at that time were extensively held in England. It
executes only a jiortion of his design ; namely, the es-
tablishment of thefollowiiig three propositions, wiiicli
he regarded as the fundamentals or essentials of true
religion : ' First, that all things in the world do not
float without a head and governor; but that there is
a God, an omnipotent understanding being, presiding
over all. Secondl\% that this God being essenti:iily
good and just, there is something in its own nature
immutalily and eternally just and unjust; and nut
by arbitrary will, law, and command only. And
lastly, that we arc so far forth prineiiials or masters
of our own actions, as to be accountalile to justice
for them, or to make us guilty and bhune-woriliy
for what we do amiss, and to deserve p\inishmi-nt
accordingly.' Erom this statement by Cudworth
in his preface, the reader will observe that he main-
tained (in opposition to two of the leading doctrines
of Ilobbes), first, the existence of a natui-al and
everlasting distinction between justice and injustice ;
and secondly, the freedom of the human will. On the
former point he differs from most subsequent oppo-
nents of Hobbism, in ascribing our consciousness of
the natural difterence of riglit and wrong entirely
to the reasoning faculties, and in no degree to senti-
ment or emotion. As, how^ever, he confines Ids
attention in the ' Intellectual System' to the first
essential of true religion enumerated in the passage
just quoted, ethical questions are in that work but
incidentally and occasionally touched upon. In
combating the atheists, he displays a prodigious
amount of erudition, and that rare degree of candour
which prompts a controversialist to give a full
statement of the opinions and arguments which he
means to refute. This fairness brought upon him
the reproach of insincerity ; and by a contempo-
rary Protestant theologian the epithets of Arian,
Socinian, Deist, and even Atheist, were freely ap-
plied to him. 'He has raised,' says Dryden, ' such
strong objections against the being of a God and
Providence, that many think he has not answered
them ;' — ' the common fate,' as Lord Shaftesbury
remarks on this occasion, ' of those who dare to
appear fair authors.' This clamour seems to have dis-
heartened tlie philosopher, who refrained from pub-
lishing the other jjortions of his scheme. He left,
however, several manuscript works, one of which,
entitled A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable
Moralitrj, but oidy introductory in its character, was
])ublishediii 1731 by i)r Chandler, bishop of Durham.
His unprinted writings are now in the British
]Museum, and include treatises on Moral Good and
Evil, liiberty and Necessity, the Creation of the
World and the Inunortality of the Soul, the Learn-
ing of the Hebrews, and Ilobbes's Notions concern-
ing the Nature of God and the Extension of Spirits.
Mr Dugald Stewart, speaking of the two published
works, observes, that ' The Intellectual System of
Cudworth embraces a field much wider than his
treatise of Imnmtable Morality. The hitter is
particularly directed against the doctrines of Hobbes,
and of the Antiiiomians ;* but the former aspires to
* Tho Antinomians were a sect of I'resbytcriaiis which
sprang up during tlie confusion of tlie civil war in l".ni:land.
Their designation is a Greok compounil, signifying ' enoniios .rf
425
FAOM 164.0
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
tear up by the roots all the principles, both physical
and metaphysical, of the Epicurean pliilosophy. It
is a work, certainly, which reflects much honour on
the talents of the author, and still more on the
boundless extent of his learning ; but it is so ill
suited to the taste of the present age, that, since the
time of Mr Harris and l)r Trice, I scarcely recollect
the slightest reference to it in the writings of our
British metaphysicians. Of its faults (beside the
general disposition of the author to discuss questions
placed altogether beyond tlie reach of our faculties),
the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a
plastic nature ; or, in other words, " of a vital and
spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary agent,
created bj' the Deity for the execution of his pur-
poses." Notwithstanding, however, these and many
otlier abatements of its merits, the " Intellectual
System" will for ever remain a precious mine of in-
formation to those whose curiosity may lead them
to study the spirit of tlie ancient theories.'* A Latin
translation of this work was pulilished by Mosheim
at Jena in 1733. A few specimens of the original
ai'e subjoined : —
[Gcd, tliou'jh Incompnliensiblc, not Inconceivable.]
It doth not at all follow, because God is incompre-
hensible to our finite and narrow understandings, that
he is utterly inconceivable by them, so that they can-
not frame any idea of him at all, and he may there-
fore be concluded to be a non-entity. For it is certain
that we cannot comprehend ourselves, and that we
have not such an adequate and comprehensive know-
ledge of tlie essence of any substantial thing as that
we can penectly master and conquer it. It was a
truth, though abused by the sceptics, akatalepton ti,
somttliing incomprehensible in the essence of the lowest
substances. For even body itself, which the atheists
think themselves so well acquainted with, because
thej' can feel it with their fingers, and which is the
only substance that they acknowledge either in them-
selves or in the universe, hath such puzzling ditficul-
ties and entanglements in the speculation of it, that
they can never be able to extricate themselves from.
We m.ight instance, also, in some accidental things,
as time and motion. Truth is bigger than our minds,
and we are not the same with it, but have a lower
participation only of the intellectual nature, and are
rather apprehenders than comprehenders thereof. This
is indeed one badge of our creaturely state, that we
the law," it being their opinion that exhortations to morality
were unnecessary, at once to the elect, whom the divine grace
would of itself lead to the practice of piety and virtue, and to
the non-elect, whose salvation and virtuous conduct were, by
the very circumstance of non-election, rendered impossible.
Some of the Antinomian doctors carried their views so far as
to maintain, ' that as the elect cannot fall from grace, nor
forfeit tlie divine favour, so it follows that the wicked actions
they commit, and the violations of the divine law with which
they are chargeable, are not really sinful, nor are to be con-
eidcred as instances of their departing from the law of God ;
and that, consequently, they have no occasion either to confess
their sins or to break them off by repentance.* Baxter and
Tillotson were among the distinguished opponents of the tenets
of this sect. — (See Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, cent.
xvii. chap ii. sect. 2.3.) Cudworth, in his ' Treatise concerning
Eternal and Immutable Morality,' classes with the atheists of
antiquity some of his contemporaries, who thought ' that God
may command what is contrary to moral rules; that he has
no inclination to the good of his creatures ; that he may justly
doom an innocent being to eternal tonnents ; and tliat what-
ever God does will, for that reason is just, because he wills it.'
He does not mention, however, by what sect these views were
held.
* FirstiPreliminary Dissertation to Encyclopaedia Britannioa,
7tli edition, p. 44.
have not a perfectly comprehensive knowledge, or stich
as is adequivte and commensurate to the essences of
things ; fronr whence we ought to be led to this ac-
knowledgment, that there is another Perfect Mind or
Understanding Being above us in the universe, from
which our imperfect minds were derived, and upon
which they do depend. Wherefore, if we can have
no idea or conception of anj'thing, whereof we have
not a full and perfect comprehension, then can we not
have an idea or conception of the nature of any sub-
stance. But though we do not comprehend all truth,
as if our mind were above it, or master of it, and can-
not penetrate into, and look quite through the nature
of everything, yet may rational souls frame certain
ideas and conceptions, of whatsoever is in the orb of
being proportionate to their own nature, and sutlicient
for their purpose. And though we cannot fully com-
prehend the Deity, nor exhaust the infiniteness of its
perfection, yet may we have an idea of a Being ab.so-
hitely perfect ; such a one as is nostro modulo conform is,
affretabte and proportionate to our mcasiu-e and scant-
ling ; as we may approach near to a mountain, and
touch it with our hands, though we cannot encompass
it all round, and enclasp it within our arms. What-
soever is in its own nature absolutely unconceivable,
is nothing ; but not whatsoever is not fully compre-
hensible by our imperfect understandings.
It is true, indeed, that the Deity is more incom-
prehensible to us than anything else whatsoever, which
proceeds from the fulness of its being and perfection,
and from the transcendency of its brightness ; but for
the very same reason may it be said also in some sense,
that it is more knowable and conceivable than any-
thing. As the sun, though by reason of its excessive
splendour it dazzle our weak sight, j'et is it, notwith-
standing, far more visible also than any of the nebu-
loscB siellce — the small iniatij stai-s. 'Where there is
more of light there is more visibility ; so, where there
is more of entity, reality, and perfection, there is more
of conceptibility and cognoscibility ; such a thing
filling up the mind more, and acting more strongly
upon it. Nevertheless, because our weak and imper-
fect minds are lost in the vast immensity and redun-
dancy of the Deity, and overcome with its transcendent
light and dazzling brightness, therefore hath it to us
an appearance of darkness and incomprehensibility ;
as the unbounded expansion of light, in the clear
transparent ether, hath to us the apparition of an
azure obscurity ; which yet is not an absolute thing
in itself, but ouly relative to our sense, and a mere
fancy in us.
The incomprehensibility of the Deity is so far from
being an argument against the reality of its existence,
as that it is most certain, on the contrary, that were
there nothing incomprehensible to us, who are but
contemptible pieces, and small atoms of the universe ;
were there no other being in the world but what our
finite understandings could span or fathom, and en-
compass round about, look through and through, have
a conmianding view of, and perfectly coriquc*- and
subdue under them, then could there be nothing abso-
lutely and infinitely perfect, that is, no God. * *
And nature itself plainly intimates to "Ls that there
is some such absolutely perfect Being, which, though
not inconceivable, yet is incomprehensible to our finite
understandings, by certain passions, '»\hich it hath
implanted in us, that otherwise would want an object
to display themselves upon ; namely, those of devout
veneration, adoration, and admiration, together with
a kind of ecstacy and pleasing horror ; which, in the
silent language of nature, seem to speak thus much
to us, that there is some object in the world so nuich
bigger and vaster than our mind and thoughts, that
it is the very same to them that the ocean is to nar-
row vessels; so that, when they have taken into them-
selves as much as they can thereof by couteinjdation,
426
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATUHE.
I)R RICHARD CUMBERlARi,
and filled up all their capacity, there is still an inir
luensity of it left without, which cannot enter in for
want of room to receive it, and therefore must be
apprehended after some other strange and more mys-
terious manner, namely, by their being plunged into
it, and swallowed up or lost in it. To conclude, the
Deity is indeed incomprehensible to our finite and
imperfect understandings, but not inconceivable ; and
therefore there is no ground at all for this atheistic
pretence to make it a non-entity.
\_Difficulty of Convincing Interested Unbclierers.]
As for the last chapter, though it promise only a
confutation of all the Atheistic grounds, yet we do
therein also demonstrate the absolute impossibility of
all Atheism, and the actual existence of a God. We
say demonstrate, not a priori, which is impossible and
contradictious, but, by necessary inference, from prin-
ciples altogether undeniable. For we can by no
means grant to the Atheists that there is more than
a p>robable persuasion or opinion to be had of the
existence of a God, without any certain knowledge or
science. Nevertheless, it will not follow from lience
that whosoever shall read these demonstrations of
ours, and understand all the words of them, must
therefore of necessity be presently convinced, wlietlier
he will or no, and put out of all manner of doubt
and hesitancy concerning the existence of a God.
For we believe that to be true which some have
affirmed, that were there any interest of life, any con-
cernment of appetite and passion, against the truth
of geometrical theorems themselres, as of a triangle
Laving three angles equal to two right, whereby men's
judgments may be clouded and bribed, notwithstand-
ing all the demonstrations of them, many would re-
main at least sceptical about them.
[Creation.']
Because it is undeniably certain, concerning our-
selves, and all imperfect beings, that none of these
can create any new substance, men are apt to mea-
sure all things by their own scantling, and to sup-
pose it universally impossible for any power what-
ever thus to create. But since it is certain that
imperfect beings can themselves produce some things
out of nothing pre-existing, as new cogitations, new
local motion, and new modifications of things corpo-
real, it is surely reasonable to think that an absolutely
perfect Being can do something more, that is, create
new substances, or give them their wliole being. And
it may well be thought as easy for God, or an Omni-
potent Being, to make a whole world, matter and all,
as it is for us to create a thought or to move a finger,
or for the sun to send out rays, or a candle light ; or,
lastly, for an opaque body to produce an image of
itself in a glass or water, or to project a shadow ; all
these imperfect things being but the energies, rays,
images, or shadows of the Deity. For a substance to
be made out of nothing by God, or a Being infinitely
perfect, is not for it to be made out of nothing in the
impossible sense, because it comes from Him who is
all. Nor can it be said to be impossible for anything
whatever to be made by that which hath not only
infinitely greater perfection, but also infinite active
power. It is indeed true, that infinite power itself
cannot do tilings in their own nature impossible ; and,
therefore, those who deny creation, ought to prove,
that it is absolutely impossible for a substance, though
not for an accident or modification, to be brought
from non-existence into being. But nothing is in
itself impossible which does not imply contradiction ;
and though it be a contradiction to be and not to be
at the same time, there is surely no contradiction in
conceiving an imperfect being, which before was not,
afterwards to be.
DR RICHARD CUMBERLAND.
Dr rticHARD Cumberland (1G32-171S), another
learned and amiable divine of the churcli of Eng-
land, was raised by King William to the see of
retcrborougli in 1688. He had previously publislied,
in 1072, a Latin work, Z>e I.cglhus Naturcf^Disquisiiio
Fhilusuphicu, &c. ; or, ' A Philosophical Inquiry into
tlie Laws of Nature ; in which their form, order,
promulgation, and obligation, are investigated from
the nature of tilings ; and in whicli, also, the pliilo-
sophieal principles of Ilobbes, moral as well as civil,
are considered and refuted.' This modest and eru-
dite, but verbose production (of whieli t« o English
translations have appeared), contains many sound
and at that time novel views on moral science,
along witli otliers of very doubtful soundness. Tlia
laws of nature he deduces from tlie results of liuman
conduct, regarding that to be commanded by God
wliich conduces to the liappiness of man. lie wrote
also a learned Essay towards tlie Recover)/ of the Jewish
Weights aiul Measures, comprehending their Monies,
and a translation of Sanchoniatho's Phanician History.
In tlie performance of his episcopal duties he dis-
])layed a rare degree of activity, moderation, and
benevolence. Vv'lien expostulated with by liis friends
on account of the great labour which he underwent,
he replied, ' I will do my duty as long as I can ; a
man had better wear out than rust out.' He lived,
liowever, to the advanced age of eighty-six, in the
enjoyment of such mental vigour, that he success-
fully studied tlie Coptic language only three years
before his death.
[_Thc Tahei-nacle and Temple of the Jews.l
The fit measures of the tabernacle and temple, to
the uses of the whole nation of the Jews, demonstrate
God's early care to settle his people Israel, in the form
of one entire national church, under Moses, Aaron,
and the other priests, who were general officers for
all Israel. The church in the wilderness, mentioned
by Saint Stephen (Acts vii. 38), was thus national,
and is the first collective body of men called a church
in the Scripture language, by a man full of the evan-
gelical spirit.
. Synagogues for particular neighbourhoods' conve-
nience, in the public exercise of religion, were intro-
duced long after, by the jiious prudence of the na-
tional governors of tlie Jewish church and state, and
accordingly were all subordinate to them. It is to
be observed, also, that this limited place for public
national worship was within their own nation, in the
midst of their camp in the wilderness, in their ovn\
land in Canaan. No recourse from it to a foreign
church by appeals, but all differences finally decided
witliin their own nation, and therein all, even Aaron,
although the high priest, and elder brother to Moses,
yet was sul ject to ISIoses, who was king in Jesurun.
By these means all schismatical setting up of one
altar against another was prevented ; national com-
munion in solemn and decent piety, with perfect
cliarity, was promoted ; which being no shadows, but
the most substantial concerns of religion, are to be
preserved in the gospel times.
Hereby is more evidently proved the magnificence.
symmetry, and beauty that was in the structure of
the temple ; and the liberal maintenance wliich God
provided for the Levites liis ministers. For if the
cubit by me projioscd determine the area both of the
temple and of the priests' suburbs (as the Scripture
sets them both out by cubits), they must be much
longer; and if they were set out by so many .shorter
cubits (sujipose cubits of If! inches), in such propor-
tion as the squares of tlicso diflt'ixnt cubits bear to
each other, by the liJth aud 20th ^ropositiou of
427
FROM 164J,
CYCLOP^liDIA OF
TO 1689.
Euclid's 6'th book. But the square of these diflerent
cubits are in foot measure, which is here more conve-
nient, as 3, 82 to 2, 2o ; the bigger of which is near
half as much more as the less. Therefore the areas
of the temple, and of the priests' suburbs, are, ac-
cording to m^' measure, near half as big again as they
would be if determined by that shorter cubit.
Such greatness of the temple Solomon intimates to
the kii:g of Tyre to be requisite, as best suiting with
the greatness of God (2 Chronicles ii. .5). This reason,
alleged by Solomon to a heathen, must be of moral or
natural, and therefore perpetual force, continuing to
^^•angelical times ; and therefore intimating to us,
that even now magnificent and stately buildings are
useful means to signify what great and honourable
thoughts we hare of God, and design to promote in
those that come to the places of his public worship.
And from God's liberal provision of land in the
Levites' suburbs, besides other advantages, we are
taught by Saint Paul, that even so those that preach
the gospel should live of the gospel (1 Cor. ix. 14).
The fitness, safety, and honour of keeping to the
use of such indifferent things, as have been deter-
mined by law or custom, is clearly proved b\' the
constancy' of Israel's using those measures (although
others might be assigned as the Greek or Roman
measures, to serve the same ends) from the time of
Moses, and probably before, to the captivity and after.
And this, notwithstanding they were used by the
Eg}-ptians and Canaanites, which altered not their
nature in the least. .And this instance proves un-
deniably that such inditferent practices, as the use of
the measures, may be highly useful to the greatest
moral duties, the public honour of God, and the pre-
sen-ation of justice among them.
The church of England has at no period produced
so many great divines as during that to wliich our
attention is at present directed. Barrow, Tillotson,
Stillingfleet, Sherlock, and South, who flourished
during this era, were not only eminent preachers
in their day, but have since continued to stand in
the very first rank of e.Kcellence as writers on
theology.
DR ISAAC BARROVC
Dr Isaac Barrow, the son of a linen-draper of
London, was born in 1630, and at school was more
remarkable for a love of fighting than for attention
to his books. He studied at Cambridge for the
church ; but perceivipg, at the time of the connnon-
wealth, that the ascendency of theological and poli-
tical opinions different from his own gave him little
chance of preferment, he turned liis views to the
medical profession, and engaged in the study of
anatomy, botany, and cliemistry. After some time,
however, he resumed his theo'logical pursuits, de-
voting also much attention to mathematics and
astronomy. In 1655, having been disappointed in his
hopes of obtaining the Greek professorship at Cam-
bridge, he went abroad for several years, during
which he visited France. Italy, Smvrna, Constan-
tinople, Germany, and Holland. At the Turkish
capital, where he spent twelve months, he studied
with great delight the works of St Chrysostom,
which were composed in that city. Barrow returned
to England in 1659, and in the following year ob-
tained, without opposition, the professorship for
which he had formerly been a candidate ; to which
appointment was added, in 1662, that of ])rofessor of
geometry in Greshani college, London. Both these
he resigned in 1663, on becoming Lucasian professor
of roatiiematics in Cambridge university. After fill-
ing the last of these offices with great ability for six
years, towards the end of which he published a
valuable and pr^fdund work on optics, he resolved
to devote himself more exclusively to theology, and
in 1669 resigned his chair to Isaac Newton. He
Dr Isaac Barrow.
was subsequently appointed one of the royal chap
lains ; and in 1672 was nominated to the mastership
of Trinity college by the king, who observed on the
occasion, that ' he had bestowed it on the best scholar
in England.' To complete his honours, he was, in
1675. chosen vice-chancellor of the university ; but
this final appointment he survived only two years,
having been cut off by fever in 1677. at the age of
forty-six. Dr Barrow was distinguished by scrupu-
lous integrity of character, with great candour,
modesty, disinterestedness, and mental serenity.
His manners and external aspect were more fliose
of a student than of a man of the world ; and he
took no pains to improve his looks by attention to
dress. On an occasion when he preached before a
London audience who did not know him, his appear-
ance on mounting the pulpit made so unfavourable
an impression, that nearlj- the whole congregation
immediately left the church. He never was married.
Of his powers and attainments as a mathemati-
cian (in which capacity he is accounted inferior to
Sir Isaac Newton alone), Barrow has left evidence
in a variety of treatises, nearly all of which are in
the Latin tongue. It is, however, bj- his theological
works that he is more generally known to the public.
These, consisting of sermons — expositions of the
Creed, the Lord's prayer, the Decalogue, and the
Doctrine of the Sacraments — and treatises on the
pope's supremacy and the unity of the church — were
published in three folio volumes a few j-ears after
his death. His sermons continue in high estimation
for depth and copiousness of thought, and nervous
though unpolished eloquence. 'As a writer,' says
Mr Stewart, 'he is equally distinguished by the re-
dundancy of his matter, and bj' the pregnant brevity
of his expression ; but what more peculiarly charac
terises his manner, is a certain air of powerful and
of conscious facility ii' the execution of whatever he
undertakes. Whether the subject be mathematical,
metaphysical, or theological, he seems always tc
bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to the
occasion ; and wliich, in contending with the greatest
diflBculties, " puts forth but half its strength." '* He
* First Prfcliminary Dissertation to Encyclopsedia Britannica
p. 45.
42s
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ISAAC BARROW.
composed with such care, that in general it was not
till he had transcribed his sermons three or four
times, that their language satisfied him, Tlie length
of his discourses was unusually great, seldom less
than an hour and a-half being occupied in tlie de-
livery. It is recorded, tliat having occasion to
preach a charity sermon before the lord mayor and
aldermen of London, he spoke for three liours and a-
half ; and that wlien asked, on coming down from
the pulpit, whether he was not tired, he replied,
' Yes, indeed, I began to be weary with standing so
long.' The influence of tlie intellectual fertility
which this anecdote strikingly illustrates, is seen in
the composition of his sermons ; for tlie coitiousness
of liis thouglits seems to overpower him in giving
them expression, and in this way is apt to render
his sentences parenthetical and involved. Barrow's
style is less poetical than that of Jeremy Taylor.
\_The ExceUency of the Christian Rdigion.']
* * Another peculiar excellency of our religion is,
that it prescribes an accurate rule of life, most agree-
able to reason and to our nature, most conducive to
our welfare and content, tending to procure each man's
][)rivate good, and to promote the public benefit of all,
by the strict obsei-vance whereof we bring our human
nature to a resemblance of the divine ; and we shall
also thereby obtain God's favour, oblige and benefit
men, and procure to ourselves the conveniences of a
sober life, and the pleasure of a good conscience. For
if we examine the precepts which i-espect our duty to
God, what can be more just, pleasant, or beneficial to
us, than are those duties of piety which our religion
enjoins ? What is more fit and reasonable, than that
we should most highly esteem and honour him, who is
most excellent ? that we should bear the sincerest affec-
tion for him, who is perfect goodness himself, and most
beneficial to us ? that we should have the most awful
dread of him, that is infinitely powerful, holy, and
just 1 that we should be very grateful to him, from
whom we received our being, with all the comforts and
conveniences of it ? that we should entirely trust and
hope iu him, who can and will do whatever we may
in reason expect from his goodness, nor can he ever
fail to perform his promises ? that we should render
all due obedience to him, whose children, sciwants,
and subjects we are ? Can there be a higher privilege
than to have liberty of access to him, who will favour-
ably hear, and is fully able to supply our wants ? Can
we desire to receive benefits on easier terms than the
asking for them 1 Can a more gentle satisfaction for
our offences be required than confessing of them, re-
pentance, and strong resolutions to amend them \ The
practice of such a piety, of a service so reasonable,
cannot but be of vast advantage to us, as it procures
peace of conscience, a comfortable hope, a freedom
from all terrors and scruples of mind, from all tor-
menting cares and anxieties.
And if we consider the precepts by which our reli-
gion regulates our carriage and behaviour towards our
neighbours and brethren, what can be imagined so
good and useful as those which the gospel affords ?
It enjoins us sincerely and tenderly to love one an-
other ; earnestly to desire and delight in each other's
good ; heartily to sympathise with all the evils and
Borrows of our brethren, readily affording them all the
help and comfort we are able ; willingly to part with
our substance, ease, and pleasure, for their benefit and
relief; not confining this our charity to particular
friends and relations, but, in conformity to the bound-
less goodness of Almighty God, extending it to all.
It requires us mutually to bear with one another's in-
firmities, mildly to resent and freely remit all in-
I'uries; retaining no grudge, nor executing no revenge,
lut requiting our enemies with good wishes and good
deeds. It commands us to be quiet in our stationai
diligent iu our callings, true in our words, u]iright in
our dealings, observant of our relatinns, obedient and
respectful to our superiors, meek and gentle to our in-
feriors, modest and lowly, ingenuous and condescend-
ing in our conversation, candid in our censures, and
innocent, inoffensive, and obliging in our behaviour
towards all persons. It enjoins us to root out of our
hearts all envy and malice, all pride and haughtiness ;
to restrain our tongues from all slander, detraction,
reviling, bitter and harsh language ; not to injure,
hurt, or needlessly trouble our neighbour. It engages
us to prefer the public good before our own opinion,
humour, advantage, or convenience. And woukl men
observe and practise what this excellent doctrine
teaches, how sociable, secure, and pleasant a life we
might lead ! what a paradise would this world then
become, in comparison to what it now is?
If we further survey t!ie laws and directions of our
religion, with regard to the management of our souls
and bodies, we shall also find that nothing could be
devised more worthy of us, more agreeable to reason,
or more productive of our welfare. It obliges us to
preserve unto our reason its natural prerogative and
due empire ; not to suffer the brutish part to usurp
and domineer over us ; not to be enslaved to bodily
temper, or deluded by vain i\incy, to commit that
which is unworthy of, or mischievous to us. It enjoins
us to have sober and moderate thouglits concerninjj
ourselves, suitable to our total dependence on God, to
our natural meanness, weakness, and sinful inclina-
tions ; and that we should not be puffed up witli self-
conceit, or vain confidence in our wealth, honour, and
prosperity. It directs us to compose our minds into
a calm, serene, and cheerful state ; that we should not
easily be moved with anger, distracted with care oi
trouble, nor disturbed with any accident ; but that
we should learn to be content in eveiy condition, and
patiently bear all events that may happen to us. It
commands us to restrain our appetites, to be temperate
in our enjoyments ; to abstain from all irregular plea-
sures which may corrupt our minds, impair our liealth,
lessen our estate, stain our good name, or prejudice
our repose. It doth not prohibit us the use of any
creature that is innocent, convenient, or delightful ;
but indulgeth us a prudent and sober use of them, so
as we are thankful to God, whose goodness bestows
them. It orders us to sequester our minds from the
fading glories, unstable possessions, and vanisliing de-
lights of this world ; things which are unworthy the
attention and affection of an immortal spirit ; and
that we should fix our thoughts, desires, and endea-
vours on heavenly and spiritual objects, which are
infinitely pure, stable, and durable ; not to love the
world and the things therein, but to cast all our care
on God's providence ; not to trust in uncei-tain riches,
but to have our treasure, our heart, hope, ami conver-
sation in heaven. And as our religion deliiers a most
excellent and perfect rule of life, so it chiefly requires
from us a rational and spiritual service. The ritual
observances it enjoins are in number few, in nature
easy to perform, also very reasonable, decent, and use-
ful ; apt to instruct us in, and excite us to the practice
of our duty. And our religion hath this farther pecu-
liar advantage, that it sets before us a living copy of
good practice. Example yields the most compendious
instruction, the most efficacious incitement to action ;
and never was there any example so perfect in itself, so
fit for our imitation, as that of our blessed Saviour,
intended by him to conduct us through all the parts of
duty, especially in those most high and difficult ones,
that of charity, self-denial, humility, and jiatience.
Ilia practice was suited to all degrees and capacities
of men, and so tempered, that persons of all callings
might easily follow him in the paths of righteousness,
in the performance of all substantial duties towards
429
KROM 1649
C3YCL0PJEDIA OF
TO 1689.
God and man. It is also an example attended with
the greatest obligations and inducements to follow it,
whether we consider the great excellency and dignity
of the person (who was the most holy Son of God), or
our manifold relations to him, being our lord and
master, our best friend and most gracious redeemer ;
or the inestimable benefits we have received from him,
even redemption from extreme misery, and being put
into a capacity of the most perfect happiness ; all
which are so many potent arguments engaging us to
imitate him.
Ao'ain, our religion doth not only fully acquaint us
with our duty, but, which is another peculiar virtue
thereof, it builds the same on the most solid founda-
licn. Indeed, ancient philosophers have highly com-
jnended virtue, and earnestly recommended the prac-
tice of it ; but the grounds on which they laid its
praise, and the arguments used to enforce its practice,
were very weak ; also the principles from whence it
was deduced, and the ends they proposed, were poor
and mean, if compared with ours. But the Christian
doctrine recommends goodness to us not only as agree-
able to man's imperfect and fallible reason, but as
conformable to the perfect goodness, infallible wisdom,
and most holy will of God ; and which is enjoined us
by this unquestionable authority, as our indispensable
duty, and the only way to happiness. The principles
from whence it directs our actions are lore, reverence,
lind gratitude to God, good-will to men, and a due
regard to our own welfare. The ends which it pre-
scribes are God's honour and the salvation of men ; it
excites us to the practice of virtue, by reminding us
that we shall thereby resemble the supreme goodness,
express our gratitude to our great benefactor, dis-
charge our duty to our almighty lord and king ; that
we shall thereby avoid the wrath and displeasure
of God, and certainly obtain his favour, mercy, and
every blessing necessary for us ; that we shall escape
not only the terrors of conscience here, but future end-
less misery and torment ; that we shall procure not
only present comfort and peace of mind, but acquire
crowns of everlasting glory and bliss. These are the
firmest grounds on which virtue can subsist, and the
most effectual motives to the embracing of it.
Another peculiar advantage of Christianity, and
which no other law or doctrine could ever pretend to,
is, that as it clearly teaches and strongly persuades
us to so excellent a way of life, so it sufficiently
enables us to practise it ; without which, such is the
frailty of our nature, that all instruction, exhortation,
and encouragement would little avail. The Christian
law is no dead letter, but hath a quickening spirit
attending it. It sounds the ear and strikes the heart
of him who sincerely embraces it. To all good men
it is a sure guide, and safety from all evil. If our
minds are dark or doubtful, it directs us to a faithful
oracle, where we may receive counsel and information ;
if our passions and appetites are unruly and outrage-
ous, if temptations are violent and threaten to overbear
us, it leads us to a full magazine, where we may supply
ourselves with all proper arms to withstand and sub-
due them. If our condition is disconsolate or despe-
rate, here we may apply for relief and assistance ; for
on our earnest seeking and asking, it offers us the
wisdom and power of God himself to direct, assist,
support, and comfort us in all exigencies. To them
who with due fervency and constancy <ask it, CJod
hath promised in the gospel to 'grant his Holy Spirit'
to direct them in their ways, to admonish them of
their duty, to strengthen them in obedience, to secure
them from temptations, to support them in affliction.
As this is peculiar to our religion, so it is of consider-
able advantage. For what would the more perfect
rule signify, without power to observe, and knowledge
to discern it ? and how can a creature so ignorant,
impotent, and inconstant as man, who is so easily
deluded by false appearances, and transported with
disorderly passions, know how to conduct himself,
without some guide and assistance ; or how to prose-
cute what is good for him, especially in cases of in-
tricacy and difficulty? how can such an one continue
in a good state, or recover himself from a bad one, or
attain any virtuous habit, did he not apprehend such
a friendly power ready on all occasions to guard and
defend him? It is this consideration only that can
nourish our hope, excite our courage, and quicken our
endeavours in religious practice, as it assures us that
there is no duty so hard, which, by God's grace, we
may not perform, and no enemy so mighty, which, by
his help, we cannot conquer ; for though we are not
able to do anything of ourselves, yet we * can do all
things by Christ that strengthens us.'
Our religion doth further declare, that God is not
only reconcilable, but desirous to be our friend,
making overtures of grace to us, and offering a full
pardon for all crimes we have committed. It assures
us, that if we are careful to amend, God will not be
extreme to mark what is done amiss ; that by our
infirmity we often fall, yet by our repentance we may
rise again ; that our endeavours to please God, though
imperfect and defective, yet if serious and sincere,
will be accepted by him. This is the tenor of that
great covenant between heaven and earth, which the
Son of God procured by his intercession, purchased
by his wonderful patience and meritorious obedience,
ratified and sealed by his blood, published to man-
kind, and confirmed the truth thereof by many won-
derful miracles. Thus is our religion an inestimable
benefit and unspeakable comfort to all who sincerely
embrace and firmly adhere to it ; because it gives
ease to their conscience, and encourages them in the
practice of their duty.
The last advantage I shall mention, peculiar to the
Christian doctrine, is the style and manner of its
speech, which is properly accommodated to the capa-
city of all persons, and worthy the majesty and sin-
cerity of divine truth. It expresseth itself plainly
and simply, without any affectation or artifice, osten-
tation of wit or eloquence. It speaks with an impe-
rious awful confidence, in the strain of a king ; its
words carrying with them authority and power divine,
commanding attention, assent, and obedience ; as this
you are to believe, this you are to do, on pain of our
high displeasure, and at your utmost peril, for even
your life and salvation depend thereon. Such is the
style and tenor of the Scripture, such as plainly be-
comes the sovereign Lord of all to use, when he is
pleased to proclaim his mind and will to us his crea-
tures.
As God is in himself invisible, and that we could
not bear the lustre and glory of his immediate pre-
sence, if ever he would convincingly signify his will
and pleasure to us, it must be by efVects of his incom-
municable power, by works extraordinary and super-
natural ; and innumerable such hath God afforded in
favour and countenance of our religion ; as his clearly
predicting the future revelation of this doctrine, by
express voices and manifest apparitions from heaven ;
by frequently suspending the course of natural causes ;
by remarkable instances of providence ; by internal
attestations on the minds and consciences of men ; by
such wonderful means doth God demonstrate that the
Christian religion came from him ; an advantage pe-
culiar to it, and such as no other institution, except
that of the .lews, which was a prelude to it, could
ever reasonably pretend to. I hope these considera-
tions will be sufficient to vindicate our religion from
all aspersions cast on it by inconsiderate, vain, and
dissolute persons, as also to confirm us in the esteem,
and excite us to the practice thereof.
And if men of wit would lay aside their prejudices,
reason would compel them to confess, th.at the heavenly
430
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ISAAC B (RROW.
doctrines and laws of Christ, established by innumer-
able miracles, his completely holy and pure life, his
meekness, charit)', and entire submission to the will
of Ofod in his death, and his wonderful resurrection
from tl.e state of the dead, are most unquestionable
evidences of the divinity of his person, of the truth of
his gospel, and of the obligation that lies upon us
thankfully to accept him for our Redeemer and Saviour,
on the gracious terms he has proposed. To love God
with all our souls, who is the maker of our beings,
and to love our neighbours as ourselves, who bear his
image, as they are the sum and substance of the
Christian religion, so are they duties fitted to our
nature, and most agreeable to our reason. And, there-
fore, as the obtaining the love, favour, and kindness
of God should be the chief and ruling principle in our
hearts, the first thing in our consideration, as what
ought to govern all the purposes and actions of our
lives ; so we cannot possibly have more powerful mo-
tives to goodness, righteousness, justice, equity, meek-
ness, humility, temperance, and chastity, or greater
dissuasives and discouragement from all kinds of sin,
than what the Holy Scriptures afford us. If we will
fear and reverence God, love our enemies who despite-
fully use us, and do good in all our capacities, we are
promised tliat our reward shall he very great ; that
we shall be the children of the Most High, that we
shall be ii;habitants of the everlasting kingdom of
heaven, where there is laid up for us a crown of
righteousness, of life, and glory.
[What is WU?]
First it may be demanded what the thing is we
speak of is, or what this facetiousness doth import ?
To which question I might reply as Democritus did to
him that asked the definition of a man ; ' 'Tis that
which we all see and know.' Any one better appre-
hends what it is by acquaintance than I can inform
him by description. It is indeed a thing so versatile
and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many
postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by
several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less
hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than
to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure
of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion
to a known story, or in seasonable application of a
trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale : some-
times it playeth in words and phrases, taking adva:i-
tage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the athnity
of their sound. Sometimes it is wrapped in a dress
of humorous expression ; sometimes it lurketh under
an odd similitude ; sometimes it is lodged in a sly
question, in a smart answer, in a quirklsh reason, in
a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly
retorting an objection : sometimes it is couched in a
bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty
hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible
reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense :
sometimes a scenical representation of persons or
things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or ges-
ture passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity,
sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being :
sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon
what is strange ; sometimes from a crafty wresting
obvious matter to the purpose ; often it consists in one
knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell
how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable,
being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy
and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner
of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as
reason teacheth and proveth things by), which by a
pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression
doth afl^ect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some
wonder, and breeding some delight thereto. It raiseth
admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of appre-
hension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of
spirit and reach of wit more than vulgar. It seemeth
to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch
in remote conceits applical)]e ; a notable skill, that he
can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose
before him ; together witl> a lively briskness of humour,
not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination.
Whence in Aristotle such persons are termed epidexioi,
dexterous men ; and tutroj}"!, men of facile or versa-
tile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all
things, or turn all things to tliemselves. It also pro-
cureth delight, by gratifying curiosity with its rare-
ness or semblance of difficulty; as monsters, not for
their beauty, but their rarity ; as juggling tricks, not
for their use, but their abstruseness, are behebl with
pleasure, by diverting the mind from its road of serious
thoughts ; by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit;
by provoking to such dispositions of spirit in way of
emulation or complaisance ; and by seasoning matters,
otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and
thence grateful tang.
[ Wise Selection of Pkasu7-es.]
"Wisdom is exci'edingly pleasant and peaceable ;
in general, by disposing us to acquire and to enjoy all
the good delight and ]u;ppiness we are capable of;
and by freeing us from all the inconveniences, mis-
chiefs, and infelicities our condition is subject to. For
whatever good from clear understanding, deliberate
advice, sagacious foresight, stable resolution, dexter-
ous address, right intention, and orderly proceeding,
doth naturally result, wisdom coiifers : whatever evil
blind ignorance, false presumption, unwary credulity,
precipitate rashness, unsteady purpose, ill contrivance,
backwardness, inability, unwieldiness and confusion
of thought beget, wisdom prevents. From a thousand
snares and treacherous allurements, from innumerablf
rocks and dangerous sui-priscs, from exceedingly many
needless incumbrances and vexatious toils of fruitless
endeavours, she redeems and secures us.
Wisdom instructs us to examint compare, and
rightly to value the objects that court our affections
and challenge our care ; and thereby regulates our
passions and moderates our endeavours, which begets
a pleasant serenity and peaceable tranquillity of
mind. For when, being deluded with false shews, and
relying upon ill-grounded presumptions, we highly
esteem, passionatelj' affect, and eagerly pursue vhings
of little wortli in themselves or concernment to us ;
as we unhandsomel}' prostitute our affections, and
prodigally mispend our time, and v.iinly lose oui
labour, so the event not answering our expectation,
our minds thereby .are confounded, disturbed, and
distempered. But when, guided by right reason, we
conceive grea,t esteem of, and zealously are enamoured
with, and vigorously strive to attain, things of excel-
lent worth and weighty consequence, the conscience
of having well placed our affections and will emjiloyed
our pains, and the experience of fruits c\ rresponding
to our hopes, i-avislics our minds with uhcxpres>il)lo
content. And so it is: present a]ipearance and v:.l-
gar conceit ordinarily impose upon our fancies, dis-
guising things with a deceitful varnish, and rojiie-
senting those that are vainest with the grcalesfc
advantage; whilst the noblest objects, being of a
more subtle and spiritual nature, like fairest jiwuls
enclosed in a homely box, avoid the notice of gross
sense, and j)ass undiscerned by us. But the light of
wisdom, as it unmasks specious imposture, ami be-
reaves it of its false colours, so it penetrates into the
retirements of true excellency, and reveals itsgeuuins
lustre.
[Grief Controlled hy Wisdom. ~\
Wisdom makes all the troubles, griefs, and pauis
431
r
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 16S9.
incident to life, whether casual adversities or natural
afflictions, easy and supportable, by rightly valuing
the importance and moderating the influence of them.
It suflers not busy fancy to alter the nature, amplify
the detrree, or extend the duration of them, by repre-
senting them more sad, heavy, and remediless than
thev truly are. It allows them no force beyond what
naturally and necessarily they have, nor contributes
nourishment to their increase. It keeps them at a
due distance, not permitting them to encroach upon
the soul, or to propagate their influence beyond their
proper sphere.
[Honmir to God.']
God is honoured by a willing and careful practice
of all pietj' and virtue for conscience' sake, or an
avowed obedience to his holy will. This is the most
natural expression of our reverence towards him, and
the most effectual way of promoting the same in
others. A subject cannot better demonstrate the re-
verence he bears towards his prince, than by (with a
cheerful diligence) observing his laws ; for by so
doing, he declares that he acknowledgeth the autho-
rity "and revereth the majesty which enacted them ;
that he approves the wisdom v.hich devised them, and
the goodness which designed them for public benefit ;
that he dreads his prince's power, which can maintain
them, and his justice, which will vindicate them ;
that he relies upon his fidelity in making good what
of protection or of recompense he propounds to the
observers of them. No less pregnant a signification
of our reverence towards God do we yield in our
gladly and strictly obeying his laws, thereby evi-
dencing our submission to God's sovereign authority,
our esteem of his wisdom and goodness, our a^rful
regard to his power and justice, our confidence in
him, and dependence upon his word. The goodliness
to the sight, the pleasantness to the taste, which is
ever perceptible in those fruits which genuine piety
beareth, the beauty men see in a calm mind and a
sober conversation, the sweetness they taste from
■works of justice and charity, will certainly produce
veneration to the doctrine that teacheth such things,
and to the authority which enjoins them. We shall
especially honour God by discharging faithfully those
offices which God hath intrusted us with ; by improv-
ing diligently those talents which God hath conmiitted
to us ; by using carefully those means and opportu-
nities which God hath vouchsafed us of doing him
service and promoting his glory. Thus, he to whom
God hath given wealth, if he expend it, not to the
nourishment of pride and luxury, not only to the
gratifying his own pleasure or humour, but to the
furtherance of God's honour, or to the succour of his
indigent neighbour, in any pious or charitable way,
he doth thereby in a special manner honour God.
He also on whom God hath bestowed wit and parts,
if he employ them not so much in contriving projects
to advance his own petty interests, or in procuring vain
applause to himself, as in advantageously setting forth
God's praise, handsomely recommending goodness,
dexterously engaging men in ways of virtue, he doth
thereby rt'markably honour God. He likewise that
hath honour conferred upon him, if he subordinate it
to God's honour, if he use his owi credit as an instru-
ment of bringing credit to goodness, thereby adorning
and illustrating piety, he by so doing doth eminently
practise this duty.
[TJie Goodness of God.}
Wherever we direct our eyes, whether we reflect
them inward upon ourselves, we behold his goodness
to occupy and penetrate the very root and centre of
our beings ; or extend them abroad towards the things
•bout ust we may perceive ourselves enclosed wholly,
and surrounded with his benefits. At home, we find
a comely body framed by his curious artifice, various
organs fitly proportioned, situated and tempered for
strength, ornament, and motion, actuated by a gentle
heat, and invigorated with lively spirits, disposed to
health, and qualified for a long endurance ; subser-
vient to a soul endued with divers senses, faculties,
and powers, apt to inquire after, pursue, and perceive
various delights and contents. Or when we contem-
plate the wonderful works of nature, and, walking
about at our leisure, gaze upon this ample theatre of
the world, considering the stately beauty, constant
order, and sumptuous furniture thereof, the glorious
splendour and uniform motion of the heavens, the
pleasant fertility of the earth, the curious figure and
fragrant sweetness of plants, the exquisite frame of
animals, and all other amazing miracles of nature,
wherein the glorious attributes of God (especially his
transcendent goodness) are most conspicuously dis-
played (so that by them not only large acknowledg-
ments, but even congratulatory hymns, as it were, of
praise, have been extorted from the mouths of Ais-
totle, Pliny, Galen, and such like men, never sus-
pected guilty of an excessive devotion), then should
our hearts be affected with thankful sense, and our
lips break forth into his praise.
[Charihj.l
Is any man fallen into disgrace ? charity doth hold
down its head, is abashed and out of counteiuiT< —
partaking of his shame. Is any man disappointea o/
his hopes or endeavours ? charit}' crieth out, alas ! as
if it were itself defeated. Is any man afflicted with
pain or sickness? charity looketh sadly, it sighetli
and groaneth, it fainteth and languisheth with him.
Is <any man pinched with hard want ? charity, if it
cannot succour, it will condole. Doth ill news arrive?
charity doth hear it with an unwilling ear and a sad
heart, although not particularly concerned in it. The
sight of a wreck at sea, of a field spread with carcasses,
of a countiy desolated, of houses burnt and cities
ruined, and of the like calamities incident to man-
kind, would touch the bowels of any man . but the
very report of them would affect the heart of charity.
[Concord and Discord."]
How good and pleasant a thing it is (as David
saith) for brethren (and so we are all at least by
nature) to live together in unity. How that (as
Solomon saith) belter is a dry mor.sel, and quietness
therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with strife.
How delicious that conversation is which is accom-
panied with mutual confidence, freedom, courtesy,
and complaisance ; how calm the mind, howcomjioscd
the affections, how serene the countenance, how melo-
dious the voice, how sweet the sleep, how contentful
the whole life is of him that neither deviseth mischief
against others, nor suspects any to be contrived against
himself ! And contrariwise, how ungrateful and loath-
some a thing it is to abide in a state of enmity, wrath,
dissension : having the thoughts distracted with soli-
citous care, anxious suspicion, envious regret ; the
heart boiling with choler, the face over-clouded with
discontent, the tongue jarring and out of tune, the
ears filled with discordant noises of contradiction,
clamour, and reproach ; the whole frame of body and
soul distempered and disturbed with the worst of
passions ! How much more comfortable it is to walk
in smooth and even paths, tlian to wander in rugged
ways overgrown with briers, obstructed with rubs, and
beset with snares; to sail steadily in a quiet, than to
be tossed in a tempestuous sea ; to behold the lovely
face of heaven smiling with a cheerful serenity, than
to see it frowning with clouds, or raging with storms ;
to hear hanuonious consents than dissonant janglings ;
432
I-KOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ISAAC BARROW.
to see objects correspondent in graceful symmetry,
tban lying disorderly in confused heaps; to be in
hi:alth, and have the natural humours consent in
moderate temper, tlian (as it happens in diseases)
agitated with tumultuous commotions : how all senses
and faculties of man unanimously rejoice in those
emblems of peace, order, harmony, and proportion.
Yea, how nature universally delights in a quiet sta-
bility or undisturbed progress of motion ; the beauty,
strength, and vigour of everything requires a concur-
rence of force, co-operation, and contribution of help ;
all things thrive and flourish by communicating reci-
procal aid ; and the world subsists by a friendly con-
spiracy of its parts ; and especially that political
society of men chiefly aims at peace as its end, de-
pends on it as its cause, relies on it for its support.
Ilow much a peaceful state resembles heaven, into
■which neither complaint, pain, nor clamour (otite
paithos, oute panos, oule hrauge, as it is in the Apo-
calypse) do ever enter ; but blessed souls converse
together in perfect love, and in perpetual concord ;
and how a condition of enmity represents the state of
hell, that black and dismal region of dark hatred,
fiery wrath, and horrible tumult. How like a para-
dise the world would be, flourishing in joy and rest,
if men would cheerfully conspire in aflection, and
helpfully contribute to each other's content : and how
like a savage wilderness now it is, when, like wild
beasts, they vex and persecute, worry and devour each
other. How not only philosophy hath placed the
supreme pitch of happiness in a calmness of mind
and tranquillity of life, void of care and trouble, of
irregular passions and perturbations ; but that Holy
Scripture itself, in that one term of peace, most usu-
ally comprehends all joy and content, all felicity and
prosperity : so that the heavenly consort of angels,
when they agree most highly to bless, and to wish the
greatest happiness to mankind, could not better ex-
press their sense than by saying, ' Be on earth peace,
and good-will among men.'
Almighty God, the most good and beneficent Maker,
gracious Lord, and merciful Preserver of all things,
infuse into their hearts those heavenly graces of meek-
ness, patience, and benignity ; grant us and his whole
church, and all his creation, to serve him quietly here,
and a blissful rest to praise and magnify him for
CTer.
\_Industi'y.'\
By industry we understand a serious and steady
application of mind, joined with a vigorous exercise
of our active faculties, in prosecution of any reason-
able, honest, useful design, in order to the accomplish-
ment or attainment of some considerable good ; as,
for instance, a merchant is industrious whocontinueth
intent and active in driving on his trade for acquiring
wealth ; a soldier is industrious who is watchful for
occasion, and earnest in action towards obtaining the
victory ; and a scholar is industrious who doth assi-
duously bend his mind to study for getting know-
ledge.
Industry doth not consist merely in action, for
that is incessant in all persons, our mind being a rest-
less thing, never abiding in a total cessation from
thought or from design ; being like a ship in the sea,
if not steered to some good purpose by reason, yet
tossed by the waves of fancy, or driven by the winds
of temptation somewhither. But the direction of our
mind to some good end, without roving or flinching,
in a straight and steady course, drawing after it our
active powers in execution thereof, doth constitute
industrj' ; the which therefore usually is attended
with labour and pain ; for our mind (which naturally
doth aflect variety and liberty, being apt to loathe
familiar objects, ani to be weary of any constraint) is
not easily kept in a constant attention to the same
thing ; and the spirits employed in thought are prone
to flutter and fly away, so tliat it is hard to fix tliem ;
and the corporeal instruments of action being strained
to a high pitch, or detained in a tone, will soon feel
a lassitude somewhat oflx;nsive to nature ; wlience
labour or pain is commonly reckoned an ingredient of
industry, and laboriousness is a name signifvinc it ;
upon which account this virtue, as involving'labour,
deserveth a peculiar commendation ; it being then
most laudable to follow the dictates of reason, when
so doing is attended with difficulty and trouble.
Such, in general, I conceive to be the nature of in-
dustry, to the practice whereof the following conside-
rations maj- induce.
1. We may consider that industry doth befit the
constitution and frame of our nature, all the faculties
of our soul and organs of our body being adapted in
a congruity and tendency thereto : our hands arc
suited for work, our feet for travel, our senses to
watch for occasion of pursuing good and eschewin"
evil, our reason to plod and contrive ways of employ-
ing the other parts and powers ; all these, I say, are
formed for action, and that not in a loose and "ad-
ding way, or in a slack and remiss degree, but in re-
gard to determinate ends, with vigour requisite to
attain them ; and especially our appetites do prompt
to industry, as inclining to things not attainable with-
out it; according to that aphorism of the wise man,
' The desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands
refuse to labour ;' that is, he is apt to desire things
which he cannot attain without pains ; and not en-
during them, he for want thereof doth feel a deadly
smart and anguish : wherefore, in not being industri-
ous, we defeat the intent of our ]Maker, we pervert his
work and gifts, we forfeit the use and benefit of our
faculties, -we are bad husbands of nature's stock.
2. In consequence hereto, industry doth preserve
and perfect our nature, keeping it in good tune and
temper, improving and advancing it towards its best
state. The labour of our mind in attentive medita-
tion and study doth render it capable and patient of
thinking upon any object or occasion, doth polish and
refine it by use, doth enlarge it by accession of habits,
doth quicken and rouse our spirits, dilating and dif-
fusing them into their proper channels. The very
labour of our body doth keep the organs of action
sound and clean, discussing fogs and superfluous
humours, opening passages, distributing nourishmenf,
exciting vital heat ; barring the use of it, no good
constitution of soul or body can subsist ; but a foul
rust, a dull numbness, a resty listlessness, a heavy
unwieldiness, must seize on us ; our spirits will be
stifled and choked, our hearts will grow faint and
languid, our parts will flag and decay ; the vigour of
our mind, and the health of our body, will be much
impaired.
It is with us as with other things in nature, which
by motion are preserved in their native purity and
perfection, in their sweetness, in their lustre , rest
corrupting, debasing, and defiling them. If the water
runneth, it holdeth clear, sweet, and fresh ; but stag-
nation tumeth it into a noisome puddle : if the air
be fanned by winds, it is i)ure and wholesome ; but
from being shut up, it groweth thick and putrid : if
metals be employed, they abide smooth and splendid ;
but lay them up, and they soon contract rust : if the
earth be belaboured with culture, it yieldeth com ;
but lying neglected, it will be overgrown with brakes
and thistles ; and the better its soil is, the ranker
weeds it will produce : all nature is upheld in its
being, order, and state, by constant agitation : every
creature is incessantly employed in action conform-
able to its designed end and use : in like manner the
preservation and improvcuKut of our facultied de-
pend on their constant exercise.
433
29
TROH 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
ro 168!*
JOHN TILLOTSON.
John Tillotsox (1630-1694) was the son of a
clothier at Sowerbr, near Halifax, and was brought
up to the Calvinis"tic faith of the Puritans. While
Archbishop Tillotson.
studying at Cambridge, his early notions were con-
siderably modified by the perusal of Chillingworth's
' Religion of the Protestants ;' and at the passing of
the act of uniformity in 1662, they had become so
nearly allied to those of the church of England, that
St Lawrence Church, Jewry.
Ii* submitted to the law without hesitation, and ac-
•j^ted a curacy. He very quickly became noted as
a preacher, and began to rise in the church. It was
as lecturer in St Lawrence church, Jewry, in the
city of London, that liis sermons first attracted
general attention. Tlie importance which he thus
ai.quired he endeavoured to employ in favour of his
old associates, the nonconformists, whom he was
anxious to bring, like himself, within the pale of the
establishment ; but his efforts, though mainly per-
haps prompted by benevolent feeling, led to no-
thing but disappointment. Meanwhile, Tillotson
had married Miss French, a niece of Oliver Crom-
well, by which alliance he became connected with
the celebrated Dr Wilkins, the second husband of
his wife's mother. This led to his being intrusted
with the publication of the works of that prelate
after his decease. The moderate principles of Til-
lotson as a churchman, and his respectable charac-
ter, raised him after the Kevohition to the arch-
bishopric of Canterbury, in which situation he
exerted himself to remove the abuses that had
crept into the church, and, in particular, manifested
a strong desire to abolish non-residence among the
clergy. These proceedings, and the heterodoxy of
some of his views, excited much enmity against
him, and subjected him to consideral)le annoyance.
He died about tliree years after being raised tc
the primac\% leaving his sermons as the sole pro-
perty with whicli he was able to endow his widow.
On account of his great celebrity as a divine, they
were purchased b}' a bookseller for no less than two
thousand five hundred guineas; and down to the
present time, they have continued in high estimation,
as instructive, rational, perspicuous, and impressive
discourses. Although the style of Tillotson is fre-
quentl}'^ careless and languid, his sentences tedious
and unmusical, his words ill-chosen and unskilfully
placed, and liis metaphors deficient in dignity, yet
there is so nnich warmth and earnestness in his
manner, such purity and clearness of expression, so
entire a freedom from the appearance of affectation
and art, and so strong an infusion of excellent sense
and virtuous feeling, that, in spite of all defects,
these sermons must ever be attractive to the ad-
mirers of sound practical religion and pliilosoptiy.
jMany detached passages miglit be quoted, in whicli
important truths are conveyed with admirable force
and precision ; in the following extracts, we shall
endeavour to illustrate both the excellences and
faults of the works of this eminent divine.
[Advanta(/es of Truth and Sinceritij.'\
Truth and reality have all the advantages of ap-
pearance, and many more. If the show of anything
be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better :
for why does any man disstnible, or seem to be that
which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have
such a quality as he jiretends to ? for to counterfeit and
dissemi'le, is to put oi\ the appearance of some real
excellency. Now, the best way in the world for a man
to seem to be anything, is really to be what we would
seem to be. Besides, that it is many times as trouble-
some to make good the pretence of a good quality, as
to have it ; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one
but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains
and labour to seem to have it are lost. There is some-
thing uimatural in painting, which a skilful eye will
easily discern from native beauty and complexion.
It is hard to personate and act a part long ; for
where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always
be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and
betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any
man think it convenient to seem cood, let him be so
indeed, and then his goodness will appear to every
body's satisfaction ; so that, upon all accounts, sia-
4U
PROSK WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN TILLOrSON.
ceritj is true wisdom. Particularly as to the affairs
of this world, integrity hath many advantages over
all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and
deceit ; it is much the plainer and easier, much the
safer and more secure way of dealing in the world ; it
has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement
and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it ; it is
the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying
us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and
last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do con-
tinually grow weaker, and less effectual and service-
able to them that use them ; whereas integrity gains
strength by use ; and the more and longer any man
practiseth it, the greater service it does him, by con-
firming his reputation, and encouraging those with
whom he hath to do to repose the greatest trust and
confidence in him, which is an unspeakable advantage
in the business and affairs of life.
Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs
nothing to help it out ; it is always near at hand, and
Bits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we
are aware ; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a
man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a
great many more to make it good. It is like building
upon a false foundation, which continually stands in
need of props to shore it up, and proves at last more
chargeable than to have raised a substantial building
at first upon a true and solid foundation ; for sin-
cerity is firm and substantial, and there is nothing
hollow or unsound in it, and because it is plain and
open, fears no discovery ; of which the crafty man is
always in danger ; and when he thinks he walks in the
dark, all his pretences are so transparent, that he that
"jins may read them. He is the last man that finds
himself to be found out ; and whilst he takes it for
granted that he makes fools of others, he renders him-
self ridiculous.
Add to all this, that sincerity is the most compen-
dious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the
6j)eedy despatch of business ; it creates confidence in
those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many
inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words;
it is like travelling in a plain beaten road, which
commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end
than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves.
In a word, whatsoever convenience may be thought to
be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over ;
but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it
brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and sus-
picion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth,
nor trusted perhaps when he means honestly. \\'hen
a man has once forfeited the reputation of his iiitegrity,
he is set fast, and nothing will then sen-e his turn,
neither truth nor falsehood.
And 1 have often thought that God hath, in his great
wisdom, hid from men of false and dislionest minds
the wonderful advantages of truth and integrity to the
prosperity even of our worldly affairs. The^ie men are
so blinded by their covetousness and ambition, that
they cannot look beyond a present advantage, nor for-
bear to seize upon it, though by ways never so in-
direct ; they caimot see so far as to the remote conse-
quences of a steady integrity, and the vast benefit and
advantages which it will bring a man at last. Were
but this sort of men wise and clear sighted enough
to discern this, they would be honest out of very
knavery, not out of any love to honesty and virtue,
but with a crafty design to promote and advance mure
effectually their own interests ; and therefore the jus-
tice of the divine providence hath hid this truest point
of wisdom from their eyes, that bad men might not
be upon equal terms with the just and upright, and
serve their ovm wicked designs by honest and lawful
means.
Indeed, if a man were only to deal in the world for
a day, and should never have occasion to converse
more with mankind, never more need their good
opinion or good word, it were then no great matter
(speaking as to the concernments of this world) if a
man spend his reputation all at once, and ventured it
at one throw : but if he be to continue in the world,
and would have the advantage of conversation whilst
he is in it, let him make use of truth and .sincerity in
all his words and actions ; for nothing but this will
last and hold out to the end ; all other arts will fail,
but truth and integrity will carry a man through, and
bear him out to the last.
[ Virtue and Vice Declared by the General Vote of
MaTikind.]
God hath shown us what is good by the general
vote and consent of mankind. Not that all mankind
do agree concerning virtue and vice ; but that as to
the greater duties of piet}', justice, mercy, and the
like, the exceptions are but few in comparison, and
not enough to Infringe a general consent. And of
this I shall offer to you this threefold evidence: —
1. That these virtues are generally pi-aised and held
in esteem by mankind, ancl the contrary vices gene-
rally reproved and evil spoken of. Now, to praise
anything, is to give testimon}' to the goodness of it ;
and to censure anything, is to declare that we believe
it to be evil. And if we consult the history of a'l
ages, we shall find that the things which are generally
praised in the lives of men, and recommended to the
imitation of posterity, are piety and devotion, grati-
tude and justice, humanity and charity ; and that the
contrary to these are marked with ignominy and re-
proach : the former are commended even in enemies,
and the latter are branded even by those who had a
kindness for the persons that were guilty of them ; so
constant hath mankind always been in the commen-
dation of virtue, and the censure of vice. Nay, we
find not only those who are virtuous themselves giv-
ing their testimony and applause to virtue, but even
those who are vicious ; not out of love to goodness,
but from the conviction of their own minds, and from
a secret reverence they bear to the common consent
and opinion of mankind. And this is a great testi-
monj', because it is the testimony of an enemy, ex-
torted by the mere light and force of truth.
And, on the contrary, nothing is more ordinary
than for vice to reprove sin, and to hear men condemn
the like or the same things in others which they allow
in themselves. And this is a clear evidence that vice
is generally condemned by mankind ; that man}' men
condemn it in themselves; and those who are so kind
as to spare themselves, are very quick-sighted to spy
a fault in anybody else, and will censure a bad
action done by another, with as nmch freedu.n and
impartiality as the most virtuous man in the world.
And to this consent of mankind about virtue and
vice the Scripture frequently appeals. As when it
commands us to 'provide things honest in the sight
of all men ; and by well-doing to put to silence the
ignorance of foolish nieti ;' intimating that there are
some things so confessedly good, and owned to be such
by so general a vote of mankind, that the worst of
men have not the face to open their mouths against
them. And it is made the character of a virtuous
action if it be lovely and commendable, and of good
report; Pliilip. iv. 8, 'Whatsoever tilings are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be auj
virtue, if tliere be any praise, make account of these
things;' intimating to us, that mankind do generally
concur in the praise and commendation of what is
virtuous.
2. Men do generally glory and stand upon tl>.eif
innocency when tliey do virtuously, but are a.>iiia?ned
and out of countenance when they do the contrary.
Now, glory and sljame are nothing else but an appeal
435
FROM 1649
CYCLOP-^DIA OF
ic 1689.
to the judgment of others concerning the good or evil
of our actions. ' There are, indeed, some such mon-
sters as are impudent in their impieties, but these are
but few in comparison. Generally, mankind is modest ;
the greatest part of those who do evil are apt to blush
at their owi faults, and to confess them in their coun-
tenance, which is an acknowledgment that they are
not only guilty to themselves that they have done
amiss, but that they are apprehensive that others
think so ; for guilt is a passion respecting ourselves,
but shame regards others. Now, it is a sign of shame
that men love to conceal their faults from others, and
commit them secretly in the dark, and without wit-
nesses, and are afraid even of a child or a fool ; or if
they be discovered in them, they are solicitous to ex-
cuse and extenuate them, and ready to lay the fault
upon anybody else, or to transfer their guilt, or as
much of it as they can, upon others. All which are
certain tokens that men are not only naturally guilty
to themselves when they commit a fault, but that
they are sensible also what opinions others have of
these things.
And, on the contrary, men are apt to stand upon
their justification, and to glory when they have done
well. The conscience of a man's own virtue and in-
tegrity lifts up his head, and gives him confidence
before others, because he is satisfied they have a good
opinion of his actions. What a good face does a man
naturally set upon a good deed ! And how does he
sneak when he hath done wickedly, being sensible
that he is condemned by others, as well as by himself!
No man is afraid of being upbraided for having dealt
iionestly or kindly with others, nor does he account it
any calumny or reproach to have it reported of him
that he is a sober and chaste man. No man blusheth
when he meets a man with whom he hath kept his
word and discharged his trust ; but every man is apt
to do so when he meets one with whom he has dealt
dishonestly, or who knows some notorious crime by
him.
3. Vice is generally forbidden and punished by
human laws ; but against the contrary virtues there
never was any law. Some vices are so manifestly evil
in themselves, or so mischievous to human society,
that the laws of most nations have taken care to dis-
countenance them by severe penalties. Scarce any
nation was ever so barbarous as not to maintain and
vindicate the honour of their gods and religion by
public laws. Murder and adultery, rebellion and
sedition, perjury and breach of trust, fraud and op-
pression, are vices severely prohibited by the laws of
most nations — a clear indication what opinion the
generality of mankind and the wisdom of nations
have always had of these things.
But now, against the contrary virtues there never
was any law. No man was ever impeached for ' living
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world'
— a plain acknowledgment that mankind always
thought them good, and never were sensible of the
inconvenience of them ; for had they been so, they
would have provided against them by laws. This St
Paul takes notice of as a great coramcTidation of the
Christian virtues — ' The fruit of tlie Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, fidelity,
meekness, temperance ; against such there is no law ;'
the greatest evidence that could be given that these
things are unquestionably good in the esteem of man-
kind, ' against such there is no law.' As if he had
eaid. Turn over the law of Moses, search those of
Athens and Sparta, and the twelve tables of the Ro-
mans, and those innumerable laws that have been
added since, and you shall not in any of them find
any of those virtues that I have mentioned condemned
and forbidden— a clear evidence that mankind never
took any exception against them, but are generally
agreed about the goodness of them.
lEvidence of a Creator in the Structure of the World."]
How often might a man, after he had jumbled a
set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground
before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so
much as make a good discourse in prose ! And may
not a little book be as easily made by chance, as this
great volume of the world 1 How long might a man
be in sprinkling colours upon a canvass with a care-
less hand, before they could happen to make the
exact picture of a man ? And is a man easier made
by chance than his picture? How long might twenty
thousand blind men, which should be sent out from
the several remote parts of England, wander up and
down before they would all meet upon Salisbury
Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order
of an army ? And yet this is much more easy to be
imagined, than how the innumerable blind parts of
matter should rendezvous themselves ii-to a world.
\_Sin and Holiness.']
A state of sin .and holiness are not like two ways
that are just parted by a line, so as a man may step
out of the one full into the other; but they are like
two ways that lead to very distant places, and conse"
quently are at a good distance from one another ; and
the farther a man hath travelled in the one, the
farther he is from the other ; so that it requires time
and pains to pass from one to the other.
[Resolution necessary in foi'saking Vice.]
He that is deeply engaged in vice, is like a man
laid fast in a bog, who, by a faint and lazy struggling
to get out, does but spend his strength to no purjwse,
and sinks himself the deeper into ic : the only way is,
by a resolute and vigorous effort to spring out, if pos-
sible, at once. When men are sorely urged and
pressed, they find a power in themselves which they
thought they had not : like a coward driven up to a
wall, who, in the extremity of distress and despair,
will fight terribly, and perform wonders ; or like a
man lame of the gout, who, being assaulted by a pre-
sent and terrible danger, forgets his disease, and will
find his legs rather than lose his life.
[Singidarity.]
To be singular in anything that is wise, worthy, and
excellent, is not a disjjaragement, but a praise : every
man would choose to be thus singular. * * To act
otherwise, is just as if a man, upon great deliberation,
should rather choose to be drowned than to be saved
by a plank or a small boat, or to be carried into the
harbour any other way than in a great ship of so
many hundred tons.
[Commencertvent of a Vicious Course.]
At first setting out upon a vicious course, men are
a little nice and delicate, like young travellers, who
at first are ofi'ended at every speck of dirt that lights
upon them ; but after they have been accustomed to
it, and have travelled a good while in foul ways, it
ceaseth to be troublesome to them to be dashed and
bespattered. * *
When we bend a thing at first, it will endeavour
to restore itself; but it may be held bent so long, till
it will continue so of itself, and grow crooked ; and
then it may require more force and violence to reduce
it to its former straightuess than we used to make it
crooked at first.
[77(6 Moral Feelings Instinctive.]
[God hath discovered our duties to us] by a kind of
natural instinct, by which I mean a secret impression
436
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EDWARD SriLLlNGFLEET.
upon the minds of men, whereby they are naturally
carried to approve some things as good and fit, and to
dislike other things, as having a native evil and de-
formity in them. And this I call a natural instinct,
because it does not seem to proceed so much from the
exercise of our reason, as from a natural propension
and inclination, like those instincts which are in
brute creatures, of natural affection and care toward
their young ones. And that these inclinations are
precedent to all reason and discourse about them, evi-
dently appears by this, that they do put forth them-
selves every whit as vigorously in young persons as in
those of riper reason ; in the rude and ignorant sort of
people, as in those who are more polished and re-
fined. For we see plainly that the young and igno-
rant have as strong impressions of piety and devotion,
as true a sense of gratitude, and justice, and pity, as
the wiser and more knowing part of mankind. A
plain indication, that the reason of mankind is pre-
vented* by a kind of natural instinct and anticipation
concerning the good or evil, the comeliness or defor-
mity, of these things. And though this do not equally
extend to all the instances of our duty, yet as to the
great lines and essential parts of it, mankind hardly
need to consult any other oracle than the mere pro-
pensions and inclinations of their nature ; as, whether
we ought to reverence the divine nature, to be grate-
ful to those who have conferred benefits upon us, to
speak the truth, to be faithful to our promise, to re-
store that which is committed to us in trust, to pitv
and relieve those that are in misery, and in all
things to (? 1 to others as we would have them do
to us.
[^Splrltual Pride.'\
Nothing is more common, and more to be pitied,
than to see with what a confident contempt and
Econiful pity some ill-instructed and ignorant people
will lament the blindness and ignorance of those
who have a thousand times more true knowledge and
skill than themselves, not only in all other things,
but even in the practice as well as knowledge of the
Christian religion ; believing those who do not relish
their affected phrases and uncouth forms of speech
to be ignorant of the mystery of the gospel, and utter
strangers to the life and power of godliness.
\_Education.'\
Such ways of education as are prudently fitted to
the particular disposition of children, are like wind
and tide togeth^^r, which will make the work go on
amain : but th )se ways which are applied cross to
nature are like wind against tide, which will make a
stir and conflict, but a veiy slow progress.
The principles of religion and virtue must be in-
stilled and dropped into them by such degrees, and in
such a measure, a,s they are capable of receiving them :
for children are narrow-mouthed vessels, and a great
deal cannot be poured into them at once.
Young years are tender, and easily wrought upon,
apt to be moulded into any fashion: they are like
moist and soft clay, which is pliable to any form ; but
soon grows hard, and then nothing is to be made of it.
Great severities do often work an effect quite con-
trary to that which was intended ; and many times
those who were bred up in a very severe school hate
learning ever after for the sake of the cruelty that was
used to force it upon them. So likewise an endeavour
to bring children to piety and goodness by unreason-
able strictness and rigour, does often beget in them a
lasting disgust and prejudice against religion, and
teacheth them to hate virtue, at the same time that
they teach them to know it.
* The word prevented is here used in the obsolete sense of
anticipated. — Ed.
EDWARD STILLINGFLEET.
Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699) distin-
guished himself in early life by his writings in
defence of the doctrines of the church. The title of
his jirincipal work is Origines Sacra; or a liational
Account of the Grounds of Natural and Revealed
Religion. His abilities and extensive learning caused
him to be raised in 1689 to the dignity of bishop of
Worcester. Towards the end of his life, he published
A Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity, in which
some passages in Locke's p:ssay on the Human
Understanding were attacked as subversive of fun-
damental doctrines of Christianity ; but in the con-
troversy which ensued, the philosopher was gene-
rally held to have come off victorious. So great
was the bishop's chagrin at this result, that it was
thought to have hastened his death. The promi-
nent matters of discussion in this controversy were
the resurrection of the body and the immateriality
of the soul. On these r-oints Locke argued, that
although the resurrect) .n of the dead is revealed in
Scripture, the re-animation of the identical bodies
which inhabited this world is not revealed; and
that even if tlie soul were proved to be material, this
would not imply its mortality, since an Omnipotent
Creator may, if he pleases, impart the faculty of
thinking to matter as well as to spirit. The dispu-
tation was carried on by Locke with much more
gentleness and good temper than by Stillingfleet, who
displayed considerable captiousness aud asperity
towards his opponent.
Fifty of Stillingfleet's sermons, published after his
death, deservedly bear a high character for good
sense, sound morality, energy of style, and the know-
ledge of human nature which they display. Extracts
from two of them are subjoined.
\_Tni.e Wisdora.l
That is the truest wisdom of a man which doth most
conduce to the happiness of life. For msdom as it
refers to action, lies in the proposal of a right end, and
the choice of the most proper means to attain it :
which end doth not refer to any one part of a man's
life, but to the whole as taken together. He therefore
only deserves the name of a wise man, not that con-
siders how to be rich and great when he is poor and
mean, nor how to be well when he is sick, ni. r how to
escape a present danger, nor how to compass a parti-
cular design ; but he that considers the whole course
of his life together, and what is fit for him to make
the end of it, and by what means he may best enjoy
the happiness of it. I confess it is one great part of
a wise man never to propose to himself too much hap-
piness here ; for whoever doth so is sure to find him-
self deceived, and consequently is so much more
miserable iis he fails in his greatest expectations. But
since God did not make men on purpose to be miser-
able, since there is a great difference as to men's con-
ditions, since that difference depends very nmch on
their own choice, there is a great deal of reason to
place true wisdom in the choice of those things which
tend most to the comfort and happiness of life.
That which gives a man the greatest satisfaction in
what he doth, and either prevents, or lessens, or makes
him more easily bear the troubles of life, doth the
most conduce to the happiness of it. It was a bold
saying of Epicurus, ' That it is more desirable to be
miserable by acting according to reason, than to b«
happy in going against it ;' and I cannot tell how it
can well agree with his notion of felicity : but it is a
certain truth, that in the consideration of happiness,
the satisfaction of a man's own mind doth weigh down
all the external accidents of life. For, suppr st a man
to hiive riches and honours as great as Aha'<uerui
437
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
bestowed on his highest favourite Haman, yet by his
sad instance we find that a small discontent, when the
mind suffers it to increase and to spread its venom,
doth so weaken the power of reason, disorder the pas-
sions, make a man's life so uneasy to him, as to pre-
cipitate him from the height of his fortune into the
depth of ruin. But on the other side, if we suppose a
man to be always pleased with his condition, to enjoy
an even and quiet mind in every state, being neither
lifted up with prosperity nor cast down with adversity,
he is really happy in comparison with the other. It
is a mere speculation to discourse of any complete
happiness in this world ; but that which doth either
lessen the number, or abate the weight, or take off the
malignity of the troubles of life, doth contribute very
much to that degree of happiness which may be ex-
pected here.
The integrity and simplicity of a man's mind doth
all this. In tht first place, it gives the greatest satis-
faction to a man's own mind. For although it be
impossible for a man not to be liable to error and
mistake, yet, if he doth mistake with an innocent
mind, he hath the comfort .^f his innocency when he
thinks himself bound to correct his error. But if a
man prevaricates with himself, and acts against the
sense of his own mind, though his conscience did not
judge aright at that time, yet the goodness of the bare
act,°with respect to the rule, will not prevent the sting
that follows the want of inward integrity in doing it.
' The backslider in heart,' saith Solomon, ' shall be
filled with his own ways, but a good man shall be
satisfied from himself.' The doing just and worthy
and generous things without any sinister ends and
designs, leaves a most agreeable pleasure to the mind,
like°that of a constant health, which is better felt
than expressed. When a man applies his mind to
the knowledge of his duty, and when he doth under-
stand it (as it is not hard for an honest mind to do,
for, as the oracle answered the servant who desired to
know how he might please his master, ' If you will
seek it, you will be sure to find it'), sets himself
with a firm resolution to pursue it ; though the rain
falls, and the floods arise, and the winds blow on
every side of him, yet he enjoys peace and quiet within,
notwithstanding all the noise and blustering abroad ;
and is sure to hold out after all, because he is founded
upon a rock. But take one that endeavours to blind
or corrupt or master his conscience, to make it serve
some mean end or design ; what uneasy reflections
hath he upon himself, what perplexing thoughts,
what tormenting fears, what suspicions and jealousies
do disturb his imagination and rack his mind ! What
art and pains doth such a one take to be believed
honest and sincere ! and so much the more, because he
doth not believe himself: he fears still he hath not
given satisfaction enough, and by overdoing it, is the
more suspected. * * Secondly, because integrity
doth more become a man, and doth really promote
his interest in the world. It is the saying of Dio
Chryaostom, a heathen orator, that ' simplicity and
truth is a great and wise thing, but cunning and de-
ceit is foolish and mean ; for,' saith he, ' observe the
beasts : the more courage and spirit they have, the
less art and subtilty they use ; but the more timorous
and itmoble they are, the more false and deceitful.'
True wisdom and greatness of mind raises a man
above the need of using little tricks and devices.
Sincerity and honesty carries one through many diffi-
culties, which all the arts he can invent would never
help him through. For nothing doth a man more
real mischief in the world than to be suspected of too
much craft ; because every one stands upon his guard
against him, and suspects plots and designs where
there are none intended : insomuch that, though he
speaks with all the sincerity that is possible, yet no-
thing he saith can be believed. * * But ' he that
walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and
speaketh the truth in his heart,' as the Psalmist de-
scribeth the practice of integrity', may possibly meet
with such as will be ready to condemn him for hypo-
crisy at first ; but when they find he keeps to a certain
rule, and pursues honest designs, without any great
regard to the opinion which others entertain concern-
ing him, then all that know him cannot but esteem
and value him ; his friends love him, and his enemies
stand in awe of him. 'The path of the just,' saith
the wise man, ' is as the shining light which shineth
more and more unto the perfect day.' As the day
begins with obscurity and a great mixture of darkness,
till by quick and silent motions the light overcomes
the mists and vapours of the night, and not only
spreads its beams upon the tops of the mountains, but
darts them into the deepest and most shady valleys ;
thus simplicity and integrity may at first appearing
look dark and suspicious, till by degrees it breaks
through the clouds of envy and detraction, and then
shines with a greater glory.
[Immoderate Self-Love."]
There is a love of ourselves which is founded in
nature and reason, and is made the measure of our
love to our neighbour ; for we are to love our neigh-
bour as ourselves ; and if there were no due love of
ourselves, there could be none of our neighbour. But
this love of ourselves, which is so consistent with the
love of our neighbour, can be no enemy to our peace :
for none can live more quietly and peaceably than
those who love their neighbours as themselves. But
there is a self-love which the Scripture condemns, be-
cause it makes n)en peevish and froward, uneasy to
themselves and to their neighbours, filling them with
jealousies and suspicions of others with respect tc
themselves, making them apt to mistrust the inten-
tions and designs of others towards them, and so pro-
ducing ill-will towards them ; and where that hath
once got into men's hearts, there can be no long peace
with those they bear a secret grudge and ill-will to.
The bottom of all is, they have a wonderful value for
themselves and those opinions, and notions, and
parties, and factions they happen to be engaged in,
and these they make the measure of their esteem and
love of others. As far as they comply and suit with
them, so far they love thtm, and no farther. If we
ask. Cannot good men differ about some things, and
yet be good still 1 Yes. Cannot such love one an-
other notwithstanding such difference ? No doubt
they ought. \\'hence comes it, then, that a small
difference in opinion is so apt to make a breach in
affection ? In plain truth it is, every one would be
thought to be infallible, if for shame they durst to
pretend to it ; and they have so good an opinion of
themselves, that they cannot bear such as do not sub-
mit to them. From hence arise quarrellings and dis-
putings, and ill language, not becoming men or Chris-
tians. But all this comes from their setting up
themselves and their o-wn notions and practices, which
they would make a rule to the rest of the world ; and
if others have the same opinion of themselves, it is
impossible but there must be everlasting clashings
and disputings, and from thence falling into different
parties and factions ; which can never be prevented
till they come to more reasonable opinions of them-
selves, and more charitable and kind towards others.
DR WILLIAM SHERLOCK.*
Dr William Sherlock, dean of St Paul's (1641-
1707), acquired in his lifetime an extensive rcpu-
* This divine is sometimes confounded with his son Thomas
Sherlock, successively bishop of Bangor and Salisbury in the
reipn of George IT., and who published numerous sermons
which are highly nstecmed.
438
PROSE WUITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR WILLIAM SHEIILOCK.
tatioii, cliiefly by his writings in controversial theo-
logry, wliich were deemed somewhat inconsistent
with the doctrines of the established church. In
particular, he was charged with tritlieism. Cot hav-
ing, in a Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy a7id
Ever-Blessed Trinity, which he published in 1691,
proposed the hypothesis, that ' there were three
eternal minds, two of them issuing from the Father,
but that they were one by a mutual consciousness
in the three to evcrj' of their thoughts.' This pub-
lication led to a celebrated controversy with Dr
South, of which we shall speak in noticing the works
of that divine. Sherlock was extremely loyal, and
maintained the principle of non-resistance to the
fullest extent. His Practical Discourse Concerning
Death, which appeared in 1690, is one of the most
popular theological works in the language. He also
wrote a treatise On the Immort<tlit!/ of the Soul, in
which, wliile inferring the high probability of a
future life from arguments drawn from tlie liglit
of nature, he maintains that only in revelation can
evidence perfectly conclusive be found. From this
work is taken the first of the following extracts : —
[Longing after TranioHaUty.l
Let us now consider the force of this argument ;
liow far these natural desires of immortality prove
that we are by nature inmiortal. For [say the ob-
jectors] is there anything in the world more extrava-
gant than some men'r desires are ; and is this an
argument, that we shall have whatever we desire, be-
cause we fondly and passionatel_y, and, it ma}' be, very
imreasonably desire it ? And therefore, to explain the
force of this argument, I shall observe two things ; 1st,
That all natural passions and ai)petites are innne-
diately implanted in our nature by God ; and, '2dly,
That all natural passions have their natural objects.
As for the first, it is certain, as I have already shown
at large, that our passions and appetites are the life
and sense of the soul, without wliich it would be dead
and stupid, without any principle of vital sensa-
tion. For what is life without fear, and love, and
hope, and desire, and such like passions, whereby we
feel all things else, and feel ourselves ? Now, what-
ever fancies men may have about our notions and
ideas, that they may come into our minds from with-
out, and be formed by external impressions, yet no
man will be so absurd as to say, that external objects
can put a principle of life into us ; and tlien they can
create no new passions in us, which are essential to
our natures, and must be the work of that God who
made us.
And therefore, secondly, every natural desire must
have its natural object to answer that desire, or else
the desire was made in vain ; which is a reproach to
our wise Maker, if he have laid a necessity on us of
desiring that which is not in nature, and therefore
cannot be had. We may as well suppose that God
has made eyes without light, or ears without sounds,
as that he has implanted any desires in us which he
hath made nothing to answer. There is no one ex-
ample can be given of this in any kind whatsoever ;
for should any man be so extravagant as to desire to
fly in the air, to walk upon the sea, and the like, you
would not call these the desires of nature, because our
natures are not fitted for them ; but all the desires
which are founded in nature have their natural ob-
jects. And can we then think, that the most natural
and most necessary desire of all has nothing to answer
it? that nature should teach us above all things to
desire immortality, which is not to he h.ad ? especially
when it is the most noble and generous desire of human
nature, that which most of all becomes a reasonable
creature to desire ; nay, that which is the governing
principle of all our actions, and must give laws to all
our other passions, desires, and appetites. What a
strange creature has God made man, if he deceive him
in the most fundamental and most universal principle
of action ; which makes his whole life nothing else
but one continued cheat and imposture !
[Life not too Short.]
Such a long life fas that of the antediluvians]
is not reconcilable with the present state of the world.
What the state of the world was before the flood, in
what manner they lived, and how they employed their
time, we cannot tell, for Moses has given no account
of it ; but taking the world as it is, and as we find it,
I dare undertake to convince those men, who are most
apt to complain of the shortness of life, that it would
not be for the general happiness of mankind to have
it much longer: for, 1st, The world is at present very
unequally divided ; som >. have a large share and por-
tion of it, others have nothing but what they can earn
by ver}' hard labour, or extort from other men's cha-
rity by their restless importunities, or gain by more
ungodly arts. Now, though the rich and prosperous,
who have the world at command, and live in ease and
pleasure, would be very well contented to spend some
hundred years in this world, yet I should think fifty
or threescore years abundantly enough for slaves and
beggars ; enough to s])eiid in hunger and want, in a
jail and a prison. And those who are so foolish as
not to think this enough, owe a great deal to the wis-
dom and goodness of God that he does. So that the
greatest part of mankind have great reason to be con-
tented with the shortness of life, because they have
no temptation to wish it longer.
2dly, The present state of this world requires a more
quick succession. The world is pretty well peopled,
and is divided amongst its present inhabitants ; and
but ver}' few, in comparison, as I observed before, have
any considerable share in the division. Now, let us but
suppose that all our ancestors, who lived a hundred
or two hundred years ago, were alive still, and pos-
sessed their old estates and honours, what had become
of this present generation of men, who have now taken
their places, and make as great a show and bustle in
the world as they did ? And if you look back three,
or four, or five hundred years, the case is still so much
the worse ; the world would be overpeopled; and where
there is one poor miserable man now, there must have
been five hundred ; or the world must have been com-
mon, and all men reduced to the same h v'el ; which,
I believe, the rich and happy pco])le, who are so fond
of long life, would not like very well. This would
utterly undo our young prodigal heirs, were their hopes
of succession three or four hundred years oft', who, as
short as life is now, think their fathers make very
little haste to their graves. This would spoil theii
trade of spending their estates before they have them,
and make them live a dull sober life, whether they
would or no ; and such a life, I know, they don't
think worth having. And therefore, 1 hope at least
they will not make the shortness of their fathers' lives
an argument against j)rovidence ; and yet such kind
of sparks as these are commonly the wits that set up
for atheism, and, when it is put into their headi,
quarrel with everything which they fondly conceivo
will weaken the belief of a God :ind a j)rovidence,
and, among other things, with the shortness of life ;
which they have little reason to do, when they so often
outlive their estates.
3dly. The world is very bad as it is ; so bad, that good
men scarce know how to spend fifty or threescore years
in it ; but consider how bad it would probably be,
were the life of man extended to six, seven, or eight
hundred years. If so near a prusjject of the other
world, as forty or fifty years, cannot restrain men from
the greatest villanies, what would they do if they
439
FROM 1G49
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Tf) Jfi'tS
coultl as reasonably sujtpose death to be three or four
hundred years oft? If men make such im])rovementR
in wickedness in twenty or thirty years, what would
^hey do in hundreds ? And what a blessed place then
would this world be to live in! We see in the old
world, when the life of men was drawn out to so great
a length, the wickedness of mankind grew so insutt'er-
able, that it repented God he had made man ; and he
resolved to destroy that whole generation, excepting
Noah and his family. And the most probable account
that can be given how they came to grow so univer-
sally wicked, is the long and prosperous lives of such
wicked men, who by degrees corrupted others, and
they others, till there was but one righteous family
left, and no other remedy left but to destroy them
all ; leaving only that righteous family as the seed
and future hopes of the new world.
And when God had determined in himself, iind pro-
mised to Noah never to destroy the world again by
such an universal destruction, till the last and final
judgment, it was necessary by degrees to shorten the
lives of men, which was the most effectual means to
make them more governable, and to remove bad ex-
amples out of the world, which would hinder the
spreading of the infection, and people and reform the
■world again by new examples of piety and virtue.
For when there are such quick successions of men,
there are few ages but have some great and brave ex-
amples, which give a new and better spirit to the
world.
[Advantages of our Ignorance of tlie Time of Death.]
For a conclusion of this argument, I shall briefly
vindicate the wisdom and goodness of God, in con-
cealing from us the time of our death. This we are
very apt to complain of, that our lives are so very un-
certain, that we know not to-day but that we may die
to-morrow ; and we would be mighty glad to meet
with any one who would certainly inform us in this
matter, how long we are to live. But if we think a
little better of it, we shall be of another mind.
For, 1st. Though I presume many of you would be
glad to know that you shall certainly live twenty, or
thirty, or forty years longer, yet would it be any com-
fort to know that you must die to-morrow, or some
few months, or a year or two hence ? which may be
your case for ought you know ; and this, I believe,
you are not very desirous to know ; for how would this
chill your blood and spirits ! How would it overcast
all the pleasures and comforts of life ! You would
spend your d.ays like men under the sentence of death,
while the execution is suspended.
Did all men, who must die young, certainly know
it, it would destroy the industry and improvements
of half mankind, which would half destroy the world,
or be an insupportable mischief to human societies ;
for what man, who knows that he nmst die at twenty,
or five-and-twenty, a little sooner or later, would
trouble himself with ingenious or gainful arts, or con-
cern himself any more with this world, than just to
live so long in it ? And yet, how necessary is the ser-
vice of such men in the world ! What great things
do they many times do ! and what great improve-
ments do they make ! Ilow pleasant and diverting
is their conversation, while it is innocent ! How do
they enjoy themselves, and give life and spirit to the
graver age ! How thin would our schools, our shops,
our universities, and all places of education be, did
they know how little time many of them were to live
in the world ! For would such men concern them-
selves to learn the arts of living, who must die as soon
as they have learnt them ? VV^ould any father be at
a great expense in educating his child, only that he
might die with a little Latin and (ircek, logic and
philosophy? No; half the world must be divided
into cloisters and nunneries, and nurseries fur the
grave.
Well, you'll say, suppose that ; and is not this an
advantage above all the inconveniences you can think
of, to secure the salvation of so many thousands who
are now eternally ruined by youthful lusts and vani-
ties, but would spend their days in piety and devo-
tion, and make the nest world their only care, if they
knew how little while they were to live here?
Right : I grant this might be a good way to correct
the heat and extravagances of youth, and so it would
be to show them heaven and hell ; but God does not
think fit to do either, because it offers too much force
and violence to men's minds; it is no trial of their
virtue, of their reverence for God, of their conquests
and victory over this world by the power of faith, but
makes religion a matter of necessity, not of choice :
now, God will force and drive no man to heaven ; the
gospel dispensation is the trial and discipline of in-
genuous spirits ; and if the certain hopes and fears of
another world, and the uncertainty of our living herv,
■will not conquer these flattering temptations, au'l
make men seriously religious, as those ■who nmst cer-
tainly die, and go into another world, and they know
not how soon, God will not try whether the certain
knowledge of the time of their death will make them
religious. That they may die young, and that thou-
sands do so, is reason enough to engage young men to
expect death, and prepare for it ; if they will venture,
they must take their chance, and not say they had no
warning of dying young, if they eternally miscarry by
their wilful delays.
And besides this, God expects our youthful service
and obedience, though we were to live on till old age ;
that we may die young, is not the proper, much less
the onl}' reason, why we should ' remember our Creator
in the days of our 3'outh,' but because God has a right
to our youthful strength and vigour; and if this will
not oblige us to an early piety, we must not expect
that God will set death in our view, to fright and ter-
rify us : as if the only design God had in requiring
our obedience was, not that we might live like reason-
able creatures, to the glory of their ALiker and Re-
deemer, but that we might repent of our sins time
enough to escape hell. God is so merciful as to ac-
cept of returning prodigals, but does not think fit to
encourage us in sin, by giving us notice v.-hen we shall
die, and when it is time to think of repentance.
'2dly. Though I doubt not but that it would be a
great pleasure to you to know that you should live till
old age, yet consider a little with yourselves, and then
tell me, whether you yourselves can judge it wise and
fitting for God to let you know this ?
1 observed to you before, what danger there is in
flattering ourselves with the hopes of long life ; that it
is apt to make us too fond of this world, when we
expect to live so long in it ; that it weakens the hopes
and fears of the next world, by removing it at too
great a distance from us ; that it encourages men to
live in sin, because they have time enough before
them to indulge their lusts, and to repent of their
sins, and make their peace with God before they die ;
and if the uncertain hopes of this undoes so many
men, what would the certain knowledge of it do?
Those who are too wise and considerate to be imposed
on by such uncertain hopes, might be conquered by
the certain knowledge of a long life.
DR ROBERT SOUTH,
Dr Robert South, reputed as the wittiest of Ting'
lish divines, and a man of powerful though some-
what irregular talents, was born at Hackney in 1633,
being the son of a London merchant. Having passed
through a brilliant career of scholarship at Oxford,
until he was elected public orator of the university,
440
{"ROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ROBERT SOUTH.
he bad an opportunitj^ of attracting the notice <if
the Earl of Chvrendon, when tliat nobleman was
made chancellor, and by him obtained a succession
Dr Robert South.
of good appointments, amongst which was the rec-
tory of Islip in Oxfordshire, where, it is recorded to
his honour, he gave his curate the unprecedented
salary of a hundred pounds, and spent the remainder
of liis income in educating poor children, and im-
proving the church and parsonage-liouse. Soutli
was the most enthusiastic among the ultra-loyal
divines of the English church at that period, and of
course a zealous advocate of passive obedience and
-If
Islip Church.
the divine right of sovereigns. In a sermon preached
in Westminster Abbey in 167.5, on the Peculiar Care
and Concern of Providence for the Protection and De-
fence of Kings, he ascribes the ' absolute subjection'
which men yield to royalty to ' a secret work of the
divine power, investing sovereign princes witli cer-
tain marks and rays of that divine imatre which
overawes and controls the spirits of men, they know-
not how or why. And yet tliey feel themselves
actually wrought upon and kept under by them, and
that very frequently against their will. And this
is that property which in kings we call ni.ijesty.'
The positions maintained in this sermon, ;t^ summed
up at its close, are to the following effect :—Kiii<.'S
are endowed with more than ordinary sagacitv and
quickness of understanding; they have a singular
courage and presence of mind in cases of diflficultv ;
the hearts of men are wonderfully inclined to them;
an awe and dread of their persons and anthoritv is
imprinted on their people ; and, lastly, their hearf-:
are disposed to virtuous courses. Of'the old rov:.'-
ists, he speaks thus:— 'I look upon the old chun h
of England royalists (which I take to be only another
name for a man who prefers his conscience befor-
his interest) to be the best Christians and the most
meritorious subjects in the world; as having passed
all those terrible tests and trials which conq'uerinji
domineering malice could put them to, and carriid
their credit and tlieir conscience clear and triuni
phant through and above them all, constantlv firm
and immovable by all that they felt, 'itlier from
their professed enemies, or their false friends.' And
in a sermon preached before Charles II., he speaks
of his majesty's father as ' a blessed saint, the just-
ness of whose government left his subjects at a loss
for an occasion to rebel; a father to his country, if
but for this only, that he was the father of such a
son!' During the encroachments upon the church
by government in the reign of James II., the 1 )yalty
of South caused him to hold his peace, ' and to use
no other weapons but prayers and tears for tiie re-
covery of his sovereign from the wicked and un-
advised counsels wherewith he was entangled " But
when its reputation was attacked by persons un-
invested with ' marks and rays of the'divine image,'
he spared neither argument nor invective. The
following sample of his violent declamation will illus-
trate this remark : —
May the great, the just, and the eternal God, judge
between the church of England and those men whc
have charged it with Popery ; who have called the
nearest and truest copy of primitive Christianity,
superstition ; and the most detestable instances of
schism and sacrilege, reformation ; and, in a word,
done all that they could, both from the pulpit and
press, to divide, shake, and confound the purest and
most apostolically reformed church in tlie Christian
world : and all this, by the venomous gibberish of a
few paltry phrases instilled into the minds of the
furious, whimsical, ungoverned multitude, who have
ears to hear, without either heads or hearts to under- '
stand.
For I tell you again, that it was the treacherous
cant and misapi)lication of those words — popery,
superstition, reformation, tender conscience, perse-
cution, moderation, and the like, as they have been
used by a pack of designing hypocrites (who believed
not one word of what they said, and laughed within
themselves at those who did), that put this poor
church into such a flame heretofore, as burnt it down
to the ground, and will infallibly do the -same to it
again, if the providence of God and the prudence of
man does not timely interpose between her and the
villanous arts of such incendiaries.
Against the Independents and Presbyterians, South
was in the habit of pouring forth unbounded ridi-
cule, lie cordially hated these and all otlier secta-
ries, and resolutely opposed even the slightest con-
cessions to them on the part of the church, witli the
441
FBOH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1G89.
view of effecting an accommodation. His disposi-
tion was that of a persecutor, and made him utterly
hostile to the toleration act, a measure of which he
declares one consequence to be ' certain, obvious, and
undeniable ; and that is, the vast increase of sects and
heresies among us, which, where all restraint is taken
off, nuist of necessity grow to the higliest pitch that
the devil himself can raise such a Babel to; so that
there shall not be one bold ring-leading knave or
fool who shall have the confidence to set up a new
sect, but shall find proselytes enougli to wear his
name, and list themselves under his baimer; of
which the Quakers are a demonstration past dispute.
And then, what a vast party of this poor deluded
people must of necessity be drawn after these im-
postors !' He mercilessly satirises the Puritans, a
sect of whom he says, ' They ascribed those villanies
which were done by the instigation of the devil to
the impulse and suggestion of the Holy Spirit.' He
speaks in terms equally bitter and unqualified of
their long prayers : —
I do not in the least question, but the chief design
of such as use the extempore way is to amuse the
unthinking rabble with an admiration of their gifts ;
their whole devotion proceeding from no other prin-
ciple, but only a love to hear themselves talk. And,
I believe, it would put Lucifer himself hard to it, to
outvie the pride of one of those fellows pouring out his
extempore stutf among his ignorant, whining, factious
followers, listening to and applauding his copious
flow and cant, with the ridiculous accents of their
impertinent groans. And the truth is, extempore
prayer, even when best and most dexterously per-
formed, is nothing else but a business of invention and
wit (such as it is), and requires no more to it, but a
teeming imagination, a hold front, and a ready ex-
pression ; and deserves much the same commendation
(were it not in a matter too serious to be sudden upon)
which is due to extempore verses, only with this dif-
ference, that there is necessary to those latter a com-
petent measure of wit and learning ; whereas the
former may be done with very little wit, and no
learning at all.
In 1693 Dr South began a most acrimonious and
inaecent controversy with Dr Sherlock, by publisli-
ing Animadversions upon that writer's ' Vindication
of the Doctrine of the Trinity.' The violence and
personality displayed by both parties on this occa-
sion gave just offence to the friends of religion and
the church ; and at length, after the controversy had
raged with unabating violence for some time, the
king was induced by the bishops to put an end to it,
by ordaining ' that all preachers should carefully
avoid all new terms, and confine themselves to such
ways of explication as have been commonly used in
the church.'
Notwithstanding his intolerant and fiery temper,
Or South was fully conscious of the nature of that
Christian spirit in which a clergyman, above all
others, ought to act. The third of the following pas-
sages in liis sermons is but another proof of the
trite observation, that men are too frequently unable
to reduce to practice the virtuous principles which
they really and honestly hold.
[77(6 Will for the Decd.l
The third instance in which men used to plead the
will instead of the deed, shall be in duties of cost and
expense.
Let a business of expensive charity be proposed ;
and then, as I showed before, tliat, in matters of la-
bour, the lazy person could find i> ) hands whoruwith
to work ; so neither, in this cas can the religious
miser find any hands wherewith to give. It is won-
derful to consider how a conunand or call to be liberal,
cither upon a civil or religious account, all of a sud-
den impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts
up every private man's exchequer, and makes those
men in a minute have nothing who, at the very same
instant, want nothing to spend. So that, instead of
relieving the poor, such <a command strangely increases
their number, and transforms rich men into beggars
presently. For, Irt the danger of their prince and
country knock at their purses, and call upon them to
contribute against a public en^my or calamity, then
immediately they have nothing, and their riches upon
such occasions (as Solomon expresses it) never fail to
make themselves wings, and fly away. * *
to descend to matters of daily and common
occuiTcnce ; what is more usual in conversation, than
for men to express their unwillingness to do a thing
1)y saying they cannot do it ; and for a covetous man,
being asked a little money in private charity, to answer
that he has none ? Which, as it is, if true, a sufficient
answer to God and man ; so, if false, it is intolerable
hypocrisy towards both.
But do men in good earnest think that God will be
put off so? or can they imagine that the law of God
will be baffled with a lie clothed in a scoff?
For such pretences are no better, as appears from
that notable account given us by the apostle of this
windy, insignificant charity of the will, and of the
worthlessness of it, not enlivened by deeds : (James ii.
15, 16), ' If a brother or a sister be naked, and desti-
tute of daily food, and one of you say unto them,
Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled ; notwith-
standing ye give them not those things which are
needful to the body ; what doth it profit.' Profit,
does he say ? Why, it profits just as nmch as fair
words command the market, as good wishes buy food
and raiment, and pass for current payment in the
shops. Come to an old rich professing vulpony, and
tell him that there is a church to be built, beautified,
or endowed in such a place, and that he cannot lay
out his money more to God's honour, the public good,
and the comfort of his own conscience, than to bestow
it liberally upon such an occasion ; and, in answer to
this, it is ten to one but you shall be told, * how much
God is for the inward, spiritual worship of the heart ;
and that the Almighty neither dwells nor delights in
temples made with hands, but hears and accepts the
prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and
stables ; and in the homeliest and meanest cottages,
as well as in the stateliest and most magnificent
churches.' Thus, I say, you are like to be answered.
In reply to which, I would have all such sly sanctified
cheats (who are so often harping on this string) to
know, once for all, that God, who accepts the prayers
of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables,
when, by his afflicting providence, he has driven them
from the appointed places of his solemn worship, so
that they cannot have the use of them, will not for all
this endure to be served or prayed to by them in such
places, nor accept of their barn-worship, nor their hog-
stye worship ; no, nor yet their parlour or their cham-
ber-worship, where he has given them both wealth and
power to build churches. For he that commands us
to luorsMp him in the spirit, commands us also to honour
him ivith our svhstance. And never pretend that thou
hast a heart to pray while thou hast no heart to give,
since he that serves Mammon with his estate cannot
possibly serve God with his heart. For as in the
heathen worship of God, a sacrifice without a heart
was accounted ominous, so in the Christian worsliip
of him, a heart without a sacrifice is worthless and
impertinent.
And thus much for men's pretences of the will when
they are called upon to give upon a religious account*,
accordin"' to which, a man may be well enough said
442
FROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ROBERT SOUTH.
(as the common word is) to be all heart, and yet the
an-antest miser in the world.
But come we now to this rich old pretender to god-
liness in another case, and tell him that there is such
a one, a man of good famiiv, good education, and wlio
has lost all his estate for the king, now ready to rot
in prison for debt ; come, what will you give towards
bis release ? Why, then answers the will instead of
the deed, as much the readier speaker of the two,
* The truth is, I always had a respect for such men ;
I love them with all my heart ; and it is a thousand
pities that any that had served the king so faithfully
should be in such want.' So say I too, and the more
ghame is it for the whole nation that they should be
BO. But still, what will you give ? Why, then, an-
swers the man of mouth-charity again, and tells you
that 'you could not come in a worse time ; that now-
a-days money is very scarce with him, and that there-
fore he can give nothing ; but he will be sure to pray
for the poor gentleman.'
Ah, thou hypocrite! when thy brother has lost all
that ever he had, and lies languishing, and even gasp-
ing under the utmost extremities of poverty and dis-
tress, dost thou think thus to lick him up again only
with thy tongue ? Just like that old formal hocus,
who denied a beggar a farthing, and put him off with
his blessing.
Why, what are the prayers of a covetous wretch
worth? what will thy blessing go for? what will it
buy ! is this the charity that the apostle here, in the
text, presses upon the Corinthians?* This the case
if', which God accepts the willingness of the mind in-
stead of the liberality of the purse * No, assuredly ;
but the measures that God marks out to thy charity
are- these: thy superfluities must give place to thy
neighbour's great convenience ; thy convenience must
Teil thy neighbour's necessity ; and, lastly, thy very
necessities must yield to thy neighbour's extremity.
Thi? is the gradual process that must be thy rule ;
and he that pretends a disability to give short of this,
prevaricates with his duty, and evacuates the precept.
God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the needs of
thy poo brother, sometimes the necessities of thy
country, and sometimes the urgent wants of thy
prince : now, before thou fliest to the old, stale, usual
pretence, that thou canst do none of those things, con-
sider with thyself that there is a God who is not
to be flammed off with lies, who knows exactly what
thou canst do, and what thou canst not ; and con-
sider in the next place, that it is not the best hus-
bandry in the world to be damned to save charges.
[lU-natured and Good-natured Men.']
A staunch resolved temper of mind, not suffering a
man to sneak, fawn, cringe, and accommodate himself
to all humours, though never so absurd and unrea-
sonable, is commonly branded with, and exposed un-
der the character of, pride, morosity, and ill-nature:
an ugly word, which you may from time to time ob-
serve many honest, worthy, inoffensive persons, and
that of all sorts, ranks, and professions, strangely and
unaccountably worried and run down by. And there-
fore I think 1 cann>'«t do truth, justice, and common
honesty better service, than by ripping up so mali-
cious a cheat, to vindicate such as have suffered by it.
Certain it is that, amongst all the contrivances of
malice, there is not a surer engine to pull men down
in the good opinion of the world, and that in spite of
the greatest worth and innocence, than this imputa-
tion of ill-nature ; an engine which sen-es the ends
and does the work of pique and envy botli efTcctually
and safely. Forasmuch as it is a loose and general
* ' For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted accord-
ing to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath
not. —2 Cvr. viil. 12.— Ed.
charge upon a man, without alleging an;r particular
reason for it from his life or actions ; and consequently
does the more mischief, because, as a word of course,
it passes currently, and is seldom looked into or exa-
mined. And, therefore, as there is no way to prove a
paradox or false proposition but to take it for gi-anted,
so, such as would stab any man's good name with the
accusation of ill-nature, do very rarely descend to
proofs or particulars. It is sufficient for their pur-
pose that the word sounds odiously, and is believed j
easily ; and that is enough to do any one's business I
with the generality of men, who seldom have so much /
judgment or charity as to hear the cause before they
pronounce sentence.
But that we may proceed with greater truth, equity,
and candour in this case, we will endeavour to find
out the right sense and meaning of this terrible con-
founding word, ill-nature, by coming to particulars.
And here, first, is the person charged with it false
or cruel, ungrateful or revengeful ? is he shrewd and
unjust in his dealings with others? does he regard no
promises, and pay no debts ? does he profess love,
kindness, and respect to those whom, underhand, he
does all the mischief to that possibly he can ? is he
unkind, rude, or niggardly to his friends ? Has he shut
up his heart and his hand towards the poor, and has
no bowels of compassion for such as are in want and
misery ? is he unsensible of kindnesses done him, and
withal careless and backward to acknowledge or re-
quite them ? or, lastl}-, is he bitter and implacable in
the prosecution of such as have wronged or abused
him ?
No ; generally none of these ill things (which one
would wonder at) are ever meant, or so nmch as
thought of, in the charge of ill-nature ; but, for the
most part, the clean contrary qualities are readily
acknowledged. Ay, but where and what kind of thing,
then, is this strange occult quality, called ill-nature,
which makes such a thundering noise against suih as
have'the ill luck to be taxed with it ?
Why, the best account that I, or any one else, can
give of it, is this : that there are many men in the
world who, without the least arrogance or self-coLceit,
have yet so just a value both for themselves and
others, as to scorn to flatter, and gloze, to fall down
and worship, to lick the spittle and kiss the ftet of
any proud, swelling, overgrown, domineering huff
whatsoever. And such persons generally think it
enough for them to show their superiors respect with-
out adoration, and civility without servitude.
A^ain, there are some who have a certain ill-natured
stiffness (forsooth) in their tongue, so as not to be
able to applaud and keep pace with this or that self-
admiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is jiluming
and praising himself, and telling fulsome stories in
his o\vn commendation for three or four hours by the
clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing
dirt upon all mankind besides.
There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom
neither hopes nor fears, frowns nor favours, can pre-
vail upon to have anj' of the cast, beggarly, forlorn
nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual
or temporal, trumped upon them.
To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-
natured persons, who are not to be brought by any
one's guilt or greatness to speak or write, or to swear
or lie, as they are bidden, or to give up their own
consciences in a compliment to those who have none
themselves.
And lastly, there are some so extremely ill-natured,
as to think it very lawful and allowable for tlicm to
be sensible, when they are injured and oppressed,
when they are slandered in their own good names, and
wronged in their just interests; and, withal, to dare
to own what they find and feel, without bein^ such
beasts of buri.in as to bear tamely whatsoever is cast
443
FSOM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
upon tliein ; or such spaniels as to lick the foot wliich
kicks them, or to thank the goodly great one for doing
them all these back-favours. Now, these and the like
particulars are some of the chief Instances of that ill-
nature which men are more properly said to be guilty
of towards their superiors.
But there is a sort of ill-nature, also, that uses to be
practised towards equals or inferiors, such as perhaps
^ num's refusing to lend money to such as he knows will
never repay him, and so to straiten and incommode
himself, only to gratify a shark. Or possibly the man
may prefer his duty and his business before company,
and the bettering himself before the humouring of
others. Or he may not be willing to spend his time,
his health, and his estate, upon a crew of idle, spung-
ing, ungrateful sots, and so to play the prodigal
amongst a herd of swine. With several other such
unpardonable faults in conversation (as some will
have them), for which the fore-mentioned cattle, find-
ing themselves disappointed, will be sure to go grum-
bling and grunting away, and not fail to proclaim
him a morose, ill-conditioned, ill-natured person, in
all clubs and companies whatsoever ; and so that
man's work is done, and his name lies grovelling upon
the ground, in all the taverns, brandy-shops, and
coffeehouses about the town.
And thus having given you some tolerable account
of what the world calls ill-nature, and that both to-
wards superiors and towards equals and inferiors (as
it is easy and natural to know one contrary by the
other), we may from hence take a true measure of what
the world is observed to mean by the contrary charac-
ter of good-nature, as it is generally bestowed.
And first, when great ones vouchsafe this endearing
eulogy to those below them, a good-natured man gene-
rally denotes some slavish, glavering, flattering para-
site, or hanger-on ; one who is a mere tool or instru-
)nent ; a fellow fit to be sent upon any malicious
errand ; a setter, or informer, made to creep into all
companies ; a wretch employed under a pretence of
friendship or acquaintance, to fetch and carry, and to
come to men's tables to play the Judas there ; and, in
a word, to do all those mean, vile, and degenerous
offices which men of greatness and malice use to en-
gage men of baseness and treachery in.
But then, on the other hand, when this word passes
between equals, commonly by a good-natured man is
meant either some easy, soft-headed piece of simpli-
cily, who suffers himself to be led by the nose, and
wiped of his conveniences by a company of sharping,
worthless sycophants, who will be sure to despise,
laugh, and droll at him, as a weak empty fellow, for
ftU his ill-placed cost and kindness. And the truth
is, if such vermin do not find him empty, it is odds
but in a little time they will make him so. And this
is one branch of that which some call good-nature
(and good-nature let it be) ; indeed so good, that ac-
cording to the wise Italian proverb, it is even good for
nothing.
Or, in the next place, by a good-natured man is
usually meant neither more nor less than a good fel-
low, a painful, able, and laborious soaker. But he
who owes all his good nature to the pot and the pipe,
to the jollity and compliances of merry company, may
possibly go to bed with a wonderful stock of good
nature over-night, but then he will sleep it all away
again before the morning.
[The Glory of the Clerr/ij.']
God is the fountain of honour, and the conduit by
which he conveys it to the sons of men are virtues
and generous practices. Some, indeed, may please
and promise themselves high matters from full re-
venues, stately palaces, court interests, and great de-
oendences. But that which makes the clergy glori- {
ous, is to be knowing in their profession, unspotted in
their lives, active and laborious in their charges, bold
and resolute in opposing seducers, and daring to look
vice in the face, though never so potent and illustri-
ous. And, lastly, to be gentle, courteous, and com-
passionate to all. These are our robes and our maces,
our escutcheons and highest titles of honour.
[The Pleasures of Animemcnt and Indiittnj Compared.^
Nor is that man less deceived that thinks to main-
tain a constant tenure of pleasure by a continual
pursuit of sports and recreations. The most volup-
tuous and loose person breathing, were he but tied to
follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice and his
courtships every day, would find it the greatest tor-
ment and calamity that could befall him ; he would
fl}' to the mines and galleys for his recreation, and to
the spade and the mattock for a diversion from the
misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure. But,
on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered
the course of things, that there is no action, the use-
fulness of which has made it the matter of duty and
of a profession, but a man may bear the continual
pursuit of it without loathing and satiety. The same
shop and trade that employs a man in his youth, em-
ploys him also in his age. Every morning he rises
fresh to his hammer and anvil ; he passes the day
singing; custom has naturalised his labour to him ;
his shop is his element, and he cannot with any en-
joyment of himself live out of it.
[Hypoa-itical Sanctimony.']
Bodily abstinence, joined with a demure, affected
countenance, is often called and accounted piety and
mortification. Suppose a man iiifinitely ambitious,
and equally spiteful and malicious ; one who poisons
the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises
by the fall of better men than himself; yet if he steps
forth with a Friday look and a lenten face, with a
blessed Jesu ! and a mournful ditty for the vices of
the times ; oh ! then he is a saint upon earth : an
/\mbrose or an Augustine (1 mean not for that earthly
trash of book-learning ; for, alas ! such are above that,
or at least that's above them), but for zeal and for
fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, and a holy
rage against other men's sins. And happy those
ladies and religious dames characterised in the 2d of
Timothy, c. iii. 5, 0', who can have such self-denying,
thriving, able men for their confessors ! and thrice
happy those families where they vouchsafe to take
their Friday night's refreshments! thereby demon-
strate to the world what Christian abstinence, and
what primitive, self-mortifying vigour there is in for-
bearing a dinner, that they may have the better sto-
mach to their supper. In fine, the whole world stands
in admiration of them : fools are fond of them, and
wise men are afraid of them ; they are talked of, they
are pointed out ; and, as they order the matter, they
draw the eyes of all men after them, and generally
something else.
[Ignoi-ance in Poiver.]
We know how great an absurdity our Saviour ac-
counted it for the blind to lead the blind, and to put
him that caimot so much as see to discharge the
office of a watch. Nothing more exposes to contempt
than ignorance. When Samson's eyes were out, of a
public magistrate he was made a public sport. And
when Eli was blind, we know how well he governed
his sons, and how well they governed the church under
hitn. But now the blindness of the understanding is
greater and more scandalous, especially in such a
seeing age as ours, in which the very knowledge >f
former times passes but for ignorance in a better
444
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR ROBERT SOUTH.
dress ; an age that flies at all learning, and inquires
into everything, but especially into faults and defects.
Ignorance, indeed, so far as it may be resolved into
natural inability, is, as to men at least, inculpable,
and consequently not the object of scorn, but pity ;
but in a governor, it cannot be without the conjunction
of the highest impudence : for who bid such a one
aspire to teach and to govern ? A blind man sitting in
the chimney-comer is pardonable enough, but sitting
at the lielm he is intolerable. If men will be ignorant
and illiterate, let them be so in private, and to them-
selves, and not set their defects in a high place, to
make them visib'e and conspicuous. If owls will not
be hooted at, let them keep close within the tree, and
not perch upon the upper boughs. Solomon built his
temple with the tallest cedars ; and surely when God
refused the defective and the maimed for sacrifice, we
cannot think that he requires them for the priesthood.
When learning, abilities, and what is excellent in the
world forsake the church, we may easily foretell its
ruin without the gift of prophecy. And when igno-
rance succeeds in the place of learning, weakness in
the room of judgment, we may be sure heresy and
confusion will quickly come in the room of religion.
[Religion not Hostile to Pleasure.^
That pleasure is man's chiefest good (because, in-
deed, it is the perception of good that is properly plea-
sure), is an assertion most certainly true, though, under
the common acceptance of it, not only false, but
odiou'?. For, according to this, pleasure and sen-
Bualil y pass for terms equivalent ; and tlierefore he
that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the
discourse. Sensuality is indeed a part, or rather one
kind of pleasure, such an one as it is. For pleasure,
in general, is the consequent apprehension of a suitable
object suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty ;
and so must be conversant both about the faculties of
the body and of the soul respectively, as being the re-
sult of the fruitions belonging to both.
Now, amongst those many arguments used to press
upon men the exercise of religion, I know none that
are like to be so successful as those that answer and
remove the prejudices that generally possess and bar
up the hearts of men against it : amongst which there
is none so p"<!valent in truth, though so little owned
in pretence, i:;-* that it is an enemy to men's pleasures,
that it bereaves them of all the sweets of ci;nverse,
dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy,
designing to make the world nothing else but a great
monastery ; with which notion of religion nature
and reason seem to have great cause to be dissatisfied.
For since God never created any faculty, eitlier in soul
or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object,
and that in order to its gratification, can we think
that religion was designed only for a contradiction to
nature, and with the greatest and most irrational
tyranny in the world, to tantalise and tie men up
from enjoyment, in the midst of all the opjiortunities
of enjoyment ? to place men with the furious atlec-
tions of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty,
and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has
sealed up everything that is suitable under the cha-
racter of unlawful ? For certainly, first to frame ap-
petites fit to receive pleasure, and then to interdict
them with a Touch not, taste not, can be nothing else
than only to give them occasion to devour and prey
upon themselves, and so to keep men under the perr
petual torment of an unsatisfied desire ; a thing
hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the creature,
and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the
great Creator.
He, therefore, that would persuade men to religion
both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion
of it upon this, that it interferes not with any rational
pleasure, that it bids nobody quit the enjoyme:»t of
any one thing that his reason can prove to him ought
to be enjoyed. 'Tis confessed, when, througli the cross
circumstances of a man's temper or condition, the en-
joyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to
a greater inconvenience, thun religion bids him quit
it ; that is, it bids him prefer the endurance of a
lesser evil before a gi-eater, and nature itself does no
less. Religion, therefore, entrenches upon none of our
privileges, invades none of our pleasures ; it may, in-
deed, sometimes command us to change, but never
totally to abjure them.
[Labour overcomes Apparent Impossibilities.']
Labour is confessedly a great part of the curse, and
therefore no wonder if men fly from it ; which they do
with so great an aversion, tliat few men know their
own strength for want of tn,-ing it, and upon that ac-
count think themselves really unable to do many
things which experience would convince them they
have more ability to efl^ect than they have will to at-
tempt. It is idleness that creates impossibilities ; and
where men care not to do a thing, they slielter them-
selves under a persuasion that it cannot be done. The
shortest and the surest way to prove a work possible,
is strenuously to set about it ; and no wonder if that
proves it possible that for the most part makes it so.
[Ingratitude an Incurable Vice.]
As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to
attempt the making of such an one his friend, so
neither is he, in the next place, to presume to think
that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate
the humour of an ungrateful person by any acts of
kindness, though never so frequent, never so obliging.
Philosophy will teach the learned, and experience
may teach all, that it is a thing hardly feasible. For,
love such an one, and he shall despise you. Commend
him, and, as occasion serves, he shall revile you. Give
him, and he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save
his life ; but, when you have done, look to your own.
The greatest favours to such an one are but the
motion of a ship upon the waves ; they leave nc
trace, no sign behind them ; they neither soften nor
win upon him ; they neither melt nor endear him, but
leave him as hard, as rugged, and as unconcerned as
ever. All kindnesses descend upon such a temper as
showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the
main sea ; the sea swallows them all, but is not at all
changed or sweetened by them. I may truly say of
the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-
proof. It is Impenetrable, unconquerable ; unconquer-
able by that which conquers all things else, even by
love itself. Flints may be melted — we see it daily — •
but an ungrateful heart cannot ; no, not by the
strongest and the noblest flame.- After all your at-
tempts, all your experiments, for anything that man
can do, he that Is ungrateful will be ungrateful still.
And the reason is manifest ; for you ma}' remember
tliat I told you that ingratitude sprang from a prin-
ciple of ill nature : which being a thing founded in
such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as,
being born with a man Into the world, and iqion that
account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that
can be applied by education, and leaves such a bias
ujion the mind, as is beforehand with all instruction.
So that you shall seldom or never meet with an
ungrateful person, but, if you look backward, and trace
}nm up to his original, you will find that he was l)orn
so ; and if 3'ou could look forward enough, it is a
thousand to one but you will find that he also dies so;
for you shall never light u[)()ii an ill-natured man who
was not also an lU-natuiud cliilil, and gave sever.il
testimonies of his boiiijf so to discerning persons, long
before the use of his reason.
445
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO I6;i!>.
The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off
by anything but death. I do not by this limit the
operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders:
but humanly speaking, and according to the method
of the world, and the little correctives supplied by art
and discipline, it seldom fails but an ill principle has
its course, and nature makes good its blow. And
therefore, where ingratitude begins remarkably to
show itself, he surely judges most wisely who takes
alarm betimes, and, arguing the fountain from the
stream, concludes that there is ill-nature at the
bottom ; and so, reducing his judgment into practice,
timely withdraws his frustraneous baffled kindnesses,
and sees the folly of endeavouring to stroke a tiger into
a lamb, or to court an Ethiopian out of his colour.
DR JOHN WILK.INS.
Dr John "Wilkins, bishop of Chester (1614-
1672), resembled Dr Barrow in the rare union of
BcientiSc with theological study. Having sided
with the popular party during the civil war, he
received, when it proved victorious, the headship
of Wadham college, Oxford. While in that situa-
tion, he was one of a small knot of university men
■who used to meet for the cultivation of experi-
mental philosophy as a diversion from the painful
thoughts excited by public calamities, and who, after
the Restoration, were incorporated by Charles II.
under the title of the Royal Society. Of the
object of those meetings, Dr Sprat, in his history
of the society, gives us the following account. ' It
was some space after the end of the civil wars, at
Oxford, in Dr Wilkins his lodgings, in Wadham
college, which was then the place of resort for
virtuous and learned men, that the first meetings
were made, which laid the foundation of all this
that followed. The university had, at that time,
many members of its own, who had begun a free way
of reasoning ; and was also frequented by some gen-
tlemen of philosophical minds, whom the misfor-
tunes of the kingdom, and the security and case of
a retirement amongst gown- men, had drawn thither.
Their first purpose was no more than only tlie satis-
faction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in
quiet with one another, without being engaged in the
passions and madness of that dismal age. * * For
such a candid and unpassionate company as that
was, and for such a gloomy season, what could have
been a fitter subject to pitch upon than natural
philosophy ? To have been always tossing about
some theological question, would have been to have
made tliat their private diversion, the excess of
which they themselves disliked in the public : to
have bpen eternally musing on civil business, and
the distresses of their country, was too melancholy
a reflection : it was nature alone which could plea-
santly entertain tliem in that estate. Tiie contem-
plation of that draws our minds off from the past
or present misfortunes, and makes them conquerors
over things in the greatest public unhapjjiness :
while the consideration of men, and human affairs,
may affect us with a thousand disquiets, tiiat ne\er
separates us into mortal factions; that gives vis room
to differ wit'iont animosity, and permits us to raise
contrary imaginations upon it, without any danger
of a civil war.'*
Having married a sister of Oliver Cromwell in
1056, l>r Wilkins was enabled, by a disjiensation
from tlie Protector, to retain his office in Wadham
college, notwitlistanding a rtde which made celibacy
imperative on those wlio lii'ld it ; but three years
ijfterwarus he removed to Cambridge, the headship
* Sprat's Ilistory of the Royal Society, pp. 53, 55.
of Trinity college having been presented to hiia
during the brief government of his wife's nephew,
Richard. At the Restoration, he was ejected from
this office ; but his politics being neither violent nor
unaccommodating, the path of advancement did
not long remain closed. Having gained the favour
of the Duke of Buckingham, he was advanced in
1668, after several intermediate steps, to the see of
Chester. According to Bishop Burnet, Dr AVilkins
' was a man of as great mind, as true a judgment, as
eminent virtues, and of as good a soul, as any I ever
knew. Though he married Cromwell's sister, yet
he made no other use of that alliance but to do good
offices, and to cover the university of Oxford from
the sourness of Owen and Goodwin, At Cambridge,
he joined with those who studied to propagate better
thoughts, to take men off from being in parties, or
from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits and
fierceness about opinions. He was also a great ob-
server and promoter of experimental philosophy,
which was then a new thing, and much looked
after. He was naturally ambitious ; but was the
wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of
mankind, and had a delight in doing good.' Bishop
Wilkins, like his friend and son-in-law Tillotson.
and the other moderate churchmen of the day, was
an object of violent censure to the high-church
party ; but fortunately he possessed, as Burnet
farther informs us, 'a courage which could stand
against a current, and against all the reproaches
with which ill-natured clergymen studied to load
him.' He wrote several theological and mathema-
tical works; but his most noted performance is one
which he published in early life, entitled The Dis-
cover}/ of a New World ; or a Discourse tending to
prove that it is probable there may be another Habiialile
World in the Moon : with a Discourse concerninc) the
Possibility of a Passage thither. In this ingenious
but fantastical treatise, he supports the proposition,
' That it is possible for some of our posterity to find
out a conveyance to this other world, and, if there
be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them.'
He admits, that to be sure this feat has in the pre-
sent state of hum.an knowledge an air of utter im-
possibility : yet from this, it is argued, no hostile
inference ought to be drawn, seeing that many
things formerly supposed impossible have actually
been accomplished. ' If we do but consider,' says
he, ' by what steps and leisure all arts do usually
rise to their growth, we shall have no cause to doubt
why this also may not hereafter be found out amongst
other secrets. It hath constantly yet been the method
of Providence not presently to show us all, but to
lead us on by degrees from the knowledge of one
thing to another. It was a great wliile ere the
planets were distinguished from tlie fixed stars; and
some time after that ere the morning and evening
stars were found to be the same. And in greater
space, I doubt not but this also, and other as ex-
cellent mysteries, will be discovered.' Though it is
evident that tlie possit)ility of any event whatsoever
might be argued on the same grounds, they seem to
have been quite satisfactory to Wilkins, who goes
on to discuss the difficulties in the way of accom-
plishing the aerial journey. After disposing, by
means of a tissue of absurd h3'potheses, of the ob-
stacles presented by ' the natural heaviness of a
man's body,' and 'the extreme coldness and tliiimess
of the ethereal air' — and having made it appear that
even a swift journey to tiie moon would iirobably
occupy a period of six months — lie naturally stumbles
on the question, 'And how were it jiossible for any
to tarry so long without diet or sleep ?'
1. For diet. I su^'pose there could be no trusting to
446
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR J()1:N l-EARSON.
that fancy of Philo the Jew (mentioned before), who
thinks that the music of the spheres should supply the
Strength of food.
Nor can we well conceive how a man should be able
to carry so much luggage with him as might serve for
his viaticum in so tedious a journey.
2. But if he could, yet he must have some time to
rest and sleep in. And I believe he shall scarce find
iny lodgings by the way. No inns to entertain pas-
Hengers, nor any castles in the air (unless they be
enchanted ones) to receive poor pilgrims or errant
knights. And so, consequently, he cannot have any
possible hopes of reaching thither.'
The difficulty as to sleep is removed by means of
the following ingenious supposition : — 'Seeing we do
not then spend ourselves in any labour, we shall not,
it may be, need the refreshment of sleep. But if we
do, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where
■we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our
chambers.' The necessary supply of food remains,
however, to be provided for ; and on this subject the
author is abundantly amusing. We have room for
only a few of his suggestions.
'And here it is considerable, that since our bodies
will then be devoid of gravity,', and other impediments
of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any
labour, and so, consequently, not much need the
reparation of diet ; but maj', perhaps, live altogether
without it, as those creatures have done who, by
reason of their sleeping for many days together, have
not spent any spirits, and so not wanted any food,
which is commonly related of serpents, crocodiles,
bears, cuckoos, swallows, and such like. To this pur-
pose Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations : as
that of Epimenides, who is storied to have slept
seven ty-fi\e years ; and another of a rustic in Ger-
many, who, being accidentally covered with a hay-rick,
slept there for all the autumn and the winter fol-
lowing without any nourishment.
Or, if this will not serve, yet why may not a
Papist fast so long, as well as Ignatius or Xaverius ?
Or if there be such a strange efiioacy in the bread of
the Eucharist, as th(Vr miraculous relations do attribute
to it, why, then, that may serve well enough for their
viaticum.
Or, if we must needs feed upon something else, why
may not smells nourish us ? Plutarch and Pliny, and
divers other ancients, tell us of a nation in India that
lived only upon pleasing odours. And 'tis the common
opinion of physicians, that these do strangely both
strengthen and repair the spirits. Hence was it that
Democritus was able, for divers days together, to feed
himself with the mere smell of hot bread.
Or if it be necessary that our stomachs must receive
the food, why, then,- it is not impossible that the
purity of the ethereal air, being not mixed with any
imjiroper vapours, may be so agreeable to our bodies,
as to yield us sufficient nourishment.'
The greatest difficulty of all, however, is still un-
removed ; and that is. By what conveyance are we
to get to the moon.' With what the author says on
this point, we shall conclude our extracts from his
work.
[How a Man may Fly to the Moon.'\
Tf it Ije here inquired, what means there may be
conjectured for our ascending beyond the sphere of the
earth's magnetical vigour, 1 answer, 1. It is not
perhaps imi)Ossiule that a man may be able to fly, by
the application of wings to his own body ; as angels
are pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and
aa hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a
Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius relates.
2. If there be such a great ruck in Madagascar as
iVIarcus Polus, the Venetian, mentions, the feathers in
whose wings are twelve feet long, which can soop up a
horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites do a
mouse ; why, then, it is but teaching one of these to
carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymede
does upon an eagle.
Or if neither of these ways will serve, yet T do
seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it possible tc
make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and
give such a motion unto it, as shall co!ivey him through
the air. And this, perhaps, might be made largt
enough to carry divers men at the same time, tosethei
with food for their viaticum, and commodities foi
traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind
that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be
answerable thereunto. ^Ve see a great ship swims as
well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as
well as a little gnat.
This engine may be contrived from the same prin-
ciples by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and
Regiomontanus a wooden eagle
I conceive it were no difficult matter (if a man had
leisure) to show more particularly the means of com
posing it.
DR JOHN PEARSON.
Dr Wilkins was succeeded in the see of Chester
by another very learned and estimable divine, Dr
John Pearson (1613-1686), who had previously
filled a divinity chair at Cambridge, and been mas-
ter of Trinity college in that university. He pub-
lished, in 1659, An Exposition on the Creed, which
Bishop Burnet pronounces to be 'among tlie best
books that our church has produced.' This work
has been much admired for the melody of its Ian
guage, and the clear and metliodical way in which
the subjects are treated. The author thai illus-
trates
[The Resurrection.]
Beside the principles of which we consist, an 1 the
actions which flow from us, the consideration of the
things without us, and the natural course of varia-
tions in the creature, will render the resurrection yet
more highly probable. Every space of tweiity-four
hours teacheth thus nmch, in which there is always a
revolution amounting to a resurrection. The da^'dies
into a night, and is buried in silence and in darkness ;
in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth,
opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead ol
night ; this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day
dies into night, so doth the summer into winter : the
sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies
buried in the ground ; the earth is covered with snow,
or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre ;
when the spring appeareth, all begin to rise ; the plants
and flowers peep out of their graves, revive, and grow,
and flourish ; this is the annual resurrection. The coin
by which we live, and for want of which we p( ri.-h
with famine, is notwithstanding cast nj)on the earll;,
and buried in the ground, with a design that it uiay
corrupt, and being corrupted, may revive and miil-
tijjly : our bodies are fed by this constant exjieriment,
and we continue this present life by succession of resur-
rections. Thus all things arc repaired by corrupting;,
are preserved by perishing, and revive by dying;
and can we think that man, the lord of all these tiiiiigM,
which thus die and revive for him, should be detained
in death as never to live again { Is it imaginable
that God should thus restore all things to man, and
not restore man to himself? If there were no other
consideration, but of the principles of human nature,
of the liberty and remuuerability of human actions,
447
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OP
TO 1689
and of the natural revolutions and resurrections of
other creatures, it were abundantly sufficient to render
the resurrection of our bodies highly probable.
We must not rest in this school of nature, nor
settle our persuasions upon likelihoods; but as we
passed from an apparent possibility into a high pre-
sumption and probability, so must we pass from
thence unto a full assurance of an infallible certainty.
And of this, indeed, we cannot be assured but by the
revelation of the will of God ; upon his power we must
conclude that we may, from his will that we shall,
rise from the dead. Now, the power of God is known
unto all men, and therefore all men may infer from
thence a possibility ; but the will of God is not re-
vealed unto all men, and therefore all have not
an infallible certainty of the resurrection. For the
grounding of which assurance 1 shall show that God
hath revealed the determination of his will to raise
the dead, and that he hath not only delivered that
intention in his Word, but hath also several ways
confirmed the same.
DR THOMAS SPRAT.
Dr Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester (1636-
1713), is praised by Dr Johnson as ' an author whose
pregnancy of imagination and eloquence of language
have deservedly set him high in the ranks of litera-
ture ;'* and although the voice of the literary public
has not confirmed so high a eulogium, yet the cele-
brity of the bishop in his own times, added to the
merits of his style, which, though not pre-eminent,
are imquestionably great, entitle him to be men-
tioned among the leading prose writers of this
period. At Oxford, where he received his academi-
cal education, he studied mathematics under Dr
Wilkins, at whose house the philosophical inquirers
who originated the Royal Society used at that time
to meet. Sprat's intimacy with Wilkins led to his
election as a member of the society soon after its
incorporation; and in 1667 he published the history
of that learned body, with the object of dissipating
the i)rejudice and suspicion with which it Avas re-
garded by the public. ' This,' says Dr Johnson. ' is
one of the few books which selection of sentiment
and elegance of diction have been able to preserve,
though written upon a subject flux and transitory.
The history of the Royal Society is now read, not
with the wish to know what they were then doing,
but how their transactions are exhibited by Sprat.'f
Previously to this time he had been appointed
chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, whom he is
said to have aided in writing the Rehearsal. He
was made also chaplain to the king. In these cir-
cumstances, ecclesiastical promotion could hardly
fail to ensue ; and accordingly, after several advanc-
ing steps, the see of Rochester was attained in 1684.
Next year he served the government by publishing
an account of the Ryehouse plot, written by the
command of King James. For this work he found
it convenient, after the Revolution, to print an apo-
logy ; and having submitted to the new goverimient,
he was allowed, notwithstanding his well-known
attachment to the abdicated monarch, to remain
unmolested in his bishopric. In 1692, however, he
was brought into trouble by a false .accusation of
joining in a conspiracy for the restoration of James;
but after a confinement of eleven days, he clearly
proved his innocence. So strong was the impression
made by this event upon his mind, that he ever
afterwards distinguished the anniversary of his de-
liverance as a day of thanksgiving. Besides the
works already mentioned, Sprat wrote a Life of
Cowlei/ (1668), prefixed to the works of that poet ;
* JoliDBon's Life of Cowley.
t Life cif Sprat.
besides a volume of Sermons, and one or two niinoi
productions. He published also some poems, which,
being in the style of Cowley, have long since fallen
into neglect, though still to be found in the early
collections of English poetry. The qualities which
deserve to be admired in his prose style are strength,
neatness, smoothness, and precision. It displays
but little of that splendour which the eulogy by
Dr Johnson induces a reader to expect, though
we can by no means agree with Dr Drake in the
opinion that it is wanting in vigour. ' They who
shall study his pages,' says that writer, ' will find
no richness, ardour, or strength in his diction ;
but, on the contrary, an air of feebleness, and a
species of imbecile spruceness, pervading all his
productions. They must acknowledge, however,
much clearness in his construction, and will pro-
bably agree that his cadences are often peculiarly
well turned, especially those which terminate his
paragraphs, and which sometimes possess a smart-
ness which excites attention.'* In our opinion, it
would not be eas}' to find in any contemporary work
a better specimen of what is called the middle style,
than the first of the subjoined extracts, forming a
portion of Sprat's History of the Royal Society. It
is diflacult to account for the perversity of Lord
Orrery, who, after remarking that, 'among our
English writers, few men have gained a greater
character for elegance and correctness than Sprat,'
declares, that ' few men have deserved it less;' and
that, ' upon a review of Sprat's works, his lan-
guage will sooner give you an idea of one of the
insignificant tottering boats uj)on the Thames, than
of the smooth noble current of the river itself.'f
How far this is true, let the reader judge for him-
self.
{^Vietv of the Divine Gorcmmcnt afforded by
Experimental Philosophy.]
We are guilty of false interpretations of providences
and wonders, when we either make those to be miracles
that are none, or when we put a false sense on those
that are real ; when we make general events to have
a private aspect, or particular accidents to have some
universal signification. Though both these may seem
at first to have the strictest appearance of religion,
yet they are the greatest usurpations on the secrets of
the Almighty, and unpardonable presumptions on his
high prerogatives of punishment and reward.
And now, if a moderating of these extravagances
must be esteemed profaneness, I profess I cannot
absolve the experimental philosopher. It must be
granted, that he will be very .scrupulous in believing
all manner of commentaries on prophetical visions, in
giving liberty to new predictions, and in assigning
the causes and marking out the paths of God's judg-
ments amongst his creatures.
He cannot suddenly conclude all extraordinary
events to be the immediate finger of God ; because
he familiarly beholds the inward workings of things,
and thence perceives that many etfects, which use to
attVight the ignorant, are brought forth by the com-
mon instruments of nature, lie cannot be suddenly
inclined to pass censure on men's eternal condition
from any temporal judgments that may befall them ;
because his long converse with all matters, times, and
places, has taught him the truth of what the Scripture
says, that ' all things happen alike to all.' He cannot
blindly consent to all imaginations of devout nien
about future contingencies, seeing he is so rigid in
examining all particular matters of fact. He cannot
* Essays Illustrative of the Tatler, &c. i. Gfl.
t Orrery's Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift, p,
!K7. LoikUjii: IT.Vi.
448
PROSE wRiTr.n?.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DH THOMAS SPRAT.
be forward to assent to spiritual raptures and revela-
tions ; because he ia truly acquainted witli the tem-
pers of men's bodies, the composition of their blood,
and the jiower of fancy, and so better understands the
difference between diseases and inspirations.
Rut in all this he commits nothing that is irre-
ligious. 'Tis true, to deny that God has heretofore
warned the world of what was to come, is to contra-
dict the very Godhead itself; but to reject the sense
which any private man shall fasten to it, is not to
disdain the Word of God, but the opinions of men
like ourselves. To declare against the possibility that
new prophets maybe sent from heaven, is to insinuate
that the same infinite Wisdom which once showed
itself that way is now at an end. But to slight all
pretenders, that come without the help of miracles, is
not a contempt of the Spirit, but a just circumspec-
tion that the reason of men be not over-reached. To
deny that God directs the course of human things, is
stupidity : but to hearken to everj' prodigy that men
frame against their enemies, or for themselves, is not
to reverence the power of God, but to make that serve
the passions, the interests, and revenges of men.
It is a dangerous mistake, into which many good
men fall, that we neglect the dominion of God over
the world, if we do not discover in every turn of
human actions many supernatural providences and
miraculous events. Whereas it is enough for the
honour of his government, that he guides the whole
creation in its wonted course of causes and efFects : as
it makes as much for the reputation of a prince's wis-
dom, that he can rule his subjects peaceably by his
known and standing laws, as that he is often forced
to make use of extraordinary justice to punish or
reward.
Let us, then, imagine our philosopher to have all
slowness of belief, and rigour of trial, which by some
is miscalled a blindness of mind and hardness of
heart. Let us suppose that he is most unwilling to
grant that an3-thing exceeds the force of nature, but
where a full evidence convinces him. Let it be
allowed, that he is always alarmed, and ready on his
guard, at tlie noise of any miraculous event, lest his
judgment should be surprised by the disguisas of faith.
But does he by this diminish the authority of ancient
miracles ? or does he not rather confinn them the
more, by confining their number, and taking care that
every falsehood should not mingle with them ? Can
he by this undermine Christianity, which does not
now stand in need of such extraordinary testimonies
from heaven ? or do not they rather endanger it, who
still venture its truths on so hazardous a chance, who
require a continuance of signs and wonders, as if the
works of our Saviour and his apostles had not been
sufficient ? Who ought to be esteemed the most car-
nally-minded — the enthusiast that pollutes religion
with his own passions, or the experimenter that will
not use it to flatter and obey his own desires, but to
subdue them ? Who is to be thought the greatest
enemy of tlie gospel- oe that loads men's faiths by so
many improbable things as will go near to make the
reality itself suspected, or he that only admits a few
arguments to confirm the evangelical doctrines, but
then chooses those that are unquestionable? It can-
not be an ungodly purpose to strive to abolish all
holy cheats, whicii are of fatal consequence both to
the deceivers and those that are deceived : to the
deceivers, because they must needs be hypocrites,
having the artifice in their keeping ; to the deceived,
because, if their eyes shall ever be opened, and they
chance to find that they have been deluded in any
one thing, they will be apt not only to reject that, but
even to despise the very truths themselves which they
bad before been taught by those deluders.
It were, indeed, to be confessed, that this severity
of censure on religious thin;rs were to be condemned
in experimenters, if, while they deny any wonders
that are falsely attributed to the true God, they should
approve those of idols or false deities. But' that is
not objected against them. They make no compari-
son between his power and the works of any others,
but only between the several ways of his own mani-
festing himself Thus, if they lessen one heap, yet
they still increase the other; in the main, they dimi-
nish nothing of his right. If they take from the pro-
digies, they add to the ordinary works of the same
Author. And those ordinary works themselves they
do almost raise to the height of wonders, by the exact
discovery which they make of their excellences ;
while the enthusiast goes near to bring down the
price of the true and primitive miracles, by such a
vast and such a negligent augmenting of their
number.
By this, I hope, it appears that this inquiring, this
scrupulous, this incredulous temper, is not the dis-
grace, but the honour of experiments. And, therefore,
I will declare them to be the most seasonable study
for the present temper of our nation. This wild
amusing men's minds with prodigies and conceits of
providence has been one of the most considerable
causes of those spiritual distractions of which our
country has long been the theatre. This is a vanity
to which the English seem to have been alwaj-s sub-
ject above others. There is scarce any modern histo-
rian that relates our foreign wars, but he has this
objection against the disposition of our countrymen,
that they used to order their affairs of the greatest
in'portance according to some obscure omens or pre-
dictions that passed amongst them on little or no
foundations. And at this time, especially this last
year [1666], this gloomy and ill-boding humour had
prevailed. So that it is now the fittest season for
experiments to arise, to teach us a wisdom which
springs from the depths of knowledge, to shake cff the
shadows, and to scatter the mists which fill the minds
of men with a vain consternation. This is a work well
becoming the most Christian profession. For the most
ajtparent effect which attended the passion of Christ,
was the putting of an eternal silence on all the false
oracles and dissembled inspirations of ancient times.
[Coivlo/s Love of Retlrement.l
Upon the king's happy restoration, Mr Cou ley was
past the fortieth year of his age ; of which the greatest
part had been spent in a various and tempestuous
condition. He now thought he had sacrificed enough
of his life to his curiosity and experience. He had
enjoyed many excellent occasions of observation. He
had been present in many great revolutions, which in
that tumultuous time disturbed the peace of all our
neighbour states as well as our own. He had nearly
beheld all the splendour of the highest part of man-
kind. He had lived in the presence of princes, and
familiarly conversed with greatness in all its degrees,
which was necessary for one that would contemn it
aright ; for to scorn the pomp of the world before a
man knows it, does commonly proceed rather from ill
manners than a true magnanimity.
He was now weary of the vexations and formalities
of an active condition. He had been perplexed with
a long compliance to foreign manners. He was
satiated with the arts of court ; which sort of life,
though his virtue had made innocent to him, yet
nothing could make it quiet. These were the reasons
that moved him to forego all public employments, and
to follow the violent inclination of his own mind,
which in the greatest throng of his former business
had still called u])on him, and represented to him the
true delights of solitary studies, of temperate pleasures,
and of a moderate revenue, below the malice and (lat-
teries of fortune. * *
449
30
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168it.
In his last seven or eight j-ears he was concealed in
his beloved obscurity, and possessed that solitude
which, from his very childhood, he had always most
passionately desired. Though he had frequent invita-
tions to return into business, yet he never gave ear to
any persuasions of profit or preferment. His visits to
the city and court were very few ; his stays in town
were only as a passenger, not an inhabitant. The
places that he chose for the seats of his declining life
were two or three villages on tlie bank of the Thames.
During this recess, his mind was rather exercised on
what was to come than whiit was past ; he suffered no
more business nor cares of life to come near him than
what were enough to keep his soul awake, but not to
disturb it. Some few friends and books, a cheerful
heart, and innocent conscience, were his constant
companions. * *
I acknowledge he chose that state of life, not out of
any poetical rapture, but upon a steady and sober ex-
perience of human things. But, however, I cannot
applaud it in him. It is certainly a great disparage-
ment to virtue and learning itself, that those very
things which only make men useful in the world
should Incline them to leave it. This ought never to
be allowed to good men, unless the bad had the same
moderation, and were willing to follow them into the
wilderness. But if the one shiill contend to get out of
employment, while the other strive to get into it, the
affairs of mankind are like to be in so ill a posture,
that even the good men themselves will hardly be able
to enjoy their very retreats in security.
DR THOTIAS BURNET.
Dr Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), master of the
Charter-house in London, and who probably would
have succeeded Tillotson as arclibishop of Canter-
bury, had not his heterodoxy stood in the way, ac-
quired great celebrity by the publication of a work
entitled The Sacred Theory of the Earth; containing
an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the
General Changes which it hath alreadij undergone, o?' is
tc undergo, till the Consummation of all Things. The
first edition, which was written in Latin, appeared
in 1680; but an English translation was published
by the author in 1691. In 'a geological point of
fiew, this treatise is totally wu)rtldess, from its
want of a basis of ascertained facts ; but it abounds
in fine composition and magnificent description,
and amply deserves perusal as an eloquent and in-
genious philosophical romance. The author's atten-
tion seems to have been attracted to the sub-
ject by the unequal and ragged appearance of the
earth's surface, which seemed to indicate the globe
to be the ruin of some more reguhir fabric. He
tells that in a journey across the Alps and Apen-
nines, ' the sight of tliose wild, vast, and indigested
heaps of stones and earth did so deeply strike my
fancy, that I was not easy till I could give myself
some tolerable account how that confusion came in
nature.' The theory which he formed was the fol-
lowing: — The globe in its chaotic state was a dark
fluid mass, in wliicli the elements of air, water, and
earth were blend(;d into one universal compound.
Gradually, tlie heavier parts full towards the centre,
and formed a nucleus of solid matter. Around this
floated tlie liquid ingredients, and over them was
the still ligliter atmospheric air. By and by, the
liquid mass became separated into two layers, bj'
the separation of the watery particles from those of
an oil}- composition, which, being the lighter, tended
upwards, and, when hardened by time, became a
smooth and solid crust. This was the surface of
the antediluvian globe. ' In this smooth cartli,' says
Burnet, 'were ue first wenes of the world, and
the first generations of mankind ; it had the beauty
of youth and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful,
and not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture in all its body; no
rocks nor mountains, no hollow caves nor gaping
channels, but even and uniform all over. And the
smoothness of the earth made the face of the heavens
so too; the air was calm and serene ; none of those
tumultuary motions and conflicts of vapours, which
the mountains and the winds cause in ours. 'Twas
suited to a golden age, and to the first innocency of
nature.' By degrees, however, the heat of the sun,
penetrating the superficial crust, converted a portion
of the water beneath into steam, the expansive force
of which at length burst the superincumbent shell,
already weakened by the dryness and cracks occa-
sioned by the solar rays. When, therefore, the
'appointed time was come that All-wise Providence
had designed for the punishment of a sinful world,
the whole fabric brake, and the frame of the earth
was torn in pieces, as by an earthquake; and those
great portions or fragments into which it was
divided fell into the abyss, some in one posture, and
some in another.' The waters of course now ap-
peared, and the author, gives a fine description of
their tumultuous raging, caused by the precipitation
of the solid fragments into their bosom. The pres-
sure of such masses falling into the abyss, ' could
not but impel the water with so nmch strength as
would carry it up to a great height in the air, and
to the top of anything that lay in its way ; any emi-
nency, or high fragment whatsoever: and then roll-
ing back again, it would sweep down with it what-
soever it rushed upon — woods, buildings, living
creatures — and carry them all headlong into the
great gulf. Sometimes a mass of water would be
quite struck off and separate from the rest, and
tossed through the air like a flying river ; but tlie
common motion of the waves was to climb up the
hills, or inclined fragments, and then retm-n into the
vallej's and deeps again, with a perpetual fluctuation
going and coming, ascending and descending, till
the violence of them being spent by degrees, they
settled at last in the places allotted for them ; where
bounds are set that they cannot pass our, that they
return not again to cover the earth. * *
' Thus the flood came to its heiglit ; and it is not
easy to represent to ourselves this strange scene of
things, when tlie deluge was in its fury and ex-
tremity ; when the earth was broken and swallo.wed
tip in the abyss, whose raging waters rose higlier
than the mountains, and filled the air with broken
waves, with an universal mist, and with thick dark-
ness, so as nature seemed to be in a second chaos;
and upon this chaos rid the distressed ark that bore
the small remains of mankind. No sea was ever so
tumultuous as this, nor is there anything in jiresent
nature to be compared witli the disorder of these
waters. All the poetry, and all the hyperboles that
are u.sed in the descrij)tion of storms and raging seas,
were literally true in this, if not beneath it. The
ark was really carried to the tops of the highest
mountains, and into the places of the clouds, and
thrown down again into the deepest gulfs ; and to
this very state of tlie deluge and of the ark, which
was a type of tlic church in this world, David seems
to have alluded in the name of the church (I'sal. xlii.
7.) " Ab3^ss calls upon abyss at the noise of thy
cataracts or water-spouts ; all thy waves and billows
have gone over me." It was no doubt an extraordi-
nary and miraculous providence that could make a
vessel so ill-manned live upon such a sea ; that kept
it from being dashed against the hills, or overwhelmed
in the deeps. That abyss which had devoured ;md
swallowed up whole forests of woods, cities, and pro-
vinces, nay, the whole earth, when it had conquered
450
I-ROSE WRITERS.
EXGLISH LITERATURE.
DR THOMAS BUK.NET.
all, .ind triumphed over .ill, coulJ not destroy tliis
single ship. I remember in the story of the Aru^o-
nautics {Dion. Anjonaut. 1. i. v. 47.), when Jason set
out to fetch the golden fieece, the poet saitli, all the
gods that day looked down from heaven to view the
ship, and the nymphs stood upon the mountain-tops
to see the noble youth of Thessaly pulling at the
oars ; we may with more reason suppose the good
angels to have looked down upon this ship of Xoah's,
and tliat not out of curiosity, as idle spectators, but
with a jiassionate concern for its safety and deliver-
ance. A ship, whose cargo was no less than a w hole
world ; that carried the fortune and hopes of all pos-
terity; and if this had perished, the eartli, for any-
thing we know, had been nothing but a desert, a
great ruin, a dead heap of rubbish, from the deluge
to the conflagration. But death and hell, the grave
and destruction, have their bounds.'
We cannot pursue the author into further details,
nor analyse the ingenious reasoning by which he
endeavours to defend his theory from some of the
many insuperable objections which the plainest facts
of geology and natural philosophy furnish against it.
The concluding part of his work relates to the final
conflagration of the world, by which, he supposes,
the surface of the new chaotic mass will be restored
to smoothness, a-id ' leave a capacity for another
world to rise from it.' Here the style of the author
rises into a magnificence worthy of the sublimity of
the theme, and he concludes with impressive and
appropriate reflections on the transient nature of
earthly things. The passage is aptly termed by
Addisou the author's funeral oration over his globe.
[TJieJinal Conflagration of the Globe.']
But 'tis not possible, from any station, to have a
full prospect of this last scene of the earth, for 'tis a
mixture of fire and darkless. This new temple is
filled with smoke while it is consecrating, and none can
enter into it. But I am apt to think, if we could look
down upon this burning world from above the clouds,
and have a full view of it in all its parts, we should
think it a lively representation of hell itself ; for fire
and darkness are the two chief things by which that
Btate or that place uses to be described ; and they are
both here mingled together, with all other ingredients
that make that tophet that is prepared of old (Isaiah
XXX.) Here are lakes of fire and brimstone, rivers of
melted glowing matter, ten thousand volcanos vomiting
flames all at once, thick darkness, and pillars of smoke
twisted about with wreaths of flame, like fiery snakes ;
mountains of earth thrown up into the air, and the
heavens dropping down in lumps of fire. These things
will all be literally true concerning that day and
that state of the earth. And if we suppose Beelzebub
and his apostate crew in the midst of this fiery fur-
nace (and I know not where they can be else), it will
be hard to find any part of the universe, or any state
of things, that answers to so many of the properties
and characters of hell, as this which is now before us.
But if we suppose the storm over, and that the fire
hath gotten an entire victory over all other bodies,
and subdued everything to itself, the conflagration
will end in a deluge of fire, or in a sea of fire, cover-
ing the whole globe of the earth ; for, when the ex-
terior region of the earth is melted into a fluor, like
molten glass or running metal, it will, according to the
nature of other fluids, fill all vacuities and depressions,
and fall into a regular surface, at an equal distance
everywhere from its centre. This sea of fire, like the
first ab^ss, will cover the face of the whole earth, make
a kind of second chaos, and leave a capacity for an-
other world to rise from it. But that is not our present
business. Let us only, if you please, to take leave of
this subject, reflect, upon this occasion, on the vanity
and transient glory of all this habitable world ; how, by
the force of one element breaking loose upon the rest,
all the varieties of nature, all the works of art, all the
labours of men, are reduced to nothing ; all that we
admired and adored before, as great and magnificent,
is obliterated or vanished ; and another form'and face
of things, plain, simi)le, and everywhere the same,
overspreads the whole earth. Where are now the great
empires of the world, and their great imperial cities 1
Their pillars, trophies, and monuments of glorv ?
Show me where they stood, read the inscription, tell
rne the victor's name ! What remains, what impres-
sions, what difference or distinction do you see in this
mass of fire ? Rome itself, eternal Rome, the great
city, the empress of the world, whose domination and
su{)erstition, ancient and modem, make a great part
of the history of this earth, what is become of her now 1
She laid her foundations deep, and her palaces were
strong and sumptuous : she glorified herself, and
lived deliciously, and said in her heart, T sit a queen,
and shall see no sorrow. But her hour is come ; she is
wiped away from the face of the earth, and buried in
perpetual oblivion. But it is not cities only, and
works of men's hands, but the everlasting hills, the
mountains and rocks of the earth, are melted as wax
before the sun, and their place is nowhere found.
Here stood the Alps, a prodigious range of stone, the
load of the earth, that covered many countries, and
reached their arms from the ocean to the Black Sea ;
this huge mass of stone is softened and dissolved, as a
tender cloud into rain. Here stood the African moun-
tains, and Atlas with his top above the clouds. There
was frozen Caucasus, and Taurus, and Hnaus, and the
mountains of Asia. And yonder, towards the north,
stood the Riphtean hills, clothed in ice and snow. All
these are vanished, dropped awa}' as the snow upon their
heads, and swallowed up in ared seaof fire. (Rev.xv. 3.)
Great and marvellous are thy works. Lord God Al-
mighty ; just and true are thy ways, thou King of
Saints. Hallelujah.
Dr Burnet is led by his subject into the following
energetic
\_Ilebuke of Human Pride.}
We must not, by any means, admit or imagine
that all nature, and this great universe, was made only
for the sake of man, the meanest of all intelligent
creatures that we know of; nor that this little planet
where we sojourn for a few days, is the only habitable
part of the universe : these are thoughts so groundless
and unreasonable in themselves, and also so derogatory
to the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the First
Cause, that as they are absurd in rea.son, so they
deserve far better to be marked aiid censured for
heresies in religion, than many opinions that have
been censured for such in former ages. How is it
possible that it should enter into tiie thoughts of vain
man to believe himself the principal part of God's
creation ; or that all the rest was ordained for him,
for his service or pleasure ? 'Man, whose follies we
laugh at every day, or else complain of them ; wliose
pleasures are vanity, and his passions stronger than
his reason ; who sees himself every way weak and im
potent ; hath no power over external nature, little
over himself ; cannot execute so much as his own good
resolutions ; nmtable, irregular, prone to evil. Surely^
if we made the least reflection upon ourselves with
impartiality, we should be ashamed of such an arro-
gant thought. How few of these sons of men, foi
whom, they say, all things were made, are the sons of
wisdom I how few find the paths of life! They spend
a few davs in fidly and sin, and then go down to tlie
regions of dtath and misery. And is it possible to
believe that all nature, and all Providence, are only,
451
VRou 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
or principally, for their sake ? Is ic not a more reason-
able character or conclusion which the prophet hath
made, Surely every man is vanity 1 Man that comes
into the world at the pleasure of another, and goes
out bv a hundred accidents ; his birth and education
generally determine his fate here, and neither of those
are in his own power ; his wit, also, is as uncertain as
his fortune ; he hath not the moulding of his own
brain, however a knock on the head makes him a fool,
stupid as the beasts of the field ; and a little excess
of passion or melancholy makes him worse, mad and
frantic. In his best senses he is shallow, and of little
understanding ; and in nothing more blind and igno-
rant than in things sacred and divine ; he falls down
before a stock or a stone, and says, Thou art my God ;
he can believe nonsense and contradictions, and make
it his religion to do so. And is this the great creature
which God hath made by the might of his power, and
for the honour of his majesty ? upon whom all things
must wait, to whom all things must be subservient ?
Methinks, we have noted weaknesses and follies enough
in the nature of man ; this need not be added as the
top and accomplishment, that with all these he is so
vain as to think that all the rest of the world was
made for his sake.
Figuring to himself the waters of the sea dried up,
he thus grandly describes the appearance of
\_The Dry Bed of the Ocean.']
That vast and prodigious cavity that nms quite
round the globe, and reacheth, for ought we know,
from pole to pole, and in many places is unsearchably
deep — when I present this great gulf to my imagi-
nation, emptied of all its waters, naked and gaping
at the sun, stretching its jaws from one end of the
earth to another, it appears to me the most ghastly
thing in nature. What hands or instruments could
work a trench in the body of the earth of this vastness,
and lay mountains and rocks on the side of it, as
ramparts to inclose it ? * *
But if we should suppose the ocean dry, and that we
looked down from the top of some high cloud upon the
empty shell, how horridly and barbarously would it
look ! And with what amazement should we see it
under us like an open hell, or a wide bottomless pit !
So deep, and hollow, and vast ; so broken and con-
fused ; so everyway deformed and monstrous. This
would effectually awaken our imagination, and make
us inquire and wonder how such a thing came in
nature ; from what causes, by what force or engines,
could the earth be torn in this prodigious manner ?
Did they dig the sea with spades, and carry out the
moulds in hand-baskets ? Where are the entrails
laid ? And how did they cleave the rocks asunder ?
If as many pioneers as the army of Xerxes had been
at work ever since the beginning of the world, they
could not have made a ditch of this greatness.
According to the proportions taken before in the second
chapter, the cavity or capacity of the sea-channel will
amount to no less than 1,63.0,090 cubical miles. Nor
is it the greatness only, but that wild and multifarious
confusion which we see in the parts and fasliion of it,
that makes it strange and unaccountable^ It is
another chaos in its kind ; who can paint the scenes of
it ? Gulfs, and precipices, and cataracts ; pits within
pits, and rocks under rocks ; broken mountains, and
ragged islands, that look as if they had been countries
pulled up by the roots, and planted in the sea.
Besides his ' Sacred Theory of the Earth,' Burnet
wrote a work entitled Arrhirohxjia Philosojihica. giving
(in account of the opinions of tlie ancients concern-
ng the nature of things; with the design, as he says.
' to vindicate and give antiquity its due praise, and
to show that neither were our ancestors dunces, nor
was wisdom or true philosophy born with us.' His
opinion of the ancient philosophers, however, seems
to have been considerably exalted by his finding in
their views some traces of his own favourite theory.
In this work he gave much offence to the orthodox,
by expressing some free opinions concerning the
jMosaic account of the creation, the fall of man, and
the deluge ; he even considered the narrative of the
fall to be an allegorical relation, as many of the
fathers had anciently taught. In a posthumous work
On Christian Faith and Duties, he gives the prefer-
ence to those parts of Christianit}' Avhlch refer to
human conduct over the disputed doctrinal portions.
Another posthumous treatise, On the State of the Dead
and Beviving* is remarkable as maintaining the
finity of hell torments, and the ultimate salvation of
the whole human race. It is said that, in conse-
quence of holding these views, Dr Burnet, notwith-
standing the patronage of Tillotson, and the favour
of King William, was slmt out by a combination of
his clerical bretliren from high ecclesiastical prefer •
meat.
DR HENRY MORE.
The last of the divines of the established church
whom we shall mention at present is Dr Henry
More (1614-1687), a very learned cultivator of the
Platonic philosophy. He devoted his life to study
and religious meditation at Cambridge, and strenu-
ously refused to accept preferment in the church,
which would have rendered it necessary for him to
leave what he called his paradise. The friends
of this recluse philosopher once attempted to decoy
him into a bishopric, and got him as far as Wliite-
hall. that he might kiss the king's hand on the oc-
casion ; but when told for what purpose they had
brought him thither, he refused to move a step
farther. Dr ]\Iore published several works for the
promotion of religion and virtue ; his moral doctrines
are admirable, but some of his views are strongly
tinged with mysticism, and grounded on a philosophy
which, though considerable attention was paid to it
at the time when he lived, has now fallen into gene-
ral neglect as visionary and absurd. He was one of
those who held the opinion that the wisdom of the
Hebrews had descended to Pythagoras, and from him
to Plato, in the writings of whom and his followers
he believed that the true principles of divine philo-
sophy were consequently to be found. For such a
theory, it is hardly necessary to remark, there is no
good foundation, the account given of Pytliagoras's
travels into the east being of uncertain autliority,
and tliere being no evidence that he had any com-
munication with the Hebrew prophets. Dr More
was an enthusiastic and disinterested inquirer after
truth, and is celebrated by his contemporaries as a
man of uncommon benevolence, purity, and devotion.
He once observed to a friend, ' that "he was thought
by some to have a soft head, but he thanked God he
had a soft heart.' Among his visionary notions w.as
the idea that supernatund communications were
made to him, under the direction of God, by a parti-
cular genius or demon like that of Socrates ; that
he was unusually gifted with the power of explaining
* The two works mentioned above were originally published
in Latin, under the titles De Fide el Officiis Christ iaiwnim, and
Dc Statu Mortuorum et li>surgeiitium. ]3oth have been trans-
lated ; thouKh the author, apprehensive of bad cnnseiiuinces
from the publication of an English version of the latter, strongly
protested, in a note, agaiuBt its being rendered into the verna-
cular tongue.
452
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR HENRY MORE.
the prophecies of Scripture ; and that, wlien writing
on tliat subject, he was under tlie guidance of a spe-
cial providence. He was, moreover, credulous as to
apparitions and witchcraft, but in this ditl'ered little
from many intelligent and learned contemporaries.
His works, thougli now little read, were extremely
popular in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
The principal of them are, The Mystery of Godliness,
The Mystery of Iniquity, A Discourse on the Immorta-
lity of the Soul, Ethical and Metaphysical Manuals,
several treatises against atheism and idolatry, and a
dull and tedious poem, entitled A Platonic Song of
the Soul. The following two stanzas are a favourable
specimen of the last-named work : —
[The Soul and Body.']
Like to a light fast lock'd in lanthom dark,
Whereby by night our wary steps we guide
In slabby streets, and dirty channels mark,
Some weaker rays through the black top do glide,
And llusher streams perhaps from horny side.
But when we've pass'd the peril of the way,
Arriv'd at home, and laid that ease aside.
The naked light how clearly doth it ray,
And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day.
Even so the soul, in this contracted state,
I Confin'd to these strait instruments of sense,
More dull and narrowly doth operate ;
At this hole hears, the sight nmst ray from thence,
Here tastes, there smells : but when she's goue from
hence,
Like naked lamp she is one shining sphere.
And round about has perfect cognoscence
Whate'er in her horizon doth appear :
She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear.
Of the prose composition of Dr IVIore, the sub-
joined extracts, the first from his ' INIystery of God-
liness,' and the second from ' An Antidote against
Atlieism,' will serve as specimens : —
[Devout Contemvlation of the Works of God.']
Whether, therefore, our eyes be struck with that
more radiant lustre of the sun, or whether we behold
that more placid and calm beauty of the moon, or be
refreshed with the sweet breathings of the open air,
or be taken up with the contemplation of those pure
sparkling lights of the stars, or stand astonished at
the gushing downfalls of some mighty river, as that
of Nile, or admire the height of some insuperable
and inaccessible rock or mountain ; or with a plea-
sant liorror and chillness look upon some silent wood,
or solenm shady grove ; whether the face of heaven
smile upon us with a clieerful bright azure, or look
upon us with a more sad and minacious countenance,
dark pitchy clouds being charged with thunder and
lightning to let fly against the earth ; whether the
air be cool, fresh, and healthful ; or whether it be
sultry, contagious, and pestilential, so that, while we
gasp for life, we are forced to draw in a sudden and
inevitable death ; whether the eartli stand firm, and
prove favourable to the industry of the artificer ; or
wliether she threaten the very foundations of our
buildings with trembling and tottering earthquakes,
accompanied with remugient echoes and ghastly mur-
murs from below ; whatever notable emergencies happen
for either good or bad to us, tliese are the Joves and
Vejoves that we worsliip, wliich to us are not many,
but one God, who has the only power to save or destroy.
And therefore, from whatever part of this magnificent
temple of his — the world — he sliail send forth his
voice, our hearts and eyes are presently directed thither-
ward wi; h fear, I .re, and veneration.
l^Nature of the Evidence of the Existence of God."]
When I say that I will demonstrate that there is
a God, I do not promise that I will always produce
such arguments that the reader shall acknowledge so
strong, as he shall be forced to confess that it is utterly
unpossible that it should be otherwise ; but they shall
be such as shall deserve full assent, and win full as-
sent from any uni)rejudiced mind.
For I conceive that we may give full assent to that
which, notwithstanding, may possibly be otherwise ;
which I shall illustrate by several examples : — Sup-
pose two men got to the top of Mount Athos, and
there viewing a stone in the form of an altar with
ashes on it, and the footsteps of men on those ashes,
or some words, if you will, as Optimo Maximo, or To
agnosto Thco, or the like, written or scrawled out upon
the ashes ; and one of them should cry out. Assuredly
here have been some men that have done this. But
the other, more nice than wise, should reply. Nay, it
may possibly be otherwise ; for this stone may have
naturally gro\ni into this very shape, and the seeming
ashes may be no ashes, that is, no remainders of any
fuel burnt there ; hut some unexplicable and unper-
ceptible motions of the air, or other particles of this
fluid matter that is active everj where, have wrought
some parts of the matter into .he form and nature of
ashes, and have fridged and j)laYed about so, that they
have also figured those intelligible characters in the
same. But would not anybody deem it a piece of
weakness, no less than dotage, for the other man one
v.hit to recede from his former apprehension, but as
fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first,
notwithstanding this bare possibility of being other-
wise ?
So of anchors that have been digged up, either in
plain fields or mountainous places, as also the Rom.an
urns with ashes and inscriptions, as Severiamis Fid.
Linus, and the like, or Roman coins with the effigies
and names of the Ca!sars on them, or that which is more
ordinary, the skulls of men in every churchyard, with
the right figure, and all those necessary perforations for
the passing of the vessels, besides those conspicuous
hollows for the eyes and rows of teeth, the os istyloeides,
ethoeides, and what not. If a man will say of them,
that the motions of the particles of the matter, or
some hidden spermatic power, has gendered these, both
anchors, urns, coins, and skulls, in the ground, he doth
but pronounce that which human reason must admit
is possible. Nor can any man ever so demonstrate
that those coins, anchors, and urns, were once the
artifice of men, or that this or that skull was once a
part of a living man, that he shall force an acknow-
ledgment that it is impossible that it should be other-
wise. But yet I do not think that any man, without
doing manifest violence to his fiiculties, can at all
suspend his assent, but freely and fully agree that
this or that skull was once a part of a living man,
and that these anchors, urns, and coins, were certainly
once made by human artifice, uotwithstanding the
possibility of being otherwise.
And what I have said of assent is also true in dis-
sent ; for the mind of man, not crazed nor prejudiced,
will fully and irreconcilably disagree, by its own
natural sagacity, where, notwithstanding, tlie thing
tliat it doth thus resolvedly and undoubtedly reject,
no wit of man can prove impossible to be true. As
if we should make such a fiction as this — tliat .Vrchi-
medes, with the same individual body that he had
when the soldiers slew him, is now safely intent upon
his geometrical figures under ground, at the centre
of the earth, far from the noise and din of tliis world,
that might disturb his meditations, or distract liim
in his curious delineations he makes with his rod upon
tlie dust ; which no man living can prove inipoHwible.
Yet if any man does not as irreconcilably disHeiit froiu
453
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 168!»
sucli a fable as this, as from any falsehood imaginable,
as.-ui-edly that man is next door to madness or dotage,
or does enormous violence to the free use of his fa-
culties.
During the same period, some writers of eminence
appeared among those bodies of Protestant Chris-
. tians Avho did not conform to the rules of the esta-
blisiied church. The most celebrated of tliese are
Baxter, Owen, Calamy, Flavel, Fox, Barclay, Penn,
and Bunyan.
KICHARD BAXTER.
Richard Baxter (1615-1691) is generally es-
teemed the most eminent of the nonconformist
Richard Baxter.
divines of this period. His first employment was that
of master of the free school at Dudley, in which town
he afterwards became distinguished as a preaclier,
first in connexion with the establislied church, and
subsequently as a dissenting minister. His labours
tliere are said to have been of marked utility in im-
proving the moral character of the inhabitants, and
increasing their respect for religion. Though lie
sided with parliament during tlie civil war, he was a
zealous advocate of order and regular government
both in church and state. "When Cromwell usurped
the supreme power, Baxter openly expressed liis dis-
.approbation, and, in a conference with the Protector,
plainly told him that the peo])le of England con-
sidered monarchy a blessing, the loss of which they
deplored. After the Kestoration, he was aj)pointed
one of the royal chaplains, but, like Dr Owen, refused
a bishopric ofTereil him by I^ord Clarendon. During
the persecution of the nonconformists, he was occa-
sionally nnich molested in the performance of his
ministerial duties ; in 1685, he was, on frivolous
grounds, condenmed by the infamous Jeffreys for
sedition, but by the king's favour obtained a release
from the heavy fine imposed ujion him on this occa-
sion. Baxter, who was a man of erdargcd and liberal
view.s, refrained from joining any of those sects into
which the dissenters were si)lit ; and he was in con-
sequence generally regarded with susjiicion and dis-
like by the more narrow-minded of them. His
character was of course exposed to much obloquy
in his lifetime, but is now imjjartially judged of,
nosterity having agreed to look upon him as ardently
devoted to the cause of piety and good morals,
esteeming worth in whatever denomination it wa&
found ; and one who, to simplicity of manners, added
much sagacity as an observer of human afiiiirs.
By many even of his contemporaries his merits were
anijdy acknowledged ; and among liis friends and
admirers he had the honour to reckon Dr Barrow,
Bishop "Wilkins, and Sir Matthew Hale. Baxter
engaged in many controversies, chiefly against the
principles of the Antinomians ;* but his writings on
other subjects are likewise numerous. The remark
of one of his biographers, that the works of this in-
dustrious author are sufficient to form a library of
themselves, is hardly overcharged, for not fewer than
one Imndred and sixty-eight publications are named
in the catalogue of his works. Their contents,
which include bodies of practical and theoretical
divinity, are of course very various ; none of them
are now much read, except the practical pieces, espe-
cially those entitled The Saint's Everlasting Best,
and A Call to the Unconverted. The latter was so
popular when published, that 20,000 copies are said
to have been sold in a single year. His work en-
titled The Certainty of the World of Spirits fully
evinced by itnqnestionahle Histories of Apparitions and
Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., is interesting to
the curious. Baxter wrote a candid, liberal, and
rational Narrative of the most Memorable Passages oj
his Life and Times, which appeared in 1G96, a few
years after his death. It is highly instructive, and,
like Baxter's writings generally, was a favourite
boolv of Dr Johnson. Our character of this produc-
tion will be fully borne out by the following ex-
tracts : —
[Fruits of Ej-pcriencc of Human Character.'\
I now see more good and more evil in all men than
heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good
as I once thought they were, but have more imperfec-
tions ; and that nearer approach and fuller trial doth
make the best appear more weak and faulty than their
admirers at a distance think. And I find that few
are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious
separating professors do imagine. In some, indeed, I
find that human nature is corrupted into a greater
likeness to devils than I once thought any on earth
had been. But even in the wicked, usually there is
more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
testify for God and holiness, than I once believed
there had been.
I less admire gifts of utterance, and bare profession
of religion, than I once did ; and have much more
charity for many who, by the want of gifts, do make
an obscurer profession than they. I o:ioe thought that
almost all that could pray movingly and fluently, and
talk well of religion, had been saints. But experi-
ence hath opened to ine what odious crimes may con-
sist with high profession ; and I have met with divers
obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary pro-
fession, or forwardness in religion, but only to live a
quiet blameless life, whom I have after found to have
long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and
sanctified life ; only, their prayers and duties were by
accident kept secret from other men's observation.
Yet he that u])on this pretence would confound the
godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to lay
heaven and hell together.
[Baxtei's Judgment of Ms Wntings.']
Concerning almost all my writings, I must confess
that my own judgment is, that fewer, well studied and
I>olished, had been better; but the reader who can
* See note, page 425.
454
ntOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
RICHARD DAXTEB.
s.afeiy censure the books, is not fit to censure the au-
thor, unless he had been upon the place, and. ac-
quainted ivith all the occasions and circumstances.
Indeed, for the ' Saint's Rest,' I had four months'
vacancy to write it, but in the midst of continual lan-
guishing and medicine ; but, for the rest, I -wrote them
in the crowd of all my other employments, which would
^llow me no great leisure for polishing and exactness,
or any ornament ; so that I scarce ever wrote one sheet
twice over, nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings,
but was fain to let it go as it was first conceived ; and
when my own desire was rather to stay upon one thing
long than run over many, some sudden occasions or
other extorted almost all my writings from me ; and
the apprehensions of present usefulness or necessity
prevailed against all other motives ; so that the di-
vines which were at hand with me still put me on,
and approved of what I did, because they were moved
by present necessities as well as I ; but those that
were far off, and felt not those nearer motives, did
rather wish that I had taken the other way, and pub-
lished a few elaborate writings ; and I am ready my-
self to be of their mind, when I forgot the case that I
then stood in. and have lost the sense of former mo-
tives. * *
And this token of my weakness so accompanied
those my j-ounger studies, that I was very apt to
start up controversies in the way of my practical
writings, and alsj more desirous to acquaint the
world with all that I took to be the truth, and to
assault those books by name which I thought did tend
to deceive them, and did contain unsound and dan-
trcrous doctrine; and the reason of all this was, that
I wfit then in the Ti^^ur of my youthful apprehen-
sions, and the new appearance of any sacred truth, it
■was more apt to affect me, and be more highly valued,
th.-in afterwards, when commonness had dulled my
delight ; and I did not sufficiently discern then how
much, in most of our controversies, is verbal, and upon
mutual mistakes. And withal, I knew not how im-
patient divines v/ere of being contradicted, nor how it
would stir up all their powers to defend what they have
once said, and to rise up against the truth which is thus
thrust upon them, as the mortal enemy of their honour ;
and I knew not how hardly men's minds are changed
from their former apprehensions, be the evidence never
so plain. And I have perceived that nothing so much
hinders the reception of the truth as urging it on men
with too harsh importunity, and falling too heavily
on their errors ; for hereby you engage their honour
in the business, and they defend their errors as them-
selves, and stir up all their wit and ability to oppose
you. In controversies, it is fierce opposition which is
the bellows to kindle a resisting zeal ; when, if they be
neglected, and their opinions lie awhile despised, they
usually cool, and come again to themselves. IMeu
are so loath to be drenched with the truth, that I am
no more for going that way to work ; and, to confess
the truth, I am lately much prone to the contrary ex-
treme, to bo too indifierent what men hold, and to
keep my judgment to myself, and never to mention
anything wherein I differ from another on anything
which I think I know more than he ; or, at least, if
he receive it not presently, to silence it, and leave him
to his own opinion ; and I find this effect is mixed
according to its causes, which are some good and some
bad. The bad causes are, 1. An impatience of men's
weakness, and mistaking forwardness, and self-con-
ceitcdness. 2. An abatement of my sensible esteem
of truths, through the long abode of them on my mind.
Though my judgment value them, yet it is hard to be
equally affected with old and common things, as with
new and rare ones. The better causes are, 1. That I
am much more sensible than ever of the necessity of
living upon the principles of religion which we are all
agreed in, and uniting in these ; and how much mis-
chief men that overvalue iheir own opinions have done
by their controversies in the church ; how some have
destroyed charity, and some caused schisms liy them,
and most have hindered godliness in themselvcis and
others, and used them to divert men from the serious
jirosecuting of a holy life ; and, as Sir Francis Bacon
saith in his Essay of Peace, ' that it is one great bene-
fit of church peace and concord, that writing contro
versies is turned into books of practical devotion foi
increase of piety and virtue.' 2. And I find that it
is much more for most men's good and edification, to
converse with them only in tliat way of godliness
which all are agreed in, and not by touching upon dif-
ferences to stir up their corru])tioiis, and to tell them
of little more of your knowledge than what you find
them willing to receive from 3'ou as mere learners ;
and therefore to stay till they crave information of
you. We mistake men's diseases when we think
there needeth nothing to cure their errors, but only to
bring them the evidence of truth. Alas! there are
many distempers of mind to be removed before men
are apt to receive that evidence. And, therefore, that
church is happy where order is kept up, and the abi-
lities of the ministers command a reverend submission
from the hearers, and where all are in Christ's school,
in the distinct ranks of teachers and learners ; for in
a learning way men are ready to receive the truth,
but in a disputing way, they come armed against it
with prejudice and animosity.
IDesh-c of Approhation.l
I am much less regardful of the approbation of man,
and set much lighter by contempt or applause, than
I did long ago. I am oft suspicious that this is not
only from the increase of self-denial and humility,
but partly from my being glutted and surfei'ed with
human applause : and all worldly things appear must
vain and unsatisfactory, when we have tried them
most. But though I feel that tliis hath some hand in
the effect, yet, as far as I can perceive, the knowledge
of man's nothingness, and God's transcendent great-
ness, with whom it is that I have most to do, and the
sense of the brevity of human things, and the nearness
of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect,
which some have imputed to self-conceitedness and
morositv.
\_Clianfje -in Baxter's E.^fimalr of his Own and otlicr Met
Kn'jideilij>'.'\
Heretofore I knew much less than now, and yet
was not half so much acquainted with my ignorance.
I had a great delight in the daily new discovv^ries
which I made, and of the light which shincd in upon
me (like a man that cometh into a country where he
never was before); but I little knew either how imper-
fectly I understood those very points whosi discovery
so much delighted me, nor how much might be said
against them, nor how many things I was yet a stranger
to : but now I find fargreater darkness upon all things,
and perceive how very little it is that wc know, in
com])arison of that which we arc ignorant of, and havei
far meaner thoughts of my own understanding, though
I must needs know that it is better furnished than it
was then.
Accordingly, I had then a far higher opinion of
learned persons and books than I have now; for what
1 wanted myself, I thought every reverend divine liad
attained and was fiuniliarly acquainted with ; and
what books I understood not, by reason of the strange-
ness of the terms or matter, I tlie more admired, and
thought that others understood their worth. But now
experience hath constrained wc against my will to
know, that reverend learned men are iinperfect, and
know but little as well as 1, especially tliose that
think themselves the wisest ; and the better I am ac-
4&S
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO ] 689.
quainteJ witii them, the more 1 perceive that we are
all yet in the dark : and the more I am acquainted
with holy men, that are all for heaven, and pre-
tend not much to subtilties, the more I value and
honour them. And when I have studied hard to un-
derstand some abstruse admired book (as De Scicntia
Dei, De Providentia circa Malum, De Decretis, De Prcc-
determinatione, De Lihertute Creaturce,* &c.), I have but
attained the knowledge of human imperfection, and to
eee that the author is but a man as well as I.
And at first I took more upon my author's credit
than now I can do ; and when an author was highly
commended to me by others, or pleased me in some
part, t was ready to entertain the whole ; whereas now
I take and leave in the same author, and dissent in
some things from him that I like best, as well as from
others.
[On the Credit diu: to History. 1
I am nufh more cautelous in my belief of history
than heretofore ; not that I run into their extreme,
that will believe nothing because they cannot believe
all things. But I am abundantly satisfied by the ex-
perience of this age, that there is no believing two
sorts of men, ungodly men and partial men ; though
an honest heathen, of no religion, may be believed,
where enmity against religion biasseth him not ; yet
a debauched Christian, besides his enmity to the
power and practice of his own religion, is seldom with-
out some further bias of interest or faction ; especially
when these concur, and a man is both ungodly .and
ambitious, espousing an interest contrary to a holy
heavenly life, and also factious, embodying himself
with a sect or i)arty suited to his spirit and designs ;
there is no believing his word or oath. If you read
any man partially bitter against others, as differing
from him in opinion, or as cross to his greatness, in-
terest, or designs, take heed how 3'ou believe any more
than the historical evidence, distinct from his word,
conipelleth you to believe. The prodigious lies which
have been published in this age in matters of fiict,
with unblushing confidence, even where thousands or
multitudes of eye and ear-witnesses knew all to be
false, doth call men to take heed what history they
believe, especially where power and violence affordeth
that privilege to the reporter, that no man dare answer
him, or detect his fraud ; or if they do, their writings
are all supprest. As long as men have liberty to ex-
amine and contradict one another, one may partly
conjecture, by comparing their words, on which side
the truth is like to lie. But when great men write
history, or flatterers by their appointment, which no
man dare contradict, believe it but as you are con-
strained. Yet, in these cases, I can freely believe
history : 1. If the person show that he is acquainted
with what he saith. 2. And if he show you the evi-
dences of honesty and conscience, and the fear of God
(which maybe much perceived in the spirit of a writ-
ing). 3. If he appear to be impartial and charitable,
and a lover of goodness and of mankind, and not
possessed of malignity, or personal ill-will and malice,
nor carried away by faction or personal interest. Con-
Bcionable men dare not lie : but faction and interest
abate men's tenderness of conscience. And a charit-
able impartial heathen may speak truth in a love to
truth, and hatred 01 a lie ; but ambitious malice and
false religion will not stick to serve themselves on any
thing. * * Sure 1 am, that as the lies of the Papists,
of Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, and Beza, are visibly
malicious and impudent, by the common plenary con-
tradicting evidence, and yet the multitude of their
* Theee Latin titles of books signify, Of the Knowledge of
God, Of Providence concerning Evil, Of Decrees, Of Predesti-
lation, Of the Liberty of the Creature.
seduced ones believe them all, in despite of truth and
charity ; so in this age there have been such things
written against parties and persons, whom the ^Titers
design to make odious, so notoriously false, as you
would think, that the sense of their honour, at least,
should have made it impossible for such men to write.
My own eyes have read such words and actions as-
serted with most vehement, iterated, unblushing con-
fidence, which abundance of ear-witnesses, even of
their own parties, must needs know to have been alto-
gether false : and therefore having myself now \\Titten
this history of myself, notwithstanding my protesta-
tion that I have not in anything wilfully gone against
the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader
than the self-evidencing light of the matter, with con-
current rational advantages from persons, and things,
and other witnesses, shall constrain him to, if he be
a person that is unacquainted with the author him-
self, and the other evidences of his veracity and credi-
bility.
[Character of Sir Matthew ITale.']
He was a man of no quick utterance, but spake with
great reason. He was most precisely just ; insomuch
that, I believe, he would have lost all he had in the
world rather than do an unjust act. Patient in hear-
ing the most tedious speech which any man had to
make for himself. The pillar of justice, the refuge of
the subject who feared oppression, and one of the
greatest honours of his majesty's government ; for,
with some other upright judges, he upheld the honour
of the English nation, that it fell not into the reproach
of arbitrariness, cruelty, and utter confusion. Every
man that had a just cause, was almost past fear if he
could but bring it to the court or assize where he was
judge ; for the other judges seldom contradicted him.
He was the great instrument for rebuilding London ;
for when an act was made for deciding all controver-
sies that hindered it, he was the constant judge, who
for nothing followed the work, and, by his prudence
and justice, removed a multitude of great impedi-
ments.
His great advantage for innocency was, that he was
no lover of riches or of grandeur. His garb was too
plain ; he studiously avoided all unnecessary famili-
arity with great persons, and all that manner of living
which signifieth wealth and greatness. He kept no
greater a family than myself. I lived in a small
house, which, for a pleasant back opening, he had a
mind to ; but caused a stranger, that he might not be
suspected to be the man, to know of me whether I
were willing to part with it, before he would meddle
with it. In that house he lived contentedly, without
any pomp, and without costly or troublesome retinue
or visitors ; but not without charity to the poor. He
continued the study of physics and mathematics still,
as his great delight. He hath himself written four
volumes in folio, three of wliich 1 have read, against
atheism, Sadduceism, and infidelity, to prove first the
Deity, and then the inmiortality of man's soul, and
then the truth of Christianity and the Holy Scrip-
ture, answering the infidel's objections against Scrip-
ture. It is strong and masculine, only too tedious for
impatient readers. He said he wrote it only at vacant
hours in his circuits, to regulate his meditations, find-
ing, that while he wTote down what he thought on, his
thoughts were the easier kept close to work, and kept
in a method. But I could not persuade him to pub-
lish them.
The conference which I had frequently with him,
mostly about the immortality of the soul, and other
philosophical and foundation points, was so edifying,
that his very q\iestions and objections did help me to
more light than other men's solutions. Those who
take none for religious who frequent not private meet-
456
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN OWEN.
ings, &c., took him for an excellently righteous moral
man ; but I, who heard and read his serious expres-
sions of the concernments of eternity, and saw his love
to all good men, and the blamelessncss of his life,
thought better of his piety than my own. When the
people crowded in and out of my house to hear, he
openly showed me so great respect before them at the
door, and never spake a word against it, as was no
small encouragement to the common people to go on ;
though the other sort muttered, that a judge should
seem so far to countenance that which they took to be
against the law. He was a great lamenter of the ex-
tremities of the times, and of the violence and foolish-
jess of the predominant clergy, and a great desirer of
such abatements as might restore us all to serviceable-
ness and unity. lie had got but a very small estate,
though he had long the greatest practice, because he
would take but little mono}', and undertake no more
business than he could well despatch. He often offered
to the lord chancellor to resign his place, when he was
blamed for doing that which he supposed was justice.
He had been the learned Selden's intimate friend, and
one of his executors ; and because the Hobbians and
other infidels would have persuaded the world that
Selden was of their mind, I desired him to tell me the
truth therein. He assured mc that Selden was an
earnest professor of the Christian faith, and so angry
an adversary to Hobbes, that he hath rated him out
of the room.
[^Observance of the Sabbath in Baxter's Youth.]
I cannot forget, that in my youth, in those late
times, when we lost the labours of some of our con-
formable godly teachers, for not reading publicly the
book of sports and dancing on the Lord's Da}^ one of
my father's own tenants was the town piper, hired by
the year (for many years together), and the place of
the dancing assembly was not an hundred yards from
our door. We could not, on the Lord's Day, either
read a chapter, or pray, or sing a psalm, or catechise,
or instruct a servant, but with the noise of the pipe
and tabor, and the shoutings in the street, continually
in our ears. Even among a tractable people, we were
the common scorn of all the rabble in the streets, and
called puritans, precisians, and hypocrites, because we
rather chose to read the Scriptures than to do as they
did ; though there was no savour of nonconformity in
our family. And when the people by the book were
allowed to play and dance out of public service time,
they could so hardly break oft' their sports, that many
a time the reader was fain to stay till the piper and
players would give over. Sometimes the morris-dan-
cers would come into the church in all their linen,
and scarfs, and antic-dresses, with morris-bells jing-
ling at their legs ; and as soon as common prayer was
read, did haste out presently to their play again.
[ Theological Controversies.]
My mind being these many years immersed in
studies of this nature, and having also long wearied
myself in searching what fathers and schoolmen have
said of such things before us, and my genius abhorring
confusion and equlvocals, I came, by many years'
longer study, to perceive that most of the doctrinal
controversies among Protestants are far more about
equivocal words than matter ; and it wounded my
loul to perceive what work both tyrannical and un-
skilful disputing clergymen had made these thirteen
hundred years in the world ! Experience, since the
year ltJ4o, till this year, 1675, hath loudly called me
to repent of my own jirejudices, sidings, and ccnsur-
ings of causes and persons not understood, ajid of all
the miscarriages of my ministry aud life which have
been thereby caused; and to make it my chief work
to call men that are within my hearing to more peace-
able thoughts, affections, and practices. And my en-
deavours have not been in vain, in that the ministers
of the county where I lived were very many of such
a peaceable temper, and a great number more through
the land, by fjod's grace (rather than any endeavours
of mine), are so minded. But the sons of the cowl
were exasperated the more against me, and accounted
him to be against every man that called all men to
love and peace, and was for no man as in a contrary
way.
JOHN OWEN.
Dr John Owen (1616-1683), after studying at
Oxford for the church of England, became a Presby-
terian, but finally joined the Independents. He was
highly esteemed by the parliament wliich executed
the king, and was frequently called upon to preach
before them. Cromwell, in particular, was so highly
pleased with him, that, when going to Ireland, he
insisted on Dr Owen accompanying him. for tlie
purpose of regulating and superintending tlie college
of Dublin. After spending six months in that city,
Owen returned to his clerical duties in England, from
which, however, he was again speedily called away by
Cromwell, who took him in 1650 to Edinburgh, where
he spent six months. Subsequenth', he was promoted
to the deanery of Christ-church college in Oxford,
and soon after, to the vice-chancellorship of the uni-
versity, wliich oflSces he held till Cromwell's death.
After the Restoration, he was favoured by Lord
Clarendon, Avho offered him a preferment in the
church if he would conform ; but this the prmciples
of Dr Owen did not permit him to do. The perse-
cution of the nonconformists repeatedly disposed
him to emigrate to New England, but attachment to
his native country prevailed. Notwithstanding his
decided hostility to the church, the amiable disposi
tions and agreeable manners of Dr Owen procured
him much esteem from many eminent churchmen,
among whom was the king himself, who on one oc-
casion sent for him, and, after a conv(.Tsation of two
hours, gave him a thousand guineas to be distributed
among those who had suffered most from the recent
persecution. He was a man of extensive learning,
and most estimable character. As a preacher, he
was eloquent and graceful, and displayed a degree of
moderation and liberality not very common among
the sectaries with whom he was associated. His
extreme industry is evinced by the voluminous-
ness of his publications, which amount to no Knver
than seven volumes in folio, tweut}' in quarto, and
about thirty in octavo. Among these are a collec-
tion of Sermons, An Exposition on the Epistle to the
Hebrews, A Discourse of the Huh/ Spirit, and The
Jjivine Original and Authority of the Scriptures.
The style of Dr Owen merits little jjraise. He
wrote too rapidly and carelessly to produce composi-
tions either vigorous or beautiful. Tlie graces of
style, indeed, were confessedly held by him in con-
temj)t; for in one of his prefaces we find this plain
declaration, ' Know, reader, that you have to do with
a person who, provided his words but clearly express
the sentiments of his mind, entertains a fixed and
absolute disregard of all elegance and ornaments of
speecli.' The length of liis sentences, and their intri-
cate and parenthetical structure, often render them
extremely tedious, and he is far from hajjpy in the
choice of the adjectives with wliich they are en-
cumbered. In a word, his diction is, for the most
part, dry, heavy, and pointless, and his ideas are
seldom brought out with powerful effect. Robert
Hall entertained a decided antipathy to the writings
of this celebrated divine. ' I can't think how you
457
FROM lh'49
CYCLOPEDIA OV
TO 168i».
like Dr Owen,' said he to a friend ; ' I can't read
him with any patience ; I never read a jiage of ])r
Owen, sir, without finding some confusion in liis
thouglits, eitlier a truism or a contradiction in terms.'
'Sir, lie is a double Dutchman, floundering in a con-
tinent of mud.' For moderation in controversy, Dr
Owen was most lionourably distinguislied among the
theological warriors of his age. ' As a controversial
writer,' saj's his excellent biographer, Mr Orme,
• Owen is generally distinguished for calmness, acute-
ness, candour, and gentlemanly treatment of his op-
ponents. He lived during a stormy period, and often
experienced the bitterest provocation, but he very
seldom lost his temper.'
EDMUND CALAMY.
Edmund Calamy (1 600-1 ete) was originally a
clergyman of the church of England, but had become
a nonconformist bef)re settling in London as a
preacher in 1G39. A celebrated production against
Episcopacy, called Smectymnuiis, from the initials
of the names of the writers, and in which Calamy
was concerned, appeared in the following year. Pie
was much in favour with the Tresby terian party ; and,
in his sermons, which were among the most popular
of the time, occasionally indulged in violent political
declamation ; yet he was, on the whole, a moderate
man, and disapproved of those forcible measures
which terminated in the death of tlie king. Having
exerted himself to promote the restoration of Charles
IL, he subsequently received the ofler of a bishopric ;
but, after much deliberation, it was rejected. The
passing of the act of uniformity in 1662 made him
retire from his ministerial duties in the metropolis
several j'ears before his death. The latter event was
hastened by the impression made on his mind by tlie
great fire of London, a view of the smoking ruins
having strongly and injuriously affected him. His
sermons were of a plain and practical character; and
five of them, published under the title of The Goclli/
Mans Ark, or a City of Refuge in tlie Day of his Dis-
tress, acquired much popularity.
JOHN FLAVEL.
John Flavkl (1627-1691) was a zealous preacher
at Dartmouth, where he was greatly molested for
his nonconformity during the persecutions. His
private character was highly respectable, and in the
pulpit he was distinguished for the warmth, fluency,
and variety of his devotional exercises, which, like
his writings, were somewhat tinged with enthusiasm.
His works, occupying two folio volumes, are written
in a p.kin and perspicuous style, and some of them
are still highlj' valued by persons of Calvinistic oj)i-
nions. This remark applies more particularly to his
Husliamhy Spiritualised, and Navigation Spiritualised,
in which the author extracts a variety of pious les-
sons from natural objects and phenomena, and the
common operations of life. ^lany of his sermons
have been published.
MATTHEW HENRY.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714) was the son of
Philip Henry, a pious and learned nonconformist
minister in Flintsliire. He entered as a student of
law in Gray's Inn ; but, yielding to a strong desire
for the office of the ministry, he soon abandoned the
pursuit of the law, and turned his attention to
theology, which he studied with great diligence and
zeal. In 1685 he was chosen i)astor of a noncon-
formist congregation at Cliester, where he offi-
ciated about twenty -five years. In 1711 he clianged
the scene of his labours to Hackney, where he con-
tinued till his death in 1714. Of a varietv of theo-
logical works published by this excellent divine, the
largest and 'vfst known is his Commentary on the
Bible, which he did not live to complete. It was
originally printed in five volumes folio. The Com-
mentary on the Epistles was added by various
divines. Considered as an explanation of the sacred
volume, this popidar production is not of great
value ; but its practical remarks are peculiarly in-
teresting, and have secured for it a place in the very
first class of expository works. Dr Olinthns Gre-
gory, in his Memoir of the Rev. liobert Hall, men-
tions, respecting that eminent preacher, that for the
last two years of his life he read daily two chapters
of Matthew Henry's Commentary, a work whicli I'.s
had not before read consecutively, though he had
long known and valued it. As he proceeded, he
felt increasing interest and pleasure, greatly admiring
the copiousness, variety, and pious ingenuity of the
thoughts ; the simplicity, strength, and pregnancy
of the expressions. The following extract from the
exposition of Matthew vi. 24, may be taken as a
sjiecimen of the nervous and pointed remarks with
which the work abounds.
Ye Cannot Serve God and Mammon.
Mammon is a Syriac word that signifies gain, so
that whatever is, or is accounted by us to be gain, is
inanimon. ' Whatever is in the world — the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life' — is
mammon. To some, their belly is their maminoii, and
they serve that ; to others, their ease, their sports and
pastimes, are their mammon ; tr others, worldly
riches ; to others, honours and preferments : the
praise and applause of men was the Pharisees'
mammon : in a word, self — the unity in which the
world's trinity centres — sensual secular self, is the
mammon which cannot be served in conjunction with
God; for if it be served, it is in competition with him,
and in contradiction to hira. He does not say we rnmt
not, or we nhould not, but we cannot serve Cod and
manmion ; we cannot love both, or hold to both, or
hold by both, in observance, obedience, attendance,
trust, and dependence, for they are contrary the one
to tlie other. God says, 'My son, give ine thine
heart ;' ]\Iammon says, ' No — give it me.' God says,
' Be content with such things as ye have ; ' Mammon
says, ' Grasp at all that ever thou canst — " Rem, rem,
quocunque modo, rem" — money, money, by fair means
or by foul, money.' God says, ' Defraud not ; never
lie; be honest and just in thy dealings ;' ^lamiiion
says, ' Cheat thy own father if thou canst gain by it.'
God says, ' Be charitable ;' Mammon says, ' Hold thy
own ; this giving undoes us all.' God says, ' Be care-
ful for nothing ;' Mammon says, ' Be careful for every-
thing.' God says, ' Keep holy the Sabbath day ;'
Alanimon says, ' I\Iake use of that day, as well as any
other, for the world.' Thus inconsistent are the com-
mands of God and Mammon, so that we cannot serve
both. Let us not, then, halt between God and liaal,
but ' chooseye this day whom ye will serve,' and abide
by your choice.
GEORGE FOX.
George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends,
or, as they are usually' termed, Quakers, was one of
the most prominent religious enthusiasts in an age
which produced them in extraordinary abundance.
He was the son of a weaver at Drayton, in Leices-
tershire, and was born in 1624. llaving been ap-
jirenticed to a shoenuiker who traded in wool and
cattle, he spent much of his youth in tending sheep,
au employment vvliich allowed him to indulge his
458
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE FOX.
propensity for musing and solitude. "When about
nineteen j-ears of age, he was one day vexed by a
disposition to intemperance wliich he observed in
two professedly religious friends whom lie met at a
fair. ' I went awaj-,' says he in his Journal, ' and,
wlien I had done my business, returned home ; but
I did not go to bed tliat night, nor could I sleej) ;
but sometimes walked up and doAvn, and sometimes
prayed, and cried to the Lord, who said unto me,
" Tiiou seest how young people go together into
vanity, and old people into the earth; thou must
forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be a
stranger to all." ' This divine communieation, as in
the warmth of his imagination he considered it to
be, was scrupulously obeyed. Leaving his relations
and master, lie betook himself for several years to
a wandering life, which was interrupted only for a
few months, during wliich he was prevailed iipon
to reside at home. At this time he seems to have
been completely insane. In the course of his melan-
choly wanderings, he sometimes, for weeks together,
passed tlie night in the open air, and used to spend
entire days without sustenance. ' My troubles,'
says he, 'continued, and I was often under great
temptations. I fasted much, walked abroad in soli-
tary places many daj's, and often took my Eihle and
sat in hollow trees and lonesome places until night
came on ; and frequently in the niglit walked mourn-
fully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows
in the first workings of the Lord in me.' On another
occasion, ' I was in a fast for about ten days, my
spirit being greatly exercised on truth's behalf.' At
this period, as well as during the remainder of his
life, Fox had many dreams and visions, and sup-
posed himself to receive supernatural messages from
above. In his Journal he gives an account of a par-
ticular movement of his mind in singularly beauti-
ful and impressive language : ' One morning, as I
was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me,
and a temjitation beset me, and I sate still. And it
■was said. All things come by nature ; and the Ele-
ments and Stars came over me, so that I was in a
moment quite clouded with it ; but, inasmuch as I
sate still and said nothing, the people of the house
perceived nothing. And as I sate still under it and
let it alone, a living hope rose in me, and a true
voice arose in me which cried, There is a living God
■vrho made all things. And immediately the cloud
and temptation vanished away, and the life rose over
it all, and my heart was glad, and I praised the liv-
ing God.' Afterwards, lie tells us, ' the Lord's power
broke forth, and I had great openings and prophe-
cies, and spoke unto tlie jieople of the tilings of
God, which they heard with attention and silence,
and went away and spread tlie fame thereof.' Con-
ceiving himself to- be divinely commissioned to
convert his countrymen from their sins, he began,
about the year 1647, to teacli publicly in tlie vici-
nity of Duckenfield and Manchester, wlience he
travelled through several neighbouring counties,
haranguing at the market-idaces against tlie vices
of the age. He had now formed the opinions, that
a learned education is unnecessary to a minister;
that the existence of a separate clerical profession
is unwarranted by the Bible ; that the Creator of
the world is not a dweller in temples made witli
hands; and that the Scriptures are not the rule either
of conduct or judgment, but that man should follow
' the light of Christ within.' He believed, moreover,
that he was divinely commanded to abstain from
taking off his hat to'any one, of whatever rank; to
use the words thee and thou in addressing all persons
with whom he communicated ; to bid nobody good-
morrow or good-night ; .and never to bend his knee
to any one in autliority, or take an oath, even on
the most solemn occasion. Acting upon these views,
he sometimes went into churches while service was
going on, and interrupted the clergymen by loudly
contradicting tlieir statements of doctrine. By these
breaclies of order, and the employment of such un-
ceremonious fashions of address, as, ' Come down,
thou deceiver!' he naturally gave great offence, which
led sometimes to his imjjrisonment, and sometimes
to severe treatment from tlie hands of the populace.
At Derby he was imprisoned in a loathsome dun-
geon for a year, and afterwards in a still more dis-
gusting cell at Carlisle for half that period. To this
ill-treatment he submitted with meekness and re-
signation ; and out of prison, also, there was ample
opportunity for the exercise of the same qualities.
As an illustration of the rough usage which he fre-
quently brought upon himself, we extract this affect-
ing narrative from his Journal : —
[Fox's Ill-treatment at Ulrerstone.']
The people were in a rage, and fell upon me in
the steeple-house before his [Justice Sawrcy's] face,
knocked me do^vIl, kicked me, and trampled upon
me. So great was the uproar, that some tumbled
over their seats for fear. At last he came and took
me from the people, led me out of the steeple-house,
and put me into the hands of the constables and
other officers, bidding them whip me, and put me out
of the town. IMany friendly people being come to the
market, and some to the steeple-house to hear me,
divers of these they knocked down also, and broke
their heads, so that the blood ran do^vn several ; and
Judge Fell's son running after, to see what they
would do with mo, they threw him into a ditch of
water, some of them crying, ' Knock the teeth out of
his head.' When they had haled me to the common
moss side, a multitude following, the constables and
other oificers gave me some blows over my back with
willow-rods, and thrust me among the rude multitude,
who, having furnished themselves with staves, hedge-
stakes, holm or holly-bushes, fell upon me, and beat
me upon the head, arms, and shoulders, till they had
deprived me of sense ; so that I fell down upon the
wet common. "When I recovered again, and saw my-
self lying in a watery common, and the people stand-
ing about me, I lay still a little while, and the power
of the Lord sprang through me, and the ( tenial re-
freshings revived nie, so that I stood up again in the
strengthening power of the eternal God, and stretchiu"
out my arms amongst them, I said with a loud voice,
' Strike again ! here are my arms, my head, and
cheeks !' Then they began to fall out among them-
selves.
In 1635, Fox returned to his native town, where
he continued to preach, dispute, .and hold lonfer-
ences, till he was sent by Colonel Hacker to Crom-
well, under the charge of Captain Drury. Of what
followed, his Journal contains the subjoined parti-
culars.
[Interview with Oliver CromwellJ^
After Captain Drury had lodged me at the IMer-
maid, over against the Mews at Charing-Cross, he
went to give the Protector an account of me. A\'hen
he came to me again, he told me the Protector re-
quired that I should promise not to take up a canial
sword or weapon against him or the goverimieiit, as
it then was ; and that I should wTite it in what words
I saw good, and set my hand to it. I said little in
reply to Captain Drury, but the next moniiiig I was
moved of the Lord to write a paper to the Protector,
by the name of Oliver Cromwell, wherein 1 did, in the
presence of the Lord (Jod, declare, that 1 did den;
the wearing or drawing of a 'carnal sword, or any
459
FROM 1649
CYCLOr.KDlA OF
TO 16^9.
other outward weapon, against him or any man ; and
that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all
violence, and against the works of darkness, and to
turn people from darkness to light ; to bring thetn
from the occasion of war and fighting to the peaceable
Gospel, and from being evil-doers, which the magis-
trates' sword should be a terror to.' When I had
written what the Lord had given me to \\Tite, I set
my name to it, and gave it to Captain Drury to hand
to Oliver Cromwell, which he did. After some time.
Captain Drury brought me before the Protector him-
self at Whitehall. It was in a morning, before he
was dressed ; and one Harvey, who had come a little
among friends, but was disobedient, waited upon
him. When I came in, I was moved to say, ' Peace
be in this house ;' and I exhorted him to keep in the
fear of God, that he might receive wisdom from him ;
that by it he might be ordered, and with it might
order all things under his hand unto God's glory. I
spoke much to him of truth ; and a great deal of dis-
course I had with him about religion, wherein he
carried himself ver\' moderately. But he said we
quarrelled with the priests, whom he called ministers.
I told him, ' I did not quarrel with them, they quar-
relled with rae and my friends. Rut, said 1, if we
own the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, we cannot
hold up such teachers, prophets, and shepherds, as the
prophets Christ and the apostles declared against ;
but we must declare against tliein by the same power
and spirit.' Then I shewed him that the prophets,
Christ, and the apostles, declared freely, and declared
against them that did not declare freely ; such as
preached for filthy lucre, divined for money, and
preached fur hire, and were covetous and greedy, like
the dumb dogs that could never have enough ; and
that they who have the same spirit that Christ, and
the prophets, and the apostles had, could not but
declare against all such now, as they did then. As
I spoke, he several times said it was very good, and
it was truth. I told him, ' That all Christendom (so
called) had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power
and spirit that those had who gave forth the Scrip-
tures, and that was the reason they were not in fellow-
ship with the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the
Scriptures, nor one with another.' ^lany more words
I had with him, but people coming in, I drew a little
back. As I was turning, he catched me by the hand,
and with tears in his eyes said, ' Come again to my
house, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day
together, we should be nearer one to the other ;' add-
ing, that he wished me no more ill than he did to his
own soul. I told him, if he did, he wronged his ovtii
soul, and admonished him to hearken to God's voice,
that he might stand in his counsel, and obey it ; and
if he did so, that would keep him from hardness of
heart ; but if he did not hear God's voice, his heart
would be hardened. He said it was true. Then I
went out ; and when Captain Drury came out after
me, he told me the lord Protector said I was at liberty,
and might go whither I would. Then I was brought
into a great hall, where the Protector's gentlemen
were to dine. I asked them what they brought me
thither for. They said it was by the Protector's order,
that I might dine with them. I bid them let the
Protector know I would not eat of his bread, nor drink
if his drink. When he heard this, he said, ' Now I
lee there is a people risen that I cannot win, either
?rith gifts, honours, offices, or places ; but all other
Beets and people 1 can.' It was told him again, 'That
we had forsook our own, and were not like to look for
luch things from him.'
The sect lieaded by Fox was now becoming
numerous, and attracted much opposition from the
pulpit and press. He therefore continued to travel
through the kingdom, expounding his views, and
answering objections both verbally and by the pub-
lication of controversial pamphlets. In the course
of his peregrinations he still suffered frequent im-
prisonment, sometimes as a disturber of tiie peace,
and sometimes because he refused to uncover his
head in the presence of magistrates, or to do violence
to his principles by taking the oath of allegiance.
After reducing (with the assistance of his educated
disciples Ivobert Barclay, Samuel Fisher, and George
Keith) the doctrine and discipline of his sect to a
more systematic and permanent form than that in
which it had hitherto existed, he visited Ireland and
the American plantations, employing in the latter
nearly two years in confirming and increasing his
followers. He afterwards repeatedly visited Holland,
and other parts of the continent, for similar purposes.
He died in London in 1690, aged sixty six.
That Fox was a sincere believer of what he
preached, no rational doubt can be entertained ; and
that he was of a meek and forgiving disposition
towards his persecutors, is equally unquestionable.
His integrity, also, was so reinarkaV)le, that his
word was taken as of equal value with his oath.
Religious enthusiasm, however, amounting to mad-
ness in the earlier stage of his career, led him into
many extravagances, in which few members of th©
respectable society whiih he founded have partaken.
The severities so liberally inflicted on him were ori-
ginally occasioned by those breaches of the peace
already spoken of, and no doubt also by what in his
speeches must have appeared blasjihemous to many
of his hearers. His public addresses were usually
prefaced by such phrases as, ' The Lord hath opened
to nie ;' ' I am moved of the Lord ;' ' I am sent of
the Lord God of heaven and earth.' In a warning
to magistrates, he says, ' All ye powers of the eartn,
Christ is come to reign, and is among you, and ye
know him not.' Addressing the ' seven parishes at
the Land's End,' his language is equally strong :
' Christ,' he tells them, ' is come to teach his people
himself; and every one that will not hear this pro-
phet, which God hath raised up, and which Closes
spake of, when he said, " Like unto me will God
raise you up a prophet, him shall you hear ;" every
one, I say, that will not hear this prophet, is to be
cut otf.' And stronger still is what we find in this
passage in his Journal : ' From Coventry I went to
Atherstone, and, it being their lecture-day, I was
moved to go to their chapel, to speak to the priest
and the people. They were generally pretty quiet ;
only some few raged, and would have had my rela-
tions to have bound me. I declared largely to them,
that God was come to teach his people himself, and
to bring them from all their man-made teachers, to
hear his Son ; and some were convinced there.' In
conformity with these high pretensions. Fox not
only acted as a prophet, but assumed the power ol
working miracles — in the exercise of which he claims
to have cured various individuals, including a inaa
whose arm had long been disabled, and a woman
troubled with King's Evil. C)n one occasion he ran
with bare feet through Lichfield, exclaiming, ' Wo
to the bloody city of Lichfiehi !' and, when no cala-
mity followed this denouncement as expected, found
no better mode of accounting for the failure tlian
discovering that some Christians had once been slain
there. Of his power of discerning witches, the fol-
lowing examples are given in his Journal: — 'As I
was sitting in a house full of peo{)le, declaring the
word of life to them, I cast mine eyes upon a woman,
and I discerned an unclean spirit in her ; and I was
moved of the Lord to speak sharply to her, and told
her she was a witch ; whereuj)on the woman went
out of the room. Now, I being a stranger there,
and knowing nothing of the womau outwardly, the
460
PROSE wmrcRS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
KOBERT BARCLAY.
people wondered at it, and told nie afterwards I had
discovered a great thing, for all the country looked
upon her as a witch. The Lord had given uie a
spirit of discerning, by which I many times saw
the states and conditions of people, and could try
their spirits. ITor, not long before, as I was going
to a meeting, I saw women in a tield, and I discerned
them to be witches ; and I was moved to go out of
my way into the field to them, and to declare unto
them their conditions, telling them plainly they were
in the spirit of witchcraft. At another time, there
came such an one into Swarthmore Hall, in the
meeting time, and I was moved to speak sharply to
her, and told her she was a witch ; and the people
Baid afterwards, she was generally account
The writings of George Fox are comprised in
three folio volumes, printed respectively in 1694,
1698, and 1706. The first contains his Journal,
largely quoted from above ; the second, a collection
of his Epiitlcs ; and the third, his Doctrinal l\cces.
ROBERT BARCLAY.
Robert Barclay (1648-1690), a country gentle-
man of Kincardineshire, has already been mentioned
as one of those educated Quakers who aided Fox in
systematising the doctrines and discijiline of the
sect. By the publication of various aiile works in
defence of tliose doctrines, he gave tlie Society of
"'riinds a iiiii' li more respectable station in the eyes
Lrv lIouM?, Kinc irdincshire,
of psople of other persuasions tlian it had previously
occupied. His fother, who was a colonel in tlie
army, had been converted to Quakerism in 1666,
and he himself was soon after induced to embrace
the same views. In taking this step, he is said to
have acted chiefly from the dictates of his under-
standing; though, it must be added, the existence
of considerable enthusiasm in his disposition was
indicated by a remarkable cii-cumstance mentioned
by himself — namely, that, feeling a strong impulse to
pass through the streets of Aberdeen clothed in sack-
cloth and ashes, he could not be easy till he obeyed
what he supposed to be a divine command. His most
celebrated production is entitled An Apology for the
True Christian Divinity, as the Same is held forth and
Preached by the People in Scorn called Quakers. This
work, which appeared in Latin in 1676, and in Eng-
lish two j-ears after, is a learned and methodical
treatise, very difltrent from what the world expected
on such a subject, and it was therefore read with
avidity both in Britain and on the continent. Its
most remarkable theological feature is the attemj)t
to prove that there is an internal light in man,
■which is better fitted to guide him aright in reli-
gious matters than even the Scriptures themselves ;
the genuine doctrines of which he asserts to be ren-
dered uncertain by various readings in different
manuscripts, and the fallilnlity of translators and
interpreters. These circumstances, says he, ' and
tfiuch more which might be alleged, puts the minds,
eyen of the learned, into infinite doubts, scruples,
and inextricable difficulties ; whence we may very
safely conclude, that Jesus Christ, who promised to
^^ ~»^^A \yi*-
the se It of Robert Barclay.
be always with his children, to lead Ibcm into all
truth, to guard them against the devices of the
enemy, and to establish their faith upon an unmove-
able rock, left them not to be i)nncii>nlly ruled by
that which was subject, in itself, to many uncer-
tainties ; and therefore he gave tlicm bis Spirit as
their principal guide, which neither moths nor time
can wear out, nor transcribers nor translators cor-
rupt ; which none are so young, none so illiterate,
none in so remote a place, but they may come to be
reached and rightly informed by it.' It would be
erroneous, however, to regard this work (if Barclay
as an exposition of all the doctrines which have been
or are prevalent among the Quakers, or, indeed, to
consider it as anything more than the vehicle of
such of his own views, as in his character of an
apologist he thought it desirable to state. ' This
ingenious man,' says ^losheim, ' appeared as a patron
and defender of Quakerism, and not as a professed
teacher or expositor of its various doctrines ; and he
interprtied and modified the opinions of this sect
after the manner of a champion or advocate, who
undertakes the defence of an odious cause. How,
then, does he go to work? In the first jilace, lie
observes an entire silence in relation to those funda-
mental principles of Christianity, concerning which
it is of great consequence to know the real o])inions
of the Quakers ; and thus he exhibits a system ot
theology that is evidently lame and imperfect. For
it is the peculiar business of a prudent apuli'gist tt
pass over in silence points that are scarcely suscep-
tible of a plausible defence, and to enlarge upon
those ©nly which the powers of genius and elo<iucnc©
461
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
may be able to embellish and exhibit in an advan-
tageous point of view. It is observable, in the
second place, that Barclay touches in a slight, super-
ficial, and hasty manner, some tenets, -which, when
amply explained, had exposed the Quakers to severe
censure ; and in this he discovers plainly the weak-
ness of his cause. Lastly, to omit many other
observations that might be made here, this writer
employs the greatest dexterity and art in softening
and modifying those invidious doctrines which he
cannot conceal, and dare not disavow ; for which
purpose he carefully avoids all those phrases and
terms that are made use of by the Quakers, and are
peculiar to their sect, and expresses their tenets in
ordinary language, in terms of a vague and inde-
finite nature, and in a style that casts a sort of
mask over their natural aspect. At this rate, the
most enormous errors may be held with impunity ;
for there is no doctrine, however absurd, to which
a plausible air may not be given bj' following tlie
insidious method of Barclay ; and it is well known
that even the doctrine of Spinoza was, with a like
artifice, dressed out and disguised by some of his
disciples. The other writers of this sect have de-
clared their sentiments with more freedom, perspi-
cuity, and candour, particularly the famous William
Penn and George Whitehead, whose writings deserve
an attentive lierusal preferably to all tlie t)ther pro-
ductions of that community.'* The dedication of
Barclay's 'Apology' to King Charles II. has always
been particularly admired for its respectful yet
manl_" freedom of style, and for the pathos of its
allusion to his majesty's own early troubles, as a
reason for his extending mercy and favour to the
persecuted Quakers. ' Thou hast tasted,' says he,
* of prosperity and adversity ; thou knowest what it
is to be banished thy native country, to be over-
ruled, as well as to rule and sit upon the throne ;
and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how
hateful the oppressor is to both God and man: if,
after all these warnings and advertisements, thou
dost not turn unto the Lord witli all thy heart, but
forget him, who remembered thee in thy distress,
and give up thyself to follow lust and vanit}-, surely
great will be thy condemnation.' But this appeal
had no effect in stopping persecution; for after his
return from Holland and Germany, which he had
visited in company with Pox and Penn, he was, in
1677, imprisoned along with many other Quakers,
at Aberdeen, through the instrumentality of Arch-
bishop Sharp. lie was soon liberated, however, and
subsequently gained fovour at court. Both Penn
and he were on terms of intimacy with James II. ;
and just before the sailing of the Prince of Orange
for England in 1688, Barclay, in a private conference
with his majesty, urged him to make some conces-
sions to the people. The death of this respectable
and amiable person took place about two years after
that event.
We extract from the ' Apology for the Quakers'
what he says
[^Against Titles of JTonoicr.]
We affirm positively, that it is not la\vful for Chris-
tians either to give or receive these titles of honour,
as, Your Holiness, Your Majesty, Y'our Excellency,
Y'our Eiiiineney, &c.
First, because these titles are no part of that obe-
dience which is due to magistrates or [superiors ; neiilier
doth the giving them add to or diminish from that
hubjection we owe to them, which consists in obeying
* Moeheim'i' Ecclesiastical History. Cent, xrii., chap. It.,
sec. C.
their just and la^vful commands, not in titles and
designations.
Secondly, we find not that in the Scripture any
such titles are used, either under the law or the gospel ;
but that, in speaking to kings, princes, or nobles, they
used only a simple compellation, as, ' O King !' and
that without any further designation, save, perhaps,
the name of the person, as, ' King Agrippa,' &c.
Thirdly, it lays a necessity upon Christians most
frequently to lie ; because the persons obtaining these
titles, either by election or hereditarily, may fre-
quently be found to have nothing really in them de-
serving them, or answering to them : as some, to whom
it is said, ' Y'our Excellency,' having nothing of excel-
lency in them ; and who is called, ' Y'our Grace,'
appear to be an enemy to grace ; and he who is called
' Y'our Honour,' is known to be base and ignoble. I
wonder what law of man, or what patent, ought to
oblige me to make a lie, in calling good evil, and evil
good. I wonder what law of man can secure me, in
so doing, from the just judgment of God, that will
make me count for every idle word. And to lie is
something more. Surely Christians should be ashamed
that such laws, manifestly crossing the law of God,
should be among them. * *
Fourthly, as to those titles of ' Holiness,' ' Erai-
nency,' and ' Excellency,' used among the Papists to th»
pope and cardinals, &c. ; and ' Grace,' ' Lordship,' and
' Worship,' used to the clergy among the Protestants,
it is a most blasphemous usurpation. For if they use
' Holiness' and ' Grace' because these things ought to
be in a pope or in a bishop, how come they to usurp
that peculiarl}' to themselves ? Ought not holiness
and grace to be in every Christian ? And so every
Christian should say ' Y'our Holiness' and ' Y'our
Grace' one to another. Next, how can they in reason
claim an}' more titles than were practised and re- I
ceived b_y the apostles and primitive Christians, whose j
successors they pretend they are ; and as whose sue
cessors (and no otherwise) themselves, I judge, will j
confess any honour they seek is due to them I Now, ;
if they neither sought, received, nor admitted such |
honour nor titles, how came these by them I If they
saj- they did, let them prove it if they can : we find
no such thing in the Scripture. The Christians speak
to the apostles without any such denomination, neither !
saying, ' If it please your Grace,' 'your Holiness,' nor
'your Worship;' thej' are neither called My Lord
Peter, nor My Lord Paul ; nor yet jNlaster Peter, nor
Master Paul ; nor Doctor Peter, nor Doctor Paul ; but
singly Peter and Paul ; and that not only in the
Scripture, but for some hundreds of years after : so
that this appears to be a manifest fruit of the apostacy.
For if these titles arise either from the office or worth
of the persons, it will not be denied but the apostles
deserved them better than any now that call for them.
But the case is plain ; the apostles had the holiness,
the excellenc\', the grace ; and because they were holy,
excellent, and gracious, they neither used nor ad-
mitted such titles ; but these having neither holiness,
excellency, nor grace, will needs be so called to satisfy
their ambitious and ostentatious mind, which is a
manifest token of their h_\-pocrisy.
Fifthly, as to that title of 'Majesty' usually as-
cribed to princes, we do not find it given to any such
in the II0I3' Scripture ; but that it is specially and
peculiarly ascribed unto C5od. We find in tlie Scrip-
ture the proud king Nebuchadnezzar assuming this
title to himself, who at that time received a sufiicient
reproof, by a sudden judgment which came upon him.
Therefore in all the compellations used to princes in
the Old Testament, it is not to be found, nor yet in
the New. Paul was very civil to Agrippa, yet he gives
him no such title. Neither was this title used among
Christians in the primitive times.
46 J
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAH tElfn.
WILLIAM PENN.
William Tenn (1644-1718), tlie son of an Eng-
lish admiral, is celebrated not only as a distinguislied
writer on Quakerism, but as the founder of the
state of rennsylvania in North America. The prin-
ciples whicli he adopted gave much offence to his
fatlier, who repeatedly banished him from his house;
but at length, viien it appeared that the son's opi-
nions were unalterable, a reconciliation took place
between them. Like many other members of the
Society of Friends, Penn suffered much persecution,
and was repeatedly tlirown into prison. During a
confinement in the Tower of London, he wrote the
most celebrated of his works, entitled A'o Cross,
no Croivii, in which the views of the Quakers are
powerfully maintained, and which continues in high
esteem among persons of that denomination. After
his liberation, he spent nuicli time in defending his
principles against various opponents — among otliers,
Richard Baxter, ■with whom he lield a public dispu-
tation, which lasted for six or seven hours, not, as
it appears, witliout considerable asperity, especially
on the part of Baxter. In 1681, Charles XL, in con-
sideration of some unliquidated claims of the de-
ceased Admiral I'eim upi^n the cro-sm, granted to
>Villiam, the son, a district in North America, which
was named Pennsjlvania by his majesty's desire,
and of which Penn was constituted sole proprietor
and governor. lie immediately took measures for
the settlement of the province, and drew up articles
of government, among which the follo^v^ng is one of
the most remarkable : — ' That all persons in this
province, who confess and acknowledge the one al-
mighty and eternal God to be the creator, upholder,
and ruler of the world, and tluit hold themselves
obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in
society, shall in no ways be molested or prejudiced
for their religious persuasion, or practice in matters
of faith and worship ; nor shall they be compelled,
at any time, to frequent, or maintain, any religious
worship, place, or ministry whatever.' Having gone
out to his colony in 1682, he proceeded to buy land
from the natives, with whom he entered into a treaty
of peace and friendship, which was observed wliile
the power of tlie Quakers predominated in the
colony, and which for many years after his death
caused his memory to be affectionately cherished
by the Indians. He then fixed on tlie site of his
capital, Philadelphia, the building of wliich, on a
regular plan, was immediately commenced. After
spending two j-ears in America, he returned to Eng-
land in 1684, and was enabled, by his intimacy with
James II., to procure the release of his Quaker
brethren, of whom fourteen hundred and eighty were
in prison at the accession of that monarch. When
James, in order, no doubt, to facilitate the re-esta-
blisliment of the Catholic religion, proclaimed liberty
of conscience to his subjects, the Quakers sent up
an address of thanks, which was delivered to his
majesty by Penn. This brought a suspicion of
popery upon the latter, between whom and Dr
Tillotson a correspondence took place on the sub-
ject. Tillotson, in his concluding letter, acknow-
ledged himself convinced of the falsity of the accu-
sation, and asked pardon for having lent an ear to
it. After the Revolution, Penn's former intimacy
with James caused him to be regarded as a dis-
affected person, and led to various troubles ; but he
still continued to preach and write in support of his
favourite doctrines. Having once more gone out to
America in 1699, he there exerted himself for the
improvement of his colony till 1701, when he finally
returned to England. This excellent and philan-
thropic man survived till 1718.
Besides the work already mentioned, Penn wrote
Reflections and ilai-'tms nlutlny to the Conduct of
Life, and A Keif, Sfc. to discern the Dijf'erence be-
tween the Religion professed bi/ the Quakers, and the
Misrepresentations of their Adversaries. To George
Fox's Journal, which was published in 1694, he
prefixed A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of
the People called Quakers. The first of the subjoined
specimens of his composition is extracted from his
' No Cross, no Crown,' where he thus argues
lAgain.H the Pride of Nolle Birth.]
That people are generally proud of their persons, is
too visible and troublesome, especially if they have
any pretence either to blood or beauty ; the one has
raised many quarrels among men, and the other
among women, and men too often, for their sakes, and
at their excitements. But to tlie first : what a pother
has this noble blood made in the world, antiquity of
name or family, whose father or mother, great grand-
father or great-grandmother, was best descended or
allied? what stock or what clan they came of! what
coat of arms they gave? which had, of right, the pre-
cedence ? But, niethiiiks, nothing of man's folly has
less show of reason to palliate it.
For, first, what matter is it of whom any one is de-
scended, that is not of ill fame; since 'tis his own
virtue that must raise, or vice depress him ? An an-
cestor's character is no excuse to a man's ill actions,
but an aggravation of his degeneracj' ; and since vir-
tue comes not by generation, I neither am the better
nor the worse for my forefather : to be sure, not in
God's account ; nor should it be in man's. Nobody
would endure injuries the easier, or reject favours the
more, for coining by the hand of a man well or ill de-
scended. I confess it were greater honour to have had
no blots, and with an hereditary estate to have had
a lineal descent of worth : but that was never found ;
no, not in the most blessed of families upon earth ; I
mean Abraham's. To be descended of wealth and
titles, fills no man's head with brains, or heart with
truth ; those qualities come from a higher cause.
'Tis vanity, then, and most condemnable pride, for a
man of bulk and character to despise anoth r of less
size in the world, and of meaner alliance, for want of
them ; because the latter may have the merit, where
the former has only the effects of it in an ancestor :
and though the one be great by means of a foiefitther,
the other is so too, but 'tis by his own ; then, pray,
which is the bravest man of the two ?
' {),' Fays the person proud of blood, ' it was never a
good world since we have had so many upstart gentle-
men !' But what should others have said of that man's
ancestor, when he started first up into the knowledge
of the world ! For he, and all men and faniilies_ ay,
and all states and kingdoms too, have had their up-
starts, that is, their beginnings. This is like beini^
the True Church, because old, not because good ; for
families to be noble by being old, and not by being
virtuous. No such matter : it must be age in virtue,
or else virtue before age ; for othenvise, a man should
be noble by means of his predecessor, and yet the pre-
decessor less noble than he, because he was the ar
quirer ; which is a paradox that will puzzle all tl.cir
heraldry to explain. Strange ! that they should be
more noble than their ancestor, that got their nobility
for them ! But if this be absurd, as it is, then the
upstart is the noble man ; the man that got it by his
virtue : and those only are entitled to his lionour
tliat are imitators of his virtue ; the rest may bear his
name from his blood, but that is all. If virtue, then,
give nobility, whicli heathens themselves agree, tiien
families are no hmger truly noble than they are vir-
tuous. And if virtue go not by blood, but by the
qualifications of the dosceiidautH, it follows, blood in
463
r
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
excluded ; else blood would bar virtue, and no man
that wanted the one should be allowed the benefit of
the other ; which were to stint and bound nobility for
want of antiquity, and make virtue useless.
No, let blood and name go together ; but pray, let
nobility and virtue keep company, for they are nearest
of kin." 'Tis thus positeil by God himself, that best
knows how to apportion things with an equal and just
hand. He neither likes nor aislikes by descent ; nor
does he regard what people were, but are. He re-
members not the righteousness of any man that leaves
his righteousness, much less any unrighteous man for
the righteousness of his ancestor.
But" if these men of blood please to think themselves
concerned to believe and reverence God in his Holy
Scriptures, they may learn that, in the beginning, he
made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell upon
all the face of the earth ; and that we are descended
of one father and mother ; a more certain original
than the best of us can assign. From thence go down
to Noah, who was the second planter of human race,
and we are upon some certainty for our forefathers.
What violence has rapt, or virtue merited since, and
how far we that are alive are concerned in either, will
be hard for us to determine but a few ages oft' us.
But, methinks, it should suffice to say, our own eyes
gee that men of blood, out of their gear and trappings,
without their feathers and finery, have no more marks
of honour by nature stamped upon them than their
inferior neighbours. Nay, themselves being judges,
they will frankly tell us they feel all those passions
in their blood that make them like other men, if not
farther from the virtue that truly dignifies. The
lamentable ignorance and debauchery that now rages
among too many of our greater sort of folks, is too
clear and casting an evidence in the point : and pray,
tell me of what blood are they come I
Howbeit, when I have said all this, I intend not,
by debasing one false quality, to make insolent an-
other that is not true. I would not be thought to set
the churl upon the present gentleman's shouliler ; by
no means ; his rudeness will not mend the matter.
But what 1 have writ, is to give aim to all, where true
nobility dwells, that everyone may arrive at it by the
■ways of virtue and goodness. But for all this, I must
allow a great advantage to the gentleman ; and there-
fore prefer his station, just as the Apostle Paul, who,
after he had humbled the Jews, that insulted upon the
Christians with their law and rites, gave them the ad-
vantage upon all other nations in statutes and judg-
ments. I must grant, that the condition of our great
men is much to be preferred to the ranks of inferior
people. For, first, they have more power to do good ;
and, if their hearts be equal to their ability, they are
blessings to the people of any country. Secondly, the
eyes of the people are usually directed to them ; and if
they will be kind, just, and helpful, they shall have
their aflcctions and services. Thirdly, they are not
under equal straits with the inferior sort ; and conse-
quently they have more help, leisure, and occasion, to
polish their passions and tempers with books and con-
versation. Fourthly, they have more time to observe
the actions of other nations ; to travel and view the
laws, customs, and interests of other countries, and
bring home whatsoever is worthy or imitable. And so
an easier way is open for great men to get honour ; and
such as love true reputation will embrace the best
means to it. But because it too oftpu hajipens that
great men do little mind to give God the glory of
their prosperity, and to live answerable to his mercies,
but, on the contrary, live without God in the world,
fulfilling the lusts thereof. His hand is often seen,
either in impoverishing or extinguishing them, and
raising up men of more virtue and humility to their
estates and dignity. However, I nmst allow, that
Among people of this rank, there have been some of
them of more than ordinary virtue, whose examples
have given light to their families. And it has been
something nr.tural for some of their descendants to
endeavour to keep up the credit of their houses in
proportion to the merit of their founder. And, to say
true, if there be any advantage in such descent, 'tis
not from blood, but education ; for blood has no intel-
ligence in it, and is often spurious and uncertain ;
but education has a mighty influence and strong bias
upon the affections and actions of men.* In this the
ancient nobles and gentry of this kingdom did excel ;
and it were much to be wished that our great people
would set about to recover the ancient economy of
their houses, the strict and virtuous discipline of their
ancestors, when men were honoured for their achieve-
ments, and when nothing more exposed a man to shame,
than his being bom to a nobility that he had not a
virtue to support,
[Penn's Advice to his Children.}
Next, betake yourselves to some honest, industrious
course of life, and that not of sordid covetousness,
but for example, and to avoid idleness. And if you
change your condition and marry, choose with the
knowledge and consent of your mother, if living, or of
guardians, or those that have the charge of you. Mind
neither beauty nor riches, but the fear of the Lord,
and a sweet and amiable disposition, such as you can
love above all this world, and that may make your
habitations pleasant and desirable to you.
And being married, be tender, affectionate, patient,
and meek. Live in the fear of the Lord, and he will
bless you and your offspring. Be sure to live within
compass ; borrow not, neither be beholden to any.
Ruin not yourselves by kindness to others ; for that
exceeds the due bounds of friendship, neither will a
true friend expect it. Small matters I heed not.
Let your industry and parsimony go no further
than for a sufficiency for life, and to make a provision
for your children, and that in moderation, if the Lord
gives vou any. I charge you help the poor and needy ;
let the Lord have a voluntary share of your income
for the good of the poor, both in our society and
others ; for we are all his creatures ; remembering
that ' he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.'
Know well your incomings, and your outgoings
may be better regulated. Love not money nor the
world : use them only, and they will serve you ; but
if you love them you serve them, which will debase
your spirits as well as offend the Lord.
Pity the distressed, and hold out a hand of help to
them ; it may be your case, and as you mete to others,
God will mete to you again.
Be humble and gentle in your conversation ; of few
words I charge you, but always pertinent when you
speak, hearing out before you attempt to answei, and
then speaking as if you would persuade, not impose.
Aff"ront none, neither revenge the aff'ronts that are
done to you ; but forgive, and you shall be forgiven of
your heavenly Father.
In making friends, consider well first ; and when
you are fixed, be true, not wavering by reports, nor
"deserting in affliction, for that becomes not the good
and virtuous.
Watch against anger ; neither speak nor act in it ;
for, like drunkenness, it makes a man a beast, and
throws people into desperate inconveniences.
Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise ;
their praise is costly, designing to get by those they
bespeak ; they are the worst of creatures ; they lie to
* WHiile the influence of education, here spoken of by Peiin,
is unquestionaWe, the fact of the hereditary transmission of
qualities, both bodily and ment.al, has been equally well ascer
tained, although the laws by which it is regidated are still ia
some respects obscure. — Ed.
4(U
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS ELLWOOD.
flatter, and flatter to cheat ; and, which is worse, if
you believe them, j-ou cheat yourselves most dange-
rously. But the virtuous, though poor, love, cherish,
and preftT. Remember David, who, asking the Lord,
' Who shall abide in thy tabernacle ? who shall dwell
upon thy holy hill V answers, ' He that walketh up-
rightly, worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth
in his heart ; in whose eyes the vile person is con-
temned, but honoureth them who fear the Lord.'
Next, my children, be temperate in all things : in
your diet, for that is phjsic by prevention ; it keeps,
nay, it makes people healthy, and their generation
sound. This is exclusive of the spiritual advantage
it brings. Be also plain in your apparel ; keep out
that lust which reigns too much over some ; let your
virtues be your ornaments, remembering life is more
than food, and the body than raiment. Let your fur-
niture be simple and cheap. Avoid pride, avarice,
and luxury. Read my ' No Cross, no Crown.' There
is instruction. jNIake your conversation with the most
eminent for wisdom and piety, and shun all wicked
men as you hope for the blessing of God and the com-
fort of your father's living and dying prayers. Be
sure you spsak no evil of any, no, not of the meanest ;
much less o'f your superiors, as magistrates, guardians,
tutors, teachers, and elders in Christ.
Be no busybodies ; meddle not with other folk's
matters, but when in conscience and duty pressed ;
'or it procures trouble, and is ill manners, and very
unseemly to wise men.
In your families remember Abraham, Moses, and
Joshua, their integrity to the Lord, and do as you
have them for your examples.
Let the fear and service of the living God be encou-
raged in your houses, and that plainness, sobriety,
and moderation in all things, as becometh God's
chosen people ; and as I advise you, my beloved chil-
dren, do you counsel yours, if God should give you
any. Yea, I counsel and command them as my pos-
terity, that they love and serve the Lord God with an
upright heart, that he may bless you and yours from
generation to g •aeration.
And as for yo,\ who are likely to be concerned in
the government oi Pennsylvania and my parts of East
Jersey, especially the first, I do charge you before the
Lord God and his holy angels, that you be lowly,
diligent, and tender, fearing God, loving the people,
and hating covetousness. Let justice have its im-
partial course, and the law free passage. Though to
your loss, protect no man against it ; for you are not
above the law, but the law above you. Live, there-
fore, the lives yourselves you would have the people
live, and then you have right and boldness to punish
the transgressor. Keep upon the square, for God sees
you : therefore, do your duty, and be sure you see
with your own eyes, and hear with your own ears. En-
tertain no lurchers, cherish no informers for gain or
revenge, use no tricks, fly to no devices to support or
cover injustice ; but let your hearts be upright before
the Lord, trusting in him abo%e the contrivances of
men, and none shall be able to hurt or supplant.
THOMAS ELL WOOD.
Thomas Ellwood (1639-1713) is the last writer
among the early Quakers whom we think it neces-
sary to mention. He was a man of considerable
talent, and remarkably endowed with the virtues of
benevolence, perseverance, and integritj', which have
been so generally displayed by the members of the
Society of Friends. He seems to have been totally
free from the violent and intolerant disposition by
which George Fox was characterised. From an in-
teresting and highly instructive Life of Ellwood,
written by himself, it appears that his conversion to
the principles of Quakerism gave deep offence to his
father, who sometimes beat him with great reverity,
particularly when the son persisted in remaining
covered in his presence. To prevent the recurrence
of this offence, he successively took from Tliomas
all his hats, so that, when he "went abroad, t!ie ex-
posure of his bare head occasioned a severe cold.
Still, however, there remained another cause of
offence ; for ' whenever I had occasion,' says Ellwood,
' to speak to my father, though I had no hat now
to offend him, yet my laiiguage did as much ; for I
durst not say " you" to liini, but " thou" or " thee,"
as the occasion required, and then he would be sure
to fall on me with his fists. At one of these tinjes,
I remember, when lie had beaten me in that man-
ner, he commanded nie (as he commoidy did at such
times) to go to my chamber, which I did, and he
followed me to the bottom of the stairs. Being come
thitlier, he gave me a parting-blow, and in "a very
angry tone, said, " Sirrah, if ever I hear you say
thou or thee to me again, I'll strike your teeth down
your throat." I was greatly grieved to hear him
say so, and feeling a word rise in my heart \mto
him, I turned again, and calmly said unto him,
" Shotild it not be just if God should serve thee so,
when thou sayest ' thou' or ' tliee' to him." Tliough
his hand Avas up, I saw it sink, and his countenance
fall, and he turned away, and left nie standing there.
But I, notwithstanding, went up into my chamber
and cried unto the Lord, earnestly beseeching hirr
that he would be pleased to open my father's eyes,
that he might see whom he fought against, and" for
what ; and that he would turn his heart.'
But what has given a peculiar interest to Ellwood
in the eyes of posterity, is the circumstance of his
having been a pupil and friend of Milton, and one
of those who read to the poet after the loss of his
sight. The object of Ellwood in offering his services
as a reader was, tliat he miglit, in return, obtain
from MUton some assistance in his own studies. One
of his friends, as we learn from his autobiography,
'had an intimate acquaintance with Dr Paget, a
physician of note in London ; and he with John
Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning
throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces
he had written on various subjects and occasions.
This person, having filled a public station in former
times, lived now a private and retired life in Lon-
don ; and, having wholly lost his siglit, kept always
a man to read to him, which, usually, was the son
of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom, in
kindness, he took to improve his learning.' The
autobiography contains the following particidars of
lElbcood's Inte}-cou7-se with Milton.']
He received me courteously, as well for the sake of
Dr Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington,
who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a o-ood
respect ; and having inquired divers things of me,
with respect to my former progressions in learning, he
dismissed me, to provide myself of such accommoda-
tions as might be most suitable to my futur*? studies.
I went, therefore, and took myself a lodging as near
to his house (which was then in Je^vin-Street) as conve-
niently I could ; and, from thenceforward, went every
day, in the afternoon (except on the first days of the
week), and sitting by liim in his dining-room, read to
him such books, in the Latin tongue, as he pleased to
hear me read.
At my first sitting to road to him, obsen'ing that I
used the English pronunciation, he told me if I would
have the benefit of the Latin tongue (not only to read
and understand Latin authors, but to converse with
foreigners, either abroad or at home), I must learn the
foreign pronunciation. To this I consenting, he in-
465
FBOU 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168S
structed me how to sound the tc wels, so different from
the common pronunciation used by the English (who
epeak Anglice their Latin), that (with some few other
variations in sounding some consonants, in particular
cases, as C, before E or /, like Ch; Sc, before /, like
Sh, &c.) the Latin thus spoken seemed as difterent
from that which was delivered as the English gene-
rally speak it, as if it was another language.
I had, before, during my retired life at my father's,
by unwearied diligence and industry', so far recovered
the rules of grammar (in which I had once been very
ready), that I could both read a Latin author, and,
after a sort, hammer out his meaning. But this
change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me.
It w^ now harder to me to read than it was before to
understand when read. But
* Labor omnia vincit
Improbus.'
Incessant pains
The end obtains.
And so did I, which made my reading the more ac-
ceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, per-
ceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning,
gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the
help he could ; for, having a curious ear, he under-
stood, by my tone, when I understood what I read,
and when I did not ; and accordingly would stop me,
examine me, and open the most difficult passages
to me.
Thus went I on for about six weeks' time, reading
to him in the afternoons, and exercising myself, with
my own books, in my chamber in the forenoons. I
was sensible of an improvement.
But, alas ! I had fixed my studies in a wrong place.
London and I could never agree for health. My lungs
(as I suppose) were too tender to bear the sulphureous
air of that city ; so that I soon began to droop, and,
in less than two months' time, I was fain to leave both
my studies and the city, and return into the country,
to preserve life ; and much ado I had to get thither.
* * [Having recovered, and gone back to Lon-
don,] I was very kindly received by my master, who
had conceived so good an opinion of me, that my con-
versation (I found) was acceptable to him ; and he
seemed heartily glad of ray recovery and return ; and
into our old method of study we fell again, I reading
to him, and he explaining to me as occasion re-
quired. * *
Some little time before I went to Aylesbury prison,
I was desired by my quondam master, Milton, to take
a house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt,
that he might get out of the city, for the safety of
himself and his family, the pestilence then growing
hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles
Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice,
and intended to have waited on him, and seen kim
well-settled in it, but was prevented by that ini-prison-
ment.
But now, being released, and returned home, I soon
made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country.
After some common discourses had passed between
us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, being
broufht, he delivered to me, bidding me to take it
home with me, and read it at my leisure, and, when I
had 80 done, return it to him, with my judgment
thereupon.
When I came home, and had set myself to read it,
I found it was that excellent poem, which he entitled
' Paradise Lost.' After I had, with the utmost atten-
tion, read it through, I made him another visit, and
returned him his book, with due acknowledgment for
the favour he had done me, in communicating it to
me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought
of it, which I modestly but freely told him ; and
Mter some furthei discourse i.bout it, I pleasantly said
to him, ' Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost ;
but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found V He
made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse ;
then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another
subject.
After the sickness was over, and the city well
cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he re-
turned thither ; and when, afterwards, I went to wait
on him there (which I seldom failed of doing, whenever
my occasions drew me to London), he showed me his
second poem, called ' Paradise Regained,' and, in a
pleasant tone, said to me, ' This is owing to you, for
you put it into my head at Chalfont ; which before I
had not thought of.'
Ellwood furnishes some interesting particulars
concerning the Londfin prisons, in which he and
many of his brother Quakers were confined, and the
manner in which tliey were treated both there and
out of doors. Besides his autobiography, he wTOte
numerous controversial treatises, tlie most promi-
nent of which is The Foundation of Tithes Shaken,
published in 1682. His Sacred IJistorics of the Ohl
and iVew Testaments, which appeared in 1705 and
1709, are regarded as his most considerable produc-
tions.
JOHN BUNVAX.
John Bunyan (1G2S-1G88). the son of a tinker
residing at Elton, in Bedfordshire, is one of the most
remarkable religious authors of this jivi-. He was
taught in childhood to read and write, ami afterwards,
John Bunyan.
having resolved to follow his father's occupation,
travelled for many years about the country as a
repairer of metal utensils. At this time he is repre-
sented to have been sunk in profligacy and wicked-
ness, though, as we find a love of dancing and ringing
bells included among what he afterwards looked upon
as heinously sinful tendencies, it is probable that, like
many other religious enthusiasts, he has greatly ex-
aggerated the depravity of his unregenerated condi-
tion. One of his most grievous transgressions was
that of swearing immoderately ; and it appears that
even while lying in wickedness, his conscience often
troubled him. By degrees his religious impressions
acquired strengtii and permanence ; till, after many
doubts respecting his acceptability with God, the
divme authority of the Scriptures, and the reality
of his possession of faith (which last circumstancu
46G
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JC HN BUNT AN.
he was (inre on the eve of putting to the test by
comniandinu: some water puddles to be dry), lie at
length attained a comfortable state of belief; and,
having now resolved to lead a moral and pious life,
vas, about the year 1655, baptised and admitted as a
Birtliplace of Bunyan.
aiember of tlie Baptis'" congregation in Bedford. By
the solicitation of the ither members of that body,
he was induced to become a preacher, though not
without some modest reluctance on his part. After
zealously preaching the gospel for five years, he was
apprehended as a maintainer and upholder of as-
semblies for religious purposes, which, soon after the
Restoration, liad been declared unlawful. His sen-
tence of condemnation to peri)etual banishment
was commuted to imprisonment in Bedford jail,
where he remained for twelve years and a-half
During that long period he employed himself partly
In writing pious works, and partly in making tagged
laces for the support of himself and his family.
His library while in prison consisted but of two
books, the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs, with
both of which his own productions show him to
have become extremely familiar. Having been li-
berated through the V)enevolent endeavours of I)r
Barlow, bishop of Lincoln, he resumed his occupa-
tion of itinerant preacher, and continued to exercise
it until the proclamation of liberty of conscience
by James H. After that event, he was enabled,
by the contributions of his friends, to erect a meet-
ing-house in Bedford, where his preaching attracted
large congregations during the remainder of his life.
He frequently visited and preached to the noncon-
formists in London, and when there in 1688, was
cut off by fever in the sixty-first year of his age.
While in prison at Bedford, Bunyan, as we have
said, composed several works ; of these Tlie Pilgrinis
Progress from tliis World to that which is to Come is
the one which has acquired the most extensive cele-
'/rity. Its popularity, indeed, is almost unrivalled;
it has gone through innumerable editions, and been
translated into most of the European languages. The
object of this remarkable production, it is hardly
necessary to say, is to give an allegorical view of the
life of a Christian, his difficulties, temptations, en-
couragements, and idtiinatc triumph; -and this is
done with sucli skill and graphic effect, that the
book, though upon the most serious of subjects, is
read by children with as much pleasure as the fictions
professedly written for their amusement. The work
is, throughout, strongly imbued with the Calvinistic
principles of the author, who, in relating the conten-
tions of his hero with the powers of darkness, anc'
the terrible visions by which he was so frequently
ippalled, has doubtless drawn largely from what he
hunself experienced under the influence of his own
fervid imagination. It has, not without reason, been
(juestioned whether the religious ideas which the
V ork is calculated to inspire, be not of so unneces
sirdy gloomy a character as to render its indiscrimi-
nate perusal by children improper. Of the literary
nitrits of ' The Pilgrim's Progress' Jlr Southey
speaks in the following terms: — ' His is a home-
spun style, not a manufiictured one : and what a
difference is there between its homeliness and the
flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom
Brown school I If it is not a well of English unde-
filed to v.-hich the pott as well as tlie philologist
must repair, if they wou.d drink of the living waters,
it is a clear stream of current English, the vernacular
speech of his age, sometimes, indeed, in its rusticity
and coarseness, but always in its plainness and its
strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in some
degree beholden for his general popularity ; his
language is everywhere level to the most ignorant
reader, and to the meanest capacity- : tliere is a
homely reality about it ; a nurser}' tale is not more
intelligible, in its manner of narration, to a child.
Another cause of his popularity is, that he taxes tlie
imagination as little as the understanding. The
vividness of his own, which, as his history shows,
sometimes coidd not distinguish ideal impressions
from actual ones, occasioned this. He saw the things
of which he was writing as distinctly with hit
mind's eye as if they were indeed passing before
him in a dream. And the reader perhaps sees theit
more satisfactorily to himself, because the outline Oj
the picture only is presented to him, and the autlioi
having made no attempt to fill up the details, every
reader supplies them according to the measure anO
scope of his own intellectual and imatrinativt
powers.'* Another allegorical production of Bunyan
which is still read, though less extensively, is T/h
]Ioly War made hy King Shaddai upon I)iaf)oliis, fut
the Regaining of the JSIvtropolis of tlie World, or thi
Losing and Betaking of Mansoul. Here the fall ol
man is tj'pified by the capture of the flourishing
city of ^lansoul by Diabolus, the enemy oi its right-
ful sovereign Shaddai, or Jehovah; whose son Im-
manuel recoveis it after a tedious siege. Bunyan's
Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners (of which
the most remarkable portions are given below) is an
interesting though fanatical narrative of his own life
and religious experience. His other works, which
are numerous, and principally of the emlilematic
class, need not be mentioned, as their merits are
not great enough to have preserved them frop
almost total oblivion. The concluding extracts are
from ' The Pilgrim's Progress.'
[Extracts from Bimyan's Autobiography.']
In this niy relation of the merciful working of God
upon my soul, it will not bo amiss, if, in the first
place, I do, in a few words, give you a hint of my
♦ Southey's edition of ' The Pilgrim's Progress,' p. IxxxviiL
4C7
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
•10 168&
pedijrree and manner of bringing up, that thereby the
goodness and bounty of God to\yards me may be the
more adranced and magnified before the sons of men.
For my descent, then, it was, as is well kno^vn by
many, of a low and inconsiderable generation, ray
father's house being of that rank that is meanest and
most despised of all the families of the land. Where-
fore I have not here, as others, to boast of noble blood,
and of any high-born state, according to the flesh,
though, all things considered, I magnify the hearenly
niaje'sty, for that by this door he brought me into the
world, to partake of the grace and life that is in Christ
by the gospel. But, notwithstanding the meanness
and inconsiderableness of my parents, it pleased God
to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn
me both to read and write ; the which I also attained,
according to the rate of other poor men's children,
though, to my shame, I confess I did soon lose that I
had learned, even almost utterly, and that long before
the Lord did work his gracious work of conversion
upon my soul. As for my own natural life, for the
time that I was without God in the world, it was, in-
deed, according to the course of this world, and the
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,
Eph. ii. 2, 3. It was my delight to be taken captive
by the devil at his will, 2 Tim. ii. 26, being filled with
all unrighteousness ; the which did also so strongly
work, both in my heart and life, that I had but few
equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blas-
pheming the holy name of God. Yea, so settled and
rooted was 1 in these things, that they became as a
second nature to me ; the which, as 1 have also with
soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that
even in my childhood he did scare and terrify me
with fearful dreams and visions. For often, after I
had spent this and the other day in sin, I have been
greatly afilicted while asleep with the apprehensions
of devils and wicked spirits, who, as I then thought,
laboured to draw me away with them, of which I
could never be rid. Also I should, at these years, be
greatly troubled with the thoughts of tlie feai-ful tor-
ments of hell-fire, still fearing that it would be my
lot to be found at last among those devils and hellish
fiends, who are there bound down with the chains and
bonds of darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
These things, I say, when 1 was but a child but
nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that
then, in the midst of my many sports and childish
vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often
much cast down and afilicted in my mind therewith,
yet could I not let go my sins. Yea, I was also then
80 overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I
should often wish either that there had been no hell,
or that I had been a devil, supposing they were only
tormentors, that if it must needs be that I went thither,
I might be rather a toimentor then be tormented my-
self.
A while after, these terrible dreams did leave me,
■which also I soon forgot ; for my pleasures did quickly
cut off the remembrance of them, as if they had never
been ; wherefore, with more greediness, according to
the strength of nature, 1 did still let loose the reins
of my lusts, and deliglited in all transgressions against
the law of God ; so that, until I came to the state of
marriage, I was the very ringleader in all manner of
vice and ungodliness. Yea, such prevalcncy had the
lusts of the flesh on my poor soul, that, had not a
miracle of precious grace prevented, I had not only
perished by the stroke of eternal justice, but also laid
myself open to the stroke of those laws which bring
some to disgrace and shame before the face of the
world.
In these days the thoughts of religion were very
grievous to me ; I could neither endure it myself, nor
that any other should ; so that when 1 have seen some
^ead in those books that concerned Christian piety, it
would be as it were a prison to me. Then I said unto
God, 'Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge
of thy ways,' Job xx. 14, 15. I was now void of all
good consideration ; heaven and hell were both out of
sight and mind ; and as for saving and damning, they
were least in my thoughts. ' Lord, thou knowest
my life, and my ways are not hid from thee.'
But this I well remember, that, though I could my-
self sin with the greatest delight and ease, yet even
then, if I had at any time seen wicked things, by those
who professed goodness, it would make my spirit
tremble. As once, above all the rest, when I was in
the height of vanity, yet hearing one to swear that
was reckoned for a religious man, it had so great a
stroke upon my spirit, that it made my heart ache.
But God did not utterly leave me, but followed me
still, not with convictions, but judgments mixed with
mercy. For once I fell into a creek of the sea, ana
hardly escaped drowning. Another time I fell out of
a boat into Bedford river, but mercy yet preserved
me ; besides, another time being in the field with my
companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the
highway, so I, having a stick, struck her over the back,
and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with
my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers,
by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I
might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to
my end. This, also, I have taken notice of with
thanksgiving : when I was a soldier, I with others were
drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it ; but
when I was just ready to go, one of the company de-
sired to go in my room ; to which when I had con-
sented, he took my place, and coming to the siege, as
he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a
musket-bullet, and died. Here, as I said, were judg-
ments and mercy, but neither of them did awaken my
soul to righteousness; wherefore I sinned still, and
grew more and more rebellious against God, and care
less of my own salvation.
Presently after this I changed my condition into a
married state, and my mercy was to light upon a wife
whose father and mother were counted godly ; this
woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor
might be (not having so much household stuff" as a
dish or spoon betwixt us both), yet this she had foi
her part, ' The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and
' The Practice of Piety,' which her father had left
when he died. In these two books I sometimes read,
wherein I found some things that were somewhat
pleasant to me (but all this while I met with no con-
viction). She also often would tell me what a godly
man her father was, and how he would reprove and
correct vice, both in his house and among his neigh-
bours, and what a strict and holy life he lived in his
days, both in word and deed. Wherefore these books,
though they did not reach my heart to awaken it
about my sad and sinful state, yet they did beget
within me some desires to reform my vicious life, and
fall in very eagerly with the religion of the times ; to
wit, to go to church twice a-day, and there very de-
voutly both say and sing as others did, yet retaining
my wicked life ; but withal was so overrun with the
spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with
great devotion, even all things (both the high-place,
priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else) belong-
ing to the church ; counting all things holy that were
therein contained, and especially the priest and clerk
most happy, and, without doubt, greatly blessed, be-
cause they were the servants, as I then thought, of
God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his
work therein. This conceit grew so strong upi>n my
spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so
sordid and debauched in his life), I should find my
spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto
him ; yea, I thought for the love I did bear unto them
(supposing they were the ministers of God), I could
468
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN BUNYAN.
have laid down at their feet, and have been trampled
upon by them — their name, their garb, and work did
80 intoxicate and bewitch me. * *
But all this while 1 was not sensible of the danger
and evil of sin ; I was kept from considering that sin
would damn me, what religion soever I followed, un-
less I was found in Christ. Kay, I never thouglit
whether there was such a one or no. Thus man, while
blind, doth wander, for he knoweth not the way to the
city of God, Eccles. x. 15.
I3ut one day, amongst all the sermons our parson
made, his subject was to treat of the Sabbath-day, and
of the evil of breaking that, either with labour, sports,
or otherwise ; wherefore I fell in my conscience under
his sermon, thinking and believing that he made that
sermon on purpose to show me my evil doing. And
at that time I felt what guilt was, though never before
that I can remember ; but then I was for the present
greatly loaded therewith, and so went home, when the
sermon was ended, with a great burden upon my
spirit. This, for that instant, did embitter my former
pleasures to me ; but hold, it lasted not, for before I
had well dined, the trouble began to go off my mind,
and my heart returned to its old course ; but oh, how
glad was I that this trouble was gone from me, and
that the fire was put out, that I might sin again with-
out control ! Wherefore, when I had satisfied nature
with my food, I shook the sermon out of my mind,
and to my old custom of sports and gaming I returned
with great delight.
But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game
of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole,
just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice
did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which
said, ' Wilt thou l'?ave thy sins and go to heaven, or
have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put to
an exceeding maze ; wherefore, leaving my cat upon
the gi'ound, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I
had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord
Jesus look down upon me, as being very hotly dis-
pleased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me
with some grievous punishment for those and other
ungodly practices.
I had no sooner thus conceived in my raind, but
suddenly this conclusion fastened on my spirit (for
the former hint did set my sins again before my face),
that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that
it was now too late for me to look after heaven ; for
Christ would not forgive me nor pardon my transgres-
sions. Then, while I was thinking of it, and fearing
lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair,
concluding it was too late, and therefore I resolved in
my mind to go on in sin ; for, thought I, if the case
be thus, mj' state is surely miserable ; miserable if I
leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them : I
can but be damned ; and if I must be so, I had as
good be damned for many sins as be damned for few.
Thus I stood in the midst of my play, before all
that then were present ; but yet I told them no-
thing ; but, I say, having made this conclusion, I
returned desperately to my sport again ; and I well
remember, that presently this kind of despair did
so possess my soul, that I was persuaded I could
never attain to other comfort than what I should
get in sin ; for heaven was gone already, so that on
that I must not think ; wherefore I found within me
great desire to take my fill of sin, that I might taste
the sweetness of it ; and I made as much haste as I
could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should
die before I had my desires ; for that I feared greatly.
In these things, I protest before God I lie not, neither
do I frame this sort of speech ; these were really,
strongly, and with all my heart, my desires ; the good
Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive my trans-
gressions. And I am very confident that this temp-
tation of the devil is more usual among poor cresjires
I than many are aware of, yet they continuallv have a
secret conclusion within them, that there are no hopes
for them ; for the}- have loved sins, therefore after
them they will go, Jer. ii. 25. xviii. 12.
Now, therefore, I went on in sin, still grudging that
I could not be satisfied with it as I would. This did
continue with me about a month or more ; but one
day, as I was standing at a neighbour's shop window,
and there cursing and swearing after my wonted man-
ner, there sat within the woman of the house, who
heard me ; and though she was a very loose and un-
godly wretch, yet protested that I swore and cursed
at that most fearful rate, that she was made to tremble
to hear me ; and told me further, that I was the un-
godliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard in all
her life ; and that I, by thus doing, was able to spoil
all the youth in the whole town, if they came but in
my company. At this reproof I was silenced, and put
to secret shame, and that, too, as I thought, before the
God of heaven ; wherefore, while I stood there, hang-
ing down my head, I wished that I might be a little
child again, that m}' father might learn me to speak
without this wicked way of swearing ; for, thought I,
I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain to think
of a reformation, for that could never be. But how
it came to pass I know not, I did from this time for-
ward so leave my swearing, that it was a gi-eat wonder
to m3-self to observe it ; and whereas before I knew not
how to speak unless I put ai, oath before, and another
behind, to make my words have authority, now I
could without it speak better, and with more pleasant-
ness, than ever I could before. All this while I knew
not .Tesus Christ, neither did leave my sports and
plays.
But quickly after this, I fell into company with
one poor man that made profession of religion, who, as
I then thought, did talk pleasantly of the Scriptures
and of religion ; wherefore, liking what he said, I be-
took me to my Bible, and began to take great pleasure
in reading, especially with the historical part thereof;
for, as fur Paul's epistles, and such like scriptures, I
could not away with them, being as yet ignorant
either of my nature, or of the want and worth of Jesus
Christ to save us. Wherirfbro I fell to some outward
reformation both in my words and life, and did set
the commandments before me for my way to heaven ;
which commandments I also did strive to keep, and,
as I thought, did keep them pretty well sometimes,
and then I should have comfort ; j'et now and then
should break one, and so afilict my conscience ; but
then I should repent, and say I was sorry for it, and
promise God to do better next time, and there got
help again ; for then I thought I pleased God as well
as any man in England.
Thus I continued about a year, all which time our
neighbours did take me to be a very godly and reli-
gious man, and did marvel much to see such great
alteration in my life and manners ; and, indeed, so it
was, though I knew not Christ, nor grace, nor faith,
nor hope ; for, as I have since seen, had I tJien died,
my state had been most fearful. But, I say, my
neighbours were amazed at this my great conver-
sion — from prodigious profaneness to something like a
moral life and sober man. Now, therefore, they began
to praise, to commend, and to speak well of me, both
to my face and behind my back. Now I was, as they
said, become godly ; now I was become a right honest
man. But oh ! when I understood those were their
words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well ;
for though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted
hypocrite, yet I loved to be talked of as one that was
truly godly. I was proud of my godliness, and, in-
deed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spokeu
of by men ; and thus I continued for about a twelve*
month or more.
Now you nmst kimw, that before this I had taken
46'.)
-Jl
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning
to be tender, 1 thought such practice was but vain,
and therefore forced myself to leave it ; yet my mind
hankered ; wherefore I would go to the steeple-house
and look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought
this did not become religion neither ; yet I forced my-
self and would look on still. But quickly after, I be-
gan to think, ' How, if one of the bells should fall ?'
Then I chose to stand under a nuvin beam that lay
overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking
here 1 might stand sure ; but then I thought again,
should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit
the wall, and then rebounding upon me, might kill
me for all this beam. This made me stand in the
steeple-door ; and now, thought I, I am safe enough ;
for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out behind
these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstand-
ing. So after this I would yet go to see them ring,
but would not go any farther than the steeple-door ;
but then it came into my head, ' How, if the steeple
itself should fall *' And this thought (it may, for
aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did con-
tinually so shake my mind, that I durst not stand at
the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to fiee, for
fear the steeple should fall upon my head.
Another thing was my dancing ; I was a full year
before I could quite leave that. But all this while,
when I thought I kept that or this commandment, or
did by word or deed anything I thought was good, I
had great peace in my conscience, and would think
with myself, God cannot choose but be now pleased
with me ; yea, to relate it in my own way, I thought
no man in England could please God better than I.
But, poor wretch as I was, I was all this while igno-
rant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my
ovra righteousness ; and had perished therein, had not
God in his mercy showed me more of my state by
nature. * *
In these days, when I have heard others talk of
what was the sin against the Holy Ghost, then would
the tempter so provoke me to desire to sin that sin,
that I was as if I could not, must not, neither should
be quiet until I had committed it ; now no sin would
serve but that : if it were to be committed by speak-
ing of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth
would have spoken that word whether I would or no ;
and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon
me, that often I have been ready to clap my hands
under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening ; at
other times, to leap with my head downward into
some muck-hill hole, to keep my mouth from ppeak-
ing. Now, again, I counted the estate of everything
that God had made far better than this dreadful state
of mine was ; yea, gladly would I have been in the
condition of a dog or a horse, for I knew they had no
souls to perish under the everlasting weight of hell or
sin, as mine was like to do. Nay, though I saw this
and felt this, yet that which added to my sorrow was,
that I could not find that with all my soul I did de-
sire deliverance. That scripture did also tear and
rend my soul in the midst of these distractions, 'The
wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest,
whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no
peace to the wicked, saith my God,' Isaiah Ivii.
20 21. * *
And now I am s[>eaking my experience, I will in
this place thrust in a word or two concerning my
preaching the word, and of God's dealing with me in
that particular also. After I had been about five or
six years awakened, and helped to see both the want
and worth of .lesus Christ our Lord, and to venture
my soul upon him, some of the most able among the
saints with us for judgment and holiness of life, as
\hey conceived, did perceive that God counted me
"^-orthy to understand something of Lis will in his
noly word, and had given me utterance to express
what I saw to others for edification ; therefore they
desired me, with much earnestness, that I would
be willing at some times to take in hand, in one of
the meetings, to speak a word of exhortation unto
them. The which, though at the first it did much
dash and .abash my spirit, yet being still by them de-
sired and intreated, I consented, and did twice, at
two several assemblies, but in private, though with
much weakness, discover my gift amongst them ; at
which they did solemnly protest, as in the sight of
the great God, they were both affected and comforted,
and gave thanks to the Father of mercies for the
grace bestowed on me.
After this, sometimes, when some of them did go
into the country to teach, they would also that I
should go with them, where, though as yet I durst not
make use of my gift in an open way, yet more pri-
vately, as I came amongst the good people in those
places, I did sometimes speak a word of admonition
unto them also, the which they received with rejoic-
ing at the mercy of God to me-ward, professing their
souls were edified thereby. Wherefore, to be brief,
at last being still desired by the church, 1 was more
particularly called forth, and appointed to a more
ordinary and public preaching of the word, not only to
and amongst them that believed, but also to offer the
gospel to those who had not yet received the faith
thereof: about which time I did evidently find in my
mind a secret pricking forward thereto, though at that
time I was most sorely afflicted with fiery darts of the
devil concerning my eternal state. * *
Wherefore, though of myself, of all the saints the
most unworth}', yet I, with great fear and trembling
at my own weakness, did set upon the work, and did,
according to my gift, preach that blessed gospel that
God hath shown me in the holy word of truth ; which,
when the country understood, they came in to hear
the word by hundreds, and that from all parts, though
upon divers and sundry accounts. And I thank God
he gave unto me some measure of bowels and pity
for their souls, which also put me forward to labour
with great earnestness to find out such a, word as
might, if God would bless it, awaken the conscience,
in which also the good Lord had respect to the desire
of his servant ; for 1 had not preached long before
some began to be greatly afflicted in their minds at
the greatness of their sin, and of their need of .Jesus
Christ.
But I first could not believe that God should spe.ak
by me to the heart of any man, still counting myself
unworthy ; yet those who were thus touched would
have a particular respect for me ; and though I did
put it from me that they should be awakened by me,
still they would aflirm it before the saints of God :
they would also bless God for me (unworthy wretch
that I am !), and count me God's instrument that
showed to them the way of salvation. * *
Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying
out against men's sins, and their fearful state because
of them. After which the Lord came in upon my own
soul with some sure peace and comfort through Christ :
wherefore now I altered in my preaching (for still I
preached what I saw and felt) ; now therefore I did
much labour to hold with Jesus Christ in all his
offices, relations, and benefits unto the world, and did
strive also to condemn and remove those false .sup-
ports and props on which the world doth lean, and
by them fall and perish. On these things also I stayed
as long as on the other.
After this, God led me into something of the mys-
stery of the union of Christ ; wherefore that I dis-
covered and showed to them also. And when I had
travelled through these three points of the word of
God, about the space of five years or more, I was
caught in my present practice, and cast into piison,
where I have lain above as long again to confirm the
i70
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN BUNTAN.
truth by wuy of sutfcring, as I was before in testifying
of it according to the Scriptures in a way of preach-
inff. * *
When I first went to preach the word abroad, the
doctors and priests of the country did open wide
against me ; but I was persuaded of this, not to render
railing foi railing, but to see how many of their car-
nal profesjors I could convince of their miserable state
by the law, and of the want and worth of Christ : for,
thought I, ' That shall answer for me in time to come,
when they shall be for my hire before their face,' Gen.
XXX. 33.
I never cared to meddle with things that were con-
troverted, and in dispute among the saints, especially
things of the lowest nature; yet it pleased me much
to contend with great earnestness for the word of
faith, and the remission of sins by the death and suf-
ferings of Jesus ; but, I say, as to other things, I would
let them alone, because 1 saw they engendered strife ;
and because that they neither in doing nor in leaving
undone did commend us to God to be his: besides, I
saw my work before me did run into another channel,
even to carry an awakened word ; to that therefore I
did stick and adhere. * *
If any of those who were awakened by my minis-
try did after that fall back (as sometimes too many
did), I can truly say their loss hath been more to me
than if my own children, begotten of my own body,
had been going to their grave. I think verily, I may
speak it without any offence to the Lord, nothing has
gone so near me as that, unless it was the fear of the
loss of the salvation of my own soul. I have counted
as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those
places where my children were born : my heart hath
been so ^vrapped up in the glory of this excellent
work, that I counted myself more blessed and honoured
of God by this than if he had made me the emperor of
the Christian world, or the Lord of all the glory of the
earth without it. * *
But in this work, as in all other, I had my temp-
tations attending me, and that of divers kinds ; as
sometimes I should be assaulted with great discourage-
ment therein, fearing that I should not be able to
speak a word at all to edification ; nay, that I should
not be able to speak sense to the people ; at which
times I should have such a strange faintness seize upon
my body, that my legs have scarce been able to carry
me to the place of exercise.
Sometimes, when I have been preaching, I have
been violently assaulted with thoughts of blasphemy,
and strongly tempted to speak the words with my
mouth before the congregation. I have also at times,
even when I have begun to speak the word with much
clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech, been, before
the ending of that opportunity, so blinded and so
estranged from the things I have been speaking, and
have been also so straitened in my speech as to utter-
ance before the people, that I have been as if I had
not known what I have been about, or <as if my head
had been in a bag all the time of my exercise. * *
But when Satan perceived that his thus tempting
and assaulting of me would not answer his design,
to wit, to overthrow the ministry, and make it inefl'ec-
tual as to the ends thereof, then he tried another
way, which was, to stir up the minds of the ignorant
and malicious to load me with slanders and reproaches.
Now therefore I may say, that what the devil could
devise and his instruments invent, was whirled up
and down the country against me, thinking, as I said,
by that means they should make my ministry to be
abandoned. It began therefore to be rumoured up
and down among the people that 1 was a witch, a
Jesuit, a highwayman, <and the like. To all which I
shall only say, God knows that I am innocent. But
as for mine accusers, let them provide themselves to
meet me before the tribunal of the Son of God, there
to answer for all these thing* (with all the rest of
their iniquities), unless God shall give them repent-
ance for them, for the whicli I pray with all my
heart. * *
Having made profession of the glorious gospel of
Christ, and jireached the same about five years, I
was apprehended at a meeting of good people in the
country (among whom I should have preached that
day, but they took me from amongst them), and had
me before a justice, who, after I had offered security
for my appearance the next sessions, yet committed
me, because my sureties would not consent to be
bound that I should preach no rrtore to the people.
At the sessions after, I was indicted for a main-
tainer of unla^^■ful assemblies and conventicles, and
for not conforming to the church of England ; and
after some conference there with the justices, they
t.aking my plain dealing with them for a confession,
as they termed it, of the indictment, did sentence me
to a per]ietual banishment, because I refused to con-
form. So being again delivered up to the jailer's
hands, I was had to prison, and there laid a complete
twelve years, waiting to see what God would suffer
these men to do with me. In which condition I have
continued with much content, through grace, but have
met with many turnings and goings upon my heart,
both from the Lord, Satan, and my own corruption,
by all which (glory be to Jesus Christ) I have also
received much conviction, instruction, and under-
standing, of which I shall not here discourse ; only
give you a hint or two that may stir up the godly to
bless God, and to pray for and also to take encourage-
ment, should the case be their own, ' not to fear what
man can do unto them.'
[Christian in the Uands of Giant Despair.]
Now there was, not far from the place where they
lay, a castle, called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof
was Giant Despair, and it was in his grounds they
now were sleeping ; wherefore he, getting up in the
morning early, an<l walking up and down in his fields,
caught Christian and Hopeful asleep in his grounds.
Then, with a grim and surly voice, he bid them awake,
and asked them whence they were, and what they did
in his grounds I They told him they were pilgrims,
and that they had lost their way. Then said the
giant. You have this night trespassed on me, by
trampling and lying on my ground, and therefore you
must go along with me. So they were forced to go,
because he was stronger than they. They also had
but little to say, for they knew themselves in fault.
The giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put
them into his castle, in a very dark dungeon, nasty
and stinking to the spirits of those two men. Here
they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday
night, without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or
light, or any to ask how they did : they were there-
fore here in evil case, and were far from frienos and
acquaintance. Now, in this place Christian had
double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised
haste that they were brought into this distress.
Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was
Diffidence : so when he was gone to bed, he told his
wife what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a
couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon,
for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her
also what he had best to do further to them. So she
asked him what they were, whence they came, and
whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she
counselled him, that when he arose in the morning,
he should beat them without mercy. So when he
arose, he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and
goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first
falls to rating them as if they were dogs, although
they never gave him a word of distaste : then he falls
471
FBOU 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
upon thcni, and beats them fearfully, in such sort
that they were not able to help themselves, or turn
them upon the floor. This done, he withdraws, and
leaves them there to condole their misery, and to
mourn under their distress : so all that day they spent
their time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamenta-
tions. The next night she talked with her husband
about them further, and understanding that they were
yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make
away with themselves. So when morning was come,
he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and per-
ceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he
had given them the day before, he tolJ them, that
since they were never like to come out of that place,
their only way would be forthwith to make an end of
themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison : For
why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is at-
tended with so much bitterness? But they desired
him to let them go ; witli which he looked ugly upon
them, and rushing to them, had doubtless made an
end of them himself, but that he fell into one of his
fits (for he sometimes in sun-shiny weather fell into
fits), and lost for a time the use of his hands : where-
fore he withdrew, and left them, as before, to consider
what to do. Then did the prisoners consult between
themselves whether it was best to take his counsel or
no ; and thus they began to discourse : —
Cla: Brother, said Christian, what shall we do?
The life that we nov.- live is miserable. For my part,
I know not whether it is best to live thus, or die out
of hand. ' My soul chooseth strangling rather than
life,' and the grave is more easy for me than this dun-
geon ! Shall we be ruled by the giant ?
Hope. Indeed our present condition is dreadful, and
death would be far more welcome to me, than thus
for ever to abide ; but let us consider, the Lord of the
country to which we are going hath said. Thou shalt
do no murder : no, not to any man's person ; much
more then are we forbidden to take his counsel to kill
ourselves. Besides, he that kills another can but
commit murder on his own body ; but for one to kill
himself, is to kill body and soul at once. And, more-
over, my brother, thou talkest of ease in the grave ;
but hast thou forgotten the hell, whither for certain
the murderers go ? For no murderer hath eternal
life, &c. And let us consider, again, that all laws are
not in the hand of Giant Despair : others, so far as I
can understand, have been taken by him as well as
we, and yet have escaped out of his hands. Who
knows but that God, who made the world, may cause
that Giant Despair may die ; or that, at some time or
other, he m.ay forget to lock us in ; or that he may in
a short time have another of his fits before us, and
may lose the use of his limbs ? and if ever that should
come to pass again, for my part I am resolved to
pluck up the heart of a man, and to try my utmost
to get from under his hand. I was a fool that I did
not try to do it before ; but, however, my brother, let
us be patient, and endure a while : the time may
come that he may give us a happy release ; but let us
not be our own murderers. With these words Hope-
ful at present did moderate the mind of his brother ;
so they continued together (in the dark) that day in
their sad and doleful condition.
Well, towards the evening, the giant goes down
into the dungeon again, to see if his prisoners had
taken his counsel ; but when he came there he found
them alive ; and truly, alive was all ; for now, what
for want of bread and water, and by reason of the
wounds they received when he beat them, they could
do little but breathe. But, I say, he found them
alive ; at which he fell into a grievous rage, and told
them, that seeing they had disobeyed his counsel, it
should be worse with them than if they had never
been bom.
At this they trembled greatly, and I think that
Christian fell into a swoon ; but coming a little to
himself again, they renewed their discourse about the
giant's counsel, and whether yet thej' had best take it
or no. Now, Christian again seemed to be for doing
it ; but Hopeful made his second reply as followeth : —
Hope. My brother, said he, rememberest thou not
how valiant thou hast been heretofore ? Apollyon
could not crush thee, nor could all that thou didst
hear, or see, or feel, in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death : vrhat hardships, terror, and amazement, hast
thou alread}' gone through, and art thou now nothing
but fear ? Thou seest that I am in the dungeon with
thee, a far weaker man by nature than thou art ; also
this giant has wounded me as well as thee, and hath
also cut ofi" the bread and water from my mouth, and
with thee I mourn without the light. But let us
exercise a little more natience : remejnber how thou
playedst the man at Vanity Fair, and wast neither
afraid of the chain nor the cage, nor yet of bloody
death ; wherefore let us (at least to avoid the shame
that becomes not a Christian to be found in) bear up
with patience as well as we can.
Now, night being come again, and the giant and
his wife being a-bed, she asked concerning the prison-
ers, and if they had taken his counsel ; to which he
replied. They arc sturdy rogues ; they choose rather to
bear all hardships than to make away with them-
selves. Then said she. Take them into the castle-
yard to-morrow, and show them the bones and skulls
of those thou hast already despatched, and make
them believe, ere a week comes to an end, thou wilt
also tear them in pieces, as thou hast done their fel-
lows before them.
So when the morning was come, the giant goes to
them airain, and takes them into the castle-yard, and
shows them as his wife had bidden him. These, said
he, were pilgrims, as you are, once ; and they tres-
passed in my grounds, as you have done ; and, when
I thought fit, I tore them in pieces, and so ^vithin ten
days I will do you ; go, get je down to your der
again ; and with that he beat them all the waj- thither.
They lay, therefore, all day on Saturday in a la-
mentable case, as before. Now, when night was come,
and when Mrs Diffidence and her husband the giant
were got to bed, they began to renew their discourse
of their prisoners ; and, withal, the old giant won-
dered that he could neither by his blows nor counsel
bring them to an end. And with that his wife re-
plied, I fear, said she, that they live in hope that
some will come to relieve them, or that they have
picklocks about them, by the means of which they
hope to escape. And sayest thou so, my dear ? said
the giant ; I will therefore search them in the
morning.
Well, on Saturday, about midnight, they began to
pray, and continued in prayer till almost break of
day.
Now, a little before it was day, good Christian, as
one half amazed, brake out in this passionate speech :
What a fool (quoth he) am I thus to lie in a stinking
dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty? I
have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I
am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Ciwtle.
Then said Hopeful, That's good news, good brother;
pluck it out of thy bosom and try.
Then Christian pulled it out of his bosom, and be-
gan to try at the dungeon-door, whose bolt (as he
turned the key) gave back, and the door flew open
with ease, and Christian and Hopeful both came out.
Then he went to the outer door that leads into the
castle-yard, and with his key opened that door also.
After, he went to the iron gate, for that must be
opened too ; but that lock went very hard, yet tho
key did open it. Then they thrust open the door to
make their escape with speed, but that gate, as it
opened, made such a cracking, that it waked Giant
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Despair, who hastily rising to pursue his prisoners,
felt his limbs to lail ; for his fits took him aguiu, so.
that he could by no means go after them. Then they
went on, and came to the king's highway, and so were
safe, because they were out of his jurisdiction.
Now, when they were gone over the stile, they be-
gan to contrive with themselves what they should do
at that stile to prevent those that should come after
from falling into the hands of Giant Despair. So they
consented to erect there a pillar, and to engrave upon
the stile thereof this senterce: — 'Over this stile is
the way to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant
Despair, who despiseth the King of the Celestial
Country, and seeks to destroy his holy pilgrims.'
Man}', therefore, that followed after, read what was
written, and escaped the danger.
[Tlie Golden City.}
Now I saw in my dream that by this time the pil-
grims were got over the Enchanted Ciround, and enter-
ing into the country of Beulah, whose air was very
sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it,
they solaced them there for a season. Yea, here they
heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every
day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the
voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the
sun shineth night and day ; wherefore it was beyond
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also out of
the reach of Giant Despair ; neither could they from
this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they
were within sight of the city they were going to ; also
here met them some of the inhabitants thereof: for in
this land the shining ones commonly walked, because
It was upon the borders of Heaven. In this land, also,
the contract between the bride and bridegroom was
renewed ; yea, here, ' as the bridegroom rejoiceth over
the bride, so did their God rejoice over them.' Here
they had no want of corn and wine ; for in this place
they met abundance of what they had sought for in
all their pilgrimage. Here they heard voices from out
of the city, loud voices, saying, ' Say ye to the daughter
of Zion, behold thy salvation cometh ! Behold, his
reward is with him !' Here all the inhabitants of the
country called them ' The holy people, the redeemed
of the Lord, sought out,' &c.
Now, as they walked in this land, they had more
rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom
to which they were bound ; and drawing nearer to the
city yet, they had a more perfect view thereof: it was
built of pearls and precious stones, also the streets
thereof were paved with gold ; so that, by reason of
the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the
sunbeams upon it. Christian with desire fell sick ;
Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease :
wherefore here they lay by it awhile, ciying out, be-
cause of their pangs, ' If you see my Beloved, tell him
that I am sick of love.'
But being a little strengthened, and better able to
bear their sickness, they walked on their way, and
came yet nearer and nearer, where were orchards,
vineyards, and gardens, and their gates opened into
the highway. Now, as they came up to these places,
behold the gardener stood in the way, to whom the
pilgrims said, Whose goodly vineyards and gardens
are these ? He answered. They are the king's, and are
planted here for his own delight, and also for the
solace of pilgrims : so the gardener had them into the
vineyards, and bid them refresh themselves with
dainties ; he also showed them there the king's walks
and arbours, where he delighted to be ; and here they
tarried and slept.
Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked more
in their sleep at this time than ever the}' did in all
their journey ; and being in a muse thereabout, the
gardener said even to me, Wherefore musest thou at
the matter? It is tlie nature of the fruit of the
grapes of these vineyards to go down so sweetly, as to
cause the lips of them that are a.-lrcp to speak.
So I saw that when they awoke, they addressed
themselves to go up to the city. But, as I said, the
reflection of the sun upon the city (for the city was
pure gold) was so extremely glorious, that thej could
i]ot as yet nitli open face behold it, but through an
instrument made for that purpose. So I saw that, as
they went on, there met them two men in raiment that
shone like gold ; also their faces shone as the light.
These men asked the pilgrims whence they came?
and they told them. They also asked them where
they had lodged, what difiiculties and dangers, what
comforts and pleasures, they had met with in the way !
and they told them. Then said the men that met
them. You have but two difficulties more to meet
with, and then you are in the city.
Christian and his companion then asked the men to
go along with them ; so they told them that they won I !.
But, said they, you must obtain it by your owti f .irh.
So I saw in my dream that they went on togetin-r liil
they came in sight of the gate.
Now, I further saw that betwixt them and tlic L'ate
was a river, but there was no bridge to go over, and
the river was very deep. At the siglit, therefni-c, of
this river, the pilgrims were much stunned ; but the
men that went with them said, You must go thiough,
or you cannot come to the gate.
The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no
other way to the gate? To which they answered. Yes,
but there hath not any, save two, to wit, Ivnoch and
Elijah, been permitted to tread that path since the
foundation of the world, nor shall, until the last
trumpet shall sound. The pilgrims then (especiallv
Christian) began to despond in their minds, and looked
this way and that ; but no way could be found by
them by which they might escape the river. Then they
asked the men if the waters were all of a dcjith ? They
said. No ; yet they could not help them in that case ;
For, said they, you shall find it deeper or shallower, as
you believe in the King of the place.
They then addressed themselves to the water, and
entering. Christian began to sink, and crying out to
his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep
watei's : the billows go over my head ; all the waters
go over me. Selah.
Then said the other. Be of good cheer, K.y brother ;
I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said CJiristian,
Ah 1 my friend, the sorrow of death hath encouipassed
me about; I shall not seethe land that fiov.-s with
milk and honey. And with that a great darkness and
horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see
before him. Also here, in a great measure, he lost
his senses, so that he could neither remembpi nor
orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he
had met v.-ith in the way of his pilgrimage. But all
the words that he spake still tended to discover that
he had horror of mind, and heart fears that he sliouid
die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the
gate. Here, also, as they that stood by perceived, he
was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that
he had committed, both since and before he began to
be a pilgrim. It was also observed that he was troubled
with a{)paritions of hobgoblins and evil spirits ; for
ever and anon he would intimate so much by words.
Hopeful, therefore, here had much ado to keep his
brother's head above water ; yea, sometimes he would
be quite gone down, and then ere awhile he would rise
up again half dead. Hopeful did also endeavour to
comfort him, saying. Brother, I see the gate, and men
standing by to receive us ; but Christian would answer,
It is you ; it is you they wait for ; you have been Hope-
ful ever since I knew you. And so have you, said he
to Christian. Ah ! brother, said he, surely if I wa/t
right, he would now rise to help me ; but for ray sinf
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689
he hath brought me into the snare and left me. Then
said Hopeful, My brother, you have quite forgot the
text, where it is said of the wicked, ' There are no
bands in their death, but their strength is firm ; they
are not troubled as other men, neither are they
plagued like other men.' These troubles and distresses
that you go through in these waters are no sign that
God "hath" forsaken you ; but are sent to try you,
whether you will call to mind that which heretofore
you have received of his goodness, and live upon him
in your distresses.
Then I saw in my dream that Christian was in a
muse awhile. To whom, also. Hopeful added these
words. Be of good cheer, .lesus Christ maketh thee
■whole: and with that Christian brake out with aloud
voice. Oh ! I see him again ; and he tells me, ' When
thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee ;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.'
Then they both took courage, and the enemy was
after that as still as a stone, until they were gone
over. Christian, therefore, presently found ground to
stand upon, and so it followed that the rest of the
river was but shallow ; but thus they got over. Now,
upon the bank of the river on the other side, they saw
the two shining men again, who there waited for
them ; wherefore, being come out of the river, they
saluted them, saying, ' We are ministering spirits, sent
forth to minister to those that shall be heirs of salva-
tion.' Thus they went along toward the gate. Now,
you must note that the city stood upon a mighty hill ;
but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because
they had these two men to lead them up by the arms ;
they had likewise left their mortal garments behind
them in the river ; for though they went in with them,
they came out without them. They therefore went up
here with much agility and speed, though the founda-
tion upon which the city was framed was higher than
the clouds ; they therefore went up through the region
of the air, sweetly talking as they went, being com-
forted because they got safely over the river, and had
such glorious companions to attend them.
The talk that they had with the shining ones was
about the glory of the place ; who told them, that the
beauty and glory of it was inexpressible. There, said
they, is ' Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the
innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of
just men made perfect.' You are going now, said
they, to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall see
the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits
thereof; and when you come there, you shall have
white robes given you, and your walk and talk shall
be every day with the King, even all the days of eter-
nity. There you shall not see again such things as you
saw when you were in the lower region upon the earth,
to wit, sorrow, sickness, affliction, and death, ' for the
former things are passed away.' You are now going to
Abraham, Isaac, and .Jacob, and to the prophets, men
that God hath taken away from the evil to come, and
that are now resting upon their beds, each one walking
in his righteousness. The men then asked. What must
we do in this holy place ? To whom it was answered,
You must there receive the comforts of all your toil,
and have joy for all your sorrow ; you must reap what
you have sown, even the fruit of all your prayers and
tears, and sufferings for the King by the way. In that
place you must wear crowns of gold, and enjoy the
perpetual sight and vision of the Holy One, for 'there
you shall see him as he is.' There, also, you shall
serve him continually with praise, witli shouting, and
thanksgiving, whom you desired to serve in the world,
thoui'h with much dilficulty, because of the infirmity
of your flesh. There your eyes shall be delighted with
seein", and your ears with licariiig, the pleasant voice
of the Mighty One. There you shall enjoy your
friends again, that are gone thither before you ; and
there you shall with joy receive even every one that
follows into the holy places after you. There, also,
you sliall be clothed with glory and majesty, and put
into an equipage fit to ride out with the King of
(ilory. When he shall come with sound of trumpet
in the clouds, as upon the wings of the wind, you
shall come with him ; and when he shall sit upon the
throne of judgment, you shall sit by him ; yea, and
when he shall pass sentence upon all the workers of
iniquit}', let them be angels or men, you also shall
have a voice in that judgment, because they were his
and your enemies. Also, when he shall again return
to the city, you shall go too, with sound of trumpet,
and be ever with him.
Now, while they were thus drawing towards the
gate, behold a company of the heavenly host came out
to meet them : to whom it was said by the other two
shining ones, These are the men who loved our Lord
Avhen they were in the world, and have left all for his
holy name ; and he hath sent us to fetch them, and
we have brought them thus far on their desired jour-
ney, that they may go in and look their Redeemer 'n
the face with joy. Then the heavenly host gave a
great shout, saying, ' Blessed are they that are called
to the marriage-supper of the Lamb.' Thei-e came
also out at this time to meet them several of the
king's trumpeters, clothed in white and shining rai-
ment, who, with melodious and loud noises, made
even the heavens to echo with their sound. These
trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten
thousand welcomes from the world ; and this they did
with shouting and sound of trumpet.
This done, they compassed them round about on
every side ; some went before, some beliind, and some
on the right hand, some on the left (as it were to guard
them through the upper regions), continually sound-
ing as they went, with melodious noise, in notes on
high ; so that the very sight was to them that could
behold it as if Heaven itself was come down to meet
them. Thus, therefore, they walked on together ; and,
as they walked, ever and anon these trumpeters, even
with joyful sound, would, by mixing their music witj)
looks and gestures, still signify to Christian and his
brother how welcome they were into their company,
and with what gladness they came to meet them : and
now were these two men, as it were, in Heaven, before
they came at it, being swallowed up with the sight of
angels, and with hearing their melodious notes. Here,
also, they had the city itself in view, and thought
they heard all the bells therein to ring, to welcome
them thereto. But, above all, the warm and joyful
thoughts that they had about their own dwelling
there with such company, and that for ever and ever.
Oh ! by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be
expressed ! Thus they came up to the gate.
Now, when they were come up to the gate, there
was written over in letters of gold, ' Blessed are they
that do his commandments, that they may have a
right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the
gates into the city.'
Then I saw in my dream that the shining men bid
them call at the gate ; the which, when they did, some
froin above looked over the gate, to wit, Enoch, Moses,
Elijah, &c., to whom it was said. These pilgrims are
come from the City of Destruction, for the love that
they bear to the King of this place ; and then the pil-
grims gave in unto them each man his certificate,
which they had received in the beginning : those,
therefore, were carried in to the King, who, when he
had read them, said. Where are the men ? To whom
it was answered, They are standing without the gate.
The King then commanded to open the gate, 'That
the righteous nation,' said he, 'that keepeth trutli,
may enter in.'
Now, I saw in my dream that these two men went
in at the gate ; and lo, as they entered, they were
transfigured, and they had raiment put en that shone
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LORL. CLARENDO.N.
like gold. There were also that met them with harps
and crowns, and gave to them the harps to praise
withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I
heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang
again for joy, and that it was said unto them, ' Enter
ye into the joy of your Lord.' I also heard the men
themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying,
'Blessing, honour, and glory, and power be to Mini
that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for
ever and ever.'
Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the
men, I looked in after them, and behold the city
shone like the sun ; the streets, also, were paved with
gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on
their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps,
to sing praises withal.
There were also of them that had wings, and they
answered one another without intermission, saying,
'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord.' And after that they
shut up the gates ; which when I had seen, I wished
myself among them.
Now, while I was gazing upon all these things, I
turned my head to look back, and saw Ignorance
coming up to the river side ; but he soon got over, and
that without half the difficulty which the other two
men met m ith. For it happened that there was then
in that idace one Vain-Hope, a ferryman, that with
his boat helped him over ; so he, as the other, I saw,
did ascend the hill, to come up to the gate, only he
came alone ; neither did any man meet him with the
least encouragement. When he was coming up to the
gate, he looked up to the miting that was above, and
then began to knock, supposing that entrance should
have been quickly administered to him: but he was
asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate,
Whence come you, and what would you have I He
answered, ' I have eat and drank in the presence of
the King, and he has taught in our streets.' Then
they asked for his certificate, that they might go in
and show it to the King ; so he fumbled in his bosom
for one, and found none. Then said they. You have
none ! but the man answered never a word. So they
told the King, but he would not come down to see
him, but commanded the two shining ones that con-
ducted Christian and Hopeful to the city to go out
and take Ignorance, and bind him hand and foot, and
have him away. Then they took him up, and carried
him through the air to the door that 1 saw on the side
of the hill, and put him in there. Then I saw that
there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven,
as well as from the City of Destruction. ' So I awoke,
and behold it was a dream.'
The period under review and the reign which
immediately preceded it were fortunate in a group
of historical writers who described their own times
with extraordinary felicity. At their head stands
the Earl of Clarendon, who gives the royalist view
of public aSairs.
tORD CLARENDON.
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1G08-1674),
the son of a private gentleman of good fortune in
Wiltshire, studied for several years at Oxford with
a view to the church, but, in consequence of the
death of two elder brothers, was removed at the age
of sixteen to London, where he diligently pursued
the study of the law. AV'hile thus employed, he
associated much with some of the most eminent of
his contemporaries, among whom may be mentioned
Lord Falkland, Selden, Carew, Waller, Morley,
Hales of Eton, and Chillingworth. From the con-
versation of these and other distinguished individuals
(the characters of some of whom he has admirably
sketched in his works), he considered liimself to have
derived a great portion of his knowledge; and he
Lord Clarendon.
declares that ' he never was so proud, or thought
himself so good a man, as when he was the worst
man in the company.' In the practice of the law
he made so creditable a figure, as to attract the fa-
vourable notice of Archbishop Laud ; but being in
easy circumstances, and having entered parliament
in 1640, he soon afterwards quitted the bar, and de-
voted himself to public affairs. At first he abstained
from connecting himself with any political party ;
but eventually he joined tlie royalists, to whose
principles he was inclined by nature, though not in
a violent degree. In the struggles between Charles I.
and the people, he was much consulted by the
king, who, however, sometimes gave him great
offence by disregarding his advice. Many of the
papers issued in the royal cause during the civil
war were the productions of Hyde. Charles, wliile
holding his court at Oxford, nominated him chan-
cellor of the exchequer, and conferred upon him
the honour of knighthood. Leaving tlie king in
1644, he accompanied Prince Charles to the west,
and subsequently to Jersey, where he remained for
two years after the prince's departure from that
island, engaged in tranquil literary occupations, and
especially in writing a history of the stormy events
in which he had lately been an actor. In 1648 he
joined the prince in Holland, and next year went as
one of his ambassadors to M.adrid, having first esta-
blished his own wife and children at Antwerp. In
Spain the ambassadors were coldly received : after suf-
fering much from neglect and poverty, they were at
length ordered to quit the kingdom, which they did
in 1651 ; Hyde retiring to his fiimily at Antwerp,
but afterwards, in the autumn of the same year,
joining the exiled Charles at Paris. Thenceforth,
Hyde continued to be of great service in managing
the embarrassed pecuniary affairs of the court, in
giving counsel to the king, and in preserving har-
mony among liis adiierents. At this time his own
poverty was such, that he writes in 1652, 'I have
neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the
sharpness of the season ;' and in the following year,
' I have not had a livre of my own for three months.'
He was greatly annoyed by the indolence and extra-
vagance of Charles, who, however, valued him highly,
and manifested his apjirobation by raising him to
the dignity of lord chancellor. This appointment
by a king without a kingdom, besides serving to tes-
475
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689
tify the royal favour, enabled the easy and indolent
monarch t») rid himself of clamorous applicants for
futuic lucrative offices in England, by referring them
to one who had greater ability to resist solicitation
with firmness. (.Jf the four confidential counsellors
by whose advice Charles was almost exclusively
directed after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Hyde
' bore the greatest share of business, and was be-
lieved to possess the greatest influence. The mea-
sures he reconmiended were tempered with sagacity,
prudence, and moderation.' ' The chancellor was
a witness of the Restoration; he was with Charles at
Canterburj' in his progress to London, followed his
triumplial entr}' to the capital, and took his seat on
the first of June (1660) as speaker of the House of
Lords : he also sat on the same day in the Court of
Chancery.' In the same year his daughter became
the wife of the Duke of York, by which marriage
Hyde was rendered a progenitor of two queens of
England, I\Iary and Anne. At the coronation in 1661,
the earldom of Clarendon was conferred on him,
along with a gift of £20,000 from the king. He en-
joj-ed the office of chancellor till 1665, when, having
incurred the popular odium by some of his measures,
and raised up many bitter enemies in the court by
his opposition to the dissoluteness and extravagance
which there prevailed, he resigned the great seal by
Dunkirk House, the London residence of Lord Clarendon.
his majesty's command, and was soon afterwards
compelled to withdraw from the kingdom. He re-
tired to France, and occupied himself in completing
his History of the Rebellion (for such was the epithet
bestowed by the royalists upon the civil war),
which, howevei', was not published till tlie reign of
Queen Anne. This great work, which usually occu-
pies six volumes, is not written in the studied manner
of modern historical compositions, but in an easy
flowing conversational style; and it is generally
esteemed for the lively descriptions which the author
gives, from his own knowledge and observation, of
his most eminent contemporaries. The events are
narrated with that freshness and minuteness which
only one concerned in them could have attained ; but
some allowance must be made, in judging of the cha-
racters and the transactions described, for the political
prejudices of the author, which, as already seen, were
those of a moderate and virtuous royalist. The chief
faults with which his style is chargeable are prolixity
and involution, which render some portions of the
work unreadable, except with a great effort of atten-
tion. And from having been written before notes
came into use, the narrative is too frequently in-
terrupted by the introduction of minute discussions
of accessory matters. Lord Clarendon wrote also a
variety of shorter works, among which are a life of
himself, a reply to the 'Leviathan' of Ilobbes, and
an admirable Essay on an Active and Contemplative
Life, ana why the One should be prefeired before the
Other. The last is pcculiMrly valuable, as the j)ro-
duction of a man who to a sound and vigorous un-
derstanding added rare knowk'dge of the world,
and luuch experience of life, both active and retired.
He strongly maintains the superiority of an active
course, as having the greater tendency to promote
not only the happiness and usefulness, but also the
virtue, of the individual. Man, says he, ' is not sent
into the world only to have a being to breathe till
nature extinguisheth that breatli, and reduceth that
miserable creature to the nothing he was before : he
is sent upon an errand, and to do the business of
life ; he hath flxculties given him to judge between
good and evil, to cherish and foment the first motions
he feels towards the one, and to subdue the first
temptations to tlie other ; he hath not acted his
part in doing no harm ; his duty is not only to do
good and to be innocent himself, but to propagate
virtue, and to make others better than tliey would
otherwise be. Indeed, an absence of folly is the first
hopeful prologue towards the obtaining wisdom;
yet he shall never be wise wlio knows not what folly
is ; nor, it may be, commendably and judiciously
honest, without having taken some view of the
quarters of iniquity ; since true virtue pre-supposeth
an election, a declining somewhat tliat is ill, as well
as the choice of what is good.' The choice of a
mode of life he, however, justly thinks ought to be
regulated by a consideration of the abilities of each
individual who is about to commence his career ;
all abstract disquisitions on the subject being as
unprofitable as to argue the questions, ' "Whether a
man who is obliged to make a long journey should
choose to undertake it upon a black or a bay horse,
and take his lodging always in a public inn, or at a
friend's house ; to which the resolution, after how
long a time soever of considering, nmst be, that the
black horse is to be made use of, if he be better than
the bay ; and tliat the inn is to be i)referred, if the
entertaimnent be better there than it is like to be
at the friend's house. And how ligiit and ridiculous
soever this instance may seem to be, it is very
worthy to accompany the other debate, which must
be resolved by the same medium. That a man of
a vigorous and active spirit, of perspicacity of judg-
ment, and high thoughts, cannot enter too soon into
the field of action ; and to confine him to retirement,
and to spend his life in contemplation, were to take
his life from him. On the other hand, a dull dis-
spirited fellow, who hath no faculties of soul to
exercise and improve, or such as no exercise or con-
versation can improve, may withdraw himself as far
as he can from the world, and spend his life in sleep,
that was never awake ; but what kind of fruit this
dry trunk will 3'ield by his speculation or contem-
plation, can no more be comprehended than that he
will have a better and more useful understanding
after he is dead and buried.' Lord Clarendon omits
to add, that dispositions as well as talents ought
always to be considered ; since, however great a
man's abilities may be, the want of boldness, self-
confidence, and decision of character, must operate
as an insurmountable bar to success in the struggles
of active life.*
In the year 1811, a work of Lord Clarendon's,
which had till then remained in manuscript, was
published under the title of Religion and Policy, and
the Countenance and Assistance they should give tr
each other ; with a Survey of the I'ower and Juris-
diction of the Pope in the Dominions of other Princes.
* Lord Clarendon's other miscellaneous works consist of a
Vindication of Iliniself from the Charge of High Treason;
Contemplations on the Psalms of David ; Dialogues on the
Want of Respect due to Age, and on Education ; and essays OB
various subjects,
476
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD CLARENDON.
The principal object of the work is to show the
injury which religion has sustained by the pope's
assumption of temporal authority, and that it is
incumbent on Catholics living under Protestant
governments to pay no regard to the papal autho-
rity, in opposition to their own sovereign.
Lord Clarendon's ' History of the Rebellion' was
not intended for publication till tlie numerous public
individuals of whom it spoke were no more ; and ac-
cordingly, it did not make its appearance till the year
1707. It was edited by Lord Rochester, Bishop Sprat,
and Dean Aldrich, who made numerous alterations
on the text, which, however, has now been correctly
given in an edition printed at Oxford in 1826.
[Reception of the Liturgy at Edinburgh in 1637.]
On the Sunday morning appointed for the work, the
Chancellor of Scotland, and others of the council,
being present iu the cathedral church, the dean began
to read the Liturgj', which he had no sooner entered
upon, but a noise and clamour was raised throughout
the church, that no words could be heard distinctly ;
and then a shower of stones, and sticks, and cudgels,
were thrown at the dean's head. The bishop went up
into the pulpit, and from thence put them in mind of
the sacredness of the place, of their duty to God and
*he king ; but he found no more reverence, nor was
the clamour and disorder less than before. The chan-
cellor, from his seat, commanded the provost and
magistrates of the city to descend from the gallery in
which they sat, and b}' their authority to suppress the
riot ; which at last with great difficulty they did, by
driving the rudest of those who made the disturbance
out of the church, and shutting the doors, which gave
the dean opportunity to proceed in the reading of
the Liturgy, that was not at all attended or heark-
ened to by those who remained within the church ;
and if it had, they who were turned out continued
their barbarous noise, broke the windows, and endea-
voured to break down the doors, so that it was not
possible for any to follow their devotions.
When all was done that at that time could be
done there, and the council and magistrates went out
of the church to their houses, the rabble followed the
bishops with all the opprobrious language they could
invent, of bringing in superstition and popery into
the kingdom, and making the people slaves ; and were
not content to use their tongues, but employed their
hands too in throwing dirt and stones at them ; and
treated the bishop of Edinburgh, whom they looked
upon as most active that way, so rudely, that witli
difficulty he got into a house, after they had torn his
habit, and was from thence removed to his own, with
great hazard of his life. As this was the reception
which it had in the cathedral, so it fared not better
in the other churches of the city, but was entertained
with the same noise and outcries, and threatening
the men, whose office it was to read it, with the same
bitter execrations against bishops and popery.
Hitherto no person of condition or name appeared
or seemed to countenance this seditious confusion ; it
was the rabble, of which nobody was named, and,
which is more strange, not one apprehended : and it
seems the bishops thought it not of moment enough
to desire or require any help or protection from the
council ; but without conferring with them, or apply-
ing themselves to them, they despatched away an
express to the king, with a full and particular infor-
mation of all that had passed, and a desire that he
would take that course he thought best for the carry-
ing on his service.
Until this advertisement arrived from Scotland,
there were very few in England who had heard of any
disorders there, or of anything done there which miglit
produce any * * And the truth is, there was so
little curiosity either in the court or in the country
to know anything of Scotland, or what was done there,
that when the wliole nation was solicitous to know
what passed weekly in Germany, and Poland, and all
other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what
was doing in Scotland. Nor had that kingdom a place
or mention in one page of any gazette ; and even after
the advertisement of this preamble to rebellion, no
mention was made of it at the council-board, but such
a despatch made into Scotland upon it, as exjiressed
the king's dislike and displeasure, and obliged the
lords of the council there to appear more vigorously
in the vindication of his authority, and suppression
of those tumults. But all was too little. That people,
after they had once begun, pursued the business vigour-
ously, and with all imaginable contempt of the govern-
ment ; and though in the hubbub of the first day
there appeared nobody of name or reckoning, but tht
actors were really of the dregs of the people, yet they
discovered by the countenance of that day, that few
men of rank were forward to engage themselves in the
quan-el on the behalf of the bishops ; whereupon more
considerable persons every day appeared against them,
and (as heretofore in the case of St Paul, Acts xiii.
50, ' The Jews stirred up the devout and honourable
women') the women and ladies of the best quality
declared themselves of the party, and, with all the
reproaches imaginable, made war upon the bishops,
as introducers of popery and superstition, against which
they avowed themselves to be irreconcilable enemies ;
and their husbands did not long defer the owning
the same spirit ; insomuch as vdthin few days the
bishops durst not appear in the streets, nor in any
courts, or houses, but were in danger of their lives ;
and such of the lords as durst be in their company,
or seemed to desire to rescue them from violence, had
their coaches torn in pieces, and their persons assaulted,
insomuch as they were glad to send for some of those
gi'eat men, who did indeed govern the r3t)ble, though
they appeared not in it, who readily ci. ne and re-
deemed them out of their hands ; so that, by the time
new orders came from England, there was scarce a
bishop left in Edinburgh, and not a minister who durst
read the Liturgy in any church.
[Character of Hampden ]
]Mr Hampden was a man of much greater cunning,
and, it may be, of the most discerning spirit, and of
the greatest address and insinuation to bring anything
to pass which he desired, of any man of that time, and
who laid the design dee])est. He was a gentleman of
a good extraction, and a fair fortune ; who, from a life
of great pleasure and license, had on a sudden retired
to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, and yet re-
tained his usual cheerfulness and afiability ; which,
together with the opinion of his wisdom and justice,
and the courage he had showed in opposing the ship-
money, raised his reputation to a very great height,
not only in Buckinghamshire, where he lived, but
generally throughout the kingdom. He was not a
man of many words, and rarely begun the discourse,
or made the first entrance upon any business that war
assumed ; but a very weighty speaker, and after he
had heard a full debate, and observed how the house
was like to be inclined, took up the argument, and
shortly, and clearh', and craftily so stated it, that he
commonly conducted it to the conclusion he desired ;
and if he found he could not do that, he was never
without the dexterity to divert the debate to another
time, and to prevent the determining anytliing in the
negative, which might prove inconvenient in the future.
He made so great a show of civility, and modesty, and
humility, and always of mistrusting his own judgment,
and esteeming his with whom lie conferred for the pre-
sent, that he seemed to have no opinions or resolutions,
477
FROM 1649
CYCLOFiEDIA OF
but such as he contracted from the inforaiation and
instruction he received upon the discourses of others,
whom he had a wonderful art of governing, and lead-
ing into his principles and inclinations, whilst they
believed that he wholly depended upon their counsel
and advice. No man had ever a greater power over
himself, or was less the man that he seemed to be ;
which shortly after appeared to everybody, when he
cared less to keep on the mask.
[Character of Lord Fallland.]
In this unhappy battle [of Newbury] was slain the
Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious
parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable
sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing
and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind,
and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life,
that if there were no other brand upon this odious and
accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be
most infamous and execrable to all posterity :
Turpe mori, post te, solo non posse dolore.
Before this parliament, his condition of life was so
happy, that it was hardly capable of improvement.
Before he came to be twenty years of age, he was
master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by
the gift of a grandfiither, without passing through his
father or mother, who were then both alive, and not
Veil enough contented to find themselves passed by in
the descent. His education for some years had been
in Ireland, where his father was lord deputy ; so that,
when he returned into England to the possession of
his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance
or friends, which usually grow up by the custom of
conversation, and therefore was to make a pure elec-
tion of his company, which he chose by other rules
than were prescribed to the young nobility of that
time. And it cannot be denied, though he admitted
some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of
their natures, and their undoubted affection to him,
that his familiarity and friendship for the most j)art
was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts,
and of untouched reputation in point of integrity ; and
such men had a title to his bosom.
He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good
parts in any man ; and if he found them clouded with
poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron
towards them, even above his fortune ; of which, in
those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if
he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there
had been the least of vice in his expense, he might
have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and
pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not
to be wearied by an}' pains that were necessary to
that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to
see London, which he loved above all places, till he
had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to
his own house in the country, and pursued it with
that indefatigable industry, that it will not be be-
lieved in how short a time he was master of it, and
accurately read all the (jreek historians.
jn thi • tim \ his housi beii.o; wit'iin Title i lore than
ten fuiles of Oxford, he coniracte.l familial ity and
friendship with the most polite and accurate men of
that university, who found such an immenseness of
wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite
a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such
a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any-
thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had
known nothing, that they frequently resorted and
dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer
air ; so that his house was a university in a less volume,
whither they came not so much for repose as study,
9Jid to examine and refine those grosser propositions
TO 1689.
fulirar
which laziness and consent made current in
conversation. * *
He was superior to all those passions and affections
which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no
other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed
a lover of all good men ; and that made him too much
a contemner of those arts which must be indulged in
the transactions of human affairs. In the last short
parliament he was a burgess in the House of Com-
mons ; and from the debates, which were there
managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he
contracted such a reverence to parliaments, that he
thought it really impossible they could ever produce
mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom ; or that the
kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission
of them. * *
The great opinion he had of the uprightness and in-
tegrity of those persons who appeared most active,
especially of Mr Hampden, kept him longer from sus-
pecting any design against the peace of the kingdom ;
and though he differed from them commonly in con-
clusions, he believed long their purposes were honest.
When he grew better informed what was law, and dis-
cerned in them a desire to control that law by a vote
of one or both houses, no man more opposed those
attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble by
reason and argumentation ; insomuch iis he was by de-
grees looked upon as an advocate for the court ; to
which he contributed so little, that he declined those
addresses, and even those invitations which he was
obliged almost by civility to entertain. And he was
so jealous of the least imagination that he should in-
cline to preferment, that he affected even a moroseness
to the court and to the courtiers, and left nothing
undone which might prevent and divert the king's or
queen's favour towards him but the deserving it. For
when the king sent for him once or twice to speak
with him, and to give him thanks for his excellent
comportment in those councils, which his majesty
graciously termed ' doing him service,' his answers
were more negligent, and less satisfactory, than might
be expected ; as if he cared only that his actions should
be just, not that they should be acceptable ; and that
his majesty should think that they proceeded only
from the impulsion of conscience, without any sym-
pathy in his affections.
He had a courage of the most clear and keen
temper, and so far from fear, that he seemed not with-
out some appetite of danger ; and therefore, upon any
occasion of action, he always engaged his person in
those troops which he thought by the forwardness of the
commanders to he most like to be fiirthest engaged ;
and iti all such encounters, he had about him an ex-
traordinary cheerfulness, without at all affecting the
execution tliat usually attended them ; in which he
took no delight, but took pains to prevent it, where it
was not by resistance made necessary ; insomuch
tliat at Edge-hill, when the enemy was routed, he was
like to have incurred great peril, by interposing to
save those who had thrown away their arms, and
against whom, it may be, others were more fierce for
their having thrown them away ; so that a man might
think he came into the field chiefly out of curiosity to
see the face of danger, and charity to prevent the
shedding of blood. Yet in his natural inclination, he
acknowledged he was addicted to the profession of a
soldier ; and sliortly after he came to his fortune, be-
fore he was of age, he went into the Low Countries,
with a resolution of procuring command, and to give
himself up to it ; from which he was diverted by the
complete inactivity of that summer; so he returned
into iMiglaiid, and shortly after entered upon tliat
vehement course of study we mentioned before, till the
iirst alarm from the north ; then again he made ready
for the field, and though he received some repulse in
the command of a troop of liorse, of which he had
478
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
tORD CLARENDON.
a promise, he went a volunteer with the Earl of
Essex.
From the entrance into this unnatural war, his
natural cheerfulness and vivacitj grew clouded, and a
kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him,
which he had never been used to ; j-et being one of
those who believed that one battle would end all dif-
ferences, and that there would be so great a victory on
one side that the other would be compelled to submit
to any conditions from the victor (which supposition
and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most
men, and prevented the looking after many advan-
tages that might then have been laid hold of), he re-
gisted those indispositions. But after the king's return
from Brentford, and the furious resolution of the two
houses not to admit any treaty for peace, those indis-
■oositions which had before touched him grew into a
perfect habit of uncheerfulness ; and he who had been
so exactly easy and affable to all men, that his face
and countenance was always present and vacant to
his company, and held any cloudiness and less plea-
santness of the visa/re a kind of rudeness or incivilit}',
became on a sudden less communicable ; and thence
very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with the
Bplecn. In his clothes and habit, which he had minded
before always with more neatness, and industry, and
expense, than is usual to so great a soul, he was not
now only incurious, but too negligent ; and in his re-
ception of suitors, and the necessary or casual ad-
dresses to his place, so quick, and sharp, and severe,
that there wanted not some men (strangers to his
nature and disposition) who believed him proud and
imperious ; from which no mortal man was ever more
free. * *
"When there was any overture or hope of peace, he
would be more erect and vigorous, Jind exceedingly
solicitous to press anj-thing which he thought might
promote it ; and sitting among his friends, often after
a deep silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill
and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace ;
and would passionately profess, ' that the very agony
! of the war, and the view of the calamities and desola-
tion the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep
from him, and would shortly break his heart.' This
made some think, or pretend to think, ' that he was
so much enamoured of peace, that he would have been
glad the king should have bought it at any price ;'
which was a most unreasonable calumny. As if a man
that was himself the most punctual and precise in
every circumstance that might reflect upon conscience
or honour, could have wished the king to have com-
mitted a trespass against either. * *
In the morning before the battle, as always upon
action, he was very cheerful, and put himself into the
first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advanc-
ing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both
sides with musketeers ;• from whence he was shot with
a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the
instant falling from his horse, his body was not found
till the next morning; till when, there was some hope
he might have been a prisoner, though his nearest
friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort
from that imagination. Thus fell that incomparable
young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age,
having so much despatched the true business of life,
that the eldest rarely attain to that immense know-
ledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with
niore innocency : whosoever leads such a life, needs be
the less anxious upon how short warning it is taken
from him.
{Character of Charles /.]
But it will not be unnecessary to add a short cha-
racter of his person, that posterity may know the in-
estimable lo>i« vhich the nation then underwent, in
being deprived of a prince whose example would have
had a greater influence upon the manners and piety
of the nation, than the most strict laws can have. To
speak first of his private qualifications as a man, be-
fore the mention of hi* princely and roj'al virtues ; he
was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an
honest man ; so great a lover of justice, that no temp-
tation could dispose him to a wrongful action, except
it was so disguised to him that he believed it to be
just. He had a tenderness and compassion of nature
which restrained him from ever doing a hard-hearted
thing ; and, therefore, he was so apt to grant pardon
to malefactors, that the judges of the land represented
to him the damage and insecurity to the public that
flowed from such his indulgence. And then he re-
strained himself from pardoning either murders or
highway robberies, and quickly discerned the fruits
of his severity by a wonderful reformation of those
enormities. He was very punctual and regular in his
devotions ; he was never known to enter upon his re-
creations or sports, though never so early in the morn-
ing, before he had been at public prayers ; so that on
hunting days, his chaplains were bound to a very early
attendance. He was likewise very strict in observing
the hours of his private cabinet devotions, and was
so severe an exacter of gravity and reverence in all
mention of religion, that he could never endure any
light or profane word, with what sharpness of wit so-
ever it was covered ; and though he was well pleased
and delighted with reading verses made upon an}' oc-
casion, no man durst bring before him anything that
was profane or unclean. That kind of wit had never
any coiwitenance then. He was so great an example
of conjugal affection, that they who did not imitate
him in that particular, durst not brag of their liberty ;
and he did not only permit, but direct his bishops to
prosecute those scandalous vices, in the ecclesiastical
courts, against persons of eminence, and near relation
to his service.
His kingly virtues had some mixture and allay that
hindered them from shining in full lustre, and from
producing those fruits they should have been attendei
with. He was not in his nature very bountiful, thougt
he gave very much. This appeared more after the
Duke of Buckingham's death, after which those showers
fell very rarely ; and he paused too long in giving,
which made those to whom he gave less sensible of the
benefit. He kept state to the full, which made his
court very orderly, no man presuming to be seen in a
place where he had no pretence to be. He saw and
observed men long before he received them about his
person ; and did not love strangers, nor very confident
men. He was a patient hearer of causes, which he
frequently accustomed himself to at the council board,
and judged very well, and was dexterous in the medi-
ating part ; so that he often put an end to causes by
persuasion, which the stubbornness of men's humours
made dilatory in courts of justice.
He was very fearless in his person ; but, in his riper
years, not very enterprising. He had an excellent
understanding, but was not confident enough of it ;
which made him oftentimes change his own opinion
for a worse, and follow the advice of men that did not
judge so well as himself. This made liim more irre-
solute than the conjuncture of his affairs would ad-
mit ; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious
nature, he would have found more respect and duty.
.\nd his not applying some severe cures to approach-
ing evils proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and
the tenderness of his conscience, wliich, in all cases of
blood, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken
to severe counsels, how reasonably soever urged. This
only restrained him from pursuing his advantage in
the first Scottish expedition, when, humanly sjjcaking,
he might have reduced that nation to the n.o>t 'iitire
obedience that could have been wished. Bui no man
479
FBOU 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168S.
can say he had then many who advised him to it, but
the contrary, by a wonderful indisposition all his
council had "to the war or any other fotigue. He was
always a great lover of the Scottish nation, haring not
only been" born there, but educated by that people,
and besieged by them always, having few English
about him till he was king ; and the major number
of his servants being still of that nation, who he
thought could never fail him. And among these, no
manliad such an ascendant over him, by the humblest
insinuations, as Duke Hamilton had.
As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance
he was so strict, that he abhorred all debauchery to
that degree, that, at a great festival solemnity, where
be once was, when very many of the nobility of the
English and Scots were entertained, being told by one
who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine
they drank, and ' that there was one earl who had
drank most of the rest down, and was not himself
moved or altered,' the king said, ' that he deserved to
be hanged ;' and that earl coming shortly after into
the room where his majesty was, in some gaiety, to
show how unhurt he was from that battle, the king
sent one to bid him withdraw from his majesty's pre-
sence ; nor did he in some days after appear before
him.
So many miraculous circumstances contributed to
his ruin, that men might well think that heaven and
earth conspired it. Though he was, from the first
declension of his power, so much betrayed by his o^vn
servants, that there were very few who remained faith-
ful to him, ye* that treachery proceeded not always
from any treasonable purpose to do him any harm,
but from particular and personal animosities against
other men. And afterwards, the terror all men were
under of the parliament, and the guilt they were con-
scious of themselves, made them watch all opportu-
nities to make themselves gracious to those who could
do them good ; and so they became spies upon their
master, and from one piece of knavery were hardened
and confirmed to undertake another, till at last they
had no hope of preservation but by the destruction of
their master. And after all this, when a man might
reasonably believe that less than a universal defection
of three nations could not have reduced a great king
to so ugly a fate, it is most certain that, in that very
hour, when he was thus wickedly murdered in the
sight of the sun, he had as great a share in the hearts
and affections of his subjects in general, was as much
beloved, esteemed, and longed for by the people in
general of the three nations, as any of his predecessors
had ever been. To conclude, he was the worthiest
gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best
husband, the best father, and the best Christian, that
the age in which he lived produced. And if he were
not the greatest king, if he were without some parts
and qualities which hare made some kings great and
happy, no other prince was ever unhappy who was
possessed of half his virtues and endowments, and so
much without any kind of vice.
[Escape of Charles IT. after the Battle of Worcester.*']
Though the king could not get a body of horse to
fight, he could have too many to fly with him ; and
he had not been many hours from Worcester, when
he found about him near, if not above, four thousand
of his horse. There was David Lesley with all his own
equipage, as if he had not fled upon the sudden ; so
that good order, and regularity, and obedience, might
yet have made a retreat even into Scotland itself.
But there was paleness in every man's looks, and
jealousy and confusion in their faces ; and scarce any-
thing could worse befall the king than a return into
* The particulars of this escape arc here narrated ' as the
author had them from the king himself."
Scotland, which yet he could not reasonably promise
to himself in that con)pany. But when the night
covered them, he found means to withdr.aw himself
mth one or two of his own servants, whom he likewise
discharged when it begun to be light ; and after he
had made them cut off his hair, he betook himself
alone into an adjacent wood, and relied only upon
Him for his preservation who alone could, and did
miraculously deliver him.
When it was morning, and the troops which had
marched all night, and who knew that when it begun
to be dark the king was with them, found now that
he was not there, they cared less for each other's com-
pany ; and most of them who were English separated
themselves, and went into other roads ; and wherever
twenty horse appeared of the country, which was now
awake, and upon their guard to stop and arrest the
runaways, the whole body of the Scottish horse would
fly, and run several ways ; and twenty of them would
give themselves prisoners to two country fellows ; how-
ever, David Lesley reached Yorkshire with above fif-
teen hundred horse in a body. But the jealousies in-
creased every day ; and those of his o^^Tl countiy were
so unsatisfied with his whole conduct and behaviour,
that they did, that is, many of them, believe that he
was corrupted by Cromwell ; and the rest, who did
not think so, believed him not to understand his pro-
fession, in which he had been bred from his cradle
When he was in his flight, considering one morning;
with the principal persons which way they should
take, some proposed this and others that way, Sir
William Armorer asked him, ' which way he thought
best V which, when he had named, the other said, ' he
would then go the other ; for, he swore, he had be-
trayed the king and the army all the time ;' and st-
left him. * *
It is great pity that there was never a journal made
of that miraculous deliverance, in which there might
be seen so many visible impressions of the immediate
hand of God. When the darkness of the night was
over, after the king had cast himself into that wood,
he discerned another man, who had gotten upon an
oak in the same wood, near the place vrhere the king
had rested himself, and had slept soundly. The man
upon the tree had first seen the king, and knew him,
and came do^vn to him, and was known to the king,
being a gentleman of the neighbour county of Staf-
fordshire, who had sen-ed his late majesty during the
war, and had now been one of the few who resorted to
the king after his coming to Worcester. His name
was Careless, who had had a command of foot, about
the degree of a captain, under the Lord Loughborough.
He persuaded the king, since it could not be safe for
him to go out of the wood, and that, as soon as it
should be fully light, the wood itself would probably
be visited by those of the country, who would be
searching to find those whom they might make pri-
soners, that he would get up into that tree where he
had been, where the boughs were so thick with leaves
that a man would not be discovered there without a
narrower inquiiy than people usually make in places
which they do not suspect. The king thought it good
counsel, and, with the other's help, climbed into the
tree, and then helped his companion to ascend after
him, where they sat all that day, and securely saw
many who came purposely into the wood to look after
them, and heard all their discourse, how they would
use the king himself if they could take him. This
wood was either in or upon the borders of Staftbrd-
shire ; and though there was a highway near one
side of it, where the king had entered into it, yet it
was large, and all other sides of it opened amongst
inclosures, and Careless was not unacquainted with
the neighbour villages ; and it was part of tlie king's
good fortune that this gentleman, by being a Ro-
man Catholic, was acquainted with those of that pro-
480
FROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD CLARENDON.
fessioii of all degree-!, who Lad the best opportuni-
ties of concealing him ; for it must never be denied,
that some of that religion had a very great share in.
his majesty's preservation.
The day being spent in the tree, it was not in the
king's power to forget that he had lived two days with
eating very little, and tvro nights with as little sleep ;
so that, when the night came, he was willing to make
some provision for both ; and lie resolved, with the
advice and assistance of his companion, to leave his
blessed tree ; and, when the night was dark, they
walked through the wood into those inclosures which
were farthest from any highway, and making a shift
to get over hedges and ditches, after walking at least
eight or nine miles, which were the more grievous to
the king by the weight of his boots (for he could not
put them oif when he cut off his hair, for want of
shoes), before morning they came to a poor cottage,
the owner whereof, being a Roman Catholic, was known
to Careless. He was called up, and as soon as he
knew one of them, he easily concluded in what condi-
tion they both were, and presently carried them into
a little barn full of hay, which was a better lodging
than he had for himself. But when they were there,
and had conferred with their host of the news and
temper of the country, it was agreed that the danger
would be the greater if they stayed together ; and,
therefore, that Careless should presently be gone, and
should, within two days, send an honest man to the
king, to guide him to some other place of security;
and in the mean time his majesty should stay upon
the hay- now. The poor man had nothing for him to
eat, but promised him good butter-milk ; and so he
was once more left alone, his companion, how weary
soever, departing from him before day, the poor man
of the house knowing no more than that he was a
friend of the captain's, and one of those who had
escaped from Worcester. The king slept very well in
his lodging, till the time that his host brought him a
piece of bread, and a great pot of butter-milk, which
he thought the best food he ever had eaten. The poor
man spoke very intelligently to him of the country,
and of the people who were well or ill affected to the
king, and of the great fear and terror that possessed
the hearts of those who were best affected. He told
him, ' that he himself lived by his daily labour, and
that what he had brought him was the fare he and
his wife had ; and that he feared, if he should endea-
vour to procure better, it might draw suspicion upon
him, and people might be apt to think he had some-
body with him that was not of his own family. How-
ever, if he would have him get some meat, he would
do it ; but if he could bear this hard diet, he should
have enough of the milk, and some of the butter that
was made with it.' The king was satisfied with his
reason, and would not run the hazard for a change of
diet ; desired only the man ' that he might have his
company as often and as much as he could give it
him ;' there being the same reason against the poor
man's discontinuing his labour, as the alteration of
his fare.
After he had rested upon this hay-mow and fed
upon this diet two days and two nights, in the even-
ing before the third night, another fellow, a little
above the condition of his host, came to the house,
sent from Careless, to conduct the king to another
house, more out of any road near which any part of
the army was like to march. It was above twelve
miles that he was to go, and was to use the sa-n3
caution he had done the first night, not to go in any
common road, which his guide knew well how to
avoid. Here he new dressed himself, changing clothes
with his landlord ; he had a gi-eat mind to have kept
his own shirt ; but he considered, that men are not
sooner discovered by any mark in disguises than by
having fint linen in ill clothes ; and so he parted with
his shirt too, and took the same his poor host had then
on. Though he had foreseen that he must leave his
boots, and his landlord had taken the best care he
could to provide an old pair of shoes, yet they were
not easy to him when he first put them on, and, in a
short time after, grew very grievous to him. In this
equipage he set out from his first lodging in the be-
ginning of the night, under the conduct of this guide,
who guided him the nearest way, crossing over hedges
and ditches, that they might be in least danger of
meeting passengers. This was so gi-ievous a march,
and he was so tired, that he was even ready to despair,
and to prefer being taken and suffered to rest, before
purchasing his safety at that price. His shoes had,
after a few miles, hurt him so much, that he had
thrown them away, and walked the rest of the way in
his ill stockings, which were quickly worn out ; and
his feet, with the thorns in getting over hedges, and
with the stones in other places, were so hurt and
wounded, that he many times cast himself upon the
gi-ound, with a desperate and obstinate resolution to
rest there till the morning, that he might shift with
less torment, what hazard soever he run. But his
stout guide still prevailed with him to make a new
attempt, sometimes promising that the way should be
better, and sometimes assuring him that he had but
little farther to go ; and in this distress and perplexity,
before the morning they arrived at the house desigTied ;
which, though it was better than that which he had
left, his lodging was still in the bam, upon straw
instead of hay, a place being made as easy in it as the
expectation of a guest could dispose it. Here he had
such meat and porridge as such people use to have,
with which, but especially with the butter and the
cheese, he thought himself well feasted ; and took the
best care he could to be supplied with other, little
better, shoes and stockings ; and after his feet were
enough recovered that he could go, he was conducted
from thence to another poor house, within such a dis-
tance as put him not to much trouble ; for having not
yet in his thought which way or by what means to
make his escape, all that was designed was only, by
shifting from one house to another, to avoid discovery.
And being now in that quarter which was more in-
habited by the Roman Catholics than most other parts
in England, he was led from one to anotner of that
persuasion, and concealed with great fidelity. But he
then observed that he was never carried to any gentle-
man's house, though that country was full of them,
but only to poor houses of poor men, which only
yielded him rest with very unpleasant sustenance ;
whether there was more danger in those better houses,
in regard of the resort and the many servants, or
whether the owners of great estates were the owners
likewise of more fears and apprehensions.
Within few days, a very honest and discreet person,
one Mr Hudleston, a Benedictine monk, who attended
the service of the Roman Catholics in those parts,
came to him, sent by Careless, and was a very great
assistance and comfort to him. And when the places
to which he carried him were at too great a distance
to walk, he provided him a horse, and more proper
habit than the rags he wore. This man told him,
'that the Lord Wilmot lay concealed likewise in a
friend's house of his, which his majesty was very glad
of, and wished him to contrive some means how they
might speak together,' which the other easily did ,
and, within a night or two, brought them into one
place. Wilmot told the king ' that he liad by very
good fortune fallen into the house of an honest gentle-
man, one Mr Lane, a person of an excellent reputa-
tion for his fidelity to the king, but of so universal
and general a good name, that, though he had a son
who had been a colonel in the king's service during
the late war, and was then upon liis way with men to
Worcester, the very day of tlie defeat, men of all affev-
481
32
FKOH 1649
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 168Lr.
tions in the country, and of all opinions, paid the old
man a very great respect ; that he had been very
civilly treated there ; and that the old gentleman had
used some diligence to find out where the king was,
that he might get him to his house, where, he was
sure, he could conceal hira till he might contrive a
full deliverance.' He told him, ' he had withdrawn
from that house, in hope that he might, in some
other place, discover where his majesty was ; and hav-
ing now happily found him, advised him to repair to
that house, which stood not near any other.'
The king inquired of the monk of the reputation of
this gentleman, who told him, ' that he had a fair
estate, was exceedingly beloved, and the eldest justice
of peace of that county of Stafford ; and though he
was a very zealous Protestant, yet he lived with so
much civility and candour towards the Catholics, that
they would all trust him as much as they would do any
of their own profession ; and that he could not think of
any place of so good repose and security for his ma-
jesty's repair to.' The king liked the proposition, yet
thought not fit to surprise the gentleman, but sent
Wilmot thither again, to assure himself that he might
be received there, and was willing that he should
know what guest he received ; which hitherto was so
much concealed, that none of the houses where he had
yet been, knew or seemed to suspect more than that
he was one of the king's party that fled from Wor-
cester. The monk carried him to a house at a reason-
able distance, where he was to expect an account from
the Lord Wilmot, who returned very punctually, with
as much assurance of welcome as he could wish.
And so they two went together to Mr Lane's house,
where the king found he was welcome, and conveni-
ently accommodated in such places as in a large house
had been provided to conceal the persons of malig-
nants, or to preserve goods of value from being plun-
dered. Here he lodged and ate very well, and began
to hope that he was in present safety. Wilmot re-
turned under the care of the monk, and expected
summons when any farther motion should be thought
to be necessary.
In this station the king remained in quiet and
blessed security many days, receiving every day in-
formation of the general consternation the kingdom
was in. out of the apprehension that his person might
fall into the hands of his enemies, and of the great
diligence they used to inquire for him. He saw the
proclamation that was issued out and printed, in
which a thousand pounds were promised to any man
who would deliver and discover the person of Charles
Stuart, and the penalty of high treason declared against
those who presumed to harbour or conceal him, by
which he saw how much he was beholden to all those
who were faithful to him. It was now time to con-
sider how he might get near the sea, from whence he
might find some means to transport himself; and he
was now near the middle of the kingdom, saving that
it was a little more northward, where he was utterly
unacquainted with all the ports, and with that coast.
In the west he was best acquainted, and that coast
was most proper to transport him into France, to which
he was inclined. Upon this matter he communicated
with those of this family to whom he was known, that
Is, with the old gentleman the father, a very grave
and venerable person ; the colonel, his eldest son, a
very plain man in his discourse and behaviour, but of
a fearless courage, and an integrity superior to any
temptation ; and a daughter of the house, of a very
good wit and discretion, and very fit to bear any part
in such a trust. It was a benefit, as well as an incon-
venience, in those unhappy times, that the affections
of all men were almost as well known as their faces,
by the discovery they had made of themselves in those
sad seasons in many trials and persecutions ; so that
men knew not only the minds of their next neigh-
bours, and those who inhabited near them, but, upon
conference with their friends, could choose fit houses,
at any distance, to repose themselves in security, fr<)m
one end of the kingdom to another, without trusting
the hospitality of a common inn ; and men were very
rarely deceived in their confidence upon such occa-
sions ; but the persons with whom they were at any
time, could conduct them to another house of the same
affection,
Mr Lane had a niece, or very near kinswoman, who
was married to a gentleman, one Mr Norton, a person
of eight or nine hundred pounds per annum, who
lived within four or five miles of Bristol, which was
at least four or five days' journey from the place where
the king then was, but a place most to be wished for
the king to be in, because he did not only know all
that country very well, but knew many persons also
to whom, in an extraordinary case, he durst make
himself known. It was hereupon resolved that Mrs
Lane should visit this cousin, who was known to be
of good affections, and that she should ride behind
the king, who was fitted with clothes and boots for
such a service ; and that a servant of her fatliar's, in
his liverj', should wait upon her. A good house was
easily pitched upon for the first night's lodging, where
Wilmot had notice given him to meet ; and in this
equipage the king began his journey, the colonel keep-
ing him company at a distance, witli a hawk upon his
fist, and two or three spaniels, which, where there
were any fields at hand, warranted him to ride out of
the way, keeping his company still in his eye, and not
seeming to be of it. In this manner tliey came to
their first night's lodging ; and they need not now
contrive to come to their journey's end about the
close of the evening, for it was in the month of Oc-
tober far advanced, that the long journeys they made
could not be despatched sooner. Here the Lord Wil-
mot found them, and their journeys being then ad-
justed, he was instructed where he should be every
night ; so they were seldom seen together in the jour-
ney, and rarely lodged in the same house at night.
In this manner the colonel hawked two or three days,
till he had brought them within less than a day's
journey of Mr Norton's house, and then he gave his
hawk to the Lord Wilmot, who continued the journey
in the same exercise.
There was great care taken when they came to any
house, that the king might be presently carried into
some chamber, Mrs Lane declaring ' that he was a
neighbour's son, whom his father had lent her to ride
before her, in hope that he would the sooner recover
from a quartan ague, with which he had been miser-
ably afflicted, and was not yet free.' And by this
artifice she caused a good bed to be still provided for
him, and the best meat to be sent, which she often
carried herself, to hinder others from doing it. There
was no resting in any place till they came to Mr Nor-
ton's, nor anything extraordinary that hap])ened in
the way, save that they met many people e^cry ilay
in the way, who were very well known to the king ;
and the day that they went to Mr Norton's, they
were necessarily to ride quite through the city of
Bristol- — a place and people the king had been so well
acquainted with, that he could not but send his eyes
abroad to view the great alterations which had been
made there, after his departure from thence ; and
when he rode near the place where the great fort had
stood, he could not forbear putting his horse out of
the way, and rode with his mistress behind him round
about it.
They came to Mr Norton's house sooner than usual,
and it being on a holiday, they saw many people
about a bowling-green that was before the door; and
the first man the king saw was a chaplain of his own,
who was allied to the gentleman of th(' hon«e. n'n]
was sitting upon the rails to see how the l)0wler;-
482
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CORD CLARENDON.
played. ^\'llllaIn, by which name the ting went,
walked with his horse into the stable, until his mis-
tress could provide for his retreat. Mrs Lane was
very welcome to her cousin, and was presently con-
ducted to her chamber, where she no sooner was, than
she lamented the condition of ' a good youth who
came with her, and whom she had borrowed of his
father to ride before her, who was very sick, being
newly recovered of an ague ;' and desired her cousin
' that a chamber might be provided for him, and a
good fire made, for that he would go early to bed, and
was not fit to be below stairs.' A pretty little cham-
ber was presently made ready, and a fire prepared,
and a boy sent into the stable to call William, and
to show him his chamber; who was very glad to be
there, freed from so much company as was below.
Mrs Lane was put to find some excuse for making a
visit at that time of the year, and so many days' jour-
ney from her father, and where she had never been
before, though the mistress of the house and she had
been bred together, and friends as well as kindred.
She pretended ' that she was, after a little rest, to go
into Doreetshire to another friend.' When it was
supper-time, there being broth brought to the table,
Mrs Lane filled a little dish, and desired the butler
who waited at the table ' to carry that dish of porridge
to William, and to tell him that he should have some
meat sent to him presently.' The butler carried the
porridge into the chamber, with a nakpin, and spoon,
and bread, and spoke kindly to the young man, who
was willing to be eating.
The butler, looking narrowly upon him, fell upon
his knees, and with tears told him, ' he was glad to
see his majesty.' The king was infinitely surjjrised,
yet recollected himself enough to laugh at the man,
and to ask him ' what he meant V The man had
been falconer to Sir Thomas Jerniyn, and made it
appear that he \new well enough to whom he spoke,
repeating some particulars which the king had not
forgot. Whereupon the king conjured him 'not to
speak of what he knew, so much as to his master,
though he believed him a very honest man.' The fel-
low promised, and kept his word ; and the king was
the better waited upon during the time of his abode
there.
Dr Gorges, the king's chaplain, being a gentleman
of a good family near that place, and allied to Mr
Norton, supped with them ; and being a man of a
cheerful conversation, asked Mrs Lane many questions
concerning William, of whom he saw she was so care-
ful, by sending up meat to him, ' how long his ague
had been gone ? and whether he had purged since it
left him ?' and the like ; to which she gave such an-
swers as occurred. The doctor, from the final preva-
lence of the Parliament, had, as many others of that
function had done, declined his profession, and pre-
tended to study physic. As soon as supper was done,
out of good nature, and without telling anybody, he
went to see William. The king saw him coming into
the chamber, and withdrew to the inside of the bed,
that he might be farthest from the candle ; and the
doctor came and sat down by him, felt his pulse, and
asked him many questions, which he answered in as
few words as was possible, and expressing great incli-
nation to' go to his bed ; to which the doctor left him,
and went to Mrs Lane, and told her ' that he had
been with William, and that he would do well ;' and
advised her what she should do if his ague returned.
The next morning the doctor went away, so that the
king saw him no more. The next day, the Lord Wil-
mot came to the house with his hawk, to see Mrs
Lane, and so conferred with William, who was to con-
sider what he was to do. They thought it necessary
to rest some days, till they were informed what port
lay most convenient for them, and what person lived
nearest to it, upon whose fidelity they might rely;
and the king ga'"e him directions to inquire after
some persons, and some other particulars, of which
when he should be fulh' instructed, he should return
again to him. In the mean time, Wilmot lodged at
a house not far from Air Norton's, to which he had
been recommended.
After some days' stay here, and communication be-
tween the king and the Lord Wilmot by letters, the
king came to know that Colonel Francis Windham
lived within little more than a day's journey of the
place where he was, of which he was very glad ; for, be-
sides the inclination he had to his eldest brother, whose
wife had been his nurse, this gentleman had behaved
himself very well during the war, and had been go-
vernor of Dunstar castle, where the king had lodged
when he was in the west. After the end of the war,
and when all other places were surrendered in that
county, he likewise surrendered that, upon fair con-
ditions, and made his peace, and afterwards married
a wife with a competent fortune, and lived quietly,
without any suspicion of having lessened his affection
towards the king.
The king sent Wilmot to him, and acquainted him
where he was, and ' that he would gladly speak with
him.' It was not hard for him to choose a good place
where to meet, and thereupon the day was appointed.
After the king had taken his leave of Mrs Lane, who
remained with her cousin Norton, the king and the
Lord Wilmot met the colonel ; and in the way he met,
in a towm through which they passed, Mr Kirton, a
servant of the king's, who well knew the Lord Wilmot,
who had no other disguise than the hawk, but took
no notice of him, nor suspected the king to be there;
yet that day made the king more wary of having him
in his company upon the way. At the place of meet-
ing, they rested only one night, and then the king
went to the colonel's house, where he rested many
days, whilst the colonel projected at what place the
king might embark, and how they might procure a
vessel to be ready there, which v.-as not easy to find,
there being so great a fear possessing those who were
honest, that it was hard to procure any vessel that
was outward-bound to take in any passenger.
There was a gentleman, one Mr Ellison, who lived
near Lyme, in Dorsetshire, and was well known to
Colonel Windham, having been a captain in the
king's army, and was still looked upon as a very
honest man. With him the colonel consulted how
they might get a vessel to be ready to take in a couple
of gentlemen, friends of his, who were in danger to be
arrested, and transport them into France. Though no
man would ask who the persons were, yet it could not
but be suspected who they were ; at least they con-
cluded that it was some of Worcester party. Lyme
was generally as malicious and disaffected a town to
the king's interest as any to'ivn in England could be,
yet there was in it a master of a bark, of whose honesty
this captain was very confident. This man was 'ately
returned from France, and had unladen his vessel,
when Ellison asked him 'when he would make an-
other voyage ?' And he answered, ' as soon as he could
get lading for his ship.' The other asked 'whether
he would undertake to carry over a couple of gentle-
men, and land them in France, if ho might be as well
paid for his voyage as he used to be when he was
freighted by the merchants !' In conclusion, lie told
him ' he should receive fifty pounds for his fare.' The
large recompense had that effect, that the man under-
took it ; though he said ' he must make his provision
very secretly, for that he might be well suspected for
going to sea again without being frciglited, after he
was so newly returned.' Colonel ^\'indhanl being
advertised of this, came, together with the Lord Wil-
mot, to the captain's house, from whence the lord and
the captain rid to a house near Lyme, where the iiuw^
ter of the bark met them ; and the Lord Wilmi.: being
483
TROH 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689,
satisfied with the discourse of the man, and his wari-
ness in foreseeing suspicions which would arise, it was
resolved that on such a night, which upon considera-
tion of the tides was agreed upon, the man should
draw out his vessel from the pier, and, being at sea,
should corue to such a point about a mile from the
town, where his ship should remain upon the beach
when the water was gone, which would take it off
again about break of day the next morning. There
was very near that point, even in the riew of it, a
(mail inn, kept by a man who was reputed honest, to
which the caraliei-s of the country often resorted ; and
the London road passed that way, so that it was sel-
dom without company. Into that inn the two gentle-
men were to come in the beginning of the night, that
they might put themselves on board. All things being
thus concerted, and good earnest given to the master,
the Lord ^^'ilmot and the colonel returned to the
colonel's house, above a day's journey from the place,
the captain undertaking every day to look that the
master should provide, and, if anything fell out con-
trary to expectation, to give the colonel notice at such
a place where they intended the king should be the
day before he was to embark.
The king being satisfied with these preparations,
came at the time appointed to that house where he
was to hear that all went as it ought to do ; of which
he received assurance from the captain, who found
that the man had honestly put his provisions on
board, and had his company ready, which were but
four men, and that the vessel should be drawn out
that night ; so that it was fit for the two persons to
come to the aforesaid inn : and the captain conducted
them within sight of it, and then went to his own
house, not distant a mile from it ; the colonel remain-
ing still at the house where they had lodged the night
before, till he might hear the news of their being em-
barked.
They found many passengers in the inn, and so
were to be contented with an ordinary chamber, which
they did not intend to sleep long in. But as soon as
there appeared any light, Wilmot went out to discover
the bark, of which there was no appearance. In a
word, the sun arose, and nothing like a ship in view.
They sent to the captain, who was as much amazed ;
and he sent to the town, and his servant could not
find the master of the bark, which was still in the
pier. They suspected the captain, and the captain
suspected the master. However, it being past ten of
the clock, they concluded it- was not fit for them to
stay longer there, and so they mounted their horses
again to return to the house where they had left the
colonel, who, they knew, resolved to stay there till he
were assured that they were gone.
The truth of the disappointment was this : the man
meant honestly, and made all things ready for his
departure ; and the night he was to go out with his
Tessel, he had stayed in his own house, and slept two
or three hours ; and the time of the tide being come
that it was necessary to be on board, he took out of a
cupboard some linen and other things, which he used
to carry with him to sea. His wife had observed that
he had been for some days fuller of thoughts than he
used to be, and that he had been speaking with sea-
men who used to go with him, and that some of them
had carried provisions on board the bark ; of which
she had asked her husband the reason, who had told
her ' that ho was promised freight speedily, and there-
fore he would make all things ready.' She was sure
that there was yet no lading in the ship, and there-
fore, when she saw her husband take all those mate-
nala with him, which was a sure sign that he meant to
go to sea, and it being late in the night, she shut the
door, and swore he should not go out of his house.
He told her ' he must go, and was engaged to go to
ica that night, for which he should be well paid.' His
wife told him * she was sure he was doing somewhat
that would undo him, and she was resolved he should
not go out of his house ; and if he should persist in
it, she would tell the neighbours, and carry him be-
fore the mayor to be examined, that the truth might
be found out.' The poor man, thus mastered by the
passion and violence of his wife, was forced to yield
to her, that there might be no farther noise, and so
went into his bed.
And it was very happy that the king's jealousy
hastened him from that inn. It was the solemn fast-
day, which was observed in those times principally to
inllame the people against the king, and all those who
were loyal to him ; and there was a chapel in that
village over against that inn, where a weaver, who had
been a soldier, used to preach, and utter all the vil-
lany imaginable against the old order of government .
and he was then in the chapel preaching to his con-
gregation when the king went from thence, and tell-
ing the people 'that Charles Stuart was lurking some-
where in that country, and that they would merit
from God Almighty if they could find him out.' The
passengers, who had lodged in the inn that night,
had, as soon as they were up, sent for a smith to visit
their horses, it being a hard frost. The smith, when
he had done what he was sent for, according to the
custom of that people, examined the feet of the other
two horses, to find more work. When he had observed
them, he told the host of the house ' that one of those
horses had travelled far, and that he was sure that
his four shoes had been made in four several counties ;*
which, whether his skill was able to discover or no,
was very true. The smith going to the sermon, told
his story to some of his neighbours, and so it came
to the ears of the preacher when his sermon was done.
Immediately he sent for an officer, and searched the
inn, and inquired for those horses ; and being in-
formed that they were gone, he caused horses to be
sent to follow them, and to make inquiry after the
two men who rid those horses, and positively declared
' that one of them was Charles Stuart.'
When they came again to the colonel, they presently
concluded that they were to make no longer stay in
those parts, nor any more to endeavour to find a ship
upon that coast ; and without any farther delay, they
rode back to the colonel's house, where they arrived
in the night. Then they resolved to make their next
attempt in Hampshire and Sussex, where Colonel
Windhaiir had no interest. They must pass through
all Wiltshire before they came thither, which would
require many days' journey ; and they were first to
consider what honest houses there were in or near the
way, where they might securely repose ; and it was
thought very dangerous for the king to ride through
any great toNvn, as Salisbury or \\'inchester, which
might probably lie in their way.
There was, between that and Salisbury, a Tery
honest gentleman, Colonel Robert Philips, a younger
brother of a very good family, which had always been
very loyal, and he had served the king during the war.
The king was resolved to trust him, and so sent the
Lord Wilmot to a place from whence he might send
to Mr Philips to come to him ; and when he had
spoken witli him, Mr Philips should come to the
king, and Wilmot was to stay in such a place as they
two should agree. Mr Philips accordingly came
to the colonel's house, which he could do without
suspicion, they being nearly allied. The ways were
very full of soldiers, which were sent now from the
army to their quarters, and many regiments of horso
and foot were assigned for the west, of which division
Desborough was commander-in-chief. These marches
were like to last for many days, and it would not be
fit for the king to stay so long in that place. There-
upon he resorted to his old security of taking a woman
behind him, a kinswoman of Colonel Windham, whom
484
FBOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Bl'LSTRODE WHITELOCKXi
he carried in that manner to a place not far from
Salisbury, to which Colonel Philips conducted him.
In this journey he passed through the middle of a
regiment of horse, and, presently after, met Des-
borough walking down a hill with three or four men
with him, who had lodged in Salisbury the night be-
fore, all that road being full of soldiers.
The next day, upon the plains, Dr Hinchman, one
of the prebends of Salisbury, met the king, the Lord
Wilmot and Philips then leaving 1 im to go to the
sea-coast to find a vessel, the doctoi conducting the
king to a place called Heale, three n: iles from Salis-
bury, belonging then to Serjeant Hyde , who was after-
wards Chief Justice of the King's Ben .'h, and then in
the possession of the widow of his elder brother — a
house that stood alone from neighbours, and from any
highwa}' — where coming in late in the evening, he
supped with some gentlemen who accidentally were
in the house, which could not well be avoided. But
the next morning he went early from thence, as if he
had continued his journey ; and the widow, being
trusted with the knowledge of her guest, sent her ser-
vants out of the way, and at an hour appointed re-
ceived him again, and accommodated him in a little
room, which had been made since the beginning of the
troubles for the concealment of delinquents, the seat
always belonging to a malignant family.
Here he lay concealed, without the knowledge of
some gentlemen who lived in the house, and of others
who daily resorted thither, for many days ; the widow
herself only attending him ^vith such things as were
necessary, and bringing him such letters as the doctor
received from the Lord Wilmot and Colonel Philips.
A vessel being at last provided upon the coast of Sussex,
and notice thereof sent to Dr Hinchman, he sent to
the king to meet him at Stonehenge, upon the plains,
three miles from Heale, whither the widow took care
to direct him ; and being there met, he attended him
to the place where Colonel Philips received him. He,
the next day, delivered him to the Lord Wilmot, who
went with him to a house in Sussex recommended by
Colonel Gunter, a gentleman of that country, who had
served the king in the war, who met him there, and
had provided a little bark at Brighthelrastone, a
small fisher town, where he went early on board, and,
by God's blessing, arrived safely in Normandy.
[Character of Oliver Cromwell.']
He was one of those men, quos vituperare ne inimici
quidem 'possunt, nisi vt simul lavAent; whom his very
enemies could not condemn without commending hiiu
at the same time ; for he could never have done half
that mischief without great parts of courage, industry,
and judgment. He must have had a wonderful un-
derstanding in the natures and humours of men, and
as great a dexterity in applying them ; who, from a
private and obscure birth (though of a good family),
without interest or estate, alliance or friendship, could
raise himself to such a height, and compound and
knead such opposite and contradictory tempers, hu-
mours, and interests into a consistence, that contri-
buted to his designs, and to their own destruction ;
whilst himself grew insensibly powerful enough to cut
off those by whom he had climbed, in the instant that
they projected to demolish their own building. What
was said of Cinna may very justly be said of him,
aumm eum, qxue nemo auderet bonus; perfedsm, qiUB a
nulla, nisi fortissimo, perfici poisent — [' he attempted
those things which no good man durst have ventured
on, and achieved those in which none but a valiant
andgreat man could have succeeded.'] Without doubt,
uo man with more wickedness ever attempted any-
thing, or brought to pass what he desired more
wickedly, more in the face and contempt of religion
and moral honesty. Yet wickedness as great as his
could never have accomplished those designs without
the assistance of a great spirit, an admirable circum-
spection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous reso-
lution.
When he appeared first in the parliament, he seemed
to have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament
of discourse, none of those talents which use to con-
ciliate the affections of the stander-by. Yet as he
grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be
raised, as if ha had had concealed faculties, till he
had occasion to use them ; aTid when he was to act
the part of a great man, he did it without any inde-
cency, notwithstanding the want of custom.
After he was confirmed and invested Protector by
the humble petition and advice, he consulted with
very few upon any action of importance, nor comnm-
nicated any enterprise he resolved upon with more
than those who were to have principal parts in the
execution of it ; nor with them sooner than was abso-
lutely necessary. What he once resolved, in which
he was not rash, he would not be dissuaded from, nor
endure any contradiction of his power and authority,
but extorted obedience from them who were not will-
ing to yield it. * *
Thus he subdued a spirit that had been often
troublesome to the most sovereign power, and made
Westminster Hall as obedient and subservient to his
commands as any of the rest of his quarters. In all
other matters, which did not concern the life of his
jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for
the law, rarely interposing between part}' and party.
As he proceeded with this kind of indignation and
haughtiness with those who were refractoiy, and durst
contend with his greatness, so towards all who com-
plied with his good pleasure, and courted his protec-
tion, he used great civility, generosity, and bounty.
To reduce three nations, which perfectly hated him,
to an entire obedience to all his dictates ; to avre and
govern those nations by an army that was indevoted
to him, and wished his ruin, was an instance of a very
prodigious address. But his greatness at home was
but a shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was
hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain,
or the Low Countries, where his friendship was cut-
rent at the value he put upon it. As thej did all
sacrifice their honour and their interest to his plea-
sure, so there is nothing he could have demanded that
either of them would have denied him. * *
To conclude his character : Cromwell was not so
far a man of blood as to follow ilachiavel's method ;
which prescribes, upon a total alteration of govern-
ment, as a thing absolutely necessary, to cut off all
the heads of those, and extirj)ate their families, who
are friends to the old one. It was confidently re-
ported, that in the council of officers it was more than
once proposed, ' that there might be a general mas-
sacre of all the royal party, as the only expedient to
secure the government,' but that Cromwell would
never consent to it ; it may be, out of too great a con-
tempt of his enemies. In a word, as he was guiltv of
many crimes against which damnation is denounced,
and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had s,>nie
good qualities which have caused the memory of some
men in all ages to be celebrated ; and he will be
looked upon by posterity as a brave wicked man.
BDLSTRODE "WHITELOCKE.
BuLSTRODE Whitelocke (1605-1676), an eminent
lawj-er, who wrote Memorials of Etnjlish Affairs fron:
the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to tin.
Restoration, was of principles opposite to those of
Lord Clarendon, though, like Selden and other mode-
rate anti-royalists, he was averse to a civil var.
Whitelocke was the legal adviser of Hampden during
the prosecution of that celebrated patriot for refusing
48^
FKOM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
to pay ship-money. As a member of parliament, and
one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the
kirg at Oxford, he advocated pacific measures; and,
being an enemy to arbitrary power botli in church
and state, he refused, in tlie Westminster assembly
for settling the form of churcli government, to ad-
mit the assumed divine right of presbytery. Under
Cromwell he held several high appointments ; and
during the governmentof the Protector's son Kich.ard,
acted as one of the keepers of tlie great seal. At the
Restoration, he retired to his estate in Wiltshire,
Avhich continued to be his principal residence till his
death in 1676. Whitelocke's ' IMemorials' not hav-
ing been intenled for publication, are almost wholly
written in the form of a diary, and are to be regarded
rather as a collection of historical materials than as
history itself. In a posthumous volume of Essays,
Ecclesiastical and Civil, he strongly advocates reli-
gious toleration.
GILBERT BURNET.
Gilbert Burnet was the son of a Scottisli ad-
vocate of reputation, and nephew to Johnston of
Gilbert Burnet.
Warriston, one of the principal popular leaders
of the civil war in Scotland. He was born at
Edinburgh in 1643, and after entering life as a
clergyman of liis native cliurch, and holding for
some years the divinity professorship at Glasgow,
he removed to a benefice in London, where, partly
by his talents, and partly through forward and offi-
cious habits, he rendered liimself the confidant of
many high political persons. In 1679 he greatly
increased his reputation by publishing the first
volume of a Iliston/ of the Reformatiun in Enyland.
The appearance of this work at the time when the
Popish I'lot was engaging public attention, pro-
cured to the author the thanks of both houses of
parliament, with a request that he would complete
the history. This he did by ])ublisliing two addi-
tional volumes in 1681 and 1714; and the work is
considered the best existing account of the important
occurrences of which it treats. The conduct of
Charles II. towards the conclusion of his reign was
highly offensive to Burnet, who firmed an intimate
connexion witli the opjjosition party, and even wrote
a letter to the king, freely censuring l)oth his pnblic
acts and private vices. Both in this and the suc-
ceeding reign, his o])inions brouglit him into dis-
p'easure w ith the court. Having, therefore, retired to
the continent, he became serviceable in Holland to
the Prince of Orange, accompanied the expedition
which brought about the Revolution, and was re-
warded witli the bishopric of Salisbury. Both as a
prelate and a literary man, he s])ent the remainder
of his life with usefulness and activitj', till its ter-
mination in 1715. Burnet left in manuscript his
celebrated History of My Own Times, giving an out-
line of the events of the civil war and common-
wealth, and a full narration of what took place from
the Restoration to the j^ear 1713, during which
period the author advanced from his seventeenth to
his seventieth year. As he had, under various cir-
cumstances, personally known the conspicuous cha-
racters of a whole century, and penetrated most of
tlie state secrets of a period nearly as long, he has
been able to exhibit all these in his work with a
felicity not inferior to Clarendon's, though allowance
is also required to be made in his case for political
prejudices. Foreseeing that the freedom with which
he delivered his opinions concerning men of all ranks
and parties would give ofltnce in many quarters,
Bishop Burnet ordered, in his will, that his liistorj
should not be published till six years after his death;
so that it did not make its appearance till 1723.* Its
publication, as might have been expected, was a
signal for the commencement of numerous attacics
on the reputation of the author, whose veracity and
fairness were loudly impeached. It fell under the
lash of the Tory wits — Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot;
by the last of wliom it was ridiculed in a humorous
production, entitled Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this
Parish. In the opinion of a more impartial posterity,
however. Bishop Burnet's honest freedom of sjieech,
his intrepid exposure of injustice and corruption, in
what rank soever he found it to exist, and the live-
liness and general accuracy with which the events
and characters of his age are described, are far more
than sufficient to counterbalance his garrulous vanity
and self-importance, and a singular tendenc}^ to view
persons and occurrences with the spirit and credu-
lity of a partisan. There is no good reason to sup-
pose that he willingly distorts the truth ; though,
in his preface, he makes the following admission that
some things may have been over-coloured. ' I find
that the long experience I have had of the baseness,
the malice, and the falsehood of mankind, has in-
clined me to be apt to think generally the worst
both of men and parties ; and, indeed, the peevish-
ness, the ill-nature, and the ambition of many clergy-
men, has sharpened my spirits too much against
them : so I warn my reader to take all that I say on
these heads with some grains of allowance, though 1
have watched over myself and my pen so carefully,
that I hope there is no great occasion for this
apology. I have written,' says lie, ' with a design to
make both myself and my readers wiser and Vietter,
and to lay open the good and bad of all sides and
parties as clearly and impartially as I myself under-
stood it ; concealing nothing that I thought fit to be
known, and representing things in their natural
colours, without art or disguise, without any regard
to kindred or friends, to parties or interests : for I
do solemnly say this to the world, and make my
liumble appeal upon it to the great God of truth,
that I tell the truth on all occasions, as fully and
freely as upon my best inquiry I have been able to
find it out. AVhere things appear doubtful, I deliver •►
them with the same uncertainty to the world.' Dr
King of Oxford says in his ' Anecdotes of His Own
Times,' ' I knew Burnet, bishop of Salisbury ; he was
* Btirnet's sons, by whom it was published, took the liberty
of suppressing many passages, which were restored in the
Oxford edition of 1«23.
486
ROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GILBERT BURNET.
a furious party-man, and easily imposed on by any
lying spirit of his own faction ; but he was a better
pastor tlian any man wlio is now stated on the
bishops' bench. Although he left a large family
when he died, three sons and two daughters (if 1
rightly remember), yet he left them nothing more
than their mother's fortune. He always declared,
that he sliould think himself guilty of the greatest
crime if he were to raise fortunes for his children out
of the revenue of liis bishopric.'*
The principal works of Bishop Burnet, in addition
to tliose already mentioned, are Memoirs of the Dukes
of Hamilton (1676) ; An Account of the Life and Death
of the Earl of Bochcstcr (1680), whom lie attended on
his penitent death-bed ; Tlie Lives of Sir Matthew
Hale and Bishop Bedell (1682 and 1685) ; a transla-
tion of Sir Thomas Jlore's ' Utopia ;' f and various
theological treatises, among whicli is an Exposition
of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.
His style, though too unpolished to place him in the
foremost rank of historical writers, is spirited and
vigorous ; while his works afford sufficient evidence
that to various and extensive knowledge he added
great acuteness in the discrimination of human cha-
racter. As he composed with great ease and rapidity,
and avoided long and intricate sentences, his pages
are mucli more I'eadable than those of Clarendon.
IDcalh and Character of Edward VI.']
[Prom the ' History of the Reformation.']
In the beginning of January this year [1553], he
was seized with a deep cough, and all medicines that
were used did rather increase than lessen it. He was
.so ill when the parliament met, that he was not able
to go to Westminster, but ordered their first meeting
and the sermon to be at Whitehall. In the time of
his sickness, Bishop Ridley preached before him, and
took occasion to run out much on works of charity,
and the obligation that lay on men of high condition
to be eminent in good works. This touched the king
to the quick ; so that, presently after the sermon, he
sent for the bishop. And, after he had commanded
him to sit down by him, and be covered, he resumed
most of the heads of the sermon, and said he looked
upon himself as chiefly touched by it. He desired
him, as he had already given him the exhortation in
general, so to direct him to do his duty in that parti-
cular. The bishop, astonished at this tenderness in
so young a prince,^: burst forth in tears, expressing
how much he was overjoyed to see such inclinations
in him ; but told him he must take time to think on
it, and craved leave to consult with the lord-mayor
and court of aldermen. So the king writ by him to
them to consult speedily how the poor should be re-
lieved. They considered there were three sorts of
* King's ' Anecdotes,' p. 185. Sir James Mackintosh (Edin-
burgh Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 15) characterises Burnet as ' a
zealous and avowed partisan, but an honest writer, whose
account of facts is seldom substantially erroneous, tliougli it be
often inaccurate in points of form and detail.' Dr Jolinson's
opinion is thus recorded by Boswell : — ' Burnet's History of His
Own Times is very entertaining : tlie style, indeed, is mere
chit-chat. I do not believe that Burnet intentionally lied ; but
he was so much prejudiced, th.at he took no pains to find out the
truth. He was like a man who resolves to regulate his time by
a certain watch, but will not inquire whetlier the watch is
right or not.' Horace Walpole says—' Burnet's style and manner
are very interesting ; it seems as if he liad just come from the
king's closet, or from the apartments of tho men whom he
describes, and was telling his reader, in plain honest terms,
what he had seen and heard.'
t An extract from this will be found at p. 60 of the present
volume.
i The king was sixteen years of age.
poor; such as were so by natural infirmity or folly,
as impotent persons, and madmen or idiots ; such as
were so by accident, as sick or maimed persons ; and
such as, by their idleness, did cast themselves into
poverty. So the king ordered the Greyfriars' church,
near Newgate, with the revenues belonging to it, to
he a house for orphans ; St Bartholomew's, near Smith-
field, to bo an hospital ; and gave his own house of
Bridewell to be a place of correction and work for such
as were wilfully idle. He also confinned and enlarged
the grant for the hospital of St Thomas in Southwark,
which he had erected and endowed in August last.
And when he set his hand to these foundations, which
was not done before the 5th of June this year, he
thanked God that had prolonged his life till he had
finished that design. So he was the first founder of
those houses, which, by many great additions since
that time, have risen to be amongst the noblest in
Europe.
He expressed, in the whole course of his sickness,
great submission to the will of God, and seemed glad
at the approaches of death ; only, the consideradon
of religion and the church touched him much ; and
upon that account he said he was desirous of life.
* * His distemper rather increased than abated ;
so that the physicians had no hope of his recovery.
Upon which a confident woman came, and undertook
his cure, if he might be put into her hands. This was
done, and the physicians were put from him, upon
this pretence, that, they having no hopes of his reco-
very, in a desperate case desperate remedies Were to
be applied. This was said to be the Duke of Nor-
thumberland's advice in particular ; and it increased
the people's jealousy of him, when they saw the king
grow sensibly worse every day after he came under
the woman's care ; which becoming so plain, she was
put from him, and the physicians were again sent for,
and took him into their charge. But if they had small
hopes before, they had none at all now. 'Death thus
hastening on him, the Duke of Northumberland, who
had done but half his work, except he had got the
king's sisters in his hands, got the council to write to
them in the king's naine, inviting them to come and
keep him company in his sickness. But as they were
on the way, on the 6th of July, his spirits and body
were so sunk, that he found death approachino- ; and
so he composed himself to die in a most devout man-
ner. His whole exercise was in short prayers and eja-
culations. The last that he was heard to use was in
these words: ' Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable
and ivretched life, and take me among thy chosen ; how-
beit, not my will, but thine be done ; Lord, I connuit
my spirit to thee. Oh Lord, thou knowest how haj)py it
were for me to be with thee ; yet, for thy chosen 's sake,
send me life and health, that I may truly serve thee.
Oh my Lord God, bless my people, and save thine in-
heritance. Oh Lord God, save thy chosen people of
England ; oh Lord God, defend this realm from pa-
pistry, and maintain thy true religion, that I and my
people may praise thy holy name, for Jesus Christ his
sake.' Seeing some about him, he seemed troubled
that they were so near, and had heard him ; but, with
a pleasant countenance, he said he had been praying
to God. And soon after, the pangs of death coming
upon him, he said to Sir Henry Sidney, who was hold-
ing him in his arms, ' I am faint ; Lord have mercy
on me, and receive my spirit ;' and so he breathed out
his innocent soul.
Thus died King Edward VI., tliat incomparable
young prince. He was then in the sixteenth year ol
his age, and was counted the wonder of that time.
He was not only learned in the tongues, and other
liberal sciences, but knew well the state of liis king-
dom. He kept a book, in wliich he writ the charac-
ters that were given him of all the chief men of the
nation, all the judges, lord-lieutenants, and justices
487
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
of the peace over England : in it he had marked down
their way of living, and their zeal for religion. He
had studied the matter of the mint, with the exchange
and value of money ; so that he understood it well,
as appears by his journal. He also understood forti-
fication, and designed well. He knew all the har-
bours and ports, both of his own dominions, and of
France and Scotland ; and how much water they had,
and what was the way of coming into them. He had
acquired great knowledge of foreign affairs ; so that
he talked with the ambassadors about them in such a
manner, that they filled all the world with the highest
opinion of him that was possible ; which appears in
most of the histories of that age. He had great quick-
ness of apprehension ; and, being mistrustful of his
memory, used to take notes of almost everything he
heard ; he writ these first in Greek characters, that
those about him might not understand them ; and
afterwards writ them out in his journal. He had a
copy brought him of everything that passed in coun-
cil, which he put in a chest, and kept the key of that
always himself.
In a word, the natural and acquired perfections of
his mind were wonderful ; but his virtues and true
piety were yet more extraordinary. * * [He] was
tender and compassionate in a high measure ; so that
he was much against taking away the lives of here-
tics ; and therefore said to Cranmer, when he per-
suaded him to sign the warrant for the burning of
Joan of Kent, that he was not willing to do it, because
he thought that was to send her quick to hell. He
expressed great tenderness to the miseries of the poor
In his sickness, as hath been already shown. He took
particular care of the suits of all poor persons ; and
gave Dr Cox special charge to see that their petitions
were speedily answered, and used oft to consult with
him how to get their matters set forward. He was an
exact keeper of his word ; and therefore, as appears
by his journal, was most careful to pay his debts, and
to keep his credit, knowing that to be the chief nerve
of government; since a prince that breaks his faith,
and loses his credit, has thrown up that which he can
never recover, and made himself liable to perpetual
distrusts and extreme contempt.
He had, above all things, a great regard to religion.
He took notes of such things as he heard in sermons,
which more especially concerned himself ; and made
his measures of all men by their zeal in that matter.
* * All men who saw and observed these qualities
in him, looked on him as one raised by God for most
extraordinary ends ; and when he died, concluded
that the sins of England had been great, that had
provoked God to take from them a prince, under
whose government they were like to have seen such
blessed times. He was so afl^able and sweet-natured,
that all had free access to him at all times ; by which
he came to be most universally beloved ; and all the
high things that could be devised were said by the
people to express their esteem of him.
[Character of Leighton, Bishop of Dumhlane — ffis
Death.']
[From the ' History of My Own Times.']
He was the son of Dr Leighton, who had in Arch-
bishop Laud's time writ ' Zion's Plea against the
Prelates,* for which he was condemned in the Star-
Chamber to have his ears cut and his nose slit. He
was a man of a violent and ungovemed heat. He
sent his eldest son Robert to be bred in Scotland, who
was accounted a saint from his youth up. He had
great quickness of parts, a lively apprehension, with
a charming vivacity of thought and expression. He
had the greatest command of the purest Latin that
ever I knew in any man. He was a master both of
Greek and Hebrew, and of the whole compass of theo-
logical learning, chiefly in the study of the Scriptures.
But that which excelled all the rest was, he was pos-
sessed with the highest and noblest sense of divine
things that I ever saw in any man. He had no re-
gard to his person, unless it was to mortify it by a
constant low diet, that was like a perpetual fast. He
had a contempt both of wealth and reputation. He
seemed to have the lowest thoughts of himself possible,
and to desire that all other persons should think as
meanly of him as he did himself. He bore all sorts
of ill usage and reproach like a man that took plea-
sure in it. He had so subdued the natural heat of
his temper, that in a great variety of accidents, and
in a course of twenty-two years' intimate conversation
with him, I never observed the least sign of passion
but upon one single occasion. He brought himself
Into so composed a gravity, that I never saw him
laugh, and but seldom smile. And he kept himself
in such a constant recollection, that I do not remem-
ber that ever I heard him say one idle word. There
was a visible tendency in all he said to raise his o^^-n
mind, and those he conversed with, to serious reflec-
tions. He seemed to be in a perpetual meditation.
And though the whole course of his life was strict and
ascetical, yet he had nothing of the sourness of tem-
per that generally possesses men of that sort. He was
the freest from superstition, of censuring others, or of
imposing his own methods on them, possible ; so that
he did not so much as recommend them to others.
He said there was a diversity of tempers, and every man
was to watch over his own, and to turn It In the best
manner he could. His thoughts were lively, oft out of
the way, and surprising, yet just and genuine. And he
had laid together in his memory the greatest treasure
of the best and wisest of all the ancient sayings of the
heathens as well as Christians, that I have ever known
any man master of; and he used them in the aptest
manner possible. He had been bred up with the
greatest aversion imaginable to the whole frame of the
church of England. From Scotland, his father sent
him to travel. He spent some years in France, and
spoke that language like one bom there. He came
afterwards and settled in Scotland, and had Presby-
terian ordination ; but he quickly broke through the
prejudices of his education. His preaching had a
sublimity both of thought and expression in it. The
grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that
few heard him without a very sensible emotion : I am
sure I never did. His style was rather too fine ; buu
there was a majesty and beauty in it that left so deep
an impression, that I cannot yet forget the sermons I
heard him preach thirty years ago. And yet with
this he seemed to look on himself as so ordinary a
preacher, that while he had a cure, he was ready to
employ all others. And when he was a bishop, he chose
to preach to small auditories, and would never give
notice beforehand : ho had. Indeed, a very low voice,
and so could not be heard by a great crowd. * *
Upon his coming to me [in London], I was amazed
to see him, at above seventy, look still so fresh and
well, that age seemed as if it were to stand still with
him. His hair was still black, and all his motions
were lively. He had the same quickness of thought,
and strength of memorj', but, above all, the same heat
and life of devotion, that I had ever seen in him.
When I took notice to him upon my first seeing him
how well he looked, he told me he was very near his
end for all that, and his work and journey both were
now almost done. This at that time made no great
impression on me. He was the next day taken with
an oppression, and as it seemed with a cold and with
stitches, which was indeed a pleurisy.
The next day Leighton sunk so, that both speech
and sense went away of a sudden. And he continued
panting about twelve hours, and then died without
pangs or convulsions. I was by him all the while.
188
PB08E WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GILBERT BURITRT.
Thus I lost him who had been for so many 3-ears the
chief guide of my whole life. He had lived ten j'ears
in Sussex, in great privacy, dividing his time wholly
between study and retirement, and the doing of good ;
for in the parish where he lived, and in the parishes
round about, he was always employed in preaching,
and in reading prayers. He distributed all he had
in charities, choosing rather to have it go through
other people's hands than his own ; for I was his
almoner in London. He had gathered a well-chosen
library of curious as well as useful books, which he
left to the diocese of Dumblane for the use of the
clergy there, that country being ill provided with
books. He lamented oft to me the stupidity that he
observed among the commons of England, who seemed
to be much more insensible in the matters of religion
than the commons of Scotland were. He retained
still a peculiar inclination to Scotland ; and if he
had seen any prospect of doing good there, he would
have gone and lived and died among them. In the
short time that the affairs of Scotland were in the
Duke of Monmouth's hands, that duke had been pos-
sessed with such an opinion of him, that he moved
the king to write to him, to go and at least live in
Scotland, if he would not engage in a bishopric there.
But thai fell with that duke's credit. He was in his
last j'ears turned to a greater severity against popery
than I had imagined a man of his temper and of his
largeness in point of opinion was capable of. He
spoke of thi^ corruptions, of the secular spirit, -and of
the cruelty that appeared in that church, with an
extraordinary concern ; and lamented the shameful
advances that we seemed to be making towards popery.
He did this w» ,h a tenderness and an edge that I did
not expect from so recluse and mortified a man. He
looked on the state the church of England was in
with very melancholy reflections, and was very uneasy
at an expression then much used, that it was the best
constituted church in the world. He thought it was
truly so with relation to the doctrine, the worship,
and the main part of our government ; but as to the
administration, both with relation to the ecclesiasti-
cal courts and the pastoral care, he looked on it as
one of the most corrupt he had ever seen. He thought
we looked like a fair carcass of a body without a
spirit, without that zeal, that strictness of life, and
that laboriousness in the clergy, that became us.
There were two remarkable circumstances in his
death. He used often to say, that if he were to choose
a place to die in, it should be an inn ; it looking like
a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all
as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and con-
fusion in it. He added, that the officious tenderness
and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying
man ; and that the unconcerned attendance of those
that could be procured in such a place would give
less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired,
for he died at the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane. Another
circumstance was, that while he was bishop in Scot-
land, he took what his tenants were pleased to pay
him. So that there was a great arrear due, which was
raised slowly by one whom he left in trust with his
affairs there. And the last payment that he could
I expect from thence was returned up to him about six
weeks before his death. So that his provision and
journey failed both at once.
[Character of Charles II.}
[From the same.]
Thus lived and died King Charles II. He was the
greatest instance in history of the various revolutions
of which any one man seemed capable. He was bred
up the first twelve years of his life with the splendour
that became the heir of so great a crown. After that,
he passed th^'ough eighteen years of great inequali-
ties ; unhappy in the war, in the loss of his father,
and of the crown of England. Scotland did not only
receive him, though upon terras hard of digestion, but
made an attemjjt ujion England for him, though a
feeble one. He lost the battle of Worcester with too
much indifference. And then he showed more care
of his person than became one who had so much at
stake. He wandered about England for ten weeks
after that, hiding from place to place. But, under
all the apprehensions he had then upon him, he showed
a temper so careless, and so much turned to levity,
that he was then diverting himself with little house-
hold sports, in as unconcerned a manner as if he had
made no loss, and had been in no danger at all. He
got at last out of England. But he had been obliged
to so many who had been faithful to him, and cai-eful
of him, that he seemed afterwards to resolve to make
an equal return to them all ; and finding it not easy
to reward them all as they deserved, he forgot tli:im
all alike. Most princes seem to have this prettv deep
in them, and to think tliat they ought never to re-
member past services, but that their acceptance of
them is a full reward. lie, of all in our age, exerted
this piece of prerogative in the amplest manner ; for
he never seemed to charge his memory, or to trouble
his thoughts, with the sense of any of the services that
had been done him. While he was abroad at Paris,
Colen,' or Brussels, he never seemed to lay anything
to heart. He pursued all his diversions and irregular
pleasures in a free career, and seemed to be as serene
under the loss of a crown as the greatest philosopher
could have been. Nor did he willingly hearken to
any of those projects with which he often complained
that his chancellor persecuted him. That in which
he seemed most concerned was, to find money for sup-
porting his expense. And it was often said, that if
Cromwell would have compounded the matter, and
have given him a good round pension, that he might
have been induced to resign his title to him. During
his exile, he delivered himself so entirely to his plea-
sures, that he became incapable of application. He
spent little of his time in reading or study, and yet
less in thinking. And in the state his affairs were
then in, he accustomed himself to say to every person,
and upon all occasions, that which he thought would
please most ; so that words or promises went very
easily from hiin. And he had so ill an opinion of
mankind, tliat he thought the great art of living and
governing was, to manage all things and all persons
with a dej)th of craft and dissimulation. And in that
few men in the world could put on the appearances
of sincerity better than he could ; under which so
much artifice was usually hid, that in conclusion he
could deceive none, for all were become mistrustful
of him. He had great vices, but scarce any virtues
to correct them. He had in him some vices tliat were
less hurtful, which corrected his more hurtful ones.
He was, during the active part of life, given up to
sloth and lewdness to such a degree, that he hated
business, and could not bear the engaging in anything
that gave him much trouble, or put him under any
constraint. And though he desired to become abso-
lute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws,
yet he would neither run the risk, nor give himself
the trouble, which so great a design required. He
had an appearance of gentleness in his outward de-
portment ; but he seemed to have no bowels nor
tenderness in his nature, and in the end of his life
he became cruel. He was ai)t to forgive all crimes,
even blood itself, yet he never forgave anything that
was done against himself, after his first and general
act of indemnity, which was to be reckoned as done
rather upon maxims of state than inclinations of
1 Coloene.
i&i
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
mercy. He dellvereJ himself up to a most enormous
course of vice, without any sort of restraint, even from
the consideration of the nearest relations. The most
studied extrav.agances that way seemed, to the very
last, to be much delighted in and pursued by him.
He had the art of making all people grow fond of him
at first, by a softness in his whole way of conversation,
as he was certainl}' the best-bred man of the age.
But when it appeared how little could be built on
his promise, they were cured of the fondness that he
■was apt to raise in them. When he saw young men
of quality, who had something more than ordinary in
them, he drew them about him, and set himself to
corrupt them both in religion and morality ; in which
he proved so unhappily successful, that he left Eng-
land much changed at his death from what he had
found it at his restoration. He loved to talk over all
the stories of his life to every new man that came
about him. His stay in Scotland, and the share he
had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from
the one side to the other, were his common topics.
He went over these in a very graceful manner, but
so often and so copiously, that all those who had been
long accustomed to them grew weary of them ; and
when he entered on those stories, they usually with-
drew. So that he often began them in a full audience,
and before he had done, there were not above four or
five persons left about him, which drew a severe jest
from Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He said he won-
dered to see a man have so good a memory as to re-
peat the same story without losing the least circum-
stance, and yet not remember that he had told it to
the same persons the very day before. This made
him fond of strangers, for they hearkened to all his
often-repeated stories, and went away as in a rapture
at such an uncommon condescension in a king.
His person and temper, his vices as well as his for-
tunes, resemble the character that we have given us
of Tiberius so much, that it were easy to draw the
parallel between them. Tiberius's banishment, and
nls coming afterwards to reign, makes the comparison
in that respect come pretty near. His hating of busi-
ness, and his love of pleasures ; hisraisingof favourites,
and trusting them entirely ; and his pulling them
down, and hating them excessively ; his art of cover-
ing deep designs, particularly of revenge, with an
appearance of softness, brings them so near a likeness,
that I did not wonder much to observe the resem-
blance of their faces and persons. At Rome, I saw
one of the last statues made for Tiberius, after he had
lost his teeth. But, bating the alteration which that
made, it was so like King Charles, that Prince Borg-
hese and Signior Dominico, to whom it belonged,
did agree with me in thinking that it looked like a
statue made for him.
Few things ever went near his heart. The Duke of
Gloucester's death seemed to touch him much. But
those who knew him best, thought it was because he
had lost him by whom only he could have balanced
the surviving brother, whom he hated, and yet em-
broiled all his affairs to preserve the succession to
him.
His ill conduct in the first Dutch war, and those
terrible calamities of the plague and fire of London,
with that loss and reproach which he suffered by the
insult at Chatham, made all people conclude there
was a curse upon his government. His throwing the
public hatred at that time upon Lord Clarendon was
both unjust and ungrateful. And when his people
had brought him out of all his difficulties upon his
entering into the triple alliance, his selling tliat to
France, and his entering on the second Dutch war
with as little colour as he had for the first ; his
beginning it with the attempt or the Dutch Smyrna
fleet, the shutting up the exchequer, and his declara-
(ioi. for toleration, which was a step for the introduc-
tion of popery, make such a chain of black actions,
flowing from blacker designs, that it amazed those
who had known all this to see with what impudent
strains of flattery addresses were penned during his
life, and yet more grossly after his death. His con-
tributing so much to the raising the greatness of
France, chiefly at sea, was such an error, that it could
not flow from want of thought, or of true sense.
Ruvigny told me he desired that all the metliods the
French took in the increase and conduct of their naval
force might be sent him ; and he said he seemed to
study them with concern and zeal. He showed what
errors they committed, and how they ought to be cor-
rected, as if he had been a viceroy to France, rather
than a king that ought to have watched over and
prevented the progress they made, as the greatest of
all the mischiefs that could happen to him or to his
people. They that judged the most favourably of
this, thought it was done out of revenge to the Dutch,
that, with the assistance of so great a fleet as France
could join to his own, he might be able to destroy
them. But others put a worse construction on it ;
and thought, that seeing he could not quite n\aster
or deceive his subjects by his own strength and ma-
nagement, he was willing to help forward the great-
ness of the French at sea, that by their assistance he
might more certainly subdue his own people ; accord-
ing to what was generally believed to have fallen from
Lord Clifford, that if the king must be in a depend-
ence, it was better to pay it to a great and generous
king, than to five hundred of his own insolent sub-
jects.
No part of his character looked wickeder, as avcU
as meaner, than that he, all the while that he was
professing to be of the church of England, ex])ressing
both zeal and affection to it, was yet secretly recon-
ciled to the church of Rome ; thus mocking God, and
deceiving the world with so gross a prevarication.
And his not having the honesty or courage to own it
at the last ; his not showing any sign of the least re-
morse for his ill-led life, or any tenderness either for
his subjects in general, or for the queen and his ser-
vants ; and his recommending only his mistresses and
their children to his brother's care, would have been
a strange conclusion to any other's life, but was well
enough suited to all the other parts of his.
[The C~ar Pder in England in 1C98.]
[From the same.]
I mentioned, in the relation of the former year, the
Czar's coming out of his own country, on which I mil
now enlarge. He came this winter over to England,
and stayed some months among us. I waited often
on him, and was ordered, both by the king and the
archbishop and bishops, to attend upon him, and to
offer him such informations of our religion and con-
stitution as he was willing to receive. I had good in-
terpreters, so I had much free discourse with him.
He is a man of a very hot temper, soon inflamed, and
very brutal in his passion. He raises his natural heat
by drinking much brandy, which he rectifies himself
with great application ; he is subject to convulsive
motions all over his body, and his head seems to be
affected with these ; he wants not capacity, and has a
larger measure of knowledge than might be expected
from his education, which was very indifferent ; a want
of judgment, with an instability of temper, appear
in him too often and too evidently ; he is mechani-
cally turned, and seems designed % nature rather to
be a ship-carpenter than a great prince. This was his
chief study and exercise while he stayed litre ; he
wrought much with his own hands, and made all
about him work at the models of ships. He told me
he designed a great fleet at Azuph, and witli it to
attack the Turkish empire : but he did not seem cap-
4yo
PROSE WRITEBS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GILBERT BURNET.
ftble of conducting so great a design, though his con-
duct in his wars since tliis has discovered a greater
genius in him than appeared at that time. lie was
desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not
seem disposed to mend matters in Moacovy. He was,
indeed, resolved to encourage learning, and to polish
his people by sending some of them to travel in other
countries, and to draw strangers to come and live
among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his
sister's intrigues. There was a mixture both of pas-
sion and severity in his temper. He is resolute, but
understands little of war, and seemed not at all in-
quisitive that way. After I had seen him often, and
had conversed much with liim, I could not but adore
the depth of the providence of God, that had raised
up such a furious man to so absolute an authority
over so great a part of the world.
David, considering the great things God had made for
the use of man, broke out into the meditation, ' \Vhat
is man that thou art so mindful of him ?' But here
there is an occasion for reversing these words, since
man seems a very contemptible thing in the sight of
God, while such a person as the Czar has such multi-
tudes put, as it were, under his feet, exposed to his
restless jealousy and savage temper. He went from
hence to the court of Vienna, where he puiposed to
have stayed some time ; but he was called home,
sooner than he had intended, upon a discovery or a
suspicion of intrigues managed by his sister. The
strangers, to whom he trusted most, were so true to
him, that those designs were crushed before he came
back. But on this occasion he let loose his fury on
all whom he suspected. Some hundreds of them
were hanged all round Moscow ; and it was said that
he cut off many heads with his own hand. And so far
was he frooi relenting, or showing any sort of tender-
ness, that he seemed delighted with it. How long
he is to be the scourge of that nation, or of his neigh-
bours, God only knows. So extraordinary an incident
will, I ho' e, justify such a digression.
[Character of William III.}
[From the same.]
Thus Uvea wnd died "William III., King of Great
Britain, and Prince of Orange. He had a thin and
weak body, was bro-vvii-haired, and of a clear and deli-
cate constitution. He had a Roman eagle nose, bright
and sparkling eyes, a large front, and a countenance
composed to gravity and authority. All his senses
were critical and exquisite. He was always asthma-
tical ; and the dregs of the small-pox falling on his
lungs, he had a constant deep cough. His behaviour
was solemn and serious, seldom cheerful, and but with
a few. He spoke little and very slowly, and most
commonly with a disgusting dryness, which was his
character at all times, except in a day of battle ; for
then he was all fire, though without passion ; he was
then everywhere, and looked to everything. He had no
great advantage from his education. De Witt's dis-
courses were of great use to him ; and he, being appre-
hensive of the observation of those who were looking
narrowly into everything he said or did, had brought
himself under a habitual caution, that he could never
shake off ; though in another scene it proved as hurt-
ful as it was then necessary to his affairs. He spoke
Dutch, French, English, and German equally well ;
and he understood the Latin, Spanish, and Italian,
so that he was well fitted to command armies com-
posed of several nations. He had a memory that
amazed all about him, for it never failed him. He
was an exact observer of men and things. His strength
lay rather in a true discerning and a sound judgment,
than in imagination or invention. His designs were
always great and good. But it was thought he trusted
too much to that, and that he did not desce.il enough
to the humours of his people, to make himself and
his notions more acceptable to tliem. This, in a
government that has so much of freedom in it as
ours, was more necessary than he was inclined to be-
lieve. His reservedness grew on him, so that it dis-
gusted most of those who served him ; but he had
observed the errors of too much talking, more than
those of too cold a silence. He did not like contra-
diction, nor to have his actions censured ; but he loved
to employ and favour those who had the arts of com-
placence, yet he did not love flatterers. His genius
lay chiefly to war, in which his courage was more
admired than his conduct. Great errors were often
committed by hir^ ; but his heroical courage set things
right, as it inflamed those who were about him. He
was too lavish of money on some occasions, both in
his buildings and to his favourites, but too sparing
in rewarding services, or in encouraging those who
brought intelligence. He was apt to take ill im-
pressions of people, and these stuck long with him ;
but he never carried them to indecent revenges. He
gave too much way to his own humour, almost in every-
thing, not excepting that which related to his own
health. He knew all foreign affairs well, and under-
stood the state of everj' court in P^urope very particu-
larly. He instructed his own ministers himself, but he
did not apply enough to affairs at home. He tried how
he could govern us, by balancing the two parties one
against another ; but he came at last to be persuaded
that the Tories were irreconcilable to him, and he
was resolved to try and trust them no more. He be-
lieved the truth of the Christian religior very firmly,
and he expressed a horror at atheism an( blasphemy ;
and though there was much of both in his court, yet
it was always denied to Mm, and kept out of sight.
He was most exemplarily decent and devout in the
public exercises of the worship of God ; only on
week-days he came too seldom to then. He was
an attentive hearer of sermons, and was (.-onstant in
his private prayers, and in reading the rjcriptures ;
and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did
not often, it was with a becoming gravity. He was
much possessed with the belief of absolute decrees.
He said to me he adhered to these, because he did
not see how the belief of Providence could be main-
tained upon any other supposition. His indiflerence
as to the forms of church-government, and his being
zealous for toleration, together with his cold behaviour
towards the clergy, gave them generally very ili im-
pressions of him. In his deportment towards all about
him, he seemed to make little distinction between
the good and the bad, and those who sirved well, or
those who served him ill. He loved the Dutch, and
was much beloved among them ; but the ill returns
he met from the English nation, their jealousies of
him, and their perverseness towards him, had too
much soured his mind, and had in a great measure
alienated him from them ; which he did not take care
enough to conceal, though he saw the ill effects this
had upon his business. He grew, in his last years,
too remiss and careless as to all affairs, till the
treacheries of France awakened him, and the dread-
ful conjunction of the monarchies gave so loud an
alarm to all Europe ; for a watching over that court,
and a bestimng himself against their practices, was
the prevailing passion of his whole life. Few men
had the art of concealing and governing passion more
than he had ; yet few men had stronger passions,
which were seldom felt but by inferior servants, to
whom he usually made such recompenses for ar.y
sudden or indecent vents he might give his anger,
that they were glad at every time that it broke upon
them. He was too easy to the faults of those about
him, when they did not lie in his ovm way, or cross
any of his designs ; and he was so apt to think that
his ministers might grow insolent, if they should find
491
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1 68;)
that thev li;id much credit with him, that he seemed
to hare 'made it a maxim to let them often feel how-
little power they had even in small matters. His
favourites had a more entire power, but he accustomed
the-n only to inform him of things, but to be sparing
in tfferiu"'- advice, except when it was asked. It was
not easy to account for the reasons of the favour that
he showed, in the highest instances, to two persons
beyond all others, the Earls of Portland and Albe-
marle, they being in all respects men not only of
different, but of opposite characters. Secrecy and
fidelity were the only qualities in which it could be
said that they did in any sort agree. I have now run
through the chief branches of his character. I had
occasion to know him well, having observed him very
carefully in a course of sixteen years. I had a large
measure of his favour, and a free access to him all the
while, though not at all times to the same degree.
The freedom that I used with him was not always
acceptable ; but he saw that I served him faithfully ;
so, after some intervals of coldness, he always returned
to a good measure of confidence in me. I was, in
many great instances, much obliged by him ; but that
was not my chief bias to him ; I considered him as a
person raised up by God to resist the power of France,
and the progress of tyranny and persecution. The
series of the five Princes of Orange that was now ended
in him, was the noblest succession of heroes that we
find in any history. And the thirty years, from the
year 1C72 to his death, in which he acted so great a
part, carry in them so many amazing steps of a glo-
rious and distinguishing Providence, that, in the words
of David, he may be called ' The man of God's right
hand, whom he made strong for himself.' After all
the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and
faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest
princes that our history, or indeed that any other,
can afl^ord. He died in a critical time for his own
glory, since he had formed a great alliance, and had
projected the whole scheme of the war ; so that if it
succeeds, a gi-eat part of the honour of it will be as-
cribed to him ; and if otherwise, it will be said he
was the soul of the alliance, that did both animate
and knit it together, and that it was natural for that
body to die and fall asunder, when he who gave it
life was withdra^vn. Upon his death, some moved
for a magnificent funeral ; but it seemed not decent
to run into unnecessary expense, when we were enter-
ing on a war that must be maintained at a vast charge.
So a private funeral was resolved on. But for the
honour of his memory, a noble monument and an
equestrian statue were ordered. Some years must
show whether these things were really intended, or if
they were only spoke of to excuse the privacy of his
funeral, which was scarce decent, so far was it from
being magnificent.
JOHN DRYDEN.
Dryden, who contributed more than any other
English writer to improve the poetical diction of his
native tongue, performed also essential service of
the same kind with respect to the quality of our
prose. Throwing off, still more than Cowley had
lone, those inversions and other forms of Latin
idiom which abound in the pages of his most dis-
tinguished predecessors, Dryden speaks in the lan-
guage of one addressing, in easy j'et dignified con-
versational phraseology, an assemblage of polite and
well-educated men. Strength, ease, copiousness,
variety, and animation, are tiie predominant qualities
of his style; but tlie haste with wliich he composed,
and his inherent dislike to the labour of correction,
are aonietimes betrayed by tlie negligence and rough-
ness of his sentences. On the whole, however, to the
orose of Dryden may be assigned the foremost place
among the specimens which can be furnished of
vigorous and genuine idiomatic English. In addition
to the qualities just enumerated, it possesses those of
equability and freedom from mannerism. Speaking
of this attribute of Dryden's style, Dr Johnson
observes, ' He who writes much, will not easily
escape a manner — such a recurrence of particular
modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always
another and the same ; he does not exhibit a second
time the same elegances in tlie same form, nor
appears to have any art other than tliat of expressing
with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His
style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or
ludicrously; for, being always equable and always
varied, it has no prominent or discriminative charac-
ters. The beauty who is totally free from dispro-
portion of parts and features, cannot be ridiculed by
an overcharged resemblance.'*
Dryden has left no extensive work in prose; the
pieces which he wrote were merely accompaniments
to his poems and plays, and consist of prefaces,
dedications, and critical essays. His dedications are
noted for the fulsome and unprincipled flattery in
which he seems to have thought himself authorised
by his poverty to indulge. The critical essays,
though written with more haste and carelessness
than would now be tolerated in similar produc-
tions, embody many sound and vigorously-expressed
thoughts on subjects connected with polite lite-
rature. Of his prefaces Dr Johnson remarks, ' They
have not the formality of a settled style, in which
the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The
clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled;
every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls
into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid;
the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous ; what is
little is gay; what is great is splendid. He may
be thought to mention himself too frequently ; but
while he forces himself upon our esteem, we can-
not refuse him to stand high in his own. Every-
thing is excused by the play of images and the
sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy.
nothing is feeble ; though all seems careless, there is
nothing harsh ; and though, since his earlier works,
more tlian a century has passed, they have nothing
yet uncouth or obsolete.'
According to the same critic, Dryden's Efsay on
Dramatic Foesy ' was the first regular and valuable
treatise on the art of writing. He who, having
formed his opinions in the present age of English
literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will
not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or
much novelty of instruction ; but he is to remember
that critical principles were then in the hands of a
few, who had gathered them partlj- from the ancients,
and partly from the Italians and French. The
structure of dramatic poems was then not generally
understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and
poets, perhaps, often pleased by chance.
A writer who obtains his full purpose, loses
himself in his own lustre. Of an opinion whicli is no
longer doubted, tJie evidence ceases to be examined.
Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is
forgotten. Learning, once made popular, is no longer
learning; it has the appearance of something wliich
we have bestowed ujion ourselves, as the dew aj)pears
to rise from the field which it refreshes.
To judge rightly of an author, we must transport
ourselves to his time, and examine what were the
wants of his cotemporaries, and what were liis means
of supplying tliem. That which was easy at one
time was difficult at another. Dryden, at least,
imported his science, and gave his country what it
* Johnson' jife of Dryden.
41)2
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRYDEN.
wantc-d before ; or rather he imported only tlie
materials, and manufactured them by his own
skill.
The Dialogue on the Drama was one of his first
essays of criticism, written when he was yet a
timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore
laboured ^rith that diligence, wliich he might allow
himself somewhat to remit, wlien his name gave
sanction to his positions, and his awe of the public
was abated, partly by custom and partly by success.
It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our
language, a treatise so artfully variegated with suc-
cessive representations of opposite probabilities, so
enlivened with imagery, so brightened with illus-
trations. His portraits of the English dramatists
are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The
account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual
model of encomiastic criticism ; being lofty with-
out exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus
on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by
Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines
is exhibited a character so extensive in its compre-
hension, and so curious in its limitations, that
nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed ; nor
can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all
their emulation of reverence, boast of much more
than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome
of excellence — of having changed Dryden's gold for
baser metal, of lower value though of greater bulk.
In this, and in all his other essays on the same
subj< ct, the criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a
poet not a dull collection of theorems, not a rude
detei tion of faults which, perhaps, the censor was not
able to have committed, but a gay and vigorous
dissertation, where delight is mingled with instruc-
tion, and where the author proves his right of judg-
ment by his power of performance.'
' The prose of Dryden,' says Sir Walter Scott,
' may rank with the best in the English language.
It is no less of his own formation than his ver-
sification ; is equally spirited, and equally har-
monious. Without the lengthened and pedantic
sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified when dignity
is becoming, and is lively without the accumulation
of strained and absurd allusions and metaphors,
which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many
of the author's contemporaries.'
It is recorded by Malone, that Dr\-den's miscel-
laneous prost writings were held in high estimation
by Edmund Burke, who carefully studied them on
account equally of their style and matter, and is
thought to have in some degree taken them as the
model of his own diction.
As specimens of Dryden's prose composition, we
here present, in the first place, his characters of
some of the most eminent English dramatists.
[Shakspeare.']
To begin, then, with Shakspeare. lie was the man,
who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had
the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the
images of nature were still present to him, and he
drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he
describes anything, you more than see it — you feel it
too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning,
give him the greater commendation. He was natu-
rally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books
to read nature ; be looked inwards, and found her
there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike ; wore he
so, I should do him injury to compare him with the
greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid ;
his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious
swelling into bombast. But he is always great when
some great occasion is preseuted to him ; no man can
\l=:7:r=.z
say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not
then raise himself as liigh above the rest of poets,
Quantum Icnta solent inter vibuma cupres8i.'
The consideration of this made ]\rr Hales of Eton
say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever
writ, but he would produce it much better done in
Shakspeare ; and however others are now generally
preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived,
which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and
Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem.
And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation
was at highest. Sir John Suckling, and with him the
greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far
above him.
[Beaumont and Fletcher.]
Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to
speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit,
which was their precedent, great natural gifts, im-
proved by study ; Beaumont especially, being so ac-
curate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he
lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and,
'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not
contriving, all his plots. What value he had for him,
appears by the verses he writ to him, and therefore
I need speak no farther of it. The first play that
brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their ' Phi-
laster ;' for before that they had written two or three
very unsuccessfully : as the like is reported of Ben
Jonson, before he writ ' Every Man in his Humour.'
Their plots were generally more regular than Shak-
speare's, especially those which were made before
Beaumont's death ; and they understood and imi-
tated the conversation of gentlemen much better ;
whose wild debauclieries, and quickness of wit in re-
partees, no poet before them could paint as they have
done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from par-
ticular persons, they made it not their business to de-
scribe : they represented all the passions very lively,
but above all, love. I am apt to believe the English
language in them arrived to its highest perfection :
what words have since been taken in, are rather super-
fluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the
most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the
stage ; two of theirs being acted through the year, for
one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's : the reason is, be-
cause there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and
pathos in their more serious plaj'S, which suits gene-
rally with all men's humours. Shakspeare's lan-
guage is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's
wit comes short of theirs.
[Bai Jonson.]
As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived,
if vi-e look upon him while he was himself (for his
L^st plays were but his dotages), 1 think him the most
learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever
had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well
as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather
that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little
to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour
also in some measure, we had before him ; but some-
thing of art was wanting to the drama, till he came.
He managed his strength to more advantage than any
who preceded him. You seldom find him making
love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the
passions ; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to
do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came
after those who had performed both to such a height.
Humour was his proper sphere; and in tha. he de-
lighted most to represent mechanic people. He wag
deeply conversant in the ancients, both. Greek and
' Aa the cypress is above surrounding shrubs.
493
VBOH 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them ; there is
scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors
of thoic times whom he has not translated in ' Sejanus '
and 'Catiline.' But hehas done his robberies so openly,
that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law.
He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would
be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With
the spoils of these wTiters he so represented Rome to
us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one
of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we
had seen less of it than in him. If there was any
fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too
closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially :
perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanise
our tongue, leaving the words which he translated
almost as much Latin as he found them ; wherein,
though he learnedly followed their language, he did
not enough complj' with the idiom of ours. If I wouhl
compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge
him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater
wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our
dramatic poets : Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of
elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shaks-
peare. To conclude of him : as he has given us the
most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has
laid down in his ' Discoveries,' we have as many and
profitable rules for perfecting the stage, as any where-
with the French can furnish us.
{^Improved Style of Dramatic Dialogue after the
Restoration.^
I have always acknowledged the wit of our prede-
cessors witli all the veneration which becomes me ;
but, I am sure, their wit was not that of gentlemen ;
there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred and
clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation
of the authors.
And this leads me to the last and greatest advantage
of our writing, which proceeds from conversation. In
the age wherein those poets' lived, there was less of
gallantry than in ours ; neither did they keep the best
company of theirs. Their fortune has been much like
that of Epicurus in the retirement of his gardens ; to
live almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their
decease. I cannot find that any of them had been
conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson ; and his
genius lay not so much that way, as to make an im-
provement by it. Greatness was not then so easy of
access, nor conversation so free, as it now is. I cannot,
therefore, conceive it any insolence to aflirm, that by
the knowledge and pattern of their wit who writ before
us, and by the advantage of our own conversation, the
discourse .and raillery of our comedies excel what has
been written by them. And this will be denied by
none, but some few old fellows who value themselves
on their acquaintance with the Black Friars ; who,
because they saw their plays, would pretend a right to
judge ours. * *
Now, if they ask me whence it is that our conver-
sation is so much refined, I must freely, and without
flattery, ascribe it to the court ; and in it, particularly
to the king, whose example gives a law to it. His own
misfortunes, and the nation's, aff"orded him an oppor-
tunity which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes,
I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the
most polished courts of Europe ; and thereby of cul-
tivating a spirit which was formed by nature to re-
ceive the impressions of a gallant and generous edu-
cation. At his return, he found a nation lost as much
in barbarism as in rebellion : And, as the excellency
of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his
manners reformed the other. Vhe desire of imitating
JO great a pattern first awakened the dull and heavy
' Shakspeare, Jonson, kc
spirits of the English from their natural reservedness ;
loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation,
and made them easy and pliant to each other in dis-
course. Thus, insensibly, our way of living, _<e»amc
more free ; and the fire of the English wit, which was
before stifled under a constrained melancholy way of
breeding, began first to display its force by mixing
the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of
our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it
would be a wonder if the poets, vrhose work is imita-
tion, should be the only persons in three kingdoms
who should not receive advantage by it ; or if they
should not more easily imitate the wit and conversa-
tion of the present age than of the past.
[Tramlations of the A ncient Poets.'\
Translation is a kind of drawing after the life ;
where every one will acknowledge there is a double
sort of likeness, a good one and a bad. It is one thing
to draw the outlines true, the features like, the pro-
portions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable ;
and another thing to make all these graceful, h r the
posture, the shadowings, and chiefly by the sjiirit
which animates the whole. I cannot, without some
indignation, look on an ill copy of an excellent ori-
ginal : much less can I behold with patience Virgil,
Homer, and some others, whose beauties I have been
endeavouring all my life to imitate, so abused, as I
may say, to their faces by a botching interpreter.
What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or
Latin, will believe me or any other man, when we
commend these authors, and confess we derive all that
is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they tako
those to be the same poets whom our Oglebies have
translated ? But 1 dare assure them, that a good poet
is no more like himself in a dull translation, than his
carcass would be to his living body. There are many
who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are igno-
rant of their mother-tongue. The proprieties and de-
licacies of the English are known to few : it is impos-
sible even for a good wit to understand and practise
them without the help of a liberal education, long
reading, and digesting of those few good authors we
have amongst us ; the knowledge of men and manners,
tlie freedom of habitudes and conversation with the
best company of both sexes ; and, in short, without
wearing off the rust which he contracted while he was
laying in a stock of learning. Thus difiicult it is to un-
derstand the purity of English, and critically to discern
not only good writers from bad, and a proper style from
a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure
in a good author, from that which is vicious and cor-
rupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or
the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young
men take up some cried-up English poet for their
model ; adore him, and imitate him, as they think,
without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is
boyish and trifling, wherein either his thouglits are
improper to his subject, or his expressions unworthy
of his thoughts, or the turn of both is unharmonious.
Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a
nice critic in his mother-tongue before he attempts to
translate in a foreign language. Neither is it suffi-
cient that he be able to judge of words and style, but
he must be a master of them too: he must ])erfcctly
understand his author's tongue, and absolutely com-
mand his own : so that to be a thorough translator,
he must be a thorough poet. Neither is it enough to
give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical
expressions, and in musical numbers ; for, though all
these are exceeding difficult to perform, yet there re-
mains a harder task ; and it is a secret of which few
translators have sufficiently thought. I have already
hinted a word or two concerning it ; that is, the main-
taining the character of an author, which distinguishes
494
PROSE WRITEKS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRYDEN.
him from all others, and makes him appear that in-
dividual poet whom you would interpret. For ex-
ample, not only the thoughts but the style and versi-
fication of Virgil and Ovid are very dilTerent ; yet I
i!ee, even in our best poets, who have translated some
parts of them, that they have confounded their
several talents ; and by endeavouring only at the
sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them
both so much alike, that if I did not know the ori-
ginals, 1 should never be able to judge by the copies
which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was ob-
jected against a late noble painter, that he drew
many graceful pictures, but few of them were like.
And this happened to him, because he always studied
himself more than those who sat to him. In such
translators I can easily distinguish the hand which
performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their
poet from another. Suppose two authors are equally
sweet ; yet there is as great distinction to be made in
sweetness, as in that of sugar, and that of honey. I
can make the difference more plain, by giving you (if
it be worth knowing) my own method of proceeding,
in my translations out of four several points in this
volume — Virgil, Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace.
In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered
the genius and distinguishing character of my author.
I looked on Virgil as a succinct and gi-ave majestic
writer ; one w!io weighed not only every thought, but
every word and syllable ; who was still aiming to
crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly
he could ; for which reason he is so very figurative,
that he requires (I may almost say) a grammar apart
to construe him. His verse is everywhere, sounding
the very thing in your ears, whose sense it bears ; yet
the numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the
delight of the reader, so that the same sounds are
never repeated twice together. On the contrary, Ovid
and Claudian, though they WTite in styles differing
from each other, yet have each of them but one sort
of music in their verses. All the versification and
little variety of Claudian is included within the com-
pass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in
the same tenor, perpetually closing his sense at the
end of a verse, and that verse commonly which they
call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives,
with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace. Ovid,
with all his sweetness, has as little variety of numbers
and sound as he ; he is always, as it were, upon the
hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet-ground.
He avoids, like the other, all synalisphas, or cutting
off one vowel when it comes before another in the
following word ; so that, minding only smoothness,
he wants both variety and majesty. But to return to
Virgil : though he is smooth where smoothness is re-
quired, yet he is so far from affecting it, that he seems
rather to disdain it ; frequently makes use of .syna-
Ifephas, and concludes his sense in the middle of his
verse. He is everywhere above conceits of epigram-
matic wit and gross hyperboles ; he maintains majesty
in the midst of plainness ; he shines, but glares not ;
and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of
Lucan. 1 drew my definition of poetical wit from my
particular consideration of him ; for propriety of
thoughts and words are only to be found in him ; and,
where they are proper, they will be delightful. Plea-
sure follows of necessity, as the effect does the cause,
and therefore is not to be put into the definition.
This exact propriety of Virgil I particularly regarded
as a great jiart of his character ; but must confess, to
my shame, that I have not been able to translate any
part of him so well, as to make him appear wholly
like himself; for, where the original is close, no ver-
Bion can reach it in the same compass. Hannibal
Caro's, in the Italian, is the nearest, the most poeti-
cal, and the most sonorous, of any translation of the
iEneids ; yet, though he takes the advantage of blank
verse, he commonly allows two lines for one of Virgil,
and does not always hit his sense. Tasso tells us in
his letters that Sperone Speroni, a great Italian wit,
who was his contemporary, observed of Virgil and
Tully, that the Latin orator endeavoured to imitate
the copiousness of Homer, the Greek poet ; and that
the Latin poet made it his business to reach the con-
ciseness of Demosthenes, the Greek orator. Virgil,
therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and
leaving so much to be imagined by the reader, can
never be translated as he ought, in any modern tongue.
To make him copious, is to alter his character ; and
to translate him line for line, is impossible ; because
the Latin is naturally a more succinct language than
either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the
English, which, by reason of its mono.syllables, is far
the most compendious of them. Virgil is much the
closest of any Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter
has more feet than the English heroic.
Besides all this, an author has the choice of his own .
thoughts and words, which a translator has not ; he
is confined by tfie sense of the inventor to tliose ex-
pressions which are the nearest to it ; so that Virgil,
studying brevity, and having the command of his own
language, could bring those words into a narrow com-
pass, which a translator cannot render without cir-
cumlocutions. In short, they who have called him
the torture of the grammarians, might also have called
him the plague of translators ; for he seems to have
studied not to be translated. I own that, endeavour-
ing to turn his ' Nisus and Euryalus' as close as I was
able, I have performed that episode too literally ;
that giving more scope to ' Mezentius and Lausus,'
that version, which has more of the majesty of Virgil,
has less of his conciseness ; and all that I can pro-
mise for myself, is only that I have done both better
than Ogleby, and perhaps as well as Caro ; so that,
methinks, I come like a malefactor, to make a
speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets,
by my sad example, from the sacrilege of translating
Virgil. Yet, by considering him so carefully as I did
before my attempt, I have made some faint lesem-
blance of him ; and, had I taken more time, might
possibly have succeeded better, but never so well as
to have satisfied myself.
He who excels all other poets in his own language,
were it possible to do him right, must aj pear above
them in our tongue, which, as my Lord Uosconnnon
justly observes, approaches nearest to the Roman in
its majesty ; nearest, indeed, but with a vast interval
betwixt them. There is an inimitable grace in Vir-
gil's words, and in them principally consists that
beauty which gives so inexpres.sible a pleasure to him
who best understands their force. This diction of hia
(1 must once again say) is never to be cojiied ; and,
since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best
translation. The turns of his verse, his breakings, hi*
propriety, his numbers, and his gravity, I have m
far imitated as the poverty of oui language and the
hastiness of my performance wou>d allow. I may
seem sometimes to have varied from his sense ; but I
think the greatest variations may be fairly deduced
from him ; and where I leave his commentators, it may
be I understand him better; at least I writ without
consulting them in many places. But two particular
lines in ' Mezentius and Lausus ' I cannot so easily ex-
cuse. They are, indeed, remotely allied -to Virgil's
sense ; but they are too like the trifling tenderness of
Ovid, and were printed before I had con.sidered them
enough to alter them. The first of them 1 have for-
gotten, and cannot easily retrieve, because the copy Lb
at the press. The second is thi.s —
When Lausus died. I was already slain.
This appears pretty enough at first sight ; but I am
convinced, for many reasons, that the expression is too
495
FBOM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
bold ; that Virgil would not have said it, though Ovid
would. The reader may pardon it, if he please, for
the frceness of the confession ; and instead of that,
and the former, admit these two lines, which are more
according to the author —
Nor ask I life, nor fought yrith that design ;
As I had used my fortune, use thou thine.
Having with much ado got clear of Virgil, I have,
in the nest place, to consider the genius of Lucretius,
whom I have translated more happily in those parts
of him which I undertook. If he was not of the best
at'e of Roman poetry, he was at least of that which
preceded it ; and he himself refined it to that degree
of perfection, both in the language and the thoughts,
that he left an easy task to Virgil, who, as he suc-
ceeded him in time, so he copied his excellences ; for
the method of the Georgics is plainly derived from
him. Lucretius had chosen a subject naturally crab-
bed ; he therefore adorned it with poetical descrip-
tions, and precepts of morality, in the beginning and
ending of his books, which you see Virgil has imitated
with great success in those four books, which, in my
opinion, are more perfect in their kind than even his
divine ^neids. The turn of his verses he has like-
wise followed in those places which Lucretius has
most laboured, and some of his very lines he has
transplanted into his own works, without much va-
riation. If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing
character of Lucretius (I mean of his soul and genius)
is a certain kind of noble pride, and positive assertion
of his opinions. He is everywhere confident of his
own reason, and assuming an absolute command, not
only over his vulgar reader, but even his patron Mera-
mius ; for he is always bidding him attend, as if he
had the rod over him, and using a magisterial autho-
ritv while he instructs him. From his time to ours,
I know none so like him as our poet and philosopher
of Malmesbury.* This is that perpetual dictatorship
which is exercised by Lucretius, who, though often in
the ^\Tong, yet seems to deal bona fide with his reader,
and tells him nothing but what he thinks ; in which
plain sincerity, I believe, he differs from our Hobbes,
who could not but be convinced, or at least doubt, of
some eternal truths which he has opposed. But for
Lucretius, he seems to disdain all manner of replies,
and is so confident of his cause, that he is before-hand
with his antagonists ; urging for them whatever he
imagined they could say, and leaving them, as he
supposes, without an objection for the future : all this,
too, with so much scorn and indignation, as if he
were assured of the triumph before he entered into the
lists. From this sublime and daring genius of his, it
must of necessity come to pass that his thoughts must
be masculine, full of argumentation, and that suffi-
ciently warm. From the same fiery temper proceeds
the loftiness of his •expressions, and the perpetual
torrent of his rerse, where the barrenness of his subject
does not too much constrain the quickness of his fanc_y.
For there is no doubt to be made, but that he could
have been everywhere as poetical as he is in his de-
scriptions, and in the moral part of his philosophy, if
he had not aimed more to instruct, in his system of
nature, than to delight. But he was bent upon mak-
ing Memmius a materialist, and teaching him to defy
an invisible power : in sh irt, he was so much an
atheist, that he forgot sometimes to be a poet. These
are the considerations which I had of that author,
before I attempted to translate some parts of him.
And accordingly I laid by my natural diffidence and
scepticism for a while, to take up that dogmatical
way of his which, as I said, is so much his character,
as to make him that individual poet. As for his
opinions concerning the mortality of the soul, they are
» Hobbes, who died in 1679.
so absurd, that I cannot, if I would, believe them. I
think a future state demonstrable even by natural
arguments ; at least, to take away rewards and punish-
ments is only a pleasing prospect to a man who re-
solves beforehand not to live morally. But, on the
other side, the thought of being nothing after death
is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man, even
though a heathen. We naturally aim at happiness,
and cannot bear to have it confined to the shortness of
our present being ; especially when we consider that
virtue is generally unhappy in this world, and vice
fortunate : so that it is hope of futurity alone that
makes this life tolerable, in expectation of a better.
Who would not commit all the excesses to which he
is prompted by his natural inclinations, if he may do
them with security while he is alive, and be incapable
of punishment after he is dead ? If he be cunning
and secret enough to avoid the laws, there is no band
of morality to restrain him ; for fame and reputation
are weak ties : manj' men have not the least sense of
them. Powerful men are only awed by them as they
conduce to their interest, and that not always when a
passion is predominant ; and no man will be contained
within the bounds of duty, when he may safely trans-
gress them. These are my thoughts abstractedly, and
without entering into the notions of our Christian
faith, which is the proper business of divines.
But there are other arguments in this poem (which
I have turned into English) not belonging to the mor-
tality of the soul, which are strong enough to a rea-
sonable man, to make him less in love with life, and
consequently in less apprehensions of death. Such as
are the natural satiety proceeding from a perpetual
enjoyment of the same things ; the inconveniences of
old age, which make him incapable of corporeal plea-
sures ; the decay of understanding and memory, which
render him contemptible and useless to others. These,
and many other reasons, so pathetically urged, so
beautifully expressed, so adorned with examples, and
so admirably raised by the prosopnpeia of nature, who
is brought in speaking to her children with so much
authority and vigour, deserve the pains I have taken
with them, which I hope have not been unsuccessful,
or unworthy of my author : at least I must take the
liberty to own that I was pleased with my o\ni endea-
vours, which but rarely happens to me ; and that I
am not dissatisfied upon the review of anything I
have done in this author.
[Spenser and Milton.']
[In epic poetry] the English have onl}' to boast of
Spenser and IMilton, who neither of them wanted
either genius or learning to have been perfect poets,
and yet both of them are liable to many censures.
For there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser ;
he aims at the accomplishment of no one action, he
raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and
endows each of them with some particular moral vir-
tue, which renders them all equal, without subordina-
tion or preference. Every one is most valiant in his
ovm legend ; only, we must do hira that justice to ob-
serve, that magnanimit}', which Is the character of
Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and
succours the rest when they are in distress. The
original of every knight was then living in the court
of Queen Elizabeth ; and he attributed to each of
them that virtue which he thought was most conspi-
cuous in them— an Ingenious piece of flattery, though
it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to
finish his poem, in the six remaining legends, it had
certainly been more of a piece, but could not have
been perfect, because the model was not true. But
Prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney,
wliom he intended to make happy by the marriage of
his Gloriaiia, dying before him, deprived the poet both
496
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRTDEN.
of means and spirit to accomplish his desi^. For the
rest, his obsolete language, and the ill choice of his
stanza, are faults but of the second magnitude ; for,
notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at
least after a little practice ; and for the last, he is the
more to be admired, that, labouring under such a
difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and
so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly
imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and
only Mr Waller among the English.
As for Mr Milton, whom we all admire with so much
justice, his subject is not that of a heroic poem, pro-
perly so called. His design is the losing of our happi-
ness ; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other
epic works ; his heavenly machine? are many, and his
human persons are but two. Bui I will not take Mr
Rymer's work out of his hands ; he has promised the
world a critique on that author, wherein, though he
will not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will
grant us that his thoughts are elevated, his words
sounding, and that no man has so happily copied the
manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his
Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is
true he runs into a fiat of thought sometimes for a
hundred lines together, but it is when he has got into
a track of Scripture. His antiquated words were his
choice, not his necessity ; for therein he imitated
Spenser, as Spenser did Chaucer. And though, per-
haps, the love of their masters may have transported
both too far, in the frequent use of them, yet, in my
opinion, obsolete words may then be laudably revived,
when either they are more sounding or more signifi-
cant than those in practice ; and when their obscu-
rity is taken away, by joining other words to them
which clear the sense, according to the rule of Horace,
for the admission of new words. But in both cases a
moderation is to be observed in the use of them ; for
unnecessary coinage, as well as unnecessary revival,
runs into affectation ; a fault to be avoided on either
hand. Neither will I justify Milton for his blank
verse, though I may excuse him, by the example of
Hannibal Caro, and other Italians, who have used it ;
for whatever causes he alleges for the abolishing of
rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine),
his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme
was not his talent ; he had neither the ease of doing
it, nor the graces of it, which is manifest in his
Juvenilia,' or verses written in his youth, where his
rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes
hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most
pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every
man a rhymer, though not a poet.
[^Lampoon.']
In a word, that fonner sort of satire, which is known
in England by the name of lampoon, is a dangerous
sort of weapon, and for the most part unlawful. We
have no moral right on the reputation of other men.
It is taking from them what we cannot restore to
them. There are only two reasons for which we may
be permitted to write lampoons ; and I will not pro-
mise that they can always justify us. The first is
revenge, when we have been aff"ronted in the same
nature, or have been anyways notoriously abused,
ftnd can make ourselves no other reparation. And
yet we know, that, in Christian charity, all offences
are to be forgiven, as we expect the like pardon for
those wliich we daily commit against Almighty God.
And this consideration has often made me tremble
when I was saying our Saviour's prayer ; for the plain
condition of the forgiveness which we beg, is the par-
doning of others the ofi"ences which they have done to
us ; for which reason I have many times avoided the
commission of that fault, even when I have been
notoriously provoked. Let not this, my lord, pass
for vanity in me, for it is truth. More libels have
been written against me than almost any man now
living ; and I had reason on my side to have defended
mj own innocence. I speak not of my poetry, which
I have wholly given up to the critics : let them use
it as they please : posterity, perhaps, may be more
favourable to me ; for interest and passion will lie
buried in another age, and partiality and prejudice
be forgotten. I speak of my morals, which have been
sufficiently aspersed : that only sort of reputation
ought to be dear to every honest man, and is to me.
But let the world witness for me, that I have been
often wanting to myself in that particular : I have
seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, when it was
in my power to have exposed my enemies : and, being
naturally vindictive, have suffered in silence, and
possessed my soul in quiet.
Anything, though never so little, which a man
speaks of himself, in ray opinion, is still too much ;
and therefore I will waive this subject, and proceed to
give the second reason which may justify a poet when
he writes against a particular person ; and that is,
when he is become a public nuisance. All those,
whom Horace in his Satires, and Persius and Juvenal
have mentioned in theirs, with a brand of infamy, are
wholly such. It is an action of virtue to make ex-
amples of vicious men. They may and ought to be
upbraided with their crimes and follies ; both for their
amendment, if they are not yet incorrigible, and for
the terror of others, to hinder them from falling into
those enormities, which they see are so severely
punished in the persons of others. The first reason
was only an excuse for revenge ; but this second is
absolutely of a poet's office to perform : but how few
lampooners are now living who are capable of this
duty !* When they come in my way, it is impossible
sometimes to avoid reading them. But, good God !
how remote they are, in common justice, from the
choice of such persons as are the proper subject of
satire ! And how little wit they bring for the support
of their injustice ! The weaker sex is their most or-
dinary theme ; .and the best and fairest are sure to be
the most severely handled. Amongst men, those who
are prosperously unjust are entitled to panegyric ; but
affiicted virtue is insolently stabbed with all manner
of reproaches ; no decency is considered, no fulsome-
ness omitted ; no venom is wanting, as far as dulness
can supply it ; for there is a perpetual dearth of wit ;
a barrenness of good sense and entertainment. The
neglect of the readers will soon put an end to this
sort of scribbling. There can be no pleasantry where
there is no wit ; no impression can be made where
there is no truth for the foundation. To conclude :
they are like the fruits of the earth in this unnatural
season ; the com which held up its head is spoiled
with rankness ; but the greater part of the harvest is
laid along, and little of good income and wholesome
nourishment is received into the barns. This is al-
most a digression, I confess to your lordship ; but a
just indignation forced it from me.
[Zh-ydm's Translation of Virgil.']
What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in
plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in
my declining years ; struggling with wants, oppressed
with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be mis-
construed in all 1 write; and my judges, if they are
not very equitable, already prejudiced against me,
* The abuse of personal satires, or I.impoons, as they were
called, was carried to a prodigious extent in the days of Dry-
den, when every man of fashion was obliged to write verses ;
and those who had neither poetry nor wit, had recourse to
ribaldry and libelling.— .Sir Walter Scott.
497
33
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO IdHh.
by the lying character which has been given them of
my morals. Yet, steady to my principles, and not
dispirited with my afflictions, I have, by the blessing
of God on my endeavours, overcome all difficulties,
and in some measure acquitted myself of the debt
which I owed the public when I undertook this work.
In the first place, therefore, I thankfully acknowledge
to the Almighty Power the assistance he has given me
in the beifinning, the prosecution, and conclusion of
my present studies, which are more happily performed
than I could have promised to myself, when I laboured
under such discouragements. For what I have done,
imperfect as it is for want of health and leisure to
correct it, will be judged in after ages, and possibly in
the present, to be no dishonour to my native country,
whose language and poetry would be more esteemed
abroad, if they were better understood. Somewhat
(give me leave to say) I have added to both of them
in the choice of words and harmony of numbers,
which were wanting (especially the last) in all our
poets, even in those who, being endued with genius,
yet have not cultivated their mother-tongue with
sufficient care ; or, relying on the beauty of their
thoughts, have judged "the ornament of words and
sweetness of sound unnecessary. One is for raking in
Chaucer (our English Ennius) for antiquated words,
which are never to be revived, but when sound
or significancy is wanting in the present language.
But many of his deserve not this redemption, any
more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are
slain for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to
life, if a wish could revive them. Others have no ear
for verse, nor choice of words, nor distinction of
thoughts, but mingle farthings with their gold to
make up the sum. Here is a field of satire opened to
me; but since the Revolution, I have wholly re-
nounced that talent: for who would give physic to the
great when he is uncalled — to do his patient no good,
and endanger himself for his prescription ? Neither
am I ignorant but I may justly be condemned for
many of those faults, of which I have too liberally
arraigned others.
[Histwy and Biography.']
It may now be expected that, having written the
life of a historian,* I should take occasion to write
somewhat concerning history itself. But I think to
commend it is unnecessary, for the profit and pleasure
of that study are both so very obvious, that a quick
reader will be beforehand with me, and imagine faster
than I can write. Besides, that the post is taken up
already ; and few authors have travelled this way,
but who have strewed it with rhetoric as they passed.
For my own part, who must confess it to my shame,
that I never read anything but for pleasure, it has
always been the most delightful entertainment of my
life ; but they who have employed the study of it, as
they ought, for their instruction, for the regulation of
their private manners, and the management of public
affairs, must agree with me that it is the most plea-
sant school of wisdom. It is a familiarity with past
ages, and an acquaintance with all the heroes of
them ; it is, if you will pardon the similitude, a pro-
spective glass, carrying your soul to a vast distance,
and taking in the farthest objects of antiquity. It
informs the understanding by the memory ; it helps
us to judge of what will happen, by showing us the
like revolutions of former times. For mankind being
the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions,
and moved to action by the same interests, notliing
can come to pass but some precedent of the like
nature has already been produced ; so that, having the
causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceived
in the effects, if we have judgment enough but to
draw the parallel.
God, it is true, with his divine providence over-
rules and guides all actions to the secret end he has
ordained them ; but in the way of human causes, a
wise man may easily discern that there is a natural
connection betwixt them ; and though he cannot fore-
see accidents, or all things that possibly can come, he
may apply examples, and by them foretell that from
the like counsels will probably succeed the like events;
and thereby in all concernments, and all offices of life,
be instructed m the two main points on which depend
our happiness — that is, what to avoid, and what to
choose.
The laws of historj, in general, are truth of matter,
method, and clearnesii of expression. The first pro-
priety is necessary, to keep our understanding from
the impositions of falsehood ; for history is an argu-
ment framed from many particular examples or in-
ductions ; if these examples are not true, then those
measures of life which we take from tliem will be
false, and deceive us in their consequence. The
second is grounded on the former ; for if the method
be confused, if the words or expressions of thought
are any way obscure, then the ideas which we receive
must be imperfect ; and if such, we are not taught
by them what to elect or what to shun. Truth,
therefore, is required as the foundation of history to
inform us, disposition and perspicuity as the inanner
to inform us plainly ; one is the being, the other tlie
well being of it.
History is principally divided into these three spe-
cies — commentaries, or annals ; history, properly so
called ; and biographia, or the lives of particular men.
Commentaries, or annals, are (as I may so call
them) naked history, or the plain relation of matter of
fact, according to tlie succession of time, divested of all
other ornaments. The springs and motives of actions
are not here sought, unless they offer themselves, and
are open to every man's discernment. The method Is
the most natural that can be imagined, depending
only on the observation of months and years, and
drawing, in the order of them, whatsoever hap])ened
worthy of relation. The style is easy, simple, unforced,
and unadorned with the pomp of figures ; councils,
guesses, politic observations, sentences, and orations,
are avoided ; in few words, a bare narration is its busi-
ness. Of this kind, the ' Commentaries of Cfwsar' are
certainly the most admirable, and after him the ' An-
nals of Tacitus' may have j)lace ; nay, even the prince
of Greek historians, Thucydides, may almost be adoj-ted
into the number. For, though he instructs everywhere
by sentences, though he gives the causes of actions,
the councils of both parties, and makes orations wliere
they are necessary, yet it is certain that he first de-
signed his work a commentary ; every year writing
down, like an unconcerned spectator as he was, the
particular occurrences of the time, in the order as
they happened ; and his eighth book is wholly written
after the way of annals ; though, out-living the war,
he inserted in his others those ornaments which render
his work the most complete and most instructive now
extant.
History, properly so called, may be described by
the addition of those parts which are not required to
annals ; and therefore there is little farther to be said
concerning it ; only, that the dignity and gravity of
style is here necessary. That the guesses of secret
causes inducing to the actions, be drawn at least from
the most probable circumstances, not perverted by the
malignity of the author to sinister interpretations (of
which Tacitus is accused), but candidly laid down,
and left to the judgment of the reader; that nothing
of concernment be omitted ; but things of trivial mo-
ment are still to be neglected, as debasing tlie inajosty
of the work ; that neither partiality nor prejudice
498
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN DRYDEN.
appear, but that truth may everywhere be sacred :
' Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri iion audeat
historicus' — [' that a historian should never dare to
speak falsely, or fear to speak what is true'] ; that he
neither iucline to superstition, in giving too much
credit to oracles, prophecies, divinations, and prodi-
gies, nor to irreligion, in disclaiming the Almighty
Providence ; but where general opinion has prevailed
of any miraculous accident or portent, he ought to
relate it as such, without imposing his opinion on our
belief. Next to Thucj-dides in this kind, may be
accounted Polybius, amongst the Grecians ; Livj',
though not free from superstition, nor Tacitus from
ill nature, amongst the Romans ; amongst the modern
Italians, Guicciardini and Davila, if not partial ; but
above all men, in my opinion, the plain, sincere, un-
affected, and most instructive Philip de Comines,
amongst the French, though he only gives his history
the humble name of Commentaries. I am sorry I
cannot find in our own nation, though it has produced
some commendable historians, any proper to be ranked
with these. Buchanan, indeed, for the purity of his
Latin, and for his learning, and for all other endow-
ments belonging to a historian, might be placed
amongst the greatest, if he had not too much leaned
to prejudice, and too manifestly declared himself a
party of a cause, rather than a historian of it. Ex-
cepting only that (which I desire not to urge too far
on so great a man, but only to give caution to his
readers concerning it), our isle may justly boast in
him a writer comparable to any of the moderns, and
excelled by few of the ancients.
Biographia, or the history of particular men's lives,
comes next to be considered ; which in dignity is in-
ferior to the other two, as being more confined in
action, and treating of wars and councils, and all
other public affairs of nations, only as they relate to
him whose life is written, or as his fortunes have a
particular dependence on them, or connexion to them.
All things here are circumscribed and driven to a
point, so as to terminate in one ; consequently, if the
action or counsel were managed by colleagues, some
part of it must be either lame or wanting, except it
be supplied by the excursion of the writer. Herein,
likewise, must be less of variety, for the same reason ;
because the fortunes and actions of one man are re-
lated, not those of many. Thus the actions and
achievements of Sylla, Lucullus, and Pompey, are
all of them but the successive parts of the Mithri-
datie war ; of which we could have no perfect image,
if the same hand had not given us the whole, though
at several views, in their particular lives.
Yet though we allow, for the reasons above alleged,
that this kind of writing is in dignity inferior to his-
tory and annals, in pleasure and instruction it equals,
or even excels, both , of them. It is not only com-
mended by ancient practice to celebrate the memory
of great and worthy men, as the best thanks which
posterity can pay them, but also the examples of
xirtue are of more vigour when they are thus con-
tracted into individuals. As the sunbeams, united
in a burning-glass to a point, have greater force than
when they are darted from a plain superficies, so the
virtues and actions of one man, drawn together into a
single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and
more lively impression than the scattered relations of
many men and many actions ; and by the same means
that they give us pleasure, they afi'ord us profit too.
For when the understanding is intent and fixed on a
single thing, it carries closer to the mark ; every jiart
of the object sinks into it, and the soul receives it
unmixed and whole. For this reason Aristotle com-
mends the unity of action in a poem ; because the
mind is not capable of digesting many tilings at once,
nor of conceiving fully any more than one idea at a
time. Whatsoever distracts the pleasure, lessens it ;
and as the reader is more concerned at one man's
fortune than those of many, so likewise the writer is
more capable of making a perfect work if he confine
himself to this narrow compass. The lineaments,
features, and colourings of a single picture may be hit
exactly ; but in a history-j)iece of many figures, the
general design, the ordonnance or disposition of it,
the relation of one figure to another, the diversity of
the posture, habits, shadowings, and all the other
graces conspiring to a uniformity, are of so difficult
performance, that neither is the resemblance of parti-
cular persons often perfect, nor tlie beauty of the
piece complete ; for any considerable error in the
parts renders the whole disagreeable and lame. Thus,
then, the perfection of the work, and the benefit
arising from it, are both more absolute in biography
than in histoi-y. All history is only the precepts of
moral philosophy reduced into examples. Aloral phi-
losophy is divided into two parts, ethics and politics j
the first instructs us in our private offices of virtue,
the second in those which relate to the management
of the commonwealth. Both of these teach by argu-
mentation and reasoning, which rush as it were into
the mind, and possess it with violence ; but history
rather allures than forces us to virtue. There is no-
thing of the tyrant in example ; but it gently glides
into us, is easy and pleasant in its passage, and, in one
word, reduces into practice our speculative notions ;
therefore the more powerful the examples are, they
are the more useful also, and by being more known,
they are more powerful. Now, unity, which is defined,
is in its own nature more apt to be understood than
multiplicity, which in some measure participates of
infinity. The reason is Aristotle's.
Biographia, or the histories of particular lives, though
circumscribed in the subject, is yet more extensive in
the style than the other two ; for it not only compre-
hends them both, but has somewhat superadded, whicb
neither of them have. The style of it is various, ac-
cording to the occasion. There are proper places in
it for the plainness and nakedness of narration, which
is ascribed to annals ; there is also room reserved for
the loftiness and gravity of general history, when the
actions related shall require that manner of tjcpres-
sion. But there is, withal, a descent into minute cir-
cumstances and trivial passages of life, which are
natural to this way of writing, and which the dignity
of the other two will not admit. There you art con-
ducted only into the rooms of state, here you aio led
into the private lodgings of the hero ; you see him in
his undress, and are made familiar with his most pri-
vate actions and conversations. You ma> behold a
Scipio and a La^lius gathering cockle-shelis on the
shore, Augustus playing at bounding-stones with boys,
and Agesilaus riding on a hobby-horse among hia
children. The pageantry of life is taken away ; you
see the poor reasonable animal as naked as ever nature
made him ; are made acquainted with his passions
and his follies, and find the demi-god a man. Plu-
tarch himself has more than once defended this kind
of relating little passages ; for, in the Life of Alex-
ander, he says thus : ' In writing the lives of illustrious
men, I am not tied to the laws of history ; nor does
it follow, that, because an action is great, it therefore
manifests the greatness and virtue of him who did it ;
but, on the other side, sometimes a word or a casual jest
betrays a man more to our knowledge of him, than a
battle fought wherein ten thousand men were slain,
or sacking of cities, or a course of victories.' In an-
other place, he quotes Xenophon on the like occasion :
' The sayings of great men in their familiar discourses,
and amidst their wine, have somewhat in them which
is worthy to be transmitted to posterity.' Our author
therefore needs no excuse, but rather deserves a com-
mendation, when he relates, as pleasant, si.inf saving*
of his heroes, which appear (I mu-'t confess it) verv
4yy
FROM 164.9
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1689.
cold and insipid mirth to us. For it is not his mean-
ing to commend the jest, hut to paint the man ; be-
sides, we may have lost somewhat of the idiotism of
that language in which it was spoken ; and where the
conceit is couched in a single word, if all the signi-
fications of it are not critically understood, the grace
and the pleasantry are lost.
But in all parts of biography, whether familiar or
stately, whether sublime or low, whether serious or
merrj', Plutarch equally excelled. If we compare him
to others, Dion Cassius is not so sincere ; Herodian, a
lover of truth, is oftentimes deceived himself with
what he had falsely heard reported ; then, the time of
his emperors exceeds not in all above sixty years, so
that his whole history will scarce amount to three
lives of Plutarch. Suetonius and Tacitus may be
called alike either authors of histories or writers of
lives ; but the first of them runs too willingly into
obscene descriptions, which he teaches, while he re-
lates ; the other, besides what has already been noted
of him, often fivlls into obscurity ; and both of them
have made so unlucky a choice of times, that they
are forced to describe rather monsters than men ; and
their emperors are either extravagant fools or tyrants,
and most usually both. Our author, on the contrary,
as he was more inclined to commend than to dispraise,
has generally chosen such great men as were famous
for their several virtues ; at least such whose frailties
or vices were overpoised by their excellences ; such
from whose examples we ma}' have more to follow than
to shun. Yet, as he was impartial, he disguised not
the faults of any man, an example of which is in the
life of LucuUus, where, after he has told us that the
double benefit which his countrymen, the Chosroneans,
received from him, was the chiefest motive which he
had to write his life, he afterwards rips up his luxury,
and shows how he lost, through his mismanagement,
his authority and his soldiers' love. Then he was
more happy in his digressions than any we have
named. I have alvrays been pleased to see him, and
his imitator IMontaigne, when they strike a little out
of the common road ; for we are sure to be the better
for their wandering. The best quarry lies not always
in the open field : and who would not be content to
follow a good huntsman over hedges and ditches,
when he knows the game will reward his pains? But
if wo mark him more narrowly, we may observe that
the great reason of his frequent starts is the variety
of his learning ; he knew so much of nature, was so
vastly furnished with all the treasures of the mind,
that he was uneasy to himself, and was forced, as I
may say, to lay down some at every passage, and to
scatter his riches as he went : like another Alexander
or Adrian, he built a city, or planted ,a colony, in
every part of his progress, and left behind him some
memorial of his greatness. Sparta, and Thebes, and
Athens, iind Rome, the mistress of the world, he has
discovered in their foundations, their institutions,
their growth, their height ; the decay of the three
first, and the alteration of the last. You see those
several people in their different laws, and policies,
and forms of government, in their warriors, and
senators, and demagogues. Nor are the ornaments of
poetry, and the illustrations of similitudes, forgotten
by him ; in both which he instructs, as well as pleases ;
or rather pleases, that he may instruct.
Dryden was exceedingly sensitive to the criticisms
of the paltry versifiers of his day. Among those
who annoyed him was Elkanah Kettle, a now for-
gotten rhymer, with whom he carried on a violent
war of ridicule and abuse. The following is an
amusing specimen of a criticism by Dryden on
Settle's tragedy, called ' The Empress of Morocco,'
which seems to have roused tlie jealousy and indig-
nation of the critic : —
' To conclude this act with the mo.st rumbling jiiece
of nonsense spoken yet —
" To flattering lightning our feigned smiles confonn.
Which, backed with thunder, do but gild a storm."
Conform a smile to light n'tng, make a smile imitate
lightning, and Jiaticnny lightning ; lightning, sure, is a
threatening thing. And this lightning must gild a
storm. Now, if I must conform my smiles to light-
ning, then my smiles must gild a storm too : to gild
with smiles is a new invention of gilding. And gild a
storm by being laclced nitli thunder. Thunder is part
of the storm ; so one part of the storm must help to
gild another part, and help by baching ; as if a man
would gild a thing the better for being backed, or
having a load upon his back. So that here is gilding
by conforming, smiling, lightning, backing, and thim-
dering. The whole is as if I should say thus : I will
make my counterfeit smiles look like a flattering
horse, which, being backed with a trooper, does
but gild the battle. I am mistaken if nonsense is
not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these
two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being
sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense
at once.'
The controversies in which Dryden was frequently
engaged, were not in general restrained within the
bounds of legitimate discussion. The authors of those
days descended to gross personalities. ' There was,'
says Sir Walter Scott, ' during the reign of Charles
II., a semi-barbarous virulence of controversy, even
upon abstract points of literature, which would be
now thought injudicious and unfair, even by the
newspaper advocates of contending factions. A
critic of that time never deemed he had so effec-
tually refuted the reasoning of his adversary, as
when he had said something disrespectful of his
talents, person, or moral character. Thus, literary
contest was embittered by personal hatred, and
truth was so far from being the object of the
combatants, that even victory was tasteless unless
obtained by the disgrace and degradation of the
antagonist.'*
SIR •WILLIAM TEMPLE.
Sir "William Temple, a well-known statesman
and miscellaneous writer, possesses a high reputation
as one of the chief polishers of the English language.
He was the son of Sir John Temple, master of the
Rolls in Ireland in the reigns of Charles I. and II.,
and was born in London in 1628. He studied at
Cambridge under Cudworth as tutor ; but being in-
tended for public life, devoted his attention chiefly to
the French and Spanish languages. After travelling
for six years on the continent, he went to reside
with his father in Ireland, where he represented
the county of Carlow in the parliament at Dublin
in 1661. Eemoving, two years afterwards, to Eng-
land, the introductions which he carried to the
leading statesman of the day speedily procured
him employment in the diplomatic service. He was
sent, in 166.5, on a secret mission to the bishop ot
Munster, and performed his duty so well, that on
his return a baronetcy was bestowed on him, and he
was appointed English resident at the court of
Brussels. The peace of western Europe was at
this time in danger from the ambitious designs of
Louis XIV., who aimed at the subjugation of the
Spanish Netherlands. Temple paid a visit to the
Dutch governor, De Witt, at the Hague, and with
great skill brought about, in 1668, the celebrated
' triple alliance' between England, Holland, and
Sweden, by which the career of Louis was for a
time effectually checked. In the same year he re-
* Scott's Life of Dryden, Sect. iiL
500
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WILLIAM TK.MPLE.
ceiveil the appointment of ambassador at tlie Hague,
where he resided in that capacity for about twelve
Sir William Temple.
months, on terms of intimacy with De Witt, and
also with the young Prince of Orange, afterwards
William III. of England. The corrupt and wavering
principles of the English court having led to the
recall of Temple in 1669, he retired from public
business to his residence at Sheen, near Richmond,
and there employed himself in literary occupations
and gardening. In 1674, however, lie with some
reluctance consented to return as ambassador to
Holland ; in which country, besides engaging in
various important negotiations, he contributed to
bring about the marriage of the Prince of Orange
with the Duke of York's eldest daughter Mary.
That important and popular event took place in
1677. Having finally returned to England in 1679,
Temple was pressed by the king to accept the ap-
pointment of secretary of state, which, however, lie
persisted in refusing. Charles was now in the ut-
most perplexity, in consequence of the discontents
and difficulties which a long course of misgovern-
ment had occasioned ; and used to hold long conver-
sations with Temple, on the means of extricating
himself from his embarrassments. The measure
advised by Sir William was the appointment of a
privy council of thirty persons, in conformity with
wliose advice the king should always act, and by
whom all his affairs should be freely and openly
debated ; one half of the members to consist of the
great officers of state, and the other of the most in-
fluential and wealthy noblemen and gentlemen of the
country. This scheme was adopted by Charles, and
excited great joy throughout the nation. The hopes
of the people were, however, speedily frustrated by
the turbulent and unprincipled factiousness of some
of the members. Temple, who was himself one of
the council, soon became disgusted witli its proceed-
ings, as well as those of the king, and, in 1681,
finally retired from public life. He spent the re-
mainder of his days chiefly at Moor Park, in Surrey,
where Jonathan Swift, then a young man, resided
with him in the capacity of amanuensis. After the
Revolution, King William sometimes visited Temple
in order to consult him about public affairs. His
death took place in 1698, at the age of sixty-nine.
Throughout his whole career, the conduct of Sir
WilUam Temple was marked by a cautious regard
for his personal comfort and reputation ; a quality
which strongly disposed him to avoid risks of every
kind, and to stand aloof from those departments of
public business where the exercise of eminent
courage and decision was required. His character
as a patriot is therefore not one which calls fur
high admiration; thougli it ouglit t(j be remarked,
in his favour, that as he seems to liave had a lively
consciousness that neither his abilities nor dispo-
sitions fitted him for vigorous action in stormy
times, he probably acted with prudence in with-
drawing from a field in which lie would have only
been mortified by failure, and done harm instead of
good to the public. Being subject to frequent
attacks of low spirits, he might have been disabled
for action by the very emergencies which demanded
the greatest mental energy and self-possession. As
a private character, he was respectable and decorous:
his temper, naturally haughty and unainiable, was
generally kept under gooil regulation ; and among
his foibles, vanity was the most prominent.
The works of Sir William TL'mi)le consist chiefly of
short miscellaneous pieces. His longest production is
Observations upon the United Provinces of the Nether-
lands, composed during his first retirement at Sheen.
This is accounted a masterpiece of its kind, and,
when compared with his Essay on the Original and
Nature of Government, written about the same time,
shows that he had much more ability as an observer
and describer, than as a reasoner on what he saw.
Besides several political tracts of temporary interest,
he wrote Essays on Ancient and jModern Learning ;
the Gardens of Epicurus ; Heroic Virtue ; Poetry ;
Popular Discontents ; Health and Long Life. h\
these are to be found many sound and acute obser-
vations exjjressed in the perspicuous and easy, but
not very correct or precise language, for which he
is noted. His correspondence on public affairs has
also been published.
Of all his productions, that which appears to us,
in matter as well as composition, the best, is a letter
to the Countess of Essex on her excessive grief occa-
sioned by the loss of a belovtd daughter. As a spe-
cimen of eloquent, firm, and dignified, sat tender
and affectionate expostulation, it is probably un-
equalled within the compass of English literature.
This admirable ])itce will be found anung the
extracts which follow.
The style of Sir William Temple is characterised
by Dr Blair as remarkable for its simplicity. ' In
point of ornament and correctness,' adds that critic,
' he rises a degree above Tillotson ; though, for cor-
rectness, he is not in the highest rank. All is easy
and flowing in him ; he is exceedingly harmonious ;
smoothness, and what maj' be called amenit}^ are tlie
distinguishing characters of his maimer ; relaxing
sometimes, as such a manner will naturally do, into
a prolix and remiss style. No writer whatever has
stamped upon his style a more lively impression of
his own character. In reading his works, w-e stem
engaged in conveisatifm with him ; we become
thoroughly acquainted with him, not merely as an
author, but as a man, and contract a friendship for
him. He may be classed as standing in the middle
between a negligent simpli(nty and the higliest
degree of ornament which this character of style
admits.'* In a conversation jiieservud by Bosw( 11
Dr Johnson said, that ' Sir William Temj)l(; was
the first writer who gave cadence to English prose .
before his time, they were careless of arrangement,
and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an
important word or an insignificant wore], tir with
wliat part of speech it was (oncluded.'f This
* Blair's Lectures, Lect. I!».
t IJosvveU's Life of .Iiilinson, vol. iii.
501
FROM 1649
CYCLOPiKDIA OF
TO 1689.
reaiark, however, has certainly greater latitude
than Johnson would have given it if published by
himself. It is true that some of Temple's produc-
tions are eminently distinguislied by harmony and
cadence; but that he was the first who introduced
the latter, will not be admitted by any one who is
familiar witli the prose of Drummond, Cowley,
Dryden, and Sprat.
[Agahist Excessive Grief. *'\
The honour which I received by a letter from your
ladyship was too great not to be acknowledged ; yet I
doubted whether that occasion could bear me out in
the confidence of giving your ladyship any further
trouble. But I can no longer forbear, on account of
the sensible wounds that have so often of late been
given your friends here, by the desperate expressions
in several of your letters, respecting your temper of
mind, your health, and your life ; in all which you
must allow them to be extremely concerned. Per-
haps none can be, at heart, more partial than I am to
whatever regards your ladyship, nor more inclined to
defend you on this very occasion, how unjust and un-
kind soever you are to 3'ourself. But when you throw
away your health, or your life, so great a remainder of
your own familj-, and so great hopes of that into which
3'ou are entered, and all by a desperate melancholy,
upon an event past remedy, and to which all the mor-
tal race is perpetually subject, give me leave to tell
you, madam, that what you do is not at all consistent
either with so good a Christian, or so reasonable and
great a person, as your ladyship appears to the world
in all other lights.
I know no duty in religion more generally agreed
on, nor more justly required by God Almighty, than
a perfect submission to his will in all things ; nor do
I think any disposition of mind can either please him
more, or becomes us better, than tliat of being satis-
fied with all he gives, and contented with all he takes
away. None, I am sure, can be of more honour to
God, nor of more ease to ourselves. For, if we con-
sider him as our Maker, we cannot contend with him ;
if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him ; so
that we may be confident, whatever he does is intended
for good ; and whatever happens that we interpret
otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repining, nor
save anything b}' resisting.
But if it were fit for us to reason with God Almighty,
and your ladyship's loss were acknowledged as great
as it could have been to any one, yet, I doubt, you
would have but ill grace to complain at the rate you
have done, or rather as you do ; for the first emotions
or passions may be pardoned ; it is only the continu-
ance of them which makes them inexcusable. In this
world, madam, there is notliing perfectly good ; and
whatever is called so, is but either comparatively with
other things of its kind, or else with the evil that is
mingled in its composition ; so he is a good man who
is better than men commonly are, or in whom the
good qualities are more than the bad ; so, in the
course of life, his condition is esteemed good, which is
better than that of most other men, or in which the
good circumstances are more than the evil. By this
measure, I doubt, madam, your complaints ought to
be turned into acknowledgments, and your friends
would have cause to rejoice rather than to condole
with you. When your ladyship has fairly considered
how God Almighty has dealt with you in what he has
given, you may be left to judge yourself how you have
dealt with him in your complaints for what he has
taken away. If you look about you, and consider
other lives as well as your own, and what your lot
* Addressed to the Countess of Essex in 1674, after the death
of her only 4aughter.
is, in comparison with those that have been dni«x
in the circle of your knowledge ; if you think how few
are born with honour, how uumy die without name or
children, how little beauty we see, how ic\s friends we
hear of, how much poverty, and how many diseases
there are in the world, you will fall down upon your
knees, and, instead of repining at one afiliction, will
admire so many blessings as you have received at the
hand of God.
To put your ladyship in mind of what you are, and
of the advantages which you have, would look like a
design to flatter you. But this I may say, that we
will pity you as much as you please, if you will tell
us who they are whom you think, upon all circum-
stances, you have reason to envy. Now, if I had a
master who gave me all I could ask, but thought fit
to take one thing from me again, either because I
used it ill, or gave myself so much over to it as to
neglect what I owed to him, or to the world ; or, per-
haps, because he would show his power, and put me
in mind from whom I held all the rest, would you
think I had mucli reason to complain of hard usage,
and never to remember any more what was left me,
never to forget what was taken away ?
It is true you have lost a child, and all that could
be lost in a child of that age ; but you have kept one
child, and you are likely to do so long ; 3'ou have the
assurance of another, and the hopes of many more.
You have kept a husband, great in employmeut, in
fortune, and in the esteem of good men. You have
kept your beauty and your health, unless you have
destroyed them yourself, or discouraged them to stay
with you by using them ill. You have friends who
are as kind to you as j-ou can wish, or as you can give
them leave to be. You have honour and esteem from
all who know you ; or if ever it fails in any degree, it
is only upon that point of your seeming to be fallen
out with God and the whole world, and neither to
care for yourself, nor anything else, after what you
have lost.
You will say, perhaps, that one thing was all to
you, and your fondness of it made you indifferent to
everything else. But this, I doubt, will be so far from
justifying you, that it will prove to be your fimlt as
well as your misfortune. God Almighty gave you all
the blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly
upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest : is
this his i-Auli or yours ? Nay, is it not to be very un-
thankful to Heaven, as well as very scornful to the
rest of the world ? is it not to say, because you have
lost one thing God has given, you thank him for no-
thing he has left, and care not what he takes away ?
is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the
world, there is nothing left in it which you think can
deserve your kindness or esteem ? A friend makes me
a feast, and places before me all that his care or kind-
ness could provide : but I set my heart upon one dish
alone, and, if that happens to be thrown do\vn, I scorn
all the rest ; and though he sends for another of the
same kind, yet I rise from the table in a rage, and
say, ' My friend is become my enemy, and hq has done
me the greatest wrong in the world.' Have I reason,
madam, or good grace in what I do ? or would it be-
come me better to eat of the rest that is before me,
and think no more of what had happened, and could
not be remedied ?
Christianity teaches and commands us to moderate
our passions ; to temper our affections towards all things
below ; to be thankful for the possession, and patient
under the loss, whenever he who gave shall see fit to
take away. Your extreme fondness was perhaps as
displeasing to God before as now your extreme afflic-
tion is ; and your loss may have been a punishment
for your faults in the manner of enjoying what you
had. It is at least pious to ascribe all the ill that
befalls us to our o^vn demerits, rather than to injus-
502
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
tlce in God. And it becomes us better to adore the
issues of his providence in the effects, than to inquire
into the causes ; for submission is the only way of
reasoning between a creature and its Maker ; and con-
tentment in his will is the greatest duty wc can pre-
tend to, and the best remedy we can apply to all our
misfortunes.
But, madam, though religion were no party in your
case, and for so violent and injurious a grief you had
nothing to answer to God, but only to the world and
youi-self, yet I very much doubt how you would be
acquitted. We bring into the world with us a poor,
needy, uncertain life ; short at the longest, and un-
quiet at the best. All the imaginations of the Avitty
and the wise have been perpetually busied to find out
the wa3's to revive it with pleasures, or to relieve it
with diversions ; to compose it with ease, and settle it
with safety. To these ends have been employed the
institutions of lawgivers, the reasonings of philoso-
phere, the inventions of poets, the pains of labouring,
and the extravagances of voluptuous men. All the
world is perpetually at work that our poor mortal
lives may pass the easier and happier for that little
time we possess them, or else end the better when we
lose them. On this account riches and honours are
coveted, friendship and love pursued, and the virtues
themselves admired in the world. Now, madam, is
it not to bid defiance to all mankind, to condemn
their universal opinions and designs, if, instead of
passing your life as well and easily, you resolve to
pass it as ill and as miserably as you can? You grow
insensible to the conveniences of riches, the delights
of honour and praise, the charms of kindness or friend-
ship ; nay, to the observance or applause of virtues
themselves ; for who can you expect, in these excesses
of passions, will allow that you show either temper-
ance or fortitude, either prudence or justice I And as
for your friends, I suppose you reckon upon losing
their kindness, when you have sufficiently convinced
them they can never hope for any of yours, since you
have left none for yourself, or anything else.
Passions are perhaps the stings vvithout which, it is
said, no honey is made. Yet I think all sorts of men
have ever agreed, they ought to be our servants and
not our masters ; to give us some agitation for enter-
tainment or exercise, but never to throw our reason
out of its seat. It is better to have no passions at all,
than to have them too violent ; or such alone as, in-
stead of heightening our pleasures, afibrd us nothing
but vexation and pain.
In all such losses as your ladyship's has been, there
is something that common nature cannot be denied ;
there is a great deal that good nature may be al-
lowed. But all excessive and outrageous grief or
lamentation for the dead was accounted, among the
ancient Christians, to have something heathenish ;
and, among the civil nations of old, to have something
barbarous : and therefore it has been the care of the
first to moderate it by their precepts, and of the lat-
ter to restrain it by their laws. When young chil-
dren are taken away, we are sure they are well, and
escape much ill, which would, in all appearance, have
befallen them if they had stayed longer with us. Our
kindness to them is deemed to proceed from com-
mon opinions or fond imaginations, not friendship or
esteem ; and to be grounded upon entertainment rather
than use in the many offices of life. Nor would it
pass from any person besides your ladyship, to say
you lost a companion and a friend of nine years old ;
though you lost one, indeed, who gave the fairest
hopes that could be of being both in time and every-
thing else that is estimable and good. But yet that
itself is very uncertain, considering the chances of
time, the infection of company, the snares of the
world, and the passions of youth : so that the most
excellent and ajn-eeab'e creature of that tender age
might, by the course of years and accidents, become
the most miserable herself; and a greater trouble to
her friends by living long, than she could have been
by dying young.
Yet after all, madam, I think your loss so great,
and some measure of your grief so deserved, that,
would all your passionate complaints, all the anguish
of your heart, do anything to retrieve it ; could tears
water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again
after once it is cut down ; could sighs furnish new
breath, or could it draw life and spirits from the
wasting of yours, I am sure your friends would be so
far from accusing your passion, that they would
encourage it as much, and share it as deeply, as they
could. But alas ! the eternal laws of the creation
extinguish all such hopes, forbid all such designs ;
nature gives us many children and friends to take
them awa}', but takes none away to give them to us
again. And this makes the excesses of grief to be
universally condemned as unnatural, because so much
in vain ; whereas nature does nothing in vain : as un-
reasonable, because so contrary to our own designs ;
for we all design to be well and at ease, and by grief
we make ourselves troubles most properly out of the
dust, whilst our ravings and complaints are but like
arrows shot up into the air at no mark, and so to no
purpose, but only to fall back upon our own heads
and destroy ourselves.
Perhaps, madam, you will say this is your design,
or, if not, your desire ; but I hope you are not yet s?
far gone or so desperately bent. Your ladyship knows
very well j'our life is not your own, but His who lent
it you to manage and preserve in the best way you
can, and not to throw it away, as if it came from
some common hand. Our life belongs, in a great
measure, to our country and our family: therefore,
by all human laws, as well as divine, self-murder has
ever been agreed upon as the greatest crime ; and it
is punished here with the utmost shame, which is all
that can be inflicted upon the dead. But is the crime
much less to kill ourselves by a slow poison than by a
sudden wound ? Now, if we do it, and know we do
it, by a long and continual grief, can we think our-
selves innocent? What great difference is there, if
we break our hearts or consume them, if we pierce
them or bruise them ; since all terminates in the same
death, as all arises from the same despair? But what
if it does not go so far ; it is not, indeed, so bad as it
might be, but that does not excuse it. Though I do
not kill my neighbour, is it no hurt to wound him, or
to spoil him of the conveniences of life ? The greatest
crime is for a man to kill himself: is it a small one
to wound himself by anguish of heart, by grief, or
despair; to ruin his health, to shorten his age, to de-
prive himself of all the pleasure, ease, and enjoyment
of life ?
Next to the mischiefs which we do ourselves, are
those which we do our children and our friends, who
deserve best of us, or at lea.st deserve no ill. The
child you carry about you, what has it done that you
should endeavour to deprive it of life almost as soon
as you bestow it? — or, if you suffer it to be born, that
you should, by your ill-usage of j-ourself, so much
impair the strength of its body, and perhaps the very
temper of its mind, by giving it such an infusion of
melancholy as may serve to discolour the objects and
disrelish the accidents it may meet with in the com-
mon train of life? Would it be a small injury to my
lord Capell to deprive him of a mother, from whose
prudence and kindness he may justly expect the care
of his health and education, the forniing of his body,
and the cultivating of his mind ; tlie seeds of honour
and virtue, and the true princi])lcs of a happy life{
How has Lord Ilssex deserved that you should de-
prive him of a wife whom he loves with so much pas-
sion, and, which is more, with so much reason ; who
503
fhoh 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
is 60 great an honour and support to his family, so
great a hope to his fortune, and comfort to his life?
Are there so many left of your ovn\ great family that
you should desire in a manner wholly to reduce it, by
Buffering almost the last branch of it to wither away
before its time ? or is your countr}', in this age, so
stored with gi-eat persons, that you should envy it
those whom we may justly expect from so noble a
race ?
■Whilst 1 had any hopes that your tears would ease
you, or that j'our grief would consume itself by liberty
and time, your ladyship knows very well I never ac-
cused it, nor ever increased it by the common formal
ways of attempting to assuage it : and this, I am sure,
is the first office of the kind I ever performed, other-
wise than in the most ordinary forms. I was in hopes
what was so violent could not be long ; but when I
observed it to grow stronger with age, and increase
like a stream the further it ran ; when I saw it draw
out to such unhappy consequences, and threaten not
less than your child, your health, and your life, I
could no longer forbear this endeavour. Nor can I
end it without begging of j'our ladyship, for God's
sake, for your o\vn, for that of your cliildren and your
friends, your country and your family, that you would
no longer abandon yourself to so disconsolate a pas-
sion ; but that you would at length awaken your
piety, give way to your prudence, or, at least, rouse up
the invincible spirit of the Percies, which never yet
shrunk at any disaster; that you would sometimes
remember the great honours and fortunes of your
family, not always the losses ; cherish those veins of
good humour that are so natural to you, and sear up
those of ill, that would make you so unkind to your
children and to yourself; and, above all, that you
would enter upon the cares of your health and your
life. For my part, I know nothing that could be so
great an honour and a satisfaction to me, as if your
ladyship would own me to have contributed towards
this cure ; but, however, none can perhaps more justly
pretend to your pardon for the attempt, since there is
none, 1 am sure, who has always had at heart a greater
honour for your ladyship's family, nor can have more
esteem for you, than, madam, your most obedient and
">ost humble servant.
[Right of Private JxiAgment in ReligionJ]
Whosoever designs the change of religion in a
country or government, by any other means than that
of a general conversion of the people, or the greatest
part of them, designs all the mischiefs to a nation
that use to usher in, or attend, the two greatest dis-
tempers of a state, civil war or tyranny ; which are
violence, oppression, cruelty, rapine, intemperance,
injustice ; and, in short, the miserable effusion of
human blood, and the confusion of all laws, orders,
and virtues among men.
Such consequences as these, 1 doubt, are something
more than the disputed opinions of any man, or any
particular assembly of men, can be worth ; since the
great and general end of all religion, next to men's
happiness hereafter, is their happiness here ; as ap-
pears by the commandments of God being the best
and greatest moral and civil, as well as divine pre-
cepts, that have been given to a nation ; and by the
rewards proposed to the piety of the .lews, throughout
the Old Testament, which were the blessings of this
life, as health, length of age, number of children,
plenty, peace, or victory.
Now, the way to our future happiness has been per-
rwtually disputed throughout the world, and must be
?oft at last to the impressions made ui)on every man's
belief and conscience, either by natural or super-
natural arguments and means ; which impressions
men may disguise or dissemble, but no man can
resist. For belief is no more in a man's power than
his stature or his feature ; and he that tells me I must
change my opinion for his, because 'tis the truer and
the better, without other arguments that have to me
the force of conviction, may as well tell me I nmst
change my gray eyes for others like his that are black,
because these are lovelier or more in esteem, ile
that tells me I must inform myself, has reason, if I
do it not ; but if I endeavour it all that 1 can, and
perhaps more than ever he did, and yet still differ
from him ; and he that, it may be, is idle, will have
me study on, and inform myself better, and so to the
end of my life, then I easily understand what he
means by informing, which is, in short, that I must
do it till I come to be of his opinion.
If he that, perhaps, pursues his pleasures or inte-
rests as much or more than I do, and allows me to
have as good sense as he has in all other matters, tells
me I should be of his opinion, but that passion or
interest blinds me ; unless he can convince me how
or where this lies, he is but where he was ; only pre-
tends to know me better than I do myself, who cannot
imagine why I should not have as much care of my
soul as he has of his.
A man that tells me my opinions are absurd or
ridiculous, impertinent or unreasonable, because they
differ from his, seems to intend a quarrel instead of a
dispute, and calls me fool, or madman, with a little
more circumstance ; though, perhaps, I pass for one
as well in my senses as he, as pertinent in talk, and
as prudent in life : yet these are the common civilities,
in religious argument, of sufficient and conceited men,
who talk much of right reason, and mean always their
own, and make their private imagination the measure
of general truth. But such language determines all
between us, and the dispute comes to end in three
words at last, which it might as well have ended in
at first. That he is in the right, and I am in the
wrong.
The other great end of religion, which is our happi-
ness here, has been generally agreed on by all man-
kind, as appears in the records of all their laws, as
well as all their religions, which come to be established
by the concurrence of men's customs and opinions;
though in the latter, that concurrence may have been
produced by divine impressions or inspirations. For
all agree in teaching and commanding, in planting
and improving, not only those moral virtues wliich
conduce to the felicity and tranquillity of every
private man's life, but also those manners and dis-
positions that tend to the peace, order, and safety of
all civil societies and governments among men. Nor
could I ever understand how those who call them-
selves, and the world usually calls, religious men, come
to put so great weight upon those points of belief
which men never have agreed in, and so little upon
those of virtue and morality, in which they have
hardly ever disagreed. Nor why a state should ven-
ture the subversion of their peace, and their order,
which are certain goods, and so universally esteemed,
for the propagation of uncertain or contested opinions.
[^Poetical Genius.}
The more true and natural source of poetry may be
discovered by observing to what god this inspiration
was ascribed by the ancients, which was Apollo, or the
sun, esteemed among them the god of learning in
general, but more particularly of music and of j)oetry.
The mystery of this fable means, I suppose, that a
certain noble and vital heat of temper, but especially
of the brain, is the true spring of these two parts or
sciences : this was that celestial fire which gave such
a pleasing motion and agitation to the minds of those
men that have been so much admired in the world,
that raises such infinite images of things so agreeable
504
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
and delightful to mankind ; by the influence of this
sun are produced those golden and inexliausted mines
of invention, which has furnished the world with trea-
sures so highly esteemed, and so universally known
and used, in all the regions that have yet been dis-
covered. From this arises that elevation of genius
which can never be produced by any art or study, by
pains or by industry, which cannot be taught by
precepts or examples ; and therefore is agreed by all
to be the pure and free gift of heaven or of nature,
and to be a fire kindled out of some hidden spark of
the very first conception.
But though invention be the mother of poetry, yet
this child is, like all others, born naked, and must be
nourished with care, clothed with exactness and ele-
gance, educated with industry, instructed with art,
improved by application, corrected with severity, and
accomplished with labour and with time, before it
arrives at any great perfection or growth : 'tis certain
that no composition requires so many several ingre-
dients, or of more different sorts than this ; nor that,
to excel in any qualities, there arc necessary so many
gifts of nature, and so many improvements of learning
and of art. For there must be a universal genius, of
great compass as well as great elevation. There must
be a sprightly imagination or fancy, fertile in a thou-
sand productions, ranging over infinite ground, pierc-
ing into every corner, and, by the light of that true
poetical fire, discovering a thousand little bodies or
images in the world, and similitudes among them,
unseen to common eyes, and which could not be
discovered without the rays of that sun.
Besides the heat of invention and liveliness of wit,
there must be the coldness of good sense and sound-
ness of judgment, to distinguish between things and
conceptions, which, at first sight, or upon short glances,
seem alike ; to choose, among infinite productions of
wit and fancy, which are worth preserving and culti-
vating, and which are better stifled in the birth, or
thrown away when they are born, as not worth bring-
ing up. Without the forces of wit, all poetry is flat
and languishing; without the succours of judgment,
'tis wild and extravagant. The true wit of poesy is,
that such contraries must meet to compose it ; a
genius both penetrating and solid ; in expression both
delicacy and force ; and the frame or fabric of a true
poem must have something both sublime and just,
amazing and agreeable. There must be a great
agitation of mind to invent, a great calm to judge
and correct ; there must be upon the same tree, and
at the same time, both flower and fruit. To work up
this metal into exquisite figure, there must be em-
ployed the fire, the hammer, the chisel, and the file.
There must be a general knowledge both of nature and
of arts, and, to go the lowest that can be, there are
required genius, judgment, and application ; for, with-
out this last, all the. rest will not serve turn, and none
ever was a great poet that applied himself much to
anj'thing else.
^\'hen I speak of poetry, I mean not an ode or an
elegy, a song or a satire ; nor by a poet the composer
of any of these, but of a just poem ; and after all I
have said, 'tis no wonder there should be so few that
appeared in any parts or any ages of the world, or
that such as have should be so much admired, and
have almost divinity ascribed to them and to their
works. * *
I do not here intend to make a further critic upon
poetry, which were too great a labour ; nor to give
rules for it, which were as great a presumption : be-
sides, there has been so much paper blotted upon these
subjects, in this curious and censuring age, that 'tis
all grown tedious, or repetition. The modern French
wits (or pretenders) have been very severe in tlieir
censures, and exact in their rules, I think to very
\ittle purpose; for I know not why they might not
have contented themselves with those given by Aris-
totle and Horace, and have translated them rather
than conmiented upon them; for all they have done
has been no more ; so as they seem, by their writings
of this kind, rather to have valued themselves, than
improved anybody else. The truth is, there is some-
thing in the genius of poetry too libertine to be con-
fined to so many rules ; and whoever goes about to
subject it to sucli constraints, loses both its spirit and
grace, which are ever native, and never learned, even
of the best masters. 'Tis as if, to make excellent
honey, you should cut oft' the wings of your bees, con-
fine them to their hive or their stands, and lay flowert-
before them such as you think the sweetest, and like
to yield the finest extraction ; j'ou had as good pull
out their stings, and make arrant drones of them.
They must range through fields, as well as garden?,
choose such flowers as they please, and by proprie'.i.;.-
and scents they only know and distinguish: t.'itv
must work up their cells with admirable'art, extract
their honey with infinite labour, and sever itfrov: the
wax with such distinction and choice, as beloi.gs to
none but themselves to perform or to judge.
Sir William Temple's Essai/ upon the Ancient and
Modern Learning gave occasion to one of the most
celebrated literary controversies which have oc-
curred in England. The composition of it was
suggested to him principally by a French M-ork of
Charles Perrault, on ' The Age of Louis the Great,'
in which, with the view of flattering the pride of
tlie grand monarqve, it was afhrnied that the writers
of antiquity had been excelled by those of modern
times. Tliis doctrine excited a warm controversy
in France, where the poet Boileau was among those
by whom it was strenuous!}' opposed. It was in
behalf of the ancients that Sir William Temple also
took tlie field. The first of the enemy's arguments
which he controverts, is the allegation, ' tliat we
must have more knowledge than the ancients,
because we have the advantage both of tlieirs and
our own ; just as a dwarf standing upon a giant's
shoulders sees more and farther than he.' To this
he replies, that the ancients may have derived vast
stores of knowledge from their predecessors, namely,
the Cliinese, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syri-
ans, and Jews. Among these nations, says he, 'were
planted and cultivated mighty growtlis of astronomy,
astrology, magic, geometry, natural jiliilosopliy, and
ancient story ; and from tliese sources Orpheus,
Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, and otliers of
tlie ancients, are acknowledged to have drawn all
those depths of knowledge or learning which have
made them so renowned in all succeeding ages.'
Here Temple manifests wonderful ignorance and
credulity in assuming as facts the veriest fables of
the ancients, particularly with respect to Orpheus,
of whom he afterwards speaks in C' injunction with
that equally authentic personage, Arion, and in
reference to whose musical powers ne asks trium-
phantly, 'What are become of the charms of music,
by wliich men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpcjits,
were so frequently' enchanted, andtheir very natures
changed ; by which the passions of men Avcre raised
to the greatest height and violence, and then as sud-
denly appeased, so that they might be justly said
to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into
harts, by tlie powers and cliarms of this admirable
music ?' In the same credulous si)irit, he aflirms
that 'The more ancient sages of Greece appear, by
the characters remaining of them, to have been
much greater men than Hip[)ocrates, IMato, and
Xeno])hon. They were generally princes or lawgivers
of their countries, or at least ottered or invited lu be
so, either of their own or of others, that desired
50.5
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CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1639.
1
them to frame or reform tlieir several institutions of
civil srovcrnment. They were commonly excellent
poets and great physicians: tliey were so learned
in natural "philosophy, that they foretold not only
eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land,
and storms at sea, great drouglits, and great plagues,
much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of
fruits or grain ; not to mention the magical powers
attributed to several of them to allay storms, to
raise gales, to appease commotions of the people, to
make plagues cease; which qualities, whether upon
any ground of trutli or no, yet, if well believed, must
have raised them to that strange height they Avere
at, of common esteem and honour, in their own and
succeeding ages.' The objection occurs to him, as one
likely to be set up by the admirers of modern learn-
ing, that there is no evidence of the existence of
books before those now either extant or on record.
This, however, gives him no alarm : for it is very
doubtful, he tells us, whether books, though they
may be helps to knowledge, and serviceable in dif-
fusing it, ' are necessary ones, or nuich advance anj'
other science beyond the particular records of
actions or registers of time' — as if any example
could be adduced of science having flourished where
tradition was the only mode of handing it down !
His notice of astronomy is equally ludicrous: 'There
is nothing new in astronomy,' says he, ' to vie with
the ancients, latless it be the Copernican system' — a
system which overturns the wliole fabric of ancient
astronomical science, though Temple declares with
great simplicity tliat it ' has made no change in
the conclusions of astronomy.' In comparing ' the
great wits among the moderns' with tlie authors of
antiquity, he mentions no Englishmen except Sir
Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden, leaving Shak-
speare and IMilton altogether out of view. How
little he was qualified to judge of the comparative
merits of ancient and modern authors, is evident not
only from his total ignorance of the Greek language,
but from the very limited knowledge of English lite-
rature evinced by his esteeming Sir Philip Sidney
to be ' both the greatest poet and the noblest genius
of any that have left writings behind them, and
published in ours or any other modern language.'
He farther declares, that after Ariosto, Tasso, and
Spenser, he ' knows none of the moderns that have
made any achievements in heroic poetry worth re-
cording.' Descartes and Hobbes are ' the only new
philosophers that have made entries upon the noble
stage of the sciences for fifteen hundred j-ears past,'
and these ' have by no means eclipsed the lustre of
Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and others of the ancients.'
Bacon, Newton, and Boyle, are not regarded as phi-
losophers at all. But the most unlucky blunder
committed by Temple on this occasion was his
adducing the Greek Epistles of Phalaris in sup-
port of the proposition, that ' the oldest books we
have are still in their kind the best.' These Epis-
tles, says he, 'I think to have more grace, more
spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others
I have seen, either ancient or modern.' Some critics,
he admits, have asserted that they are not the pro-
duction of Phalaris (who lived iu Sicily more than
I five centuries before Christ), but of some writer in
I the declining age of Greek literature. In reply to
these sceptics, he enumerates such transcendent
i excellences of the Epistles, that any man, he thinks,
I ' must have little skill in painting that caimot find
out this to be an original.' The celebrity given to
these Epistles by the publication of Temple's Essay,
led to the appearance of a new edition of them at
Oxford, under the name of Charles Boyle as editor.
Boyle, while preparing it for the press, got into a
quarrel with the celebrated critic Richard Bentley, a
man deeply versed in Greek literature; on whom he
inserted a bitter reflection in his preface. Bentley,
in revenge, demonstrated the Epistles to be a forgery,
taking occasion at the same time to speak some-
what irreverently of Sir "William Temple. Boyle,
with the assistance of Aldrich, Atterbmy, and
other Christ-churcli doctors (who, indeed, were the
real combatants), sent forth a reply, the plausibility
of which seemed to give him the advantage ; till
Bentley, in a most triumphant rejoinder, exposed the
gross ignorance wliich lay concealed under the wit
and assumption of his opponents. To these parties,
however, the controversy was not confined. Boyle
and his friends were backed by the sarcastic powers,
if not by the learning, of Pope, Swift, Garth, Middle-
ton, and others. Swift, who came into the field on
behalf of his patron Sir William Temple, published
on this occasion his famous ' Battle of the Books,'
and to the end of his life continued to speak of Bent-
ley in the language of hatred and contempt. In the
work just mentioned. Swift has ridiculed not only
that scholar, but also his friend the Eev. William
Wotton, who had opposed Temple in a treatise
entitled ' Eeflections upon Ancient and Modern
Learning,' published in 1G94. To some parts of
that treatise Sir William wrote a reply, tlie fol-
lowing passage in which suggested, Ave doubt not,
the satirical account given long afterwards by Swift
in ' Gulliver's Travels,' of the experimental researches
of the jirojectors at Lagoda. 'What has been pro-
duced for the use, benefit, or pleasure of mankind,
by all the airy speculations of those Avho have passed
for the great advancers of knoAvledge and learning
these last fifty years (avIhcIi is the date of our
modern pretenders), I confess I am yet to seek, and
should be veiy glad to find. I have indeed heard cf
wondrous jjretensions and visions of men possessed
with notions of the strange advancement of learning
and sciences, on foot in this age, and the progress
they are like to make in the next ; as the universal
medicine, Avhich Avill certainly cure all that have it ;
the phi'.osopher's stone, which Avill be found out by
men that care not for riches ; the transfusion of
young blood into old men's veins, Avhich Avill make
them as gamesome as the lambs from Avliich 'tis
to be derived ; a universal language, which may
serve all men's turn Avhen they have forgot their
OAvn ; the knoAvlcdge of one another's thoughts
Avithout the grievous trouble of speaking; the art
of filing, till a man happens to fall doAvn and break
his neck ; doul)le-bottomed ships, Avhereof none can
ever be cast a^vay besides the first that Avas made ;
the admirable virtues of that noble and necessary
juice called spittle, Avhicli Avill come to be sold, and
very cheap, in the apothecaries' shops ; discoveries
of ncAv worlds in the planets, and voyages between
this and that in the moon to be made as frequently
as betAA-een York and London: Avhicli such poor
mortals as I am think as wild as those of Ariosto,
but without half so much Avit, or so much instruc-
tion ; for there, these modern sages may kiioAV
where they may hope in time to find their lost
senses, preserved in vials, with those of Orlando.'
■WILLIAM -WOTTON.
William Wotton (1666-1726), a clergyman in
Buckinghamshire, whom we haA'e mentioned as the
author of a reply to Sir William Temple, wrote
various other works, of which none deserves to be
si)ecified except his condemnatory remarks on Swift'fS
' Tale of a Tub.' In childhood, his talent for languages
was so extraordinary and precocious, that Avhen five
years old he was able to read Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, almost as well as English. At the age of
506
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR MATTHEW HALE.
twelve he took the degree of bachelor of arts, pre-
viously to which he had gained an extensive ac-
quaintance with several additional languages, include
ing Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldeu ; as well as with
geography, logic, philosophy, chronology, and ma-
thematics. As in many similar cases, liowever, the
expectations held out by his early jiroficiency were
not justified by any great acliievements in after life.
We quote the following passage from his Reflections
upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1C94), chiefly
because it records the change of manners which
took place among literary men during the seven-
teenth ceuturj-.
[Decline of Pedantry in England.^
The last of Sir William Temple's reasons of the
great decay of modem learning is pedantry ; the
urging of which is an evident argument that his dis-
course is levelled against learning, not as it stands
now, but as it was fifty or sixty years ago. For the
new philosophy has introduced so great a correspon-
dence between men of learning and men of business ;
which has also been increased by other accidents
amongst the masters of other learned professions ; and
that pedantry which formerly was almost universal is
now in a great measure disused, especially amongst
the young men, who are taught in the universities to
laugh at that frequent citation of scraps of Latin in
common discourse, or upon arguments that do not
require it ; and that nauseous ostentation of reading
and scholarship in public companies, which formerly
was so much in fashion. Affecting to write politely
in modern languages, especially the French and ours,
has also helped very much to lessen it, because it has
enabled abundance of men, who wanted academical
education, to talk plausibly, and some exactly, upon
very many learned subjects. This also has made
Writers habitually careful to avoid those imperti-
nences which they know would be taken notice of and
ridiculed ; and it is probable that a careful perusal
of the fine new French books, which of late years have
been greedily sought after by the politer sort of gentle-
men and scholars, may in this particular have done
abundance of good. By this means, and by the help
also of some other concurrent causes, those who were
not learned themselves being able to maintain disputes
with those that were, forced tliem to talk more warily,
and brought them, by little and little, to be out of
countenance at that vain thrusting of their learning
into everything, which before had been but too visible.
SIR MATTHEW HALE.
Sir Matthew Hale (1609—1676) not only ac-
quired some reputation as a literary man, but is
celebrated as one of the most upright judges that
have ever sat upon the English bench. Both in his
studies and in the exercise of his profession he dis-
played uncommon industry, which was favoured by
his acquaintance with Selden, who esteemed hira so
highly as to appoint him his executor. Hale was a
judge both in the time of the commonwealth and
under Charles II., who appointed him chief baron
of the exchequer in 1660, and lord chief-justice of
the king's bench eleven years after. In the former
capacity, one of his most notable and least creditable
acts was the condemnation of some persons accused
of witchcraft at Bury St Edmunds in 1664. Amidst
the immorality of Charles II.'s reign, Sir Matthew
Hale stands out with peculiar lustre as an impartial,
incorruptible, and determined administrator of jus-
tice. Though of a benevolent and devout, as well as
righteous disposition, his manners are said to have
been austere ; he was, moreover, opinionative, and
accessible to flattery. In a previous page, we have
extracted from Baxter a character of tliis estimable
man. Tlie productions of his pen, which are many
and various, relate chiefly to natural philosophy,
divinity, and law. His religious opinions were Cal-
vinistical; and his chief theological work, entitled
Contemplations, Moral and iHrine, retains consider-
able popularitj' among serious peajjle of that persua-
sion. As a specimen of his style, we present a letter
of advice to his children, written about the year
1662.
[On Conversation.}
Dear Children — I thank God I came well to Far-
rington this day, about five o'clock. And as I have
some leisure time at my inn, I cannot spend it more
to my own satisfaction, and your benefit, than, by a
letter, to give you some good counsel. The subject
shall be concerning your speech ; because much of the
good or evil that befalls persons arises from the well
or ill managing of their conversation. When I have
leisure and opportunity, I shall give you my direc-
tions on other subjects.
Never speak anything for a truth which you know
or believe to be false. Lying is a great sin against
God, who gave us a tongue to speak the truth, and
not falsehood. It is a great offence against humanity
itself; for, where there is no regard to truth, there
can be no safe society between man and man. And
it is an injury to the speaker; for, besides the dis-
grace which it brings upon him, it occasions so much
baseness of mind, that he can scarcely tell truth, or
avoid lying, even when he has no colour of necessity
for it ; and, in time, he comes to such a pass, that as
other people cannot believe he speaks truth, so he
himself scarcely knows when he tells a falsehood.
As you must be careful not to lie, so you must
avoid coming near it. You must not equivocate, nor
speak anything positively for which you have no
authority but report, or conjecture, or opinion.
Let your words be few, especially when your supe-
riors, or strangers, are present, lest you betray your
o\^^l weakness, and rob yourselves of "the oi)portunity,
which you might otherwise have had, to gain know-
ledge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those
whom you silence by your impertinent talking.
Be not too earnest, loud, or violent in your conver-
sation. Silence your opponent with reason, not with
noise.
Be careful not to interrupt another when he is
speaking ; hear him out, aiul you will understand
him the better, and be able to give him the better
answer.
Consider before you speak, especially when the busi-
ness is of moment ; weigh the sense of what you mean
to utter, and the expressions you intend to use, that
they may be significant, pertinent, and inoffensive.
Inconsiderate persons do not think till they speak ;
or they speak, and then think.
Some men excel in husbandry, some in gardening,
some in mathematics. In conversation, learn, as near
as you can, where the skill or excellence of any per-
son lies ; put him upon talking on that subject, ob-
serve what he says, keep it in your memory, or com-
mit it to writing. By this means you will glean the
worth and knowledge of eveiybody you converse with ;
and, at an easy rate, acquire what may be of use to
you on many occasions.
When you are in company with light, vain, imper-
tinent persons, let the observing of their failings make
you the more cautious both in your conversation with
them and in your general behaviour, that you may
avoid their errors.
If any one, whom you do not know to be a person
of truth, sobriety, and weight, rclatvs strange stories,
be not too ready to believe or report them ; and yet
507
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
(unless he is one of your familiar acquaintance) be
not too forward to contradict him. If the occasion
requires jou to declare your opinion, do it modestly
and pentiv, not bluntly nor coarsely ; by this means
you will avoid giving offence, or being abused for too
much credulity.
If a man, whose integrity you do not very well
know, makes you great and extraordinary professions,
do not give much credit to him. Probably, you will
find that he aims at something besides kindness to
vou, and that when he has served his turn, or been
disappointed, his regard for you will grow cool.
Beware also of him who flatters you, and commends
you to j-our face, or to one who he thinks will tell
you of it ; most probably he has either deceived and
abused you, or moans to do so. Remember the fable
of the fox commending the singing of the crow, who
had something in her mouth which the fox wanted.
Be careful that you do not commend yourselves.
It is a sign that your reputation is small and sinking,
if your own tongue must praise you ; and it is fulsome
and unpleasing to others to hear such commenda-
tions.
Speak well of the absent whenever jou have a suit-
able opportunity. Never speak ill of them, or of
anybody, unless you are sure they deserve it, and
unless it is necessary for their amendment, or for the
safety and benefit of others.
Avoid, in your ordinary communications, not only
oaths, but all imprecations and earnest protestations.
Forbear scoifing and jesting at the condition or
natural defects of anj' person. Such ofiences leave
a deep impression ; and they often cost a man dear.
Be very careful that you give no reproachful, me-
nacing, or spiteful words to any person. Good words
make friends ; bad words make enemies. It is great
prudence to gain as many friends as we honestly can,
especialh' when it may be done at so easy a rate as a
good word ; and it is great folly to make an enemy
by ill words, which are of no advantage to the party
who uses them. When faults are committed, they
may, and by a superior' they must, be reproved : but
let it be done without reproach or bitterness ; other-
wise it will lose its due end and use, and, instead of
reforming the offence, it will exasperate the offender,
and lay the reprover justly open to reproof.
If a person be passionate, and give you ill language,
rather pity him than be moved to anger. You will
find that silence, or very gentle words, are the most
exquisite revenge for reproaches ; they will either cure
the distemper in the angry man, and make him
son-y for his passion, or they will be a severe reproof
and punishment to him. But, at any rate, the}' will
preserve your innocence, give you the deserved repu-
tation of wisdom and moderation, and keep up the
serenity and composure of your mind. Passion and
anger make a man unfit for everything that becomes
him as a man or as a Christian.
Never utter any profane speeches, nor make a jest
of any Scripture expressions. When you pronounce
the name of God or of Christ, or repeat any passages
or words of Holy Scripture, do it with reverence and
eeriousness, and not lightly, for that is 'taking the
name of God in vain.'
If you hear of any unseemly expressions used in
religious exercises, do not publish them ; endeavour
to forget them ; or, if you mention them at all, let it
be with pity and sorrow, not with derision or reproach.
Read these directions often ; think of them seri-
ously ; and practise them diligently. You will find
them useful in your conversation ; which will be every
day the more evident to you, as your judgment,
understanding, and experience increase.
I have little further to add at this time, but my
wi<h and command that you will remember the former
wunsels that I have frequently given you. Begin and
end the daj' with private prayer ; read the Scriptures
often and seriously ; be attentive to the public wor-
ship of God. Keep yourselves in some useful employ-
ment ; for idleness is the nurserj' of vain and sinful
thoughts, which corrupt the mind, and disorder the
life. Be kind and loving to one another Honour
your minister. Be not bitter nor harsh to my ser-
vants. Be respectful to all. Bear my absence pa-
tiently and cheerfully. Behave as if I were present
among you and saw you. Remember, you have a
greater Father than I am, who always, and in all
places, beholds you, and knows your hearts and
thoughts. Study to requite my love and care for you
with dutifulness, observance, and obedience ; and
account it an honour that you have an opportunity,
by your attention, faithfulness, and industry, to pay
some part of that debt which, by the laws of nature
and of gratitude, you owe to me. Be frugal in my
family, but let there be no want ; and provide con-
veniently for the poor.
I pray God to fill your hearts with his grace, fear,
and love, and to let you see the comfort and advan-
tage of serving him ; and that his blessing, and pre-
sence, and direction, may be with you, and over you
all. — I am your ever loving father.
England, during the latter half of the seventeenth
century, was adorned by three illustrious philoso-
phers, who, besides making important contributions
to science, were distinguished by the simplicity and
moral excellence of their personal character, and an
ardent devotion to tlie interests of religion, virtue,
and truth. We allude to John Locke, Robert Boyle,
and Sir Isaac Newton.
JOHX LOCKE.
John Locke, the son of a gentleman in Somerset-
shire, was bora in 1632, and after receiving his ele-
mentary education at Westminster school, com-
pleted his studies at Christ-church college, Oxford.
In the latter city ho resided from 1651 till 1664»
508
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN LOCKE.
during which period he became distrusted with the
verbal subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy,
wliich he found unfruitful and devoid of practical
utility. Having chosen the profession of medicine,
he made considerable progress in the necessary
studies; but finding the delicacy of his constitution
an obstacle to successful practice, he at length aban-
doned his design. In 1664, he accompanied, in the
capacity of secretary, Sir "Walter Yane, who was sent
by Charles II. as envoy to tlie Elector of Branden-
burg during the Dutch war : some lively and inte-
resting letters written by him from Germany on this
occasion have recently been published by Lord King.
Those who are acquainted with Locke only in the
character of a grave philosopher, will peruse with
interest the following humorous account, which he
gives to one of his friends, of some Christmas reli-
gious ceremonies witnessed by him in a churcli at
Cleves. ' About one in the morning I went a gos-
siping to our lady. Think me not profane, for the
name is a great deal modester than the service I
was at. I shall not describe all tlie particulars I
observed in that church, being the principal of the
Catholics in Cleves ; but only those that were par-
ticular to the occasion. Near the high altar was a
little altar for this day's solemnity ; the scene was a
stable, wherein was an ox, an ass, a cradle, the Vir-
gin, the babe, Joseph, shepherds, and angels, dra-
matis personaj. Had they but given them motion, it
had been a perfect puppet play, and miglit have de-
served pence a-piece ; for tliey were of the same size
and make that our English puppets are ; and I am
confident these shepherds and this Joseph are kin
to that Judith and Holoiihernes which I have seen
at Bartholomew fair. A little witliout the stable
was a flock of sheep, cut out of cards ; and these, as
they then stood without their shepherds, appeared
to me the best emblem I had seen a long time, and
methought represented these poor innocent people,
who, whilst their shepherds pretend so much to
follow Christ, and pay their devotion to him, are
left unregarded in tlie barren wilderness. This was
the show : the music to it was all vocal in tlie quire
adjoining, but such as I never heard. They had
strong voices, but so ill-tuned, so ill-managed, that
it was their misfortune, as well as ours, that they
could be heard. He that could not, though he had
a cold, make better music with a chevy chase over a
pot of smooth ale, deserved well to pay the reckon-
ing, and go away athirst. However, I think they
were the honestest singing-men I have ever seen,
for they endeavoured to deserve their money, and
earned it certainly with pains enough ; for what
they wanted in skiU, tliey made up in loudness and
variety. Every one had his own tune, and the result
of all was like the noise of choosing parliament men,
where every one endeavours to cry loudest. Besides
the men, there were a company of little choristers ;
I thought, when I saw them first, they had danced
to the other's music, and that it had been your
Gray's Inn revels ; for they were jumping up and
down about a good charcoal fire that was in the
middle of the quire (this tlieir devotion and their
singing \» as enough, I think, to keep them warm,
though it were a very cold night) ; but it was not
dancing, but singing they served for ; for when it
came to their turns, away they ran to their places,
and there they made as good harmony as a concert
of little pigs would, and they were much about as
cleanly. Their part being done, out they sallied
again to the fire, where they played till their cue
called them, and then back to tlieir places they
huddled. So negligent and slight are they in their
service in a place where the nearness of adversaries
might teach them to be more careful.' In this and
other letters, he continues in the same iinniorous
strain.
In the same year, Locke returned to Oxford, wliere
he soon afterwards received an offer of considerable
preferment in the Irish church, if lie should think fit
to take orders. Tliis, after due consideration, he
declined. 'A man's affairs and whole course of liis
life,' says he, in a letter to the friend who made the
proposal to him, ' are not to be changed in a moment,
and one is not made fit for a calling, and that in a
day. I believe you think me too proud to undertake
anything wherein I sliould acquit myself but un-
worthily. I am sure I cannot content myself with
being undermost, possibly the middlemost, of my
profession ; and you will allow, on consideration,
care is to be taken not to engage in a calling where-
in, if one chance to be a bungler, there is no retreat.
''' * It is not enough for such places to be in
orders, and I cannot tliink that preferment of that
nature should be tlirown upon a man who has never
given any proof of himself, nor ever tried tlie pulpit.'
In 1666, Locke became acquainted with Lord Ash-
ley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury ; and so valuable
did his lordship find the medical advice and general
conversation of the philosopher, that a close and
permanent friendship sprang up between them, and
Birthplace of Locke.
Locke became an inmate of his lordship's house.
This brought him into the society of Sheffield, Duke
of Buckingham, the Earl of Halifax, and other cele-
brated wits of the time, to whom his conversation
was highly acceptable. An anecdote is told of him,
which shows the easy terms on which he stood with
these noblemen. On an occasion when several of them
were met at Lord Ashley's house, the party, soon
after assembling, sat down to cards, so that scarcely
any conversation took place. Locke, after looking
on for some time, took out his note-book, and began
to write in it, with mucli appearance of gravity and
deliberation. One of the party observing tliis, in-
quired wliat he was writing. ' My lord,' he replied,
' I am endeavouring to profit as far as I am able in
your company ; for having waited with impatience
for the honour of being in an assembly of the greatest
geniuses of the age, and having at length obtained
509
FR, M 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
this good fortune, I thought that I could not do
better than write down j-our conversation ; and in-
deed I have set down the substance of what has been
said for this hour or two.' A very brief specimen
of what he liad written was sufficient to make the
objects of his irony abandon the card-table, and en-
gage in rational discourse. While residing with
Lord Ashley, Locke superintended the education,
first of his lordship's son, and subsequently of his
grandson, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who figured
as an elegant philosophical and moral writer in
tlie reign of Queen Anne. In 1672, when Lord
Ashley received an earldom and the office of chan-
cellor, he gave Locke the appointment of secretary
of presentations, which the philosopher enjoyed
only till the following year, when his patron lost
favour with the court, and was deprived of the seals.
The delicate state of Locke's health induced him in
1675 to visit France, where he resided several years,
first at Montpelier, and afterwards at Paris, where
he had opportunities of cidtivating the acquaintance
of the most eminent French literary men of the day.
Seal of Locke.
When Shaftesbury regained power for a brief season
in 1679, he recalled Locke to England ; and, on tak-
ing refuge in Holland three years afterwards, was
followed thither by his friend, whose safety likewise
was in jeopardy, from the connexion which subsisted
between them. After the death of his patron in
1683, Locke found it necessary to prolong liis stay
in Holland, and even there was obliged by the ma-
chinations of his political enemies at home, to live
for upwards of a year in concealment; in 1686, how-
ever, it became safe for him to appear in public, and
in tbe following year he instituted, at Amsterdam, a
literary society, the members of which (among whom
were Le Clerc, Limborch, and other learned indivi-
duals,) met weekly for the purpose of enjoying each
otlier's conversation. The revolution of 1688 finally
restored Locke to his native country, to which
he was conveyed by the fleet that brought over the
princess of Orange. He now became a prominent
defender of civil and religious liberty, in a succes-
sion of works which have exerted a highly benefi-
cial influence on subsequent generations, not only
in Britain, but tliroughout the civilised world.
While in Holland, he had written, in Latin, A
Letter concerving Toleration : this appeared at Gouda
in 1689, and translations of it were immediately pub-
lished in Dutch, French, and English. The liberal
opinions which it maintained were controverted by
an Oxford writer, in reply to whom Locke succes-
sively wrote three additional Letters. In 1690 was
published his most celebrated work. An Essaij con-
cerning Human Understanding. In tbe composition of
this treatise, which his retirement in Holland afforded
him leisure to finish, he had been engaged for
eighteen years. His object in writing it is tlnis ex-
plained in the prefatory epistle to the reader : —
' Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this
essay, I should tell thee that five or six friends meet-
ing at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very
remote from this, found themselves quickly at a
stand by the difficulties that rose on everj' side.
After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without
coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts wliich
perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took
a wrong course, and that, before we set ourselves
upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessarj' to
examine our own abilities, and see what objects our
understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with.
This I proposed to the company, who all readily
assented ; and thereupon it was agreed tliat this
should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and \m-
digested thoughts on a subject I had never before
considered, which I set down against our next meet-
ing, gave the first entrance into this discourse ; which
having been thus begun by chance, was continued
by intreaty, written by incoherent parcels ; and after
long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my
humour or occasions permitted ; and at last, in a re-
tirement where an attendance on my health gave me
leisure, it was brought into that order thou scest it.'
In proceeding to treat of the subject originally pro-
posed, he found his matter increase upon his hands,
and was gradually led into other fields of investiga-
tion. It hence happens, that of the four books of
wliich the essay consists, only tlie last is devoted to
an inquiry into the objects within the sphere of the
human understanding. Of the contents of the com-
pleted work, the following summar}' will perhaps
impart to the reader as definite an idea as our limited
space will allow to be conveyed : — ' After clearing
the waj' by setting aside the whole doctrine of innate
notions and principles, both speculative and practi-
cal, the author traces all ideas to two sources, sensa-
tion and reflection ; treats at large of the nature of
ideas simple and complex ; of the operation of tlie
human understanding in forming, distinguishing,
compounding, and associating them ; of the manner
in which words are applied as representations of
ideas ; of the difficulties and obstructions in the
search after truth, which arise from the imperfec-
tion of these signs ; and of the nature, reality, kinds,
degrees, casual hindrances, and necessary limits of
human knowledge.'* The most valuable portions of the
work are the fourth book, already mentioned, and tlie
tliird, in which the author treats of the nature and
imperfections of language. Tlie first and second
books are on subjects of comparatively little appli-
cability to practical purposes, and, moreover, con-
tain doctrines which have been much controverted
by subsequent philosophers, and seem to be not
always consistent with each other. The style of the
work is plain, clear, and expressive ; and, as it was
designed for general perusal, there is a frequent em-
ployment of colloquial phraseology. Locke hated
scholastic jargon, and wrote in language intelligible
to every man of common sense. ' No one,' says his
pupil, Shaftesburj% ' has done more towards tlie re-
calling of philosophy from barbarity, into the use and
practice of the world, and into the company of the
better and politer sort, who might well be ashamed
of it in its other dress. 'f The influence of the ' Essay
on Human Understanding' upon the aims and habits
of philosophical inquirers, as well as upon the minds
of educated men in general, has been extremely bene-
ficial. ' Few books,' says Sir James Mackintosh,
* Enfield's Abridgment of Brucker's History of Philosophy,
t Shaftesbury's Correspondence, February 17(>7.
510
rf=
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN LOCKS.
• have contributed more to rectify prejudice; to under-
mine established errors, to diffuse a just mode of
thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and
yet to contain it within the boundaries which nature
has prescribed to the human understanding. An
amendment of the general habits of thought is, in
most parts of knowledge, an object as important as
even the discovery of new truths, though it is not so
palpable, nor in its nature so capable of being esti-
mated by superficial observers. In the mental and
moral world, which scarcely admits of anything
which can be called discovery, the correction of the
intellectual habits is probably the greatest service
which can be rendered to science. In this respect,
the merit of Locke is unrivalled. His writings have
diffused throughout the civilised world the love of
civil Uberty ; the spirit of toleration and charity in
religious differences ; the disposition to reject what-
ever is obscure, fantastic, or hypothetical in specu-
lation ; to reduce verbal disputes to their proper
value ; to abandon problems which admit of no solu-
tion ; to distrust whatever cannot be clearly ex-
pressed ; to render theory the simple expression of
facts ; and to prefer those studies which most directly
contribute to human happiness. If Bacon first dis-
covered the rules by which knowledge is improved,
Locke has most contributed to make mankind at
large observe them. He has done most, though often
by remedies of silent and almost insensible operation,
to cure those mental distempers which obstructed
the adoption of these rules ; and thus led to that
general diffusion of a healthful and vigorous under-
standing, which is at once the greatest of all improve-
ments, and the instrument by which all other im-
provements must be accomplished. He has left to
posterity the instructive example of a prudent refor-
mer, and of a philosophy temperate as well as liberal,
which spares the feelings of the good, and avoids
direct hostility with obstinate and formidable pre-
judice. These benefits are very slightly counter-
balanced by some political doctrines liable to mis-
application, and by the scepticism of some of his
ingenious followers, an inconvenience to which every
philosophical school is exposed, which does not
steadily limit its theory to a mere exposition of ex-
perience. If Locke made few discoveries, Socrates
made none. Yet both did more for the improvement
of the understanding, and not less for the progress of
knowledge, than the authors of the most brilliant
discoveries.'*
In 1690, Locke published two Treatises on Civil
Government, in defence of the principles of the Revo-
lution against the Tories ; or, as he expresses himself,
' to establish the throne of our great restorer, our
present King William ; to make good his title in the
consent of the people, which, being the only one of
all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly
than any prince in Christendom ; and to justify to
the world the people of England, whose love of their
just and natural rights, with their resolution to pre-
serve them, saved the nation when it was on the very
brink of slavery and ruin.' The chief of his other
productions are Thoughts concerning Education (1G93),
The Reasonableness of Christianity {\G9^>), two Vin-
dications of that work (1696), and an admirable
tract On the Conduct of the Understanding, printed
after the author's death. A theological controversy
in which he engaged with Stihingfleet, bishop of
Worcester, has already been spoken of in our account
of that prelate. Many letters and miscellaneous
pieces of Locke have been published, partly in the
beginning of last century, and partly by Lord King
in his recent Ufe of the philosopher.
* Edinburgh Review, vol. ixxvi, p. 243.
In reference to the writings of Locke, Sir James
Mackintosh observes, that justly to understand their
character, it is necessary to take a deliberate survey
of the circumstances in which tlie writer was placed.
'Educated among tlie English dissenters, during the
sliort period of their political ascendency, he early
imbibed that deep piety and ardent spirit of liberty
which actuated that body of men ; and he probably
imbibed also in their schools the disposition to me-
taphysical inquiries which has everywhere accom-
panied the Calvinistic theology. Sects founded in
the right of private judgment, naturally tend to
purify themselves from intolerance, and in time learn
to respect in others the freedom of thought to tlie
exercise of which they owe their own existence. By
the Independent divines, who were his instructors,
our philosopher was taught those principles of reli-
gious liberty whicli they were tlie first to disclose to
the world.* Wlien free inquiry led him to milder
dogmas, he retained the severe morality which was
their honourable singularity, and which continues to
distinguish their successors in those communities
which have abandoned their rigorous opinions. His
professional pursuits afterwards engaged him in the
study of the physical sciences, at the moment when
the spirit of experiment and observation was in its
youtliful fervour, and when a repugnance to scholas-
tic subtleties was the ruling passion of the scientific
world. At a more mature age, he was admitted into
the society of great wits and ambitious politicians.
During the remainder of his life, he was often a man
of business, and always a man of the world, witliout
much undisturbed leisure, and probablj' with that
abated relisli for merely abstract speculation which
is the inevitable result of converse with society and
experience in affairs. But his political connexions
agreeing with liis earl}' bias, made him a zealous ad-
vocate of liberty in opinion and in government ; and
he gradually limited his zeal and activity to the illus-
tration of such general principles as are the guardians
of these great interests of human society. Almost
all his writings, even his essay itself, were occasional,
and intended directly to counteract the enemies of
reason and freedom in his own age. The first letter
on toleration, the most original perliaps of his works,
was composed in Holland, in a retirement wliere he
was forced to conceal himself from the tyranny which
pursued him into a foreign land ; and it was pub-
lished in England in the year of the Revolution, to
vindicate the toleration act, of which the author
lamented the imperfection.'f
On the continent, the principal works of Locke
became extensively known through the medium of
translations into French. They seem to have been
attentively studied by Voltaire, who, in his writings
on toleration and free inquiry, has diffused still far-
ther, and in a more popular shape, the doctrines of
the English philosopher.
Immediately after the Revolution, employment in
the diplomatic service was offered to Locke, who
decUned it on tlie ground of ill health. In 1695,
having aided government with his advice on the sub-
ject of the coin, he was appointed a member of t)ie
Board of Trade, which office, however, the same cause
quickly obliged him to resign. Tlie last years of his
existence were spent at Gates, in Essex, the seat of
Sir Francis Mashani, who had invited him to make
that mansion his home. Lady ]\fasham. a daugliter
of l)r Cudworth, and to whom Locke was attaclied
by strong ties of friendship, palliated by lier atten-
tion the infirmities of his declining years. The
* ' Orme's Memoirs of Dr Owen, pp. 09-110. London, I82fi. lu
this very able volume, it ig clc:vrly proved tli.it the Iude))en-
dents were the first teachers of religious liberty."
t Edinbure-h Roview, vol. xxxvi, p. 229.
511
r
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
death of tliis excellent man took place in 1704,
wlien lie had attained the age of seventy-two.
In the following selection of passages from his
works, we shall endeavour to display at once the
general character of the author's thoughts and opi-
nions, and the style in which they are expressed.
[^Caioses of WeaJcness in Men^s Understandings. 1
There is, it is visible, great variety in men's under-
starjdings, and their natural constitutions put so wide
a diflerence between some men in this respect, that
art and industry would never be able to master ; <and
their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise
on it that which other men easily attain unto.
Amongst men of equal education there is a great in-
equality of parts. And the woods of America, as well
as the schools of Athens, produce men of several abi-
lities in the same kind. Though this be so, yet I
imagine most men come very short of what they might
attain unto in their several degrees, by a neglect of
their understandings. A few rules of logic are thought
sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the
highest improvement ; whereas I think there are a
great many natural defects in the understanding ca-
pable of amendment, which are overlooked and wholly
neglected. And it is easy to perceive that men are
guilty of a great many faults in the exercise and im-
provement of this faculty of the mind, which hinder
them in their progress, and keep them in ignorance
and error all their lives. Some of them I shiiU take
notice of, and endeavour to point out proper remedies
for, in the following discourse.
Besides the want of determined ideas, and of saga-
city and exercise in finding out and laying in order
intermediate ideas, there are three miscarriages that
men are guilty of in reference to their reason, where-
by this faculty is hindered in them from that service
it might do and was designed for. And he that re-
flects upon the actions and discourses of mankind,
will find their defects in this kind very frequent and
very observable.
1. The first is of those who seldom reason at all,
but do and think according to the example of others,
whether parents, neighbours, ministers, or who else
they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit
faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and
trouble of thinking and examining for themselves.
2. The second is of those who put passion in the
place of reason, and being resolved that shall govern
their actions and arguments, neither use their own,
nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than
it suits their humour, interest, or party ; and tliese,
one may observe, commonly content themselves with
words which have no distinct ideas to them, though,
in other matters, that they come with an unbiassed
indifferency to, they want not abilities to talk and
hear reason, where they have no secret inclination
that hinders them from being untractable to it.
3. The third sort is of those who readily and sin-
cerely follow reason, but for want of having that which
one may call large, sound, round-about sense, have not
a full view of all that relates to the question, and may
be of moment to decide it. We are all short-sighted,
and very often sec but one side of a matter ; our views
are not extended to all that has a connexion with it.
From this defect, I think, no man is free. We see
but in part, and we know but in part, and therefore
it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial
views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of
his own parts how useful it is to talk and consult
with others, even such as came short with him in capa-
city, quickness, and penetration ; for, since no one
t sees all, and we generally have different prospects of
! the same thing, according to our different, as I may
i (ay, positions to it, it is not incongruous to think, nor
1
beneath any man to try, whether iinother may not
have notions of things which have escaped him, and
which his reason would make use of if they came into
his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never
deceives those who trust to it ; its consequences from
what it builds on are evident and certain ; but that
which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is, that
the principles from which we conclude, the grounds
upon which we bottom our reasoning, are but a part ;
something is left out which should go into the reckon-
ing to make it just and exact. * *
In this we may see the reason why some men of
study and thought, that reason right, and are lovers
of truth, do make no great advances in their dis-
coveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly blended
in their minds, their decisions are lame and defective,
and they are very often misttaken in their judgments.
The reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort
of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not
come in the hearing but of one sort of notions ; the
truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen
in the intellectual world, where light shines, and, as
they conclude, day blesses them ; but the rest of that
vast expansum they give up to night and darkness,
and so avoid coming near it. They have a petty traf-
fic with known correspondents in some little creek ;
within that they confine themselves, and are dexterous
managers enough of the wares and products of that
corner with which they content themselves, but will
not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to
survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts
with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful,
than what has fallen to their lot in the admired plenty
and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them
contains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those
who live thus mewed up within their own contracted
territories, and will not look abroad beyond the bound-
aries that chance, conceit, or laziness, has set to their
inquiries, but live separate from the notions, dis-
courses, and attainments of the rest of mankind, may
not amiss be represented by the inhabitants of the
Marian islands, which, being separated by a large
tract of sea from all communion with the habitable
parts of the earth, thought themselves the only people
of the world. And though the straitness and con-
veniences of life amongst them had never reached s«
far as to the use of fire, till the Spaniards, not manj
years since, in their voyages from Acapulco to Manilla
brought it amongst them, yet, in the want and igno-
rance of almost all things, they looked upon them-
selves, even after that the Spaniards had brought
amongst them the notice of variety of nations abound-
ing in sciences, arts, and conveniences of life, of which
they knew nothing, they looked upon themselves, I
say, as the happiest and wisest people in the universe.
[Practice and Hahit.']
We are bom with faculties and powers capable
almost of anything, such at least as would carry us
fiirther than can be easily imagined ; but it is only
the exercise of those powers which gives us ability
and skill in anything, and leads us towards perfec-
tion.
A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be
brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman,
though his body be as well proportioned, and his
joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way
inferior. The legs of a dancing-master, and the fingers
of a musician, fall, as it were, naturally without
thought or pains into regular and admirable motions.
Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain
endeavour to produce like motions in the members
not used to them, and it will require length of time
and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like
ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do
£i2
rBOSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN I.OCKE.
we find rope-diincers and tumblers bring tlicir bodies
to ! not but that sundrj' in almost all manual arts
are as wonderful ; but I name those which the world
takes notice of for such, because, on that very account,
they give money to see them. All these admired mo-
tioi s, bevond the reach and almost the conception of
unpractised spectators, are nothing but the mere effects
of use and industry in men, whose bodies hare nothing
peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers on.
As it is in the body, so it is in the mind ; i)ractice
makes it what it is ; and most even of those excel-
lencies which are looked on as natural endowments,
will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to
be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that
pitch oniv by repeated actions. Some men are re-
marked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apo-
logues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to
be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the
rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who
excel in either of them, never purposely set themselves
to the study of it as an art to be leamt. But yet it
is true, that at first some lucky hit which took with
somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged
him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endea-
vours that wa}-, till at last he insensibly got a facility
in it without perceiving how ; and that is attributed
wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of
use and practice. I do not deny that natural dispo-
sition may often give the first rise to it ; hut that
■never carries a man far without use and exercise, and
it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind
as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many
a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never
produces anything for want of improvement. We see
the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different,
sven concerning the same matter, at court and in the
university. And he that will go but from Westmin-
ster-hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius
and turn in their ways of talking ; and one cannot
think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with
different parts from those who were bred at the uni-
versity or inns of court.
To what purpose all this, but to show that the dif-
ference, so observable in men's understandings and
parts, does not arise so much from the natural facul-
ties, as acquired habits ? He would be laughed at
that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a
country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not have
much better success who shall endeavour at that age
to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who
has never been used to it, though you should lay be-
fore him a collection of all the best precepts of logic
or oratory. Kobody is made anything by hearing of
rules, or laying them up in his memory ; practice
must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on
the rule ; and you may as well hope to make a good
painter or musician, extempore, by a lecture and in-
struction in the arts' of music and painting, as a co-
herent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules,
showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
This being so, that defects and weakness in men's
understandings, as well as other faculties, come from
want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to
think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and
there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the
fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. ^Ve
see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in
making a bargain, who, if you reason with them about
matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid.
[Prejv{lices.1
Every one is fonvard to complain of the prejudices
that mislead other men or parties, as if he were free,
and had none of his own. This being objected on all
gides, it IS agreed that it is a fault, and a hindrance
to knowledge. What, noAV, is the cure? No other
but this, that every man should let alone others' jire-
judices, and examine his own. Nobody is convinced
of his by the accusation of another : he recriminates
by the same rule, and is clear. Tlie only way to
remove this great cause of ignorance and error out of
the world, is for every one impartially to examine
himself. If others will not deal fairly with their own
minds, does that make my errors truths, or ought it
to make me in love with them, and willing to impose
on myself! If others love cataracts on their eyes,
should that hinder me from couching of mine as
soon as I could ? Every one declares against blind-
ness, and yet who almost is not fond of that which
dims his sight, and keeps the clear light out of his
mind, which should lead him into truth and know-
ledge ? False or doubtful positions, relied upon as
unquestionable maxims, keep those in the dark from
truth who build on them. Such are usually the
prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence,
fashion, interest, &;c. This is the mote which every
one sees in his brother's eye, but never regards the
beam in his o\vn. For who is there almost that is ever
brought fairly to examine his own principles, and see
whether they are such as will bear the trial? But
yet this should be one of the firet things every one
should set about, and be scrupulous in, who would
righth' conduct his understanding in the search of
truth and knowledge.
To those who are willing to get rid of this great
hindrance of knowledge (for to such only I ^vrite) ; to
those who would shake oft" this great and dangerous
impostor Prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the
likeness of truth, and so dexterously hoodwinks men's
minds, as to keep them in the dark, with a belief that
they are more in the light than any that do not see
with their eyes, I shall offer this one mark whereby
prejudice may be known. He that is strongly of any
opinion, must suppose (unless he be self-condemned)
that his persuasion is built upon good grounds, and
that his assent is no greater than what the evidence
of the truth he holds forces him to ; and that they are
arguments, and not inclination or fancy, that make
him so confident and positive in his tenets. Now if,
after all his profession, he cannot bear any opposition
to his opinion, if he cannot so much as give a patient
hearing, much less examine and weigh the arguments
on the other side, does he not plainly confess it is
prejudice governs him ? And it is not evidence of
truth, but some lazy anticipation, some beloved pre-
sumption, that he desires to rest undisturbed in. For
if what he holds be as he gives out, well fenced with
evidence, and he sees it to be true, what need he fear
to put it to the proof? If his opinion be settled upon
a firm foundation, if the arguments that support it,
and have obtained his assent, be clear, good, and con-
vincing, why should he be shy to have it tried whether
they be proof or not '. He whose assent goes beyond
his evidence, owes this excess of his adherence only
to prejudice, and does, in effect, own it when he re-
fuses to hear what is offered against it ; declaring
thereby, that it is not evidence he seeks, but the
quiet enjoyment of the opinion he is fond of, with a
forward condemnation of all that may stand in oppo-
sition to it, unheard and unexamined.
[Injudicious Haste in Stiuly.]
The eagerness and strong bent of the mind aftep
knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often a hin-
drance to it. It still presses into farther discoveries
and new objects, and catches at the variety of know-
ledge, and therefore often stays not long enough on
what is before it, to look into it as it should, for haste
to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post
through a country may be able, from the transient
513
34
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
Tiew, to tell in general how the parts lie, and may be
able to give some loose description of here a mountain
and there a plain, here a morass and there a river ;
woodland in one part and savannahs in another. Such
superlicial ideas and observations as these he may
collect in galloping over it ; but the more useful ob-
servations of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabi-
tants, with their several sorts and properties, must
necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever
discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature
commonly lodges her treasures and jewels in rocky
ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies
deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick
upon it with labour and thought, and close contem-
plation, and not leave it until it has mastered the dif-
ficulty and got possession of truth. But here care must
be taken to avoid the other extreme : a man must not
stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries of
science in every trivial question or scruple that he
may raise. He that will stand to pick up and exa-
mine every pebble that comes in his way, is as un-
likely to return enriched and laden with jewels, as
the other that travelled full speed. Truths are not
the better nor the worse for their obviousness or diffi-
culty, but their value is to be measured by their
usefulness and tendency. Insignificant observations
should not take up any of our minutes ; and those
that enlarge our view, and give light towards further
and useful discoveries, should not be neglected, though
they stop our course, and spend some of our time in
a fixed attention.
There is another haste that does often, and will,
mislead the mind, if it be left to itself and its own
conduct. The understanding is naturally forward,
not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which
makes it skip over one to get speedily to another part
of knowledge), but also eager to enlarge its views by
running too fast into general observations and con-
clusions, without a due examination of particulars
enough whereon to found those general axioms. This
seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies, not
realities ; such theories, built upon narrow founda-
tions, stand but weakly, and if they fall not them-
selves, are at least very hardly to be supported against
the assaults of opposition. And thus men, being too
hasty to erect to themselves general notions and ill-
grounded theories, find themselves deceived in their
stock of knowledge, when they come to examine their
hastily assumed maxims themselves, or to have them
attacked by others. General observations, dra^vn from
particulars, are the jewels of knowledge, comprehend-
ing great store in a little room ; but they are there-
fore to be made with the greater care and caution,
lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame
will be the greater, when our stock comes to a severe
scrutiny. One or two particulars may suggest hints
of inquiry, and they do well who take those hints ;
but if they turn them into conclusions, and make
them presently general rules, they are forward indeed ;
but It is only to Impose on themselves by propositions
assumed for truths without sufficient warrant. To
make such observations, is, as has been already re-
marked, to make the head a magazine of materials,
which can hardly be called knowledge, or at least it
is but like a collection of lumber not reduced to use
or order ; and he that makes everything an observa-
tion, has the same useless plenty, and much more
falsehood mixed with it. The extremes on both sides
are to be avoided ; and he will be able to give the
best account of his studies, who keeps his understand-
ing in the right mean between them.
[Pleasure and Pain.']
The infinitely wise Author of our being, having
p»T«n us the power over several parts of our bodies, to
move or keep them at rest, as we think fit ; and also,
by the motion of them, to move ourselves and conti-
guous bodies, in which consists all the actions of our
body ; having also given a power to our mind, in seve-
ral instances, to choose amongst its ideas wliich it vrill
think on, and to pursue the inquiry of this or that
subject with consideration and attention ; to excite
us to these actions of thinking and mijtion that we
are capable of, has been pleased to join to several
thoughts, and several sensations, a perception of de-
light. If this were wholly separated from all our out-
ward sensations and inward thoughts, we should have
no reason to prefer one thought or action to another,
negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so
we should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our
minds ; but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run
adrift, without any direction or design ; and suffer the
ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to make
their appearances there, as it liappened, witliout at-
tending to them. In which state, man, however fur-
nished with the faculties of understanding and will,
would be a very idle inactive creature, and pass his
time only in a lazy lethargic dream. It has, there-
fore, pleased our wise Creator to annex to several ob-
jects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as
also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant plea-
sure, and that in several objects to several degrees,
that those faculties which he had endowed us with
might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.
Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on
work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ
our faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this ; only
this is worth our consideration, ' that pain is ofti;n
produced by the same objects and ideas that produce
pleasure in us.' This, their near conjunction, which
makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we
expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of adnilring
the wisdom and goodness of our Maker, wlip, design-
ing the preservation of our being, has annexed pain
to the application of many things to our bodie-i, to
warn us of the harm that they will do, and as advices
to withdraw from them. But He, not designing our
preservation barely, but the preservation of every part
and organ in Its perfection, hath, in many ciises, an-
nexed pain to those very ideas which delight us.
Thus heat, that is veiy agi-eeable to us in one degree,
by a little greater Increase of it, proves no ordinary
torment ; and the most pleasant of all sensible objects,
light Itself, if there be too much of it, if increased be-
yond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very pain-
ful sensation ; which is wisely and favourably so or-
dered by nature, that when any object does, by the
vehemency of its operation, disorder the instruments
of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice
and delicate, we might b_v the pain be warned to with-
draw, before the organ be quite put out of order, and
so be unfitted for its proper function for the future.
The consideration of those objects that produce it may
well persuade us, that this is the end or use of pain.
For, though great light be insufferable to our eyes, yet
the highest degree of darkness does not at all disease
them ; because that causing no disorderly motion in
it, leaves that curious organ unharmed in its natural
state. But yet excess of cold, as well as heat, pains
us, because it is equally destructive to that temper
which is necessary to the preservation of life, and the
exercise of the several functions of the body, and which
consists in a moderate degree of warmth, or, if you
please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies,
confined within certain bounds.
Beyond all this, we may find another reason why
God hath scattered up and down several degrees of
pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and
affect us, and blended them together in almost all
that our thoughts and senses have to do « itii ; tliat we,
finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and wiuit of com-
5U
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN LOCKE
plete happiness in all the enjoyments which the crea-
tures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the en-'
joyment of Him ' with whom there is fulness of joy,
and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.'
[Importance of Af oral Education.']
Under whose care soever a child is put to be taught
during the tender and flexible years of his life, this
is certain, it should be one who thinks Latin and lan-
guages the least part of education ; one who, knowing
how much virtue and a well-tempered soul is to be
preferred to any sort of learning or language, makes
it his chief business to form the mind of his scholars,
and give that a right disposition ; which, if once got,
though all the rest should be neglected, would in
due time produce all the rest ; and which, if it be not
got, and settled so as to keep out ill and vicious
habits — languages, and sciences, and all the other
accomplishments of education, will be to no purpose
but to make the worse or more dangerous man.
\_Fading of Ideas from the Mind.^
Ideas quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the
understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remain-
ing characters of themselves than shadows do flying
over a field of corn. * * The memory of some men
is very tenacious, even to a miracle ; but j'et there
seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas, even of
those which are struck deepest, and in minds the
most retentive ; so that if they be not sometimes re-
newed by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection
on those kind of objects which at first occasioned
them, the print wears out, and at last there remains
nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as chil-
dren of our youth, often die before us ; and our minds
represent to us those tombs to which we are approach-
ing, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet
the inscriptions are efl^aced by time, and the imagery
moulders away. Pictures drawn in our minds are
laid in fading colours, and, unless sometimes refreshed,
vanish and disappear. How much the constitution
of our bodies and the make of our animal spirits are
concerned in this, and whether the temper of the
brain make this difference, that in some it retains the
characters dra^vn on it like marble, in others like free-
stone, and in others little better than sand, I shall
not here inquire : though it may seem probable that
the constitution of the body does sometimes influence
the memory ; since we oftentimes find a disease quite
strip the mind of all its ideas, and the flames o{ a
fever in a few days calcine all those images to dust
and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if
graved in marble.
imstory.-]
The stories of Alexander and Ctesar, farther than
they instruct us in the art of living well, and furnish
us with observations of wisdom and prudence, are not
one jot to be preferred to the history of Robin Hood,
or the Seven Wise Masters. I do not deny but his-
tory is very useful, and very instructive of human
life ; but if it be studied only for the reputation of
being a historian, it is a very empty thing ; and he
that can tell all the particulars of Herodotus and
Plutarch, Curtius and Livy, without making any
other use of them, may be an ignorant man with a
good memory, and with all his pains hath only filled
his head with Christmas tales. And, which is worse,
the greatest part of history being made up of wars and
conquests, and thui style, especially the Romans,
speaking of valour as the chief if not the only virtue,
we are in danger to be misled by the general current
and business of history ; and, looking on Alexander
and Cffisar, and such-like heroes, as the highest in-
stances of human greatness, because they each of them
caused the death of several hundred thousand nies.
and the ruin of a much greater number, overran a
great part of the earth, and killed the inhabitants
to jiossess themselves of their countries — we are apt
to make butchery and rapine the chief marks and
very essence of human greatness. And if civil history
be a great dealer of it, and to many readers thus use-
less, curious and difficult inquirings in antiquity are
much more so ; and the exact dimensions of the
Colossus, or figure of the Cajntol, the ceremonies of
the Greek and Roman marriages, or who it was that
first coined money ; these, I confess, set a man well
off" in the world, especially amongst the learned, but
set him very little on in his way. * *
I shall only add one word, and then conclude: and
that is, that whereas in the beginning I cut off^ history
from our study as a useless part, as certainly it is
wliere it is read only as a tale that is told ; here, on
the other side, I recommend it to one who hath well
settled in his mind the principles of morality, and
knows how to make a judgment on the actions of
men, as one of the most useful studies he can apply
himself to. There he shall see a picture of the world
and the nature of mankind, and so learn to think of
men as they are. Tliere he shall see the rise of opi-
nions, and find from what slight and sometimes shame-
ful occasions some of them have taken their rise,
which yet afterwards have had great authority, and
passed almost for sacred in the world, and borne down
all before them. There also one may learn great and
useful instructions of prudence, and be warned against
the cheats and rogueries of the world, with many
more advantages which I shall not here enumerate.
[Orthodoxy and Heresy. 1
The great division among Christians is about opi-
nions. Every sect has its set of them, and that is
called Orthodoxy ; and he that professes his assent to
them, though with an implicit faith, and without ex-
amining, is orthodox, and in the way to salvation.
But if he examines, and thereupon questions any one
of them, he is presently suspected of heresy ; and if
he oppose them or hold the contrary, he is /presently
condemned as in a damnable error, and in the sure
way to perdition. Of this one may say, that there is
nor can be nothing more wrong. For he that examines,
and upon a fair examination embraces an error for a
truth, has done his duty more than he who embraces
the profession (for the truths themselves he dees not
embrace) of the truth without having examined
whether it be true or no. And he that has done bis
duty according to the best of his ability, is certainly
more in the way to heaven than he who has done
notliing of it. For if it be our duty to search after
truth, he certainly that has searched after it, though
he has not found it, in some points has paid a more
acceptable obedience to the will of his ilaker than he
that has not searched at all, but professes to have
found truth, when he has neither searched nor found
it. For he that takes up the opinions of any church
in the lump, without examining them, has truly
neither searched after nor found truth, but has only
found those that he thinks have found truth, and so
receives what they say with an implicit faith, and
so pays them the homage that is due only to God,
who cannot be deceived, nor deceive. In this way the
several churches (in which, as one m.ay obseri-c, opi-
nions are preferred to life, and orthodoxy is that
which they are coacerned for, and not morals) put the
terms of salvation on that which the Author of our
salvation does not put them in. The believing of a
collection of cer';ain propositions, which are called
and esteemed fundamental articles, because it haa
pleased the compilers to put them into tlicir confe*
sion of faith, is made the condition of salvation.
515
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO mail
[Disputation.]
One shoulrfi not dispute with a luan who, either
through stupidity or shamelessness, denies plain and
visible truths.
[Liberty.']
Let your will lead whither necessity would drive,
and you will always preserve your liberty,
[Opposition to New Doctriiies.]
The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge
amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do
of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none
to be right but the received doctrines. Truth scarce
ever yet carried it by vote anywhere at its first
appearance : new opinions are always suspected, and
usually opposed, without any other reason but be-
cause they are not already common. But truth, like
gold, is not the less so for being newl}' brought out of
the mine. It is trial and examination must give it
price, and not any antique fashion : and though it be
not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for
all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the
less genuine.
[Duty of Preserving Health.]
If by gaining knov.-ledge we destroy our health, we
labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands ;
and if, by harassing our bodies (though with a design
to render ourselves more useful), we deprive ourselves
of the abilities and opportunities of doing that good
we might have done with a meaner talent, which God
thought sufficient for us, by having denied us the
strength to improve it to that pitch which men of
stronger constitutions can attain to, we rob God of
so much service, and our neij'hbour of all that help
which, in a state of health, with moderate knowledge,
we might have been able to perform. He that sinks
his vessel by overloading it, though it be with gold,
and silver, and precious stones, will give his owner
but an ill account of his voyage.
[Toleration of Other Men's Opinions.']
Since, therefore, it is unavoidable to the greatest
part of men, if not all, to have several opinions, with-
out certain and indubitable proofs of their truth ;
and it carries too great an imputation of ignorance,
lightness, or folly, for men to quit and renounce their
former tenets presently upon the otfer of an argument,
which they cannot immediately answer, and show
the insufficiency of.: it would, methinks, become all
men to maintain peace, and the common offices of
humanity and friendship, in the diversity of opinions :
since we caimot reasonably expect that any one
should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion,
and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an
authority, which the understanding of man acknow-
ledges not. For however it may often mistake, it can
own no other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to
the will and dictates of another. If he you would
bring over to your sentiments be one that examines
before he assents, you must give him leave at his
leisure to go over the account again, and, recalling
what is out of his mind, examine all the particulars,
to see on \^ich side the advantage lies : and if he will
not think our arguments of weight enough to engage
him anew in so much pains, it is but what we often
do ourselves in the like cases, and we should take it
amiss if others should prescribe to us what points we
should *tudy. And if he be one who takes his opi-
nions upon trust, how can we imagine that he should
■enounce those tenets which time and custom have so
settled in his mind, that he thinks them self-evident,
and of an unquestionable certainty ; or which he takes
to be impressions he lias received from God himself,
or from men sent by him \ How can we expect, I say,
that opinions thus settled should be given up to the
arguments or authority of a stranger or adversary,
especially if there be any suspicion of interest or de-
sign, as there never fails to be where men find them-
selves ill treated \ '\^'e should do well to commiserate
our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to remove it
in all the gentle and fair ways of information ; and
not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate and per-
verse, because they Avill not renounce their o^^-n and
receive our opinions, or at least those we would force
upon them, when it is more than probable that we
are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs.
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence
of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood
of all he condemns ; or can say that he has examined
to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions]
The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay,
often upon very slight gTounds, in this fleeting state
of action and blindness we are in, should make us
more busy and careful to inform ourselves than con-
strain others. At least those who have not thoroughly
examined to the bottom all their o^\^l tenets, must
confess they are unfit to prescribe to others ; and are
unreasonable in imposing that as truth on other men's
belief which they themselves have not searched into,
nor weighed the arguments of probability on which
they should receive or reject it. Those who have
fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got past
doubt in all the doctrines they profess and govern
themselves b}', would have a juster pretence to require
others to follow them : but these are so few in number,
and find so little reason to be magisterial in theii
opinions, that nothing insolent and imperious is to be
expected from them : and there is reason to think,
that if men were better instructed themselves, they
would be less imposing on others.
THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE.
The Honourable Robert Boyle was the most
distinguished of those experimentiJ philosophers who
Honourable Robert Boyle.
sprang up in England immediately after the death
of BacoD, and who showed, by the successful applica-
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PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
HON. ROBERT BOYLE.
tion of liis principles, how trulj' he had pointed out
the means of enlarging human knowledge. The
eminent man of whom we speak was the son of
Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, at whose mansion of
Lismore he was born in tlie year 1C27. After study-
ing at Eton college and Geneva, and travelling
through Italy, he rfturued to England in 1C44.
Being in easy circumstances, and endowed with
uncommon activity of mind, he forthwith applied
himself to those studies and experiments in che-
mistry and natural jihilos()i)liy which continued to
engage his attention tlirougliout the remainder of
his life. During the civil war, some ingenious men
began to hold weekly meetings at Oxford, for the
cultivation of wliat was then termed ' the new
philosophy,' first at the lodgings of l)r Wilkins (as
already stated in our account of that divine), and
subsequently, for the most part, at the residence of
Boyle. These scientific persons, witli others who
afterwards joined them, were incorporated by Charles
XL, in 1662, under the title of the Royal Society.
Boyle, after settling in London in 1668, was one of
the most active members, and many of liis treatises
originally appeared in the Society's ' Philosophical
Transactions.' The works of this industrious man
(who died in 1691), are so numerous, that they
occupy six thick quarto volumes. They consist
chiefly of accounts of his experimental researches in
chemistry and natural philosophy, particularly with
respect to the mechanical and chemical properties of
the air. The latter subject was one in which he felt
much interest ; and by means of the air-pump, the
construction of which he materially improved, he
succeeded in making many valuable pneumatic dis-
coveries. Theology likewise being a favourite sub-
ject, he published various works, both in defence of
Christian' '"y, and in explanation of the benefits ac-
cruing to religion from the study of the divine
attributes as displayed in the material world. So
earnest was he in the cause of Christianity, that
he not only devoted much time and money in con-
tributing to its propagation in foreign parts, but,
by a codicil to his will, made provision for the deli-
very of eight sermons j'carly in London by^ some
learned divine, 'for proving the Christian religion
against notorious infidels, namely, atheists, theists,
pagans, Jews, and ]\f ahometans ; not descending
lower to any controversies that are among Chris-
tians themselves.' We learn from his biographers,
that in 1660 he was solicited by Lord Clarendon
to adopt the clerical profession, in order that the
church might have the support of those eminent
abilities and virtues by which he was distinguished.
Two considerations, however, induced him to with-
hold compliance. In the first place, he regarded
himself as more likely to advance religion by his
writings in the character of a layman, than if he
were in the more interested position of one of the
clergy — whose preaching there was a general ten-
dency to look upon as the remunerated exercise of a
profession. And secondly, he felt the obligations, im-
portance, and difficulties of the pastoral care to be so
great, that he wanted the confidence to undertake it ;
' especially,' says Bishop Burnet, ' not having felt
within himself an inward motion to it by the Holy
Ghost ; and the first question that is put to those
who come to be initiated into the service of the
church, relating to that motion, he, who had not felt
it, thought he durst not make the step, lest other-
wise he should have Hed to the Holy Ghost, so
solemnly and seriously did he judge of sacred mat-
ters.' He valued religion chiefly for its practical in-
fluence in improving the moral character of men, and
had a decided aversion to controversy on abstract
doctrinal ix)ints. His disapprobation of severities
and persecution on account of religidus belief was
very strong ; ' and I have seldom,' says Burnet, ' ob-
served liiin to speak with more heat and indigiiati<in
than when that came in his wa}-.'
The titles of those works of Boyle which are most
likely to attract tlie general reader, are Coimdeia-
t'wns on tlie Unefulncxs of Expciimintal Vldlosophy;
Considerations on the Sli/'k of the Iloltj Scriptures ; A
Free Discourse against Customari/ Sirearing; Conside-
rations about the Eeconcihtbleness of lieason and Eeli-
yion, and the I'ossiljiliti/ of a Resurrection ; A Dis-
course of Things above Eeason ; A Discourse of the
High Vcnerutiiin Man's Intellect owes to Cod, particu-
hirlg for his Wisdom and I'ou-er ; A Disquisition into
the Final Causes of Natural Things ; The Christian
Virtuoso, showing that, bi/ being addicted to Experi-
mental PInlvsophy, a man is rather assisted than iyidis-
posed to be a good Christian ; and A Treatise of Sera-
phic Love. He published, in 1GG5, Occasional Fe^ec-
tions on Several Subjects, mostly written in early life,
and whicli Swift has ridiculed in his ' Pious Medita-
tion on a Broomstick.' The comparative want of taste
and of sound judgment displayed in this portion of
Boyle's writings, is doubtless to be ascribed to the
immal; \re age at whicli it was composed, and the
circvrr.stance that it was not originally intended for
the public eye. The occasions of these devout ' Re-
flections' are such as the following : — ' Upon his horse
stumbling in a very fair way ;' ' L^pon his distilling
spirit of roses in a limbick ;' ' Upon two very miser-
able beggars begging together by the highway;'
' Ujion the sight of a windmill standing still ;' ' Upon
his paring of a rare summer apple ;' * Upon his
coach's being stopped in a narrow lane ;' ' Upon my
spaniel's fetching me my glove ;' 'Upon the taking
up his horses from grass, and giving them oats be-
fore they were to be ridden a journey.'
The works of Boyle upon natural theology take
the lead among the excellent treatises on that sub-
ject by which the literature of our country is
adorned.
His style is clear and precise, but he is apt to pro-
long his sentences until they become insufferably
tedious. Owing to the haste with whicli many of
his pieces were sent to the press, their deficiency of
method is such, as, in conjunction with the prolixity
of their style, to render the perusal of them a some-
what disagreeable task. The following specimens,
gathered from different treatises, are the most inte-
resting we have been able to find : —
[Tlie Study of NaUiral Philosophy farourahk to
Fcligion.]
The first advantage that our experimental philoso-
pher, as such, hath towards being a Christian, is, that
his course of studies couduceth much to settle in his
mind a firm belief of the existence, and divers of the
chief attributes, of God; which belief is, in the order
of things, the first principle of that natural religion
which itself is pre-required to revealed religion in
general, and consequently to that ia particular which
is embraced by Christians.
That the consideration of the vastness, beauty, and
regular motions of the heavenly bodies, the excellent
structure of animals and plants, besides a nmltitude of
other phenomena of nature, and the subserviency of
most of these to man, may justly induce him, as a
rational creature, to conclude that this vast, beautiful,
orderly, and (in a word) many ways admirable system
of things, that we call the world, was framed by an
author supremely powerful, wise, and good, can scarce
be denied by an intelligent and unprejudiced con-
siderer. And this is strongly confinned by exjierience,
which witnesscth, that in almost all ages and coun-
tries the generality of philosophers and contempla-
517
FROM 1649
CYCLOPJEDIA OF
TO 1689.
tive men were persuaded of the existence of a Deity,
by the consideration of the plienouiena of the universe,
whose fabric and conduct, they rationally concluded,
could not be deservedly ascribed either to blind chance,
or to any other cause than a divine Eeing.
But though it be true ' that God hath not left him-
self -n-ithour witness,' even to perfunctory considerers,
by stamping upon divers of the more obvious parts of
his workmanship such conspicuous impressions of his
attributes, that a moderate degree of understanding
and attention may suffice to make men acknowledge
his beinf, yet I scruple not to think that assent very
much inferior to the belief that the same objects are
fitted to produce in a heedful and intelligent con-
templator of them. For the works of God are so
worthy of their author, that, besides the impresses of
his wisdom and goodness that are left, as it were, upon
their surfaces, there are a great many more curious and
excellent tokens and eftects of divine artifice in the
hidden and innermost recesses of them ; and these are
not to be discovered by the perfunctory looks of osci-
tant and unskilful beholders ; but require, as well as
deserve, the most attentive and prying inspection of
inquisitive and well -instructed considerers. And
sometimes in one creature there may be I know not
how many admirable things, that escape a vulgar eye,
and yet may be clearly discerned by that of a true
naturalist, who brings with him, besides a more than
common curiosity and attention, a competent know-
ledge of anatomy, optics, cosmography, mechanics,
and chemistry. But treating elsewhere purposely of
this subject, it may here suffice to say, that God has
couched so many things in his visible works, that the
clearer light a man has, the more he may discover of
their unobvious exquisiteuess, and the more clearly
and distinctly he may discern those qualities that lie
more obvious. And the more wonderful things he
discovers in the works of nature, the more auxiliary
proofs he meets with to establish and enforce the ar-
gument, drawn from the universe and its parts, to
evince that there is a God ; which is a proposition of
that vast weight and importance, that it ought to en-
dear everything to us that is able to confirm it, and
affiard us new motives to acknowledge and adore the
divine Author of things. * *
To be told that an eye is the organ of sight, and
that this is performed by that faculty of the mind
which, from its function, is called visive, will give a
man but a sorry account of the instruments and man-
ner of vision itself, or of the knowledge of that Opi-
ficer who, as the Scripture speaks, ' formed the eye.'
And he that can take up with this easy theory of
■vision, will not think it necessary to take the pains to
dis-iect the eyes of animals, nor study the books of
mathematicians, to understand vision ; and accord-
ingly will have hut mean thoughts of the contrivance
of the organ, and the skill of the artificer, in compari-
son of the ideas that will be suggested of both of them
to him that, being profoundly skilled in anatomy and
eptics, by their help takes asunder the several coats,
humours, and muscles, of which that exquisite diop-
trical instrument consists ; and having separately con-
sidered the figure, size, consistence, texture, diapha-
neity or opacity, situation, and connection of each of
them, and their coaptation in the whole eye, shall
discover, by the help of the laws of optics, how admir-
ably this little organ is fitted to receive the incident
beams of light, and dispose them in the best manner
possible for comi>leting the lively representation of
the almost infinitely various objects of sight. * ""
It is not by a slight survey, but by a diligent and
skilful scrutiny of the works of God, that a man must
be, by a rational and affective conviction, engaged to
acknowledge with tlie projjhct, that the Author of
nature is 'wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
vorkinjr.'
Reficction vpon a Lanthorn and Candle, earned hy
oil a Windy Night.
As there are few controversies more important, so
there are not many that have been more curiously
and warmly disputed, than the question, whether a
public or a private life be preferable ? But perhaps
this may be much of the nature of the other question,
whether a married life or single ought rather to be
chosen 1 that being best determinable by the circum-
stances of particular cases. For though, indefinitely
speaking, one of the two may have advantages above
the other, yet they are not so great but that special
circumstances may make either of them the more
eligible to particular persons. They that find them-
selves furnished with abilities to serve their genera-
tion in a public capacity, and virtue great enough to
resist the temptations to which such a condition is
usually exposed, may not only be allowed to embrace
such an employment, but obliged to seek it. But he
whose parts are too mean to qualify him to govern
others, and perhaps to enable him to govern himself,
or manage his own private concerns, or whose graces
are so weak, that it is less to his virtues, or to his
ability of resisting, than to his care of shunning the
occasions of sin, that he owes his escaping the guilt of
it, had better deny himself some opportunities of good,
than expose himself to probable temptations. For
there is such a kind of difference betwixt virtue shaded
by a private and shining forth in a public life, as there
is betwixt a candle carried aloft in the open air, and
inclosed in a lanthorn ; in the fonner place it gives
more light, but in the latter it is in less danger to be
blown out.
Upon the sight of Roses and Ttdips growing near one
another.
It is so imcommon a thing to see. tulips last till
roses come to be blown, that the seeing them in this
garden grow together, as it deserves my notice, so
methinks it should suggest to me some reflection or
other on it. And perhaps it may not be an improper
one to compare the difference betwixt these two kinds
of flowers to the disparity which I have often ob-
served betwixt the fates of those j'oung ladies that
are only very handsome, and those that have a less
degree of beauty, recompensed by the accession of wit,
discretion, and virtue: for tulips, whilst tliey are
fresh, do indeed, by the lustre ani vividness of their
colours, more delight the eye than roses ; but
then they do not alone Cjuickly fade, but, as soon
as they have lost that freshness and gaudiness that
solely endeared them, they degenerate into things
not only undesirable, but distasteful ; whereas roses,
besides the moderate beauty they disclose to the
eye (which is sufficient to please, though not to
charm it), do not only keep their colour longer than
tulips, but, when that decays, retain a perfumed
odour, and divers useful qualities and virtues that
survive the spring, and recommend them all the year.
Thus those unadvised young ladies, that, because
nature has given them beauty enough, despise all
other qualities, and even that regular diet which is
ordinarily requisite to make beauty itself lasting, not
only are wont to decay betimes, but, as soon as they
have lost that youthful freshness that alone eiidcared
them, quickly i)ass from being objects of wonder and
love, to be so of pity, if not of scorn ; whereas those
that were as solicitous to enrich their minds as to
adorn their faces, may not only with a mediocrity of
beauty be very desirable whilst that lasts, but, not-
withstanding the recess of that and youth, may, by
the fragrancy of their reputation, aiid those virtues
and ornaments of the mind that time docs but im-
l)rove, be always sufficiently endeared to those that
have merit enough to discern and value such excel-
.f^lR
PnoSS WRITERS.
ENCuaSH LITERATURE.
ilON. ROBERT BOTLE.
Icnces, and whose esteem and friendship is alone
worth their being concerned for. In a word, they
prove the happiest as well as thej are the wisest-
ladies, that, whilst they possess the desirable quali-
ties that youth is wont to give, neglect not the acquist
facquisition] of those that age cannot take away.
[Marriage a Lottery.']
Methinks, Lindainor, most of those transltorj' goods
that we are so fond of, may not unfitly l)e resenililed
to the sensitive plant which you have admired at Sion-
gai'den : for as, though we gaze on it with attention
and wonder, yet when we come to touch it, the coy
delusive plant immediately shrinks in its displayed
leaves, and contracts itself into a form and dimensions
disadvantageously diifering from the former, which it
again recovers by degrees when touched no more ; so
these objects that charm us at a distance, and whilst
gazed on with the eyes of expectation and desire, when
a more immed'ate possession hath put them into our
hands, their fo-rner lustre vanishes, and they appear
quite dilt'ering things from what before they seemed ;
though, after deprivation or absence hath made us
forget their emptiness, and we be reduced to look upon
them again at a distance, they recover in most men's
oyes their former beaut}-, and are as capable as before
to inveigle and delude us. I must add, Lindamor,
that, when I compare to the sensitive plant most of
these transitory things that are flattered with the title
of goods, I do not out of that number e.xcept most
mistresses. For, though I am no such an enemy to
matrimony as some (for want of understanding the
raillery I have sometimes used in ordinary discourse)
are pleased to think me, and would not refuse you my
advice (though I would not so readily give you my ex-
ample) to turn votary to Hymen ; yet I have observed
so few happy matches, and so many unfortunate ones,
and have so rarely seen men love their wives at the
rate they did whilst they were their mistresses, that
I wonder not that legislators thought it necessary' to
make marriages indissoluble, to make them lasting.
And I cannot fitlier compare marriage than to a
lottery ; for in both, he that ventures may succeed and
may miss ; and if he draw a prize, he hath a rich re-
turn of his venture : but in both lotteries there is a
pretty store of blanks for every prize.
Some Cmisidei-ations Touching the Style of the
Holy Scriptures.
These things, dear Theophilus, being thus des-
patched, I suppose we may now seasonably proceed to
consider the style of the Scripture ; a subject that will
as well require as deserve some time and much atten-
tion, in regard that divers witty men, who freely
acknowledge the authority of the Scripture, take ex-
ceptions at its style, and by those and their own repu-
tation, divert nrany from studying, or so much as
perusing, those sacred writings, thereby at once giving
men injurious and irreverent thoughts of it, and
diverting them from allowing the Scripture the best
way of justifying itself, and disabusing them. Than
which scarce anything can be more prejudicial to a
book, that needs but to be sufficiently understood to
be highly venerated ; the writings these men crimi-
nate, and would keep others from reading, being like
that honey which Saul's rash adjuration withheld the
Israelites from eating, which, being tasted, not only
gratified the taste, but enlightened the eyes. * *
Of the considerations, then, that I am to lay before
you, there are three or four, which are of a more gene-
ral nature ; and therefore being such as may each of
them be pertinently employed against several of the
exce, .ions taken at the Scripture's style, it will not
be inconvenient to mention them before the rest.
And, in the first place, it should be considered that
those cavillers at the style of the Scripture, that you
and I have hitherto met with, do (for want of skill in
the original, especially in the Hebrew) judge of it by
the translations, wherain alone they read it. Now,
scarce any but a linguist will imagine how much a
book may lose of its elegancy by being read in another
tongue than that it was written in, especially if the
languages from which and into which the version is
nuvde be so very differing, as are those of the eastern
and these western parts of the worbl. I?ut of this I
foresee an occasion of saying sometliing hereafter; yet
at present 1 must observe to you, that the style of "the
Scripture is much more disadvantaged than tliat of
other books, by being judged of by translations ; for
the religious and just veneration that the interpreters
of the Bible have had for that sacred book, has made
them, in most jilaces, render the Hebrew and Greek
passages so scrupulously word for word, that, for fear
of not keeping close enough to the sense, they usually
care not how much they lose of the eloquence of the
passages they translate. So that, whereas in those
versions of other books that are made by good linguists,
the interpreters are wont to take the liberty to recede
from the author's words, and also substitute other
phrases instead of his, that they may express his
meaning without injuring his reputation. In translat-
ing the Old Testament, interpreters have not put
Hebrew phrases into Latin or English phrases, ])ut
only into Latin or English words, and have too often,
besides, by not sufficiently understanding, or at least
considering, the various significations of words, jiar-
ticles, and tenses, in the holy tongue, made many
things appear less coherent, or less rational, or less
considerable, which, by a more free and skilful ren-
dering of the original, would not be blemi.shed by any
appearance of such imperfection. And though this
fault of interpreters be pardonable enough in them,
as carrying much of its excuse in its cause, yet it
cannot but much derogate from the Scripture to ap-
pear with peculiar disadvantages, besides those many
that are common to almost all books, by being tran-
slated.
For whereas the figures of rhetoric are wont, by
orators, to be reduced to two comprehensive sorts, and
one of those does so depend upon the sound and plac-
ing of the words (whence tlie Greek rhetoricians call
such figures fchemata kxeof), that, if they be altered,
though the sense be retained, the figure may vanish ;
this sort of figures, I say, which conij)rises those that
orators call epanados antanaclash, and a multitude of
others, are wont to be lost in such literal translations
as are ours of the Bible, as I could easily shuw by
many instances, if I thought it re<iuisite.
Besides, there are in Hebrew, as in other languages,
certain approjiriated graces, and a peculiar emjihasis
belonging to some expressions, which must necessarily
be impaired by any translation, find are but too often
quite lost in those that adhere too scrupulously to
the words of the original. And, as in a lovely face,
though a painter may well enough express the cheeks,
and the nose, and li])S, yet there is often something ol
splendour and vivacity in the eyes, which no jiencil
can reach to equal ; so in some choice compo.-ures,
though a skilful interpreter may hajipily enough
render into his own language a great jwrt of what
he translates, yet there may well be some shining pas-
sages, some sparkling and emphatical expressions,
that he cannot possibly represent to the life. And
this consideration is more applicable to the Bible and
its translations than to other books, for two particular
reasons.
For, first, it is more difficult to translate the Hebrew
of the Old Testament, than if that book were written
in Syriac or Arabic, or some such other eastern lan-
guage. Not that the holy tongue is much more dif-
ficult to be learned than others ; but because in the
other learned tongues we know there are connnonlj
519
FROM 1649
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1689.
variety of books rxtaiit, whereby we may learn the
various significations of the words and phrases;
wliereas the pure Hebrew being unhappily lost, ex-
cept so much of it as remains in the Old Testament,
out of whose books alone we can but very imperfectly
frame a dictionary and a language, there are many
words, especially the hapax Icyomcna, and those that
occur but seldoni, of which we know but that one sig-
nification, or those few acceptions, wherein we find it
used in those texts that we think we clearly under-
stand. Whereas, if we consider the nature of the
primitive tongue, whose words, being not numerous,
are most of them equivocal enough, and do many of
them abound with strangely different meanings ; and
if we consider, too, how likely it is that the nume-
rous conquests of David, and the wisdom, prosperity,
fleets, and various commerces of his son Solomon, did
both enrich and spread the Hebrew language, it can-
not but seem very probable, that the same word or
phrase may have had divers other significations than
interpreters liave taken notice of, or we are now aware
of: since we find in the Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and
other eastern tongues, that the Hebrew words and
phrases (a little varied, according to the nature of
those dialects) have other, and oftentimes very dif-
ferent significations, besides those that the modern
interpreters of the Bible have ascribed to them. I say
the modern, because the ancient versions before, or
not long after, our Saviour's time, and especially that
which we vulgarly call the Septuagint's, do frequently
favour our conjecture, by rendering Hebrew words
and phrases to senses ver}' distant from those more
received significations in our texts ; when there ap-
pears no other so probable reason of their so rendering
them, as their believing them capable of significations
differing enough from those to which our later inter-
preters have thought fit to confine themselves. The
use that I would make of this consideration may easily
be conjectured, namely, that it is probable that many
of those texts whose expressions, as they are rendered
in our translations, seem flat or improper, or incohe-
rent with the context, would appear much otherwise,
if we were acquainted with all the significations of
words and phrases that were known in the times
when the Hebrew language flourished, and the sacred
books were ^vritten ; it being very likely, that among
those various significations, some one or other would
afford abetter sense, and a more significant and sinewy
expression, than we meet with in our translations ;
and perhaps would make such passages as seem flat
or uncouth, appear eloquent and emphatical. * *
But this is not all : for I consider, in the second
place, that not only we have lost divers of the signifi-
cations of man}' of the Hebrew words and phrases,
but that we have also lost the means of acquainting
ourselves with a multitude of particulars relating to
the tojiography, history, rites, opinions, fashions, cus-
toms, &c., of the ancient Jews and neighbouring na-
tions, without the knowledge of which we cannot, in
the perusing of books of such antiquity as those of
the Old Testament, and written by (and principally
for) Jews, we cannot, I say, but lose very much of that
esteem, delight, and relish, with which we should
read very many passages, if we discerned the references
and allusions that are made in them to those stories,
proverbs, opinions, &c., to which such passages may
well be supposed to relate. And this conjecture will
not, I j)resume, appear irrational, if you but consider
how many of the handsomest passages in Juvenal,
Persius, Martial, and divers other Latin writers (not
to mention IIesiod,]MusR;us, or otherancienter Greeks),
are lost to such readers as are unacquainted with the
Roman customs, government, and story ; nay, or are
not sufliciently informed of a great many particular
•circumstances relating to the condition of those times,
tnd of divers particular persons pointed at in those
poems. And therefore it is that the latter critics have
been fain to write comments, or at least notes, upon
every page, and in some pages upon almost every line
of those books, to enable the reader to discern the
eloquence, and relish the wit of the author. And 'f
such dilucidations be necessary to make us value
writings that treat of familiar and secular afl'airs,
and were written in a European language, and in
times and countries much nearer to ours, how much
do you think we must lose of the elegancy of the book
of Job, the Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon,
and other sacred composures, which not only treat
oftentimes of sublime and supernatural mysteries, but
were written in very remote regions so many ages ago,
amidst circumstances to most of which we cannot but
be great strangers. And thus much for my first gcn",-
ral consideration.
My second is this, that we should carefully distin-
guish betwixt what the Scripture itself says, and what
is only said in the Scripture. For we nmst not look
upon the Bible as an oration of God to men, or as a
body of laws, like our English statute-book, wherein
it is the legislator that all the way speaks to the
people ; but as a collection of composures of very dif-
fering sorts, and written at very distant times ; and
of such composures, that though the holy men of God
(as St Peter calls them) were acted by the Holy
Spirit, who both excited and assisted them in penning
the Scripture, yet there are many others, besides the
Author and the penmen, introduced speaking there.
For besides the books of Joshua, Judges, Sanmel,
Kings, Chronicles, the four evangelists, the Acts of
the Apostles, and other parts of Scripture that are evi-
dently historical, and wont to be so called, there are,
in the otlier books, many passages that deserve the
same name, and many others wherein, though they be
not mere narratives of things done, many sayings and
expressions are recorded that either belong not to
the Author of the Scripture, or must be looked upon as
such wherein his secretaries personate others. So that,
in a considerable part of the Scripture, not only pro-
phets, and kings, and priests being introduced speak-
ing, but soldiers, shepherds, and women, and such
other sorts of persons, from whom witty or eloquent
things are not (especially when they speak tu' fc;/(^Jore)
to be expected, it would be very injurious to impute
to the Scripture any want of eloquence, that may be
noted in the expressions of others than its Author.
For though, not only in romances, but in many of
those that pass for true histories, the supposed speakers
may be observed to talk as well as the historian, yet
that is but eitlier because the men so introduced
were ambassadors, orators, generals, or other eminent
men for parts as well as employments ; or because the
historian does, as it often happens, give himself the
liberty to make speeches for tliem, and does not set
down indeed what they said, but what he thought tit
that such persons on such occasions should have said.
Whereas the penmen of the Scripture, as one of them
truly professes, having not followed cunningly-devised
fables in what they have written, have faithfully set
down the sayings, as well as actions, they record,
witliout making them rather congruous to the condi-
tions of the speakers than to the laws of truth.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) holds by univer-
sal consent the highest rank among the natural philo-
sopliers of ancient and modern times. He was born
at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, where liis father
cultivated a small paternal estate. From childhood
he manifested a strong inclination to nieclianics, and
at Trinity college, Cambridge, which he entered in
IGOO, he made so great and rajjid progress in his
mathematical studies, that, iu 1 609, Dr Isaac Barrow,
520
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR ISAAC NEWTOS.
whose i)upil he was, resigned to him the Lucasian
professorship of mathematics. He served repeatedly
Sir Isaac Newton.
in parliament as member for the university ; was
appointed warden of the mint in 1695 ; became pre-
sident of the Royal Society in 1703 ; and two years
afterwards, received the honour of kniglitliood from
Queen Anne. To the unrivalled genius and sagacity
of Newton, the world is indebted for a variety of
splendid diso'-veries in natural philosophy and ma-
Birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton.
thematics ; among these, his exposition of the laws
which regulate the movements of the solar system
may be referred to as the most brilliant. The first
itep in the formation of the Newtonian system of
philosophy, was his discovery of the law of gravita-
tion, whi(-h lie showed to affect the vast orbs that
revolve aroiuid tlie sun, not less than the smallest
objects on our own globe. Tlie work in wliich.he
explained this system was written in Latin, and ap-
])earedin 1G87 under the t'ltla of J'hilosopltia; Aatura-
lis Principia Mulliematica — [The ^Mathematical Prin-
ciples of Natural Philosoi)hy]. To Newton we owe
likewise extensive discoveries in optics, by which
the aspect of that science was so entirely changed,
tliat he may justly be termed its founder, lie was
the first to conceive and demonstrate tlie divisibility
of light into rays of seven different colours, and pos-
sessing different degrees of refrangibility. After
pursuing his optical investigations during a period of
thirty years, he gave to tlie world, in 1704, a detailed
account of his discoveries in an admirable work en-
titled Optics ; or a Treatise of the liejlections, ReJ ruc-
tions. Inflections, and Colours of Liyht. Besides thise,
he published various profound matliematical work's,
which it is unnecessary liere to enum(-rate. Like
his illustrious contemporaries Boyle. B.urow, and
Locke, this eminent man devoted much attention to
theology as well as to natural science. The mystical
doctrines of religion were those which he chielly in-
vestigated ; and to his great interest in them wc owe
the composition of his Ohservatiuns upon the Prophe-
cies of Holy Writ, particularhj tlie I'fapliecies of Daniel
and the Apocalypse of St John, puhlislied after his
death. Among his manuscripts were found many
other theological pieces, mostly on such subjects as
the Prophetic Style, the Host of Heaven, the Reve-
lations, the Temple of Solomon, the Sanctuary, the
"Working of tlie Mystery of Iniquity, and the Con-
test between the Host of Heaven and the Transgres-
sors of the Covenant. The whole manuscripts left
by Sir Isaac were perused by Dr Pellet, by agree-
ment with the executors, with the view of publishing
such as were thought fit for the press ; tlie report
of that gentleman however was, that, of the whole
mass, nothing but a work on the Chronology of
Ancient Kingdoms was fit for publication. That
treatise accordingly appeared; and, contrary to Dr
Pellet's opinion, the ' Observations ujion the Pro-
phecies,' already mentioned, were likewise sent to
])ress. An Historical Account of Two Notable Cor-
ruptions of Scripture, also fnim the pen of Sir Isaac,
first appeared in a perfect form in Dr Ilorsley's edi-
tion of his works in 1779. We subjoin a .specimen
of his remarks on
[The Prophetic LanyMojc.'^
For understanding the prophecies, we are. In the
fir.st place, to acquaint oursehes with the figurative
language of the prophets. This laiigu.Hge is taken
from the analogy between the world natural, and an
cnijiire or kingdom considered as a world politic.
Accordingly, the whole world natural, consisting of
heaven and earth, signifies the whole world politic,
consisting of thrones and people ; or so much of it as
is considered in the proj)hecy. And the things in that
world signify the analogous things in tliis. For the
heavens, and the things therein, signify thrones and
dignities, and those who enjoy them ; and the earth,
with the things thereon, the inferior people ; and the
lowest parts of the earth, called Hades, or Hell, the
lowest or most miserable part of them. AVhenct^
ascending towards heaven, and descending to the
earth, are put for rising and falling in power and ho-
nour ; rising out of the earth or waters, and falling
into them, for the rising up to any dignity or domi-
nion, out of the inferior state of the peojije, or falling
down from the same into that inferior state ; desccnd-
inc into the lower parts of the earth, for descending
^ 521
PR)M 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 16«S,
to a very low and unhappy state ; speaking with a
faint voice out of the dust,' for being in a weak and
low condition ; moving from one place to another,
for translation from one office, dignity, or dominion
to-another; great earthquakes, and the shaking of
heaven and earth, for the shaking of dominions, so
as to distract or overthrow them ; the creating a new
heaven and earth, and the passing away of an old one,
or the beginning and end of the world, for the rise
and reign of the body politic signified thereb}^
In the heavens, the sun and moon are, by the in-
terpreters of dreams, put for the persons of kings and
queens. But iu sacred prophecy, which regards not
single persons, the sun is put for the whole species
and race of kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the
world politic, shining with regal power and glory ; the
moon for the body of the common people, considered as
the king's wife ; the stars for subordinate princes and
great men, or for bishops and rulers of the people of
God, when the sun is Christ ; light for the glory, truth,
and knowledge, wherewith great and good men shine
and illuminate others ; darkness for obscurity of con-
dition, and for error, blindness, and ignorance ; dark-
ening, smiting, or setting of the sun, moon, and stars,
for the ceasing of a kingdom, or for the desolation
thereof, proportional to the darkness ; darkening the
sun, turning the moon into blood, and falling of the
stars, for the same ; new moons, for the return of a
dispersed people into a body politic or ecclesiastic.
Fire and meteors refer to both heaven and earth,
and signify as follows : — Burning anything with fire,
is put for the consuming thereof by war ; a confla-
gration of the earth, or turning a country into a
lake of fire, for the consumption of a kingdom by
war ; the being in a furnace, for the being in slavery
under another nation ; the ascending up of the smoke
of any burning thing for ever and ever, for the con-
tinuation of a conquered people under the misery of
perpetual subjection and slavery ; the scorching heat
of the sun, for vexatious wars, persecutions, and
troubles inflicted by the king ; riding on the clouds,
for reigning over much people ; covering the sun with
a cloud, or with smoke, for oppression of the king by
the armies of an enemy ;• tempestuous winds, or the
motion of clouds, for wars ; thunder, or the voice of a
cloud, for the voice of a multitude ; a storm of thun-
der, lightning, hail, and overflowing rain, for a tem-
pest of war descending from the heavens and clouds
politic on the heads of their enemies ; rain, if not
immoderate, and dew, and living water, for the graces
and doctrines of the Spirit ; and the defect of rain,
for spiritual barrenness.
In the earth, the dry land and congregated waters,
as a sea, a river, a flood, are put for the people of
several regions, nations, and dominions ; embittering
of waters, for great affliction of the people by war and
persecution ; turning things into blood, for the mys-
tical death of bodies politic, that is, for their dissolu-
tion ; the overflowing of a sea or river, for the invasion
of the earth politic, by the people of the waters ; dry-
ing up of waters, for the conquest of their regions by
the earth ; fountains of waters for cities, the perma-
nent heads of rivers politic ; mountains and islands,
for the cities of the earth and sea politic, with the
territories and dominions belonging to those cities ;
dens and rocks of mountains, for the temples of cities ;
the hiding of men in tliose dens and rocks, for the
shutting up of idols in their tcmi)les ; houses and
ships, for families, assemblies, and towns iu the earth
and sea politic ; and a navy of ships of war, for an
army of that kingdom that is signified by the sea.
Animals also, and vegetables, are j)ut for the people
of several regions and conditions ; and particularly
trees, Aerbs, and land animals, for the people of the
earth j clitic ; flags, reeds, and fishes, for those of the
■"aters lolitic; birds and insects, for those of the
politic heaven and earth; a forest, for a kingdom;
and a wilderness, for a desolate and thin people.
If the world politic, considered in prophecy, con-
sists of many kingdoms, they are represented by as
many parts of the world natural, as the noblest by
the celestial frame, and then the moon and clouds are
put for the common people ; the less noble, by the
earth, sea, and rivers, .and by the animals or vege-
tables, or buildings therein ; and then the greater
and more powerful animals and taller trees, are put
for kings, princes, and nobles. And because the whole
kingdom is the body politic of the king, therefore
the sun, or a tree, or a beast, or bird, or a man,
whereby the king is represented, is put in a large
signification for the whole kingdom ; and several
aninuils, as a lion, a bear, a leopard, .a goat, according
to tlieir qualities, are put for several kingdoms and
bodies politic ; and sacrificing of beasts, for slaughter-
ing and conquering of kingdoms ; and friendship be-
tween beasts, for peace between kingdoms. Yet some-
times vegetables and animals are, by certain epithets
or circumstances, extended to other significations ; as
a tree, when called the ' tree of life' or ' of know-
ledge ;' and a beast, when called ' the old serpent,' or
worshipped.
There is a question with respect to Sir Isaac New-
ton, which has recently excited so much controversy
in the literary world, that we cannot avoid taking
some notice of it in this jjlace. It is well known
tliat during the last forty years of his life, the in-
ventive powers of this great philosopher seemed to
liave lost their activity ; he made no farther disco-
veries, and, in his later scientific publications, im-
parted to tlie world onl}' tlie views which he had
formed in early life. In the article ' Newton' in the
French Bioyraphie Universellc, written by M. Biot,
the statement was for the first time made, tliat his
mental powers were impaired by an attack of insa-
nity, which occurred in the years 1692 and 1G93.
This averment was by manj^ received with incredu-
lity; and Sir David Brewster, Avho published a Life
of Newton in 1831, maintains that there is no suffi-
cient proof of the fact alleged. Undue importance,
we humbly conceive, has been attached to this ques-
tion in a religious point of view ; for the tlieological
studies of Newton were by no means confined to the
concluding portion of his life, nor is tlie testimony
of even so great a man in favoiir of Christianity
of much value in a case where evidence, and not
autliority, must be resorted to as the real ground of
decision. That Newton's mind was much out of
order at the period mentioned, appears to us to be
satisfactorily proved even by documents first made
known to the world in Brewster's work, indepen-
dently of tliose publislicd liy INI. Biot. The latter
gives a manuscript of tlicDutch astronomer Huygens,
wliich is still preserved at Leydcn, and is to tlie fol-
lowing effect. ' On the 29th of May 1G94, a Scotch-
man of the name of Colin informed me that Isaac
Newton, the celebrated mathematician, eighteen
months previously, had become deranged in his
mind, either from too great application to his
studies, or from excessive grief at having lost,
by fire, his chemical laboratory and some papers.
Having made observations before the chancellor of
Cambridge, which indicated tlie alienation of liis
intellect, he was taken care of by his friends ; and
being confined to liis house, remedies were apjjlied,
by means of which lie has lately so far recovered
his health, as to begin to again understand his owm
Principia.' This account is confirmed by a diary
kept by Mr Abraham de la Pryme, a Cambridge
student, who, under date the 3d of February 1 692
(being what was on the continent called 1693, as
622
PROSE WKITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
the English year then commenced on 25tli IMarch),
rehites, in a passage which Brewster has pubUshed,
tlie loss of Newton's papers by fire while he was at
chapel ; adding, that when "the philosopher came
home, ' and had seen what was done, every one
thought he woiUd have run mad ; he was so troubled
tliereat, that he was not himself for a month after.'
Tliis, however, is the smallest part of the evidence.
Newton himself, writing on the 13th September
1693 to ]\Ir Pepys, secretary to the' admiralty, says,
' I am extremely troubled at the embroilment I am
in, and have neither ate nor slept well this twelve-
month, nor have my former consistency of mind.'
Again, on the 16th of the same month, he writes to
liis friend Locke in the following remarkable terms : —
' Sir— Being of opinion that you endeavoured to
embroil me with women, and by other means, I was
so much affected with it, as when one told me yoii
were sickly, and would not live, I answered, 'twere
better if j-ou were dead. I desire you to forgive me
this uncharitableness ; for I am now satisfied that
what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon
for my having hard thoughts of you for it, and for
representing that you struck at tlie root of morality,
in a principle you laid in your book of ideas, and
designed to pursue in anotlier book, and tliat I took
you for a Ilobbist. I beg j'onr pardon, also, for saj-ing
or thinking that there was a design to sell me an
otfice, or to embroil me. I am your most humble
and unfortunate servant — Is. Newton.'
The answer of Locke is admirable for the gentle
and affecaonate spirit in which it is written : —
' Sir — I have been, ever since I first knew ynu, so
entirely and sincereU' your friend, and tliought you
so much mine, tliat 1 coidd not have believed what
you tell me of yourself, had I had it from anybody
else. And though I cannot but be mightily troubled
that you should have had so many wrong and unjust
thouglits of me, yet, next to the return of good offices,
such as from a sincere good will I have ever done
you, I receive your acknowledgment of the contrary
as the kindest thing you coidd have done me, since
it gives me hopes that I have not lost a friend I so
much valued. After what your letter expresses, I
shall not need to say anything to justify myself to
j'ou. I shall always think j'our own rcficction on
my carriage both to you and all mankind will suffi-
ciently do that. Instead of that, give me leave to
assure you, that I am more ready to forgive you
than you can be to desire it; and I do it so freely
and fully, that I wish for nothing more than the
opportunity to convince you that I truly love and
esteem you; and that I have still the same good will
for you as if nothing of this had happened. To con-
firm this to you more fully, I should be glad to meet
you anywhere, and the rather, because the conclu-
sion of your letter makes me apprehend it would not
be wholly useless to you. But whether you think it
fit or not, I leave wholly to you. I shall always be
ready to serve you to my utmost, in any way you
Rhall like, and shall only need your commands or
permission to do it.
My book is going to press for a second edition ;
and though I can answer for the design with which
I writ it, yet since you have so opportunely given
me notice of what you have said of it, I should take
it as a favour if you would point out to me the places
that gave occasion to that censure, that, by explaining
myself better, I may avoid being mistaken by others,
or unawares doing the least prejudice to truth or
virtue. I am sure you are so much a friend to them
both, that were you none to me, I could expect this
from you. But I cannot doubt but you would do a
great deal more than this for my sake, who, after all,
have all the concern of a friend for you, wish you
exti'cmely well, and am, withcnit compliment,' &c.
To this Sir Isaac rejilicd on the .Oth of Octoljcr :—
' Sir — The last winter, hy sleeping too ofien by my
fire, I got an ill habit of sleeping ; and a distemper,
which this summer has been epidemical, put me
farther out of order, so that when I wrote to you, I
had not slept an hour a-night for a fortnight to-
gether, and for five days together not a wink. I
remember I wrote you, but what I said of your
book I remember not. If yon ])lease to send liie a
transcript of that passage, I will give you an account
of it if I can. I am your most hurnl)le servant — Is.
Newton.'
On the 26th September Pepys wrote to a friend of
his, at Cambridge, a Mr IMillington, making inquiry
about Newton's mental condition, as he had 'lately
received a letter from him so surprising to me for the
inconsistency of every part of it, as to be put into
great disorder I)}' it, from the concernment I have
for him, lest it should arise from tliat which of all
mankind I should least dread from ,,him, and most
lament for — I mean a discomposure in head, or mind,
or both.' Millington answers on the 3(Hh, that two
days ]>reviously, he had met Newton at Huntingdon ;
' wliere,' says he, 'upon his own accord, and before I
had time to ask him any question, he told me that
he had writ to you a very odd letter, at Avhich he
was much concerned ; and added, that it Avas a dis-
temper that much seized his head, and that kept
him awake for above five nights together ; which
upon occasion he desired I would represent to you,
and beg your pardon, he being very nmcli asliained
he should be so rude to a person for whom he hath
so great an honour. He is now very well, ani
though I fear he is under some small degree of
melancholy, yet I think there is no reason to STispect
it hath at all touched his understanding, and I hope
never will.'
It thus appears tliat, in consequence of excessive
study, or the loss of valuable papers, or both causes
combined, the imderstanding of Newton was for
about twelve months thrown into an intermittent
disorder, to which the name of insanity ouglit to be
applied. That his intellect never attained its former
activity and vigour, is made jirobable by the follow-
ing circumstances. In the first place, he published
after 1687 no scientific work except what he then
possessed the materials of Secondly, he tells at the
end of the second book of-liis 'Optics,' that 'though
he felt the necessity of his experiments, or rendering
them more perfect, he was not able to resolve to dc
so, these matters being no longer in his way.' And
lastly, of the manuscripts found after his death,
amounting, as we learn from I)r Charles Hutton, to
' upwards of four thousand sheets in folio, or eight
reams of foolscap paper, besides the bound bo(jks, of
which the number of sheets is not mentioned,'*
none was thought worthy of publication except his
work on the ' Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms,'
and ' Observations on the Prophecies.'^
The character and most prominent discoveries ol
Newton are summed up in his epitaph, of which the
following is a translation. * Here lies interred
Isaac Newton, knight, who, with an energy of mind
* ITutton's Mathematical Dictionary, article Ifeirton.
t SliouliI tlie reader desire to investigate the question moro
fiiUy, he will find it amply discussed in Biot's Life of Newton,
of which a translation is published in the Library of Useful
KnowIedj{0 ; Urewster's Life of Newton, jip 222-24.'! ; Biot's
reply to Brewster, in the Journal ths Siivni'S for June 1)152;
Edinbin-Kh Review, vol. Ivi. p. ; Foreiitn Quarterly Review,
vol. xii. p. 15 ; and Phrenological Journal, vol. vii. p> 335.
523
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 168S.
almost divine, guided by the light of mathematics
purely his own, first demonstrated the motions and
figures of the planets, tlie paths of comets, and tlie
causes of the tides ; who discovered, what before his
time no one had even suspected, that rays of light
are differently refrangible, and tliat this is the cause
of colours ; and who was a diligent, penetrating, and
faithful interjtreter of nature, antiquity, and the
sacred writings. In his pliilosophy, he maintained
the majesty of the Supreme Being ; in his manners,
he expressed tlie simplicity of the Gospel. Let
mortals congratulate themselves that the world has
seen so great and excellent a man, the glory of human
nature.'
JOHN RAY.
John Kay (1628-1705), the son of a blacksmith
at Black Notley, in Essex, was the most eminent of
several distinguished and indefatigable cultivators of
natural history who appeared in England about the
middle of the seventeenth century. In the depart-
ment of botiiny, he laboured with extraordinary
diligence ; and his works on this subject, which are
more numerous than those of any other botanist
except Linnajus, have such merit as to entitle him
I to be ranked as one of the great founders of the
science. Kay was educated for the church at Cam-
bridge, where he was a fellow-pupil and intimate of
Isaac Barrow. His theological views were akin to
the rational opinions held by that eminent divine,
and by Tillotson and Wilkins, with whom also Kay
was on familiar terms. The passing of the act of
uniformity in 1662 put an end to Kay's prospects
in the church ; for in that year he was deprived of
his fellowshij) of Trinity college, on account of his
conscientious refusal to comply with the injunction,
that all ecclesiastical persons should make a decla-
ration of the nullity and illegality of the solemn
league and covenant. In company with his friend
ilr Willughby, also celebrated as a naturalist, he
visited several continental countries in 1663 ; both
before and after ivhicli year, his love of natural his-
tory induced him to perambulate England and Scot-
land extensively. The principal works in which the
results of his studies and travels were given to the
public, are, Observations, Topographical, Moral, and
Physiological, made in a Journey through part of the
Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France (1673);
and Historia Plantarum Gvneralis [' A General
History of Plants']. The latter, consisting of two
large folio volumes, which were published in 1686
and 1688, is a work of prodigious labour, and
aims at describing and reducing to the author's
system all the plants that had been discovered
throughout the world. As a cultivator of zoology
and entomology also, Kay deserves to be mentioned
with honour; and he farther served the cause of
science by editing and enlarging the posthumous
works of his friend Willughby on birds and fishes.
His character as a naturalist is thus spoken of by
the Rev. Gilbert White of Selborne, who was addict-
ed to the same pursuits : ' Our countryman, the
excellent Mr Kay, is the only describer that con-
veys some precise idea in every term or word, main-
taining his superiority over his followeis and imita-
tors, in spite of the advantage of fresh discoveries
and modern information.'* ('uvier, also, gives him
a high character as a naturalist; and the author of
a recent memoir speaks of him in the following me-
rited terms : — ' Ilis varied and useful labours have
justly caused him to be regarded as the father of
natural history in this country ; and his charsicter
^». in every respect, such as we should wish to belong
♦ Natural History of Selborno, Letter 43.
to the individual enjoying that high distinction. His
claims to the regard of posterity are not more founded
on his intellectual capacity, than on his moral ex-
cellence. He maintained a steady and uncompro-
mising adherence to his principles, at a time when
vacillation and change were so common as almost
to escape unnoticed and uncensured. From some
conscientious scruples, which he shared in conmion
with many of the wisest and most i)ious men of his
time, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his views of
preferment in the church, although his talents and
learning, joined to the powerful influence of his
numerous friends, might have justified him in as-
piring to a considerable station. The benevolence
of his disposition continually appears in the gene-
rosity of his praise, the tenderness of his censure,
and solicitude to promote tlie welfare of others. Ilis
modesty and self-abasement were so great, that they
transpire insensibl_v on all occasions ; and his afiec-
tionate and grateful feelings led him, as iias been
remarked, to fulfil the sacred duties of friendship
even to his own prejudice, and to adorn the bust ot
his friend with wreaths which he himself luight
have justly assumed. All these qualities were re-
fined and exalted by the purest Christian feeling,
and the imion of the whole constitutes a character
which procured the admiration of contemporaries,
and well deserves to be recommended to the imi-
tation of posterity.'* For the greater part of his
popular fame, however, Kay is indebted to an admir-
able treatise published in 1691, under the title of
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Worhs of the
Creation, which has gone through manj' editions,
and been translated into several continental lan-
guages. One of his reasons for composing it is thus
stated b}- himself: 'By virtue of my function, I sus-
pect myself to be obliged to write something in
divinity, having written so much on other subjects;
for, I)eing not permitted to serve the church with my
tongue in preaching, I know not Init it may be my
duty to serve it with my hand in writing ; and I
have made clioice of this subject, as thinking myself
best qualified to treat of it.' Natural theology had
previously been treated of in England by Boyle,
Stillingfleet, Wilkins, Henry More, and Cudworth ;
but Kay was the first to systematise and pojjularise
the subject in the manner of Paley's work, the un-
rivalled merits of which have caused it to supersede
]x)th the treatise now under consideration, and the
similar productions of Derham in the beginning of
the eighteenth century.f But tb.ough written in a
more pleasing style, and at a time when science had
attained greater extension and accuracy, the ' Natu-
ral Theology' of Paley is but an imitation of Kay's
volume, and he has derived from it manj- of liis
most striking arguments and illustratit)us. Kay
displaj's throughout his treatise much philosophical
caution with resjiect to the admission of facts in
natural history, and good sense in the rctlections
which he is led by his subject to indulge in. Seve-
ral extracts from the work are here subjoined.
\^The Study of Nature Recommended.']
Let us then consider the works of God, and observe
the operations of his hands : let us take notice of and
* Memoir of Ray, in The Naturalist's Library, Entomology,
vol. vii. p. CO.
f Derluiin's works here alluded to are, Phi/sico-Theolofri/ , or a \
Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of a God, from his <
^Vorks of Creation (1713) ,• and Astro-Theology, or a Demon-
tlralion of the Being and Attributes (if a God, from a Surve;/ oj .
the Heavens (1714). The substance of both had been preached I
by the author in 1711 and 1712, in the capacity of lecturer on j
Boylo's foundation.
524
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
admire his infinite ivisdom and goodness in \.he for-
mation of them. No creature in this sublunary world
is capable of so doing beside man ; yet we are deficient
herein : we content ourselves with the knowledge of
the tongues, and a little skill in philology, or history
perhaps, and antiquity, and neglect that which to me
seems more material, I mean natural history and the
works of the creation. I do not discommend or
derogate from those other studies ; I should betray
mine own ignorance and weakness should I do so ; I
only wish they might not altogether justle out and ex-
clude this. I wish that this might be brought in fashion
among us ; I wish men would be so equal and civil,
as not to disparage, deride, and vilify those studies
which themselves skill not of, or are not conversant
in. No knowledge can be more pleasant than this,
none that doth so satisfy and feed the soul ; in com-
])arison whereto that of words and phrases seems to
me insipid and jejune. That learning, saith a wise
and observant prelate, which consists only in the form
and pedagogj- of arts, or the critical notion upon words
and phrases, hath in it this intrinsical imperfection,
that it is only so fiir to be esteemed as it conduceth
to the knowledge of things, being in itself but a kind
of pedantry, apt to infect a man with such odd
humours of pride, and affectation, and curiosity, as
will render him unfit for any gi-eat employment.
\Vord.s being but the images of matter, to be wholly
given up to the study of these, what is it but Pj'gma-
lion's frenzy to fall in love with a picture or image.
As for orator}', which is the best skill about words,
that hath by sonje wise men been esteemed but a
voluptuary art, like to cooker}-, which spoils wholesome
meats, and helps unwholesome, by the variety of
sauces, serving more to the pleasure of taste than the
health of the body.
\_Proportionate Latffths of the Neds and Legs of
Animals.'] .
I shall now add another instance of the wisdom of
nature, or rather the God of nature, in adapting the
parts of the same animal one to another, and that is
the proportioning the length of the neck to that of
the legs. For seeing terrestrial animals, as well birds
as quadrupeds, are endued with legs, upon which they
stand, and wherewith they transfer themselves from
place to place, to gather their food, and for other
conveniences of life, and so the trunk of their body
must needs be elevated above the sujjerficies of the
earth, so that they could not conveniently either
gather their food or drink if they wanted a neck,
therefore Nature hath not only furnished them there-
with, but with such a one as is commensurable to
their legs, except here the elephant, which hath
indeed a short neck (for the excessive weight of his
head and teeth, which to a long neck would have been
unsupportable), but is provided with a trunk, where-
with, as with a hand, he takes up his food and drink,
and brings it to his mouth. I say the necks of birds
and quadrupeds are commensurate to their legs, so
that they which have long legs have long necks, and
they that have short legs short ones, as is seen in
the crocodile, and all lizards ; and those that have no
legs, as they do not want necks, so neither have they
any, as fishes. This equality between the length of
the legs and neck, is especially seen in beasts that
feed constantly upon grass, whose necks and legs are
always very near equal ; very near, I say, because the
neck must necessarily have some advantage, in that it
"■annot hang perpendicularly down, but must incline a
little. Moreover, because this sort of creatures must
needs hold their heads down in an inclining posture
for a considerable time together, which would be very
laborious and painful for the muscles ; therefore on
each side the ridge of the yertebres of the neck,
nature hath placed an aponeurosis, or nervous liga-
ment of a great thickness and strength, apt to stretch
and shrink again as need requires, ,<viid void of sense,
extending from the liead (to whicli, and the next
vertebres of the neck, it is fastened at that end) to the
middle vertebres of the back (to which it is knit at
the other), to assist them to support the head in that
posture, wliich aponeurosis is taken notice of by the
vulgar by the name of fixfax, or pack -wax, or whit-
leather. It is also very observable in fowls that wade
in the water, which, having long legs, have also necks
answerably long. Only in these too there is an ex-
ception, exceeding worthy to be noted ; for some water-
fowl, which are palmipeds, or whole-footed, have very
long necks, and yet but short legs, as swans and geese,
and some Indian birds ; wherein we may observe the
admirable providence of Nature. For such birds as
were to search and gather their foo<l, whether herbs
or insects, in the bottom of pools and deep waters,
have long necks for that purpose, thougli their legs,
as is most convenient for swimming, be but short.
Whereas there are no land-fowl to be seen with short
legs and long necks, but all have their necks in length
commensurate to their legs. This instance is the
more considerable, because the atheists' usual flara
will not here help them out. For, say they, there
were many animals of disproportionate parts, and ol
absurd and uncouth shapes, produced at first, in the
infancy of the world ; but because they could not
gather their food to perform other functions necessary
to maintain life, they soon perished, and were lost
again. For these birds, we see, can gather their food
upon land conveniently enough, notwithstanding the
length of their necks ; for example, geese graze upon
commons, and can feed themselves fat upon land. Yet
is there not one land-bird which hath its neck thus
disproportionate to its legs ; nor one water one neitlier,
but such as are destined by nature in such manner as
we have mentioned to search and gather their food ;
for nature makes not a long neck to no purpose.
IGocVs ExhoHatioti to Actiiify.1
Methinks by all this provision for the use and ser-
vice of man, the Almighty interpretatively speaks to
him in this manner : ' I have now placed thee in a
spacious and well-furnished world ; I have endued
thee with an ability of understanding what is beauti-
ful and proportionable, and have made that which is
so agreeable and delightful to thee ; I have provided
thee with materials whereon to exercise and employ
thy art and strength ; I have given thee an excellent
instrument, the hand, accommodated to make use oi
them all ; I have distinguished the earth into hilla
and valleys, and plains, and meadows, and woods; all
these parts capable of culture and improvement by thy
industry ; I have committed to thee for thy assistance
in thy labours of ploughing, and carrying, and drawing,
and travel, the laborious ox, the patient ass, and the
strong and serviceable horse ; I have created a mul-
titude of seeds for thee to make choice out of them,
of what is most pleasant to thy taste, and of most
wholesome and plentiful nourishment ; I have also
made great variety of trees, bearing fruit both for
food and physic, those, too, capable of being meliorated
and improved by transplantation, stercoration, inci-
sion, pruning, watering, and other arts and devices.
Till and manure thy fields, sow them with thy seeds,
extirpate noxious and unprofitable herbs, guard them
from the invasions and spoil of beasts, clear and fence
in thy meadows and pastures, dress and prune thy
vines, and so rank and dispose them as is most suit-
able to the climate ; plant thee orchards, with all
sorts of fruit-trees, in such order as may be most
beautiful to the eye, and most tomprehcnsive o(
plants ; gardens for culinary herbs and all kinds of
£25
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
1689.
sallading; for delectable flowers, to gratify the eye
with their agreeable colours and figures, and thy scent
with their fragrant odours ; for odoriferous and ever-
gi-eeu shrubs and suffrutices ; for exotic and medicinal
plants of all sorts ; and dispose them in that comely
order as may be most pleasant to behold, and com-
modious for access. I have furnished thee with all
materials for building, as stone, and timber, and
slate, and lime, and clay, and earth, whereof to make
bricks and tiles. Deck and bespangle the country
with houses and villages convenient for thy habita-
tion, provided with out-houses and stables for the
harbouring and shelter of thy cattle, with barns and
granaries for the reception, and custody, and storing
up thy corn and fruits. I have made thee a sociable
creature, zoon poUtikon, for the improvement of thy
understanding by conference, and communication of
observations and experiments ; for mutual help, as-
sistance, and defence, build thee large towns and
cities with straight and well-paved streets, and ele-
gant rows of houses, adorned with magnificent temples
for my honour and worship, with beautiful palaces
for thy princes and grandees, with stately halls for
public meetings of the citizens and their several com-
panies, and the sessions of the courts of judicature,
besides public porticos and aqueducts. I have im-
planted in thy nature a desire of seeing strange and
foreign, and finding out unknown countries, for the
improvement and advance of thy knowledge in geo-
graphy, by observing the bays, and creeks, and havens,
and promontories, the outlets of rivers, the situation
of the maritime towns and cities, the longitude and
latitude, &c., of those places ; in politics, by noting
their government, their manners, laws, and customs,
their diet and medicine, their trades and manufac-
tures, their houses and buildings, their exercises and
sports, &c. In physiology, or natural history, by
searching out their natural rarities, the productions
both of land and water, what species of animals, plants,
and minerals, of fruits and drugs, are to be found there,
what commodities for bartering and permutation,
whereby thou mayest be enabled to make large addi-
tions to natural history, to advance those other
sciences, and to benefit and enrich thy country by
increase of its trade and merchandise. I have given
thee timber and iron to build the hulls of ships, tall
trees for masts, flax and hemp for sails, cables and
cordage for rigging. I have armed thee with courage
and hardiness to attempt the seas, and traverse the
spacious plains of that liquid element ; I have assisted
thee with a compass, to direct thy course when thou
shalt be out of all ken of land, and have nothing in
view but sky and water. Go thither for the purposes
before-mentioned, and bring home what may be useful
and beneficial to thy country in general, or thyself in
particular.'
1 persuade myself, that the bountiful and gracious
Author of man's being and faculties, and all things
else, delights in the beauty of his creation, and is
well pleased with the industry of man, in adorning
the earth with beautiful cities and castles, with plea-
sant villages and country-houses, with regular gardens,
and orchards, and plantations of all sorts of shrubs,
and herbs, and fruits, for meat, medicine, or moderate
delight ; with shady woods and groves, and walks set
with rows of elegant trees ; with pastures clothed with
flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, and mea-
dows burthened with grass, and whatever else diife-
renceth a civil and well-cultivated region from a
barren and desolate wilderness.
If a country thus planted and adorned, thus
polished and civilised, thus improved to the height by
all manner of culture for the support and sustenance,
and convenient entertainment of innumerable multi-
tudes of people, be not to be preferred before a bar-
barous and inhospitable Scythia, without houses,
without plantations, without ci.m-^elds or vineyards,
where the roving hordes of the savage and trucui>>iit
inhabitants transfer themselves from place to pln^.-e
in wagons, as they can find pasture and forage toi
their cattle, and live upon milk, and flesh roasted in
the sun, at the pommels of their saddles ; or a njde
and unpolished America, peopled with slothful and
naked Indians — instead of well-built houses, living ui
pitiful huts and cabins, made of poles set end-way." ;
then surely the brute beast's condition and manner of
living, to which what we have mentioned doth nearly
approach, is to be esteemed better than man's, and
wit and reason was in vain bestowed on him.
[All Tluiujs not Made for Maii.l
There are infinite other creatures without this earth,
which no considerate man can think were made only
for man, and have no other use. For my part, J can-
not believe that all the things in the world were so
made for man, that they hare no other use.
For it seems to me highly absurd and unreasonable
to think that bodies of such vast magnitude as the
fixed stars were only made to twinkle to us ; nay, a
multitude of them there are, that do not so much as
twinkle, being, either by reason of their distance or
of their sm.allness, altogether invisible to the naked
e3'e, and only discoverable by a telescope; and it is
likely, perfecter telescopes than we yet have may bring
to light many more ; and who knows how many lie
out of the ken of the best telescope that can possibly
be made ? And I believe there are many species m
nature, even in this sublunary world, which were never
yet taken notice of by man, and consequently of no use
to him, which yet we are not to think were created in
vain ; but may be found out by, and of use to, those
who shall live after us in future ages. But though
in this sense it be not true that all things were made
for man, yet thus far it is, that all the creatures in
the world may be some way or other useful to us, at
least to exercise our wits and understandings, in
considering and contemplating of them, and so afford
us subject of admiring and glorifying their and our
Maker. Seeing, then, we do believe and assert that
all things were in some sense made for us, we are
thereby obliged to make use of them for those pur-
poses for which they serve us, else we frustrate this
end of their creation. Now, some of them serve
only to exercise our minds. Many others there be
which might probably serve us to good purpose,
whose uses are not discovered, nor are they ever like
to be, without pains and industry. True it is, many
of the greatest inventions have been accidentally
stumbled upon, but not by men supine and careless,
but busy and inquisitive. Some reproach methmks
it is to learned men, that there should be so many
animals still in the world whose outward shape ii^ not
yet taken notice of or described, much less their way
of generation, food, manners, uses, observed.
Ray published, in 1672, a Collection of Enotish fV»>-
vcrbs, and, in 1700, A Persuasive to a Holy Lift- The
latter possesses the same rational and solid character
which distinguishes his scientific and physico-theo-
logical works. Trom a posthumous volume of hia
correspondence published by Derham, we extract
the following affecting letter, written on his death-
bed to Sir Hans Sloane : —
' Dear Sir — The best of friends. These are to take
a final leave of you as to this world : I look upon
myself as a dying man. God requite your kindness
expressed anyways towards me a hundredfold ; bless
yoa with a confluence of all good things in tliis
world, and eternal life and happiness hereafter ; grant
us a happy meeting in heaven. I am. Sir, eternally
yours— John Kay.
b2r
PROSE ■WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
TOM BROWN.
THOMAS STANLEY — SIR WILLIAM DUGDALE —
ANTHONY WOOD — ELIAS ASHMOLE — JOHN
AUBREY — THOMAS RY3IER.
During this period there lived several writers of
great industry, whose works, though not on subjects
calculated to give the names of the autliors much
popular celebrity, liave yet been of considerable use
to subsequent Iiterar\'' men. Thomas Stanley
(1625-1678) is the author of an erudite and bulky
compilation, entitled The History of Philosophy,
containing the Lives, Opinions, Actio7is, and Dis-
courses of the Philosophers of evert/ Sect. Of this
the first volume appeared in 1655, and the fourth in
1662. Its style is uncouth and obscure;* and tlie
work, though still resorted to as a mine of informa-
tion, has been in other respects superseded by more
elegant and less voluminous productions. Sir Wil-
tiAM DuGDALE (1605-1686) was highly distin-
guished for his knowledge of heraldry and antiqui-
ties. His work entitled The Baronage of England,
is esteemed as without a rival in its own depart-
ment; and his Antiquities of Wancicli^hire Illustrated
(1656), has been placed in the foremost rank of
county histories. He published also a History of St
Paul's Cathedral; and three volumes of a great work
entitled Monasticon Anglicanum (1655-1673), intended
to embrace the history of tlie monastic and other re-
ligious foundations wliich existed in England before
the Reformation. Besides several otlier publications,
Dugdale left a large collection of manuscripts, which
are now to be found in the Bodleian library at Ox-
ford, and at the Herald's college. Anthony Wood
(1632-1695), a native of Oxford, was addicted to
similar pursuits. He published, in 169 1, a well-known
work entitled Athcnce Oxonienses, being an account
of the lives and writings of almost all the eminent
authoi's educated at Oxford, and many of those edu-
cated at the university of Cambridge. This book
has been of much utility to tlie compilers of bio-
graphical works, though, in point of composition and
impartiality, it is held in little esteem. Wood appears
to have been a respecter of truth, but to have been
frequently misled by narrow-minded prejudices and
hastily-formed opinions. His style is poor and vul-
gar, and his mind seems to have been the reverse of
philosophical. He compiled also a work on the his-
tory and antiquities of the university of Oxford,
which was published only in Latin, the translation
into that language being made by Dr Fell, bishop
of Oxford. Eli AS Ashmole (1617-1692), a famous
antiquary and virtuoso, was a friend of Sir William
Dugdale, whose daughter he married. In the earlier
part of his life he was addicted to astrology and al-
chemy, but afterwards devoted liis attention more
exclusively to antiquities, heraldry, and the collec-
tion of coins and other rarities. His most celebrated
work, entitled The Institution, Laws, and Ceremonies
of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, was published
in 1G72. A collection of" rarities, books, and manu-
scripts, which he presented to the university of Ox-
ford, constituted the foundation of the Ashmolean
museum now existing there. ,Iohn Aubrey (1626-
"1700) studied at Oxford, and, while there, aided in the
collection of materials for Dugdale's ' Monasticon
Anglicanum ;' at a later period, he furnished valuable
assistance to Anthony Wood. His only pubhshed
work is a collection of popular superstitions relative
to dreams, portents, ghosts, witchcraft, &c., under
the title of Miscellanies. His manuscripts, of which
* Take the following sentence as a specimen : ' Scepticism
is a faculty opposing phenomena and intelligibles all manner
of ways ; whereby we proceed through the equivalence of con-
trary things and speeches, first to suspension, then to indistur-
banoQ.*
many are preserved in the Ashmolean museum and
the library of the Royal Societj', prove liis researches
to have been very extensive, and have furnished
much useful information to later anti([uaries. Au-
brey has been too liarshly censured by Gifford as a
credulous fool; yet it must be admitted that his
power of discriminating truth from falseliood was by
no means remarkable. Three volumes, published
in IS 13, under the title of Letters written hij Eminent
Persons in the Seventeenth and Eigldeenth Centuries,
Sfc. with Lives of Eminent Men, are occui)ieil prin-
cipally by very curious literary anecdotes, wliich
Aubrey communicated to Antliony Wood. Thomas
Rymer, a distinguished historical antiquary, is the
last of his class whom we shall mention at present.
Having been appointed royal historiographer in
Thomas BjTuei.
1692, he availed himself of the opportunities of re-
search whicli liis office afforded liini, and in 1704
began to publisli a collection of public treaties and
compacts, under tlie title of Fadera, Conrevtiones,
etcujiiscunque generis Acta Publico, inter Beges Anglia:
et alios Principes, ab anno 1101. Of this work he
publislied fifteen volumes folio, being assisted in his
labours by Robert Sanderson, anotlier industrious
antiquary, by whom five more were added after
Rymer's death in 1715. The ' Fcedera,' though im-
methodical and ill digested, is a liighly valuable
publication, and, indeed, is indisjiensable to those
who desire to be accurately acquainted vnth the
history of England. Fifty-eight manuscript vohirnus,
containing a great variety of historical materials
collected by Rymer, are preserved in the Britisli
museum.
TOM d'URFEY and TOM BROWN.
Very different in character from these grave aNtl
ponderous autliors were their contemporaries Tom
D'Urfey and Tom Brown, wlio entertained the
public in the reign of William HI. with occasional
whimsical compositions botli in prose and verse,
wliich are now valued only as conveying some notion
of the taste and manners of the time. D'Urfey's
comedies, whicli possess much farcical humour, have
long been considered too licentious for the stage. As
FKOM 104!?
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO \58&.
a merry and facetious companion, his society was
greatly courted, and he was a distinguished com-
poser of jovial and party songs. In the 29th num-
ber of ' The Guardian,' Steele mentions a collection
of sonnets publislied under the title of Laugh and he
Fat, or Fills to Purge Melancholy ; at the same time
censuring the world for ungratefully neglecting to
reward the jocose labours of D'Urfey, 'who was so
large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose
humorous productions so many rural squires in the
remotest part of this island are obliged for tlie dig-
nity and state wliich corpulency gives them.' In
the 6"t]i nimiber of the same work, Addison humo-
rously solicits the attendance of his readers at a play
for D'Urfey's benefit. The produce seems to have
relieved the necessities of the poet, who continued to
give forth his drolleries till his death in 1723. Tom
Brown, who died in 1704, was a 'merry fellow' and
libertine, who, having by his immoral conduct lost
the situation of schoolmaster at Kingston-upon-
Thames, became a professioniil author and libeller
in the metropolis. His writings, which consist of
dialogues, letters, poems, and other miscellanies,
display considerable learning as well as shrewdness
and humour, but are deformed by obscene and scur-
rilous buffoonery. From the ephemeral nature of
the subjects, very few of them can now be perused
with interest ; indeed the following extracts com-
prise nearly all the readable passages that can with
delicacy be presented in these modern times.
[Letter from Scarron in the Next World to Louis XI VJ]
All the conversation of this lower world at present
runs upon you ; and the devil a word we can hear in
any of our cotTee-houses, but what his Gallic majesty
is more or less concerned in. 'Tis agreed on by all
our virtuosos, that since the days of Dioclesian, no
prince has been so great a benefactor to hell as your-
self ; and as much a master of eloquence as I >vas once
thought to be at Paris, I want words to tell you how
much you are commended here for so heroically tramp-
ling under foot the treaty of Ryswlck, and opening a
new scene of war in your great climacteric, at which
age most of the princes before you were such recreants,
as to think of making up their scores with heaven,
and leaving their neighbours in peace. But you, they
say, are above such sordid precedents ; and rather
than Pluto should want men to people his dominions,
are willing to spare him half a million of your own
subjects, and that at a juncture, too, when you are
not overstocked with them.
This has gained you a universal applause in these
regions ; the three Furies sing your praises in every
street : Bellona swears there's never a prince in Chris-
tendom worth hanging besides yourself ; and Charon
bustles for you in all companies. He desired me
about a week ago to present his most humble respects
to you, adding, that if it had not been for your ma-
jesty, he, with his wife and children, must long ago
been quartered upon the parish ; for which reason he
duly drinks your health every morning in a cup of
cold Styx next his conscience. * *
Last week, as I was sitting with some of my ac-
quaintance in a public-house, after a great deal of
impertinent chat about the affairs of the Jlilanese,
and the intended siege of Mantua, the whole company
fell a-talking of your majesty, and what glorious ex-
ploits you had performed in your time. Why, gentle-
men, says an ill-looked rascal, who proved to be Hero-
stratus, for Pluto's sake let not the grand monarch
run away with all your praises. I have done some-
thing memorable in my time too ; 'twas I who, out
of the gaiete de cceur, and to perpetuate my name,
fired the famous temple of the Ephesian Diana, and
'n two hours consumed that maguificeut structure,
which was two hundred years a-building ; therefore,
gentlemen, lavish not away all your praises, I beseech
you, upon one man, but allow others their share.
Why, thou diminutive inconsiderable wretcli, said I
in a great passion to him, thou worthless idle logger-
head, thou pigmy in sin, thou Tom Thumb in ini-
quity, how dares such a puny insect, as thou art, have
the impudence to enter the lists with Louis le Grand •
Thou valuest thyself upon firing a church, but how!
when the mistress of the house was gone out to assist
Olympias. 'Tis plain, thou hadst not the courage to
do it when the goddess was present, and upon the spot.
But what is this to what my royal master can boast of,
that had destroyed a hundred and a hundred such
foolish fabrics in his time. * *
He had no sooner made his exit, but, cries an odd
sort of a spark, with his hat buttoned up before, like
a country scraper. Under favour, sir, what do you
think of me ? Why, who are you ? replied I to him.
Who am I, answered he ; why, Nero, the sixth em-
peror of Rome, that murdered my Come, said
I to him, to stop your prating, I know your history as
well as yourself, that murdered your mother, kicked
your wife down stairs, despatched two apostles out of
the world, begun the first persecution against the Chris-
tians, and lastly, put your master Seneca to death.
[These actions are made light of, and the sarcastic
shadeproceeds — ] Whereas, his most Christian majesty,
whose advocate I am resolved to be against all opposers
whatever, has bravely and generously starved a million
of poor Hugonots at home, and sent t'other million of
them a-grazing into foreign countries, contrary to
solemn edicts, and repeated promises, for no other
provocation, that I know of, but because they were
such coxcombs as to place him upon the throne. In
short, friend Nero, thou mayest pass for a rogue of
the third or fourth class ; but be advised by a stranger,
and never show thyself such a fool as to dispute the
pre-eminence with Louis le Grand, who has murdered
more men in his reign, let me tell thee, than thou hast
murdered tunes, for all thou art the vilest thrummer
upon cat -gut the sun ever beheld.' However, to give
the devil his due, I will say it before thy face, and
behind thy back, that if thou hadst reigned as many
years as my gracious master has done, and hadst had,
instead of Tigellinus, a Jesuit or two to have governed
thy conscience, thou mightest, in all probability, have
made a much more magnificent figure, and been in-
ferior to none but the mighty monarch 1 have been
talking of.
Having put my Roman emperor to silence, I looked
about me, and saw a pack of grammarians (for so I
guessed them to be by their impertinence and noise)
disputing it very fiercely at the next table ; the mat-
ter in debate was, which was the most heroical age ;
and one of them, who valued himself very much upon
his reading, maintained, that the heroical age, pro-
perly so called, began with the Theban, and ended
with the Trojan war, in which compass of time that
glorious constellation of heroes, Hercules, Jason, The-
seus, Tidajus, with Agamemnon, Ajax, Achilles, Hec-
tor, Troilus, and Diomedes flourished ; men that had
all signalised themselves by their personal gallantry
and valour. His next neighbour argued very fiercely
for the age wherein Alexander founded the Grecian
monarchy, and saw so many noble generals and com-
manders about him. The third was as obstreperous
for that of Julius Ca;sar, and managed his argument
with 80 much heat, that I expected every minute when
these puppies would have gone to loggerheads in good
earnest. To put an end to your controversy, gentle-
men, says I to them, you may talk till your lungs are
foundered ; but this I positively assert, that the pre-
sent age we live in is the most heroical age, and that
my master, Louis Ic Grand, is the greatest hero of
it. Hark you me, sir, how do you make that appear !
5-28
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1UM BROWy,
cried, the whole pack of them, opening upon me all at
once. By vour leave, gentlemen, answered I, two to
one is odds at foot-bali ; but having a hero's cause to
defend, I find myself possessed with a hero's vigour
and resolution, and don't doubt but I shall bring you
over to my party. That age, therefore, is the most
heroical which is the boldest and bravest ; the an-
cients, I grant you, got drunk and cut throats as
well as we do ; but, gentlemen, they did not sin
upon the same foot as we, nor had so many discou-
ragements to deter them ; * * so 'tis a plain case, you
see, that the heroism lies on our side. To apply this,
then, to my royal master ; he has filled all Christen-
dom with blood and confusion ; he has broke through
the most solemn treaties sworn at the altar ; he has
strayed and undone infinite numbers of poor ivretches ;
and all this for his own glory and ambition, when he's
assured that hell gapes ever}' moment for him. Now,
tell me, whether your Jasons, your Agamemnons, or
Alexanders, durst have ventured so heroically ; or
wheth-^r your pitiful emperors of Germany, your me-
chanic kings of England and Sweden, or your lousy
states of Holland, have courage enough to write after
BO illustrious a copy.
Thus, sir, you rnay see with what zeal I appear in
your majesty's behalf, and that I omit no opportunity
of magnifying your great exploits to the utmost of my
poor abilities. At the same time, I must freely own
to you, that I have met with some rough-hewn saucy
rascals, that have stopped me in my full career when I
liave been expatiating upon vour praises, and have so
dumbfounded me with their villanous objections, that
I could not tell how to reply to them.
An Exhortatory Letter to an Old Lady that SmoTced
Tobacco.
Madam — Though the ill-natured world censures you
for smoking, yet I would advise you, madam, not to
part with so innocent <a diversion. In the first place,
it is healthful ; and, as Galen rightly observes, is a
sovereign remedy for the toothache, the constant
persecutor of old ladies. Secondly, tobacco, though
it be a heathenish weed, it is a great help to Chris-
tian meditations ; which is the reason, I suppose, that
recommends it to your parsons, the generality of whom
can no more write a sermon without a pipe in their
mouths, than a concordance in their hands ; besides,
every pipe you break may serve to put you in mind of
mortality, and show you upon what slender accidents
man's life depends. I knew a dissenting minister
who, on fast-days, used to mortify upon a rump of
beef, because it put him, as he said, in mind that
all flesh was grass ; but, I am sure, much more is to
be leanit from tobacco. It may instruct you that
riches, beauty, and all the glories of the world, vanish
like a vapour. Thirdly, it is a pretty plaything.
Fourthly, and lastly, it is fashionable, at least 'tis in
a fair way of becoming so. Cold tea, you know, has
been a long while in reputation at court, and the gill
as naturally ushers in the pipe, as the sword-bearer
walks before the lord mayor.
\^An Indian's Account of a London Gamin f/- House.']
The English pretend that they worship but one
God, but for my part I don't believe what they say ;
for besides several living divinities, to which we may
see them daily offer their vows, they have several other
inanimate ones to whom they pay sacrifices, as I have
observed at one of their public meetings, where I hap-
pened once to be.
In this place there is a great altar to be seen, built
round and covered with a green tcachum, lighted in
the midst, and encompassed by several persons in a
sitting posture, as we do at our domestic sacrifices.
At the very moment I came into the room, one of
those, who I supposed was the priest, spread upon tha
altar certain leaves which he took out of a little book
that he held in liis hand. Upon these leaves wer«
represented certain figures very awkwardly painted ;
however, they must needs be the images of 'some divi-
nities ; for, in proportion as they were distributed
round, each one of the assistants made an offering to
it, greater or less, according to his devotion, fob-
served that these offerings were more considerable than
those they make in their other ten)j)les.
After the aforesaid ceremony is over, tlie priest lays
his hand in a trembling manner, as it were, upon the
rest of the book, and continues some time in tins pos-
ture, seized with fear, and without any action at all.
All the rest of the company, attentive to what he does,
are in suspense all the while, and the unmoveabla
assistants are all of them in their turn possessed by
different agitations, according to the spirit which hap
pens to seize them. One joins his hands together, and
blesses Heaven ; another, very earnestly looking upon
his image, grinds his teeth ; a third bites his fingers,
and stamps upon the ground with his feet. Every
one of them, in short, makes such extraordinary i)os
tures and contortions, that they seem to be no longei
rational creatures. But scarce has the priest returiu;d
a certain leaf, but he is likewise seized by the same
fury with the rest. He tears the book, and devours
it in his rage, throws down the altar, and curses the
sacrifice. Nothing now is to be heard but complaints
and groans, cries and imprecations. Seeing them so
transported and so furious, I judge that the God that
they worship is a jealous deity, who, to punish them
for what they sacrifice to others, sends to each of them
an evil demon to possess him.
Laconics, or New Maxims of State and Conversation.
Though a soldier in time of peace is like a chimney
in summer, yet what wise man would pluck down his
chimney because his almanac tells him it is the
middle of June ?
"War, as the world goes at present, is a nursery for
the gallows, as Hoxton is for the meetings, and Bar-
tholomew fair for the two playhouses.
Covetousness, like jealousy, when it has once taken
root, never leaves a man but with his life- A rich
banker in Lombard Street, finding himself very ill,
sent for a parson to administer the last consolations
of the church to him. While the ceremony was per-
forming, old Gripewell falls into a fit. As soon as he
was a little recovered, the doctor offered the chalice
to him. ' No no,' cries he ; ' I can't afibrd to lend
you above twenty shillings upon't ; upon my word I
can't now.'
Though a clergvman preached like an angel, yet he
ought to consider that two hour-glasses of divinity are
too much at once for the most patient constitution.
In the late civil wars, Stephen Marshal split his text
into twenty-four parts. Upon this, one of the conn-re-
gation immediately runs out of church. ' Why, what's
the matter V sa_, s a neighbour. ' Only going for my
night-go^vn and slippers, for I find we must take up
quarters hero to-night.'
If your friend is in want, don't carry him to the
tavern, where you treat yourself as well as him, and
entail a thirst and headache upon him next moniiug.
To treat a poor ^vretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or
fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles
to a man that has never a shirt on his back. Put
something into his pocket.
What is sauce for a goose is sauce for a gander.
When any calamities befell the Roman empire, the
pagans used to lay it to the charge of the Christians:
when Christianity became tlie imperial religion, the
Christians returned the same compliment to tha
pagans.
623
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1689.
That which passes for current doctrine at one junc-
ture, and in one climate, won't do so in another. The
cavaliers, in the beginning of the trouhles, used to
trump up the l"2th of the Bomam upon the parlia-
ment ; the parliament trump'd it upon the army,
when they would not disband ; the army back again
upon the parliament, when they disputed their orders.
Never was poor chapter so unmercifully tossed to and
fro again.
Not to flatter ourselves, we English are none of the
most constant and easy people in the world. When
the late war pinched us. Oh! when shall we have a
peace and trade again ? We had no sooner a peace,
but, Huzza, boys, for a new war ! and that we shall
soon be sick of.
It may be no scandal for us to imitate one good
quality of a neighbouring nation, who are like the
turf they burn, slow in kindling, but, when once
thoroughly lighted, keep their fire.
What a fine thing it is to be well-mannered upon
occasion ! In the reign of King Charles II., a certain
worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself
to the auditory at the conclusion of his sermon : —
* In short, if you don't live up to the precepts of the
gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular ap-
petites, you must expect to receive your reward in a
certain place, which 'tis not good manners to mention
here.'
To quote St Ambrose, or St Jerome, or any other
"(ed-lettered father, to prove any such important truth
as this, That virtue is commendable, and all excess to
be avoided, is like sending for the sheriff to come with
the 2wsse C07nita(us to disperse a few boys at foot-ball,
when it may be done without him.
Some divines make the same use of fathers and
councils as our beaus do of their canes, not for sup-
port or defence, but mere ornament or show ; and
cover themselves with fine cobweb distinctions, as
Homer's gods did with a cloud.
Some books, like the city of London, fare the bet-
ter for being burnt.
'Twas a meiTy saj'ing of Rabelais, that a man ought
to buy all the bad books that come out, because they
will never be printed again.
SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE.
During this period Scotland produced man}^ emi-
nent men, but scarcely any who attempted compo-
sition in the English language. The difference
between the common speech of the one country and
that which was used in the other, had been widen-
ing ever since the days of Chaucer and James I.,
but particularly since the accession of James VI. to
the English throne ; the Scotch remaining station-
ary or declining, while the Englisli was advancing
in refinement of both structure and pronunciation.
Accordingly, except the works of Drummond of
Hawthornden, who had studied and acquired the
language of Drayton and Jonson, there did not
appear in Scotland any estimable necimen of ver-
nacular prose or poetry between the time of ]Mait-
land and Montgomery and that of Sir George
Mackenzie, Lord Advocate under Charles II. and
James II. (163G~1G91). who seems to have been the
only learned man of his time that maintained an
acquaintance with tiie lighter dejiartments of con-
temporary English literature. Sir George was a
friend of Dryden, by whom he is mentioned with
great respect; and he himself composed ' poetry,
vhich, if it has no other merit, is at least in pure
English, and appears to have been fashioned after
tlie best models of the time. He also wrote some
mond essays, which possess the same merits. These
are entitled. On Happiness; The Jieliyious Stoic;
Solitude Preferred to Public Employment ; Moral i
Gallantry ; The Moral Histury of Frugality ; and
Reason. Sir George Mackenzie is one of the stan-
Sir George Mackenzie.
dard writers on the law of Scotland, and likewise
published various political and antiquarian tracts.
An important historical production of his pen, en-
titled Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, from the
Restoration of Charles II., lay undiscovered in manu-
script till the present century, and was not printed
till 1821. Though personally disposed to humanity
and moderation, the severities whicli he was instru-
mental in perpetrating against the covenanters, in
his capacity of Lord Advocate under a tyrannical
government, excited against him a degree of popu-
lar odium wiiich has not even yet entirely subsided
Sir George Mackenzie's Monument, Graj-friars
churchyard Edinburgh.
He is more honourably distingtushed as the founder
of the library of tlie Faculty of Advocates in Edin-
burgh. At the Revolution, he retired to England,
530
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR GEORGE MACKEMfTK.
■where his death took place in 1691. With the
exception of his essays, tlie only compositions bear-
ing a resemblance to J:ng:lisli, wliich appeared in
Scotland during the seventeenth century, were con-
troversial pamphlets in politics and divinity, now
generally forgotten.
From the following specimens, the reader will
perceive that Sir George Mackenzie was less suc-
cessful in verse than in prose; and that even in the
latter, his sentences are sometimes incorrectly and
loosely constructed. The fourth extract is curious
as a strong expression of liis opinion of the more
violent and enthusiastic religionists of his time.
[Pi-aise of a Country Life.']
happy country life ! pure like its air ;
Free from the rage of pride, the pangs of care.
Here happy souls lie bathed in soft content,
And are at once secure and innocent.
No passion here but love : here is no wound
But that by which lovers their names coiifound
On barks of trees, whilst with a smiling face
They see those letters as themselves embrace.
Here the kind myrtles pleasant branches spread ;
And sure no laurel casts so sweet a shade.
Yet all these country pleasures, without love,
Would but a dull and tedious prison prove.
But oh ! what woods [and] parks [and] meadows lie
In the blest circle of a mistress' e^'e !
What courts, what camps, what triumphs may one
find
Display'd in Caslia, when she will be kind !
What a dull thing this lower world had been.
If heavenly beauties were not sometimes seen !
For when fair Cselia leaves this charming place,
Her absence all its glories does deface.
[Against Envy.']
We may cure envy in ourselves, either by consider-
ing how useless or how ill these things were, for which
we envy our neighbours ; or else how we possess as
much or as good things. If I envy his greatness, I
consider that he wants my quiet : as also I consider
that he possibly envies me as much as I do him ; and
that when I begun to examine exactly his perfections,
and to balance them with my own, I found myself as
happy as he was. And though many envy others, yet
very few would change their condition even with those
whom they en'vy, all being considered. And I have
oft admired why we have suffered ourselves to be so
cheated by contradictory vices, as to contemn this
day him whom we envied the last ; or why we envy
so man)', since there are so few whom we think to
deserve as much as we do. Another great help against
envy is, that we ought to consider how much the thing
envied costs him whom we envy, and if we would
take it at the price. Thus, when I envy a man for
being learned, I consider how much of his health and
time that learning consumes : if for being great, how
he must flatter and serve for it ; and if I would not
pay his price, no reason I ought to have what he has
got. Sometimes, also, I consider that there is no rea-
son for my envy : he whom I envy deserves more than
he has, and I less than I possess. And by thinking
much of these, I repress their envy, which gi-ows still
from the contempt of our neighbour and the over-
rating ourselves. As also I consider that the perfec-
tions envied by me may be advant.ageous to mo ; and
thus I check myself for envying a great pleader, but
am rather glad that there is such a man, who may
defend my innocence : or to envy a great soldier, be-
cause his valour may defend my estate or country.
And when any of my countrymen begin to raise envy
in me, I alter the scene, and begin to be glad that
Scotland can boast of so fine a man ; and I remember,
that though now I am angry at him when I compare
hiin with myself, yet if I were discoursing of my
nation abroad, I would be glad of that merit in him
which now displeases mo. Nothing is envied but what
appears beautiful and charming ; and it is strange that
I should be troubled at the sight of what is pleasant.
1 endeavour also to make such my friends as deserve
my envy ; and no man is so base as to envy his friend.
Thus, whilst others look on the angry side of merit,
and thereby trouble themselves, I am pleased in ad-
miring the beauties and charms which bum them as
a fire, whilst they warm me as the sun.
\_Faine.'\
I smile to see underling pretenders, and who live
in a country scarce designed in the exactest maps,
sweat and toil for so unmassy a reputation, that,
when it is hammered out to the most stretching
dimensions, will net yet reach the nearest towns of a
neighbouring countrv' : whereas, examine such as have
but lately returned from travelling in most flourishing
kingdoms, and though curiosity was their greatest
errand, yet ye will find that they scarce know who is
chancellor or president in these places ; and in the
exactest histories, we hear but few news of the famous-
est pleaders, divines, or physicians ; and by soldiers
these are undervalued as pedants, and these by them
as madcaps, and both by philosophers as fools.
[Bigotry.']
I define bigotry to be a laying too much stress upon
any circumstantial point of religion or worship, and
the making all other essential duties subservient
thereto. * *
The first pernicious effect of bigotry is, that it ob-
trudes on us things of no moment as matters of the
greatest importance. Now, as it would be a great
defect in a man's sense to take a star for the sun, or
in an orator to insist tenaciously on a point which
deserved no consideration, so it must be a much
greater error in a Christian to prefer, or even to equal,
a mere circumstance to the solid points of religion.
But these mistakes become more dangerous, bv in-
ducing their votaries to believe that, because "they
are orthodox in these matters, they are the only people
of God, and all who join not are aliens to the com-
monwealth of Israel. And from this springs, first,
that they, as friends of God, may be familiar with
Him, and, as friends do one to another, may speak to
Him without distance or premeditation. * * Bigotry
having thus corrupted our reasoning in natters of reli-
gion, it easily depraves it in the whole course of our
morals and politics.
The bigots, in the second place, proceed to fancy
that they who differ from them are enemies to God,
because they differ from God's people ; and then the
Old Testament is consulted for expressions denounc-
ing vengeance against them : all nuirders become
sacrifices, by the example of Phineas and Elmd ; all
rapines are hallowed by the Israelites borrowing the
earrings of the Egv'ptians ; and rebellions have a
hundred forced texts of Scripture brought to patronise
them. But I oftentimes wonder where they find i)re-
cedents in the C»ld Testament for murdering and rob-
bing men's rejiutation, or for lying so impudently for
what they think the good old cause, which (iod fore-
seeing, has commanded us not to lie, even fur his
sake.
The third link of this chain is — Thit they, fancying
themselves to be tlie only Israel, conclude tliat (iod
sees no sin in them, all is allowable to tliem ; ami (as
one of themselves said) 'they will be as good to God
another way.'
531
FROM 1649
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1539
The fourth is — That such as differ from them are
bastards, and not the true sons of God, and therefore
they ought to have no share of this earth or its go-
vernment : hence flow these holy and useful maxims —
Dominion is founded in grace, and the saints hare the
only right to govern the earth : which being once
upon an occasion earnestly pressed in Cromwell's little
parliament, it was answered by the president of his
council — That the saints deserved all things, but that
public employment was such a drudgery, that it would
be unjust to condemn the saints to it ; and that the
securest way to make the commonwealth happy, was
to leave them in a pious retirement, interceding for
the nation at the throne of grace.
The fifth error in their reasoning is — That seeing
their opinions flow immediately from heaven, no
earthly government can condemn anything they do in
prosecution of these their opinions ; thence it is that
they raise seditions and rebellions without any scruple
of conscience : and, believing themselves the darlings
and friends of God, they think themselves above kings,
who are only their servants and executioners.
It may seem strange that such principles as bigotry
suggests should be able to produce so strange effects ;
and many fanciful persons pretend it to be from God,
because it prevails so. But this wonder will be much
lessened if wc consider, first, that the greatest part of
mankind are weak or dislionest, and both these sup-
port bigotry with all their might. Many virtuous
men also promote its interest from a mistaken good
nature, and vain men from a design of gaining popu-
larity. Those who are disobliged by the government,
join their forces with it to make to themselves a
party ; and those who are naturally unquiet or fac-
tious, find in it a pleasant divertisement ; whereas,
on the other side, few are so concerned for moderation
and truth, as the bigots are for their beloved conceits.
There is also a tinsel devotion i" '\t, which dazzles
the eyes of unthinking people ; anu this arises either
from the new zeal, that, like youth, is still vigorous,
and has not as yet spent itself so as that it needs to
languish ; or else from the bigot's being conscious
that his opinions need to be disguised under this hypo-
critical mask.
Severity also increases the number and zeal of
bigots. Iluman nature inclines us wisely to that pity
which we may one day need ; and few pardon the
severity of a magistrate, becaus* they know not where
it may stop. I have known also some very serious
men, who have concluded, that since magistrates have
not oftentimes in other things a great concern for de-
votion, their forwardness against these errors must
arise either from the cruelty of their temper, or from
some hid design of carrying on a particular interest,
very different from, and ofttiines inconsistent with,
the religious zeal they pretend. And generally, the
vulgar believe that all superiors are inclined to triumph
over those who are subjected to them ; many have also
a secret persuasion that tho magistrates are still in
league with the national church and its hierarchy,
which they suspect to be supported by them because
it maintains their interest, and they are apt to con-
sider churchmen but as pensioners, aud so as partisans,
to the civil magistrate.
[ Virtne more Pleasant tlian Vice."]
The first objection, whose difficulty deserves an
answer, is, that virtue obliges us to oppose pleasures,
and to accustom ourselves with such rigours, serious-
ness, and patience, as cannot but render its practice
uneasy. And if the reader's own ingenuity supply
not what may be rejoined to this, it will require a
discourse that shall have no other design besides its
latisfaction. And really to show by what means
every man may make himself easily happy, and how
to soften the appearing rigours of philosophy, is a
design which, if I thought it not worthy of a sweeter
pen, should be assisted by mine; and for which I
have, in my current experience, gathered together
some loose reflections and observations, of whose co-
gency I have this assurance, that they have often
moderated the wildest of my o^vn straying inclina-
tions, and so might pretend to a more prevailing
ascendant over such whose reason and temperament
make them much more reclaimable. But at present
my answer is, that philosophy enjoins not the crossing
of our own inclinations, but in order to their accom-
plishment ; and it proposes pleasure as its end, as
well as vice, though, for its more fixed establishment,
it sometimes commands what seems rude to such as
are strangers to its intentions in them. Thus tem-
perance resolves to heighten the pleasures of enjoy-
ment, by defending us against all the insults of excess
and oppressive loathing ; and when it lessens our
pleasures, it intends not to abridge them, but to make
them fit and convenient for us ; even as soldiers, who,
though they propose not wounds and starviiigs, yet,
if without these they cannot reach those laurels to
which they climb, they will not so far disparage their
o^vn hopes, as to think they should fix them upon
anything whose purchase deserves not the suffering
of these. Physic cannot be called a cruel employ-
ment, because, to preserve what is sound, it will cut
off what is tainted ; and these vicious persons, whose
laziness forms this doubt, do answer it, when they
endure the sickness of drunkenness, the toiling of
avarice, the attendance of rising vanity, and the
watchings of anxiety; and all this to satisfy inclina-
tions, whose shortness allows little pleasures, and
whose prospect excludes all future hopes. Such as
disquiet themselves by anxiety (which is a frequently
repeated self-murder), are more tortured than they
could be by the want of what they pant after ; that
longed-for possession of a neighbour's estate, or of a
public employment, makes deeper impressions of grief
by their absence, than their enjoyment can repair.
And a philosopher will sooner convince himself of
their not being the necessary integrants of our happi-
ness, than the miser will, by all his assiduousness,
gain them.
[Avarice.^
The best plea that avarice can make, is, that it pro-
vides against those necessities which otherwise would
have made us miserable ; but the love of money de-
serves not the name of avarice, whilst it proceeds no
fiirther. And it is then only to be abhorred, when it
cheats and abuses us, by making us believe that our
necessities are greater than they are, in which it treats
us as fools, and makes us slaves. But it is indeed
most ridiculous in this, that ofttimes, after it has
persuaded men that a great estate is necessary, it does
not allow them to make use of any suitable propor-
tion of what they have gained ; and since nothing can
be called necessary but what we need to use, all that
is laid up cannot be said to be laid up for necessity.
And so this argument may have some weight when it
is pressed by luxury, but it is ridiculous when it is
alleged by avarice.
I have, therefore, ofttimes admired how a person
that thought it lu.\ury to spend two hundred pounds,
toiled as a slave to get four hundred a-ycar for his
heir. Either he thought an honest and virtuous man
should not exceed two hundred pounds in his expense,
or not ; if he thought he should not, why did he bribe
his heir to be luxurious, by leaving him more ? If he
thought his heir could not live upon so little, why
should he who gained it defraud himself of the true
use ?
I know some who preserve themselves against ava-
532
PROSE WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
NEWSPAPERS IN ENGLAND.
rice, by arguing often with their own lieart that they
have twice as much as they expected, and more than
others who they think live very contentedly, and who'
did bound their designs in the beginning with mo-
derate hopes, and refuse obstinately to enlarge, lest
they should thus launch out into an ocean that has
no shore.
To meditate much upon the folly of others who are
remarkable for this vice, will help somewhat to limit
it ; and to rally him who is ridiculous for it, may in-
fluence him and others to contemn it. I must here
beg rich and avaricious men's leave, to laugh as much
at their folly as I could do at a shepherd who would
weep and grieve because his master would give him
no more beasts to herd, or at a steward, because his
lord gave him no more servants to feed. Nor can I
think a man, who, having gained a great estate, is
afraid to live comfortably' upon it, less ridiculous
than I would do him, who, having built a convenient,
or it may be a stately house, should choose to walk
in the rain, or expose himself to storms, lest he should
defile and profane the floor of his almost idolised
rooms. They who think that they are obliged to live
as well as others of the same rank, do not consider
that every man is only obliged to live according to
his present estate. And, therefore, this necessity will
also grow with our estates ; and this temptation
rather makes our necessities endless, than provides
against them. And he who, having a paternal estate
of a hundred pounds a-year, will not be satisfied to
live according to it, will meet with the same difficulty
when he comes to an estate of ten thousand pounds ;
and, like the wounded deer, he flies not from the dart,
but carries it along with him. We are but stewards,
and the steward should not be angry that he has not
more to manage ; but should be careful to bestow
what he has ; and if he do so, neither his master nor
the world can blame him.
[Tlie True Path to Esteem.']
I have remarked in my own time, that some, by
taking too much care to be esteemed and admired,
have by that course missed their aim ; whilst others
of them who shunned it, diel meet with it, as if it
had fallen on them whilst it was flying from the
others ; which proceeded from the unfit means these
able and reasonable men took to establish their repu-
tation. It is very strange to hear men value them-
selves upon their honour, and their being men of their
word in trifles, when yet that same honour cannot tie
them to pay the debts they have contracted upon
solemn promise of secure and speedy repayment ;
starving poor widows and orphans to feed their lusts ;
and adding thus robbery and oppression to the dis-
honourable breach of trust. And how can we think
them men of honour, who, when a potent and foreign
monarch is oppressing his weaker neighbours, hazard
their very lives to assist him, though they would rail
at any of their acquaintance, that, meeting a strong
man fighting with a weaker, should assist the stronger
in his oppression ?
The surest and most pleasant path to universal
esteem and true popularity, is to be just ; for all men
esteem him most who secures most their private inte-
rest, and protects best their innocence. And all who
have any notion of a Deity, believe that justice is one
of his chief attributes ; and that, therefore, whoever
is just, is next in nature to Ilim, and the best picture
of Him, and to be reverenced and loved. But yet
how few trace this path ! most men choosing rather
to toil and vex themselves, in seeking popular ap-
plause, by living high, and in profuse prodigalities,
which are entertained by injustice and oppression ; as
if rational men would pardon robbers because they
feasted them upon a part of their own spoils ; or did
let them see fine and glorious shows, made for the
honour of the giver upon the expense of the robbed
spectators. But w hen a virtuous person appears gi'eat
by his merit, and obeyed onlj- by the charming force
of his reason, all men think him descended from that
heaven which he serves, and to him they gladly pay
the noble tribute of deserved praises.
NEWSPAPERS IN ENGLAND.
In a former section, we gave an account of the
origin of newspapers, and mentioned the political
use to which they were turned in England during
the civil war. After the Restoration, their conten-
tions were lessened, but the diversity of their con-
tents increased. The Kingdams Intelligencer, which
was begun in London in 1662, contained a greater
variety of useful information than any of its pre-
decessors ; it had a sort of obituary, notices of
proceedings in j)arliamcnt and in the law-courts,
&c. Some curious advertisements also appear in
its columns, such as — ' 'J'lie Faculties' Office for
granting licenses (by act of parliament) to eat flesh
in any part of England, is still kept at St Paul's
Chain, near St Paul's cliurchyard.' The following
warning is given to tlie public against a literary
piracy : — ' There is stolen abroad a most false and
imperfect copy of a jjoeni, called Hudibras, without
name either uf printer or bookseller, as fitting so
lame and spurious an impression. The true and
perfect edition, printed bj' the author's original, is
sold by Richard Harriot, mider St Dunstan's church
in Fleet Street ; that other nameless impression is a
cheat, and will but abuse the buyer as well as the
autlior, wliose poem deserves to have fallen into
better hands.' It would appear that efforts had
been made, even at this earl}- period, to report par-
liamentary speeches; for we find, by Lord ilount-
morres's History of the Irish I'arliament, that a
warm debate occurred in that body during the j'ear
1662, relative to the propriety of allowing the publi-
cation of its debates in the English diurnals; and
the Speaker, in consequence, wrote to Sir Edward
Nicholls, secretary of state, to enjoin a prohibition.
In 1663, another paper called 'The IntelUgeHCcr,
publislied for the satisfaction and information of
the people,' was started by Roger L'Estrange. This
venal author espoused with great warmth the cause
of the crown on all occasions ; and Jlr Nicholls
tells us that he infused into his newspapers more
information, more entertainment, and more adver-
tisements, than were contained in any succeeding
paper whatever, previous to the reign of Queen Anne.
L'Estrange continued his journal for two years, but
dropped it upon the appearance of the London Gazette
(first called tlie Oxford Gazette, owing to the earlier
numbers being issued at O.xford, where the court
was then holding, and the parliament sitting, in
consequence of the plague raging in London) the
first number was published on the 4th of February
1665. So rife did these little books of news, as they
were called, become at this time, that between the
years 1661 and 1668, no less than seventy of them
were published under various titles ; some of them
of the most fantastic, and others of a very sarwistie
description. For example, we have the Mercurii/.i
Fumigosus, or the Smoking Noclarnul ; jMercurius Me-
retrix ; Mcrcurius Radamanthus ; I'l/hlic Occunettce.^,
trull/ stated, irilh allowance ! i\'cu-s from the Land oj
CIdvalnj, being tlie jileasant and delectable History and
Wonderful and Strange Adventures of Don Jiugero de
Strangmenlo, Knight of the S(/ueaking Fiddlestick,
&e. Then, when we get about the time of the famed
Popish Plot, we have the Weekli/ Visions of the Popish
Plot; Discovery of the Mystery of Iniquiti/, &c. On
633
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO i7ST.
the 12tli May 1680, L'Estrange, who had then
started a second papei', called the Observator, first
exercised his authority as hcenser of the press, hy
procuring to be issued a 'proclamation for suppress-
ing the printing and publishing unHcensed news-
books and pamphlets of news, because it has become
a common practice for evil-disposed persons to vend
to his majesty's people all the idle and malicious
reports tliat they could collect or invent, contrary
to law ; the continuance whereof would in a short
time endanger the peace of the kingdom : the same
manifestly tending thereto, as has been declared
by all his majesty's subjects mianimously.' The
charge for inserting advertisements (then untaxed)
W9 learn from the Jockei/s Intelligencer, 1G83, to
be ' a shilling for a horse or coach, for notification,
and sixpence for renewing ;' also in the Observatur
Reformed, it is announced that advertisements of
eight lines are inserted for one shilling ; and Mor-
phew's County Gentleman s Cuurant, two years after-
wards, says, that ' seeing promotion of trade is a
matter that ought to be encouraged, the price of
advertisements is advanced to 2d. per line!' The
publishers at this time, however, seem to have been
sometimes sorely puzzled for news to fill tlieir sheets,
small as the}' were ; but a few of them got over the
difficulty in a sufficiently ingenious manner. Thus,
the Flying Post, in 1G95, announces, that 'if any
gentleman has a mind to oblige his country friend
or correspondent with this account of public affairs,
he may have it for 2d., of J. Salisbury, at the Rising
Sun in Cornhill, on a sheet of fine paper ; half of
which being blank, he may thereon write Ids own
private business, or the material news of the day.'
And again, Dairker's News Letter — ' This letter will
be done up on good writing-paper, and blank space
left, that any gentleman may write his own private
business. It will be useful to improve the younger
sort in writing a curious hand !' Another pub-
lisher, with less wit or more honesty than these,
had recourse to a curious enough expedient for
filling his sheet : whenever there was a dearth of
news, he filled up the blank part with a portion
of the Bible ; and in this way is said to have actually
gone througli the whole of the New Testament and
the greater part of the Psalms of David-
REIGNS OF WILLIAM 111., ANNE, AND GEORGE I. [1689 TO 1727.1
POETS.
HE tliirty-cight
years embraced
by these reigns
produced a class
of writers in prose
and poetry, who,
during the wliole
of tlie eighteenth
century, were
deemed the best,
or nearly the best,
that the country
had ever known.
The central period
of twelve years,
which compose
the reign of Anne
(1702-14), was,
indeed, usually
styled the Augus-
tan Era of English Literature, on account of its sup-
posed resemblance in intellectual opulence to tlie reign
of the Emperor Augustus. This opinion has not
been followed or confirmed in the present age. Tlie
praise due to good sense, and a correct and polished
style, is allowed to the prose writers, and that due to
a felicity in painting artificial life, is awarded to the
poets ; but modern critics seem to have agreed to pass
over these qualities as of secondary moment, and to
hold in greater estimation the writings of the times
preceding tlie Kestoration, and of our own day, as
being more boldly original, both in style and in
thought, more imaginative, and more sentimental.
The Edinburgh Review appears to state the prevail-
ing sentiment in the following sentences: — 'Speaking
generally of that generation of authors, it may be
said that, as poets, they had no force or greatness of
fi^ncy, no pathos and no enthusiasm, and, as philo-
sophers, no comprehensiveness, depth, or originality
They are sagacious, no doubt, neat, clear, and reason-
able ; but for the most part, cold, timid, and super-
ficial.' The same critic represents it as their chief
praise that they corrected the indecency, and polished
the pleasantry and sarcasm, of the vicious school in-
troduced at the Restoration. ' Writing,' he con-
tinues, ' with infinite good sense, and great grace and
vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in
a tone that was peculiar to the upper ranks of so-
ciet3% and upon subjects that were almost exclusively
mteresting to them, they naturally figured as the
most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers
which the world had ever seen, and made the wild,
luxuriant, and humble sweetness of our earlier
authors appear rude and untutored in the compari-
son.' While there is general truth in these remarks,
it must at the same time be observed, that the age
produced several writers, who, each in his own line,
may be called extraordinary. Satire, expressed in
forcible and copious language, was certainly carried
to its utmost pitch of excellence by Swift. Tlie
poetry of elegant and artificial life was exhibited, in
a perfection never since attained, by Pope. The art
of describing the manners, and discussing the morals
of the passing age, was practised for the first time,
with unrivalled felicity, by Addison. And with all
the licentiousness of Congreve and Farquhar, it may
be fairly said that English comedy was in their
hands what it had never been before and has scarcely
in any instance been since.
5;u
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MATTHEW PRIOR.
JlATTHEVr PRIOR.
It was in some respects a disadvantage to the poets
of this period that most of tliem enjoyi a consider-
able degree of worldly prosperity and im portanee, siu:h
as has too rarely blessed the community of authors.
Some filled high diplomatic and official situations,
and others were engaged in schemes of politics and
ambition, •where offices of state and the ascendency
of rival parties, not poetical or literary laurels, were
tho prizes contended for. Familiar aud constant in-
:rz^'^^^-^
tercourse with the great on the part of authors, has
a tendency to fix the mind on the artificial distinc-
tions and pursuits of society, and to induce a tone of
thought and study adapted to such associates. Kow,
it is certain that high thoughts and imaginations can
only be nursed in solitude ; and though poets may
gain in taste and correctness by mixing in courtly
circles, the native vigour and originality of genius,
and the steady worship of truth and nature, must be
impaired by such a course of refinement. It is evident
that most of the poetry of this period, exquisite as it
is in gaiety, polish, and sprightliness of fancy, pos-
sesses none of the lyrical grandeur and enthusiasm
which redeem so many errors in the elder poets. The
French taste is visible in most of its strains ; and
where excellence is attained, it is not in the deUnea-
tion of strong passions, or in bold fertihty of inven-
tion. Pope was at the head of this school, and was
master even of higher powers. lie had access to the
haunted ground of imagination, but it was not his
favourite or ordinary walk. Uthers were content
with humbler worship, with propitiating a minister
or a mistress, reviving the conceits of classic mytho-
logy, or satirising, without seeking to reform, the
fashionable follies of the day. One of the most agree-
able and accomplished of the number was ]Mattukv
Prior, born in 1664. Some accounts give the honour
of his birth to Wimborne, in Dorsetshire, and others
to the city of London. His fivther died early, and
Matthew was brought u[) by his uncle, a vintner at
Charing Cross, who sent liim to Westminster schooL
He was afterwards taken home to assist in the busi-
ness of the inn ; and whilst there, was one day seen
by the Karl of Dorset reading Horace. The earl gene-
rously undertook the care of his education; and in
his eighteenth .year. Prior was entered of St John's
college, Cambridge. He distinguished himself during
his academical career, and amongst other copies of
verses, produced, in conjunction with the Honourable
Cliarles Montagu, the Citr/ Mouse and Country Mouse,
in ridicule of Dryden's ' Hind and Panther.' The
Earl of Dorset did not forget the poet he had snatched
from obscurity. He invited him to London, and ob-
tained for him an appointment as secretary to the
Earl of Berkeley, ambassador to the Hague. In this
ca]»acity Prior obtained the approbation of King
William, who made him one of the gentlemen of his
bedchamber. In 1697 he was appointed secretary
to the embassy on the treat}' of llyswick, at the con-
clusion of which he was presented with a consider-
able sum of money by the lords justices. Next year
he was ambassador at the court of Versailles ; and
after some other temporary honours and appoint-
ments, was made a conmiissioner of trade. In 1701, he
entered the House of Commons as representative for
the borough of East-Grimstead, and abandoning his
former friends, the Whigs, joined the Tories in im-
peaching Lord Somers. This came with a peculiarly
bad grace from Prior, for the charge against Somers
was, that he had advised the partition treaty, in
which treaty the poet himself had acted as agent.
He evinced his patriotism, however, by afterwards
Celebrating in verse the battles of Blenheim and
Kamilies. When the Whig government was at length
overturned. Prior became attached to Harley's ad-
ministration, and went with Bolingbroke to France
in 1711, to negotiate a treaty of peace. He lived in
splendour in Paris, Mas a favourite of the French
monarch, and enjoyed all the honours of ambassad(jr.
He returned to London in 1715 ; and the Whigs being
again in office, he was conmiitted to custody on a
charge of high-treason. The accusation against
Prior was, that he had held clandestine conferences
with the French plenipotentiary, though, as he justly
replied, no treaty was ever made without private in-
terviews and preliminaries. The Whigs were indig-
nant at the disgraceful treaty of Utrecht ; but Prior
only shared in the culpability of the government.
The able but profligate Bolingbroke was the master-
spirit that pronipte i the humiliating concession to
France. After two years' confinement, the poet was
released without a trial. He had in the interval
written his poem oi Alma ; and being now left vvith-
out any other support than his fellowship of vSt John's
college, he continued his studies, and produced his
Solomon, the most elaborate of his works. He had
also recourse to the publication of a collected edition
of his poems, which was sold to subscribers for five
guineas, and realised the sum of £4000. An equal
sum was presented to Prior by the Earl of Oxford,
and thus he had laid up a provision for old age. Ho
was ambitious onl}' of comfort and private enjoyment.
These, however, he did not long possess ; for he died
on the 18th of September 1721, at Lord Oxford's seat
at Wimpole, being at the time in the fifty-seventh
year of his age.
The works of Prior range over a variety of style
and subject — odes, songs, epistles, epigrams, and
tales. His longest poem, ' Solomon,' is of a serious
character, and was considered by its author to be his
best production, in which ojiinion he is supported by
Cowper. It is tlie most moral, and i>erhai(s the most
correctly written ; but the tales and lighter jiieces of
Prior are undoubtedly his happiest efforts. In these
5'6&
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
he displays that ' charming ease' with which Cowper
saj's he embellished all his poems, added to the lively
illustration and colloquial humour of his master,
Horace. No poet ever possessed in greater perfection
the art of graceful and fluent versification. His
narratives flow on like a clear stream, without break
or fall, and interest us by their perpetual good
humour and vivacity, even when they wander into
metaphysics, as in ' Alma,' or into licentiousness, as
in his tales. His expression was choice and studied,
abounding in classical allusions and images (which
were then the fashion of the day), but without any
air of pedantry or constraint. Like Swift, he loved
to versify the common occurrences of life, and relate
his personal feelings and adventures. He had, liow-
ever, no portion of the dean's bitterness or misan-
thropy, and employed no stronger weapons of satire
than raiUery and arch allusion. He sported on the
surface of existence, noting its foibles, its pleasures,
and eccentricities, but without the power of pene-
trating into its recesses, or evoking the higher pas-
sions of our nature. He was the most natural of
artificial poets — a seeming paradox, yet as true as
the old maxim, that the perfection of art is the con-
cealment of it.
For My Own Monument.
As doctors give physic by way of prevention,
Matt, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care ;
For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention
May haply be never fulfill'd by his heir.
Then take Matt's word for it, the sculptor is paid ;
That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye ;
Yet credit but lightly what more may be said,
For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie.
Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
His virtues and vices were as other men's are ;
High hopes he conceiv'd, and he smother'd great fears,
In a life party-colour'd, half pleasure, half care.
Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree ;
In public employments industrious and grave.
And alone with his friends, Lord ! how merry was he.
Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust ;
And wbirl'd in the round as the wheel turn'd about.
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.
This verse, little polish'd, though mighty sincere,
Sets neither his titles nor merit to view ;
It says that his relics collected lie here,
And no mortal yet knows if this may be true.
Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway,
So Matt may be kill'd, and his bones never found ;
False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea.
So Matt may yet chance to be hang'd or be drown 'd.
If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air.
To Fate we must yield, and the thing is the same;
And if passing thou giv'st him a smile or a tear,
He cares not — yet, prithee, be kind to his fame,
Epitaplt, Extempore.
Nobles and heralds, by your leave.
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve ;
Can Stuart or Nassau claim higher?
An Epitaph.
Interr'd beneath this marble stone,
Lie sauntering .lack and idle Joan.
While rolling threescore years and one
Did round this globe their courses run ;
If human things went ill or well.
If changing empires rose or fell,
The morning past, the evening came,
And found this couple just the same.
They walk'd and ate, good folks : What then ?
Why, then tliey walk'd and ate again ;
They soundly slept the night away ;
They did just nothing all the day.
Nor sister either had nor brother ;
They seemed just tallied for each other.
Their Moral and Economy
Most perfectly they made agree ;
Each virtue kept its proper bound.
Nor trespass'd on the other's ground.
Nor fame nor censure they regarded ;
They neither punish'd nor rewarded.
He cared not what the footman did ;
Her maids she neither prais'd nor chid :
So every servant took his course,
And, bad at first, they all grew worse.
Slothful disorder fiU'd his stable.
And sluttish plenty deck'd her table.
Their beer was strong, their wine was port ,
Their meal was large, their grace was short.
They gave the poor the remnant meat,
Just when it grew not fit to eat.
Tliey paid the churcli and parish rate,
And took, but read not, the receipt ;
For which they claim'd their Sunday's due.
Of slumbering in an upper pew.
No man's defects sought they to know.
So never made themselves a foe.
No man's good deeds did they commend.
So never rais'd themselves a friend.
Nor cherish'd they relations poor,
That might decrease their present store ;
Nor barn nor house did they repair,
That might oblige their future heir.
They neither added nor confounded ;
They neither wanted nor abounded.
Nor tear nor smile did they employ
At news of public grief or joy.
When bells were rung and bonfires made,
If ask'd, they ne'er denied their aid ;
Their jug was to the ringers carried.
Whoever either died or married.
Their billet at the fire was found.
Whoever was depos'd or crown'd.
Nor good, nor bad, nor fools, nor wise,
They would not learn, nor could advise ;
Without love, hatred, joy, or fear.
They led — a kind of — as it were ;
Nor wish'd, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried ;
And so they liv'd, and so they died.
Tlie Garland.
The pride of every grove I chose.
The violet sweet and Illy fair.
The dappled pink and bkishing rose,
To deck my channlng Chloe's hair.
At morn the nymph vouchsaf'd to place
Upon her brow the various ^vreath ;
The flowers less blooming than her face.
The scent less fragrant than her breath.
The flowers she wore along the day.
And every nymph and shepherd said,
Tliat in her hair they look'd more gay
Than glowing in their native bed.
Undress'd at evening, when she found
Their odours lost, their colours past.
She chang'd her look, and on the ground
Her garland and her eyes she cast.
636
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MATT!IKW PRICK.
That eye dropp'd sense distinct and clear,
As any muse's tongue could speak,
When from its lid a pearly tear
Ran trickling down her beauteous cheek.
Dissembling what I knew too well,
My lore, my life, said I, explain
This change of humour ; prithee tell —
That falling tear — what does it mean ?
She sigh'd, she smil'd ; and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely mor'list said.
See, friend, in some few fleeting hours.
See yonder, what a change is made.
Ah me ! the blooming pride of May
And that of beauty are but one ;
At morn both flourish bright and gay,
Both fade at evening, pale, and gone.
[Abra^s Love for Solomon.']
[From ' Solomon on the Vanity of the World.']
Another nymph, amongst the many fair,
That made my softer hours their solemn care.
Before the rest aftected still to stand,
And watch'd my ej'c, preventir^g my command.
Abra, she so was call'd, did soonest haste
To grace my presence ; Abra went the last ;
Abra was ready ere I call'd her name ;
And, though I call'd another, Abra came.
Her equals first observ'd her growing zeal,
And laughing, gloss'd that Abra serv'd so well.
To me her actions did unheeded die,
Or were remark'd but with a common eye ;
Till, more appris'd of what the rumour said,
More I observ'd peculiar in the maid.
The sun declin'd had shot his western ray.
When, tir'd with business of ihe solemn day,
I purpos'd to unbend the evening hours.
And banquet private in the women's bowers.
I call'd before I sat to wash my hands
(For so the precept of the law commands) :
Love had ordain'd that it was Abra's turn
To mix the sweets, and minister the urn.
With awful homage, and submissive dread.
The maid approach'd, on my declining head
To pour the oils : she trembled as she pour'd ;
With an unguarded look she now devour'd
My nearer face ; and now recall'd her eye.
And heav'd, and strove to hide, a sudden sigh.
And whence, said I, canst thou have dread or pain ?
What can thy imagery of sorrow mean ?
Secluded from the world and all its care.
Hast thou to grieve or joy, to hope or fear?
For sure, I added, sure thy little heart
Ne'er felt love's anger, or receiv'd his dart.
Abash'd she blush'd, and with disorder spoke :
Her rising shame adorn'd the words it broke.
If the great master will descend to hear
The humble series of his handmaid's care ;
O ! while she tells it, let him not put on
The look that awes the nations from the throne !
! let not death severe in glory lie
In the king's frown and terror of his eye !
Mine to obey, thy part is to ordain ;
And, though to mention be to suffer pain,
If the king smile whilst I my wo recite,
If weeping, I find favour in his sight,
Flow fast, my tears, full rising his delight.
! witness earth beneath, and heaven above !
For can I hide it ? I am sick of love ;
If madness may the name of passion bear,
Or love be call'd what is indeed despair.
Thou Sovereign Power, whose secret will controls
The inward bent and motion of our souls !
Why hast thou plac'd such infinite degrees
Rctwcen the cause and cure of my disease!
The niiglity oliject of that raging fire.
In which, unpitied, Abra must expire.
Had he been born some simple sliepherd's Iicir,
The lowing herd or fleecy sheep his care,
At morn with liim I o'er the hills had run.
Scornful of winter's frost and suininer's sun.
Still asking where he made his flock to rest at noon ;
For him at night, the dear expected guest,
I had with hasty joy prepar'd the feast ;
And from the cottage, o'er the distant plain.
Sent forth my longing eye to meet the swain.
Wavering, impatient, toss'd by hope and fear.
Till he and joy together should appear,
And the lov'd dog declare his master near.
On my declining neck and open breast
I should have luU'd the lovely youth to rest.
And from beneath his head, at dawning day,
With softest care have stol'n my arm away.
To rise, and from the fold release his sheep.
Fond of his flock, indulgent to his sleep.
Or if kind heaven, propitious to my fiaino
(For sure from heaven the faithful ardour cam"--),
Had blest my life, and deck'd my natal hour
With height of title, and extent of power ;
Without a crime my passion had aspirVl,
Found the lov'd prince, and told what I deslr'd.
Then I had come, preventing Sheba's queen,
To see the comelicst of the sons of men.
To hear the charming poet's amorous song.
And gather honey falling from his tongue,
To take the fragrant ki.sses of his mouth.
Sweeter than breezes of her native south.
Likening his grace, his person, and his mien,
To all that great or beauteous I had seen.
Serene and bright his eyes, as solar beams
Reflecting temper'd light from cr3'stal stream.« ;
Ruddy as gold his cheek ; his bosom fair
As silver; the curl'd ringlets of his hair
Black as the raven's wing ; his lip more red
Than eastern coral, or the scarlet thread ;
Even his teeth, and white like a young flock
Coeval, newly shorn, from the clear brook
Recent, and branching on the sunny rock.
Ivory, with sapphires interspers'd, explains
How white his hands, how blue the manly vein.^.
Columns of polish'd marble, firmly set
On golden bases, are his legs and feet ;
His stature all majestic, all divine.
Straight as the palm-tree, strong as is the pine.
Saffi-on and myrrh are on his garments shed,
And everlasting sweets bloom round his head.
What utter I ? where am I ? wretched maid !
Die, Abra, die : too plainly hast thou said
Thy soul's desire to meet his high embrace.
And blessing stamp'd upon thy future race ;
To bid attentive nations bless thy womb.
With unborn monarchs charg'd, and Solom.jij tt;
come.
Here o'er her speech her flowing eyes prevail.
foolish maid ! and oh, unhappy tale ! * *
1 saw her ; 'twas humanity ; it gave
Some respite to the sorrows of my slave.
Her fond excess proclaim'd her passion true,
And generous pity to that truth was due.
Well I intreated her, who well deserv'd ;
I call'd her often, for she ahvay serv'd.
Use made her person easy to my sight.
And ease insensibly produc'd delight.
Whene'er I revell'd in the women's bowers
(For first I sought her but at looser hours),
The apples she had gather'd smelt most sweet,
The cake she kneaded was the savoury meat :
But fruits their odour lost, and meats their tasie
If gentle Abra, had not deck'd the feast.
637
FROM 1G89
CYCLOPEDIA OF
Di.'ihouour'd did the sparkling goblet stand,
Unless received from gentle Abra's hand ;
And, when the virgins form'd the evening choir,
Raising their voices to the master lyre.
Too flat I thought this voice, and that too shrill,
One show'd too much, and one too little skill ;
Nor could my soul approve the music's tone,
Till all was hush'd, and Abra sung alone.
Fairer she seem'd distinguish'd from the rest,
And better mien disclos'd, as better drest.
A bright tiara round her forehead tied.
To juster bounds confin'd its rising pride.
The blushing ruby on her sno^y breast
Render'd its panting whiteness more confess'd ;
Bracelets of pearl gave roundness to her ann,
And every gem augmented eveiy charm.
Her senses pleased, her beauty still improv'd,
And she more lovely grew, as more belov'd.
TJic Tltkfand the Cordelia:— A Ballad.
To the tune of ' King John and the Abbot of Canterbury."
Who has e'er been at Paris, must needs know the
Greve,
The fatal retreat of th' unfortunate brave ;
Where honour and justice most oddly contribute
To ease heroes' pains by a halter and gibbet.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.
There death breaks the shackles which force had put
on.
And the hangman completes what the judge but begun ;
There the 'squire of the pad, and the knight of the
post.
Find their pains no more baulk'd, and their hopes no
more cross'd,
Derry down, &c.
Great claims are there made, and great secrets are
known ;
And the king, and the law, and the thief, has his own ;
But my hearers cry out. What a deuce dost thou ail ?
Cut off thy reflections, and give us thy tale.
Derry down, &c.
'Twas there, then, in civil respect to harsh laws.
And for want of false witness to back a bad cause,
A Norman, though late, was obliged to appear ;
And who to assist, but a grave Cordelier ?
Derry down, &c.
The 'squire, whose good grace was to open the scene,
Seem'd not in great haste that the show should begin ;
Now fitted the halter, now travers'd the cart ;
And often took leave, but was loath to depart.
Derry down, &;c.
\Miat frightens you thus, my good son 1 says the
priest.
You murder'd, are sorry, and have been confess'd.
father ! my sorrow will scarce save my bacon ;
For 'twas not that I murder'd, but that I was taken.
Derry down, &.c.
Pough, prithee ne'er trouble thy Lead with such
fancies ;
Rely on the aid you shall have from St Francis ;
If the money you promis'd be brought to the chest,
You have only to die ; let the church do the rest.
Derry down, &c.
And what will folks say, if they see you afraid ?
It reflects upon me, as I knew not my trade ;
Courage, friend, for to-day is your period of sorrow ;
A.nd things will go better, believe me, to-morrow.
Deny down, &c.
To-morrow ! our hero replied in a fright ;
He that's hang'd before noon, ought to think cf to-
night ;
Tell your beads, quoth the priest, and be fairly truss'd
up.
For you surely to-night shall in paradise sup.
Derry do^vn, kc.
Alas ! quoth the 'squire, howe'er sumptuous the
treat,
Parbleu ! I shall have little stomach to eat ;
1 should therefore esteem it great favour and grace.
Would you be so kind as to go in my place.
Derry down, kc.
That I would, quoth the father, and thank you to
boot ;
But our actions, you know, with our duty must suit ;
The feast I proposed to you, I cannot taste.
For this night, by our order, is marked for a fast.
Derry down, kc.
Then, turning about to the hangman, he said,
Despatch me, I prithee, this troublesome blade :
For thy cord and my cord both equally tie.
And we live by the gold for which other men die.
Deny down, &c.
The Cameleon.
As the Cameleon, who is known
To have no colours of his own ;
But borrows from his neighbour's hue,
His white or black, his green or blue ;
And struts as much in ready light.
Which credit gives him upon sight.
As if the rainbow were in tail.
Settled on him and his heirs male ;
So the young squire, when first he conies
From country school to Will's or Tom"s,
And equally, in truth, is fit
To be a statesman, or a wit ;
Without one notion of his own,
He saunters wildly up and do^vn,
Till some acquaintance, good or bad,
Takes notice of a staring lad.
Admits him in among the gang ;
They jest, reply, dispute, harangue;
He acts and talks, as they befriend him,
Smear'd with the colours which they lend hiio.
Thus, merely as his fortune chances,
His merit or his vice advances.
If haply he the sect pursues,
That read and comment upon news;
He takes up their mysterious face ;
He drinks his coffee without lace ;
This week his mimic tongue runs o'er
What they have said the week before;
His wisdom sets all Europe right.
And teaches JNIarlborough when to fight.
Or if it be his fate to meet
With folks who have more wealth than wit.
He loves cheap port, and double bub,
And settles in the Humdrum Club ;
He learns how stocks will fall or rise ;
Holds poverty the greatest vice ;
Thinks wit the bane of conversation ;
And says that learning spoils a nation.
But if, at first, he minds his hits.
And drinks champaign among the wits ;
Five deep he toasts the towering lasses ;
Repeats you verses wrote on glasses ;
Is in the chair ; prescribes the law ;
And 's lov'd by those he never saw.
538
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MATTHEW PBIOR.
Protogeiies and Apelles.
When poets wrote and painters drew,
As nature pointed out the view ;
Ere Gothic forms were known in Greece,
To spoil the well-proportion'd piece ;
And in our verse ere monkish rhymes
Had jangled their fantastic chimes ;
Ere on the flowery lands of Rhodes,
Those knights had fixed their dull abodes,
Who knew not much to paiirt or write,
Nor car'd to pray, nor dar'd to fight :
■ Protogenes, historians note,
Liv'd there, a burgess, scot and lot ;
And, as old Pliny's writings show,
Apelles did the same at Co.
Agreed these points of time and place,
Proceed we in the present case.
Piqu'd by Protogenes's fame.
From Co to Rhodes Apelles came,
To see a rival and a friend,
Prepar'd to censure, or commend ;
Here to absolve, and there object.
As art with candour might direct.
He sails, he lands, he comes, he rings ;
His servants follow with the things :
Appears the governante of th' house,
For such in Greece were much in use:
If young or handsome, yea or no.
Concerns not me or thee to know.
Does Squire Protogenes live here ?
Yes, sir, says she, with gracious air
And curtsy low, but just call'd out
By lords peculiarly devout.
Who came on pui-pose, sir, to borrow
Our Venus for the feast to-morrow,
To grace the church ; 'tis Venus' day :
I hope, sir, you intend to stay.
To see our Venus ? 'tis the piece
The most reno-ivn'd throughout all Greece ;
So like th' original, they say :
But I have no great skill that way.
But, sir, at six ('tis now past three),
Dromo must make my master's tea :
At six, sir, if you please to come.
You'll find my master, sir, at home.
Tea, says a critic big with laughter,
y\ as found some twenty ages after ;
Authors, before they write, should read.
'Tis very true ; but we'll proceed.
And, sir, at present would you please
To leave your name. — Fair maiden, yes.
Reach me that board. No sooner spoke
But done. With one judicious stroke.
On the plain ground Apelles drew
A circle regularly true :
And will you please, sweetheart, said he,
To show your master this from me ?
By it he presently will know
How painters write their names at Co.
He gave the pannel to the maid.
Smiling and curtsying, Sir, she said,
I shall not fail to tell my master :
And, sir, for fear of all disaster,
I'll keep it my own self : safe bind,
Says the old proverb, and safe find.
So, sir, as sure as key or lock —
Your servant, sir — at six o'clock.
Again at six Apelles came,
Found the same prating civil dame.
Sir, that my master has been here.
Will by the board itself appear.
If from the perfect line be found
He has presum'd to swell the round.
Or colours on the draught to lay,
lis thus (he order'd me to say),
Thus write the painters of this isle ;
Let those of Co remark the style.
She said, and to his hand restor'd
The rival pledge, the missive board.
Upon the happy line were laid
Such obvious light and easy shade.
The Paris' a])ple stood confcss'd,
Or Leda's egg, or Chloe's breast.
Apelles view'd the fiuish'd piece;
And live, said he, the arts of Greece!
Howc'er Protogenes and I
May in our rival talents vie ;
Howe'er our works may have express'd
Who truest drew, or colour'd best,
When he beheld my flowing line.
He found at least I could design :
And from his artful round, I grant.
That he with perfect skill can paint.
Tlie dullest genius cannot fail
To find the moral of my title ;
■ That the distinguish'd part of men.
With compass, pencil, sword, or pen,
Should in life's visit leave their name
In characters which may proclaim
That they with ardour strove to raise
At once their arts and country's praise ;
And in their working, took great care
That all was full, and round, and fair.
\_Richard^s Tlieory of the Mind.'\
[From ' Alma.']
I say, whatever you maintain
Of Alma' in the heart or brain,
The plainest man alive may tell ye,
Her seat of empire is the belly.
From hence she sends out those supplies,
Which make us either stout or wise :
Your stomach makes the fabric roll
Just as the bias rules the bowl.
The great Achilles might employ
The strength design'd to ruin Troy ;
He dined on lion's marrow, spread
On toasts of ammunition bread ;
But, by his mother sent away
Amongst the Thracian girls to play.
Effeminate he sat and quiet —
Strange product of a cheese-cake diet ! * •
Observe the various operations
Of food and drink in several nations.
Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel
Upon the strength of water-gruel ?
But who shall stand his rage or force
If first he rides, then eats his horse ?
Sallads, and eggs, and lighter fare,
Tune the Italian spark's guitar ;
And, if I take Dan Congreve right.
Pudding and beef make Britons fight.
Tokay and coifee cause this work
Between the German and the Turk ;
And both, as they provisions want.
Chicane, avoid, retire, and faint. * *
As, in a watch's fine machine.
Though many artful springs are seen ;
The added movements, which declare
How full the moon, how old the year,
Derive their secondary power
From that which simply points the liour ;
For though these gimcracks were away
(Quare- would not swear, but Quare would say),
However more reduced and plain.
The watch would still a watch remain :
But if the horal orbit ceases.
The whole stands still, or breaks to pieces.
The mind.
" Probably a noted watchmaker of the day,
539
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
Is iKiw 110 longer what it was,
And you may e'en go sell the case.
So, if unprejiidiced you scan
The goings of this clock-work, man.
You find a hundred movements made
By fine devices in his head ;
But 'tis the stomach's solid stroke
That tells his being what's o'clock.
If vou take off this rhetoric trigger.
He talks no more in trope and figure ;
Or clog his raatliematic wheel.
His buildings fall, his ship stands still ;
Or, lastly, break his politic weight,
His voice no longer rules the state :
Yet, if these finer Avhims are gone.
Your clock, though plain, will still go on :
But, spoil the organ of digestion.
And you entirely change the question ;
Alma's affairs no power can mend ;
The jest, alas ! is at an end ;
Soon ceases all the worldly bustle,
And you consign the corpse to Russel.l
JOSEPH ADDISON.
The prose works of Addison constitute the chief
source of his fame ; but his muse proved the archi-
tect of his fortune, and led him first to distinc-
tion. From his character, station, and talents, no
man of his day exercised a more extensive or bene-
ficial influence on literature. Joseph Addison, the
son of an English dean, was born at Milston, Wilt-
shire, in 1672. He distinguished himself at Oxford
by his Latin poetry, and appeared first in English
verse by an address to Dryden, written in his
twenty-second year. It opens thus
How long, great poet ! shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise !
Can neither injuries of time or age
Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage \
Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote ;
Orief chill'd his breast, and check'd his rising thought ;
* Probably an undertaker.
Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays
The Roman genius in its last decays.
The youthful poet's praise of his great master is
confined to his translations, works which a modern
eulogist would scarcely select as the peculiar glory
of Dryden. Addison also contributed an Essay on
Virgil's Georgics, prefixed to Dryden's translation.
His remarks are brief, but finely and clearly written.
At the same time, he translated the fourth Georgic,
and it was published in Dryden's ^lisccllany, issued
in 1693, with a warm commendation from the aged
poet on the ' most ingenious ^fr Addison of Oxford.'
Next year he ventured on a bolder flight — An Ac-
count of the Grenfest English Potfs, addressed to
Mr II. S. (supposed to be the famous Dr Sachcverell),
April 3, 1694. This Account is a poem of about 150
lines, containing sketches of Chaucer, S]ienser,
Cowley, IMilton, Waller, &c. We subjoin the lines
on the autlior uf the Faery Queen, though, if we are
to believe Spence, Addison had not then read the
poet he ventured to criticise : —
Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barbarous age ;
An age, that yet uncultivate and rude.
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of j'ore.
Can charm an understanding age no more ;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleased, at distance, all the sights
Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades awaj'.
This subdued and frigid character of Spenser shows
that Addison wanted both the fire and the fancy of
the poet. His next production is equally tame and
commonplace, but the theme was more congenial to
his style : it is A Poem to His Majesty, Presented to
the Lord Keeper. Lord Somers, then the keeper of
the great seal, was gratified by this compliment, and
became one of the steadiest patrons of Addison. In
1699, he procured for him a pension of £300 a-year,
to enable him to make a tour in Italy. The govern-
ment patronage was never better bestowed. The
poet entered upon his travels, and resided abroad
two years, writing from thence a poetical Letter
from Italy to Charles Lord Halifax, 1701. This is
the most elegant and animated of all his poetical
productions. The classic ruins of Eonic, the
' heavenly figures' of Raphael, the river Tiber, and
streams ' immortalised in song,' and all the golden
groves and flowery meadows of Italy, seem, as Pope
has remarked, ' to have raised his fancy, and
brightened his expressions.' There was also, as
Goldsmith observed, a strain of political thinking
in the Letter, that was then new to our poetry.
He returned to England in 1702. The death vi
King William deprived him of his pension, and ap-
peared to crush his hopes and expectations ; but
being afterwards engaged to celebrate in verse the
battle of Blenheim, Addison so gratified the lord-
treasurer, Godolphin, by his ' gazette in rhjmie,' that
he was appointed a conmiissioner of appeals. He
was next made under secretary of state, and went
to Ireland as secretary- to the Marquis of Wharton,
lord-lieutenant. The queen also made him keeper
of the records of Ireland. Previous to this (in 17u7),
Addison had brought out his opera of Ilosamond,
which was not successful on the stage. The story
of fair Rosamond would seem well adapted for
540
EL JBYXNFXlEt.
^ . //i/^/^/r^^^.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOSEPH ADDISON.
dramatic representation ; and in the bowers and
shades of Woodstock, the poet had materials for
scenic description and disphiy. Tlie genius of
Addison, however, was not adapted to the drama ;
and his opera being confined in action, and written
wliolly in rhyme, possesses Httle to attract either
readers or spectators. He wrote also a comedy,
The Drummer, or the Haunted House, which Steele
brought out after the death of the autlior. This
play contains a fund of quiet natural humour, but
lias not strength or breadtli enough of character or
action for the stage. Addison next entered upon his
brilliant career as an essayist, and by his papers in
the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, left all his con-
temporaries far behind in this delightful department
of literature. In these papers, he first displayed that
chaste and delicate humour, refined observation, and
knowledge of the world, which now form his most
distinguishing characteristics ; and in his Vision of
Mirza, his Reflections in Westminster Abbey, and
other of his graver essays, he evinced a more poetical
imagination and deeper vein of feeling than his pre-
vious writings had at all indicated. In 1713, his
tragedy of Cato was brought upon the stage. Pope
thought tlie piece deficient in dramatic interest, and
the world has confirmed his judgment ; but he wrote
a prologue for the tragedj^ in his happiest manner,
and it was performed with almost unexampled suc-
cess. Party spirit ran high : the Whigs applauded
the liberal sentiments in tlie play, and their cheers
were echoed back by the Tories, to show that tliey
did not apply them as censures on themselves. After
all the Whig enthusiasm. Lord Bulingbroke sent for
Booth the actor, who personated the character of
Cato, and presented him with fifty guineas, in ac-
knowledgment, as he said, of his defending the cause
of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator
(a hit at the Duke of ^Marlborough). Poetical eu-
logiums were showered upon the author, Steele,
Hughes, Young, Tickell, and Ambrose Philips, being
among the writers of these encomiastic verses. The
queen expressed a wish that the tragedy should be
dedicated to her, but Addisoti had previously de-
signed this honour for his friend Tickell; and to
avoid giving offence either to his loyalty or his
friendship, he published it without any dedication.
It was translated into French. Italian, and German,
and was performed by the Jesuits in their college
at St Omers. ' Being,' sa3's Sir Walter Scott, ' in
form and essence rather a French than an English
play, it is one of the few English tragedies which
foreigners have admired.' The unities of time and
place have been preserved, and the action of the
play is consequently much restricted. Cato abounds
in generous and patriotic sentiments, and contains
passages of great dignity and sonorous diction ; but
the poet fails to unlock the sources of passion and
natural emotion. It is a splendid and imposing
work of art, with the grace and majesty, and also
the lifelessness, of a noble antique statue. Addison
was now at the height of his fame. lie had long
aspired to the hand of the countess-dowager of
Warwick, whom he had first known by becoming
tutor to her son, and he was united to her in 1716.
The poet ' married discord in a noble wife.' Ilis
marriage was as unhappy as Dryden's with Lady
ElizaVjcth Howard. Both ladies awarded to their
husbands ' the heraldry of hands, not hearts,' and the
fate of the poets should serve as beacons to warn
ambitious literary adventurers. Addison received
his highest poUtical honour in 1717, when he was
made secretary of state ; but he held the ofl[ice only
for a short time. He wanted the physical boldness
and ready resources of an elfective public speaker,
and was 'ioable to defend his measures in parlia-
ment. He is also said to have been slow and fas-
tidious in the discharge of the ordinary duties of
office. When he held the situation of luider secretary,
he was employed to send word to Prince George at
Hanover of the death of the queen, and the vacancy
of the throne ; but the critical nicety of the author
overpowered his official experience, and Addison was
so distracted by the choice of expression, that the
task was given to a clerk, who boasted of having
done what was too hard for Addison. The love of
vulgar wonder may have exaggerated the poet's
inaptitude for business, but it is certain he was no
orator. He retired from the principal secretaryship
with a pension of £1500 per annum, and during his
retirement, engaged hinjself in writing a work on the
Addison's Walk, Magdiilen College, Oxford.
Evidences of the Christian JReliyiim, which he did noi
live to complete. He was oppressed by asthma and
drops}', and was conscious that he should die at
comparatively an earlj' age. Two anecdotes are
related of his deathbed. He sent, as Pope relates, a
message by the Earl of Warwick to Gay, desiring to
see him. Gay obeyed the summons ; and Addison
begged his forgiveness for an injury he had done
him, for which, he said, he would recompense him if
he recovered. The nature or extent of tlie injury
he did not explain, but Gay sujiposed it referred to
his having prevented some preferment designed for
him by the court. At another time, he requested an
interview of the Earl of Warwick, whom he was
anxious to reclaim from a dissipated and licentious
life. ' I have sent for you,' he said, ' that you may
see in what peace a Christian can die.' The event
thus calmly anticipated took place in Holland
house on the 17th of June 1719. A minute or
critical review of the daily life of Addison, and his
intercourse with his literary associates, is calculated
to diminish our reverence and affection. The
quarrels of rival wits have long been proverbial, and
Addison was also soured by political difl'erences and
contention. His temper was jealous and taciturn
541
lir=
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 172].
(until thawed by wine) ; and the satire of Pope, that
he coiild ' bear no rivul near the throne,' seems to
have been just and well-founded. His quarrels with
Pope and Steele throw some disagreeable shades
among the lights and beauties of the picture ; but
enough will still remain to establish Addison's title
to the character of a good man and a sincere Chris-
tian. The uniform tendency of all his writings is
his best and highest eulogium. No man can dis-
semble upon paper through j-ears of literary exer-
tion, or on topics calculated to disclose the bias of
liis tastes and feelings, and the qualities of his heart
and temper. The display of these by Addison is so
fascinating and unaffected, that the impression made
by his writings, as has been finely remarked, is
' like being recalled to a sense of something like
that original purity from which man has been long
estranged.'
Holland House.
A ' Life of Addison,' in two volumes, by Lucy
Aiken, published in 1843, contains several letters
suiiplied by a descendant of Tickell. This work is
written in a strain of unvaried eulogium, and is
frequently unjust to Steele, Pope, and the other
contemporaries of Addison. The most interesting
of the letters were written by Addison during his
early travels ; and though brief, and often incorrect,
contain touches of his inimitable pen. He thus re-
cords his impressions of France : — ' Tnily, by what
I have yet seen, tliey are the happiest nation in the
world. 'Tis not in the power of want or slavery to
make 'em miserable. There is nothing to be met
with in the country but mirth and poverty. Every
one sings, laughs, and starves. Their conversation
is generally agreeable ; for if they have any wit or
sense, they are sure to show it. They never mend
upon a second meeting, but use all the freedom and
familiarity at first sight that a long intimacy or
abundance of wine can scarce draw from an EngUsli-
man. Their women are perfect mistresses in this
art of showing themselves to the best advantage.
They are always gay and sprightly, and set off the
worst faces in Europe with the best airs. Every
one knows how to give herself as diarming a look
and posture as Sir Godfrey Kneller coi^d draw
her in,'
After some further experience, he recurs to the
same subject: — ' I have already seen, as I informed
you in my last, all tlic king's palaces, and have now
seen a great part of the country ; I never thought
there had been in the world such an excessive mag-
nificence or poverty as I have met with in both
together. One can scarce conceive the pomp that
appears in everything about the king; but at the
same time it makes half his subjects go bare-foot.
Tlie people are, however, the hapjiiest in the world,
and enjoy from the benefit of their climate and
natural constitution such a perpetual mirth and
easiness of temper, as even liberty and plenty can-
not bestow on those of other nations. Devotion
and loyalty are everywhere at their greatest height,
but learning seems to run very low, especially in
the 3'ounger people ; for all the rising geniuses have
turned their ambition anotlier way, and endeavoured
to make their fortunes in the army. Tlie belles
lettres in particular seem to be but short-lived in
PVance.'
In acknowledging a present of a snuff-box, we see
traces of the easy wit and playfulness of the Spec-
tator : — ' About three days ago, Mr Bocher put a
verv prett}' snuff-box in my hand. I was not a little
pleased to hear that it belonged to mj'self, and was
nmch more so when I found it was a i)resent from
a gentleman that I have so great an honour for.
You do not probably foresee that it would draw on
you the trouble of a letter, but j^ou must blame your-
self for it. For my part, I can no more accept of a
snuff-box without returning my acknowledgments,
than I can take snuff without sneezing after it.
This last, I must own to you, is so great an absur-
dity, that I should be ashamed to confess it, were
not I in hopes of correcting it very speedily. I am
observed to have my box oftener in my hand tlian
those that have bin used to one these twenty years,
for I can't forbear taking it out of my pocket wlien-
ever I think of iMr Dashwood. You know ]\Ir Bays
recommends snuff as a great provocative to wit,
but you may produce this letter as a standing evi-
dence against him. I have, since the beginning of it,
taken above a dozen pinches, and still find myself
much more inclined to sneeze than to jest. From
wlience I conclude, that wit and tobacco are not
inseparable; or to make a pun of it, tho' a man n)ay
be master of a snuff-box,
" Non cuicunque datum est habere Nasani."
I should be afraid of being thought a pedant for my
quotation, did not I know that tlie gentleman I am
writing to always carrys a Horace in his pocket.'
The same taste which led Addison, as we have
seen, to censure as fulsome the wild and gorgeous
genius of Spenser, made him look with indifference,
if not aversion, on the splendid scenery of the Alps :
'I am just arrived at Geneva,' he says, 'by a very
troublesome journey over the Alps, where I have
been for some days together shivering among the
eternal snows. My head is still giddy with moun-
tains and precipices, and you can't imagine how
much I am pleased with the sight of a plain, that is
as agreeable to me at present as a shore was about
a year ago, after our tempest at Genoa.'
The matured powers of Addison show little of
this tame prosaic feeling. The higher of his essays,
and his criticism on the Paradise Lost, betray no in-
sensibility to the nobler beauties of creation, or the
sublime effusions of genius. His conceptions were
enlarged, and his mind expanded, by that literary
study and reflection from which his political ambi-
tion never divorced him even in the busiest and most
engrossing period of his life.
fiiS
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOSEPH ADDISON.
[From the Letter from Italy.]
For wheresoe'er I turn my ravisli'd eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise ;
Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground ;1
For here the muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung ;
Renown'd in verse each shady thicket grows,
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows. * *
See how the golden groves around me smile.
That shun the coast of Britain's stormy isle ;
Or when transplanted and preserved with care,
Curse the cold clime, and stance in northern air.
Here kindly warmth their mounting juice ferments
To nobler tastes, and more exalted scents ;
Even the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom,
And trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
Bear me, some god, to Baia's gentle seats,
Or cover me in Umbria's green retreats j
Where western gales eternally reside,
And all the seasons lavish all their pride ;
Blossoms, and fruits, and flowers together rise.
And the whole year in gay confusion lies. * *
How has kind heaven adorn'd the happy land.
And scatter'd blessings with a wasteful hand !
But what avail her unexhausted stores.
Her blooming mountains, and her sunny shores,
With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart.
The smiles of nature, and the charms of art.
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns,
And tyranny usurps her happy plains ?
The poor inhabitant beholds in vain
The redd'ning orange, and the swelling grain :
Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines.
And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines:
Starves in the midst of nature's bounty curst,
And in the loaded vineyard dies for thirst.
liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright.
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight !
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
Aiid smiling plenty leads thy wanton train ;
Eas'd of her load, subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight ;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
Thee, goddess, thee, Britannia's isle adores ;
How has she oft exhausted all her stores.
How oft in fields of death thy presence sought.
Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought !
On foreign mountains may the sun refine
The grape's soft juice, and mellow it to wine ;
With citron groves adorn a distant soil,
And the fat olive swell with floods of oil :
We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies ;
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Thoufrh o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine :
'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle.
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains
smile.
Ode.
How are thy servants blest, Lord I
How sure is their defence !
Eternal wisdom is their guide,
Their help Omnipotence.
In foreign realms, and lands remote,
Supported by thy care.
Through burning climes I pass'd unhurt,
And breathed in tainted air.
' Malone states that this was the first time the phrase classic
ffrotind, since so common, was ever used. It was ridiculed by
some contemporaries as very quaint and affected.
Thy mercy sweeten'd every soil,
!NIade every region please ;
The hoary Alpine hills it warm'd.
And smooth'd the Tyrrhene seas.
Think, my soul ! devoutly think,
How, with aflrighted eyes.
Thou saw'st the wide-extended deep
In all its horrors rise.
Confusion dwelt on every face,
And fear in every heart.
When waves on waves, and gulfs on gulfs,
O'ercame the pilot's art.
Yet then from all my griefs, Lord !
Thy mercy set me free ;
Whilst in the confidence of prayer
lily soul took hold on thee.
For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave,*
I knew thou wert not slow to hear.
Nor impotent to save.
The storm was laid, the winds retir'd,
Obedient to thy will ;
The sea that roar'd at thy command,
At thy command was still.
In midst of dangers, fears, and death,
Thy goodness I'll adore ;
I'll praise thee for thy mercies past,
And humbly hope for more.
My life, if thou preserv'st my life,
Thy sacrifice shall be ;
And death, if death must be my doom,
Shall join my soul to thee.
Ode.
The spacious firmament on high.
With all the blue ethereal s'vv.
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim :
Th' unwearied sun, from day to day.
Does his Creator's power display.
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail.
The moon takes up the wond'rous tale,
And nightly to the list'ning earth
Repeats the story of her birth :
Whilst all the stars that round her bum,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll.
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What, though in solemn silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ?
What though nor real voice nor sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found 1
In reason's ear they all rejoice.
And utter forth a glorious voice.
For ever singing, as they shine.
The hand that made us is divine.
* ' The earliest composition that I recollect takinp: any plea»
sure in was the Vision of Mirza, and a hjTnn of Addison s,
beRinning, " How are thy servants blest, (t Lord I" I particu-
larly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my boy-
ish ear :
" For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave."'
IJurvs — Letter to />>■ Moore.
513
r
PROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 172r.
[The Battle of Blaihcim.']
[From ' The Campaign.']
Cut no->v the trumpet terrible from far,
In shriller clangours auimates the war ;
Coufed'rate drums in fuller concert beat,
And echoing hills the loud alarm repeat :
Gallia's proud standards to Bavaria's join'd,
Unfurl their gilded lilies in the wind ;
The daring prince his blasted hopes renews,
And while the thick embattled host he views
Stretch'd out in deep array, and dreadful lengt'o,
His heart dilates, and glories in his strength.
The fatal day its mighty course began.
That the griev'd world had long desir'd in vain ;
States that their new captivity bemoan'd,
Armies of martyrs that in exile groan'd.
Sighs from the depth of gloomy dungeons heard,
And prayers in bitterness of soul preferr'd ;
Europe's loud cries, that providence assail'd.
And Anna's ardent vows, at length prevail'd ;
The day was come when Heav'n design'd to show
His care and conduct of the world below.
Behold, in a^vful march and dread array
The long-extended squadrons shape their way !
Death, in approaching, terrible, imparts
An anxious horror to the bravest hearts ;
Yet do their beating breasts demand the strife,
And thirst of glory quells the love of life.
No vulgar fears can British minds control ;
Heat of revenge, and noble pride of soul,
O'erlook the foe, advantag'd by his post.
Lessen his numbers, and contract his host ;
Though fens and floods possess'd the middle space.
That unprovok'd they would have fear'd to pass ;
Nor fens nor floods can stop Britannia's bands,
"When her proud foe rang'd on their borders stands.
But 0, my muse, what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join'd !
Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound,
The victor's shouts and dying groans confound ;
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
And all the thunder of the battle rise.
'Twas then great Matlbro's mighty soul was prov'd,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov'd,
Arnidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examin'd all the dreadful scenes of war;
In peaceful thought the field of death survey'd.
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid.
Inspired repuls'd battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel, by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land.
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pass'd.
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast.
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform.
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
[The concluding simile of the angel has been much
celebrated, and was so admired by the lord treasurer,
that on seeing it, without waiting for the completion
of the poem, he rewarded the poet by appointing him,
in the jilace of JNIr Locke (who had been promoted), a
commissioner of appeals.]
[ From the Tragedy of Cato.^
Act iv. — Scene iv.
Re-enter Fortius.
Portius. Misfortune on misfortune! grief on grief!
My brother Marcus
Calo. Hah ! what has he done ?
Has he forsook his post ? has he given way ?
Did he look tamely on, and let them pass ?
L
Portiics. Scarce had I left my father, but 1 met him
Borne on the shields of his surviving soldiers,
Breathless and pale, and cover'd o'er with wounds.
Long at the head of his few faithful friends
He stood the shock of a whole host of foes ;
Till obstinately brave, and bent on death,
Opprest with multitudes, he greatly fell.
Cato. I'm satisfied.
Fortius. Nor did he fall before
His sword had pierced through the false h.cart of
Syphax.
Yonder he lies. I saw the hoary traitor
Grin in the pangs of death, and bite the ground.
Cato. Thanks to the gods ! my boy has done his
duty.
Portius, when I am dead, be sure thou place
His um near mine.
Portius. Long may they keep asunder!
Lxi.civ^. Cato ! arm thy soul with all its patience ;
See where the corse of thy dead son approaches I
The citizens and senators, alarmed.
Have gather'd round it, and attend it weeping.
Cato. [meeting the coi-pse.]
Welcome, my son ! here lay him down, my friends,
Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure
The bloody corse, and count those glorious wounds.
How beautiful is death, when eam'd by virtue !
Who would not be that youth 1 what pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country !
AVhy sits this sadness on your brows, my friends'
I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood
Secure, and flourished in a civil war.
Portius, behold thy brother, and remember
Thy life is not thy own when Rome demands it.
Juha. Was ever man like this ! \_Aside.
Cato. Alas ! my friends,
Why mourn you thus ? let not a private loss
AflSict j-our hearts. 'Tis Rome requires our tears.
The mistress of the world, the seat of empire,
The nurse of heroes, the delight of gods.
That humbled the proud tyrants of the cartli.
And set the nations free, Rome is no more.
liberty ! virtue ! my country I
Juha. Behold that upright man I Rome fills his
eyes
With tears that flow'd not o'er his own dead son.
[Ande.
Cato. Whate'er the Roman virtue has subdued.
The sun's whole course, the day and year, are Ca-sar's.
For him the self-devoted Decii died.
The Fabii fell, and the great Scipios conquered :
Even Pompey fought for Ca?sar. Oh ! ray friends !
How is the toil of flite the work of ages.
The Roman empire fallen ! curst ambition !
Fallen into Cresar's hands ! our great forefathers
Had left him nought to conquer but his country.
Juha. While Cato lives, Caesar will blush to see
Mankind enslaved, and be ashamed of empire.
Cato. Caesar ashamed ! has not he seen Pharsalia !
Lucius. Cato, 'tis time thou save thyself and tis.
Cato. Lose not a thought on me, I'm out of
danger.
Heaven will not leave me in the victor's hand.
Caesar shall never say I conquer'd Cato.
But oh ! my friends, your safety fills my heart
With anxious thoughts : a thousand secret terrors
Rise in my soul : how shall I save my friends !
'Tis now, Caesar, I begin to fear thee !
Lucius. Caesar has mercy, if we ask it of him.
Cato. Then ask it, I conjure you ! let him know
Whate'er was done against him, Cato did it.
Add, if you please, that I request it of him.
The virtue of my friends may pass unpunish'd.
Juba, ray heart is troubled for thy sake.
Should I advise thee to regain Numidia,
Or seek the conqueror ?
544
POKTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JO?MTHAN 3WIFT.
Jitha.
If I forsake thee
Whilst I have life, may heaven nbaiidon Juba!
Cuto. Thy Tirtues, prince, if I foresee ari;L'ht,
Will one day make thee great ; at Rome, hereafter,
'Twill be no crime to have been Cato's friend.
Porting, draw near ! ]My son, thou oft has seen
Thy sire engaged in a corrupted state,
Wrestling with vice and faction : now thou soe.st me
Spent, overpower'd, despairing of success :
Let me advise thee to retreat betimes
To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field.
Where the great Censor toiled with his own hands.
And all our frugal ancestors were blest
In humble virtues and a rural life.
There live retired ; pray for the peace of Rome ;
Content thj'self to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway.
The post of honour is a private station.
Portius. I hope my father does not recommend
A life to Portius that he scorns himself.
Cato. Farewell, my friends ! if there be any of you
Who dare not trust the victor's clemency.
Know, there are ships prepared by my command
(Their sails already opening to the winds)
That shall convey you to the wish'd-for port.
Is there aught else, my friends, I can do for 3'ou ?
The conqueror draws near. Once more farewell !
If e'er we meet hereafter, we shall meet
In happier climes, and on a safer shore.
Where Coesar never shall approach us more.
[Pointing to his (lead son.
There the brave youth, with love of virtue fired.
Who greatly in his country's cause expired.
Shall know he conquer'd. The firm patriot there
(Who made the welfare of mankind his care).
Though still, by faction, vice, and fortune crost,
Shall find the generous labour was not lost.
Act v.— Scene I.
[Cato, alone, sitting in a thoughtful posture : in his hand
Plato's book on the Immortality of the SouL A drawn s« ord
on the tahle by him.]
It must be so — Plato, thou reason'st well ! —
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire.
This longing after immortality ?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror.
Of falling into nought 1 why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ;
'Tis b 'aven itself that points out an hereafter.
And hitlmates eternity to man.
Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful thought !
Through what variety of untried being.
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ?
The wide, th' unbounded prospect, lies before me ;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
Here will I hold. If there's a power above us,
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud
Through all her works), he must delight in virtue ;
And that which he delights in must be happy.
But when ? or where ? This world was made for
CiEsar.
I'm weary of conjectures. This must end them.
[_La>jinff his hand on his sivord.
Thus am I doubly arm'd : my death and life.
My bane and antidote are both before me :
This in a moment brings me to an end ;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth.
Unhurt amidst the wars of elements.
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
What means this heaviness that hangs upon me 1
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses ?
Nature oppress'd, and harass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest. This once I'll favour her.
That my awaken'd soul may take her flight,
Renew'd in all her strength, and fresh with life,
An ofl^ering fit for heaven. Let guilt or fear
Disturb man's rest : Cato knows neither of them ;
ludift'erent in his choice to sleep or die.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
Jonathan Swift, one of the most remarkable
men of the age, was born in Dublin in 1667. His
father was steward to the society of the King's Inns,
but died in great poverty before the birth of his dis*
tinguished son. Swift was supported by his uncle
and the circumstances of want and dependence with
which he was early familiar, seem to have su.ik deep
in his haughty soul. ' Born a posthumous child,*
says Sir Walter Scott, ' and bred up an object of
charity, he early adopted the custom of observing
his birth-day as a term, not of jo}', but of sorrow,
and of reading, when it annually recurred, the
striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments
and execrates the day upon which it was said in
his father's house " that a man-child was oorn." '
Swift was sent to Trinity college, Dublin, whicn he
left in his twenty-first j'car, and was received into
the house of Sir William Temple, a distant relation
of his mother. Here Swift met King William, and
indulged hopes of preferment, which "were never rea-
lised. In 1692 he repaired to Oxford, for the pur-
pose of taking his degree of ^LA., and shortly after
obtaining this distinction he resolved to quit the
establishment of Temple and take orders in the
Irish church. He procured the prebend of Kilroot,
in the diocese of Connor, but was soon disgusted
with the life of an obscure country clergyman with
an income of £100 a-year. He returned to Moor-
park, the house of Sir William Temple, and threw
up his living at Kilroot. Temjile died in KiOO, and
tlie poet was glad to accompany Lord Berkeley to
Ireland in the capacity of chaplain. From this
nobleman he obtained the rectory of Aghar, and
the vicarages of Laraccr and Rathveggan ; to which
.545
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
was afterwards added the prebend of Dunlavin,
making his income only about £200 per annum.
At Moorpark, Swift had contracted an intimacy
•with Miss Hester Johnson, daughter of Sir William
Temple's steward, and, on his settlement in Ireland,
this lady, accompanied by another female of middle
age, went to reside in his neighbourhood. Her future
life was intimately connected with that of Swift,
and he has immortalised her under the name of
Stella.
In 1701, Swift became a political writer on the
side of the Whigs, and on his visits to England, he
associated with Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot. In
1710, conceiving that he was neglected by the mi-
nistry, he quarrelled with the Whigs, and united with
Harley and the Tory administration. He was re-
ceived with open arms. ' I stand with the new
people,' he writes to Stella, ' ten times better than
ever I did with the old, and forty times more
caressed.' He carried with him shining weapons
for party warfare — irresistible and unscrupulous
satire, steady hate, and a dauntless spirit. From
his new allies, he received, in 1713, the deanery of
St Patrick's. During his residence in England, he
had engaged the affections of another young lady,
Esther Vanhomrigh, who, under the name of
Vanessa, rivalled Stella in poetical celebrity, and in
personal misfortune. After the death of her father,
this young lady and her sister retired to Ireland,
where their father had left a small property near
Dublin. Human nature has, perhaps, never before
or since presented the spectacle of a man of such
transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a
pitiable labyrinth of the affections. His pride or
ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his mar-
riage with Stella, to whom he Avas early attached.
Though, he said, he ' loved her better than his life a
thousand millions of times,' he kept her hanging
on in a state of hope deferred, injurious alike to her
peace and her reputation. Did he fear the scorn
and laughter of the world, if he should marry the
obscure daughter of Sir William Temple's steward ?
He dared not afterwards, with manly sincerity, de-
clare liis situation to Vanessa, when this second
victim avowed her passion. He was flattered that
a girl of eighteen, of beauty and accomplishments,
sighed for ' a gown of forty-fom*,' and he did not
stop to weigh the consequences. The removal of
Vanessa to Ireland, as Stella had gone before, to be
near the presence of Swift — her irrepressible passion,
which no coldness or neglect could extinguish— her
life of deep seclusion, only chequered by the occa-
sional visits of Swift, each of which she commemo-
rated by planting with her own hand a laurel in the
garden where they met — her agonizing remon-
strances, when all her demotion and her offerings
had failed, are touching bej'.-nd expression.
' The reason I write to you,' she says, ' is because
I cannot tell it to you, should I eee you. For when
I begin to complain, then you are angry ; and there
is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes
me dumb. 1 that you may have but so much re-
gard for me left, that this complaint may touch
your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can.
Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it
would move you to forgive me, and believe that I
cannot help telling you this, and hve.'
To a being thus agitated and engrossed with the
strongest passion, how poor, how cruel, must have
seemed the return of Swift !
Cadenus, common forms apart,
In every scene had kept his heart;
Had sighed and huigui.shed, vowed and writ.
For pastime, or to shew his wit;
But books, and time, and state affairs,
Had spoiled his fashionable airs :
He now could praise, esteem, approve.
But understood not what was love :
His conduct might have made him styled
A father, and the nymph his child.
That innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book.
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy.
The tragedy continued to deepen as it approached
the close. Eight years had Vanessa nursed in soli-
tude the hopeless attachment. At length she wrote
to Stella, to ascertain the nature of the connexion
between her and Swift ; the latter obtained the fatal
letter, and rode instantly to Marley abbey, the re-
sidence of the unliappy Vanessa. ' As he entered
the apartment,' to adopt the picturesque language
of Scott in recording tlie scene, ' the sternness of his
countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express
the stronger passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa
with such terror, that she could scarce ask whether
he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a
letter on the table; and instantly leaving the house,
mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When
Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own
letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant. She
sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed
yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her
heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him
for whose sake she had indulged them. How long
she survived this last interview is uncertain, but
the time does not seem to have exceeded a few
weeks.'*
Even Stella, though ultimately united to Swift,
dropped into tlie grave without any public recogni-
tion of the tie ; they were married in secrecy in the
garden of the deanery, when on her part all but life
had faded away. The fair sufferers were deeply
avenged. But let us adopt the only charitable —
perhaps the just — interpretation of Swift's conduct ;
the malady which at length overwhelmed his reason
might then have been lurking in his frame ; the
heart might have felt its ravages before the intel-
lect. A comparison of dates proves that it was
some years before Vanessa's death that the scene
occurred which lias been related by Young, the
author of the ' Night Thoughts.' Swift was walking
with some friends in the neighbourhood of Dublin,
' Perceiving he did not follow us,' says Young, ' I
* Tlie talents of Vanessa may be scon from Ikt letters to
Swift. They are further evinced in the foUnwing Ode to
Spring, in which she alludes to her unhappy attachment : —
Hail, blushing goddess, beanteous Spring !
AVho in thy jocund train dost bring
Loves and graces — smiling hours —
Balmy breezes — fragrant flowers ;
Come, with tints of roseate hue,
Nature's faded charms renew !
Yet why should I thy presence hail ?
To me no more the breathing gale
Comes fraught with sweets, no more the rose
With such transcendent beauty blows,
As when Cadenus blest the scene,
And shared with me those joys serene.
When, imperccivcd, the lambent fire
Of friendship kindled new desire ;
Still listening to his tuneful tongue,
The truths which angels might have sung,
Divine imprest their gentle sway.
And sweetly stole my soul away.
My guide, instructor, lover, friend.
Dear names, in one idea blend ;
Oh ! still conjoined, your incense rise,
And waft sweet odours to the skies!
546
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
went back, and found him fixed as a statue, and
earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which in
its uppermost branches was much decayed. Point-
ing at it, he said, " I shall be like that tree ; I shall
die at the top." ' The same presentiment finds ex-
pression in his exquisite imitation of Horace (book
iL satire 6.), made in conjunction with Pope: —
I've often wished that I had clear
For life six hundred pounds a-year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace-walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood.
Well, now I have all this and more,
I ask not to increase my store ;
But here a grievance seems to lie.
All this is mine but till I die ;
I can't but think 'twould sound more clever,
To me and to my heirs for ever.
If I ne'er got or lost a groat
By any trick or any fault ;
And if I pray by reason's rules,
And not like forty other fools,
As thus, ' Vouchsafe, oh gracious ]\Iaker !
To grant me this and 'tother acre ;
Or if it be thy will and pleasure.
Direct my plough to find a treasure!'
But only what my station fits,
And to he I'ept in my nrjht xoits;
Preserve, Almighty Providence !
Just what you gave me, competence.
And let me in these shades compose
Something in verse as true as prose.
Swift was at first disliked in Ireland, but the
Drapiers Letters and other works gave him un-
bounded popularity. His wisli to serve Ireland was
one of his ruling passions ; yet it was something like
the instinct of the inferior animals towards their
offspring; waywardness, contemjjt, and abuse were
strangely mingled with affectionate attaclmient and
ardent zeal. Kisses and curses were alternately on
his lips. Ireland, however, gave Swift her whole
heart — he was more than king of the rabble. After
various attacks of deafness and giddiness, his temper
became ungovernable, and his reason gave way.
Truly and beautifully has Scott said, ' the stage
darkened ere the curtain fell.' Swift's almost total
sUence during the last three years of his life (for the
last year he spoke not a word) appals and overawes
the imagination. He died on the 19th of October
1745, and was interred in St Patrick's cathedral,
amidst the tears and prayers of his countrymen.
His fortune, amounting to about £10,000, he left
chiefly to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin, which
he had long meditated.
He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed, by one satiric touch.
No nation wanted it so much.
Gulliver's Travels and the Tale of a Tub must ever
be the chief corner-stones of Swift's fame. The
purity of his prose style renders it a model of Eng-
lish composition. He could wither with his irony
and invective ; excite to mirth with liis wit and in-
vention ; transport as with wonder at his marvellous
powers of grotesque and ludicrous combination, his
knowledge of human nature (piercing quite through
the deeds of men), and his matchless power of feign-
ing reality, and assuming at pleasure different cha-
racters and situations in life. He is often disgust-
ingly coarse and gross in his style and subjects ; but
his grossness is always repulsive, not seductive.
Swift's poetry is perfect, exactly as the old Dutch
artists were perfect painters. He never attempted
to rise above this 'visible diuinal sphere.' He ia
Tomb of Swift in DubLn catliedraL
content to lash the frivolities of the ;*ge, and to de-
pict its absurdities. In his too faithful representa-
tions, there is much to condemn and mucli to admire.
Who has not felt the truth and humour of his City
Shoiver, and his description of Morning? Or the
liveliness of his Grand Question Debated, in which
the knight, his lady, and the chambermaid, are so
admirably drawn ? His most ambitious flight is his
Rhapsody on Poetry, and even this is pitched in a
pretty low key. Its best lines are easily remembered :
Not empire to the rising sun.
By valour, conduct, fortune won ;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing Laws to govern states ,
Not skill in sciences profound.
So large to grasp the circle round,
Such heavenly influence require.
As how to strike the Muses' lyre.
Not beggar's brat on bulk begot,
Not bastard of a pedler Scot,
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes.
The spawn of Bridewell or the stews,
Not infants dropt, the spurious pledges
Of gipsies littering under hedges.
Are so disqualified by fate
To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Hath blasted with poetic fire.
Swift's verses on his own death are the finest
example of his peculiar poetical vein. He predicts
what his friends will say of his illness, his death,
and his reputation, varying tlie style and the topics
to suit each of the parties. The versification is easy
and flowing, with nothing but tlie most familiar and
commonplace expressions. There arc some little
touclies of homely patlios, which are felt like trick-
ling tears, and the effect of the piece altogether is
electrical: it carries with it the strongest convic
tion of its sincerity and truth ; and we see and feel
547
HiOM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172V
(especially as years creep on) how faithful a depicter
of human nature, in its frailty and weakness, was
the misanthropic dean of St Patrick's.
[_A Description of the Morning.']
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing showed the ruddy mom's approach.
The slipshod 'prentice from his master's door
Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirled her mop with dexterous airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel's edge, where wheels had woni the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drown'd in shriller notes of chimney-sweep :
Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet ;
And brick-dust Moll had screamed through half the
street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees ;
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
lA Desmption of a City Shower.^
Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower.
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you'll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If 3'ou be wise, then go not far to dine ;
You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage :
Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen ;
He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Meanwhile the south, rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings.
That swilled more liquor than it could contain.
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope ;
Such is that sprinkling, which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop — but not so clean :
You fly, invoke the gods ; then turning, stop
To rail ; she, singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunned the unequal strife.
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah ! where must needy poet seek for aid.
When dust and rain at once his coat invade?
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain !
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down.
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly.
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's a-broach.
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides.
While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits.
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits ;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds ; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chainnen bore the wooden steed.
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the modems do,
iQ^tead of paying chainnen, run them tlirough).
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go :
Filths of all hues and odours seem to tell
What street they sailed from by their sight and smeU.
They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force.
From Smithfield or St 'Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluence joined at Snowhill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holbom Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud.
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the
flood.
Baucis and Philemon.
[Imitated from the Eighth Book of Ovid.— Written about thft
year 1708.1
In ancient times, as story tells.
The saints would often leave their cells.
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hospitality.
It happened on a winter night
(As authors of the legend \vrite).
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguised in tattered habits, went
To a small village down in Kent ;
Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
They begged from door to door in vain J
Tried every tone might pit}' win.
But not a soul would let them in.
Our wandering saints in woful state.
Treated at this ungodly rate.
Having through all the village past.
To a small cottage came at last,
Where dwelt a good old honest yeoman,
Called in the neighbourhood Philemon,
"\^'ho kindly did the saints invite
In his poor hut to pass the night.
And then the hospitable sire
Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire.
While he from out the chimney took
A flitch of bacon off the hook.
And freely from the fattest side
Cut out large slices to be fried ;
Then stepped aside to fetch them drink^
Filled a large jug up to the brink,
And saw it fairly twice go round ;
Yet (what was wonderful) they found
'Twas still replenished to the top,
As if they ne'er had touched a drop.
The good old couple were amazed,
And often on each other gazed :
For both were frighted to the heart.
And just began to cry — ' What art V
Then softly turned aside to view.
Whether the lights were burning blue.
The gentle pilgrims, soon aware on't.
Told them their calling and their errant!
Good folks, you need not be afraid,
We are but saints, the hermits said ;
No hurt shall come to you or yours ;
But, for that pack of churlish boors.
Not fit to live on Christian ground.
They and their houses shall l)e drowned :
While you shall see your cottage rise.
And grow a church before your eyes.
They scarce had spoke, when fair and soft.
The roof began to mount aloft ;
Aloft rose every beam and rafter,
The heavy wall climbed slowly after.
The chimney widened, and grew higher,
Became a steeple with a spire.
548
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Jonathan swift.
The kettle to the top was hoist,
And there stood fastened to a joist;
But with the up-side down, to show
Its inclination for below :
In vain ; for some superior force.
Applied at bottom, stops its course;
I)oomed ever in suspense to dwell,
'Tis now no kettle, but a bell.
A wooden jack, which had almost
Lost by disuse the art to roast,
A sudden alteration feels.
Increased by new intestine wheels :
And, what exalts the wonder more,
The number made the motion slower ;
The filer, which, thought 't had leaden feet.
Turned round so quick, you scarce could see't.
Now, slackened by some secret power,
Can hardly move an inch an hour.
The jack and chimney, near allied,
Had never left each other's side :
The chimney to a steeple grown,
The jack would not be left alone ; »
But, up against the steeple reared,
Became a clock, and still adhered :
And still its love to household cares.
By a shrill voice at noon, declares ;
Warning the cook-maid not to bum
That roast meat, which it cannot turn.
The groaning chair was seen to crawl,
Like a huge snail, half up the wall ;
There stuck aloft in public view.
And, with small change, a pulpit grew.
The porringers, that in a row
Hung high, and made a glittering show.
To a less noble substance changed.
Were now but leathern buckets ranged.
The ballads pasted on the wall,
Of Joan of France, and English Moll,
Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood,
The Little Children in the Wood,
Now seemed to look abundance better,
Improved in picture, size, and letter ;
And high in order placed, describe
The heraldry of every tribe.
A bedstead of the antique mode.
Compact of timber many a load ;
Such as our grandsires wont to use.
Was metamorphosed into pews ;
Which still their ancient nature keep.
By lodging folks disposed to sleep.
The cottage, by such feats as these,
Grown to a church by just degrees ;
The hermits then desire their host
To ask for what he fancied most.
Philemon, having paused a while.
Returned them thanks in homely style ;
Then said, my house is grown so fine,
Methinks I still would call it mine :
I'm old, and fain would live at ease ;
Make me the parson, if you please.
He spoke, and presently he feels
His grazier's coat fall down his heels :
He sees, yet hardly can believe.
About each arm a pudding sleeye :
His waistcoat to a cassock grew,
And both assumed a sable hue ;
But being old, continued just
As threadbare and as full of dust.
His talk was now of tithes and dues ;
Could smoke his pipe, and read the news :
Knew how to preach old sennons next.
Vamped in the preface and the text :
At christenings well could act his part,
And had the service all by heart :
Wished women might have children fast,
And thought whose sow had farrowed last :
Against dissenters would repine.
And stood up firm for right divine ;
Found his head filled with many a system.
But classic authors — he ne'er missed them.
Thus having furbished up a parson.
Dame Baucis next they played their farce on :
Instead of home-spun coifs, were seen
Good pinners, edged with Colberteen :
Her petticoat, transformed apace,
Became black satin flounced with lace.
Plain Goody would no longer down ;
'Twas Madam, in her grograra gown.
Philemon was in great surprise.
And hardly could believe his eyes :
Amazed to see her look so prim ;
And she admired as much at him.
Thus, happy in their change of life.
Were several years the man and wife :
When on a day, which proved their last,
Discoursing o'er old stories past.
They went by chance, amidst their talk,
To the churchyard to fetch a walk ;
When Baucis hastily cried out.
My dear, I see your forehead sprout !
Sprout, quoth the man, what's this you tell us !
I hope j-ou don't believe me jealous ?
But yet, methinks, I feel it true ;
And really yours is budding too
Nay now I cannot stir my foot ;
It feels as if 'twere taking root.
Description would but tire my Muse ;
In short, they both were turned to yews.
Old Goodman Dobson, of the green,
Remembers he the trees hath seen ;
He'll talk of them from noon to night.
And goes with folks to show the sight ;
On Sundays, after evening praj-er,
He gathers all the parish there ;
Points out the place of either yew.
Here Baucis, there Philemon grew.
'Till once a parson of our town.
To mend his barn, cut Baucis down ;
At which, 'tis hard to be believed,
How much the other tree was grieved ;
Grew scrubby, died a-top, was stunted ;
So the nest parson stubbed and burnt it.
[ Verses on Tiis oxen 7>cafA.]
As Rochefoucault his maxims Irew
From nature, I believe them ti le :
They argue no corrupted mind
In him ; the fault is in mankind.
This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast :
' In all distresses of our friends
We first consult our private ends ;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us.
Points out some circumstance to please us.'
If this perhaps your patience move.
Let reason and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equal raised above our size.
I love my friend as well as you ;
But why should he obstruct my view ?
Then let me have the higher jKist ;
Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in a battle you should find
r)ne whom you love of all mankind.
Had some heroic action done,
A champion killed, or trophy won ;
Hather than thus be oveno])t,
XS'ould you not wish his laurels cropt !
l>ear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without :
549
FBOM 1689 CYCLOPAEDIA OF to 1727.
How patiently you hear him groan !
I'd have him throw away his pen —
How glad the case is not your own !
But there's no talking to some men.
What poet would not grieve to see
And then their tenderness appears
His brother write as well as he ?
By adding largely to my years :
But, rather than they should excel.
He's older than he would be reckoned.
Would wish his rivals all in hell ?
And well remembers Charles the Second.
Her end when emulation misses,
He hardly drinks a pint of wine ;
She turns to envy, stihgs, and hisses :
And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
The strongest friendship yields to pride,
His stomach, too, begins to fail ;
Unless the odds be on our side.
Last year we thought him strong and hale ;
Vain human kind ! fantastic race !
But now he's quite another thing ;
Thy various follies who can trace i
I wish he may hold out till spring.
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
They hug themselves and reason thus :
Their empire in our hearts divide.
It is not yet so bad with us.
Give others riches, power, and station,
In such a case they talk in tropes,
'Tis all on me a usurpation.
And by their fears express their hopes.
I have no title to aspire ;
Some great misfortune to portend
Yet, when you sink, I seem the higher.
No enemy can match a friend.
In Pope I cannot read a line,
With all the kindness they profess,
But with a sigh I wish it mine :
The merit of a lucky guess
When he can in one couplet fix
(When daily how-d'ye's come of course.
More sense than I can do in sis.
And servants answer, ' Worse and worse !')
It gives me such a jealous fit.
Would please them better than to tell.
I cry. Pox take him and his wit.
That, God be praised ! the dean is well.
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
Then he, who prophesied the best,
In ray own humorous biting way.
Approves his foresight to the rest :
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
' You know I always feared the worst,
Who dares to irony pretend.
And often told you so at first.'
Which I was born to introduce,
He'd rather choose that 1 should die.
Eefined it first, and showed its use.
Than his prediction prove a lie.
St John,' as well as Pulteney,^ knows
Not one foretells I shall recover.
That I had some repute for prose ;
But all agree to give me over.
And, till they drove me out of date,
Yet, should some neighbour feel a ])ain
Could maul a minister of state.
Just in the parts where 1 complain,
If they have mortified my pride,
How many a message would he send !
And made me tlirow my pen aside ;
What hearty prayers, that I should mend !
If with such talents heaven hath blest 'em,
Inquire what regimen I kept?
Have I not reason to detest 'em ?
What gave me ease, and how I slept ?
To all my foes, dear fortune, send
And more lament when I was dead.
Thy gifts, but never to my friend :
Than all the snivellers round my bed.
I tamely can endure the first ;
My good companions, never fear ;
But this with envy makes me burst.
For, though you may mistake a year,
Thus much may serve by way of proem ;
Though your prognostics run too fast.
Proceed we therefore to our poem.
Thoy must be verified at last.
The time is not remote, when I
Behold the fatal day arrive !
Must by the course of nature die ;
How is the dean ? he's just alive.
When, I foresee, my special friends
Now the departing prayer is read ;
Will try to find their private ends :
He hardly breathes. The dean is dead.
And, though 'tis hardly understood,
Before the passing-bell begun.
Which way my death can do them go^id.
The news through half the towi\ has run ;
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak :
Oh ! may we all for death prepare !
See, how the dean begins to break !
What has he left ? and who's his heir?
Poor gentleman ! he droops apace !
I know no more than what the news is ;
You plainly find it in his face.
'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.
That old vertigo in his head
To public uses ! there's a whim !
Will never leave him, till he's dead.
What had the public done for him {
Besides, his memory decays :
Mere envy, avarice, and pride :
He recollects not what he says ;
He gave it all — but first he died.
He cannot call his friends to mind ;
And had the dean in all the nation
Forgets the place where last he dined ;
No worthy friend, no poor relation ?
Plies you with stones o'er and o'er;
So ready to do strangers good.
He told them fifty times before.
Forgetting his own flesh and blood !
How does he fancy we can sit
Now Grub Street wits are all employed ;
To hear his out-of-fashion wit ?
With elegies the town is cloyed :
But he takes up with younger folks.
Some paragraph in every ])a])er
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
To curse the dean, or bless the drapier.
Faith, he must make his stories shorter,
The doctors, tender of tlieir fame,
Or change his comrades once a quarter :
Wisely on me lay all the bl.ame.
In half the time he talks them round.
We must confess his case was nice;
There must another set be found.
But he would never take advice.
For poetry, he's past his prime ;
Had he been ruled, for aught appears.
He takes an hour to find a rhyme :
He might have lived these twenty years;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
For when we opened him, we found
His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
That all his vital parts were sound.
Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.
From Dublin soon to London spread.
■WUliaiD Pulteney, Esq., created Earl of Dath.
'Tis told at court the dean is dead.
5S0
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
And Lady Suffolk' in the spleen
Runs laughing up to tell the queen ;
The queen so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries, ' Is he gone ! 'tis time he should.
He's dead, you say, then let him rot !
I'm glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I owTi ; but when 1
I only was the princess then ;
But now as consort of the king,
You know 'tis quite another thing.'^
Now Charteris,-' at Sir Robert's^ levee.
Tells with a sneer the tidings heavy ;
'Why, if he died without his shoes
(Cries Bob), I'm sorrj' for the news:
Oh, were the wretch but living still.
And in his place my good friend Will l^
Or had a mitre on his head.
Provided Bolingbroke was dead !'
Now Curie" his shop from rubbish drains :
Three genuine tomes of Swift's Remains !
And then to make them pass the glibber,
Revised by Tibbalds, Moore, and Gibber.
He'll treat me, as he does my betters,
Publish my will, my life, my letters ;7
Revive the libels born to die.
Which Pope must bear, as well as I.
Here shift the scene, to represent
How those I love my death lament.
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.
St John himself will scarce forbear
To bite his pen, and drop a tear.
The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
' I'm sorry — but we all must die !'
Indifference clad in wisdom's guise,
All fortitude of mind supplies ;
For how can stony bowels melt
In those who never pity felt ?
When we are lashed, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God.
The fools my juniors by a year
Are tortured with suspense and fear ;
Who wisely thought my age a screen,
When death approached, to stand between ;
The screen removed, their hearts are trembling
They mourn for me without dissembling.
My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learned to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps :
' The dean is dead (pray, what is trumps I)
Then, Lord, have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six deans, they say, must bear the pall.
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend :
No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight ;
And he's engaged to-morrow night :
My Lady Club will take it ill.
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the dean^(I lead a heart)
But dearest friends, they say, must part.
' The Countess of Suffolk (formerly Mrs Iloward), a lady of
the queen's bed-chamber.
2 Queen Caroline had, when princess, promised Swift a pre-
sent of medals, which promise was never fulfilled.
3 Colonel Francs Charteris, of infamous character, on whom
an epitaph was written by Dr Arbuthnot.
* Sir Robert Walpole, then first minister of state, afterwards
Earl of Orford.
6 William Pulteney, Esq., the great rival of Walpole.
' An infamous bookseller, who published things in the dean's
name, which he never wrote.
' For some of these practices he was brought before the
House of Lords.
His time was come, he ran his race ;
We hope he's in a better place.'
Why do wc grieve that friends should die!
No loss more easy to supply.
One year is past ; a different scene !
No further mention of the dean,
Who now, alas ! no more is missed,
Tlian if he never did exist.
Where's now the favourite of Apollo I
Departed : and his works must follow ;
Must undergo the common fate ;
His kind of wit is out of date.
Some country squire to Lintot goes,'
Inquires for Swift in verse and prose.
Says Lintot, ' I have heard the name ;
He died a year ago.' ' The same.'
He searches all the shop in vain.
' Sir, you may find them in Duck-Lane. '
I sent them, with a load of books.
Last Monday to the pastry-cook's.
To fancy they could live a year !
I find you're but a stranger here.
The dean was famous in his time.
And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
His way of writing now is past ;
The town has got a better taste.
I keep no antiquated stuff,
But spick-and-span I have enough.
Pray, but do give me leave to show 'era ;
Here's CoUey Cibber's birth-day poem ;
This ode you never yet have seen
By Stephen Duck upon the queen.
Then here's a letter finely penned
Against the Craftsman and his friend ;
It clearly shows that all reflection
On ministers is disaffection.
Next, here's Sir Robert's vindication,
And Mr Henley's-'' last oration.
The hawkers have not got them yet ;
Your honour please to have a set ?'
« * «
Suppose me dead ; and then suppose
A club assembled at the Rose,
Where, from discourse of this and that,
I grow the subject of their chat.
'The dean, if we believe report,
Was never ill-received at court.
Although ironically grave,
He shamed the fool, and lashed the knave.
To steal a hint was never known.
But what he -writ was all his own.'
' Sir, I have heard another story ;
He was a most confounded Tory,
And grew, or he is much belied,
Extremely dull, before he died.'
' Can we the Drapier then forget ?
Is not our nation in his debt ?
'Twas he that writ the Drapier's letters!'
' He should Iiave left them for his betterg ;
We had a hundred abler men.
Nor need depend upon his pen.
Say what you will about his reading.
You never can defend his breeding;
Who, in his satires running riot,
Could never leave the world in quiet ;
Attacking, when he took the whim.
Court, city, camp — all one to him.
But why would he, except he slobbered.
Offend our patriot, great Sir Robert,
Whose counsels aid the sovereign power
To save the nation every hour *
' Bernard Lintot, a bookseller. See Poik-'s ' Dunciad' anft
Letters.
2 A place where old book.s are sold.
3 Commonly calliHl Orator Iknlcy, a quack iircaclier in Lon«
don, of gieat notoriety in his day.
551
FROM 1689
CYCLOPiHUIA OF
TO 1727.
What scenes of evil he unravels,
In satirtis, libels, lying travels !
Not sparing his own clergy-cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth !'
' Perhaps I may allow, the dean
Had too much satire in his vein.
And seemed determined not to starve it,
Because no age could more deserve it.
Vice, if it e'er can be abashed.
Must be or ridiculed or lashed.
If you resent it, who's to blame ?
He neither knew you, nor your name :
Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,
Because its owner is a duke ?
His friendships, still to few confined,
Were always of the middling kind ;
No fools of rank or mongrel breed.
Who fain would pass for lords indeed,
Where titles give no right or power,
And peerage is a withered flower.
He would have deemed it a disgrace.
If such a wretch had knoivn his face.
He never thought an honour done him,
Because a peer was proud to own him ;
Would rather slip aside, and choose
To talk with wits in dirty shoes ;
And scorn the tools with stars and garters,
So often seen caressing Charteris.
He kept with princes due decorum.
Yet never stood in awe before 'em.
He followed David's lesson just ;
In princes never put his trust :
And, would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in power.'
' Alas, poor dean ! his only scope
Was to be held a misanthrope.
This into general odium drew him.
Which, if he liked, much good may't do him.
His zeal was not to lash our crimes,
But discontent against the times :
For, had we made him timely offers
To raise his post, or fill his coflTers,
Perhaps he might have truckled down.
Like other brethren of his gown.
For party he would scarce have bled :
I say no more — because he's dead.
What writings has he left behind ?
I hear they're of a different kind :
A few in verse ; but most in prose :
Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose :
All scribbled in the worst of times.
To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes ;
To praise Queen Anne, nay more, defend
her.
As never favouring the Pretender :
Or libels yet concealed from sight.
Against the court, to show his spite :
Perhaps his travels, part the third ;
A lie at every second word
Offensive to a loyal ear ;
But — not one sermon, you may swear.*
' As for his works in verse or prose,
I own myself no judge of those.
Nor can I tell what critics thought 'em ;
But this I know, all people bought 'em.
As with a moral view designed.
To please, and to reform mankind :
And, if he often missed his aim,
The world must own it to their shame.
The praise is his, and theirs the blame.
He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad ;
To show, by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor ;
I wish it soon may have a better.
And, since you dread no further lashes,
Methiuks you may forgive his ashes.'
The Grand Question Debated :
■\Vhether Hamilton's Ba-\vn should be turned into a Barrack
or a Malt-house. 1729.*
Thus spoke to my lady the knight^ full of care :
Let me have your advice in a weighty affair.
This Hamilton's Bawn,2 whilst it sticks on my hand,
I lose by the house what I get by the land ;
But how to dispose of it to the best bidder,
For a barrack or malt-house, we now must consider.
First, let me suppose I make it a malt-house,
Here I have computed the profit will fall to us ;
There's nine hundred pounds for labour and grain,
I increase it to twelve, so three hundred remain ;
A handsome addition for wine and good cheer.
Three dishes a day, and three hogsheads a year ;
With a dozen large vessels my vault shall be stored ;
No little scrub joint shall come on my board :
And you and the dean no more shall combine
To stint me at night to one bottle of wine ;
Nor shall I, for his humour, permit you to purloin
A stone and a quarter of beef from ray sirloin.
If I make it a barrack, the crown is my tenant ;
My dear, I have pondered again and again on't :
In poundage and drawbacks I lose half my rent.
Whatever they give me I must be content,
Or join with the court in every debate ;
And rather than that I would lose my estate.
Thus ended the knight : thus began his meek wife ;
It mtist and shall be a barrack, my life.
I'm grovm a mere mopus ; no company comes.
But a rabble of tenants and rusty dull rums.3
With parsons what lady can keep herself clean ?
I'm all over daubed when I sit by the dean.
But if you will give us a barrack, my dear.
The captain, I'm sure, will always come here ;
I then shall not value his deanship a straw,
For the captain, I warrant, will keep him in awe ;
Or should he pretend to be brisk and alert,
AVill tell him that chaplains should not be so pert ;
That men of his coat should be minding their prayers,
And not among ladies to give themselves airs.
Thus argued my lady, but argued in vain ;
The knight his opinion resolved to maintain.
But Ilannah,4 who listened to all that was past.
And could not endure so vulgar a taste.
As soon as her ladyship called to be drest.
Cried, Madam, why, surely my master's possest.
Sir Arthur the maltster ! how fine it will sound !
I'd rather the bawn were sunk under ground.
But, madam, I guessed there would never come good,
When I saw him so often with Darby and Wood.^
And now my dream's out ; for I was a-dreamed
That I saw a huge rat ; dear, how I screamed !
And after, methought, I had lost my new shoes ;
And Molly she said I should hear some ill news.
* Swift spent almost a wliole year (1728-9) at Gosford, in the
north of Ireland, the seat of Sir Arthur Aoheson, assisting Sir
Arthur in his agricultural improvements, and lecturing, as
usual, the lady of the manor upon the improvement of her
health by walking, and her mind by reading. The circum-
stance of Sir Arthur letting a ruinous building called Hamilton's
liawn to the crown for a barrack, gave rise to one of the
dean's most lively pieces of fugitive humour.— ScoH'* Life </
Stvifl. A bawn is strictly a place near a house enclosed with
mud or stone walls to keep the cattle.
' Sir Arthur Acheson, an intimate friend of the poet. Sir
Arthur was ancestor of the jiresent Karl of Gosford.
- A large old house belonging to Sir Arthur, two miles from
Iiis residence.
•* A cant word in Irel.and for a poor country clergyman.
* My lady's waiting-maid.
* Two of Sir Arthur's managers.
552
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPS.
Dear madam, had you but the spirit to tease,
You might have a barrack whenever jou please :
And, madam, I always believed you sostout,
That for twenty denials you would not give out.
If I had a husband like him, I purtcst,
'Till he gave me my will, I would give him no rest ; * *
But, madam, I beg you contrive and invent.
And worry him out, 'till he gives his consent.
Dear madam, whene'er of a barrack I think,
An I were to be hanged I can't sleep a wink :
For if a new crotchet comes into my brain,
I can't get it out, though I'd never so fain.
I fancy already a barrack contrived,
At Hamilton's Bawn, and the troop is arrived ;
Of this, to be sure. Sir Arthur has warning.
And waits on the captain betimes the next morning.
Now see when they meet how their honours behave,
Noble captain, your servant — Sir Arthur, your slave ;
You honour me much — the honour is mine —
'Twas a sad rainy night — but the morning is fine.
Pray how does my lady ? — my wife's at your service.
I think I have seen her picture by Jervis.
Good morrow, good captain — I'll wait on you down —
You shan't stir a foot- — you'll think me a clown —
For all the world, captain, not half an inch farther —
You must be obeyed — your servant, Sir Arthur ;
My humble respects to my lady unknown —
I hope you will use my house as your own.
' Go bring me my smock, and leave off your prate,
Thou hast certainly gotten a cup in thy pate.'
Pray madam, be quiet : what was it I said ?
You had like to have put it quite out of my head.
Next day, to be sure, the captain will come
At the head of his troop, with trumpet and drum ;
Now, madam, observe how he marches in state ;
The man with the kettle-drum enters the gate ;
Dub, dub, adub, dub. The trumpeters follow,
Tantara, tantara, while all the boys hollow.
See now comes the captain all daubed with gold
lace ;
0, la ! the sweet gentleman, look in his face ;
And see how he rides like a lord of the land,
With the fine flaming sword that he holds in his hand ;
And his horse, the dear creter, it prances and rears,
With ribbons in knots at its tail and its ears ;
At last comes the troop, by the word of command.
Drawn up in our court, when the captain cries, Stand.
Your ladyship lifts up the sash to be seen
(For sure I had dizened you out like a queen).
The captain, to show he is proud of the favour.
Looks up to your window, and cocks up his beaver.
(His beaver is cocked ; pray, madam, mark that.
For a captain of horse never takes oft^ his hat ;
Because he has never a hand that is idle.
For the right holds the sword, and the left holds the
bridle) ;
Then flourishes thrice his sword in the air.
As a compliment due to a lady so fair ;
(How I tremble to think of the blood it hath spilt !)
Then he lowers down the point, and kisses the hilt.
Your ladyship smiles, and thus you begin :
Pray captain, be pleased to alight and walk in.
The captain salutes you with congee profound.
And your ladyship curtsies half way to the ground.
Kit, run to your master, and bid him come to us.
I'm sure he'll be proud of the honour you do us ;
And, captain, you'll do us the favour to stay.
And take a short dinner here with us to-day ;
You're heartily welcome ; but as for good cheer.
You come in the very worst time of the year.
If I had expected so worthy a guest
Lord, madam ! your ladyship sure is in jest ;
You banter me, madam, the kingdom must grant
You officers, captain, are so complaisant.
'Hist, hussy, I think I hear somebody coming'
No, madam, 'tis only Sir Arthur a-humraing.
To shorten my tale (for 1 hate a long story),
The captain at dinner appears in his glory ;
The dean and the doctor' have humbled their pride,
For the captain's intreated to sit by your side ;
And, because he's their betters, you carve for him
first.
The parsons for envy are ready to burst ;
The servants amazed are scarce ever able
To keep oft' their eyes, as they wait at the table ;
And Molly and I have thrust in our nose
To peep at the captain in all his fine clothes ;
Dear madam, be sure he's a fine spoken man.
Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue ran ;
' And madam,' says he, ' if such dinners you give.
You'll never want parsons as long as you live ;
I ne'er knew a parson without a good nose.
But the devil's as welcome wherever he goes ;
G — d — me, they bid us reform and repent,
But, z — s, by their looks they never keep lent ;
Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I'm afraid
You cast a sheep's eye on her ladyship's maid ;
I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand
In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band ;
(For the dean was so shabby, and looked like a ninny
That the captain supposed he was curate to Jenny).
Whenever you see a cassock and gown,
A hundred to one but it covers a clown ;
Observe how a parson comes into a room,
G — d — me, he hobbles as bad as my groom ;
A scholar, when just from his college broke loose,
Can hardly tell how to cry ho to a goose ;
Your Noveds, and Bluturks, and Omws,- and stufi".
By G — , they don't signify this pinch of snuff.
To give a young gentleman right education,
The army's the only good school of the nation ,
My schoolmaster called me a dunce and a fool.
But at cufts I was always the cock of the school ;
I never could take to my book for the blood o' me,
And the puppy confessed he expected no good o' me.
He caught me one morning coquetting his wife,
Rut he mauled me ; I ne'er was so mauled in my life;
So I took to the road, and what's very odd.
The first man I robbed was a parson by G — .
Now, madam, you'll think it a strange thing to say.
But the sight of a book makes me sick to this day.'
Never since I was born did I hear so much wit.
And, madam, I laughed till I thought I should split.
So then you looked scornful, and snift at the dean,
As who should say, Noiv, am I sl-inny and lean ?3
But he durst not so nmch as once open his lips,
And the doctor was plaguily down in the hips.
Thus merciless Hannah ran on in her talk.
Till she heard the dean call. Will your ladyship walk 1
Her ladyship answers, I'm just coining down.
Tlien turning to Hannah and forcing a frown,
Although it was plain in her heart she was glad.
Cried, ' Hussy, why sure the wench is gone mad ;
How could these chimeras get into your brains ?
Come hither, and take this old gown for your pains.
But the dean, if this secret should come to his ears,
Will never have done with his jibes and his jeers.
For your life not a word of the matter, I charge ye ;
(iive me but a barrack, a fig for the clergy.'
ALEXANDER POPE.
United with Swift in friendship and in fame, but
possessing far higher powers as a poet, and more
refined taste as a satirist, was Alexanuek Pope,
Ixirii in London May 22, 1688. His father, a linen
draper, having acquired an independent fortune,
retired to Binfield, in Windsor F'orest. He was a
Honian Catholic, and the young poet was partly
' Dr Jenny, a clergyman in the neiglibourhood.
* Ovids, I'lutarchs, Homers. * Nicknames for my lady.
553
rBOM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
educated by the family priest. He was afterwards
Bent to a Catholic seminary at Twyford, near Win-
chester, ■where he lampooned his teacher, was
severely punished, and afterwards taken home by
his parents. He educated himself, and attended no
Bchool after his twelfth year ! The whole of his
early life was that of a severe student. He was a
poet in his infancy.
As yet a child, and all unknown to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
The writings of Dryden became the more particular
object of his admiration, and he prevailed upon a
friend to introduce him to "Will's coffeehouse, which
Dryden then frequented, that he might have the gra-
tification of seeing an author whom he so enthusias-
tically admired. Pope was then not more than twelve
years of age. He wrote, but afterwards destroyed,
various dramatic pieces, and at the age of sixteen
composed his Pastorals, and his imitations of Chaucer.
He soon became acquainted with most of the eminent
persons of the day both in politics and literature.
In 1711 appeared his Essay on Cz-i'tewm, unquestion-
ably the finest piece of argumentative and reasoning
poetry in the English language. The work is said
to have been composed two years before publication,
when Pope was only twenty-one. The ripeness of
judgment which it displays is truly marvellous.
Addison commended tlie 'Essay' warmly in the
Spectator, and it instantly rose into great popu-
larity. The style of Pope was now formed and com-
plete. His versification was that of his master,
Dryden, but he gave the heroic couplet a peculiar
terseness, correctness, and melody. The essay was
shortly afterwards followed by the Bape of the Lock.
The stealing of a lock of hair from a beauty of the
day, Miss Arabella Fermor, by her lover. Lord
Petre, was taken seriously, and caused an estrange-
ment between the ftimilies, and Pope wrote his
poem to make a jest of the affair, ' and laugh them
together again.' In this he did not succeed, hut he
added greatly to his reputation by the effort. The
machinery of the poem, founded upon the Rosicrucian
theory, that the elements are inhabited by spirits,
which they called sjdphs, gnomes, nymphs, and
salamanders, was added at the suggestion of Dr
Garth and some of his friends. Sylphs had been
previously mentioned as invisible attendants on the
fair, and the idea is shadowed out in Shakspeare's
' Ariel,' and the amusements of the fairies in the ' Mid-
summer Night's Dream.' But Pope has blended the
most delicate satire with the most lively fanc)-, and
produced the finest and most brilliant mock-heroic
poem in the world. ' It is,' says Johnson, ' the most
airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful of
all Pope's compositions.' The Temple of Fame and
the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, were next pub-
lished ; and in 1713 appeared his Windsor Forest,
which was chiefly written so early as 1704. The
latter was evidently founded on Denham's ' Cooper's
Hill,' which it far excels. Pope was, properly speak-
ing, no mere descriptive poet. He made the pic-
turesque subservient to views of historical events,
or to sketches of life and morals. But most of the
' Windsor Forest' being composed in his earlier
years, amidst the shades of those noble woods which
he selected for the theme of his verse, there is in tills
poem a greater display of sympathy with external
nature and rural objects than in any of his other
works. The lawns and glades of the forest, the
russet plains, and blue hills, and even the ' purple
dyes' of the ' wild heath,' had struck his young
imagination. His account of the dying pheasant is
a finished picture —
See ! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings :
Short is his joy, he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Ah ! what avail his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest and scarlet-circled eyes ;
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold s
Another fine painting of external nature, as pic-
turesque as any to be found in the purely descrip-
tive poets, is the winter piece in the ' Temple of
Fame ' —
So Zembla's rocks (the beauteous work of frost)
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on the impassive ice the lightnings play ;
External snows the growing mass supply,
Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky :
As Atlas fixed, each hoary pile appears,
The gathered winter of a thousand years.
Pope now commenced his translation of the Iliad.
At first the gigantic task oppressed him with its
difficulty, but he grew more familiar with Homer's
images and expressions, and in a short time was
able to despatch fifty verses a-day. Great part of
the manuscript was written upon the backs and
covers of letters, evincing that it was not with-
out reason he was called paper-sparing Pope. The
poet obtained a clear sum of £5320, 4s. by this
translation : his exclamation —
And thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive,
Indebted to no prince or peer alii
was, however, scarcely just, if we consider that this
large sum was in fact a ' benevolence' from the upper
classes of society, good-naturedly designed to reward
his literary merit. The fame of Pope was not advanced
in an equal degree with his fortune by his labours
as a translator. The 'fatal facility' of his rliyme,
the additional false ornaments which he imparted
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POFK.
to tlie ancient Greek, and his departure from the
nice discrimination of character and speech which
prevails in Homer, are faults now universally ad-
mitted. Cowper (though he failed himself in Homer)
just!}- remarks, that the Iliad and Odyssey in Pope's
hands ' ' have no more the air of antiquity than if he
had himself invented them.' The success of the
Iliad led to the translation of the Odyssey ; but Pope
called in his friends Broome and Fenton as assistants.
These two coadjutors translated twelve books, and
the notes were compiled by Broome. Fenton re-
ceived £300, and Broome £500, while Pope had
£2885, 5s. The Homeric labours occupied a period
of twelve years — from 1713 to 1725. The improve-
ment of his pecuniary resources enabled the poet to
remove from the shades of Windsor Forest to a
fituation nearer the metropolis. He purchased a
Vvise of a house and grounds at Twickenham, to
Pope's Villa, Twickenham.
which he removed with his father and mother, and
•where he continued to reside during the remainder
of his life. This classic spot, which Pope delighted
to improve, and where he was visited by ministers
of state, wits, poets, and beauties, is now greatly
defaced.* Whilst on a visit to Oxford in 1716, Pope
* Pope's house was not large, but sufficiently commodious
for the wants of an Engli^h gentleman whose friends visited
himself rather than hfs dwelling, and who were superior to the
necessity of stately ceremonials. On one side it fronted to
the road, which it closely adjoined ; on the other, to a narrow
Iswn sloping to the Thames. A piece of pleasr.re-ground, in-
cluding a garden, was cut off by the public road ; an awkward
and unpoetical arrangement, which the proprietor did his best
to improve. After the poet's death, the villa was purchased by
Sir William Stanhope, and subsequently by Lord Mendip, who
carefully preserved everything connected with it ; but, being in
1807 sold to the Baroness Howe, it was by that lady taken
down, that a larger house might he built near its site. Now
(1843) , the place is the property of Young, Esq. ; the second
house has been enlarged into two, and further alterations are
contemplated. The grounds have suffered a complete change
since Pope's time, and a monument which he erected to his
mother on a hiUock at their further extremity has been re-
moved. The only certain remnants of the poet's mansion are
the vaults upon which it was built, three in number, the
central one being connected with a tunnel, which, passing
under the road, gives admission to the rear grounds, while the
commenced, and probably finished, the most liighly
poetical and passionate of his works, the E/iistle
from Eloisa to Abelard. The delicacy of the poet in
veiling over the circumstances of tlie story, and at
the same time preserving the ardour of Eloisa's
passion, the beauty of his imagery and descriptions,
the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and
falling like the tones of an Eolian harp, as he suc-
cessively portrays the tumults of guilty love, the
deepest penitence, and the highest devotional rap-
ture, have never been surpassed. If less genial
tastes and a love of satire withdrew Pope from those
fountain- springs of the Muse, it was obviously from
no want of power in the poet to display the richest
hues of imagination, or the finest impulses of the
human mind. The next literary undertaking of
our author was an edition of Shakspeare, in which
he attempted, with but indifferent success, to esta-
blish the text of the mighty poet, and explain his
obscurities. In 1733, he pubhshed his Essay on Man,
being part of a course of moral philosophy in verse
which he projected. The 'Essay' is now read, not
for its philosophy, but for its poetry. Its meta-
physical distinctions are neglected for those splen-
did passages and striking incidents which irradiate
the poem. In lines hke tlie following, he speaks with
a mingled sweetness and dignity superior to his
great master Dryden : —
Hope springs eternal in the human breast :
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined, from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo ! the poor Indian, whose imtutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind ;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way ;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given
Behind the cloud-topped hill a humbler heaven ;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste.
Where slaves once more their native laud behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire ;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Oh Happiness ! our being's end and aim.
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name ;
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which, still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise !
Plant of celestial seed ! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign 'st to grow 1
Fair opening to some court's propitious shine.
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield.
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field ?
side ones are of the character of grottos, paved with square
bricks, and stuck over with shells. It is curious to find over
the central stone of the entrance into the left of these grottos,
a large ammonite, and over the other, the piece of hardened
clay in which its cast was left. Pope must have regarded these
merely as curiosities, or Ixisus naturce, little dreaming of the
wonderful tale of the early condition of oiu- globe which they
assist in telling. A short narrow piazza in front of the grottos
is probably ' the evening colonnade' of the lines on the absence
of Lady Mary AVortley Montagu. The taste with which Pope
Laid out his groimds at Twickenham (five acres in all), had a
marked effect on English landscape gardening. The Prince of
AVales took the design of his garden from the poet's ; and Kent,
the improver and embellisher of pleasure ground.'*, received his
best lessons from Pope. Ho aided materially in banishing the
stiff formal Dutch style.
555
vnoM ! 68f)
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
^\'llL■re grows ? — where grows it not ? Tf Tain our toil,
We ought to hhinie the culture, not the soil.
Fixed to no spot is Happiness sincere;
'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere ;
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St John ! dwells with thee.
Ask of the learned the way ! The learned are blind ;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind ;
Some place the bliss in action, some in case ;
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these ;
Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain ;
Some swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain ;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in everything, or doubt of all.
Pope's future labours were chiefly confined to
satire. In 1727 he published, in conjunction with
his friend Swift, three volumes of Miscellanies, in
prose and verse, which drew down upon the authors
a torrent of invective, lampoons, and libels, and
ultimately led to the Dunciad. by Pope. This ela-
borate and splendid satire displays the fertile inven-
tion of the poet, the variety of his illustration, and
the unrivalled force and facility of his diction ;
but it is now read with a feeling more allied to pity
than admiration — pity that one so highly gifted
should have allowed himself to descend to things so
mean, and devote the end of a great literary life to
the infliction of retributary pain on every humble
aspirant in the world of letters. ' I have often
M'ondered,' says Cowper, ' that the same poet who
wrote the "Dunciad" should have written these
lines —
That mercy I to others show.
That mercy show to me,
Alas for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others was
the measure of the mercy he received.' Sir Walter
Scott has justly remarked, that Pope must have
suffered the most from these wretched contentions.
It is known that his temper was ultimately much
changed for the worse. Misfortunes were also now
gathering round him. Swift was fost verging on
insanity, and was lost to the world ; Atterbury and
Gay died in 1732; and next year his venerable
mother, whose declining years he had watched with
affectionate solicitude, also expired. Between the
years 1733 and 1740, Pope published his inimitable
Epistles, Satires, and Moral Essays, addressed to his
friends Bolingbroke, Bathurst, Arbuthnot, &c., and
containing the most noble and generous sentiments,
mixed uj) with withering invective and the fiercest
denunciations. In 1742 he added a fourth book to
the • Dunciad,' displaying the final advent of the god-
dess to destroy order and science, and to substitute
the kingdom of the dull upon earth. The point of
his individual satire, and the richness and boldness
of his general design, attest the undiminished powers
and intense feeling of the poet. Next year Pope
prepared a new edition of the four books of the
' Dunciad,' and elevated CoUey Gibber to the situa-
tion of hero of the poem. This unenviable honour
had previously been enjoyed by Theobald, a tasteless
critic and commentator on Shakspeare ; but in thus
yielding to his personal dislike of Gibber, Pope in-
jured the force of his satire. The laureate, as War-
ton justly remarks, ' with a great stock of levity,
vanity, and affectation, had sense, and wit, and
humour ; and the author of the " Careless Husband"
was by no means a proper king of the dunces.' Gib-
ber was all vivacity and conceit — the very reverse
of personified dulness,
Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound.
Political events came in the rear of this accumulated
d vehement satire to agitate the last days of Pope.
The anticipated approach of the Pretender led the
government to issue a proclamation prohibiting ever}'
Koman Catholic from appearing within ten miles of
London. The poet complied with the proclamation ;
and he was soon afterwards too ill to be in town.
This ' additional proclamation from the Highest of
all Powers,' as he terms his sickness, he submitted
to without murmuring. A constant state of excite-
ment, added to a life of ceaseless study and contem-
plation, operating on a frame naturally delicate and
deformed from birth, had completely exhausted the
powers of Pope. He complained of his inability to
think ; yet, a short time before his death, he said, ' I
,am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that ''
'seem to feel it within me as it were by intuition.'
Another of his dying remarks was, ' There is nothing
that is meritorious but virtue and friendship ; and,
indeed, friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' He
died at Twickenham on the 30th of May, 1744.
The character and genius of Pope have given rise
to abundance of conmient and sijeculation. The
occasional fierceness and petulance of his satire can-
not be justified, even by the coarse attacks of his
opponents, and must be ascribed to his extreme
sensibility, to over-indulged vanity, and to a hasty
and irritable temper. His sickly constitution debar-
ring him from active pursuits, he placed too high a
value on mere literary fame, and was deficient in
the manly virtues of sincerity and candour. At the
same time he was a public benefactor, by stigmatis-
ing the vices of the great, and lashing the absurd
pretenders to taste and literature. He was a fond
and steady friend ; and in all our literary biography,
there is nothing finer than his constant undeviating
afftjction and reverence for his venerable parents,
I\Ie let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age ;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death ;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep at least one parent from the sky.
Proloffue to the Ssitiret.
As a poet, it would be absurd to rank Pope with the
greatest masters of the lyre ; with the universality ot
Shakspeare, or the sublimity of Milton. He was
undoubtedly more the poet of artificial life and man-
ners than the poet of nature. He was a nice observer
and an accurate describer of the phenomena of the
mind, and of the varying shades and gradations of
vice and virtue, wisdom and folly. He was too fond
of point and antithesis, but the polish of the weapon
was equ.alled by its keenness. ' Let us look,' says
Campbell, 'to the spirit that points his antithesis,
and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we
shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sen-
tentious.' His wit, fancy, and good sense, are as
remarkable as his satire. His elegance has never
been surpassed, or perhaps equalled : it is a combi-
nation of intellect, imagination, and taste, under the
direction of an independent spirit and refined moral
feeling. If he had studied more in the school of
nature and of Shakspeare, and less in the school of
Horace and Boileaii ; if he had cherished the frame
and spirit in which he composed the 'Elegy' and
the ' Eloisa,' and forgot his too exclusive devotion
to that which inspired the ' Dunciad,' the world
would have hallowed his memory with a still more
afifectionate and permanent interest than even that
which waits on him as one of our most brilliant
and accomplished English poets.
Mr Campbell in his 'Specimens' has given an elo-
quent estimate of the general powers of Pope, with
reference to his position as a poet : — ' That Pope was
neither bo insensible to the beauties of Jiature, no/
556
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPE.
80 indistinct in describing them, as to forget the
character of a genuine poet, is what I mean to urge,
without exaggerating liis picturesqueness. But be-
fore speaking of that quality in liis writings, I would
beg leave to observe, in the tirst place, that the fa-
culty by which a poet luminously describes objects of
art, is essentially the same faculty which enables him
to be a faithful describer of simple nature; in the se-
cond place, that nature and art are to a greater degree
relative terms in poetical description than is generally
recollected ; and thirdly, that artificial objects and
manners are of so much importance in fiction, as to
make the exquisite description of them no less cha-
racteristic of genius than the description of simple
physical appearances. The poet is " creation's heir."
He deepens our social interest in existence. It is
surely by the liveliness of the interest which he ex-
cites in existence, and not by the class of subjects
which he chooses, that we most fairly appreciate the
genius or the life of life which is in him. It is no
irreverence to the external charms of nature to say,
that they are not more important to a jioet's study
than the manners and atfections of his species.
Nature is the poet's goddess; but by nature, no one
rightly understands her mere inanimate face, how-
ever charming it may be, or the simple landscape-
painting of trees, clouds, precipices, and flowers.
Why, then, try Pope, or any other poet, exclusively
by his powers of describing inanimate phenomena?
Nature, in the wide and proper sense of the word,
means life in all its circumstances — nature, moral
as well as external. As tlie subject of inspired fic-
tion, nature includes artificial forms and manners.
Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer.
Homer himself is a minute describer of works of
art ; and Milton is full of imagery derived from it.
Satan's spear is compared to the pine, that makes
"the mast of some great ammiral;" and his shield is
like the moon, but like the moon artificially seen
through the glass of the Tuscan artist. The " spirit-
stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner,
and all the quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of
glorious war," are all artificial images. When Shak-
speare groups into one view the most sublime objects
of the universe, he fixes on " the cloud-capt towers,
the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples." Those
who have ever witnessed the spectacle of the launch-
ing of a ship of the line, will perhaps forgive me for
adding this to the examples of the sublime objects
of artificial life. Of that spectacle I can never forget
the impression, and of having witnessed it reflected
from the faces of ten tliousand spectators. They
seem yet before me. I sympathise with their deep
and silent expectation, and with their final burst of
enthusiasm. It was not a vulgar joy, but an afl!ect-
ing national solemnity. When the vast bulwark
sprang from her cradle, the calm water on which
she swung majestically round, gave the imagination
a contrast of the stormy element in which she was
soon to ride. All the days of battle and nights of
danger v/hich she had to encounter, all the ends of
the earth which she had to visit, and all that she
had to do and to suffer for her country, rose in awful
presentiment before the mind ; and when the heart
gave her a benediction, it was like one pronounced
on a living being.'
Tlie Messiah.
Ye nymphs of Solyma ! begin the song :
To heavenly themes sublinier strains belong.
The mossy fountains and the hylvan shades.
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more — thou my voice inspire.
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire I
Rapt into future times, the bard begun :
A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a bon !
From Jesse's root behold a branch arise.
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies :
The ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descends the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens ! from high the dewy nectar pour,
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower.
The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid,
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds snail fail ;
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale ;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend.
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.
Swift fly the years, and rise the expected mom !
Oh, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born !
See, nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring !
See lofty Lebanon his head advance !
See nodding forests on the mountains dance !
See spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise,
And Carmel's flowery top perfume the skies !
Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers ;
Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears !
A God, a God ! the vocal hills reply ;
The rocks proclaim the iipproaching Deitj'.
Lo ! earth receives him from the bending skies ;
Sink do^vn, ye mountains ; and ye valleys rise ;
With heads declined, ye cedars homage pav ;
Be smooth, ye rocks : ye rapid floods, give way 1
The Saviour comes ! by ancient bards foretold :
Hear him, ye deaf: and all ye blind, behold !
He from thick films shall purge the visual my.
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day :
'Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm the unfolding ear :
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear ;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant fesl the eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care.
Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air ;
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects ;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms.
Feeds from his hand and in his bosom warms ;
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage.
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes ;
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er.
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more :
But useless lances into scythes shall bend.
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise ; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun ;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field
The swain in barren deserts with surprise
Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise ;
And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy valleys, once peqilexed with th' in.
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn :
To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed.
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant moad.
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead :
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet.
And harmless sei-pents lick the ])ilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake ;
557
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
Pleased the jrreen lustre of tlie scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play.
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise !
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes !
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn !
See future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies !
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend !
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabean springs.
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow.
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day !
No more the rising sun shall gild the mom.
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn ;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays.
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts : the Light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine !
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay.
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away ;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains ;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns I
[The Toild.']
[From • The Rape of tlie Lock.']
And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid ;
First, robed in white, the uymjih intent adores,
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
A heavenly image in the glass appears.
To that she bends, to that her eye she rears ;
The inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Irembllng begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear ;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil.
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box :
The tortoise here and elephant unite.
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful be.auty puts on all its arms ;
The fair each moment rises in her charms.
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise.
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy sylphs surround their darling care.
These set the head, and those divide the hair ;
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown,
And Betty's praised for labours not her own.
[Description of Belinda and the Sylphs.']
[From the same.]
Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main.
Than issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the sliver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-drest youths around her shone,
But every eye was fixed on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose.
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those.
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
Aid, like the sun, they shine ou all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide ;
If to her share some female errors fall.
Look on her face, and j'ou'll forget them all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind.
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck.
With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray.
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey;
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare.
And beauty draws us with a single hair.
The advent'rous baron the bright locks admired ;
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.
Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
B}' force to ravish, or by fraud betray ;
For when success a lover's toil attends.
Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends.
For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored
Propitious heaven, and every power adored ;
But chiefly Love — to Love an altar built.
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves.
And all the trophies of his former loves ;
With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre.
And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire.
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize ;
The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer,
The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.
But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides :
While melting music steals upon the sky.
And softened sounds along the waters die ;
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
All but the Sylph, with careful thoughts opprest,
The impending wo sat heavy on his breast.
He summons straight his denizens of air ;
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair.
Soft o'er the shrouds afe'rial whispers breathe,
That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect wings unfold.
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ;
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light.
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew.
Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies.
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes ;
While every beam new transient colours flings.
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.
Amid the circle on the gilded mast,
Superior by the head was Ariel placed ;
His purple pinions opening to the sun,
He raised his azure wand and thus begun : —
Ye sylphs and sylphids, to j'our chief give ear;
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and daemons, hear!
Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned
Ry laws eternal to the aerial kind.
Some in the fields of purest ether play.
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day ;
Some guide the course of wandering orbs on high.
Or roll the planets through the boundless sky ;
Some, less refined, beneath the moon's pale light
Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night.
Or suck the mists in grosser air below.
Or dip their pinions in the painted bow.
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain.
Others on earth o'er human race jjreside.
Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide ;
Of these the chief the care of nations own,
And guard with arms divine the British throne.
556
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPiL
Our humbler province is to tend the fair,
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care ;
To save the powder from too rude a gale,
Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale ;
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers ;
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in showers
A brighter wash ; to curl their waving hairs,
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs ;
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,
To change a flounce, or add a furbelow.
This day, black omens threat the brightest fair
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care ;
Some dire disaster, or by force or flight ;
But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail China-jar receite a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade.
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade ;
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball ;
Or whether heaven has doomed that Shock must fall.
Haste, then, ye spirits ! to your charge repair :
The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care ;
The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign ;
And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine ;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite Lock ;
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
To fifty chosen sylphs, of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat :
Oft have we kno>vn that seven-fold fence to fail.
Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale.
Form a strong line about the silver bound,
And guard the wide circumference around.
Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins ;
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie.
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye :
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain ;
Or alum styptics with contracting power
Shrink his thin essence like a shrivelled flower :
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling mill ;
In fames of burning chocolate shall glow.
And tremble at the sea that froths below !
He spoke ; the spirits from the sails descend :
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend ;
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair.
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear :
VVith beating hearts the dire event they wait.
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate.
[From the Ejnstle of Eloisa to Alelard.']
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heavenly-pensive contemplation dwells.
And ever-musing melancholy reigns.
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins ?
Why rove ray thoughts beyond this last retreat ?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat ?
Yet, yet I love! — From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.
Dear, fatal name ! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed :
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise.
Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea lies :
0, write it not, my hand — the name appears
Already written — wash it out, my tears !
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays.
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls ! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary j)ains :
Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn !
Ye grots and caverns shagged with horrid thorn !
Shrines, where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep !
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not heaven's while Abelard has part.
Still rebel nature holds out half iny heart ;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain.
Nor tears for ages taught to flow in vain.
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose.
That well-known naine awakens all my woes
Oh, name for ever sad, for ever dear;
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear!
I tremble, too, where'er my own 1 find.
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of wo :
Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,
I/Ost in a convent's solitary gloom !
There stern religion quenched the unwilling flame.
There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine !
Nor foes nor fortune take this power away ;
And is my Abelard less kind than they ?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare ;
Love but demands what else were shed in prayer
No happier task these faded eyes pursue ;
To read and weep is all they now can do.
Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid.
Some banished lover, or some captive maid ;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires.
The virgin's wish without her fears impart.
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart.
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul.
And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole. * *
Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care.
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy prayer;
From the false world in early youth they fled.
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You raised these hallowed walls ; the desert smiled.
And paradise was opened in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors ;
No silver saints, by dying misers given,
Here bribed the rage of ill-requited heaven :
But such plain roofs as piety could raise.
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowred,
Where awful arches make a noon-day night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light ;
Thy eyes diifused a reconciling ray.
And gleams of glory brightened all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness or continual tears.
See how the force of others' prayers I try,
O pious fraud of amorous charity !
But why sliould I on others' prayers depend 1
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend !
Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move.
And all those tender names in one, thy love !
The darksome \nnes that o'er yon rocks reclined.
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind ;
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hilU,
The grots tliat echo to the tinkling rills.
The dying gales that pant upon the trees.
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze ;
No more these scenes my meditation aid.
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves.
Long sounding isles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and nnuul lier throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose :
n
FBOM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades every flower, and darkens every green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods. * *
What scenes appear where'er I turn my view ?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee ;
Thy image steals between my God and me ;
Thy voice I seem in every hymn to hear,
With every bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight ;
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned.
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.
While prostrate here in humble grief I He,
Kind virtuous drops just gathering in ray eye;
While praying, trembling in the dust I roll.
And dawning grace is opening on my soul :
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art !
Oppose thyself to heaven ; dispute my heart :
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies ;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears ;
Take back my fruitless penitence and prayers ;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode ;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God 1
No, fly me, fly me ! far as pole from pole ;
Rise Alps between us ! and whole oceans roll !
Ah, come not, ^vrite not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign ;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!)
Long loved, adored ideas, all adieu !
Oh grace serene! Oh virtue heavenly fair !
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care !
Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky !
And faith, our early immortality !
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest :
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest !
See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propt on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind raethinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watched the dying lamps around.
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
' Come, sister, come ! (it said, or seemed to say)
Thy place is here ; sad sister, come away ;
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed.
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid :
But all is calm in this eternal sleep ;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep.
Even superstition loses every fear ;
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here.'
I come, I come ! prepare your roseate bowers,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flowers ;
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go.
Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow :
Thou, Abclard ! the last sad oflice pay.
And smooth my passage to the realms of day.
See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll.
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul !
Ah no ! — in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand ;
Present the cross before my lifte<l eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see !
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly !
See the last sparkle languish in my eye !
Till every motion, pulse, and breath he o'er,
And even my Abelard be loved no more.
L..
Oh death, all-eloquent ! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.
Then, too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy),
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be droAvned,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round .
From opening skies thy streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine !
May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft ray love immortal on thy fame !
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er.
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more.
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads.
And drink the falling tears each other sheds ;
Then sadly saj', with mutual pity moved,
' Oh may we never love as these have loved !'
Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady,
What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade,
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ?
'Tis she !■ — but why that bleeding bosom gored \
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell.
Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart.
To act a lover's or a Roman's part ?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or bravely die ?
Why bade ye else, ye powers ! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire ?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes ;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods :
Thence to their images on earth it flows.
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glowJ.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen prisoners in the body's cage :
Dim lights of life, that bum a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres ;
Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep.
And close confined to their own palace sleep
From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die)
Fate snatched her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,
And separate from their kindred dregs below ;
So flew the soul to its congenial place.
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou, mean deserter of thy brother's blood !
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath.
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death ;
Cold is that breast which warmed the world before.
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball.
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall :
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits.
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates ;
There passengers shall stand, and, pointing, say
(While the long funerals blacken all the way),
Lo ! these were they, whose souls the furies steeled,
And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day !
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learned to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' wo.
What can atone (0 ever injured shade !)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid ?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier:
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed.
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned.
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned !
560
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXA 5DER POPE.
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of wo
To midnight dances and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb ?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast :
There shall the mom her earliest tears bestow;
There the first roses of the year shall blow ;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershadu
The ground now sacred by thy relics made.
So, peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not.
To whom related, or by whom begot ;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee ;
"Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be !
Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung.
Deaf the praised ear, and nmte the tuneful tongue.
Even he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays ;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart ;
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The muse forgot, and thou beloved no more !
[_Rapphvss Depends, not on Goods, hut on Virtiu:.']
[From the ' Essay on JIan.']
Order is Hi>aven's first law ; and this confessed.
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.
More rich, more wise ; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness :
But mutual wants this happiness increase ;
All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace.
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing :
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.
In who obtain defence, or who defend.
In him who is, or him who finds a friend :
Heaven breathes through every member of the whole
One common blessing, as one common soul.
But fortune's gifts, if each alike possessed.
And each were equal, must not all contest ?
If then to all men happiness was meant,
God in externals could not place content.
Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy called, unhappy those ;
But Heaven's just balance equal will appear.
While those are placed in hope, and these in fear ;
Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better, or of worse.
Oh, sons of earth ! attempt ye still to rise.
By mountains piled oh mountains, to the skies ?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys.
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Know, all the good that individuals find.
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense.
Lie in three words — Health, Peace, and Competence.
But Health consists with temperance alone ;
And Peace, oh virtue ! Peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain ;
But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right ?
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst.
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all the advantage prosperous vice attains,
'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains :
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pa.s8 for good.
Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue wo !
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.
But fools the good alone unhappy call.
For ills or accidents that chance to all.
See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!
See godlike Turenne prostrate on the dust !
See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife !
Was this their virtue, oi contempt of life 1
Say, was it virtue, more though heaven ne'er gave.
Lamented Digby ! sunk thee to the grave ?
Tell me, if virtue made the sou expire ?
Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire ?
Why drew Marseilles' good bisliop purer breath.
When nature sickened, and each gale was death \
Or why so long (in life if long can be)
Lent Heaven a parent to the poor and me?
What makes all physical or moral ill ?
There deviates nature, and here wanders will.
God sends not ill ; if rightly understood.
Or partial ill is universal good.
Or change admits, or nature lets it fall.
Short, and but rare, till man improved it all.
We just as wisely might of heaven complain
That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,
As that the virtuous son is ill at ease
When his lewd father gave the dire disease.
Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Causa
Prone for his favourites to reverse his laws ?
Shall burning ^■Etna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires ?
On air or sea new motions be impressed,
C>h blameless Bethel ! to relieve thy breast ?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if vou go by ?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall.
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall ?
But still this world (so fitted for the knave)
Contents us not. A better shall we have ?
A kingdom of the just then let it be :
But first consider how those just agree.
The good must merit God's peculiar care ;
But who, but God, can tell us who they are ?
One thinks on Calvin Heaven's own spirit fell j
Another deems him instrument of hell ;
If Calvin feel Heaven's blessing, or its rod.
This cries there is, and that there is no God.
What shocks one part will edify the rest.
Nor with one system can they all be blest.
The verj' best will variously incline.
And what rewards your virtue, punish mine.
Whatever is, is right. This world, 'tis true.
Was made for Casar — but for Titus too ;
And which more blest ? who chained his country, saj
Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day ?
' But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed.'
What then ? Is the reward of virtue bread ?
That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil ;
The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil ;
The knave deserves it, when he tempts the main.
Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain ;
The good man may be weak, be indolent ;
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
But grant him riches, your demand is o'er ?
'No — shall the good want health, the good want power?
Add health and power, and every earthly thing ;
* Why bounded power? why private? why no king?'
Nay, why external for internal given ?
Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven ?
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while he has more to give ;
Immense the power, immense were the demand ,
Say at what part of nature will they stand ?
What nothing earthly gives, or can de.stroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the hcart-lVlt joy,
561
sr
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727.
.s virtue's prize : a better would you fix ?
Then give Humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or Truth a gown,
Or Public Spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak, foolish man ! will Heaven reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here 1
The boy and man an individual makes,
Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes ?
Go, like the Indian, in another life,
Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife ;
As well as dream such trifles are assigned,
As toys and empires, for a godlike mind.
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing ;
How oft by these at sixty are undone
The virtues of a saint at twenty-one !
To whom can riches give repute or trust,
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold ;
Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Oh fool ! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of humankind.
Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear.
Because he wants a thousand pounds a-year.
Honour and shame from no condition rise ;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade ;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned.
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
' What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl !'
I'll tell you, friend — a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk ;
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow ;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with strings,
That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings :
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race.
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece :
But by your father's worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go ! if your ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go ! and pretend your family is young ;
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards ?
Alas ! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Look next on greatness ; say where greatness lies :
* Where, but among the heroes and the wise V
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed.
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede ;
The whole strange purpose of their lives to find,
Or make, an enemy of all mankind !
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes.
Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise :
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes :
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take.
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat ;
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great !
Who wickedly is ^vise, or madly brave.
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains.
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
What's fame 1 a fancied life in others' breath
A thing beyond us, even before our death.
Just what you hear, you have ; and what's unknown
The same (ray lord) if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends ;
To all beside as much an empty shade,
<n Eugene living, as a Caesar dead ;
Alike or when or where they shone or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod ;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As justice tears his bo<ly from the grave ;
When what to oblivion better were resigned.
Is hung on high to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign but of true desert ;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart :
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas ;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.
In parts superior what advantage lies?
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known ;
To see all other faults, and feel our own :
Condemned in business or in arts to drudge.
Without a second, or without a judge :
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land ?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
Painful pre-eminence ! yourself to view
Above life's weakness, and its comforts too.
Bring then these blessings to a strict account ;
Make fair deductions ; see to what they 'mount :
How much of other each is sure to cost ;
How each for other oft is wholly lost ;
How inconsistent greater goods with these ;
How sometimes life is risked, and always ease :
Think, and if still the things thy envy call.
Say, wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall ?
To sigh for ribbons, if thou art so silly,
!Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy :
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life ?
Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife ;
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined.
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind :
Or ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame !
If all united thy ambition call.
From ancient story leam to scorn them all.
There, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great.
See the false scale of happiness complete !
In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay.
How happy ! those to ruin, these betray :
^lark by what ^vretched steps their gloiy growa,
From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice rose;
In each how guilt and greatness equal ran.
And all that raised the hero, sunk the man :
Now Europe's laurels on their brows behold.
But stained with blood, or ill exchanged for gold :
Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in e;u->e.
Or infamous for plundered provinces.
Oh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame
Ere taught to shine, or sanctified from shame !
What greater bliss attends their close of life ?
Some greedy minion, or imperious wife.
The trophied arches, storied halls invade.
And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade.
Alas ! not dazzled with their noontide ray.
Compute the mom and evening to the day ;
The whole amount of that enormous fame,
A tale, that blends their glory with their shame !
Know then this truth (enough for man to know),
* Virtue alone is happiness below.'
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill ;
Where only merit constant pay receives.
Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives ;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain,
And if it lose, attended with no pain :
Without satiety, though e'er so blessed.
And but more relished as the more distressed :
The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears,
Less pleasing far than Virtue's verj' tears :
562
TOSTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPS.
Good, from each object, froiri each place acquired.
For ever exercised, yet never tired ;
Never elated, while one man's oppressed ;
Never dejected, while another's blest ;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.
[From the Prologue to the Satires, Addressed to
Arhuthnot-I
P. Shut up the door, good John ! fatigued I said.
Tie up the knocker ; say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages ! nay, 'tis past a doubt,
All bedlam or Parnassus is let out :
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide ?
They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide.
By land, by water, they renew the charge ;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the church is free,
Even Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me ;
Then from the mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
Happy to catch me just at dinner time.
Is there a parson, much bemused in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross.
Who pens a stanza, when he should engross ?
Is there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls
With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls !
All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain
Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.
Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,
Imputes to me and my damned works the cause :
Poor Comus sees his frantic wife elope.
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.
Friend to my life ! (which did you not prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song)
What drop or nostrum can this plagv e remove 1
Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love ?
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped ;
If foes, they write ; if friends, they read me dead.
Seized and tied down to judge, how wi etched I ;
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie :
To laugh were want of goodness and of grace ;
And to be grave, exceeds all power of face.
I sit with sad civility ; I read
With honest anguish, and an aching head ;
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears.
This saving counsel, ' Keep your piece nine years.'
' Nine years !' cries he, who high in Drury Lane,
Lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane.
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends.
Obliged by hunger, and request of friends :
' The jiiece, you think, is incorrect ? why take it ;
I'm all submission ; what you'd have it, make it.'
Three things another's modest wishes bound.
My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.
Pitholeon sends to me : ' You know his grace ;
I want a patron ; ask him for a place.'
Pitholeon libelled me — ' but here's a letter
Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him ? Curll invites to dine,
He'll \vrite a journal, or he'll turn divine.'
Bless me ! a packet — ' 'lis a stranger sues,
A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.'
If I dislike it, 'furies, death, and rage !'
If I approve, ' commend it to the stage.'
There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends.
The players and I are, luckily, no friends.
Fired that the house reject him,"Sdeath ! I'll print it
And shame the fools— your interest, sir, with Lintot.
Lintot, dull rogue ! will think your price too much :
*Not, sir, if j'ou revise it, and retouch.'
All my demurs but double his attacks :
At la.st he whispers, ' Do, and we go snacks.'
Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,
' Sir, let me see your works and you no more.' * *
You think this cruel ? Take it for a rule.
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Let peals of laughter, Codrus ! round thee break,
Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack :
Pit, box, and gallery, in convulsions hurled.
Thou stand'st unsliook amidst a bursting world.
Who shames a scribbler ? Break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew :
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
The creature's at his dirty work again ;
Throned in the centre of his thin de^^igns,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines !
Whom have I hurt ? has poet yet, or peer,
Lost the arched eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer?
And has not Colly still his lord and whore!
His butchers Henley, his freemasons Moor?
Does not one table Bavius still admit ?
Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit \
Still Sappho — ^.Hold ; for God's sake — you'll offend-
No names — be calm — learn prudence of a friend :
I, too, could write, and I am twice as tall ;
But foes like these — P. One flatterer's worse than all.
Of all mad creatures, if the learned are right.
It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.
A fool quite angry is quite innocent :
Alas ! 'tis ten times worse when they repent
One dedicates in high heroic prose.
And ridicules beyond a hundred foes :
One from all Grub-street will my fame defejid,
And, more abusive, calls himself my friend.
This prints my letters, that expects a bribe.
And others roar aloud, ' Subscribe, subscribe !'
There are, who to my person pa}' their court :
I cough like Horace, and though lean, am short.
Amnion's great son one shoulder had too high.
Such Ovid's nose, and, ' Sir ! you have an eye !'
Go on, obliging creatures, make me see
All that disgraced my betters, met in me.
Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,
' Just so immortal ^laro held his head ;'
And when I die, be sure you let me know
Great Homer died three thousand years ago
Why did I \vrite ? what sin to me unknowu
Dipped me in ink ; my parents', or my own ?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left no calling for this idle trade.
No duty broke, no father disobeyed :
The muse but served to ease some friend, not wife ,
To help me through this long disease, my life ;
To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care.
And teach the being you preserved, to bear.
But whj' then publish? Granville the polite.
And knowing Walsh, would tell nie I could write,
Well-natured Garth, inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheflield read.
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head.
And St John's self (great Dryden's friends before)
With open arms received one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approved !
Happier their author, when by these beloved !
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixonn, and Cooks.
Soft were my numbers ; who could take offence
While pure description held the place of sense !
Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill ;
I wished the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret ;
I never answered ; I was not in debt.
If want provoked, or madness made them print,
I waged no war with bedlam or the mint.
564
FROM 1689
CYCLOPiEDlA OF
TO ij27.
Did some more sober critic come abroad ;
If WTong, I smiled ; if right, I kissed the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurels graced these ri1)alds,
From slashing IBentlcy down to piddling Tibbulils ;
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,
Even such small critics some regard may claim.
Preserved in Milton's or in Shakspeare's name.
Pretty ! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms !
The things we know are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.
Were others angry ? I excused them too ;
Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find ;
But each man's secret standard in his mind.
That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness.
This, who can gratify ? for who can guess ?
The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown.
Just writes to make his barrenness appear.
And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a-ycar ;
He who, still wanting, though he lives oa theft.
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left :
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning.
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning ;
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetrj', but prose run mad :
All these my modest satire bade translate.
And owiied that nine such poets made a Tate.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe !
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with 5ase :
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone.
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer.
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged.
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged ;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws.
And sit attentive to his own applause ;
While wits and Templars every sentence raise.
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ?*
* * *
Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe.
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear.
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear !
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress ;
^\'ho loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who coj)ies out ;
That fop, whose pride afl'ects a patron's name.
Yet absent wounds an author's honest fame :
* Tlie jealousy betwixt Addison and Pope, originatinp in
literary and political rivalry, broke out into an open rupture
by tlie above highly-finished and poignant satire. When Atter-
bury read it, he Haw that Poixj's strength lay in satirical
jrietry, and h<> wrote to him not to suffer that talent to be un-
"jnployed.
Who can your merit selJisJily approve.
And show the sense of it without the loi-e ;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray : * *
^^'ho reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Makes satire a lampoon, and fiction lie ;
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread.
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
Let Sporus tremble*—^. What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk J
Satire or sense, alas ! can Sporus feel ?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings •,
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys.
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys :
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betra}'.
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way ;
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad.
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies ;
His wit all seesaw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing ! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart.
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed :
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust.
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool ;
Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool ;
Not proud nor servile : be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways ;
That flattery even to kings he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same ;
That not in fancy's maze he wandered long.
But stooped to truth, and moralised his song;
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit.
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit ;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had.
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad ;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head ;
The blow, unfelt, the tear he never shed ;
The tale revived, the He so oft o'erthrown.
The imputed trash, and dulness not his own ;
The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libelled person, and the pictured shajie ;
Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father dead ;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaj)s yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear.
Welcome to thee, fair Virtue, all the past ;
For thee, fair Virtue ! welcome even the last!
The Man of Jloss.f
[From the Moral Essays. Kpistle III.]
But all our praises why should lords engross ?
Rise, honest Muse ! and sing the Man of Ross :
* Lord Ilervcy.
t The Man of Ross was Mr John Kyrlc, who died in 1724, aged
90, and was interred in the church of Ross, in llcrefonlshire,
Mr Kyrle was enabled to effect many of his benevolent pur-
poses by tlie assistance of liberal subscriptions. Poj)c had been
in Ross, on Iiis way from Lord Bathurst's to Lord Oxford.
564
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPE.
Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
AVho hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow !
From the drj' rock who bade the waters flow 2
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost ;
But clear and artless, pouring through the plain,
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows ?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose ?
Who taught the heaven-directed spire to rise ?
* The ilan of Ross,' each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread !
The !Man of Ross divides the weekly bread :
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate :
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blessed.
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any sick ? the Man of Ross reli€ves,
Prescribes, attends, and mcd'cine makes and gives.
Is there a variance I enter but his door,
Baulked are the courts, and contest is no more :
Despairing qu.acks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.
JB. Thiice happy man, enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
say, what sums that generous hand supply 1
What mines to swell that boundless charity ?
P. Of debts and taxes, wife and children cleai,
This man possessed five hundred pounds a-year.
Blush, grandeur, blush ! proud courts, withdraw your
blaze ;
Ye little stars ! hide your diminished rays.
B. And what ! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
P. Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name :
Go, search it there, where to be born and die.
Of rich and poor makes all the history ;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between ;
Proved by the ends of being to have been.
When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch, who living saved a candle's end ;
Shouldering God's altar a vile image stands,
Belies his features, nay, extends his hands ;
That live-long wig, which Gorgon's self might own.
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.
Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend !
And see what comfort it aflTords our end !
In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw.
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies — alas ! how changed from him.
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim !
Gallant and gay, in Cliefden's proud alcove.
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ;
Or just as gay, at council, in a ring
Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit to flatter, left of all his store !
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.
The Dying Christian to his Soul.
Vital spark of heavenly flame.
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame :
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying —
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying !
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!
Hark ! they whisper ; angels say,
'^ister spirit, come away !
What is this absorbs me quite ?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight.
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death ?
The Avorld recedes ; it disappears !
Heaven opens on my eyes ! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring :
Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly !
Grave ! where is thy victory ?
Death ! where is thy sting ?
We may quote, as a specimen of the melodious
versification of Pope's Homer, the well-known moon-
light scene, which lias been both extravagantly
praised and censured. Wordsworth and Southey
luiite in considering the lines and imagery as false
and contradictory. It will be found in this case, as
in many passages of Dryden, that, though natural
objects be incorrectly described, the beauty of the
language and versification elevates the whole into
poetry of a high imaginative order. Pope followed
the old version of Chapman, which we also sub-
join :—
The troops exulting sat in order round.
And beaming fires illumined all the ground,
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night !
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light ;
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll.
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole ;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head ;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies :
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bliss the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze.
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays ;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild.
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes sc id ;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of com.
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.
Chapman's version is as follows : —
This speech all Trojans did applaud, who from their
traces loosed
Their sweating horse, which severally with headstalls
they reposed,
And fastened by their chariots ; when others brought
from town
Fat sheep and oxen instantly ; bread, wine, and hewed
down
Huge store of wood ; the winds transferred into the
friendly sky
Their supper's savour ; to the which they sat delight-
fully,
And spent all night in open field ; fires round about
them shined.
As when about the silver moon, when air is free from
wind,
And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high
prospects, and the brows
Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves
for shows ;
And even the lowly valleys gay to glitter in their sight.
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose
her light.
And all the signs in heaven are seen, that glad the
shepherd's heart ;
Lo, many fires disclosed their beams, made by the
Trojan part
565
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1^
Before the face of Ilion, and her bright turrets showed.
A thousand courts of guard kept fires, and every guard
allowed
Fifty stout men, by whom their horse eat oats, and
hard-white com,
And all did wilfully expect the silver-throned mom.
Cowper's translation is brief, but vivid and distinct : —
As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hushed.
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks
The boundless blue, but ether opened wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheered.
THOMAS TICKELL.
The friendship of Addison has shed a reflected
light on some of his contemporaries, and it elevated
them, in their own day, to considerable importance.
Amongst these was Thomas Tickell (1686-1740),
born at Bridekirk, near Carlisle, and educated at
Oxford. He was a writer in the Spectator and Guar-
dian, and when Addison went to Ireland as secre-
tar}- to Lord Sunderland, Tickell accompanied him,
and was employed in public business. He published
a translation of the first book of the Iliad at the same
time with Pope. Addison and tlie Whigs pronounced
it to be the best, while the Tories ranged under the
banner of Pope. The circumstance led to a breach
of the friendship betwixt Addison and Pope, which
■was never healed. Addison continued his patronage
of Tickell, made him his under secretary of state,
and left him the charge of publishing his works.
Tickell had elegance and tenderness as a poet, but
was deficient in variety and force. His ballad of
' Colin and Lucy' is worth all his other works. It
has the simplicity and pathos of the elder lyrics,
without their too frequent coarseness and abrupt
transitions. His ' Elegy on the Death of Addison'
is considered by Johnson one of the most elegant
and sublime funeral poems in the language. The
author's own friend, Steele, considered it only ' prose
in rhyme !' The following extract contains the best
verses in the elegy : —
Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
Sad luxury ! to vulgar minds unknown,
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mould below ;
Proud names ! who once the reins of empire held,
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled ;
Chiefs graced with scars, and prodigal of blood.
Stem patriots, who for sacred freedom stood ;
Just men by whom impartial laws were given.
And saints who taught and led the way to heaven.
Ne'er to these chambers where the mighty rest.
Since their foundation came a nobler guest ;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade.
In what new region to the just assigned,
What new employments please the unbodied mind?
A winged virtue through the ethereal skv,
From world to world unwearied docs he ily ;
Or curious trace the long laborious maze
Of Heaven's decrees, where wondering angels gaze !
Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell
How IVIichael battled, and the dragon fell ;
Or, mixed with milder cherubim, to glow
In hymns of love not ill essayed below ?
Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind ?
A task well suited to thy gentle mind.
Oh ! if sometimes thy spotless form descend.
To me thy aid, thou guardian genius ! lend.
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms.
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisp'rings purer thoughts impart.
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ;
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part no more.
That awful form which, so the Heavens decree,
Must still be loved, and still deplored by me.
In nightly visions seldom fails to rise,
Or roused by Fancy, meets my waking eyes.
If business calls, or crowded courts invite.
The unblemished statesman seems to strike my sight ;
If in the stage I seek to soothe my care,
I meet his soul, which breathes in Cato there ;
If pensive to the rural shades I rove.
His step o'ertakes me in the lonely grove ;
'Twas there of just and good he reasoned strong.
Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song ;
There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
A candid censor, and a friend severe ;
There taught us how to live, and (oh ! too high
The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.
Thou hill ! whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race ;
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appeal's.
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears !
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair.
Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air !
How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees.
Thy noontide shadow, and thy evening breeze !
His image thy forsaken bowers restore.
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more ;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed.
Thy evening breezes, and thy noonday shade.
Colin and Ln/^y. — A Ballad.
Of Leinster, famed for maidens fair,
Bright Lucy was the grace,
Nor e'er did Liffy's limpid stream
Reflect so sweet a face ;
Till luckless love and pining care
Impaired her rosy hue,
Her coral lips and damask cheeks.
And eyes of glossj' blue.
Oh ! have you seen a lily pale
When beating rains descend ?
So drooped the slow-consuming maid,
Her life now near its end.
By Lucy warned, of flattering swains
Take heed, ye easy fair !
Of vengeance due to broken vows.
Ye perjured swains ! beware.
Three times all in the dead of night
A bell was heard to ring.
And shrieking, at her window thrice
The raven flapped his wing.
Too well the love-lorn maiden knew
The solemn boding sound.
And thus in dying words bespoke
The virgins weeping round:
' I hear a voice you cannot hear.
Which says 1 must not stay ;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
By a false heart and broken vows
In early youth I die.
Was I to blame because his bride
Was thrice as rich as I ?
566
.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR SAMUEL OARTH.
Ah, Colin ! give not her thy vows,
Vows due to me alone ;
Nor thou, fond maid ! receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.
To-morrow in the church to wed,
Impatient both prepare ;
But know, fond maid ! and know, false man !
That Lucy will be there.
Then bear my corse, my comrades ! bear,
This bridegroom blithe to meet ;
He in his wedding trim so gay,
I in my winding sheet.'
She spoke ; she died. Her corpse was bome
The bridegroom blithe to meet ;
Fie in his wedding trim so gay,
She in her winding sheet.
Then what were perjured Colin's thoughts ?
How were these nuptials kept I
The bridesmen flocked round Lucy dead,
And all the village wept.
Confusion, shame, remorse, despair.
At once his bosom swell ;
The damps of death bedewed his brow ;
He shook, he groaned, he fell.
From the vain bride, ah ! bride no more !
The varying crimson fled,
When stretched before her rival's corpse
She saw her husband dead.
Then to his Lucy's new made grave
Conveyed by trembling swains.
One mould with her, beneath one sod,
For ever he remains.
Oft at this grave the constant hind
And plighted maid are seen ;
"With garlands gay and true-love knots
They deck the sacred green.
But, swain forsworn ! whoe'er thou art,
This hallowed spot forbear ;
Remember Colin's dreadful fate.
And fear to meet him there.
SIR SAMUEL GARTH.
Sir Samuel Garth, an eminent physician, pub-
lished in 1696 his poem of The Dispensary, to aid
the college of physicians in a war they were then
waging with the apothecaries. The latter had ven-
tured to prescribe, as well as compoxmd medicines ;
and the physicians, to outbid them in popularity,
advertised that they would give advice gratis to the
poor, and establish a dispensary of their own for the
sale of cheap medicines. The college triumphed ;
but in 1703 the House of Lords decided that apothe-
caries were entitled to exercise the privilege which
Garth and his brother physicians resisted. Garth
was a popular and benevolent man, a firm Whig,
yet the early encourager of Pope ; and when Dryden
died, he pronounced a Latin oration over the poet's
remains. With Addison, he was, politically and
personally, on terms of the closest intimacy. Garth
died in 1718. The ' Dispensary' is a mock heroic
poem in six cantos. Some of the leading apothe-
caries of the day are happily ridiculed ; but the in-
terest of the satire has passed away, and it did not
contain enough of the life of poetry to preserve it.
A few lines will give a specimen of the manner and
the versification of the poem. It opens in the fol-
lowing strain : —
Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best canst tell,
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why pliysicians were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own ; .
How by a journey to the Klysian plain.
Peace triuinplied, and old time returned again.
Not far from that most celebrated place,'
\Miere angry justice shows her awful face ;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state ;
There stands a dome,- majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height ;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill ;
This pile was, by the pious patron's aim,
Raised for a use as noble as its frame ;
Nor did the learned society decline
The propagation of that great design ;
In all her mazes, Nature's face they viewed.
And, as she disappeared, their search pursued.
Wrapt in the shade of night the goddess lies.
Yet to the learned unveils her dark disguise,
But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes.
Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife
Of infant atoms kindling into life ;
How ductile matter new meanders takes.
And slender trains of twisting fibres makes ;
And how the viscous seeks a closer tone.
By just degrees to harden into bone ;
While the more loose flow from the vital urn.
And in full tides of purple streams retun. ;
How lambent flames from life's bright lamps
arise.
And dart in emanations through the eyes;
How from each sluice a gentle torrent pours.
To slake a feverish heat with ambient showers ;
Whence their mechanic powers the spirits claim ;
How great their force, how delicate their frame ;
How the same nerves are fashioned to sustain
The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain ;
Why bilious juice a golden light puts on.
And floods of chyle in silver currents run ;
How the dim speck of entity began
To extend its recent form, and stretch to man ; * *
Why envy oft transforms with wan disguise.
And why gay Mirth sits smiling in the eyes ; * *
Whence Mile's vigour at the Olympic's shown,
Whence tropes to Finch, or impudence to Sloane ;
How matter, by the varied shape of pores
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.
Hence 'tis we wait the wondrous cause to find,
How body acts upon impassive mind ;
How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire.
Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire ;
Why our complexions oft our soul declare,
And how the jiassions in the features are ;
How touch and harmony arise between
Corporeal figure, and a form unseen ;
How quick their faculties the limbs fulfil.
And act at every summons of the will ;
With mighty truths, mysterious to descry,
Which in the womb of distant causes lie.
But now no grand inquiries are descried ;
Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside;
Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside;
Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal.
And for important nothings show a zeal :
The drooping sciences neglected pine.
And Prean'fi beams with fading lustre shine.
No readers here with hectic looks are found.
Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight-watching
drowned:
The lonely edifice in sweats complains
That nothing there but sullen silence rei'^ns.
' Old BaUcy.
* The College of Physicians.
567
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
This place, so fit for undisturbed repose,
The god of sloth for his asylum chose ;
Upon a couch of down in these abodes,
Supine with folded arms, he thoughtless nods ;
Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease,
With murmurs of soft rills, and whispering trees :
The poppy and each numbing plant dispense
Their drowsy virtue and dull indolence ;
No passions interrupt his easy reign,
No problems puzzle his lethargic brain :
But dark obliTion guards his peaceful bed,
And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er his head.
The following is from a grandiloquent address by
Colocynthus, a keen apothecary : —
Could'st thou propose that we, the friends of fates,
Who fill churchyards, and who unpeople states,
Who baffle nature, and dispose of lives.
Whilst Russel, as we please, or starves or thrives.
Should e'er submit to their despotic will,
Who out of consultation scarce can skill ?
The towering Alps shall sooner sink to vales.
And leeches, in our glasses, swell to whales ;
Or Norwich trade in instruments of steel,
And Birmingham in stufls and druggets deal !
Alleys at Wapping furnish us new modes.
And Monmouth Street, Versailles, with riding-hoods ;
The sick to the Hundreds in pale throngs repair,
And change the Gravel-pits for Kentish air.
Our properties must on our arms depend ;
'Tis next to conquer, bravely to defend.
'Tis to the vulgar death too harsh appears ;
The ill we feel is only in our fears.
To die, is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar :
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.
The wise through thought the insults of death defv ;
The fools through blessed insensibility.
'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave ;
Sought by the wretch, and vanquished by the brave.
It eases lovers, sets the captive free ;
And, though a tyrant, offers liberty.
Garth wrote the epilogue to Addison's tragedy of
Cato, which ends with the following pleasing lines : —
Oh, may once more the happy age appear.
When words were artless, and the thoughts sincere ;
When gold and grandeur were unenvied things.
And courts less coveted than groves and springs.
Love then shall only mourn when truth complains,
And constancy feel transport in his chains ;
Sighs with success their own soft language tell,
And eyes shall utter what the lips conceal :
Virtue again to its bright station climb.
And beauty fear no enemy but time ;
The fair shall listen to desert alone,
And every Lucia find a Cato's son.
SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.
Sir Eichard Blackmore was one of the most
fortunate physicians, and the most persecuted poets,
of this period. He was born of a good family in
Wiltshire, and took the degree of JI.A. at Oxford
in 1676. He was in extensive medical practice, was
knighted by King William III., and afterwards
made censor of the college of physicians. In 1695,
he published Prince Arthur, an epic poem, which he
says he wrote amidst the duties of his profession, in
coffeehouses, or in passing up and down the streets!
Dryden, whom he had attacked for licentiousness,
Batirised him for writing ' to the rumbling of his
chariot-wheels.' Blackmore continued writing, and
published a series of epic poems on King Alfred,
Qucf-a Elizabeth, the Kedeemer, the Creation, &c.
All have sunk into oblivion ; but Pope has preserved
his memor}' in various satirical allusions. Addison
extended liis friendship to the Wliig poet, whose
private character was exemplary and irreproachable.
Dr Johnson included Blackmore in his edition of
the poets, but restricted his publication of his works
to the poem of ' Creation,' which, he said, ' wants
neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thouglit,
nor elegance of diction.' Blackmore died in 1729.
The design of ' Creation' was to demonstrate the
existence of a Divine Eternal Mind. He recites the
proofs of a Deity from natural and physical pheno-
mena, and afterwards reviews the systems of the
Epicureans and the Fatalists, concluding witli a
hymn to the Creator of the world. The piety of
Blackmore is everywhere apparent in his writings ;
hut the genius of poetry too often evaporates amiilst
his commonplace illustrations and prosing decla-
mation. One passage of ' Creation' (addressed to
the disciples of Lucretius) will suffice to show the
style of Blackmore, in its more select and improved
manner : —
You ask us why the soil the thistle breeds ;
Why its spontaneous birth are thorns and weeds ;
Why for the harvest it the harrow needs ?
The Author might a nobler world have made.
In brighter dress the hills and vales arrayed,
And all its face in flowery scenes displayed :
The glebe unfilled might plenteous crops have borne,
And brought forth spicy groves instead of thorn :
Rich fruit and flowers, without the gardener's pains,
flight every hill have crowned, have honoured all the
plains :
This Nature might have boasted, had the Mind
\\'ho formed the spacious universe designed
That man, from labour free, as well as gi'ief,
Should pass in lazy luxury his life.
But he his creature gave a fertile soil,
Fertile, but not without the owner's toil,
That some reward his industry should cro^vn,
And that his food in part might be his own.
But while insulting you arraign the land.
Ask why it wants the plough, or labourer's hand ;
Kind to the marble rocks, you ne'er complain
That they, without the sculptor's skill and pain,
No perfect statue yield, no basse relieve.
Or finished column for the palace give.
Yet if from hills unlaboured figures came,
!Man might have ease enjoyed, though never fame.
You may the world of more defect upbraid.
That other works by Nature are unmade :
That she did never, at her own expense,
A palace rear, and in magnificence
Out-rival art, to grace the stately rooms ;
That she no castle builds, no lofty domes.
Had Nature's hand these various works prepared.
What thoughtful care, what labour had been spared '
But then no realm would one great master show.
No Phidias Greece, and Rome no Angelo.
With equal reason, too, you mi_ght demand
Why boats and ships require the artist's hand ;
Why generous Nature did not these provide,
To pass the standing lake, or flowing tide ?
You say the hills, which high in air arise.
Harbour in clouds, and mingle with the skies.
That earth's dishonour and encumbering load,
Of many spacious regions man defraud ;
For beasts and birds of prey a desolate abode.
But can the objector no convenience find
In mountains, hills, and rocks, which gird and bind
The mighty frame, that else would be disjoined ?
Do not those heaps the raging tide restrain.
And for the dome afford the marble vein ?
Does not the rivers from the mountains flow.
And bring down riches to the vale below I
568
POETS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
AMBROSE TniLlPS.
See how the torrent rolls the golden sand
From the high ridges to the flatter land.
The lofty lines abound with endless store
Of mineral treasure and metallic ore.
AMBROSE PHILIPS.
Among the Wliig poets of the day, -whom Pope's
enmity raised to temporarj' importance, was Ambrose
Philips (1671-1749). He was a native of Leices-
tershire, educated at Cambridge, and patronised by
the Whig government of George I. He was a com-
missioner of the collieries, held some appointments
in Ireland, and sat for the county of Armagh in the
Irish House of Commons. The works of Philips
consist of three plaj's, some miscellaneous poems,
translations, and pastorals. The latter were pub-
lished in the same miscellany with those of Pope,
and were injudiciously praised by Tickell as the
finest in the Enghsh language. Pope resented this
unjust depreciation of his own poetry by an ironical
paper in the Guardian, calculated to make Philips
appear ridiculous. Ambrose felt the satire keenly,
and even vowed to take personal vengeance on his
adversary, by whipping him with a rod in Button's
coffeehouse. A paper war ensued, and Pope im-
mortalised Phihps as —
The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-cro\vn ;
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a-year.
The pastorals are certainly poor enough ; but
Philips was an elegant versifier, and Goldsmith has
eulogised part of his epistle to Lord Dorset, as ' in-
comparably fine.'
A fragment of Sappho, translated by Philips, is a
poetical gem so brilliant, that Warton thought Addi-
son must have assisted in its composition : —
Blessed as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while,
Softly speak and sweetly smile.
'Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast ;
For while I gazed in transport tossed,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost.
My bosom glowed ; the subtle flame
Ran quickly through my vital frame ;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung ;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
In dewy damps my limbs were chilled.
My blood with gentle horrors thrilled ;
My feeble pulse forgot to play ;
I fainted, sunk, and died away.
Epistk to the Earl of Dorset.
Copenhagen, March 9, 1709.
From frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow.
From streams which northern winds forbid to flow.
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects which to verse invite.
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flowery plains, and silver-streaming floods,
By snow disguised, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
No gentle-breathing breeze prepares the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing.
The ships, unmoved, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly.
The vast leviathan wants room to play.
And spout his waters in the face of d.ay.
The starving wolves along the main sea prowl.
And to the moon in icy valleys howl.
O'er many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain :
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.
And yet but latel}' have I seen, even here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow.
Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow:
At evening a keen eastern breeze arose,
And the descending rain unsullied froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew.
The ruddy mom disclosed at once to view
The face of nature in a rich disguise,
And brightened every object to my eyes :
For every shrub, and every blade of grass.
And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in gla-'i ;
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show.
While through the ice the crimson berries glow.
The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yie'i.
Seemed polished lances in a hostile field.
The stag, in limpid currents, with sui-jirise
Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise :
The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine
Glazed over, in the freezing ether shine.
The frighted birds the rattling branches shui.
Which wave and glitter in the distant sue.
When, if a sudden gust of wind arise.
The brittle forest into atoms flies ;
The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends.
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends :
Or, if a southern gale the region warm,
And by degrees unbind the wintry charm,
The traveller a miry country sees.
And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees :
Like some deluded peasant. Merlin leads
Through fragrant bowers, and through delicious meads
While here enchanted gardens to him rise,
And airj' fabrics there attract his eyes.
His wandering feet the magic paths pursue,
And, while he thinks the fair illusion true
The trackless scenes disperse in fluid air.
And woods, and wilds, and thorny ways appear :
A tedious road the wearj' wretch returns.
And, as he goes, the transient vision mourns.
The First Pastoral.
If we, Dorset ! quit the city-throng,
To meditate in shades the rural song.
By your command, be present ; and, bring
The Muse along! The Muse to you shall sin"
Her influence, Buckhurst, let me there obtain,
And I forgive the famed Sicilian swain.
Begin. — In unluxurious times of yore,
When flocks and herds were no inglorious store,
Lobbin, a shepherd boy, one evening fair,
As western winds had cooled the sultry air.
His numbered sheep within the fold now pent,
Thus plained him of his dreary discontent;
Beneath a hoary poplar's whispering boughs,
He, solitary, sat, to breathe his vows.
Venting the tender anguish of his heart,
As passion taught, in accents free of art ;
And little did he hope, while, night by night.
His sighs were lavished thus on Lucy bright.
' Ah ! well-a-day, how long must I end\ire
This pining pain? Or who shall speed my cure!
Fond love no cure will have, seek no repose,
Delights in grief, nor any measure knows :
And now the moon begins in clouds to rise ;
The brightening stars increase within the skies ,
66(>
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CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 172/.
The winds are hushed ; the dews distil ; and sleep
Hath closed the eyelids of my weary sheep :
[ only, with the prowling wolf, constrained
All night to wake : with hunger he is pained,
And I with love. His hunger he may tame ;
But who can quench, cruel love ! thy flame ?
^Vhilom did I, all as this poplar fair,
ITpraise my heedless head, then void of care,
'Mong rustic routs the chief for wanton game ;
Nor could they merry make, till Lobbin came.
Who better seen than I in shepherd's arts.
To please the lads, and win the lasses' hearts ?
How deftly, to mine oaten reed so sweet.
Wont they upon the green to shift their feet ?
And, wearied in the dance, how would they yearn
Some well-devised tale from me to learn ?
For many songs and tales of mirth had I,
To chase the loitering sun adown the sky :
But ah ! since Lucy coy deep-wrought her spite
^V'ithin my heart, unmindful of delight,
The jolly grooms I fly, and, all alone.
To rocks and woods pour forth my fruitless moan.
Oh ! quit thy wonted scorn, relentless fair.
Ere, lingering long, I perish through despair.
Had Rosalind been mistress of my mind.
Though not so fair, she would have proved more kind.
think, unwitting maid, while yet is time.
How flying years impair thy youthful prime !
Thy virgin bloom will not for ever stay.
And flowers, though left ungathered, will decay :
The flowers, anew, returning seasons bring !
But beauty faded has no second spring.
My words are wind! She, deaf to all my cries,
Takes pleasure in the mischief of her eyes.
Like frisking heifer, loose in flowery meads,
She gads where'er her roving fancy leads ;
Yet still from me. Ah me! the tiresome chase!
Shy as the fawn, she flies my fond erubrace.
She flies, indeed, but ever leaves behind.
Fly where she will, her likeness in my mind.
No cruel purpose in my speed I bear ;
'Tis only love ; and love why should'st thou fear ?
What idle fears a maiden breast alarm!
Stay, simple girl ; a lover cannot harm ;
Two sportive kidlings, both fair-flecked, I rear.
Whose shooting horns like tender buds appear :
A lambkin too, of spotless fleece, I breed.
And teach the fondling from my hand to feed :
Nor will I cease betimes to cull the fields
Of every dewy sweet the morning yields :
From early spring to autumn late shalt thou
Receive gay girlonds, blooming o'er thy brow :
And when — but why these unavailing pains?
The gifts alike, and giver, she disdains ;
And now, left heiress of the glen, she'll deem
Me, landless lad, unworthy her esteem ; _
Yet was she bom, like me, of shepherd-sire,
And I may fields and lowing herds acquire.
0! would my gifts but win her wanton heart,
Or could I half the warmth I feel impart,
How would I wander, every day, to find
The choice of wildings, blushing through the rind !
For glossy plums how lightsome climb the tree,
How risk the vengeance of the thrifty bee.
Or, if thou deign to live a shepherdess.
Thou Lobbiu's flock, and Lobbin shall possess ;
And fair my flock, nor yet uncomely I,
If liquid fountains flatter not ; and why
Should liquid fountains flatter us, yet show
The bordering flowers less beauteous than they growl
come, my love ! nor think the employment mean,
The dams to milk, and little lambkins wean ;
To drive afield, by morn, the fattening ewes.
Ere the warm sun drink up the coolly dews ;
While with my pipe, and with my voice, I cheer
Each hour, and through the day detain thine ear.
How would the crook beseem thy lily hand!
How would my j'ounglings round thee gazing t-tainl {
Ah, witless younglings! gaze not on her eye :
Thence all my sorrow ; thence the death 1 die.
Oh, killing beauty! and oh, sore desire!
Must then my sutferings but with life expire ?
Though blossoms every year the trees adom.
Spring after spring I wither, nipt with scorn :
Nor trow I when this bitter blast will end.
Or if yon stars will e'er my vows befriend.
Sleep, sleep, my flock ; for happy ye may take
Sweet nightly rest, though still your master wake.'
Now to the waning moon the nightingale.
In slender warblings, tuned her piteous tale.
The love-sick shepherd, listening, felt relief,
Pleased with so sweet a partner in his grief,
Till, by degrees, her notes and silent night
To slumbers soft his hea^y heart invite.
JOHN GAY.
The Italian opera and English pastorals — bolh
sources of fashionable and poetical aflectation — were
driven out of the field at this time bj' the easj-, indo-
lent, good-humoured John Gay, who seems to have
been the most artless and the best-beloved of all the
Pope and Swift circle of wits and poets. Gay was
born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, in 1688. lie was
of the ancient family of the Le Gays of Oxford and
Devonshire ; but his father being in reduced circum-
stances, the poet was put apprentice to a silk-niercer
in the Strand, London. He disliked this mercenary
employment, and at length obtained his discharge
from his master. In 1711, he published his 7i'tt/nZ
Sports, a descriptive poem, dedicated to Pope, in
■which we may trace his joy at being eniancipaAed
from the drudgery of a shop : —
But I, who ne'er was blessed by Fortune's hand.
Nor brightened ploughshares in paternal land ;
Long in the noisy town have been immured.
Respired its smoke, and all its cares endured.
570
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN OAT.
Fatigued at last, a calm retreat I chose,
And soothed my harassed mind with sweet repose,
AVhere fields, and shades, and the refreshing clime
Inspire the sylvan song, and prompt my rhyme.
Next year. Gay obtained the appointment of domestic
secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, on which
he was cordially congratulated by Pope, who took
a warm interest in his fortunes. Ilis next work was
his Shepherd's Wee/;, in Six Pastorals, written to
throw ridicule on those of Ambrose Philips; but
containing so much genuine comic humour, and en-
tertaining pictures of country life, that they became
popular, not as satires, but on account of their in-
trinsic merits, as affording ' a prospect of his own
country.' In an address to the ' courteous reader,'
Gay says, 'Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses
idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine,
tying up the sheaves ; or, if the hogs are astray,
driving them to their styes. My shepherd gathereth
none other nosegays but what are the growth of our
own fields; he sleepetli not under myrtle shades,
but under a hedge ; nor doth he vigilantly defend
his flock from wolves, because there are none.' This
matter-of-fact view of rural life has been admirably
followed by Crabbe, with a moral aim and effect to
wliich Gay never aspired. About this time the
poet also produced his Trivia, or the Art of Walking
the Streets of London, and The Fan, a poem in three
books. The former of these is in the mock-heroic
style, in which he was assisted by Swift, and gives
a graphic account of the dangers and impediments
then encountered in traversing the narrow, crowded,
ill-lighted, and vice-infested thoroughfares of the
metropolis. His paintings of city life are iu the
Dutch style, low and familiar, but correctly and
forcibly c rawn. The following sketch of the fre-
quenters of book-stalls in the streets may stiU be
Verified:- -
Volumes on sheltered stalls expanded lie.
And various science lures the learned eye;
The bending shelves with ponderous scholiasts groan,
And deep divines, to modern shops unknown ;
Here, like the bee, that on industrious wing
Collects the various odours of the spring.
Walkers at leisure learning's flowers may spoil.
Nor watch the wasting of the midnight oil ;
May morals snatch from Plutarch's tattered page,
A mildewed Bacon, or Statgyra's sage :
Here sauntering 'prentices o'er Otway weep,
O'er Congreve smile, or over D'Urfey sleep ;
Pleased sempstresses the Lock's famed Rape unfold ;
And Squirts* read Garth till apozems grow cold.
The poet gives a lively and picturesque account
of the great frost in London, when a fair was held
•jn the river Thames : —
0, roving muse ! recall that wondrous year
VVhen winter reigned in bleak Britannia's air ;
When hoary Thames, with frosted oziers crowned,
Was three long moons in icy fetters bound.
The waterman, forlorn, along the shore,
Pensive reclines upon his useless oar :
See harnessed steeds desert the stony town,
And wander roads unstable not their own ;
Wheels o'er the hardened water smoothly glide.
And raze with whitened tracks the slippery tide ;
Here the fat cook piles high the blazing fire,
And scarce the spit can turn the steer entire;
Booths sudden hide the Thames, long streets appear.
And numerous games proclaim the crowded fair.
* Squirt is t" 18 name of an apothecary's boy in Garth's ' Dis-
pensary."
So, when a general bids the martial train
Spread their encampment o'er the spacious plain,
Thick-rising tents a canvass city build.
And the loud dice resound through all the field.
In 1713, Gay brought out a comedy entitled The
Wife of Bath; but it failed of success. His friends
were anxious in his behalf, and next v'ear (July 1714),
he writes with joy to Pope — ' Since you went out
of the town, my Lord Clarendon was appointed
envoy-extraordinary to Hanover, in the room of
Lord Paget ; and by making use of those friends,
which I entirely owe to you, he has accepted me for
his secretary.' The poet accordingly quitted his
situation in the Monmouth family, and accompanied
Lord Clarendon on his embassy. He seems, how-
ever, to have held it only for about two months; for
on the 23d of September of the same year. Pope
welcomes him to his native soil, and counsels him,
now that the queen was dead, to write something
on the king, or prince, or princess. Gay was an
anxious expectant of court favour, and he" complied
with Pope's request. He wrote a poem on the prin-
cess, and the royal family went to see his play of
WhatUije Call It? produced shortly after his return
from Hanover, in 1714. The piece was eminently
successful; and Gay was stimulated to another dra-
matic attempt of a similar nature, entitled Three
Hours After Marriage. Some personal satire and
indecent dialogues in this piece, together with the
improbability of the plot, sealed its fiite with the
public. It soon fell into disgrace; and its author
being afraid that Pope and Arbuthnot would suffer
injury from their supposed connexion with it, took
' all the shame on himself.' Gay was silent and
dejected for some time; but in *1720 he published
his poems by subscription, and realised a sum of
£ 1 000. He received, also, a present of South-Sea stock,
and was supposed to be worth £20,000, all of which
he lost by the explosion of tliat famous delusion.
This serious calamity to one fimd of finery in dress
and living only prompted to fiirther literary exer-
tion. In 1724, Gay brought out another drama.
The Captives, which was acted with moderate suc-
cess; and in 1726 he wrote a volume of fables,
designed for the special improvement of the Duke
of Cumberland, who certainly did not learn mercy
or humanity from them. The accession of the
prince and princess to the throne seemed to augur
well for the fortunes of Gay ; but he was only
offered the situation of gentleman uslier to one of
the young princesses, and considering this an insult,
he rejected it. His genius proved his best patron.
In 1726, Swift came to England, and resided two
months with Pope at Twickenham. Among other
plans, the dean of St Patrick suggested to Gay the
idea of a Newgate pastoral, in which the charac-
ters should be thieves and highwaymen, and the
Beggar s Opera was the result. When finished, the
two friends were doubtful of the success of the pieces
but it was received with unbounded applause. The
songs and music aided greatly its popularity, and
there was also the recommendation of political satire ;
for the quarrel between Peachum and Lockit was
an allusion to a personal collision between Walpole
and his colleague. Lord Townseiid. The spirit and
variety of the piece, in which song and sentiment
are so happily intermixed with vice and roguery,
still render the ' Beggar's Opera' a favourite with
the public ; but as Gay has succeeded in making
highwaymen agreeable, and even attractive, it can-
not be commended for its moral tendency. Of this
we suspect the Epicurean author thought little. The
opera had a run of sixty-three nights, and became
the rage of town and country. Its success had sdso
571
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172.
the effect of givinjr rise to the English opera, a spe-
cies of light comedy enlivened by songs and music,
which for a time supplanted the Italian opera, witli
all its exotic and elaborate graces. Gay tried a
sequel to the ' Beggar's Opera,' under the title of
Pollr/; but as it was supposed to contain sarcasms
on the court, tlie lord chamberlain prohibited its
representation. The poet had recourse to publica-
tion ; and such was the zeal of his friends, and the
effect of party spirit, that while the ' Beggars Opera'
realised for him only about £400, ' Polly' produced
a profit of £1100 or £1200. The Duchess of Marl-
borough gave £100 as her subscription for a copy.
Gay had now amassed £3000 by his writings, which
he resolved to keep ' entire and sacred.' He was at
the same time received into the house of his kind
patrons the Duke and Ducliess of Queensberry, with
whom he spent the remainder of his life. His only
literary occupation was composing additional fables,
and corresponding occasionally with Pope and
Swift. A sudden attack of inflammatory fever
hurried him out of life in three days. He died on
the 4th of December 1732. Pope's letter to Swift
announcing the event was indorsed by the latter :
' On my dear friend Mr Gay's death. Received,
December 15th, but not read till the 20th, by an
impulse foreboding some misfortune.' The friend-
ship of these eminent men seems to have been sin-
cere and tender; and nothing in the life of Swift is
more touching or honourable to his memory, than
tliose passages in his letters where the recollection
of Gay melted his haughty stoicism, and awakened
his deep though unavailing sorrow. Pope, always
more affectionate, was equdly grieved by the loss of
him whom he has characterised as —
Of manners gentle, of affections mild ;
In wit a man, simplicity a child.
Gay was buried in Westminster abbey, where a
handsome monument was erected to his memory by
the Duke and Duchess of Queensberrj'. The works
of this easy and loveable son of the muses have lost
much of their popularity. He has the licentiousness,
without the elegance, of Prior. His fables are still,
however, the best we possess; and if they have
not the nationality or rich humour and archness of
La Fontaine's, the subjects of them are light and
pleasing, and the versification always smooth and
correct. The Hare with Many Friends is doubtless
drawn from Gaj''s own experience. In the Court of
Death, he aims at a higher order of poetry, and mar-
shals his ' diseases dire' with a strong and gloomy
power. His song of Black-Eyed Susan, and the
ballad beginning ' Twas when the seas were roaring,'
are full of characteristic tenderness and. lyrical me-
lody. Tiie latter is said by Cowper to have been
the joint production of Arbuthnot, Swift, and Gay.
[2%fi Countnj Ballad Singer.']
[From ' The Sheplierd's "Week."]
Sublimer strains, rustic muse ! prepare ;
Forget awhile the bam and dairy's care ;
Thy homely voice to loftier numbers raise,
The drunkard's flights require sonorous lays ;
With Bowzybeus' songs exalt thy verse,
While rocka and woods the various notes rehearse.
'Twas in the season when the reapers' toil
Cf the ripe harvest 'gan to rid the soil ;
Wide through the field was seen a goodly rout.
Clean damsels bound the gathered sheaves about ;
The lads with sharpened hook and sweating brow
Cut down the labours of the winter plough. * *
When fast asleep they Bowzybeus spied,
riJ8 hat and oaken staff laj close beside ;
That Bowzybeus who could sweetly sing,
Or with the rosined bow torment the string;
That Bowzybeus who, with fingers' speed,
Could call soft warblings from the breathing reed ;
That Bowzybeus who, with jocund tongue.
Ballads, and roundelays, and catches sung :
They loudly laugh to see the damsel's fright,
And in disport surround the drunken wight.
Ah, Bowzybee, why didst thou stay so long?
The mugs were large, the drink was wondrous strong 1
Thou should'st have left the fair before 'twas night,
But thou sat'st toping till the morning light.
Cicely, brisk maid, steps forth before the rout,
And kissed with smacking lip the snoring lout
(For custom says, ' Whoe'er this venture proves.
For such a kiss demands a pair of gloves').
By her example Dorcas bolder grows,
And plays a tickling straw within his nose.
He rubs his uostril, and in wonted joke
The sneering strains with stammering speech bespoke •
To you, my lads, Til sing my carols o'er;
As for the maids, I've something else in store.
No sooner 'gan he raise his tuneful song.
But lads and lasses round about him throng.
Not ballad- singer placed above the crowd
Sings with a note so shrilling sweet and loud ;
Nor parish-clerk, who calls the psalm so clear,
Like Bowzybeus soothes the attentive ear.
Of nature's laws his carols first begun.
Why the grave owl can never face the sun.
For owls, as swains observe, detest the light.
And only sing and seek their prey by night.
How turnips hide their swelling heads below,
And how the closing coleworts upwards grow ;
How Will-a-wisp misleads night-faring clowns
O'er hills, and sinking bogs, and pathless do^vns.
Of stars he told that shoot with shining trail.
And of the glow-worm's light that gilds his tall.
He sung where woodcocks in the summer feed.
And in what climates they renew their breed
(Some think to northern coasts their flight they tend.
Or to the moon in midnight hours ascend) ;
Where swallows in the winter's season keep.
And how the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep ;
How nature does the puppy's eyelid close,
Till the bright sun has nine times set and rose
(For huntsmen by their long experience find.
That puppies still nine rolling suns are blind).
Now he goes on, and sings of fairs and shows,
For still new fairs before his eyes arose.
How pedlers' stalls with glittering toys are laid,
The various fairings of the country maid.
Long silken laces hang upon the twine.
And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine ;
How the tight lass knives, combs, and scissors spies,
And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes.
Of lotteries next with tuneful note he told.
Where silver spoons are won, and rings of gold.
The lads and lasses trudge the street along,
And all the fair is crowded in his song.
The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells
His pills, his balsams, and his ague-spells ;
Now o'er and o'er the nimble tumbler springs,
And on the rope the venturous maiden swings ;
Jack Pudding, in his party-coloured jacket,
Tosses the glove, and jokes at every packet.
Of raree-shows he sung, and Punch's feats.
Of pockets picked in crowds, and various cheats.
Then sad he sung ' The Children in the Wood,'
(Ah, barbarous uncle, stained with Infant blood !)
IIow blackberries they plucked in deserts wild.
And fearless at the glittering faulchion smiled ;
Their little corpse the robin-redbreasts found.
And strewed with pious bill the leaves around.
(Ah, gentle birds ! if this verse lasts so long,
Your names shall live for ever in my song.)
572
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
For ' Buxom Joan' he sung the doubtful strife,
How the slv sailor made the maid a wife.
To louder strains he raised his voice, to tell
What woful wars in ' Chevy Chase' befell.
When ' Percy drove the deer with hound and horn ;
Wars to be wept by children yet unborn !'
Ah, Witherington ! more years thy life had crowned,
If thou hadst never heard the horn or hound !
Yet shall the squire, who fought on bloody stumps.
By future bards be wailed in doleful dumj)s.
' -Ml in the land of Essex' next he chaunts.
How to sleek mares starch Quakers turn gallants :
How the grave brother stood on bank so green —
Happy for him if mares had never been !
Then he was seized with a religious qualm,
And on a sudden sung the hundredth psalm.
He sung of ' Tafiy Welsh' and ' Sa^vney Scot,'
' Lilly-bullero' and the ' Irish Trot.'
Why should I tell of ' Bateman' or of ' Shore,'
Or ' Wantley's Dragon' slain by valiant Moore,
* The Bower of Rosamond,' or ' Robin Hood,'
And how the ' grass now grows where Troy to\vn stood V
His carols ceased ; the listening maids and swains
Seem still to hear some soft imperfect strains.
Sudden he rose, and, as he reels along,
Swer.rs kisses sweet should well reward his song.
The damsels laughing fly ; the giddy clown
Again upon a wheat-sheaf drops adown ;
The DOwer that guards the drunk his sleep attends,
Till, uddy, like his face, the sun descends.
[ WalMng the Streets of London. 1
[From ' Trivia.']
Through winter streets to steer your course aright,
How to walk clean by day, and safe by night ;
How jostling crowds with prudence to decline.
When to assert the wall, and when resign,
I sing ; thou, Trivia, goddess, aid my song.
Through spacious streets conduct thy bard along ;
By thee transported, I securely stray
Where winding alleys lead the doubtful way ;
The silent court and opening square explore,
And long perplexing lanes untrod before.
To jiave thy realm, and smooth the broken ways,
Earth from her womb a flinty tribute pays ;
For thee the sturdy pavior thumps the ground.
Whilst every stroke his labouring lungs resound ;
For thee the scavenger bids kennels glide
Within their bounds, and heaps of dirt subside.
Sly youthful bosom bums with thirst of fame.
From the great theme to build a glorious name ;
To tread in paths to ancient bards unknown,
And bind my temples with a civic crown :
But more my country's love demands my lays ;
My country's be the profit, mine the praise !
When the black youth at chosen stands rejoice.
And ' clean your shoes' resounds from every voice ;
When late their miry sides stage-coaches show.
And their stiff horses through the town move slow ;
When all the Mall in leafy ruin lies.
And damsels first renew their oyster cries ;
Then let the prudent walker shoes provide,
Kot of the Spanish or Morocco hide ;
The wooden heel may raise the dancer's bound.
And with the scalloped top his step be crowned:
Let firm, well-hammered soles protect thy feet
Through freezing snows, and rains, and soaking sliit.
Should the big last extend the shoe too wide,
Each stone will wrench the unwary step aside ;
The sudden turn may stretch the swelling vein.
Thy cracking joint unhinge, or ankle sprain ;
And, when too short the modish shoes are wom.
You'll judge the seasons by your shooting corn.
Xor should it prove thy less important care.
To choose a proper coat for winter's wear.
Now in thy trunk thy D'Oily habit f)ld.
The silken drugget ill oin fence the cold ;
The frieze's spongy nap Is soaked with rain.
And showers soon drench the camblet's cockled grain ;
True Witneyl broadcloth, with its shag unshorn,
Unpierced is in the lasting tempest wom :
Be this the horseman's fence, for who would wear
Amid the town the spoils of Russia's bear ?
Within the roquelaure's clasp thy hands are pent,
Hands, that, stretched forth, invading harms prevent
Let the looped bavaroy the fop embrace.
Or his deep cloak bespattered o'er with lace.
That garment best the winter's rage defends.
Whose ample form without one plait depends ;
By various names- in various counties known,
Yet held in all the true surtout alone ;
Be thine of kersey firm, though small the cost.
Then brave unwet the rain, unchilled the frost.
If the strong cane support thy walking hand,
Chairmen no longer shall the wall command ;
Even sturdy carmen shall thy nod obey.
And rattling coaches stop to make thee way :
This shall direct thy cautious tread aright.
Though not one glaring lamp enliven night.
Let beaux their canes, with amber tipt, produce ;
Be theirs for empty show, but thine for use.
In gilded chariots while they loll at ease,
And lazily insure a life's disease ;
While softer chairs the tawdiy load convey
To court, to White's,'^ assemblies, or tlie play ;
Rosy-complexioned Health thy steps attends.
And exercise thy lasting youth defends.
Imprudent men Heaven's choicest gifts profane :
Thus some beneath their arm support the cane ;
The dirty point oft checks the careless pace.
And miry spots the clean cravat disgrace.
C)h ! may I never such misfortune meet!
May no such vicious walkers crowd the street !
IMay Providence o'ershade me with her wings.
While the bold Muse experienced danger sings !
S07ir/.
Sweet woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,
Which in the garden enamels the ground ;
Near it the bees, in play, flutter and cluster.
And gaudy butterflies frolic around.
But when once plucked, 'tis no longer iilhiring.
To Covent-Garden 'tis sent (as yet sweet),
There fades, and shrinks, and grows past all enduiiag,
Rots, stinks, and dies, and is trod under feet.
[TIte Poet and the Jiose.'\
[From the ' Fables.']
I liate the man who builds his name
On ruins of another's fame:
Thus jsrudes, by characters o erthro^vn,
Imagine that they raise their own ;
Thus scribblers, covetous of praise.
Think slander can transplant the baya.
Beauties and bards have equal pride,
With both all rivals are decried :
Who praises Lesbia's eyes and feature.
Must call her sister ' awkward creature ;'
P'or the kind flattery's sure to charm.
When we some other nymph disanii.
As in the cool of early day
A poet sought the sweets of May,
The garden's fragrant breath ascends,
And every stalk with odour bends ;
A rose he plucked, he gazed, admired.
Thus singing, as the muse inspired —
' A town in Oxfordsliirc.
2 A Joseph, wrap-rascal, kc
3 A chocolate-house in St James's Street.
677
I'ROM 1G89
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172y.
' Go, Rose, my Chloe's bosom grace ;
How happy should I prove,
Might I supply that envied place
With iievcr-lading love !
There, Pheuix-like, beneath her eye,
Involved in fragrance, burn and die.
Know, hapless flower ! that thou shalt find
More fragrant roses there :
I see thy withering head reclined
With envy and despair !
One common fate we both must prove ;
You die with envy, I with love.'
* Spare your comparisons,' replied
An angry Rose, who grew beside.
* Of all mankind, you should not flout us ;
What can a poet do without us 1
In every love-song roses bloom ;
We lend you colour and perfume.
Does it to Chloe's charms conduce,
To found her praise on our abuse!
Must we, to flatter her, be made
To wither, envy, pine, and fade ?'
The Cotirt of Death.
Death, on a solemn night of state,
In all his pomp of terror sate ;
The attendants of his gloomy reign,
Diseases dire, a ghastly train !
Crowd the vast court. With hollow tone,
A voice thus thundered from the throne :
' This night our minister we name,
Let every servant speak his claim ;
T^Ierit shall bear this ebon wand.'
All, at the word, stretched forth their hand.
Fever, with burning heat possessed,
Advanced, and for the wand addressed :
' I to the weekly bills appeal.
Let those express my fervent zeal ;
On every slight occasion near.
With violence I persevere.'
Next Gout appears with limping pace.
Pleads how he shifts from place to place ;
From head to foot how swift he flies.
And every joint and sinew plies ;
Still working when he seems supprest,
A most tenacious stubborn guest.
A haggard spectre from the crew
Crawls forth, and thus asserts his due :
' 'Tis I who taint the sweetest joj-.
And in the shape of love destroy.
My shanks, sunk eyes, and noseless face.
Prove my pretension to the place.'
Stone urged his overgrowing force ;
And, next, Consumption's meagre corse.
With feeble voice that scarce was heard.
Broke with short coughs, his suit preferred :
' Let none object my lingering way;
I gain. Like Fabius, by delay ;
Fatigue and weaken every foe
By long attack, secure, though slow.'
Plague represents his rapid power.
Who thinned a nation in an hour.
All spoke their claim, and hoped the wand.
Now expectation hushed the band.
When thus the monarch from the throne :
* Merit was ever modest known.
What, no physician speak his right !
None here ! but fees their toils requite.
Let then Intemperance take the wand.
Who fills with gold their zealous hand.
You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest
(Whom wary men as foes detest),
Forego your claim. No more pretend ;
Intemperance is esteemed a friend ;
He shares their mirth, their social joys.
And as a courted guest destroys.
The charge on him must justly fall,
Who finds employment for you all.*
TIte Hare and Many Friends.
Friendship, like love, is but a name.
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child, whom many fathers share.
Hath seldom knoAvn a father's care.
'Tis thus in friendship ; who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.
A Hare, who in a civil way.
Complied with everything, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial train.
Who haunt the wood, or graze the {jlalu.
Her care was never to ofl!end.
And every creature was her friend.
As forth she went at early dawn.
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn.
Behind she hears the hunter's cries.
And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies :
She starts, she stops, she pants for breath ;
She hears the near advance of death ;
She doubles, to mislead the hound.
And measures back her mazy round ;
Till, fainting in the public way.
Half dead with fear she gasping lay ;
What transport in her bosom grew.
When first the Horse appeared in view !
Let me, says she, your back ascend.
And owe my safety to a friend.
You know my feet betray my flight.
To friendship every burden's light.
The Horse replied : Poor honest Puss,
It grieves my heart to see thee thus ;
Be comforted, relief is near.
For all your friends are In the rear.
She next the stately Bull implored,
And thus replied the mighty lord:
Since every beast alive can tell
That I sincerely wish you well,
I may, without oflfence, pretend
To take the freedom of a friend.
Love calls me hence ; a favourite cow
Expects me near j'on barley-mow ;
And when a ladj-'s in the case.
You know, all other things give place.
To leave you thus might seem unkind ;
But see, the Goat is just behind.
The Goat remarked her pulse was high.
Her languid head, her heavy eye ;
My back, says he, may do you harm.
The Sheep's at hand, and wool is warm.
The Sheep was feeble, and complained
His sides a load of wool sustained :
Said he was slow, confessed his fears,
For hounds eat sheep as well as hares.
She now the trotting Calf addressed.
To save from death a friend distressed.
Shall I, says he, of tender age.
In this important care engage ?
Older and abler passed you by ;
How strong are those, how weak am I !
Should I presume to bear you hence,
Those friends of mine may take offence.
Excuse me, then. You know my heart ;
But dearest friends, alas ! must part.
How shall we all lament ! Adieu !
For, see, the hounds are just in view !
Tlie Lion, the Tiger, and the Traveller.
Accept, 3'oung prince, the moral lay.
And in these tales mankind survey ;
674
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
With early virtues piant your breast,
The specious arts of vice detest.
Princes, like beauties, froiu their youth
Are strangers to the voice of truth ;
Learn to contemn all praise betimes,
For flattery is the nurse of crimes :
Friendship by sweet reproof is shown
(A virtue never near a throne) ;
In courts such freedom must offend,
There none presumes to be a friend.
To those of your exalted station,
Each courtier is a dedication.
Must I, too, flatter like the rest,
And turn my morals to a jest ?
The muse disdains to steal from those
Who thrive in courts by fulsome prose.
But shall I hide your real praise.
Or tell you what a nation says ?
They in your infant bosom trace
The virtues of your royal race ;
In the fair dawning of your mind
Discern you generous, mild, and kind :
They see you grieve to hear distress.
And pant already to redress.
Go on, the height of good attain.
Nor let a nation hope in vain ;
For hence we, justly may presage
The virtues of a riper age.
True courage shall your bosom fire,
And future actions own your sire.
Cowards are cruel, but the brave
Love mercy, and delight to save.
A Tiger, roaming for his prey.
Sprung on a Traveller in the way ;
The prostrate game a Lion spies.
And on the greedy tyrant flies ;
With mingled roar resounds the wood,
Their teeth, their claws, distil with blood ;
Till, vanquished by the Lion's strength,
The spotted foe extends his length.
The man besought the shaggy lord.
And on his knees for life implored ;
His life the generous hero gave.
Together walking to his cave,
The Lion thus bespoke his guest :
What hardy beast shall dare contest
My matchless strength ? You saw the fight.
And must attest my power and right.
Forced to forego their native home,
My starving slaves at distance roam ;
Within these woods I reign alone ;
The boundless forest is my own.
Bears, wolves, and all the savage brood.
Have dyed the regal den with blood.
These carcasses on either hand,
Those bones that whiten all the land,
My former deeds and triumphs tell,
Beneath these jaws what numbers fell.
True, says the man, the strength I saw
Might well the brutal nation awe :
But shall a monarch, brave like you,
Place glory in so false a view ?
Robbers invade their neighbour's right.
Re loved ; let justice bound your might.
Mean are ambitious heroes' boasts
Of wasted lands and slaughtered hosts.
Pirates their power by murders gain :
Wise kings by love and mercy reign.
To me your clemency hath sho\vn
The virtue worthy of a throne.
Heaven gives you power above the rest.
Like Heaven, to succour the distrest.
The case is plain, the monarch said ;
False glory hath my youth misled ;
For beasts of prey, a sci-vile train,
Hi,ve been the flatterers of my reign.
You reason well. Yet tell me, friend,
Did ever you in courts attend?
For all my fawning rogues agree.
That human heroes rule like me.
Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed Simtn.
All in the dowTis the fleet was moored.
The streamers waving in the wind.
When black -eyed Susan came aboard.
Oh ! where shall I my true love find ?
Tell nie, ye jovial sailors, tell me true.
If my sweet William sails among the crew!
William, who high upon the yard
Rocked with the billow to and fro.
Soon as her well-known voice he heard.
He sighed, and cast his eyes below :
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And (quick as lightning) on the deck he st»ids.
So sweet the lark, high poised in air.
Shuts close his jiinions to his bre.ast
(If chance his mate's shrill call he hear).
And drops at once into her nest.
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lip those kisses sweet.
! Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain ;
Let me kiss ott' that falling tear ;
We only part to meet again.
Change as ye list, ye winds ! my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still points to thee.
Believe not what the landmen say,
Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind ;
They'll tell thee, sailors, when away,
In every port a mistress find :
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so.
For thou art present wheresoe'er I go.
If to fair India's coast we sail.
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright.
Thy breath is Afrlc's spicy gale.
Thy skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view,
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.
Though battle call me from thy arms,
Let not my pretty Susan mourn ;
Though cannons roar, yet, safe from harms,
William sliall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye.
The boatswain gave the dreadful word.
The sails their swelling bosom spread ;
No longer must she stay aboard ;
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head.
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land,
Adieu ! she cries, and waved her lily hand.
A Ballad.
[From the ' What-d'yc-c:ill-it ?']
'Twas wlien the seas were roaring
With hollow blasts of wind,
A damsel lay deploring.
All on a rock reclined.
Wide o'er the foaming billows
She cast a wistful look ;
Her head was crowned with willows,
That trembled o'er the brook.
Twelve months are gone and over.
And nine long tedious days ;
Why didst thou, venturous lover.
Why didst thou trust the seasi
Cease, cease thou cruel ocean,
And let my lover rest :
Ah ! wliat's thy troubled motion
To that within my breast?
575
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 1727.
The merchant robbed of pleasure,
Sees tempests in despair ;
But what's the loss of treasure,
To losing of my dear 1
Should you some coast be laid on,
Where gold and diamonds grow,
You'd find a richer maiden,
But none that loves you so.
How can they say that nature
Has nothing made in vain ;
Why then, beneath the water,
Should hideous rocks remain J
No eyes the rocks discover
That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep.
All melancholy lying,
Thus wailed she for her dear ;
Repaid each blast with sighing.
Each billow with a tear.
When o'er the white wave stooping
His floating corpse she spied.
Then, like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head, and died.
THOMAS PARNELL.
Another friend of Pope and Swift, and one of the
popular authors of that period, was Thomas Par-
NELL (1679-1718). His father possessed consider-
able estates in Ireland, but was descended of an
English family long settled at Congleton, in Che-
fihire. The poet was born and educated in Dublin,
Thomas Pamell.
went into sacred orders, and was appointed arch-
deacon of Clogher, to which was afterwards added,
through the influence of Swift, the vicarage of Fin-
glass, in the diocese of Dublin, worth £400 a-year.
Parnell, like Swift, disliked Ireland, and seems to
have considered his situation there a cheerless and
irksome banishment. As permanent residence at
their livings was not then insisted upon on the part
of the clergy, Parnell lived chiefly in London. He
married a young lady of beauty and miirit. Miss
Anne Minchen, wlio died a few years after their
union. His grief for her loss preyed upon liis
spirits (wliich had always been unequal), and hur-
ried him into intemperance. He died on the 18tli
of October, 1718, at Chester, on his way to Ireland.
Parnell was an accomplished scholar and a delight-
ful companion. His life was written by Goldsmith,
who Avas proud of his distinguished countryman,
considering him the last of the great school that had
modelled itself upon the ancients. Parnell's works
are of a miscellaneous nature — translations, songs,
hymns, epistles, &c. His most celebrated piece is
the Hermit, familiar to most readers from tlieir in-
fancy. Pope pronounced it to be ' very good,' and
its sweetness of diction and picturesque solemnity
of style must always please. His Night Piece on
Death was indirectly preferred by Goldsmitli to
Gray's celebrated Elegy ; but few men of taste or
feeling will subscribe to such an opinion. In the
* Night Piece,' Parnell meditates among the tombs.
Tired with poring over the pages of schoolmen and
sages, he sallies out at midnight to the churcliyard —
How deep yon azure dyes the sky !
Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie ;
While through their ranks, in silver pride,
The nether crescent seems to glide.
The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds, which on the right aspire.
In dimness from the view retire :
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass, with melancholy st.ate.
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,
' Time was, like thee, they life possessed,
And time shall be that thou shalt rest.'
Those with bending osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumbled ground.
Quick to the glancing thought disclose
Where toil and poverty repose.
The flat smooth stones that bear a name.
The chisel's slender help to fame
(Which, ere our set of friends decay.
Their frequent steps may wear away),
A middle race of mortals own.
Men, half ambitious, all unknown.
The marble tombs that rise on high.
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie.
Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones ;
These all the poor remains of state.
Adorn the rich, or praise the great ;
Who, while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.
TJie HeiTnit.
Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell.
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well ;
Remote from men, with God he passed his days.
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise.
A life so sacred, such serene repose.
Seemed heaven itself, till one suggestion rose-
That vice should triumph, virtue vice obey ;
This sprung some doubt of Providence's sway ;
His hopes no more a certain prospect boast.
And all the tenor of his soul is lost.
So, when a smooth expanse receives impressed
Calm nature's image on its watery breast,
Down bend the banks, the trees depending grow,
And skies beneath with answering colours glow j
But, if a stone the gentle sea divide,
Swift ruffling circles curl on every side,
676
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS PARNKLU
And glimmering fragments of a broken sun,
Banks, trees, and skies, in thick disorder run.
To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight,
To find if books, or swains, report it riglit
(For yet by swains alone the world he knew.
Whose feet came wandering o'er the nightly dew),
He quits his cell ; the pilgrim-statf he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before ;
Then, with the rising sun, a journey went,
Sedate to think, and watching each event.
The morn was wasted in the pathless grass,
And long and lonesome was the wild to pass ;
But, when the southern sun had warmed the day,
A youth came posting o'er a crossing way ;
His raiment decent, his complexion fair.
And soft in graceful ringlets waved his hair ;
Then, near approaching, ' Father, hail !' he cried.
And, * Hail, my son !' the reverend sire replied.
Words followed words, from question answer (lowed,
And talk, of various kind, deceived the road ;
Till each with other pleased, and loath to part,
While in their age they differ, join in heart.
Thus stands an aged elm in ivy bound.
Thus useful ivy clasps an elm around.
Now sunk the sun ; the closing hour of day
Came onward, mantled o'er with sober gray ;
Nature, in silence, bid the world repose.
When, near the road, a stately palace rose.
There, by the maon, through ranks of trees they pass.
Whose verdure crowned their sloping sides with grass.
It chanced the noble master of the dome
Still made his house the wandering stranger's home ;
Yet still the kindness, from a thirst of praise.
Proved the vain flourish of expensive ease.
The pair an-ive ; the liveried servants wait ;
Their lord receives them at the pompous gate ;
The table groans with costly piles of food,
And all is more than hospitably good.
Then led to rest, the day's long toil they drown.
Deep sunk in sleep, and silk, and heaps of down.
At length 'tis morn, and, at the dawn of day.
Along the wide canals the zephyrs play ;
Fresh o'er the gay parterres the breezes creep,
And shake the neighbouring wood to banish sleep.
Up rise the guests, obedient to the call.
An early banquet decked the splendid hall ;
Rich luscious wine a golden goblet graced,
Which the kind master forced the guests to taste.
Then, pleased and thankful, from the porch they go ;
And, but the landlord, none had cause of wo ;
His cup was vanished ; for in secret guise,
The younger guest purloined the glittering prize.
As one who spies a serpent in his way,.
Glistening and basking in the summer ray.
Disordered stops to shun the danger near.
Then walks with faintness on, and looks with fear ;
So seemed the sire, when, far upon the road.
The shining spoil his wily partner showed.
He stopped with silence, walked with trembling heart.
And nmch he wished, but durst not ask to part ;
Murmuring he lifts his eyes, and thinks it hard
That generous actions meet a base reward.
While thus they pass, the sun his glory shrouds.
The changing skies hang out their sable clouds ;
A sound in air presaged approaching rain.
And beasts to covert scud across the plain.
Warned by the signs, the wandering pair retreat
To seek for shelter at a neighbouring seat.
'Twas built with turrets on a rising ground.
And otiong, and large, and unimproved around ;
Its owner's temper, timorous and severe.
Unkind and griping, caused a desert there.
As near the miser's heavy door they drew,
Fierce rising gusts with sudden fury blew ;
The nimble lightning, mixed with showers, began,
And o'er their heads loud rolling thunders ran ;
Here long they knock, but knock or call in vain.
Driven by the wind, and battered by the rain.
At length some ])ity wanned the master's breast
('Twas then his thresliold first received a guest) ;
Slow creaking turns the door with jealous ciire.
And half he welcomes in the shivering pair ;
One frugal faggot lights the naked walls.
And Nature's fervour through their limbs recalls ;
Bread of the coarsest sort, with meagre wi?ic,
(Each hardly granted), served them botli to dine;
And when the tempest first appeared to cease,
A ready warning bid them part in peace.
With still remark, the pondering hermit viewed,
In one so rich, a life so poor and rude ;
And why should such (within himself lie cried)
Lock the lost wealth a thousand want beside ?
But what new marks of wonder soon take place
In every settling feature of his face.
When, from his vest, the 3'oung companion bore
That cup, the generous landlord owned before,
And paid profusely with the precious bowl,
The stinted kindness of this churlish soul !
But now the clouds in airy tumult fly ;
The sun emerging, opes an azure sky ;
A fresher green the smelling leaves display',
And, glittering as they tremble, cheer the day:
The weather courts them from their poor retreat.
And the glad master bolts the weary gate.
While hence they walk, the pilgrim's bosom wrought
With all the travail of uncertain thought :
His partner's acts without their cause appear ;
'Twas there a vice, and seemed a madness here :
Detesting that, and pitying this, he goes,
Lost and confounded with the various shows.
Now night's dim shades again involve the sky;
Again the wanderer's want a place to lie ;
Again they search, and find a lodging nigh.
The soil improved around, the mansion neut.
And neither poorly low, nor idly great;
It seemed to speak its mtister's turn of mind,
Content, and not for praise, but virtue, kind.
Hither the walkers turn their weary feet.
Then bless the mansion, and the master greet.
Their greeting fair, bestowed with modest guise.
The courteous master hears, and thus replies : —
' Without a vain, without a grudging heart.
To him who gives us all, I yield a part ;
From him you come, for him accept it here,
A frank and sober, more than costly cheer !'
He spoke, and bid the welcome table spread.
Then talked of virtue till the time of bed ;
When the grave household round his hall repair,
Warned by a bell, and close the hours with prayer.
At length the world, renewed by calm repose,
Was strong for toil ; the dapj)led morn arose ;
Before the pilgrims part, the younger crept
Near a closed cradle where an infant slept,
And writhed his neck : the landlord's little jirlde,
O strange return ! grew black, and gasped, and
died!
Horror of horrors ! what ! his only son !
How looked our hermit when the fact was done !
Not hell, though hell's black jaws in sunder part.
And breathe blue fire, could more assault his heart.
Confused, and struck with silence at the deed,
He flies, but trembling, fails to fly with speed ;
His steps the youth pursues: tlie counti-y lay
Perplexed with roads ; a servant showed the way ;
A river crossed the path ; the passage o'er
Was nice to find ; the servant trod before ;
Long arms of oaks an open bridge supplied,
And deep the waves beneath them bending glide.
The youth, who seemed to watch a time to ^ln,
Approached the careless guide, and tlirust lu::i in;
Plunging he falls, and rising, lifts his head,
Then flashing turns, and sinks among tlie dead.
577
93
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
While sparkling rage inflamea the father's eyes,
He bursts the bands of fear, and madly cries,
' Detested wretch !' — but scarce his speech began.
When the strange partner seemed no longer man !
His youthful face grew more serenely sweet ;
His robe turned white, and flowed upon his feet ;
Fair rounds of radiant points invest his hair ;
Celestial odours breathe through purpled air ;
And wings, whose colours glittered on the day,
Wide at his back their gradual plumes display.
The form ethereal bursts upon his sight,
And moves in all the majesty of light.
Though loud at first the pilgrim's passion grew,
Sudden he gazed, and wist not what to do ;
Surprise, in secret chains, his words suspends,
And in a calm, his settling temper ends,
But silence here the beauteous angel broke
(The voice of Music ravish'd as he spoke) : —
' Thy prayer, thy praise, thy life to vice unknown.
In sweet memorial rise before the throne :
These charms success in our bright region find,
And force an angel dowTi to calm thy mind ;
For this commissioned, I forsook the sky :
Nay, cease to kneel — thy fellow servant I.
Then know the truth of government divine,
And let these scruples be no longer thine.
The Maker justly claims that world he made ;
In this the right of Providence is laid ;
Its sacred majesty through all depends
On using second n)eans to work his ends :
'Tis thus, withdrawn in state from human eye,
The power exerts his attributes on high ;
Your action uses, nor controls your will.
And bids the doubting sons of men be still.
What strange events can strike with more surprise.
Than those which lately struck thy wondering eyes ?
Yet, taught by these, confess the Almighty just.
And, where you can't unriddle, learn to trust.
The great vain man, who fared on costly food.
Whose life was too luxurious to be good ;
Who made his ivory stands with goblets shine.
And forced his guests to morning draughts of wine;
Has, with the cup, the graceless custom lost.
And still he welcomes, but with less of cost.
The mean suspicious wretch, whose bolted door
Ne'er moved in pity to the wandering poor ;
With him I left the cup, to teach his mind
That Heaven can bless, if mortals will be kind.
Conscious of wanting worth, he views the bowl.
And feels compassion touch his grateful soul.
Thus artists melt the sullen ore of lead.
With heaping coals of fire upon its head ;
In the kind warmth the metal learns to glow,
And, loose from dross, the silver runs below.
Long had our pious friend in virtue trod.
But now the child half-weaned his heart from God ;
(Child of his age) for hiui he lived in pain,
And measured back his steps to earth again.
To what excesses had his dotage run !
But God, to save the father, took the son.
To all but thee, in fits he seemed to go.
And 'twas my ministry to deal the blow.
The poor fond parent, humbled in the dust.
Now owns in tears the punishment was just.
But how had all his fortunes felt a wrack.
Had that false servant sped in safety back ?
This night his treasured heaps he meant to steal,
And what a fund of charity would fail !
Thus Heaven instructs thy mind : this trial o'er,
Dej)art in peace, resign, and sin no more.'
On sounding pinions here the youth withdrew,
Tho sage stood wondering as the seraph flew ;
Thus looked Elisha, .when, to mount on high,
His master took the chariot of the sky ;
The fiery pomp ascending left the view ;
the prophet gazed, and wished to follow too.
The bending Hermit here a prayer begun,
' Lord, as in heaven, on earth thy will be done.'
Then, gladly turning, sough* his ancient place,
And passed a life of piety and peace.
MATTHEW GREEN.
^Iatthew Green (1696-1737) was author of a
poem. The Spleen, which received the praises of
Pope and Gray. He was born in 1696, of dissenting
parentage, and enjoj'cd a situation in the custom-
house. His disposition was cheerful ; but this did
not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits,
or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time.
Having tried all imaginable remedies for his maladj',
he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a
philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote the above-
mentioned poem, which adverts to all its forms,
and their apjiropriate remedies, in a style of comic
verse I'esembling Hudibras. but which Pope him-
self allowed to be eminently original. Green ter-
minated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737,
at the age of forty-one.
' The Sjjleen' was first published by Glover, the
author of 'Leonidas,' himself a poet of some jircten-
sions in his day. Gray thought that 'even the
wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of
real poetry and music' As ' The Spleen' is almost
unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its
best passages. The first tliat follows contains one
line (marked by Italic) which is certainly one of the
happiest and wisest things ever said by a British
author. It seems, however, to be imitated from
Shakspeare —
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.
[Cures for Melancholy.']
To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen.
Some recommend the bowling-green ;
Some hilly walks ; all exercise ;
Fling hut a stone, the giant dies;
Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen ;
And kitten, if the humour hit.
Has harlequined away the fit.
Since mirth is good in this behalf,
At some particulars let us laugh.
Witlings, brisk fools * *
Who buzz in rhyme, and, like blind flies,
Err with their wings for want of eyes.
Poor authors worsliipping a calf;
Deep tragedies that make us laugh ;
Folks, things prophetic to dispense,
Making the past the future tense;
The popish dubbing of a priest ;
Fine epitajdis on knaves deceased ;
A miser starving to be rich ;
The prior of Newgate's dying speech ;
A jointured widow's ritual state;
Two Jews disputing tete-a-tcte ;
New almanacs composed by seers ;
Experiments on felons' ears ;
Disdainful prudes, who ceaseless ply
The superb muscle of the eye ;
A coquette's April- weather face ;
A Queen'brough mayor behind his ma06^
And fops in military show,
Are sovereign for the case in view.
If spleen-fogs rise at close of day,
I clear my evening with a plaj',
Or to some concert take my way.
The company, the shine of lights,
The scenes of humour, music's (lights.
Adjust and set the soul to rights
S78
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
MATTHEW GREKM.
In rainy da3's keep double guard,
Or spleen will surely be too hard ;
Which, like those fish by sailors met.
Fly highest while their wings are wet.
In such dull weather, so unfit
To enterprise a work of wit ;
When clouds one yard of azure sky,
That's fit for simile, deny,
I dress my face with studious looks,
And shorten tedious hours with books.
But if dull fogs invade the head,
That memory minds not what is read,
I sit in window dry as ark,
And on the drowning world remark :
Or to some cofteehouse I stray
For news, the manna of a day,
And from the hipped discourses gather,
That politics go by the weather. * *
Sometimes I dress, with women sit,
And chat away the gloomy fit ;
Quit the stifFgarb of serious sense,
And wear a gay impertinence.
Nor think nor speak with any pains.
But lay on fancy's neck the reins. * *
Law, licensed breaking of the peace,
To which vacation is disease ;
A gipsy diction scarce known well
By the ruagi, who law-fortunes tell,
I shun ; nor let it breed within
Anxiety, and that the spleen. * *
I never game, and rarely bet.
Am loath to lend or run in debt.
No Compter-writs me agitate ;
Who moralising pass the gate,
And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
M'ho vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care.
Pays her upbraiding visits there.
And forces folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.
This view, profusely when inclined,
Enters a caveat in the mind :
Experience, joined with common sense.
To mortals is a providence.
Reforming schemes are none of mine ;
To mend the world's a vast design :
Like theirs, who tug in little boat
To pull to them the ship afloat.
While to defeat their laboured end,
At once both wind and stream contend :
Success herein is seldom seen.
And zeal, when bafSed, turns to spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent.
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent ;
His skiflTdoes with the current glide,
Not pufling pulled against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd.
Sees unconcerned life's wager rowed.
And when he can't prevent foul play.
Enjoys the folly of the fray. * *
Yet philosophic love of ease
I suffer not to prove disease,
But rise up in the virtuous cause
Of a free press, and equal laws. * *
Since disappointment galls within,
And subjugates the soul to spleen,
Most schemes, as money snares, I hate,
And bite not at projector's bait.
Suflicient wrecks appear each day,
And yet fresh fools are cast away.
Ere well the bubbled can turn round.
Their painted vessel runs aground ;
Or in deep seas it oversets
By a fierce hurricane of debts ;
Or helm-directors in one trip.
Freight first embezzled, sink the ship. *
When Fancy tries her limning skill
To draw and colour at her will.
And raise and round the figures well.
And show her talent to excel,
1 guard my heart, lest it should woo
Unreal beauties Fancy drew.
And, disappointed, feel despair
At loss of things that never were.
\_Contentinent — A WkhJ]
Forced by soft violence of prayer.
The blithsome goddess soothes my care;
I feel the deity inspire.
And thus she models my desire :
Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid.
Annuity securely made,
A farm some twenty miles from town.
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own ;
Two maids that never saw the town,
A serving-man not quite a clown,
A boy to help to tread the mow.
And drive, while t'other holds the plough j
A chief, of temper formed to please.
Fit to converse and keep the keys ;
And better to preserve the peace.
Commissioned by the name of niece ;
With understandings of a size,
To think their master very wise.
May heaven (it's all I wish for) send
One genial room to treat a friend,
^^'here decent cupboard, little plate.
Display benevolence, not state.
And may my humble dwelling stand
Upon some chosen spot of land :
A pond before full to the brim.
Where cows may cool, and geese may swim;
Behind, a green, like velvet neat.
Soft to the eye, and to the feet ;
Where odorous plants in evening fair
Breathe all around ambrosial air ;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground.
Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned.
Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,
A^'ho pay their quit-rents with a song;
^Vith opening views of hill and dale.
Which sense and fancy do regale,
Where the half-cirque, which vision bounds,
Like amphitheatre surrounds :
And woods impervious to the breeze.
Thick phalanx of embodied trees ;
From hills through plains in dusk array.
Extended far, repel the day ;
Here stillness, height, and solemn shade,
Invite, and contemplation aid :
Here nymphs from hollow oaks re'aio
The dark decrees and will of fate :
And dreams, beneath the spreading beech
Inspire, and docile fancy teach ;
While soft as breezy breath of wind,
Impulses rustle through the mind :
Here Dryads, scorning Pho-bus' ray.
While Pan melodious pipes away.
In measured motions frisk about,
Till old Silcnus puts them out.
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green ;
Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep,
Brown fiehls their fallow iabbaths keep,
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear.
And poppy top-knot;; deck her hair,
An<l silver streams through meadows stray,
And Naiads on the margin play,
And lesser nymphs on side of hills.
From plaything urns pour down the rills.
Thus sheltered free from care and itrife.
May I enjoy a calm through life ;
57il
FROK 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO J rnj.
See faction, safe in low degree,
As men at land see storms at sea,
And laugh at miserable elves,
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Cursed with such souls of base alloy,
As can possess, but not enjoy ;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By avarice, sphincter of the heart ;
Who wealth, hard earned by guilty cares.
Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs ;
May 1, with look ungloomed by guile.
And wearing virtue's liverj'-smile,
Prone the distressed to relieve.
And little trespasses forgive ;
With income not in fortune's power,
And skill to make a busy hour ;
With trips to town, life to amuse.
To purchase books, and hear the news,
To see old friends, brush off the clown,
And quicken taste at coming down.
Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage,
And slowly mellowing in age.
When fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain.
Perhaps to blossom soon again.
ANNE, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA.
' It is remarkable,' says ISIr Wordsworth, ' that
excepting The Nocturnal Reverie, and a passage or
two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of
the period intervening between tlie publication of
♦' Paradise Lost" and the " Seasons," does not con-
tain a single new image of external nature.' The
' Nocturnal Reverie' was written by Anne, Countess
OF Winchelsea, the daughter of Sir WiUiam Kings-
mill, Southampton, wlio died in 1720. Her lines
are smoothly versified, and possess a tone of calm
and contemplative observation : —
A Nocturnal Reverie.
In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined.
And only gentle zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel still waking sings ;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight.
She, holloaing clear, directs the wanderer right :
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face ;
When in some river overhung with green.
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen ;
When freshened grass now bears itself upright.
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence springs the woodbine, and the bramble rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows ;
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes.
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes ;
When scattered glow-worms, but in twilight fine.
Show trivial beauties watch their hour to shine ;
Whilst Salisbury stands the test of every light.
In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright :
When odours which declined repelling day.
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray ;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear.
And falling waters we distinctly hear ;
When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric, awful in repose ;
While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal.
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale :
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads.
Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear ;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechevr the cud ;
When curlews cry beneath the village walls.
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls ;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep.
Which but endures whilst tyrant man does sleep ;
When a sedate content the spirit feels.
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals ;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak ;
Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,
Finding the elements of rage disarmed.
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own •
In such a night let me abroad remain.
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again ;
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed.
Or pleasures seldom reached again pursued.
The following is another specimen of the correct
and smooth versification of the countess, and seem*
to us superior to the ' Nocturnal Reverie :'
Life's Progress.
How gaily is at first begun
Our life's uncertain race !
Whilst yet that sprightly morning sun,
With which we just set out to run.
Enlightens all the place.
How smiling the world's prospect lies.
How tempting to go through !
Not Canaan to the prophet's eyes,
From Pisgah, with a sweet surprise,
Did more inviting show.
How soft the first ideas prove
Which wander through our minds!
How full the joys, how free the love.
Which does that early season move.
As flowers the western winds !
Our sighs are then but vernal air,
But April drops our tears.
Which swiftly passing, all grows fixir,
Whilst beauty compensates our care,
And youth each vapour clears.
But oh ! too soon, alas ! we climb.
Scarce feeling we ascend
The gently-rising hill of Time,
From whence with grief we see that prime^
And all its sweetness end.
The die now cast, our station known,
Fond expectation past :
The thorns which former days had so>vn,
To crops of late repentance gro\\Ti,
Through which we toil at last.
Whilst every care's a driving harm.
That helps to bear us down ;
Which faded smiles no more can charm,
But every tear's a winter storm.
And every look's a frown.
WILLIAM SOMERVILLE.
The author of The Chase is still included in our
editions of the poets, but is now rarely read or con-
sulted. William Somerville (1GS2-1742), was,
as he tells Allan Ramsay, his brother-poet,
A squire well born, and six foot high.
His estate lay in Warwickshire, and brought him in
£1500 per annum. He was generous, but extrava-
gant, and died in distressed circumstances, ' plagued
£80
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALLAN RAMSAT.
and threatened by wretches,' says Shenstone, ' that
are low in every sense, and forced to drink himself
into pains of the body to get rid of the pains of the
mind.' He died in 1742, and was buried at Wot-
tcn, near Henley-on-Ardeu. ' The Chase' is in
Urn erected by Shenstone to Somerville,
blank verse, and contains practical instructions and
admonitions to sportsmen. The following is an
animated sketch of a morning in autumn, prepara-
tory to ' throwing off the pack :' —
Now golden Autumn from her open lap
Her fragrant bounties showers ; the fields are shorn ;
Inwardly smiling, the proud farmer riews
The rising pyramids that grace his .yard.
And counts his large increase ; his barns are stored,
And groaning staddles bend beneath their load.
All now is free as air, and the gay pack
In the rough bristly stubbles range unblamed ;
No widow's tears o'erflow, no secret curse
Swells in the farmer's breast, which his pale lips
Trembling conceal, by his fierce landlord awed :
But courteous now he levels every fence,
Joins in the common cry, and halloos loud.
Charmed with the rattling thunder of the field.
Oh bear me, some kind power invisible !
To that extended lawn where the gay court
View the swift racers, stretching to the goal ;
Games more renowned, and a far nobler train,
Than proud Elean fields could boast of old.
Oh! were a Theban lyre not wanting here.
And Pindar's voice, to do their merit right !
Or to those spacious plains, where the strained eye.
In the wide prospect lost, beholds at last
Sarum's proud spire, that o'er the hills ascends.
And pierces through the clouds. Or to thy downs.
Fair Cotswold, where the well-breathed beagle climbs.
With matchless speed, thy green aspiring brow,
And leaves the lagging multitude behind.
Hail, gentle Dawn! mild, blushing goddess, hail !
Rejoiced I see thy purple mantle spread
O'er half the skies ; gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from every shrub depend.
Farewell, Cleora ; here deep sunk in down.
Slumber secure, with happy dreams amused.
Till grateful streams shall tempt thee to receive
Thy early meal, or thy officious maids ;
The toilet placed shall urge thee to perform
The important work. Me other joys invite ;
The horn sonorous calls, the pack awaked,
Their matins chant, nor brook thy long delay.
My courser hears their voice ; see there with ears
And tail erect, neighing, he paws the ground ;
Fierce rapture kindles in his reddening eyes,
And boils in every vein. As cajjtive boys
Cowed by the ruling rod and haughty frowns
Of pedagogues severe, from their hard tasks,
If once dismissed, no limits can contain
The tumult raised within their little breasts,
But give a loose to all their frolic play ;
So from their kennel rush the joyous pack ;
A thousand wanton gaieties express
Their inward ecstacy, their pleasing sport
Once more indulged, and liberty restored.
The rising sun that o'er the horizon peeps,
As many colours from their glossy skins
Beaming reflects, as paint the various bow
When April showers descend. Delightful scene!
Where all around is gay ; men, horses, dogs ;
And in each smiling countenance appears
Fresh blooming health, and universal joy.
Somerville wrote a poetical address to Addison,
on the latter purchasing an estate in Warwickshire.
' In his verses to Addison,' says Johnson, ' the
couplet which mentions Clio is written with the most
exquisite delicacy of praise ; it e.xhibits one of those
liappj- strokes that are seldom attained.' Addison,
it is well-known, signed his papers in the ' Specta-
tor' with the letters forming the name of Clio. The
couplet which gratified Johnson so highly is as
follows : —
When panting virtue her last efforts made,
You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid.
In welcoming Addison to the banks of Avon, Som-
erville does not scruple to place him above Shaks-
peare as a poet !
In heaven he sings ; on earth your muse supplies
The important loss, and heals our weeping eyes :
Correctly great, she melts ea -h flinty heart
With equal genius, but superior art.
Gross as this niisjudgment is, it should be remem-
bered that Voltaire also fell into the same. The
cold marble of Cato was preferred to the living and
breathing creations of the ' myriad -minded' ma-
gician.
ALLAN RAMSAY.
The Scottish muse had been silent for nearly a
century, excepting when it found brief expression
in some stray song of broad humour or sim])le pa-
thos, chanted by the population of the hills and dales.
The genius of the country was at length revived in
all its force and nationality, its comic dialogue, Doric
simplicity and tenderness, by Allan Kamsay, whose
very name is now an impersonation of Scottish
scenery and manners. The religious austerity of
the Covenanters still hung over Scotland, and
damped the efforts of poets and dramatists ; but a
freer spirit found its way into the towns, along with
the increase of trade and connnerce. Tiie higher
classes were in the habit of visiting London, thougli
the journey was still performed on horseback ; and
the writings of Pope and Swift were circulated over
the North. Clubs and taverns were rife in Edin-
burgh, in which the assembled wits loved to indulge
in a pleasantry that often degenerated to excess.
Talent was readily known and aiiiireciatcd; and
when Kamsay appeared as an author, lie found the
nation ripe for his native hununir, his ' manners-
painting strains,' and his lively original skf-tches
5U1
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
of Scottish life. Allan Ramsay was born in 1686,
in the village of LtiuUnlls, Lanarkshire, wliere his
father held the situation of manager of Lord Hope-
ton's mines. When he became a poet, he boasted
that he was of the ' auld descent' of the Dalhousie
family, and also collaterally 'sprung from a Douglas
loin.' His mother, Alice Bower, was of English
parentage, her father having been brought from
Derbyshire to instruct the Scottish miners in their
art. Those who entertain the theory, that men of
genius usually partake largely of the qualities and
dispositions of their mother, may perhaps recognise
some of the Derbyshire blood in AUan Ramsay's
frankness and joviality of character. His father
died while the poet was in his infancy ; but his
mother marrying again in the same district, Allan
was brought up at Leadhills, and put to the village
school, where he acquired learning enough to enable
him, as he tells us, to read Horace 'faintly in the
original.' His lot might have been a hard one, but
it was fortunately spent in the country till he had
reached his fifteenth year; and his lively tempera-
ment enabled him, with cheerfulness —
To wade through glens wi' chorking feet,
When neither plaid nor kilt could fend the weet ;
Yet blythely wad he bang out o'er the brae,
And stend o'er bums as light as ony rac,
Hoping the mom' might prove a better day.
At the age of fifteen, Allan was put apprentice to a
wig-maker in Edinburgh — a light employment suited
to his slender frame and boyish smaitne.ss, but not
Tery congenial to his literary taste. His poetical
talent, however, was more observant than creative,
and he did not commence writing till he was about
twenty-si.K years of age. He then penned an address
to the 'Easy Club,' a con>ivial society of young
men, tinctured with Jacobite predilections, which
were also imbibed by Ramsay, and which probably
formed an additional recommendation to the favour
r>f Pope and Gay, a distinction that he afterwards
1 To-morrow.
enjoyed. Allan was admitted a member of this
'blythe societj',' and became their poet laureate.
He wrote various light pieces, chiefly of a local and
humorous description, which were sold at a penny
each, and became exceedingly popular. He also
sedulously courted the patronage of the great, sub-
duing his Jacobite feelings, and never selecting a
fool for his patron. In this mingled spirit of pru-
dence and poetry, he contrived
To theek the out, and line the inside.
Of mony a douce and witty pash,
And baith ways gathered in the cash.
In the year 1712 he married a writer's daughter,
Christiana Ross, who was his faithful partner for
more than thirty years. He greatly extended his
reputation by writing a continuation to King
James's ' Christ's Kirk on the Green,' executed
with genuine humour, fancy, and a perfect mastery
of the Scottisli language. Nothing so rich had ap-
peared since the strains of Dunbar or Lindsay. What
an inimitable sketch of rustic life, coarse, but as true
as any by Teniers or Hogarth, is presented in the
first stanza of the third canto ! —
Now frae the east nook of Fife the dawn
Speeled westlins up the lift ;
Carles wha heard the cock had craw'n,
Begoud to rax and rift ;
And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn,
Cried lasses up to thrift ;
Dogs barked, and the lads frae hand
Banged to their breeks like drift
By break of day. ^
Ramsay now left off wig-making, and set up a
bookseller's shop, 'opposite to Niddry's Wynd.'
He next appeared as an editor, and published two
works. The Tea Table Miscellany, being a collection
of songs, partly his own ; and The. Evergreen, a col-
lection of Scottish poems written before 1600. He
was not well qualified for the task of editing works
of this kind, being deficient both in knowledge and
taste. In the ' Evergreen,' he published, as ancient
poems, two pieces of his own, one of which, The
Vision, exhibits high powers of poetry. The genius
of Scotland is drawn with a touch of the old heroic
Muse : —
Great daring darted frae his ee,
A braid-sword shogled at his thie,
On his left arm a targe ;
A shining spear filled his right hand,
Of stalwart make in bane and brawnd,
Of just proportions large ;
A various rainbow-coloured plaid
Owre his left spaul he threw,
Down his braid back, frae his white head,
The silver wimplers grew.
Amazed, I gazed,
To see, led at command,
A stampant and rampant
Fierce lion in his hand.
In 1725 appeared his celebrated pastoral drama, 7Vie
Gentle Shepherd, of which two scenes had previously
been published under the titles of Palie and Roger,
and Jenny and Meggy. It was received with uni-
versal approbation, and was republished both in
London and Dublin. Wlien Gay visited Scotland
in company with his patrons, the Duke and Duchess
of Queensberry, he used to lounge in Allan Ram-
say's shop, and obtain from him explanations of
some of the Scottish expressions, that he might
communicate them to Pope, who was a great admirer
of the poem. This was a delicate and marked com-
pliment, which Allan must have felt, though he
58'2
ENGLISH LITERAT'JRE.
ALLa.N RAMSAY
had previously represented himself as the vicegerent
of Apollo, and equal to Homer ! He now removed
to a better shop, and instead of the IMercury's head
which had graced his sign-board, he put up ' tlie
presentment of two brotliers' of tlie iluse, Ben Jon-
son and Drummond. He next establislied a circu-
latipg library, the first in Scotland. He associated
on familiar terms witli tlie leading nobilitj', lawyers,
•wits, and literati of Scotland, and was the Pope or
Swift of the Xorth. His son, afterwards a distin-
guished artist, he sent to Rome for instruction.
But the prosperity of poets seems liable to an im-
common share of crosses. He was led by the
promptings of a taste then rare in Scotland to expend
his savings in tlie erection of a theatre, for the per-
formance of the regular drama. He wished to keep
his ' troop' together by the ' pitli of reason ;' but
he did not calculate on the pith of an act of par-
liament in the hands of a hostile magistrate. The
statute for licensing theatres prohibited all dramatic
exhibitions without special license and the royal
letters-patent; and on the strength of this enact-
ment the magistrates of Edinburgh shut up Allan's
tlieatre, leaving him without redress. To add to
his mortification, the envious poetasters and strict
religionists of tlie day attaclied him with personal
satires and lampoons, under such titles as — ' A
Looking-Glass for Allan Ramsay ;' ' The Dying
"Words of Allan Ramsay ;' and ' The Flight of Reli-
gious Piety from Scotland, upon the account of
Ramsay's lewd books, and the hell- bred playhouse
comedians,' &c. Allan endeavoured to enlist Presi-
dent Forbes and the judges on his side by a poetical
address, in which he prays for compensation from
the legislature —
Syne, for amends for what Pve lost,
Edge me into some canny post.
His circumstances and wishes at this crisis are more
particularly explained in a letter to the president,
which now lies before us : —
' Will you,' he writes, ' give me something to
do? Here I pass a sort of half idle scrimp life,
tending a trifling trade, that scarce affords me tlie
needful. Had I not got a parcel of guineas from
you, and such as you, who were pleased to patronise
my subscriptions, I should not have had a gray
groat. I think shame (but why should I, wlien I
open my mind to one of your goodness ?) to hint
that I want to have some small commission, wlien it
happens to fall in your way to put me into it.'*
It does not appear that lie either got money or a
post, but he applied himself attentively to his busi-
ness, and soon recruited his purse. A citizen-like
good sense regulated the life of Ramsay. He gave
over poetry 'before,' he prudently says, 'the cool-
ness of fancy that attends advanced years should
make me risk the reputation I had acquired.'
Frae twenty-five to five-and-forty,
My muse was nowther sweer nor dorty ;
My Pegasus wad break his tether
E'en at the shagging of a feather,
And through ideas scour like drift,
Streaking his wings up to the lift ;
Then, then, my soul was in a low,
That gart my numbers safely row.
But eild and judgment 'gin to say.
Let be your sangs, and learn to pray.
About the year 1 743, his circumstances were sufB-
ulently flourishing to enable him to build himself a
iniall octagon-shaped house on the north side of
♦ From the manuscript coUccti ;na in Culloden House.
the Castle hill, which he called Ramsay Lodge, but
which some of his waggish friends comj>are(i to a
Ramsay Lodge,
goose pie. He told Lord Elibank one day of this
ludicrous comparison. ' What,' said the witty peer,
'a goose pie! In good faith, Allan, now that I see
you in it, I think the house is not ill named.' He
lived in this singular-looking mansion (which has
since been somewhat altered) twelve years, and died
of a complaint tliat had long afflicted him, scurvy
in the gums, on the 7th of January 1758, at the
age of seventy-two. So much of pleasantry, good
humour, and worldly enjoyment, is mixed up witii
the history of Allan Ramsay, that his life is one
of the ' green and sunny spots' in literary bio-
graphy. Ilis genius was well rewarded; and he pos-
sessed that turn of mind which David Hume says it
is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate
often thousand a-j'ear — a disposition always to see
the favourable side of things.
Ramsay's poetical works are sufficiently various ;
and one of his editors has ambitiously classed them
under the lieads of serious, elegiac, comic, satiric,
epigrammatical, pastoral, lyric, epistolary, fables and
tales. He wrote trash in all departments, but failed
in none. His tales are quaint and humorous, though,
like those of Prior, they are too often indelicate.
The Monk and Miller's Wife, founded on a jioem of
Dunbar, is as happy an adaptation of an old poet as
any of Pope's or Dryden's from Chaucer. His lyrics
want the grace, simplicity, and beauty which Burns
breathed into these ' wood-notes wild,' designed alike
for cottage and hall ; yet some of those in the
'Gentle Shepherd' are delicate and tender; and
others, such as The laxt time I came o'er the Mvor,
and The Yellow-haired Laddie, are still favourites
with all lovers of Scottish song. In one of the
least happy of the lyrics there occurs this beautiful
image : —
How joyfully my spirits rise,
When dancing she moves finely, ;
I guess what heaven is by her eyes,
Which sparkle so divinely, 0.
His Lochaher no More is a strain of manly feeling
and unafl'ected pathos. The poetical epistles of
583
PROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727.
Ramsay were undoubtedly the prototypes of those
by Burns, and many of the stanzas niaj' ehallenge
comparison vith them. He makes frequent classi-
cal allusions, especially to the works of Horace, with
which he seems to have been well acqiminted, and
wliose gay and easy turn of mind harmonised with
his own. In an epistle to Mr James Arbuckle,
the poet pives a characteristic and miimte painting
cf himself:—
Imprimis, then, for tallness, I
Am fire foot and four inches high ;
A black-a-viced snod dapper fellow,
Nor lean, nor overlaid wi' tallow ;
\^'ith phiz of a Morocco cut,
Resembling a late man of wit,
Auld gabbet Spec, who was sae cunning
To be a dummie ten years running.
Then for the fabric of my mind,
'Tis mair to mirth than grief inclined :
I rather choose to laugh at folly,
Than show dislike by melancholy ;
Well judging a sour heavy face
Is not the truest mark of grace.
I hate a drunkard or a glutton,
Yet I'm nae fae to wine and mutton :
Great tables ne'er engaged my wishes,
When crowded with o'er mony dishes ;
A healthfu' stomach, sharply set,
Prefers a back-sey' piping het.
I never could imagine 't vicious
Of a fair fame to be ambitious :
Proud to be thought a comic poet.
And let a judge of numbers know it,
I court occasion thus to show it.
Hamsay addressed epistles to Gay and Somerville,
and tlie latter paid him in kind, in very flattering
verses. In one of Allan's answers is the following
picturesque sketch, in illustration of his own con-
tempt for the stated rules of art : —
I love the garden wild and wide.
Where oaks have plum trees by their side ;
Where woodbines and the twisting vine
Clip round the pear tree and the pine ;
Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow.
And roses 'midst rank clover blow
Upon a bank of a clear strand.
In wimplings led by nature's hand ;
Though docks and brambles here and there
May sometimes cheat the gardener's care,
Yet this to me 's a paradise
Compared with prime cut plots and nice,
Where nature has to art resigned,
Till all looks mean, stiff, and confined. ''' *
Heaven Homer taught ; the critic draws
Only from him and such their laws :
The native bards first plunge the deep
Before the artful dare to leap.
The 'Gentle Shepherd' is the greatest of Ramsay's
•works, and perhaps the finest pastoral drama in the
world. It possesses that air of primitive simplioit}'-
and seclusion which seems indispensable in compo-
sitions of this class, at tlie same time that its land-
scapes are filled with life-like beings, who interest
us from their character, situation, and circumstances.
It has none of that studied pruriency and unnatural
artifice which are intruded into the 'Faithful Shep-
herdess' of Fletcher, and is equally free from the
tedious allegory and forced conceits of most pastoral
poems. It is a genuine picture of Scottish life, but
of life passed in simple rural employments, apart
from the guilt and fever of large towns, and reflect-
ing only the pure and unsopliisticated emotions of
' A birhiin.
our nature. The affected sensibilities and feigned
distresses of the Corydons and Delias find no jilacein
Ramsay's clear and manly page. He drew liis sliep-
herds from the life, placed them in scenes which he
actually saw, and made them speak the language
which he every day heard — the free idiomatic speech
of his native vales. His art lay in the beautiful
selection of his materials — in the grouping of his
well-defined characters — the invention of a plot, ro-
mantic yet natural — the delightful appropriateness
of every speech and auxiliary incident, and in the
tone of generous sentiment and true feeling which
sanctifies this scene of humble virtue and happiness.
The love of his ' gentle' rustics is at first artless
and confiding, though partly disguised by maiden
coyness and arch humour; and it is expressed in lan-
guage and incidents alternately amusing and im-
passioned. At length the hero is elevated in station
above his mistress, and their affection assumes a
deeper character from the threatened dangers of a
separation. Mutual distress and tenderness break
down reserve. The simple heroine, without forget-
ting her natural dignity and modesty, lets out her
whole soul to her early companion ; and when assured
of his unalterable attachment, she not only, like Mi-
randa, ' weeps at what she is glad of,' but, witli the
true pride of a Scottisli maiden, slie resolves to study
' gentler charms,' and to educate herself to be wortliy
of her lover. Poetical justice is done to this faitliful
attachment, by both the characters being found
equal in birth and station. The poet's taste and
judgment are evinced in the superiority which he
gives his hero and heroine, without debasing their
associates below their proper level ; while a ludicrous
contrast to both is supplied by the underplot of
Bauldy and his courtsliips. The elder characters in
tlie piece afford a fine relief to the youthful pairs,
besides completing the rustic picture. While one
scene discloses the young sliepherds by 'craigy
bields' and ' crystal springs,' or presents Peggy and
Jenny on the bleaching green —
A trotting hurnie wimpling through the ground —
another shows us the snug thatched cottage, with
its barn and peat-stack, or the interior of tlie house,
with a clear ingle glancing on the floor, and its in-
mates happy with innocent mirth and rustic plenty.
The drama altogether makes one proud of peasant
life and the virtues of a Scottish cottage. By an
ill-judged imitation of Gay, in his ' Beggar's Opera,'
Ramsay interspersed songs tliroughout the ' Gentle
Sliepherd,' which interrupt the action of the piece,
and too often merely repeat, in a diluted form, tlie
sentiments of the dialogue. These should be re-
moved to the end of the drama, leaving undisturbed
the most perfect delineation of rural life and man-
ners, without vulgar humility or affectation, thai
ever was drawn.
[Ode from Horace.'^
Look up to Pentland's towering tap,
Buried beneath great wreaths of snaw.
O'er ilka cleugh, illc scaur, and slap,
As high as ony Roman wa'.
Driving their ba's frae whins or tee.
There's no ao gowfer to be seen.
Nor douser fowk wysiiig ajee
The biast bouls on Tamson's green.
Then fling on coals, and ripe the ribs.
And beek the house baith but and ben ;
Tliut mutchkin stoup it bauds but dribs,
Then let's get in the tappit hen.
584
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALLAN RAMSAk.
Good claret best keeps out the cauld,
And drives away the winter soon ;
It makes a man baith gash and bauld,
And heaves his saul beyond the moon.
Leave to the gods j'our ilka care,
If that they think us worth their while ;
They can a rowth of blessings spare,
Which will our fashious fears beguile.
For what they have a mind to do,
That will they do, should we gang wud ;
If they command the storms to blaw,
Then upo' sight the hailstanes thud.
But soon as e'er they cry, ' Be quiet,'
The blattering winds dare nae mair move,
But cour into their caves, and wait
The high command of supreme Jove.
L«t neist day come as it thinks fit,
The present minute's only ours ;
On pleasure let's employ our wit.
And laugh at fortune's feckless powers.
Be sure ye dinna quat the grip
Of ilka joy when ye are young,
Before auld age your vitals nip.
And lay ye twafald o'er a rung.
Sweet youth's a blythe and heartsome time ;
Then, lads and lasses, while it's May,
Gae pou the gowan in its prime,
Before it wither and decay.
Watch the saft minutes of delight.
When Jenny speaks beneath her breath ;
And kisses, laying a' the wyte
On you, if she kep ony skaith.
' Haith, ye're ill bred,' she'll smiling say ;
' Ye'U worry me, you greedy rook ;'
Syne frae your arms she'll rin away.
And hide hersell in some dark nook.
Her laugh will lead you to the place.
Where lies the happiness you want.
And plainly tells you to your face.
Nineteen naysays are half a grant.
Now to her heaving bosom cling,
And sweetly toolie for a kiss,
Frae her fair finger whup a ring.
As token of a future bliss.
These benisons, I'm very sure.
Are of the gods' indulgent grant ;
Then, surly carles, whisht, forbear
To plague us with your whining cant.
[In this instance, the felicitous manner in which
Ramsay has preserved the Iloratian ease and spirit,
and at the same time clothed the whole in a true
Scottish garb, renders his version greatly superior
to Dryden's English one. For comparison, two
stanzas of the latter are subjoined : —
Secure those golden early joys,
That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possest ;
The best is but in season best.
The appointed hour of promised bliss,
The pleasing whisper in the dark.
The half unwilling willing kiss.
The laugh that guides thee to the mark,
When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again ;
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.]
Sonfj.
Tunc — Bush Aboon Traquair.
At setting da}' and rising morn.
With soul that still shall love tlice,
I'll ask of heaven thy safe return.
With all that can improve thee.
I'll visit aft the birken bush,
Where first thou kindly told me
Sweet tpJes of love, and hid thy blush,
Whilst round thou didst enfold me.
To all our haunts I will repair,
By greenwood shaw or fountain ;
Or wliere the summer day I'd share
With tliee upon yon mountain :
There will I tell the trees and flowers,
From thoughts imfeigned and tender ;
By vows you're mine, by love is yours
A heart which cannot wander.
The last Time I came o^er the Moor.
The last time I came o'er the moor,
I left my love behind me ;
Ye powers ! what pain do I endure,
^Vhen soft ideas mind me !
Soon as the ruddy morn displayed
Tlie beaming day ensuing,
I met betimes my lovely maid.
In fit retreats for wooing.
Beneath the cooling shade we lay.
Gazing and chastely sporting ;
We kissed and promised time away.
Till night spread her black curtain.
I pitied all beneath the skies,
E'en kings, when she was nigh me ;
In raptures I beheld her eyes.
Which could but ill deny me.
Should I be called where cannons roar
Where mortal steel may wound me ;
Or cast upon some foreign shore,
Where dangers may surround me ;
Yet hopes again to see my love.
To feast on glowing kisses.
Shall make my cares at distance move,
In prospect of such blisses.
In all my soul there's not one place
To let a rival enter ;
Since she excels in every grace,
In her my love shall centre.
Sooner the seas shall cease to flow,
Their waves the Alps shall cover.
On Greenland ice shall roses grow,
Before I cease to love her.
The next time I go o'er the moor.
She shall a lover find me ;
And that my faith is firm and pure,
Though I left her behind me :
Then Hymen's sacred bonds shall chaia
My heart to her fair bosom ;
There, while my being does remain.
My love more fresh shall blossom.
Lochaler No More.
Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been •
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more.
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
These tears that I shed they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dangers attending on wear ;
Though bore on rough seas to a far bloody shore,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 117!
Though hurricanes rise, and rise cverj' wind,
They'll ne'er make a tempest like that in my mind ;
Though loudest of thunder on louder waves roar,
That's naething like leaving my love on the shore.
To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained ;
By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained ;
And beauty and love's the reward of the brave,
And I must deserve it before I can crave.
Then glory, my Jeany, man plead my excuse ;
Since honour commands me, how can I refuse?
Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee.
And without thy favour I'd better not be.
I gae then, my lass, to win honour and fame,
And if I should luck to come gloriously hame,
I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.
IRustic Courtsliip.']
[From the ' Gentle Shepherd.' — Act I.]
Hear how I served my lass I love as well
As 3-6 do .Tenny, and with heart as leal.
Last morning 1 was gay and early out.
Upon a dike I leaned, glowering about,
I saw my Meg come linkin' o'er the lee ;
I saw my Meg, but jNIeggy saw na me ;
For yet the sun was wading through the mist,
And she was close upon me e'er she wist ;
Her coats were kiltit, and did sweetly shaw
Her straight bare legs that whiter were than snaw.
Her cockemony snooded up fu' sleek,
Her haffet locks hang waving on her cheek ;
Her cheeks sae ruddy, and her e'en sae clear ;
And oh ! her mouth's like ony hinny pear.
Neat, neat she was, in bustine waistcoat clean,
As she came skiffing o'er the dewy green.
Blythsome I cried, ' My bonny Meg, come here,
I ferly wherefore ye're so soon asteer ?
But I can guess, ye're gaun to gather dew.'
She scoured away, and said, ' What's that to you V
'Then, fare-ye-weel, Meg-dorts, and e'en's ye like,'
I careless cried, and lap in o'er the dike.
I trow, when that she saw, within a crack,
She came with a right thieveless errand back.
Misca'd me first ; then bade me hound my dog.
To wear up three watF ewes strayed on the bog.
I leugh ; and sae did she ; then with great haste
I clasped my arms about her neck and waist ;
About her yielding waist, and took a fouth
Of sweetest kisses frae her glowing mouth.
While hard and fivst I held her in my grips,
My very saul came louping to my lips.
Sair, sair she flet wi' me 'tween ilka smack,
But weel 1 kend she meant nae as she spak.
Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom.
Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb.
Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood ;
Gae woo auither, and she'll gang clean wud.
{_Dlcdogw on Marriage.']
PEooY and jbnmy.
Jenny. Come, Meg, let's fa' to wark upon this green ;
This shining day will bleach our linen clean ;
The water clear, the lift unclouded blue,
W'ill mak them like a lily wet wi' dew.
Perjfjy. Gae far'er up the bum to Habbie's How,
There a' the sweets o' spring and summer grow :
There 'tween twa birks, out ower a little lin,
The water fa's and maks a singin' din ;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses wi' easy whirls the bordering grass.
We'll end our washing while the morning's cool ;
And when the day grows het, we'll to the pool,
There wash oursells — 'tis healthfu' now in May,
And sweetly cauler on sae warm a da_y.
Jenny. Daft lassie, when we're naked, what'U y". say
Gif our twa herds come brattling down the brae.
And see us sae? — that jeering fallow Pate
Wad taunting say, 'Haith, lasses, ye're no blate !'
Peggy. We're far frae ony road, and out o' si;;ht ;
The lads they're feeding far beyont the height.
But tell me, now, dear Jenny, we're our lane.
What gars ye plague j'our wooer wi' disdain ?
The neebours a' tent this as weel as I,
That Roger loes ye, yet ye carena by.
What ails ye at him ? Troth, between us twa,
He's wordy you the best day e'er ye saw.
Jeiiny. I dinna like him, Peggy, there's an end ;
A herd mair sheepish yet I never kend.
He kames his hair, indeed, and gaes right snug,
Wi' ribbon knots at his blue bannet lug,
Whilk pensily he wears a thought a-jee.
And spreads his gartens diced beneath his knee ;
He falds his o'erlay down his breast wi' care,
And few gang trigger to the kirk or fair :
For a' that, he can neither sing nor say.
Except, ' How d'ye V — or, ' There's a bonny day.'
Peggy. Ye dash the lad wi' constant slighting pride,
Hatred for love is unco sair to bide:
But ye'U repent ye, if his love grow cauld —
What like's a dorty maiden when she's auld ?
Like dawted wean, that tarrows at its meat.
That for some feckless whim will orp and greet ;
The lave laugh at it, till the dinner's past.
And syne the fool thing is obliged to fast,
Or scart anither's leavings at the last.
Fy ! Jenny, think, and dinna sit your time.
Jenny. I never thought a single life a crime.
Peggy. Nor I : but love in whispers lets us ken.
That men were made for us, and we for men.
Jenny. If Roger is my jo, he kens himsell,
For sic a tale I never heard him tell.
He glowrs and sighs, and I can guess the cause ;
But wha's obliged to spell his hums and haws?
Whene'er he likes to tell his mind mair plain,
I'se tell him frankly ne'er to do't again.
They're fools that slavery like, and may be free ;
The chiels may a' knit up themsells for me.
Peggy. Be doing your wa's ; for me, I hae a mind
To be as yielding as my Patie's kind.
Jenny. Heh lass ! how can ye loe that rattle-skull?
A very deil, that aye maun hae his wuU ;
We'll soon hear tell, what a poor fechting life
You twa will lead, sae soon's ye're man and wife.
Peggy. I'll rin the risk, nor hae I ony fear,
But rather think ilk langsome day a year.
Till I wi' pleasure mount my bridal-bed.
Where on my Patie's breast I'll lean my head.
Jenny. He may, indeed, for ten or fifteen days,
Mak meikle o' ye, wi' an unco fraise.
And daut ye baith afore fouk, and your lane ;
But soon as his newfangledness is gane,
He'll look upon you as his tether-stake,
And think he's tint his freedom for your sake.
Instead then 0' lang days 0' sweet delight,
Ae day be dumb, and a' the neist he'll flyte :
And maybe, in his barleyhoods, ne'er stick
To lend his loving wife a loundering lick.
Peggy. Sic coarse-spun thoughts as thac want j ith
to move
My settled mind ; I'm ower far gane in love.
Patie to me is dearer than my breath ;
But want 0' him, I dread nae other skaith.
There's nane 0' a' the herds that tread the green
Has sic a smile, or sic twa glancing een :
And then he speaks wi' sic a taking art —
His words they thirle like music through my heart.
How blithely can he sport, and gently rave,
And jest at feckless fears that fright the lave !
586
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
AI.r.AN RAMSAY.
Ilk day that he's alane upon the hill,
He reads fell books that teach him meikle skill.
He is but what need I say that or this I
I'd spend a month to tell you what he is !
In a' he says or does, there's sic a gate,
The rest seem coofs compared wi' my dear Pate.
His better sense ■will lang his love secure ;
Ill-nature hefts in sauls that's weak and poor.
Jenny. Hey, Bonny lass o' Branksomc! or't be lang.
Your witty Pate will put you in a sang.
Oh, 'tis a pleasant thing to be a bride ;
Syne whingeing getts about your ingle-side,
Yelping for this or that wi' fasheous din :
To mak them brats, then ye maun toil and spin.
Ae wean fa's sick, ane scads itsell wi' broe,
Ane breaks his shin, anither tines his shoe ;
The Deil goes o'er Jock Wabster, hame grows hell.
And Pate misca's ye waur than tongue can tell !
Peggy. Yes, it's a heartsome thing to be a wife.
When round the ingle-edge young sprouts are rife.
Gif I'm sae happy, 1 shall hae delight
To hear their little plaints, and keep them right.
"Wow ! Jenny, can there greater pleasure be.
Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee ;
When a' they ettle at — their greatest wish.
Is to be made o' and obtain a kiss ?
Can there be toil in tenting day and night
The like o' them, when love raaks care delight ?
Jenny. But poortith, Peggy, is the warst o' a" ;
Gif o'er your heads ill-chance should begg'ry draw,
But little love or canty cheer can come
Frae duddy doublets, and a pantry toom.
Your nowt may die — the spate may bear away
Frae afF the howms your dainty rucks o' hay.
The thick-blawn wreaths o' snaw, or blashy thows,
May smoor your wathers, and may rot your ewes.
A dyvour buys your butter, woo, and cheese.
But, or the day o' payment, breaks, and flees.
Wi' gloomiu' brow, the laird seeks in his rent ;
It's no to gie ; your merchant's to the bent.
His honour maunna want — he poinds your gear ;
Syne, driven frae house and hald, where will ye
steer?
Dear Meg, be wise, and live a single life ;
Troth, it's nae mows to be a married wife.
Peggy. May sic ill luck befa' that silly she
Wha has sic fears, for that was never me.
Let fouk bode weel, and strive to do their best ;
Nae mair's required ; let Heaven mak out the rest.
I've heard my honest uncle aften say,
That lads should a' for wives that's virtuous pray ;
For the maist thrifty man could never get
A weel-stored room, unless his wife wad let :
Wherefore nocht shall be wanting on my part,
To gather wealth to raise my shepherd's heart :
Whate'er he wins, I'll guide wi' canny care.
And win the Togue at market, tron, or fair.
For halesome, clean, cheap, and sufficient ware.
A flock o' lambs, cheese, butter, and some woo.
Shall first be said to pay the laird his due ;
Syne a' behind's our ain. Thus, without fear,
Wi' love and rowth, we through the warld will steer;
And when my Pate in bairns and gear grows rife,
He'll bless the day he gat me for his wife.
Jenny. But what if some young giglet on the green,
Wi' dimpled cheeks and tvva bewitching een.
Should gar your Patie think his half-worn Meg,
And her kenn'd kisses, hardly worth a feg ?
Peggy. Nae mair o' that — Dear Jenny, to be free,
There's some men constanter in love than we :
Nor is the ferly gtcat, when nature kind
Has blest them wi' solidity o' mind.
They'll reason calmly, anil wi' kindness smile.
When our short passions wad our peace beguile :
Sae, whensoe'er they slight their inaiks at hame,
It's ten to ane the wives arc maist to blame.
Then I'll employ wi' pleasure a' my art
To keep him cheerfu', and secure his heart.
At e'en, when he conies weary frae the hill,
I'll hae a' things made ready to his will ;
In winter, when he toils through wind and rain,
A bleezing ingle, and a clean hearthstane ;
And soon as he flings by his plaid and stall".
The seething pat's be ready to tak aff;
Clean hag-a-bag I'll spread upon his bo.ard,
And serve him wi' the best we can afl^ord ;
Good humour and white bigonets shall be
Guards to my face, to keep his love for nie.
Jenny. A dish o' married love right soon grows cauld,
And dosens down to nane, as fouk grow auld.
Peggy. But we'll grow auld tliegither, and ne'er find
The loss o' youth, when love grows on the mind.
Bainis and their bairns mak sure a firmer tie,
Than aught in love the like of us can spy.
See yon twa elms that grow up side by side.
Suppose them some years syne bridegroom and briilc;
Nearer and nearer ilka year they've prest,
Till wide their spreading branches are increast.
And in their mixture now are fully blest :
This shields the ither frae the eastlin blast.
That, in return, defends it frae the wast.
Sic as stand single (a state sae liked by you I)
Beneath ilk storm, frae every airt, maun bow.
Jenny. I've done — I yield, dear lassie ; I maun yield ;
Your better sense has fairly won the field,
With the assistance of a little fae
Lies darned within my breast this mony a day.
Peggy. Alake, poor prisoner ! Jenny, that's no fair.
That ye'U no let the wee thing tak the air :
Haste, let him out ; we'll tent as weel's we can,
Gif he be Bauldy's ox p>.or Roger's man.
Jenny. Anither tiiut's as good — for see, the sun
Is right far up, and we're not yet begun
To freath the graith — if cankered Madge, our aunt,
Come up the burn, she'll gie's a wicked rant :
But when we've done, I'll tell ye a' my mind;
For this seems true — nae lass can be unkind.
DRAMATISTS.
The dramatic literature of this period was, like its
general poetry, polished and artificial. In tragedy,
the highest name is tliat of Southerne, who may
claim, with Otwa}', the power of touching the pas-
sions, yet his language is feeble compared with that
of the great dramatists, and his general style low
and unimpressive. Addison's ' Cato' is more pro-
perly a classical poem than a drama — as cold and
less vigorous than the tragedies of Jonsoii. In
comedy, the national taste is apparent in its faithful
and witty delineations of polished life, of which
Wycherley and Congrevc had set the example, and
which was well continued by Farquhar and Van-
brugh. Beaumont and Fletcher first introduced
what may be called comedies of intrigue, borrowed
from the Spanish drama ; and the innovation ap-
pears to have been congenial to the English taste,
for it still pervades our comic literature.' The
vigorous exposure of the immorality of the stage by
Jeremy Collier, and the essays of Steele and Addi-
son, improving the taste and moral feeling of the
public, a partial reformation took place of those
nuisances of the drama which the Restoration had
introduced. The IMaster of the Revels, by whoni
all plays liad to be licensed, also aided in tliis work
of retrenchment ; but a glance at even tliose ini'
proved plays of the reign of William III. and his
successors, will show tliat ladies frequenting the
theatres had still occasion to wear masks, wliieh
Colley Gibber says they usually did on the first dayi
of acting of a new play.
587
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172?.
THOMAS SOUTHERNE.
Thomas Southerne (1659-1746) may be classed
either with the last or the present period. His life
was long, extended, and prosperous. He M'as a
native of Dublin, but came to England, and enrolled
himself in the Middle Temple as a student of law.
He afterwards entered the army, and held the rank
of captain under the Duke of York, at the time of
Monmouth's insurrection. His latter days were
spent in retirement, and in the possession of a con-
siderable fortune.
Southerne wrote ten plays, but only two exhibit
his characteristic powers, namely, Isabella, or the
Fatal Marriage, and Oroonoko. The latter is founded
on an actual occurrence ; Oroonoko, an African
prince, having been stolen from his native kingdom
of Angola, and carried to one of the West India
islands. The impassioned grandeur of Oroonoko's
sufferings, his bursts of horror and indignation at the
slave trade, and his unliappy passion for Imoinda,
are powerful and pathetic. In the following scene,
the hero and heroine unexpectedly meet after a long
absence : —
Oroo. My soul steals from my body through my eyes ;
All that is left of life I'll gaze away,
Ajid die upon the pleasure.
Lieut. This is strange !
Oroo. If you but mock me with her image here:
If she be not Imoinda —
[S/ie loolcs upon Mm and falls into
a swoon ; he runs to her.
Ha ! she faints !
Nay, then, it must be she— it is Imoinda !
My heart coniesses her, and leaps for joy,
To welcome her to her own empire here. [Kisses her.
Imoinda ! oh, thy Oroonoko calls.
Imo. (^Recovering.) My Oroonoko! Oh! I can't
believe
What any man can say. But if I am
To be deceived, there's something in that name,
That voice, that face — [Stares at him.
Oh ! if I know myself, I cannot be mistaken.
[^Embraces him.
Oroo. Never here :
You cannot be mistaken : I am yours,
Your Oroonoko, all that you would have ;
Your tender, loving husband.
Imo. All, indeed.
That I would have : my husband ! then I am
Alive, and waking to the joys I feel :
They were so great, I could not think 'em true ;
But'l believe all that you say to me:
For truth itself, and everlasting love,
Grows in this breast, and pleasure in these arms.
Oroo. Take, take me all ; inquire into my heart
(You know the way to every secret there),
My heart, the sacred treasury of love :
And if, in absence, I have misemployed
A mite from the rich store ; if I have spent
A wish, a sigh, but what I sent to you,
May I be cursed to wish and sigh in vain,
And you not pity me.
Imo. Oh ! I believe,
And know you by myself. If these sad eyes,
Since last we parted, have beheld the face
Of anj' comfort, or once wished to see
The light of any other heaven but you,
May 1 be struck this moment blind, and lose
Your blessed sight, never to find you more.
Oroo. Imoinda! Oh! this separation
Has made you dearer, if it can be so.
Than you were ever to me. You appear
Like a kind star to ray benighted steps,
To guide me on my way to happiness :
I cannot miss it now. Governor, friend,
You think me mad ; but let me bless you all,
Who any ways have been the instruments
Of finding her again. Imoinda's found !
And everything that I would have in her.
[Embraces her.
Bland. Sir, we congratulate your happiness ; I do
most heartily.
Lieut. And all of us : but how it comes to pass
Oroo. That would require
More precious time than I can spare you now.
I have a thousand things to ask of her,
And she as many more to know of me.
But you have made me happier, I confess,
Acknowledge it, much happier than I
Have words or power to tell you. Captain, you,
Even you, who most have wronged me, I forgive.
I wo'not say you have betrayed me now :
I'll think you but the minister of fate,
To bring me to my loved Imoinda here.
Imo. How, how shall I receive you? how be worthy
Of such endearments, all this tenderness?
These are the transports cf prosperity,
When fortune smiles upon us.
Oroo. Let the fools
Who follow fortune live upon her smiles ;
All our prosperity is placed in love ;
We have enough of that to make us happy.
This little spot of earth you stand upon
Is more to me than the extended plains
Of my great father's kingdom. Here I reign
In full delights, in joys to power unkno\vn ;
Your love my empire, and your heart my throne.
[Exeunt.
^Ir Hallam says that Southerne was the first Eng-
lish writer who denounced (in this play) the traffic in
slaves and the cruelties of their West Indian bondage.
This is an honour which should never be omitted in
any mention of the dramatist. ' Isabella' is more
correct and regular than ' Oroonoko,' and the part
of the heroine affords scope for a tragic actress,
scarcely inferior in pathos to Belvidera. Otway,
however, has more depth of passion, and more
vigorous delineation of character. The plot of
' Isabella' is simple. In abject distress, and be-
lieving her husband, Biron, to be dead, Isabella is
hurried into a second marriage. Biron returns, and
the distress of the heroine terminates in madness
and death. Comic scenes are interspersed through-
out Southerne's tragedies, which, tliough they re-
lieve the sombre colouring of the main action and
interest of the piece, are sometimes misplaced and
unpleasant.
[Return of Biron.']
A Chamber—Enter Isabella.
Isa. I've heard of witches, magic spells, and charms,
That have made nature start from her old course ;
The sun has been eclipsed, the moon drawn down
From her career, still paler, and subdued
To the abuses of this under world.
Now I believe all possible. This ring.
This little ring, with necromantic force.
Has raised the ghost of pleasure to my fears ;
Conjured the sense of honour and of love
Into such shapes, they fright me from myself!
I dare not think of them.
Enter Nurse.
Nurse. Madam, the gentleman's below.
ha. I had forgot ; pray, let me speak with him ;
{_Exit Nurte,
This ring was the first present of my love
To Biron, my first husband ; I nmst blush
To think I have a second. Biron died
683
DKAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
THOMAS SOUTHERNE.
(Still to my loss) at Candy ; there's my hope.
Oh, do 1 live to hope that he died there ?
It must be so ; he's dead, and this ring left,
By his last breath, to some known faithful friend,
To bring me back again ;
That's all I have to trust to.
Enter Biron. (Isabella looking at him.)
My fears were woman's — I hare viewed him all ;
And let me, let me say it to myself,
f live again, and rise but from his tomb.
Bir. Have you forgot me quite?
Isa. Forgot you !
Bir. Then farewell my disguise, and my misfortunes I
My Isabella !
[iTe goes to her; she shrieis, and fainti,
Isa. Ha!
Bir. Oh ! come again ;
Thy Biron summons thee to life and love ;
Thy once-loved, ever-loving husband calls —
Thy Biron speaks to ttiee. '
Excess of love and joy, for my return.
Has overpowered her. I was to blame
To take thy sex's softness unprepared ;
But sinking thus, thus dying in my arms,
This ecstacy has made my welcome more
Than words could say. Words may be counterfeit,
False coined, and current only from the tongue,
Without the mind ; but passion's in the soul,
And always speaks the heart.
Isa. Where have I been ? Why do you keep him
from me ?
I know his voice ; my life, upon the wing.
Hears the soft lure that brings me back again ;
'Tis he himself, my Biron.
Do I hold you fast,
Never to part again ?
If I must fall, death's welcome in these arms.
Bir. Live ever in these arms.
Isa. But pardon me ;
Excuse the wild disorder of my soul ;
The joy, the strange surprising j >y of seeing you.
Of seeing you again, distracted me.
Bir. Thou everlasting goodness !
Isa. Answer me :
What hand of Providence has brought you back
To your own home again ?
Oh,' tell me all.
For every thought confounds me.
Bir. My best life! at leisure all.
Isa. We thought you dead ; killed at the siege of
Candy.
Bir. There I fell among the dead ;
But hopes of life reviving from my wounds,
I was preserved but to be made a slave.
I often writ to my hard father, but never had
An answer ; I writ to thee too.
Isa. What a world of wo
Had been prevented but in hearing from you !
Bir. Alas ! thou could'st not help me.
Isa. You do not know how much I could have
done ;
At least, I'm sure I could have suffered all ;
I would have sold myself to slavery,
Without redemption ; given up my child.
The dearest part of me, to basest wants.
Bir. My little boy!
Isa. My life, but to have heard
You were alive.
Bi7: No more, my lore ; complaining of the past,
We lose the present joy. 'Tis over price
Of all my pains, that thus we meet again !
I have a thousand things to say to thee.
Isa. Would I were past the hearing. [Aside.
Bir. How does my child, my boy, my father too ?
I hear he's living still.
Isa. Well, both ; both well ;
And may he prove a father to your hopes,
Though we have found him none.
Bir. Come, no more tears.
Isa. Seven long years of sorrow for your loss
Have mourned with me.
Bir. And all my days to come
Shall be employed in a kind recompense
For thy afflictions. Can't I see my boy!
Isa. He's gone to bed ; I'll have him brought to you.
Bir. To-morrow 1 shall see him ; I want rest
Myself, after this weary pilgrimage.
Isa. Alas ! what shall I get fur you ?
Bir. Nothing but rest, my love. To-night I would
not
Be known, if possible, to your family :
I see my nurse is with you ; her welcome
Would be tedious at this time ;
To-morrow will do better.
Isa. I'll dispose of her, and order everything
As you would have it. [Exit.
Bir. Grant me but life, good Heaven, and give the
means
To make this wondrous goodness some amends;
And let me then forget her, if I can.
! she deserves of me much more than I
Can lose for her, though I again could venture
A father and his fortune for her love !
You wretched fathers, blind as fortune all !
Not to perceive that such a woman's worth
Weighs down the portions you provide your sons.
What is your trash, what all your heaps of gold.
Compared to this, my heartfelt happiness?
AVhat has she, in my absence, undergone ?
1 must not think of that ; it drives me back
Upon myself, the fatal cause of all.
Enter Isabella.
Isa. I have obeyed your pleasure ;
Everj'thing is ready for you.
Bir. I can want nothing here ; possessing thee,
All my desires are carried to their aim
Of happiness ; there's no room for a wish.
But to continue still this blessing to me;
I know the way, my love. I shall sleep sound.
Isa. Shall I attend you ?
Bir. By no means ;
I've been so long a slave to others' pride,
To learn, at least, to wait upon mjself ;
You'll make haste after?
Isa. I'll but say my prayers, and follow you.
[Exit Biron.
My prayers ! no, I must never pray again.
Prayers have their blessings, to reward our hopes.
But I have nothing left to hope for more.
What Heaven could give I have enjoyed ; but now
The baneful planet rises on my fate.
And what's to come is a long life of wo ;
Yet I may shorten it.
I promised him to follow — him !
Is he without a name ? Biron, my husband —
My husband ! Ha I What then is Villeroy ?
Oh, Biron, hadst thou come but one day sooner !
[ Wetping,
What's to be done? for something must be done.
Two husbands ! married to both,
And yet a wife to neither. Hold, my brain —
Ha I a lucky thought
Works the right way to rid me of them all ;
All the reproaches, infamies, and scorns,
Tliat every tongue and finger will find for me.
Let the just horror of my apprehensions
But keep me warm ; no matter what can come.
'Tis but a blow ; yet I will see him first,
Have a last look, to heighten my despair.
And then to rest for ever.
589
FBOH 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
NICHOLAS ROWE.
Nicholas Rowe was also bred to the law, and
forsook it for the tragic drama. He was born in
1673 of a good family in Devonshire, and during
the earlier years of manhood, lived on a patrimony
Nichol.is Rowe.
of L.300 a-year in chambers in the Temple. His
first tragedy, The Ambitious Stepinot/ter, was per-
formed with great success, and it was followed by
Tamerlane, The Fair Penitent, Ubjsses, The Royal
Convert, Jane Shore, and Lady Jane Gray. Howe,
on rising into fame as an author, was munificently
patronised. The Duke of Queensberry made him
his secretary for public atfairs. On the accession of
George I., he was made poet-laureate and a sur-
veyor of customs ; the Prince of Wales appointed
him clerk of his council ; and the Lord Chancellor
gave him the office of secretary for the presentations.
Rowe was a favourite in society. It is stated that
his voice was uncommonly sweet, and his observa-
tions so lively, and his manners so engaging, that
his friends, amongst whom were Pope, Swift, and
Addison, delighted in his conversation. Yet it is
also reported by Spence, that there was a certain
superficiality of feeling about him, which made Pope,
on one occasion, declare him to have no heart. Rowe
was the first editor of Shakspeare entitled to the
name, and the first to attempt the collection of a
few biographical particulars of the immortal drama-
tist. He was twice married, and died in 1718, at
the age of forty-five.
In addition to the dramatic works we h.ave enu-
merated, Rowe was the author of two volumes of
miscellaneous poetry, which scarcely ever rises above
dull and respectable mediocrity. His tragedies are
passionate and tender, with an equable and smooth
style of versification, not uidike that of Ford. His
' Jane Shore' is still occasionally performed, and is
effective in the pathetic scenes descriptive of the
sufferings of the heroine. ' The Pair Penitent' was
long a popular play, and the ' gallant gay Lothario'
was the prototype of many stage seducers and ro-
mance heroes. Richardson elevated the character
in his Lovelace, giving at the same time a purity and
aanctity to the sorrows of his Clarissa, which leave
Rowe's Calista immeasurably behind. The incidents
of Rowe's dramas are well arranged for st.age effect ;
they are studied and prepared in the manner of the
French school, and were adapted to the taste of the
age. As the study of Shakspeare and the romantic
drama has advanced in this country, Rowe has
proportionally declined, and is now but seldom read
or acted. His popularity in his own day is best
seen in the epitaph by Pope — a beautiful and tender
effusion of friendship, which, however, is perhaps
not irreconcilable with the anecdote preserved by
I\Ir Spence : —
Thy relics, Rowe, to this sad shrine we trust.
And near thy Shakspeare place thy honoured bust j
Oh ! next him, skilled to draw the tender tear,
For never heart-felt passion more sincere ;
To nobler sentiment to fire the brave,
For never Briton more disdained a slave.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest !
Blest in thy genius, in thy love, too, blest!
And blest, that timely from our scene removed,
Thy soul enjoys the liberty it loved.
[Penitence and Death of Jane Shore."]
Jane Shore, her Husband, and Belmour.
Bel. How fare j'ou, lady ?
Jane S. My heart is thrilled with horror,
Bel. Be of courage ;
Your husband lives ! 'tis he, my worthiest friend.
Jane S. Still art thou there \ still dost thou horer
round me ?
Oh, save me, Belmour, from his angry shade!
Bel. 'Tis he himself! he lives ! look up.
Jane S. I dare not.
Oh, that my eyes could shut him out for ever !
Shore. Am I so hateful, then, so deadly to thee,
To blast thy eyes with horror ? Since I'm gro\vn'
A burden to the world, myself, and thee.
Would 1 had ne'er survived to see thee more.
Jane S. Oh! thou most injured — dost thou live,
indeed ?
Fall then, ye mountains, on my guilty head !
Hide me, ye rocks, within your secret caverns ;
Cast thy black veil upon my shame, oh night!
And shield me with thy sable wing for ever.
Shore. Why dost thou turn away? Why tremble
thus?
Why thus indulge thy fears, and in despair
Abandon thy distracted soul to horror ?
Cast every black and guilty thought behind thee,
And let 'em never vex thy quiet more.
My arms, my heart, are open to receive thee,
To bring thee back to thy forsaken home.
With tender joy, with fond forgiving love.
Let us haste.
Now, while occasion seems to smile upon us.
Forsake this place of shame, and find a shelter.
/«?^e <S. What shall I say to you ? But I obey.
Shore. Lean on my arm.
Ja7ie S. Alas! I'm wondrous faint :
But that's not strange, I have not ate these three days.
Shore. Oh, merciless !
Jane S. Oh! 1 am sick at heart!
Shore. Thou murderous sorrow!
Wo't thou still drink her blood, pursue her still?
Must she then die? Oh, my poor penitent!
Speak peace to thy sad heart : she hears me not
Grief masters every sense.
Enter Catesbv with a Guard.
Cates. Seize on 'em both, as traitors to the state f
Bel. What means this violence?
[^Guards lay hold on Shore and Bclmmur,
590
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURK
WILLIAM LILLOW
Cates. Have we not found you,
In scorn of the protector's .strict command,
Assisting this base woman, and abetting
Her infamy ?
Shore. Infamy on thy he.ad!
Thou tool of power, thou pander to authorityl
I tell thee, knave, thou know'st of no)\e so virtuous.
And .she that bor« thee \va,s an Ethiop to her.
Catcs. You'll answer this at full : away with 'em.
Shore. Ls charity grown treason to your court ?
What honest man would live beneath such rulers ?
I am content that we should die together.
Cates. Convey the men to prison ; but for her —
Leave her to hunt her fortune as she may.
Jane S. I will not part with him : for me! — for mc!
Oh! must he die for me?
{^Following him as he is carried off — she fulls.
Shore. Inhuman villains!
[^Breahs from the Guards.
Stand off! the agonies of death are on her!
She pulls, she gripes me hard with lier cold hand.
Jane S. Was this blow wanting to complete my ruin ?
Oh ! let me go, ye ministers of terror.
He shall offend no more, for I will die,
And yield obedience to your cruel master.
Tarry a little, but a little loTiger,
And take my last breath with you.
Shore. Oh, my love !
Why dost thou fix thy dying eyes upon me
With such an earnest, such a piteous look.
As if thy heart were full of some sad meaning
Thou couldst not speak?
Jane S. Forgive me ! but forgive me !
Shore. Be witness for me, ye celestial host,
Such mercy and such pardon as my soul
Accords to thee, and begs of heaven to show thee ;
May such befall me at my latest hour.
And make my portion blest or curht for ever !
Jane S. Then all is well, and 1 shall sleep in peace ;
'Tis very dark, and I have lost you now :
Was there not something I would have bequeathed
you?
But I have nothing left me to bestow.
Nothing but one sad sigh. Oh! mercy, heaA'en !
[^Dies.
[^Calista's Passion for Lothario."]
A nail — Calista and Lucilla.
Cal. Be dumb for ever, silent as the grave,
Nor let thy fond, officious love disturb
My solemn sadness with the sound of joy.
If thou wilt soothe me, tell some dismal tale
Of pining discontent and black despair ;
For, oh ! I've gone around through all my thoughts,
But all are indignation, love, or shame.
And my dear peace of mind is lost for ever.
Luc. Why do you follow still that wandering fire.
That has misled your weary steps, and leaves you
Benighted in a wilderness of wo.
That false Lothario ? Turn from the deceiver ;
Turn, and behold where gentle Altamont
Sighs at your feet, and woos you to be happy.
€al. Away ! I think not of him. My sad soul
Has formed a dismal, melancholy scene,
Such a retreat as I would wish to find ;
An unfrequented vale, o'ergrown with trees
Mossy and old, within whose lonesome shade
Ravens and birds ill-omened only dwell :
No sound to break the silence, but a brook
That bubbling winds among the weeds : no mark
Of a'ly human shape that had been there,
Unless a skeleton of some poor wretch
Who had long since, like me, by love undone,
Sought that sad place out to despair and die in.
Liur. Alas ! for pity.
Cal. Tliere I fain would hide me
From the base world, from malice, and from shame;
For 'tis the solemn counsel of my soul
Never to live with public loss of honour:
'Tis fixed to die, rather than bear the insolence
Of cacli affected she that tells my story,
And blesses her good stars tliat she is virtuous.
To be a tale for fools ! Scorned by the women.
And pitied by the men. Oh I insujiportable !
Luc. Oh ! hear me, hear your everfaitliful creature;
By all the good I wish you, by all the ill
My trembling heart forebodes, let me intreat ycu
Never to see this fiiithless man again —
Let me forbid his coming.
Cal. On thy life,
I charge thee, no ; my genius drives me on ;
I must, I will behold him once again ;
Perhaps it is the crisis of my fivie.
And this one interview shall end my cares.
My labouring heart, that swells with indignation,
Heaves to discharge the burden ; that f.nee done,
The busy thing shall rest within its cell.
And never beat again. •
Luc. Trust not to that :
Rage is the shortest passion of our souls ;
Like narrow brooks that rise with sudden showers.
It swells in haste, and falls again as soon ;
Still as it ebbs the softer thoughts flow in.
And the deceiver, love, supplies its place.
Cal. I have been wronged enough to arm my tempei
Against the smooth delusion ; but, alas !
(Chide not my weakness, gentle maid, but pity me),
A woman's softness hangs about me still ;
Then let me blush, and tell thee all my folly.
I swear I could not see the dear betrayer
Kneel at my feet, and sigh to be forgiven,
But my relenting heart would pardon all.
And quite forget 'twas he that had undone me.
\_Eodt Lucilla.
Ha ! Altamont ! Calista, now be wary.
And guard thy soul's excesses with dissembling:
Nor let this hostile husband's eyes explore
The warring passions and tumultuous thoughts
That rage within thee, and deform thy reason.
AVILLIAM LILLO.
The experiment of domestic tragedy, founded
on sorrows incident to real life in the lower and
middling ranks, was tried with considerable success
by William Lillo, a jeweller in London. Lillo was
born in 1693, and carried on business successfully
for several years, dying in 1739, with projjerty to a
consider.^ble amount, and an estate worth £00 per
annum. Being of a litcrar}- turn, tliis resjjcctable
citizen devoted his leisure hours to the cotnposition
of three dramas, George Barnwell, Fatal ('uriosity
and Arden of Fcvcrsham. A tragedy on tlie latter
subject liad, it will be recollected, appeared about
the time of Sliakspeare. At tliis early period of tlio
drama, the style of Lillo may be said to have been
also shadowed forth in the Yorkshire tragedy, and
one or two other ])lays founded on domestic oi-cur-
renccs. These, however, were rude and irreguliir
and were driven off the stage by the romantic drama
of Sliakspeare and his successors. Lillo Inid ;i com-
petent knowledge of dramatic art, and his style was
generally smooth and easy. To tlie masters of the
drama he stands in a position similar to that of De-
foe, compared with Cervantes or Sir Walter Scott
His ' George Barnwell' describes the career of .1
London apprentice liurried on to ruin and nnu'der
by an infamous woman, wlio at hist delivers liim up
to justice and to an ignominious death. Tlie charac-
ters are naturally delineat<(i ; and we liav(> no doubt it
was correctl*' said that ' George Barnwell" drew more
591
VROH 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
tears than the rants of Alexander the Great. His
* Fatal Curiosity' is a far higher work. Driven by
destitution, an old man and his wife murder a rich
stranger who takes shelter in their house, and they
discover, but too late, that they have murdered their
son, returned after a long absence. The harrowing
details of this tragedy are powerfully depicted ; and
the agonies of OldWilmot, the father, constitute one
of the most appalling and affecting incidents in the
drama. The execution of Lillo's plays is unequal,
and some of his characters are dull and common-
place ; but he was a forcible painter of the dark shades
of humble life. His plays have not kept possession of
the stage. The taste for murders and public execu-
tions has declined ; and Lillo Avas deficient in poetical
and romantic feeling. The question, whether the
familiar cast of his subjects was fitted to constitute
a more genuine or only a subordinate walk in
tragedy, is discussed by Mr Campbell in the follow-
ing eloquent paragraph : —
' Undoubtedly the genuine delineation of the
human heart will please us, from whatever station
or circumstances of life it is derived. In the simple
pathos of tragedy, probably very little difference will
be felt from the choice of characters being pitched
above or below the line of mediocrity in station.
But something more than pathos is required in
tragedy ; and the very pain that attends our sym-
pathy requires agreeable and romantic associations
of the fancy to be blended with its poignancy. What-
ever attaches ideas of importance, publicity, and ele-
vation to the object of pity, forms a brightening and
alluring medium to the imagination. Athens her-
self, with all her simplicity and democracy, delighted
on the stage to
" let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by."
Even situations far depressed beneath the familiar
mediocritj- of life, are more picturesque and poetical
than its ordinary level. It is, certainly, on the vir-
tues of the middling rank of life that the strength
and comforts of society chiefly depend, in the same
manner as we look for the harvest not on cliffs and
precipices, but on the easy slope and the uniform
plain. But the painter docs not, in general, fix on
level countries for the subjects of his noblest land-
scapes. There is an analogy, I conceive, to this in
the moral painting of tragedy. Disparities of sta-
tion give it boldness of outline. The commanding
situations of life are its mountain scenery — the
region where its storm and sunshine may be por-
trayed in their strongest contrast and colouring.'
[^Fatal Curiosity.']
YoiinR Wii.MOT, unknown, enters the house of his parents,
and delivers them a casket, requesting to retire an hour for
rest.
AoNES, the mother, alone, with the casket in her hand.
Agnes. Who should this stranger be ? And then
this casket —
He says it is of value, and yet trusts it,
As if a trifle, to a stranger's hand.
His confidence amazes me. Perhaps
It is not what he says. I'm strongly tempted
To open it, and see. No ; let it rest.
Why should my curiosity excite nie
To search and pry into the affairs of others,
Who have to employ my thoughts so many cares
And sorrows of my ovnil With how much ease
The spring gives way ! Surprising ! most prodigious !
My eyes are dazzled, and my ravished heart
Leaps at the glorious sight. How bright's the lustre,
How immense the worth of those fair jewels !
Ay, such a treasure would expel for ever
Base poverty and all its abject train ;
The mean devices we're reduced to use
To keep out famine, and presen-e our lives
From day to day ; the cold neglect of friends ;
The galling scorn, or more provoking pity
Of an insulting world. Possessed of these,
Plenty, content, and power, might take their tuni,
And lofty pride bare its aspiring head
At our approach, and once more bend before us.
A pleasing dream ! 'Tis past ; and now 1 wake
More wretched by the happiness I've lost ;
For sure it was a happiness to think,
Though but a moment, such a treasure mine.
Nay, it was more than thought. I saw and touched
The bright temptation, and I see it yet.
'Tis here — 'tis mine — 1 have it in possession.
Must I resign it ? Must I give it back ?
Am I in love with misery and want,
To rob myself, and court so vast a loss 1
Retain it then. But how ? There is a way.
Why sinks my heart ? Why does my blood nm cold !
Why am I thrilled with horror ? 'Tis not choice,
But dire necessity, suggests the thought.
Enter Old AVilmot.
Old Wilmot. The mind contented, with how little
pains
The wandering senses yield to soft repose,
And die to gain new life? He's fallen asleep
Already — happy man ! What dost thou think,
My Agnes, of our unexpected guest ?
He seems to me a youth of great humanity:
Just ere he closed his eyes, that swam in tears.
He wrung my hand, and pressed it to his lips;
And with a look that pierced me to the soul.
Begged me to comfort thee : and — Dost thou hear met
What art thou gazing on ? Fie, 'tis not well.
This casket was delivered to you closed :
Why have you opened it? Should this be known.
How mean must we appear ?
Agnes. And who shall know it ?
0. Wil. There is a kind of pride, a decent dignity
Due to ourselves, which, spite of our misfortunes.
May be maintained and cherished to the last.
To live without reproach, and without leave
To quit the world, shows sovereign contempt
And noble scorn of its relentless malice.
Agiies. Shows sovereign madness, and a scorn of
sense !
Pursue no further this detested theme :
I will not die. I will not leave the world
For all that you can urge, until compelled.
0. Wil. To chase a shadow, when the setting sun
Is darting his last rays, were just as wise
As your anxiety for fleeting life,
Now the last means for its support are failing:
Were famine not as mortal as the sword, '
This warmth might be excused. But take thy choice}
Die how you will, you shall not die alone.
Agnes. Nor live, I hope.
0. Wil. There is no fear of that.
Agnes. Then we'll live both.
0. Wil. Strange folly ! Where's the means !
Agnes. The means are there ; those jewels.
0. Wil. Ila ! take heed :
Perhaps thou dost but try me ; yet take heed.
There's nought so monstrous but the mind of man
In some conditions may be brought to approve ;
Theft, sacrilege, treason, and parricide.
When flattering opportunity enticed.
And desperation drove, have been committed
By those who once would start to hear them named.
Agnes. And add to these detested suicide.
Which, by a crime nmch leas, wc may avoid.
592
IiRAMATlSTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM CONGREVK.
0. Wil. The inhospitable murder of our guest ?
'low couldst thou form a thought so very temptiii;i^,
!50 advantageous, so secure, and e:usy ;
And yet so cruel, and so full of horror?
A</nes. 'Tis less impiety, less against nature,
To take another's life than end our own.
0. WIL It is no matter, whether this or thut
Be, in itself, the less or greater crime :
Howe'er we may deceive ourselves or others.
We act from inclination, not by rule,
Or none could act amiss. And that all err.
None but the conscious hj-pocrite denies.
0, what is man, his excellence and strength.
When in an hour of trial and desertion,
Reason, his noblest power, may be suborned
To plead the cause of vile assassination !
Af/nes. You're too severe : reason may justly plead
For her own preservation.
0. Wil. Rest contented :
Whate'er resistance I may seem to make,
I am betrayed within : my will's seduced,
And my whole soul infected. The desire
Of life returns, and brings with it a train
Of appetites, that rage to be supplied.
Whoever stands to parley with temptation.
Does it to be o'ercome.
Agnes. Then nought remains
But the swift execution of a deed
That is not to be thought on, or delayed.
We must despatch him sleeping : should he wake,
'Twere madness to attempt it.
0. Wil. True, his strength.
Single, is more, much more than ours united ;
So may his life, perhaps, as far exceed
Ours in duration, should he 'scape this snare.
Generous, unhappy man ! what could move thee
To put thy life and fortune in the hands
Of wretches mad with anguish !
Agnes. By what means ?
By stabbing, suffocation, or by strangling,
Shall we effect his death ?
0. Wil. Why, -what a fiend !
IIow cruel, how remorseless, how impatient,
Have pride and poverty made thee !
Agnes. Barbarous man !
Whose wasteful riots ruined our estate,
And drove our son, ere the first down had spread
His rosy cheeks, spite of my sad presages.
Earnest iiitreatles, agonies, and tears.
To seek his bread 'mongst strangers, and to perish
In some remote inhospitable land.
The loveliest youth in person and in mind
That ever cro\vned a groaning mother's pains !
Where was thy pity, where thy patience then 1
Thou cruel husband ! thou unnatural father !
Thou most remorseless, most ungrateful man !
To waste my fortune, rob me of my son ;
To drive me to despair, and then reproach me.
0. Wil. Dry thy tears :
I ought not to reproach thee. I confess
That thou hast suffered much : so have we both.
But chide no more : I'm wrought up to thy purpose.
The poor ill-fated unsuspecting victim,
Ere he reclined him on the fatal couch,
From which he's ne'er to rise, took off the sa-sh
And costly dagger that thou saw'st him wear;
And thus, unthinking, furnished us with arms
Against himself. Which shall I use ?
Agnes. The sash.
If you make use of that, I can assist.
0. Wil. No.
'Tis a dreadful office, and I'll spare
Thy trembling hands tlie guilt. Steal to the door.
And bring me word if he be still asleep. [Exit Affnes.
Or I'm deceived, or he pronounced himself
The happiest of mankind. Deluded wretch !
Thy thoughts are perishing ; thy youthful joys.
Touched by the icy hand of grisly death,
Are withering in their bloom. But though extin-
guished.
Hell never know the loss, nor feel the bitter
Pangs of disappointment. Then I was wrong
In counting him a wretch : to die well pleased
Is all the happiest of mankind can hope for.
'i'o be a wretch is to survive the loss
Of every joy, and even hope itself.
As I have done. Why do I mourn him then ?
For, by the anguish of my tortured soul.
He's to be envied, if compared with me.
■WILLIAM CONGREVE.
The comedies of Congreve abound more than any
others, perhaps, in the English language, in witty
dialogue and lively incident, but their licentiousness
has banished them from the stage. The life of this
eminent dramatic -writer was a happy and prosper-
ous one. He was born in 1672, in Ireland, according
to one account, or at Bardsey, near Leeds, as others
have represented. He was of a good family, and his
father held a military employment in Ireland, where
the poet -was educated. He studied the law in the
middle temple, but began early to write for the stage.
His Old Bachelor was produced in his twenty-first
year, and acted with great applause. Lord Halifax
conferred appointments on him in the customs and
other departments of public service, worth £600 per
annum. Other plays soon appeared ; the Double
Dealer in 1694, Love for Love in 1695, the Mourning
Bride, a tragedy, in 1697, and the Way of the World
in 1700. In 1710 he published a collection of mis-
cellaneous poems ; and his good fortune still follow-
ing him, he obtained, on the accession of George I.,
the office of secretary for the island of Jamaica, which
raised his emoluments to about £1200 per annum.
Basking in the sunshine of opulence and courtly
society, Congreve wished to forget that he was an
author, and when Voltaire waited upon him, he said
he would rather be considered a gentleman than a
poet. ' If you had been merely a gentleman,' said
the witty Frenchman, ' I should not have come to
visit you.' A complaint in the eyes, which termi-
nated in total blindness, afflicted Congreve in his
latter days : he died at his house in London on the
29th of January 1729. Dryden complimented Con-
greve as one whom every muse and grace adorned ;
and Pope dedicated to him liis translation of the
Riad. What higher literary honours could have been
paid a poet whose laiirels were all gained, or at least
planted, by the age of twenty-seven? One incident
in the history of Congreve is too remarkable to be
omitted. He contracted a close intimacy with the
Duchess of Marlborought^daughter of the great duke),
sat at her table daih', and assisted in her household
management. On his death, he left the bulk of his
fortune, amounting to about £10,000, to this eccen-
tric lady, who honoured him with a splendid funenil.
' The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the
Jerusalem chamber, and was interred in Westminster
Abbey. The pall was borne by the Duke of Bridge-
water, Lord Cobhain, the Earl of AVilmington, wlio
had been speaker, and was afterwards first lord of
the treasury, and other men of high consideration.
Her grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb
diamond necklace, which she wore in honour of him ;
and if report is to be believed, showed her regard in
ways much more extraordinary. It is saiil tliat she
had a statue of him in ivory, which moved by clock-
work, and was placed daily at her table; thut slio
had a wax doll made in imitation of him. and that
the feet of this doll were regularly blisUr--d and
£93
39
ritOH 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
anointed by the doctors, as poor Con^eve's feet liad
been when he suffered from the gout.'* This idol of
fashion and literature has been removed by the just
award of i)osterity from the high place he once oc-
cupied. His plays are generally without poetry or
'-^agination, and his comic genius is inextricably
associated with sensuality and profaneness. We ad-
mire his brilliant dialogue and repartee, and his exu-
berance of dramatic incident and character ; but the
total absence of tlie higher virtues which ennoble life
— the beauty and gracefulness of female virtue, the
feelings of generosity, truth, honour, affection, mo-
desty, and tenderness — leaves his pages barren and
unproductive of any permanent interest or popularit}'.
His glittering artificial life possesses but few charms
to the lovers of nature or of poetry, and is not re-
commended by any moral purpose or sentiment. Tlie
• Mourning Bride,' Congreve's only tragedy, pos-
sesses higher merit than most of the serious plays of
that day. It has the stiffness of the French school,
with no small affectation of fine writing, without pas-
sion, yet it possesses poetical scenes and language.
The opening lines have often been quoted : —
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been informed
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
Dr Johnson considered the description of the cathe-
dral in the following extract as forming the most
poetical paragraph in the whole range of the drama
— finer than any one in Shakspeare !
Almebia — Leowora.
Aim. It was a fancied noise, for all is hushed.
Leon. It bore the accent of a human voice.
Aim. It was thy fear, or else some transient wind
Whistling through hollows of this vaulted aisle.
We'll listen.
Leon. Hark!
Aim. No ; all is hushed and still as death. 'Tis
dreadful !
How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof.
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable.
Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight ; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice ;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice — ray own affrights me with its echoes.
Leon. Let us return ; the horror of this place
And silence will increase your melancholy.
Aim. It may my fears, but cannot add to that.
No, I will on ; show me Anselmo's tomb.
Lead me o'er bones and skulls and mouldering earth
Of human bodies ; for I'll mix with them ;
Or wind me in the shroud of some pale corse
Yet green in earth, rather than be the bride
Of Garcia's more detested bed : that thought
Exerts my spirits; and my present fears
Are lost in dread of greater ill.
It is difiicult by quotation to convey an idea of
Congreve's comedies. He does not shine in parti-
cular passages, but in a constant stream of wit and
liveliness, and the quick interchange of diahigue and
Incident. He was a master of dramatic rules and
art. Nothing shows more forcibly the taste or in-
clination (J* the present daj- for the poetry of nature
»nd passion, instead of the conventional world of
» Edinburgh Review, vol. 72. p. 527.
our ancestors in the drama, than the neglect into
wliich thte works of Congreve have fallen, even as
literary productions.
\_Gay Young Men upon Toicn.'\
[From ' The Old Bachelor.']
Belmoob — Vainlove
Bel. Vainlove, and abroad so early ! Good Ciorrow.
I thought a contemplative lover could no more have
parted with his bed in a morning, than he could have
slept in it.
Vain. Belmour, good morrow. Why, truth on't is,
these early sallies are not usual to me ; but business,
as you see, sir — \_Shominy Ittterg'] — and business must
be followed, or be lost.
Bel. Business! And so must time, my friend, be
close pursued or lost. Business is the rub of life,
perverts our aim, casts off the bias, and leaves us wide
and short of the intended mark.
Vain. Pleasure, I guess you mean.
BeJ. Ay, what else has meaning ?
Vai7i. Oh, the wise will tell you
Bel. More than they believe or understand.
Vain. How; how, Ned 1 a wise man say more than
he understands ?
Bel. Ay, ay, wisdom is nothing but a pretending
to know and believe more than we really do. You
read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was —
that he knew nothing. Come, come, leave business
to idlers, and wisdom to fools ; they have need of
them. Wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occu-
pation ; and let father Time shake his glass. Let low
and earthly souls grovel till they have worked them-
selves six foot deep into a grave. Business is not my
element ; I roll in a higher orb, and dwell ■
Vain. In castles i' th' air of thy own building —
that's thy element, Ned.
[A Swaggering Bully and Boaster.']
[From the same.]
Sir Joseph W'ittol — Sharper — Captain Bluff.
Sir Jos. Oh, here he comes. Ay, my Hector of Troy ;
welcome, my bully, my back ; egad, my heart has gone
pit-a-pat for thee.
Bluff. How now, my young knight 1 Not for fear,
I hope? He that knows me must be a stranger to
fear.
Sir Jos. Nay, egad, I hate fear ever since I had
like to have died of a fright. But
Bluff. But ! Look you here, boy ; here's your anti-
dote ; here's your Jesuit's Powder for a shaking fit.
But who hast thou got with ye ; is he of mettle ? —
l^Laijing hi.^ hand on his sicoi-d.
Sir Jos. Ay, bully, a smart fellow ; and will fight
like a cock.
Bluff. Say you so ? Then I honour him. But has
he been abroad ? for every cock will fight upon his
own dunghill.
Sir Jos. I don't know ; but I'll present you.
Bluff'. I'll recommend myself. Sir, I honour you ;
I understand you love fighting. I reverence a man
that loves fighting. Sir, I kiss your hilts.
Sharper. Sir, your servant, but you are misin-
formed ; for unless it be to serve my particular friend,
as Sir Joseph here, my country, or my religion, or in
some very justifiable cause, I am not for it.
Bluff. Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I find you are
not of my palate ; you can't relish a dish of fighting
without some sauce. Now, I think fighting for fight-
ing's sake is sufficient cause. Fighting to me is reli-
gion and the laws !
Sir Jos. Ah, well said, my herol Was not that
great, sir? By the Lord Harry, he says true ; fight-
594
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
WILLIAM CONGREVK.
ing is meat, drink, and clothes to him. But, Back,
this gentleman is one of the best friends I have in
the woriJ, and saved my life last night. You know
I told you.
Bluff. Ay, then I honour him again. Sir, may I
crave j'our name ?
Sharper. Ay, sir ; my name's Sharper.
Sir Jos. Pray, Mr Sharper, embrace my Back ; yery
well. By the Lord Harry, Mr Sharper, he is as brave
a fellow as Cannibal ; are you not, Bully-Back ?
Sharper. Hannibal, I believe you mean, Sir .Toseph ?
Biuff. Undoubtedly he did, sir. Faith, Hannibal
was a very pretty fellow ; but, Sir Joseph, comparisons
are odious. Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in
those days, it must be granted. But alas, sir, were
he alive now, he would be nothing, nothing in the
earth.
Sharper. IIow, sir ? I make a doubt if there be at
this day a greater general breathing.
Blnff. Oh, excuse me, sir ; have you served abroad,
sir?
Sharper. Not I, really, sir.
Bluff. Oh, I thought so. Why, then, you can know
nothing, sir. I am afraid you .scarce know the his-
tory of the late war in Flanders with all its parti-
culars.
Sharper. Not I, sir ; no more than public letters or
Gazette tell us.
Bluff. Gazette! Why, there again now. Why, sir,
there are not three words of truth, the year round, put
into the Gazette. I'll tell you a strange thing now
as to that. You must know, sir, I was resident in
Flanders the last campaign, had a small post there ;
but no matter for that. Perhaps, sir, there was scarce
anything of moment done but a humble servant of
yours that shall be nameless was an eye-witness of.
I wont say had the greatest share in't — though I
might say that too, since I name nobody, you know.
Well, Mr Sharper, would you think it ? In all this
time, as I hope for a truncheon, that rascally Gazette-
writer never so much as once mentioned me. Not
once, by the wars ! Took no more notice than as if
Noll Blufi'had not been in the land of the living.
Sharper. Strange!
Sir Jos. Yet, by the Lord Harry, 'tis true, Mr
Sharper ; for I went every day to coffee-houses to read
the Gazette myself.
Bluff'. Ay, ay ; no matter. You see, Mr Sharper,
after all, I am content to retire — live a private person.
Scipio and others have done so.
Sharper. Impudent rogue. [Aside.
Sir Jos. Ay, this modesty of 3'ours. Egad, if he
put in for't, he might be made general himself yet.
Bluff. Oh, fie no. Sir Joseph ; you know I hate this.
Sir Jos. Let me but tell Mr Sharper a little, how
you ate fire once out of the mouth of a cannon ; egad
he did ; those impenetrable whiskers of his have con-
fronted flames.
Bluff. Death ! What do you mean, Sir Joseph ?
Sir Jos. Look you now, I tell he is so modest, he'll
own nothing.
Bluff. Pish ; you have put me out ; I have forgot
what I was about. Pray, hold your tongue, and give
me leave [Angrily.
Sir Jos. I am dumb.
Bluff. This sword I think I was telling you of, Mr
Sharper. This sword I'll maintain to be the best
divine, anatomist, lawyer, or casuist in Europe; it
shall decide a controversy, or split a cause.
Sir Jos. Nay, now, I must speak ; it will split a
hair; by the Lord Harry, I have seen it !
Bluff. Zounds ! sir, it is a lie ; you have not seen it,
nor siha'nt see it : sir, I say you can't see. What d'ye
say to that, now ?
Sir Jos. I am blind.
Bluff. Death ! had any other man interrupted me.
.S^()- Jos. Good Mr Sharper, speak to him ; I dare not
look tliat way.
Sharjxr. Captain, Sir Joseph is penitent.
Jlluff. Oh, 1 am calm, sir; calm as a discharged
culvcrin. But 'twas indiscreet, when you know whac
will provoke me. Nay, come, Sir Joseph ; you know
my heat's soon over.
Sir Jos. Well, I am a fool sometimes, but I'm sorry.
Bluff. Enough.
<SV;- Jos. Come, we'll go take a glass to drown ani-
mosities.
[Scandal and Literahire in Hirjh Life.}
[From ' The Double-Dealer."]
Cynthia — Lord and Lady Froth — Brisk.
Lady F. Then you think that episode between
Susan the dairy-maid and our coachman is not amiss.
You know, I may suppose the dairy in town, as well
as in the country.
Brisk. Incomparable, let me perish ! But, then,
being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a
charioteer. Charioteer sounds great. Besides, your
ladyship's coachman having a red face, and you com-
paring him to the sun — and you know the sun is called
' heaven's charioteer.'
Lady F. Oh! infinitely better ; I am extremely be-
holden to you for the hint. Stay ; we'll read over
those half a score lines again. \_Pulls out a paper.'}
Let me see here ; you know what goes before — the
comparison, you know. [Beads]
For as the sun shines every day,
So of our coachman I may say.
Brisl-. I am afraid that simile won't do in wet
weather, because you say the sun shines every day.
Lady F. No; for the sun it wont, but it will do
for the coachman ; for you know there's most occasion
for a coach in wet weather.
Brisl: Riglit, right ; that saves all.
Lady F. Then I don't say the sun shines all the
day, but that he peeps now and then ; yet he doe»
shine all the day, too, you know, though we don't see
him.
Brislc. Right ; but the vulgar will never compre-
hend that.
Lady F. Well, you shall hear. Let me see —
For as the sun shines every day,
So of our coachman I may say,
He shows his drunken fiery face
Just as the sun does, more or less.
Brisk. That's right ; all's well, all's well. More v
less.
Lady F. [F^ads]
And when at night his labour'.* done,
Then, too, like heaven's charioteer, the sun —
Ay, charioteer does better —
Into the dairy he descends,
And there his whipping and his driving ends ;
There he's secure from danger of a bilk ;
His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.
For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so
Brisk. Incomparable well and proper, egad ! Hut
I have one exception to make: don't you think bilk
(I know it's a good rhyme) — but don't you think bilk
a,nd fare too like a hackney coachman {
Lady F. I swear and vow I'm afraid so. And yet
our John was a hackney coachman when my lord took
him.
Brisk. Was he? I'm answered, if John was a
hackney coachman. You niay put tliat in the mar-
ginal notes; though, to prevent criticism, only mark
it witli a small asterisk, and say, 'John was formeriy
a hackney coachman.'
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FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
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Lady F. I will ; you'd oblige me extremely to write
notes to the whole poem.
Brvsk. With all my heart and soul, and proud of
the vast honour, let me perish !
Lord F. Hee, hee, hee ! my dear, have you done?
Wont you join with us? We were laughing at my
Lady Whister and Mr Sneer.
Lady F. Ay, my dear, were you ? Oh ! filthy Mr
Sneer ; he's a nauseous figure, a most fulsamic fop.
Foh ! He spent two days together in going about
Covent Garden to suit the lining of his coach with his
complexion.
Lord F. silly ! Yet his aunt is as fond of him
a-s if she had brought the ape into the world herself.
Brisk. Who ? my Lady Toothless ? 0, she's a mor-
tifying spectacle ; .she's always chewing the cud like
an old ewe.
Lord F. Foh !
Lady F. Then she's always ready to laugh when
Sneer offers to speak ; and sits in expectation of his
no-jest, with her gums biire, and her mouth open.
Brisk. Like an oyster at low ebb, egad ! Ha, ha, ha !
Cynthia. [Aside.^ Well, I find there are no fools so
inconsiderable in themselves, but they can render
other people contemptible by exposing their infir-
mities.
Lady F. Then that t'other great strapping lady ; I
can't hit of her name ; the old fat fool that paints so
exorbitantly.
Brisk. I know whom you mean. But, deuce take
me, I can't hit of her name either. Paints, d'ye say ?
Why, she lays it on with a trowel. Then she has a
great beard that bristles through it, and makes her
look as if she were plastered with lime and hair, let
me perish !
Lady F. Oh ! you made a song upon her, Mr Brisk ?
Brisk. Hee, egad ! so I did. My lord can sing it.
Cynthia. O good, my lord ; let us hear it.
Brisk. 'Tis not a song neither. It's a sort of epi-
gram, or rather an epigrammatic sonnet. I don't
know what to call it, but it's satire. Sing it, my lord.
Lord F. {Sings]
Ancient Phyllis has young graces ;
'Tis a strange thing, but a true one ;
Shall I tell you how 1
She herself makes her own faces.
And each morning wears a new one ;
Where's the wonder now ?
Brisk. Short, but there's salt in't. My way of
writing, egad !
[From Love for Love."]
Angelica — Sir Samtsok Legend — Tattle — Mrs Frail —
Miss Prue — Ben Legend and Servant.
[In the character of Ben, Congreve gave the first humorous
and natural representation of the English sailor, afterwards so
fertile and amusing a subject of delineation with Smollett
and other novelists and dramatists.]
Ben. Where's father ?
Serv. There, sir ; his back's towards you.
Sir S. My son, Ben ! Bless thee, my dear boy ;
body o' me, thou art heartily welcome.
Be7i. Thank you, father ; and I'm glad to see you.
Sir S. Odsbud, and I'm glad to see thee. Kiss me,
boy ; kiss me again and again, dear Ben.
{^Kisses him.
Ben. So, so ; enough, father. Mess, Pd rather kiss
these gentlewomen.
Sir S. And so thou shalt. Mrs Angelica, my son
Ben.
Ben. Forsooth, if you please. [Salutes her."] Nay,
Mistress, I'm not for dropping anchor here ; about
ship i'faltli. [A'wACS Frail.'] Nay, and you too, my
'ittle cock-boat — so. [A'mca Miss.}
Tattle. Sir, you are welcome ashore.
Ben. Thank you, thank you, friend.
Sir S. Thou hast been many a weary league, Boi.,
since I saw thee.
Ben. Ay, ay, been ! been far enough, an that be
all. Well, father, and how do you all at home ? How
does brother Dick and brother Val ?
Sir S. Dick ! body o'me, Dick has been dead these
two years ; I writ you word when you were at Leg-
horn.
Ben. Mess, that's true : marry, 1 had forgot. Dick's
dead, as you say. Well, and how ? 1 have a many
questions to ask you. Well, you be not married again,
father, be you ?
Sir S. No, I intend you shall marry, Ben ; I would
not marry for thy sake.
Ben. Nay, what does that signify ? — an you marry
again, why, then, Pll go to sea again ; so there's one for
t'other, an that be all. Pray don't let me be your
hindrance ; e'en marry a God's name, an the wind
sit that way. As for my part, mayhap I have no
mind to marry.
Mrs Frail. That would be a pity ; such a handsome
young gentleman.
Ben. Handsome ! he, he, he ; nay, forsooth, an you
be for joking, I'll joke with you, for I love my jest,
an the ship were sinking, as we say at sea. But I'll
tell you why I don't much stand towards matrimony.
I love to roam about from port to port, and from land
to land : I could never abide to be port-bound, as we
call it. Now, a man that is married has, as it were,
d'ye see, his feet in th*^ bilboes, and mayhap mayn't
get them out again when he would. •
»S'(V S. Ben's a wag.
Ben. A man that is married, d'ye see, is no more
like another man than a galley-slave is like one of us
free sailors. He is chained to an oar all his life ; and
mayhap forced to tug a leaky vessel into the bargain.
Sir S. A very wag ! Ben's a very wag ! only a little
rough ; he wants a little polishing.
Mrs F. Not at all ; I like his humour mightily ; it's
plain and honest ; I should like such a humour in a
husband extremely.
Ben. Say'n you so, forsooth 1 Marry, and I should
like such a handsome gentlewoman hugely. How say
you, mistress ? would you like going to sea ? Mess,
you're a tight vessel, and well rigged. But I'll tell
you one thing, an you come to sea in a high wind,
lady, you mayn't carry so much sail o' j'our head. Top
and top-gallant, by the mess.
3Irs F. No ? why so ?
Ben. Why, an you do, you may run the risk to be
overset, and then you'll carry your keels above water ;
he, he, he.
Angelica. I swear Mr Benjamin is the veriest wag
in nature — an absolute sea wit.
Sir S. Nay, Ben has parts ; but, as I told you before,
they want a little polishing. You must not take any-
thing ill, madam.
Ben. No ; I hope the gentlewoman is not angry ; I
mean all in good part ; for if I give a jest, I take a
jest ; and so, forsooth, you may be as free with me.
Ang. I thank you, sir ; I am not at all oft'ended.
But methiuks. Sir Sampson, you should leave him
alone with his mistress. Mr Tattle, we must not hin-
der lovers.
Tattle. Well, Miss, I have your promise.
[Aside to 3[iss.
Sir S. Body o' me, madam, you say true. Look
you, Ben, this is your mistress. Come, Miss, you
must not be shame-faced ; we'll leave j'ou together.
Miss l'i~ue. 1 can't abide to be left alone ; may not
my cou.sin stay with me ?
Sir S. No, no ; come, let us away.
Bm. Look you, father ; mayhap the yourg woman
•r • i ■(, t. ■,';<, a liking to me.
5.')C
DBIMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR JOHN VANBRUOH.
! Sir S. I warrant thee, boy ; come, come, we'll be
gone ; I'll venture that.
Ben and Miss Prue.
Ben. Come, mistress, will j-ou please to sit down ?
for an you stand astern a that'n, we shall never grapple
together. Come, I'll haul a chair ; there, an you
please to sit, I'll sit beside you.
Aliss Prue. You need not sit so near one ; if you have
anything to say, I can hear you farther off ; I an't deaf.
Ben. Why, that's true as you say, nor I an't dumb ;
I can be beard as far as another. I'll heave off to
please j'ou. {_Sits farther f//f.] An we were a league
asunder, I'd undertake to hold discourse with you, an
'twere not a main high wind indeed, and full in my
teeth. Look 3"0U, forsooth, I am as it were bound for
the land of matrimony; 'tis a voyage, d'ye see, that
was none of my seeking ; I was commanded by father ;
and if you like of it, mayhap I may steer into your
harbour. How say you, mistress ? The short of the
thing is, that if you like me, and I like you, we may
chance to swing in a hammock together.
MUs P. I don't know what to say to you, nor I don't
care to speak with you at all.
Ben. No ? I'm sorry for that. But pray, why are
you so scornful ?
J/ws P. As long as one must not speak one's mind,
one had better not speak at all, I think ; and truly
I wont tell a lie for the matter.
Ben. Nay, you say true in that ; it's but a folly to
lie ; for to speak one thing, and to think just the con-
trary way, is, as it were, to look one way and to row
another. Now, for my part, d'ye see, I'm for carrt'-
ing things above-board ; I'm not for keeping anything
under hatches ; so that if you ben't as willing as I,
say so a God's name ; there's no harm done. May-
hap you may be shame-faced ; some maidens, thof
they love a man well enough, yet they don't care to
tell'n so to's face. If that's the case, why, silence
gives consent.
Afiss P. But I'm sure it is not so, for I'll speak
sooner than you should believe that ; and I'll speak
truth, though one should always tell a lie to a man ;
and I don't care, let my father do what he will. I'm
toe big to be whipt ; so I'll tell you plainly, I don't
like you, nor love you at all, nor never will, that's
more. So there's your answer for you, and don't
trouble me no more, you ugly thing.
Ben. Look you, young woman, you may learn to
give good words, however. I spoke you fair, d'ye see,
and civil. As for your love or 3'our liking, I don't
value it of a rope's end ; and mayhap I like you as
little as you do me. What I said was in obedience
to father : I fear a whipping no more than you do.
But I tell you one thing, if you should give such
language at sea, you'd have a cat 0' nine tails laid
across your shoulders. Flesh ! who are you 1 You
heard t'other handsome young woman speak civilly
to me of her own accord. Whatever you think of
yourself, I don't think you are any more to compare
to her than a can of small beer to a bowl of punch.
Miss P. \\'ell, and there's a handsome gentleman,
and a fine gentleman, and a sweet gentleman, that
was here, that loves me, and I love him ; and if he
sees you speak to me any more, he'll thrash j'our
jacket for you, he will ; you great sea-calf.
Ben. What ! do you mean that fair-weather spark
that was here just now ? Will he thrash my jacket ?
Let'n, let'n, let'n — but an he comes near me, mayhap
I may give him a salt-eel fcr's supper, for all that.
What does father mean, to leave me alone, as soon as
I come home, with such a dirty dowdy ? Sea-calf !
I an't calf enough to lick your chalked face, you
cheese-curd you. Marry thee ! 00ns, I'll marry a
Lapland witch as som, and live upon selling con-
trary winds and wrected vessels.
SIR JOHN VANBRUGII.
SiK John Vanbrugh united what Mr Leigh Hunt
calls the 'apparently incompatible geniuses' of comic
writer and architect. His Blenheim and Castle
Howard have outlived the I'rvvohed Wife or the lie-
lapse ; yet the latter were highly jiopuiar once ; and
even Pope, though he admits his want ut' grace, says
that he never wanted wit. Vanbrugh was the son
Autograph and Seal of Vanbrugh.
of a successful sugar-baker, who rose to be an esquire,
and comptroller of the treasury chamber, besides
marrying the daughter of Sir Dudley Carlton. It is
doubtful whether the dramatist was born in the
French Bastile, or the parish of St Stephen's, Wal-
bnjok. The time of his birth was about the year
1666, when Louis XIV. declared war against Eng-
land. It is certain he was in France at the age of
nineteen, and remained there some years. In "695, he
was appointed secretary to the commission forendow-
ing Greenwich hospital ; and two years afterwards
appeared his play of the ' Relapse' and tlie ' Pro-
voked Wife ;' JEsop, the False Friend, the Omfederary,
and otlier dramatic pieces followed. Vanbrugh was
now highly popular. He made his design of ' Castle
Howard' in 1702, and Lord Carlisle appointed him
clarencieux king-at-arms, a heraldic office, which
gratified Vanbrugli's vanity. In 1706, he was com-
missioned by Queen Anne to carry the habit and
ensigns of the order of the garter to the elector of
Hanover ; and in the same year he commenced his
design for the great national structure at Bknheim.
He built various other mansions, was knighted by
George I., and appointed comptroller of the royal
works. He died, aged sixty, in 1726. At the time
of his death, Vanbrugh was engaged on a comedy,
the Provoked Husband, which Colley Cibber finished
with equal talent. The architectural designs of
Vanbrugh have been praised by Sir Joshua Reynolds
for their display of imagination, and their originality
of invention. Though ridiculed by Swift and other
wits of the day for heaviness and incongruity of de-
sign. Castle Howard and Blenheim are noble struc-
tures, and do honour to tlie boldness of conception
and picturesque taste of Vanbrugh.
As a dramatist, the first thing in his plays wliich
strikes the reader is the lively ease of his dialogue.
Congreve had more wit, but less nature, and less
genuine unaflTectcd humour and gaiety. Vanbrugh
drew more from living originals, and depicted the
manners of his times — the coarse debauchery of tlie
country knight, the gallantry of town-wits and for-
tune hunters, and the love of French intrigue and
French manners in his female characters. Lord
Foppington, in the 'Relapse,' is the original of most
of those empty coxcombs who abound in modern
comedy, intent oidy on dress and fashion. ^Vllen he
loses his mistress, he consoles himself with this re-
flection : — ' Now, for my part, I tliink the wisest
thing a man can do with an aching heart is to put
on a serene countenance ; for a pliilosophical air is
the most becoming thing in the world to the fa(e of
597
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
a person of q\iality. I will therefore bear my disgrace
like a great man, and let the people see I am above
an affront. [Aloud.'] Dear Tom, since things are thus
fallen out, prithee give me leave to wish thee joy.
I do it de bon cceur — strike me dumb ! You have
married a woman beautiful in her person, cliarn)ing
in her airs, prudent in her conduct, constant in her
inclinations, and of a nice morality — split my wind-
pipe !'
The young lady thus eulogised, Miss Hoyden, is
the lively, ignorant, romping country girl to be met
with in most of the comedies of this period. In the
' Provoked Wife,' the coarse pot-house valour and
absurdity of Sir John Brute (Garrick's famous part)
is well contrasted with the line-lady airs and affec-
tation of his wife, transported from tlie country to
tlie hot-bed delicacies of London fashion and extra-
vagance. Such were the scenes that delighted our
play-going ancestors, and which still please us, like
old stiff family portraits in their grotesque habili-
ments, as pictures of a departed generation.
These portraits of Yanbrugli's were exaggerated
and heightened for dramatic effect ; yet, on the whole,
they are faithful and characteristic likenesses. The
picture is not altogether a pleasing one, for it is
dashed with the most unblushing licentiousness. A
tone of healthful vivacity, and the absence of all
hypocrisy, form its most genial feature. ' The
license of the times,' as Mr Leigh Hunt remarks,
' allowed Vanbrugh to be plain spoken to an extent
which was perilous to his animal spirits ;' but, like
Dryden, he repented of these indiscretions; and if he
had lived, would have united his easy wit and nature
to scenes inculcating sentiments of honour and virtue.
[Picture of the Life of a Woman of Fasluon.']
[Sir John Brute, in the ' Provoked Wife,' disguised in his
lady's dress, joins in a drunken midnight frolic, and is taken
by the Constable and Watchmen before a Justice of the Peace.]
Justice. Pray, madam, what may be your lady-
ship's common method of life? if I may presume so
far.
Sir John. Why, sir, that of a woman of quality.
Justice. Pray, how may you generally pass your
time, madam ? Your morning, for example?
Sir John. Sir, like a woman of quality. I wake
about two o'clock in the afternoon — I stretch, and
make a sign for my chocolate. When I have drank
three cups, I slide down again upon my back, with my
arms over my head, while my two maids put on my
stockings. Then, hanging upon their shoulders, I'm
trailed to my great chair, wliere I sit and yalv^l for
my breakfast. If it don't come presently, I lie down
upon my couch, to say my prayers, while my maid
reads me the playbills.
Justice. Very well, madam.
Sir John. When the tea is brought in, I drink
twelve regular dishes, with eight slices of bread and
butter ; and half an hour after, I send to the cook to
know if the dinner is almost ready.
Justice. So, madam.
Sir John. By that time my head is half dressed, I
hear my husband swearing himself into a state of per-
dition that the meat's all cold upon the table ; to
amend which I come down in an hour more, and have
it sent back to the kitchen, to be all dressed over
again.
Justice. Poor man !
Sir John. When I have dined, and my idle ser-
vants are presumptuously set down at their ease to
do so too, I call for my coach, to go to visit fifty dear
friends, of whom I hope I never shall find one at home
while I shall live.
Justice. So! theie's the morning and afternoon
pretty well disposed of. Pray, how, madam, do you
pas-s your evenings ?
Sir John. Like a woman of spirit, sir ; a groat
spirit. Give me a box and dice. Seven's the n:ain !
Oons, sir, I set j'ou a hundred pound ! Why, do you
think women are married now-a-days to sit at Lome
and mend napkins? Oh, the Lord help your lioa 1 !
Justice. Mercy on us, Mr Constable! \\'liat will
this age come to ?
Const. What will it come to indeed, if such women
as these are not set in the stocks!
Fable.
A Band, a Bob-wig, and a Feather,
Attacked a lady's heart together.
The Band in a most learned plea,
Alade up of deep philosophy,
Told her if she would please to wed
A reverend beard, and take, instead
Of vigorous 3'outh,
Old solemn truth,
W^ith books and morals, into bed,
How happy she would be!
The Bob he talked of management,
What wondrous blessings heaven sent
On care, and pains, and industry :
And truly he must be so free
To own he thought your airy beaux,
With powdered wig and dancing shoes.
Were good for nothing — mend his soul I
But prate, and talk, and play the fool.
He said 'twas wealth gave joy and mirth,
And that to be the dearest wife
Of one who laboured all his life
To make a mine of gold his own,
And not spend sixpence when he'd done.
Was heaven upon earth.
When these two blades had done, d'ye see,
The Feather (as it might be me)
Steps out, sir, from behind the screen,
With such an air and such a mien —
Like you, old gentleman — in short.
He quickly spoiled the statesman's sport.
It proved such sunshine weather,
That you must know, at the first beck
The lady leaped about his neck.
And off they went together !
GEORGE FARQUHAR.
George Farquhar was a better artist, in stage
effect and happy combinations of incident and cha-
racter, than any of this race of comic writers. He
lias an uncontrollable vivacity and love of adventure,
whieli still render his comedies attractive botli on
tlie stage and in the closet. Farquhar was an Irish-
man, born in Londonderr}' in 1678, and, after some
college irregularity, he took to the stage. Happening
accidentally to wound a brother actor in a fencing
scene, he left the boards at the age of eighteen, and
procured a commission in the army from the Earl oi
Orrery. His first play. Love and a Bottle, came out
at Drury Lane in 1698 ; tlie Constant Couple in 1700;
tlie Lnconstant in 1703 ; the Stagc-Coarh in 1704 ; the
Ttvin Bivals in 1705 ; the Licaititing Officer in 1706;
and the Beaux' Stratagem in 1707. Farquhar was
early married to a lady who had deceived liini by
pretending to be possessed of a fortune, and lie sunk
a victim to ill health and over exertion in his tliirtieth
year. A letter written shortly before his deatli to
Wilks the actor, possesses a touching brevity of ex-
pression : — ' Dear Bob, I have not anything to leave
tliee to perpetuate my memory but two helpless girls.
598
DKAMAT1ST3.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
GEORGE FARQUHAB.
Look upon them sometimes, and think of him that
■was to tlie last moment of his life thine— George
Farquhar.' One of tlicse daughters, it appears,
married a ' low tradesman,' and the other became a
servant, while their mother died in circumstances of
the utmost indigence.
Tl)e ' Beaux' Stratagem' is Farquhar's best comedy.
The plot is admirably managed, and the disguises of
Arclier and Aimwell form a ludicrous, yet natural
series of incidents. Boniface, the landlord, is still
one of our best representatives of the English inn-
keeper, and there is genius as well as truth in the
delineation. Scrub, the servant, is equally true and
amusing; and the female characters, though as free
spoken, if not as frail as the fine-bred ladies of Con-
greve and Vanbrugh, are sufficiently discriminated.
Sergeant Kite, in the ' Recruiting Officer,' is an ori-
ginal picture of low life and humour rarely surpassed.
Farquhar has not the ripe wit of Congreve, or of our
best comic -writers. He was the Smollett, not the
Fielding of the stage. His characters are lively ; and
there is a quick succession of incidents, so amusing
and so happily contrived to interest the audience,
that the spectator is charmed with the variety and
vivacity of the scene.
* Farquhar,' says Leigh Hunt, ' was a good-natured,
sensitive, reflecting man, of so high an order of what
may be called the town class of genius, as to sympa-
thise with mankind at large upon the strength of
what he saw of them in little, and to extract from a
quintessence of good sense an inspiration just short
of the romantic and imaginative ; that is to say, he
could turn what he had experienced in common life
to the best account, but required in all cases the
support of its ordinary associations, and could not
project his spirit beyond them. He felt the little
world too much, and the universal too little. He saw
into all false pretensions, but not into all true ones ;
and if he had had a larger spliere of nature to fall
back upon in his adversity, would probably not have
died of it. The wings of his fancy were too common,
and grown in too artificial an air, to support him in
the sudden gulfs and aching voids of that new region,
and enable him to beat his way to their green islands.
His genius was so entirely social, that notwithstand-
ing what appeared to the contrary in his personal
manners, and what he took for his own superiority
to it, compelled him to assume in his writings all the
airs of the most received town ascendency ; and when
it had once warmed itself in this way, it would seem
that it had attained the healthiness natural to its
best condition, and could have gone on for ever, in-
creasing both in enjoyment and in power, had exter-
nal circumstances been favourable. He was becom-
ing gayer and gayer, when death, in the shape of a
sore anxiety, called him away as if from a pleasant
party, and left the house ringing with his jest'
[IIumoroit3 Scene at an Inn.]
BoxiPACB.— Aimwell.
JBon. This way, this way, sir.
Aim. You're my landlord, I suppose 1
Bon. Yes, sir, I'm old Will Boniface ; pretty well
known upon this road, as the saying is.
Aim. Oh, Mr Boniface, your servant.
Bon. Oh, sir, what will your honour please to drink,
as the saying is ?
Aim. I have heard your town of Litchfield much
famed for ale ; I think I'll taste that.
Bon. Sir, I have now in my cellar ten tun of the
best ale in Staffordshire: 'tis smooth as oil, sweet as
rnilk, clear as amber, and strong as brandy, and will
be just fourteen years old the fifth day of next March,
old style.
Aim. You're very exact, I find, in the age of your
ale.
Bo7i. As punctual, sir, as I am in the age of my
children : I'll show you such ale. Here," tapster,
broach number 170(5, as the saying is. Sir, you shall
taste my anno doniini. I have lived in Litchfield,
man and boy, above elght-and-fifty years, and I
believe have not consumed eight-and-fifty ounces of
meat.
Aim. At a meal, you mean, if one may guess by
your bulk ?
Bon. Not in my life, sir ; I have fed purely upon
ale : I have ate ray ale, drank my ale, and I "always
sleep upon my ale.
Enter Tapster with .-i Tankard.
Now, sir, you shall see Your worship's health :
[Brinks] — Ha ! delicious, delicious : fancy it Bur-
gundy ; only fancy it — and 'tis worth ten shillings a
quart.
Aim. [Di^inks] 'Tis confounded strong.
Bon. Strong ! it must be so, or how would we be
strong that drink it ?
Aim. And have you lived so long upon this ale,
landlord ?
i?ciM. Eight-and-fifty years, upon my credit, sir ;
but it killed my wife, poor woman, as the saying is.
Aim. How came that to pass ?
Bon. I don't know how, sir ; she would not let the
ale take its natural course, sir ; she was for qualifying
it every now and then with a dram, as the saying is ;
and an honest gentleman, that came this way from
Ireland, made her a present of a dozen bottles of
usquebaugh — but the poor woman was never well
after ; but, however, I was obliged to the gentleman,
you know.
Aim. Why, was it the usquebaugh that killed her?
Bon. I^Ij' Lady Bountiful said so. She, good ladv,
did what could be done: she cured her of three
tympanies: but the fourth carried her off : but she's
happy, and I'm contented, as the saying is.
Aim. Who's that Lady Bountiful you mentioned ?
Bon. Odds my life, sir, we'll drink her health :
[Brinks] — My Lady Bountiful is one of the best of
women. Her last husband, Sir Charles Bountiful,
left her worth a thousand pounds a-year ; and I be-
lieve she lays out one-half on't in charitable u.ses for
the good of her neighbours.
A im. Has the lad)' any children ?
Bon. Yes, sir, she has a daughter by Sir Cliarles ;
the finest woman in all our county, and the greatest
fortune. She has a son, too, by her first husband,
'Squire Sullen, who married a fine lady from London
t'other day ; if you please, sir, we'll drink his health
{^Drinki.l
A im. What sort of a man is he ?
Bon. Why, sir, the man's well enough: says little,
thinks less, and does nothing at all, faith ; but he's a
man of great estate, and values nobody.
Aim. A sportsman, I suppose?
Bon. Yes, he's a man of pleasure ; he plays at
whist, and smokes his pipe eight-and-forty hours to-
gether sometimes.
Aim. A fine sportsman, truly'. — and married, you
say ?
Bon. Ay ; and to a curious woman, sir. But he's
my landlord, and so a man, you know, would not •
Sir, my humble service [Drink.-<.] Though I value
not a farthing what he can do to me ; I pay him his
rent at quarter-day ; I have a good running trade ; I
have but one daughter, and I can give her but no
matter for that.
Aim. You're very happy, Mr Boniface : pray, what
other company have you in town ?
Don. A power of fine ladies ; and then we have the
French officers.
599
FBOH 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO ir'2'/.
Aim. Oh, that's right; you hare a good many of
those gentlemen ; pray, how do you like their com-
pany ?
B&ti. So well, as the saying is, that I could wish we
had as many more of 'em. They're full of money,
ftnd pay double for everything they have. They
know, sir, that we paid good round taxes for the
making of 'em ; and so they are willing to reimburse
us a little ; one of 'cm lodges in my house \_Bdl i-ings.]
1 beg 3'our worship's pardon ; I'll wait on you in half
a minute.
[From the Recruiting Officer.']
Scene — The Market-Place.
Drum beats the Grenadier's March. Enter Sergeant Kite,
followed by Thomas Appletree, Costar Pearmain, and
the Mob.
Kile {^Making a speech.'] If any gentlemen, soldiers,
or otliers, have a mind to serve his majesty, and pull
down the French king ; if any 'prentices have severe
masters, any children have undutiful parents ; if an}'
servants have too little wages, or any husband a bad
wife, let them repair to the noble Sergeant Kite, at
the sign of the Raven, in this good to^vn of Shrews-
burv, and they shall receive present relief and enter-
tainment. [Drum.] Gentlemen, I don't beat my
drums here to ensnare or inveigle any man ; for you
must know, gentlemen, that I am a man of honour:
besides, I don't beat up for common soldiers ; no, 1
list only grenadiers — grenadiers, gentlemen. Pray,
gentlemen, observe this cap — this is the cap of honour —
it dubs a man a gentleman in the drawing of a trigger ;
and he that has the good fortune to be born six foot
high, was bom to be a great man. Sir, will you give
me leave to try this cap upon your head ?
Cost. Is there no harm in't ? \\'out the cap list
me?
Kite. No, no ; no more than I can. Come, let me
8ep how it becomes you.
Cost. Are you sure there is no conjuration in it? —
no gunpowder plot upon me ?
Kite. No, no, friend ; don't fear, man.
Cost. My mind misgives me plaguily. Let me see
it. [Going to put it on.] It smells woundily of sweat
and brimstone. Smell, Tummas.
Tho. Ay, wauns does it.
Cost. Pray, sergeant, what writing is this upon the
face of it ?
K'lte. The crown, or the bed of honour.
Cost. Pray now, what may be that same bed of
honour!
Kite. Oh, a mighty large bed ! — bigger by half than
the great bed at Ware — ten thousand people may lie
in it together, and never feel one another.
Cost. But do folk sleep sound in this same bed of
honour?
Kite. Sound ! — ay, so sound that they never wake.
Cost. Wauns ! I wish that my wife lay there.
Kite. Say you so ? then 1 find, brother
Cost. Brother! hold there, friend ; I am no kindred
to you that I know of yet. Look ye, sergeant, no
coaxing, no wheedling, d'ye see. If I have a mind to
list, why, so ; if not, why, 'tis not so ; therefore take
your cap and your brothership back again, for I am
not disposed at this present writing. No coaxing, no
brothering me, faith.
Kite. I coax! I wheedle! I'm above it, sir; I have
served twenty campaigns ; but, sir, you talk well, and
I must own you are a man every inch of you ; a
pretty, young, sprightly fellow! I love a fellow with
a spirit ; but I scorn to coax : 'tis base ; though, I
must say, that never in my life have I seen a man
better built. How firm and strong he treads ! — he
iteps like a cajstle ! — but I scorn to wheedle any man!
^me, honest lad ! will you take share of a pot ?
Cost. Nay, for that matter, I'll spend my penny
with the best he that wears a head ; that is, begging
your pardon, sir, and in a fair way.
Kite. Give me your hand, then ; and now, gentle-
men, I have no more to say but this — here's a purse
of gold, and there is a tub of humming ale at my
quarters ; 'tis the king's money and the king's drink ;
he's a generous king, and loves his subjects. I hope,
gentlemen, you wont refuse the king's health?
All Mob. No, no, no.
Kite. Huzza, then ! — huzza for the king and the
honour of Shropshire.
All Mob. Huzza !
Kite. Beat drum. [Exeunt shouting. Drum
heating the Grenadier's March.
Scene— The Street.
Enter Kite, with Costar Pearmain in one hand, and
TuOiMAs Appletree in the other, drunk.
Kite Sings.
Our 'prentice Tom may now refuse
To wipe his scoundrel master's shoes,
For now he's free to sing and play
Over the hills and far away.
Over, &c. [The mob sing the chorus.
We shall lead more happy lives
By getting rid of brats and wives.
That scold and brawl both night and day,
Over the hills and far away.
Over, &c.
Kite. Hey, boys! thus we soldiers live! drink, sing,
dance, play ; we live, as one should say — we live — 'tis
impossible to tell how we live — we are all princes ;
why, why jou are a king, you are an emperor, and
I'm a prince; now, an't we?
Tho. No, sergeant ; I'll be no emperor.
Kite. No!
27(0. I'll be a justlce-of-peace.
K^ite. A justice-of-peace, man !
The. A}', wauns will I ; for since this pressing act,
they are greater than any emperor under the sun.
Kite. Done ; you are a justice-of-peace, and you are
a king, and I'm a duke, and a rum duke ; an't I ?
Cost. I'll be a queen.
Kite. A queen !
Cost. Ay, of England ; that's greater than any king
of them all.
Kite. Bravely said, faith! Huzza for the queen.
[ZTif-ro.] But harkye, you Mr Justice, and you Mr
Queen, did you ever see the king's picture ?
Both. No, no, no.
Kite. I wonder at that ; I have two of them set
in gold, and as like his majesty ; God bless the mark !
— see here, they are set in gold.
[Takes two broad pieces out of his pocket ;
presents one to each.
Tho. The wonderful works of nature !
[Looking at it.
What's this written about ? here's a posy, I believe.
Ca-ro-lus ! what's that, sergeant ?
Kite. Oh, Carolus ? why, Carolus is Latin for King
George ; that's all.
Cost. 'Tis a fine thing to be a scollard. Sergeant,
will you part with this? I'll buy it on you, if it
come within the compass of a crown.
Kite. A crown ! never talk of buying ; 'tis the same
thing among friends, you know. I'll present them to
ye both : you shall give me as good a thing. Put
them up, and remember your old friend when I am
over the hills and far away.
[ They sing, and put up tlie money.
600
DRAMATISTS.
ENGLISH LITEhaTURE.
GEORGE FARttUHAB.
Enter Plumb, the Recruiting Officer, singing.
Over the hills and over the main,
To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain ;
The king commands, and we'll obey,
Over the hills and far away.
Come on, my men of mirth, away with it ; I'll make
one among you. Who are these hearty lads ?
Kite. Off with your hats ; 'ounds ! off with your
hats ; this is the captain ; the captain.
Tho. We have seen captains afore now, mun.
Coft. Ay, and lieutenant-captains too. 'Sflesh !
I'll keep on my nab.
27(0. And I'se scarcely doff mine for any captain in
England. My vether's a freeholder.
Plume. Who are those jolly lads, sergeant?
Kile. A couple of honest brave fellows, that are
willing to serve their king : I have entertained them
just now as volunteers, under your honour's command.
Plume. And good entertainment they shall have :
volunteers are the men I want ; those are the men fit
to make soldiers, captains, generals.
Cost. Wounds, Tummas, what's this ! are you listed ?
Tho. Flesh ! not 1 : are you, Costar ?
Cost. Wounds ! not I.
Kite. What ! not listed \ ha, ha, ha ! a very good
jest, i'faith.
Cost. Come, Tummas, we'll go home.
Tho. Ay, ay, come.
Kite. Home ! for shame, gentlemen ; behave your-
selves better before your captain. Dear Thomas !
honest Costar !
Tho. No, no ; we'll be gone.
Kite. Nay, then, I command you to stay : I place
you both sentinels in this place for two hours, to watch
the motion of St Mary's clock 3'ou, and you the mo-
tion of St Chad's ; and he that dares stir from his
post till he be relieved, shall have my sword in his
belly the next minute.
Flume. What's the matter, sergeant ? I'm afraid
you are too rough with these gentlemen.
Kite. I'm too mild, sir; they disobey command,
sir ; and one of them should be shot for an example to
the other. They deny their being listed.
Tho. Nay, sergeant, we don't downright deny it
neither ; that we dare not do, for fear of being shot ;
but we humbly conceive, in a civil way, and begging
your worship's pardon, that we may go home.
Plume. That's easily known. Have either of you
received any of the king's money 2
Cost. Not a brass farthing, sir.
Kite. They have each of them received one and
twenty shillings, and 'tis now in their pockets.
Cost. Wounds ! if I have a penny in my pocket
but a bent sixpence, I'll be content to be listed and
shot into the bargain.
Tho. And I : look ye here, sir.
Cost. Nothing but the king's picture, that the ser-
geant gave me just now.
Kite. See there, a guinea ; one-and-twenty shillings ;
'tother has the fellow on't.
Plume. The case is plain, gentlemen : the goods are
found upon you. Those pieces of gold are worth one-
and-twenty shillings each.
Co.4. So, it seems that Carolus is one-and-twenty
Bhillings in Latin ?
T}io. 'Tis the same thing in Greek, for we are
listed.
Cost. Flesh ; but we an't, Tummas : I desire to be
carried before the mayor, captain.
[Captain and Sergeant whimper the while.
Plume. 'Twill never do. Kite ; your tricks will ruin
me at last. I wont lose the fellows though, if I can
help it. Well, gentlemen, there must be some trick
in this ; my sergeant oSers to take his oath that you
are £airly listed.
Tho. Why, captain, we know that you soldiers have
more liberty of conscience than other folks ; but for
me or neiglibour Costar here to take such an oath,
'twould be downright perjuration.
Plume. Look ye, rascal, you villain ! if I find that
you have imposed upon these two honest fellows, I'll
trample you to death, you dog ! Come, how was it ?
Tho. Nay, then, we'll speak. Your sergeant, a^
you say, is a rogue ; an't like your worship, begging
your worship's pardon ; and
Cost. Nay, Tummas, let me speak ; j-ou know I can
read. And so, sir, he gave us those two pieces of
money for pictures of the king, by way of a pre-
sent.
Plume. How? by way of a present ? the rascal ! Ill
teach him to abuse honest fellows like you. Scoun-
drel, rogue, villain !
[Beats off the Sergeant, and follows.
Both. brave noble captain! huzza! A brave
captain, faith !
Cost. Now, Tummas, Carolus is Latin for a beating.'
This is the bravest captain I ever saw. Wounda !
I've a month's mind to go with him.
Enter Plume.
Plume. A dog, to abuse two such honest fellows as
you. Look ye, gentlemen, I love a pretty fellow ; I
come among you as an officer to list soldiers, not as a
kidnapper to steal slaves.
Cost. Mind that, Tummas.
Plume. I desire no man to go with me, but as I
went myself. I went a volunteer, as you or you may
do now ; for a little time carried a musket, and now
1 command a company.
Tho. Mind that, Costar. A sweet gentleman.
Plume. 'Tis true, gentlemen, I might take an ad-
vantage of you ; the king's money was in your pockets
— my sergeant was ready to take his oath you were
listed ; but I scorn to do a base thing ; you are both
of jou at your liberty.
Cost. Thank you, noble captain. Icod, I can't find
in my heart to leave him, he talks so finely.
Tho. Ay, Costar, would he always hold in this mind.
Plume. Come, my lads, one thing more I'll tell
you : you're both young tight fellows, and the army
is the place to make you men for ever : every man has
his lot, and you have yours. What think you of a
purse of French gold out of a monsieur's pocket, after
you have dashed out his brains with the butt end of
your firelock, eh ?
Cost. Wauns! I'll have it. Captain, give me a
shilling ; I'll follow you to the end of the world.
Tho. Nay, dear Costar ! do'na ; be advise I.
Plume. Here, my hero ; here are two guineas for
thee, as earnest of what I'll do farther for thee.
Tho. Do'na take it ; do'na, dear Costar.
[Cries, and pulls back his arm.
Cost. I wull, I wuU. AVaunds ! my mind gives mo
that I shall be a captain myself: I take your money,
sir, and now I am a gentleman.
Plume. Give me thy hand ; and now you and 1
will travel the world o'er, and command it where\<r
we tread. Bring your friend with you, if you can.
[Aside.
Cost. Well, Tummas, must we part ?
Tho. No, Costar; I cannot leave thee. Come, caj.-
tain, I'll e'en go along with you too ; and if you havo
two honester simpler lads in your company than we
two have been, l'!l siiy no more.
Plume. Here, my lad. [Gives Mm, moiuy.'] Now,
your name ?
Tho. Tummas Appletree.
Plume. And yours ?
Cost. Costar Pearmain.
Plume. Well said, Costar. Born where I
Tho. Both in Herefordshire.
601
J
KROM.iesg
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1 T'J,
Plume. Very well. Courage, my lads. Now, wt'll
[SJJtgrjj.] Over the hills and far away ;
Courage, boys, it's one to ten
But we return all gentlemen ;
While conquering colours we display.
Over the hills and far away.
Kite, take care of them.
Enter Kite.
Lite. An't you a couple of pretty fellows, nowl
Here you have complained to the captain ; I am to be
turned out, and one of you will be sergeant, ^\'hich
of you is to have my halberd 1
Both. I.
Kile. So you shall — in your guts. March, you
scoundrels! [Beats them of.
Among the other successful writers for the stage,
maybe instanced Colley Gibber (1671-1757), an
actor and manager, whose comedy, the Careless Hus-
band, is still deservedly a favourite. Gibber was a
lively amusing writer, and his Apology for his Life is
one of the most entertaining autobiographies of the
language. When Pope displaced Theobald, to install
Gibber as hero of the ' Dunciad,' he suffered his judg-
ment to be blinded by personal vindictiveness and
prejudice. Colley Gibber was vain, foolish, and some-
times ridiculous, but never a dunce. Sir Richard
Steele was also a dramatic author, and obtained
from George I. a patent, appointing him manager
and governor of the royal company of comedians.
Steele's play, the Conscious Lovers, combines moral
instruction with amusement, but is rather insipid
and languid both on and off the stage. The Distrest
Mother, translated from Racine, was brought out by
Ambrose Philips, the friend of Addison, and was
highh'- successful. Aaron Hill adapted the Zara
of Voltaire to the English theatre, and wrote some
original dramas, which entitled him, no less than his
poems, to the niche he has obtained in Pope's ' Dun-
ciad.' A more legitimate comic writer appeared in
Mrs Susanna Centlivre (1667-1723), an Irish lady,
•whose life and writings were immoral, but who pos-
sessed considerable dramatic skill and talenv Her
comedies, the Busy Body, The Wonder, a Woman
keeps a Secret, and A Bold Stroke for a Wife, are still
favourite acting plays. Her plots and incidents are
admirably arranged for stage effect, and her charac-
ters well discriminated. Mrs Centlivre had been
some time an actress, and her experience had been
of service to her in writing for the stage.
ESSAYISTS.
HE age now under
notice does not de-
rive greater lustre
from its poets and
comic dramatists,
than from its origi-
nating a new and
peculiar kind of
literature, which
consisted in short
essays on men and
manners, published
periodically. Papers
containing news
had been esta-
blished in London,
and other large
cities, since the
time of the civil
war; but the idea
of issuing a perio-
sheet, commenting on the events of private
life, and the dispositions of ordinary men, was
never before entertained either in England or else-
where. In France, it must be allowed, the cele-
brated Montaigne had published in the sixteenth
century a series of essays, of which manners formed
the chief topic. Still more recently. La Bruyere,
another French author, had published his Charac-
ters, in which tlie artificial life of the court of
Louis XIV. was sketched with minute fidelity, and
the most ingenious sarcasm. But it was now for the
first time that any writer ventured to undertake a
work, in which he should meet the public several
times each week with a brief paper, either discuss-
ing some feature of society, or relating some lively
tale, allegory, or anecdote.
SIR RICHARD STEELE — JOSEPH ADDISON.
The credit of commencing this branch of litera-
ture is due to Sir Richard Steele, a gentleman of
English parentage, born in Ireland wliile his father
acted as secretary to the Duke of Ormond, Lord-
dical
Sir Richard Steele.
Lieutenant of that kingdom. Through the duke s
influence, Steele was placed at the Charter-house
school in London, where a warm and long-continued
friendship between him and Addison took its rise.
He thence removed, in 1692, to Merton college,
Oxford ; but after spending several years in de-
sidtory study, became so enamoured of the military
profession, that, in spite of the dissuasion of his
friends, and his failure to procure an appointment,
he enlisted as a private soldier in the horse-guards.
In this step, by which the succession to a rela-
tion's estate in Wexford was lost, he gave a strik-
ing manifestation of that recklessness which unfor-
tunately distinguished him through life. In the
army, his wit, vivacity, and good humour, speedily
rendered him such a favourite, tliat the officers of
his regiment, desirous to have him among them-
selves, procured for him the rank of an ensign. Tlius
situated, he plunged deeply into the fasliionahle
follies and vices of the age, enlarging, however, by
such conduct, that knowledge of life and character
wliich proved so useful to him in the comi>osition of
his works. During this course of dissipation, being
sometimes visited by qualms of conscience, he drew
up, for the purpose of self-;idmonition, a small treatise
entitled The Christian Hero, and afterwards j)ub-
lished it as a still more powerful check upon his
irregular passions. Yet it does not appear that even
602
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
sin RICHARD STfcELK.
the attention thus drawn to his conduct, and the
ridicule excited by tlie contrast between his prin-
ciples and practice, led to any perceptil)le improve-
ment. In order to enliven his character, and so
diminish the occasion of mirth to his comrades, he
produced, in 1701, a comedy entitled The Funeral,
cr Grief a-Ia-mode, in which, with much humour,
there is combined a moral tendency superior to that
of most of the dramatic pieces of the time. Steele,
though personally too much a rake, made it a prin-
ciple to employ his literary talents only in the service
of virtue. In 170.3, he sent forth another successful
comedy, called The Tender Husband, or The Acco7n-
plished Fools; and in the year following was repre-
sented his third, entitled The Li/ing Lover, the
strain of which proved too serious for the public taste.
The ill success wdiich it experienced deterred him
from again appearing as a dramatist till 1722, when
his adiuirable comedy. The Conscious Lovers, was
brouglit out with unbounded applause. ' Tlie great,
the appropriate praise of Steele,' says I)r lirake,
' is to have been the first who, after the licentious
age of Charles II., endeavoured to introduce the
Virt\ies on the stage. He clothed them with tlie
brilliancy of genius ; he placed them in situations
the most interesting to the human heart ; and
he taught his audience not to laugh at, biit to exe-
crate vice, to despise tlie lewd fool and the witty
rake, to applaud the efforts of the good, and to re-
joice in the pimishment of the wicked.'*
After the failure of ' Tlie Lying Lover,' which,
he says, ' was damned for its piety,' Steele conceived
the idea of attacking the vices and foibles of the age
through the medium of a lively periodical paper.
Accordingly, on the 12th of April 1709, he com-
menced the publication of the Tafler, a small sheet
designed to appear three times a- week, ' to expose.'
as the author stated, 'the false arts of life, to pull off
the disguises of cunning, vanity, and atfectation, and
to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our
discourse, and our behaviour.' Steele, who had then
reached his thirty-eighth year, was qualified for his
task by a knowledge of the world, acquired in free
converse with it, and by a large fund of natural
humour ; his sketches, anecdotes, and remarks, are
accordingly very entertaining. To conciliate the
ordinary readers of news, a part of each paper was
devoted to public and political intelligence ; and the
price of each number was one penny. At first, the
author endeavoured to conceal himself \mder the
fictitious name of Isaac Bickerstaff, which he bor-
rowed from a pamphlet by Swift; but his real name
Boon became known, and his friend Addison then
began to assist him with a few papers upon more
serious subjects than he himself was able or inclined
to discuss, and also, with various articles of a humo-
rous character. When the work had extended to the
271st number, -which was published on the 2d of
January 1711, the editor was induced, by a conside-
ration of the inconvenience of writing such a work
■without personal concealment, to give it up, and to
commence a publication nearly similar in plan, and
in which he might assume a new disguise. This
was the more celebrated Spectator, of which the first
number appeared on the 1st of March 1711. The
' Spectator' was published daily, and each number
was invariably a complete essay, without any ad-
mixture of politics. Steele and Addison were con-
junct in this work from its commencement, and
they obtained considerable assistance from a few
other writers, of whom the chief were Thomas
Tickell, and a gentleman named Budgell. The
greater part of the light and humorous sketches are
* Essays Illustrative of the Tatlor, &c. i. 57.
by Steele; while Addison contributed most of the
articles in Avhich there is any grave rcllectioii or
elevated feeling. ]n tlie course of the work, several
fictitious jiersons were introduced as friends of the
supposed editor, partly for amusement, and i)art]y
for the purpose of quoting them on occasions where
their opinions might be supposed appropriate. Thus,
a country gentleman was described under the name
of Sir Roger de Covcrley, to whom reference was
made -when matters connected with rural afiairs
were in question. A Caj)tain Sentry stood up for
the army ; Will Honeycomb gave law on all things
concerning the gay world ; and Sir Andrew Free-
piirt represented the commercial interest. Of these
characters. Sir Roger was by far the most luqipily
delineated : it is understood that he was entirely a
being of Addison's imagination ; and certainly, in
the whole round of English fiction, there is no cha-
racter delineated with more masterly strokes of
humour and tenderness. The ' Sjiectator,' which,
extended to six hundred and thirt3'-five numbers, or
eight volumes, is not only much superior to the
' Tatler,' but stands at the head of all the works of tlie
same kind that have since been produced ; and, as a
miscellany of polite literature, is not surpassed by
any book whatever. All that regards the smaller
morals and deicncies of life, elegance or justness of
taste, and the improvement of domestic society, is
touched upon in this paper with the happiest com-
bination of seriousness and ridicule : it is also en-
titled to the praise of having corrected the existing
style of writing and speaking on common topics,
which was much vitiated by slang phraseology and
profane swearing. The ' Spectator' appeared every
morning in the shape of a single leaf, and was re-
ceived at the breakfast tables of most persons of
taste then living in the metropolis, and had a large
sale.
During the j-ear 1713, while the publication of the
' Spectator' was temporarily suspended, Steele, with
the same assistance, published the Guardian, which
was also issued daily, and extended to a hundred
and seventy-five numbers, or two volumes. It ranks
in merit between the ' Spectator' and ' Tatler,' and is
enriched by contributions of Pope, Berkeley, and
Budgell. Addison's papers occur almost exclusively
in the second volume, where they are more nume-
rous than those of Steele himself. Of two hundred
and seventy- one papers of which the 'Tatler' is
composed, Steele wrote one hundred and eighty-
eight, Addison forty-two, and both conjointly thirty-
six. Of six hundred and thirty-five ' Sj)ectators,'
Addison wrote two lumdred and seventy-four, and
Steele two hundred and forty. And of one hundred
and seventy-six ' Guardians,' Steele wrote eighty-
two, and Addison fifty-three.
The beneficial influence of these publications on
the morality, piety, manners, and intelligence of the
British people, has been extensive and permanent.
When the ' Tatler' first appeared, the ignorance and
immorality of the great mass of society in England
were gross and disgusting. By the generality of
fashionable persons of both sexes, literary and scien-
tific attainments were desyiised as pedantic and vul-
gar. ' That general knowledge which now circulates
in common talk, was then rarely to be found. . IMen
not professing learning were not ashamed of igno-
rance ; and in the female world, any acquaintance
with books was distinguished only to be censured.'*
Politics formed almost the sole topic of conversation
among the gentlemen, and scandal among the ladies;
swearing and indecency were fashionahle vices;
gaming and drunkenness aboun'k'd ; and the practico
* Johnson's Life of Addison.
603
I ROM 1681
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
of duelling was carried to a most irrational excess.
In the theatre, as well as in society, the corruption of
Charles XL's reign continued to prevail ; and men of
the highest rank were the habitual encouragcrs of
the coarse amusements of bull-baiting, bear-baiting,
and prize-fighting. To the amelioration of this
wretched state of public taste and manners did Steele
and Addison apply themselves with equal zeal and
success, operating by the means thus stated in the
Spectator: — 'I shall endeavour to enliven morality
with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that m^'
readers may, if possible, both ways find their ac-
count in the speculation of the day. And to the
end that their virtue and discretion may not be
short, transient, intermittent starts of thought, I
have resolved to refresh their memories from day to
day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate
state of vice and fully into which the age is fallen.
The mind that lies fallow but a single day, sprouts
up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant
and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates, that
he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit
among men ; I shall be ambitious to have it said of
me, tliat I have brought pliilosophy out of closets
and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs
and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.'
Of the excellent effects produced by the essays of
Steele and Addison, we possess the evidence not
only of the improved state of society and literature
which has since prevailed, but likewise of writers
contemporary witli the authors themselves. All
speak of a decided and marked improvement in so-
ciety and manners.
' Tlie acquisition,' says Dr Drake, ' of a popular
relish for elegant literature, may be dated, indeed,
from the period of the publication of the " Tatler;" to
the progress of this new-formed desire, the " Specta-
tor" and " Guardian" gave fresh acceleration ; nor has
the impulse which was thus received for a moment
ceased to spread and propagate its influence through
every rank of British society. To these papers, in
the department of polite letters, we may ascribe the
following great and never-to-be-forgotten obligations.
They, it may be affirmed, first pointed out, in a
popular way, and with insinuating address, the best
authors of classical antiquity and of modern times,
and infused into the public mind an enthusiasm for
their beauties ; they, calling to their aid the colour-
ing of humour and imagination, effectually detected
the sources of bad writing, and exposed to never-
dying ridicule the puerilities and meretricious deco-
rations of false wit and bloated composition ; they
first rendered criticism familiar and pleasing to the
general taste, and excited that curiosity, that acute-
ness and precision, which have since enabled so many
classes of readers to enjoy, and to appreciate with
judgnient, the various productions of genius and
learning.
To the essays of Addison, in particular, are we
likewise indebted for the formation of a style beyond
all former precedent pure, fascinating, and correct,
that may be said to have effected a revolution in
our language and literature, and which, notwith-
standing all the refinements of modern criticism, is
Btill entitled to the praise of a just and legitimate
model
In trit " Spectator," moreover, was the public first
presented with a specimen of acute analysis in the
papers on the sources and pleasures of the imagina-
tion ; they form a disquisition which, while it in-
structed and delighted the unlearned reader, led the
way, though the arrogance of the literati of the pre-
sent day may disclaim the debt, to what has been
♦ern-ed by modern ostentation philosophical criticism.
T J the circulation of these volumes also may be
ascribed the commencement of a just taste in the
fields of fancy and picturesque beauty. The critique
on Milton, the inimitable ridicule on the Gothic style
of gardening, and the vivid descriptions of rural ele-
gance, the creations either of nature or of art, which
are dispersed through the pages of the " Tatler,"
" Spectator," and " Guardian," soon disseminated
more correct ideas of simplicity in the formation of
landscape, and more attractive views of sublimity
and beauty in the loftier regions of true poetry.
In fact, from the perusal of these essays, that large
body of the people included in the middle class of
society first derived their capability of judging of
the merits and the graces of a refined writer ; and the
nation at large gradually-, from this epoch, became
entitled to the distinguished appellations of literary
and critical. The readers of the " Spectator" had been
thoroughly imbued with the fine enthusiasm for lite-
rature which characterised the genius of Addison ;
they had felt and admired the delicacy, the amenity,
and the purity of his composition, and were soon
able to balance and adjust by comparison the pre-
tensions of succeeding candidates for fame. * *
If in taste and literature such numerous benefits
were conferred upon the people through the medium
of these papers, of still greater importance were the
services which they derived from them in the depart-
ment of manners and morals. Both public and private
virtue and decorum, indeed, received a firmer tone
and finer polish from their precepts and examples ;
the acrimony and malevolence that had hitherto
attended the discussion of political opinion were in
a short time greatly mitigated ; and the talents which
had been almost exclusively occupied by controversy,
were diverted into channels where elegance and learn-
ing mutually assisted in refining and purifying the
passions.'
The success and utility of the ' Tatler,' ' Spectator,'
and ' Guardian,' led to tlie appearance, throughout
the eighteenth century, of many works similar in
form and purpose ; but of these, with the excep-
tion of the Rambler, Adventurer, Idler, World, Con-
noisseur, Mirror, and Lounger, none can be said to
have obtained a place in the standard literature of
our country. Of the productions just named, an ac-
count will be given when we come to speak of the
authors principally concerned in them ; and with
respect to the others, it is sufficient to remark, that
so slender is their general merit, that from forty-
one of the best among them, Dr Drake has been
able to compile only four volumes of papers above
mediocrity.*
Notwithstanding the high excellence which must
be attributed to the ' British Essayists,' as this class
of writings is usually called, it cannot be concealed,
that since the beginning of the present century, tlieir
popularity has undergone a considerable decline.
This, we think, may easily be accounted for. All
that relates in them to temporary fashions and ab-
surdities, is now, for the most part, out of date ;
while many of the vices and rudenesses which they
attack, have either been expelled from good society
by their own influence, or are now fallen into such
general discredit, that any formal exposure of them
appears tedious and unnecessary. Add to this, that
innumerable popular works of distinguished excel-
lence, on the same class of subjects, have appeared
in later times, so that the essayists are no longer in
undisrvi>»d possession of the field which they origi-
nally and v> hATuviTHJilv occupied. Since the age of
* The selection was pubUbh«1 in 1811, under the title of
' The Gleaner; a Series of Pen,vJioia Essays, selected and
arranged from scarce or neglectco '•-Onmfts. By Nathan
Drake, M.D.' 8vo.
604
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR BiCIIARD STEF.LE.
Qaeeii Anne, moreover, tlitre lias come into request
a more vigorous, straightforward, and exciting style
of writing than that of Steele, or even of Addison,
so that the public taste now demands to be stimu-
lated by something more lively and piquant than
what seemed to our grandmothers the ne plus ultra
of agreeable writing. Yet, after making every
abatement, it is certain that there are in these
collections so many admirably written ess9,ys on
subjects of abiding interest and importance — on
characters, virtues, vices, and manners, which will
chequer society while the human race endures —
that a judicious selection can never fail to present
indescribable charms to the man of taste, pietj',
philanthropy, and refinement. In particular, the
humorous productions of Addison, whicli to this
day have never been surpassed. Mill probably main-
tain a popularity coexistent with our language itself.
But to return to the biography of Sir Richard
Steele. While conducting the ' Tatler,' and for
some years previously to its commencement, he
occupied the post of Gazette writer under the Whig
ministry ; and for the support whicli he gave them
in the political department of that work, he was
rewarded in 1710 with an appointment as one of
the commissioners of the Stamp-ofRce. When the
Tories the same j-ear came into power, an attempt
was made to win over his services, by allowing him
to retain office, and holding out hopes of farther
preferment ; but Steele, true to his principles, pre-
served silence on politics for several years, till at
length in the 'Guardian' of 28th April 1713, he
entered into a controversy with a famous Tory
paper called the ' Examiner,' in which Dr Swift at
that time \vrote with great force and virulence. In
this step, the patriotism of Steele prevailed over his
interest, for he shortly afterwards, in a manly letter
to Lord Oxford, resigned the emoluments which he
derived from government. Thus freed from tram-
mels, he entered with the utmost alacrity into poli-
tical warfare, to which he was excited by the danger
that seemed, towards the close of Queen Anne's
reign, to threaten the Protestant succession. Not
content with wielding the pen, he jirocured a seat in
parliament ; from which, however, he was speedily
expelled, in consequence of the freedom with which
he commented on public affairs in one of his pam-
phlets. For these efforts against the Tory party,
he was, on the accession of George I., rewarded with
the post of surveyor to the royal stables at Hampton
court. He obtained once more a seat in parliament,
was knighted by the king, and in 1717 visited
Edinburgh as one of the commissioners of forfeited
estates. While in the northern metropolis, he made
a hopeless attempt to bring about a union of the Eng-
lish and Scotch churches ; and also furnished a proof
of his humorous disposition, by giving a sj)lendid
entertainment to a multitude of beggars and decayed
tradesmen, collected from the streets. Two years
afterwards, he offended the ministry by strenuously
opposing a bill which aimed at fixing permanently
the number of peers, and prohibiting the king from
creating any, except for the purpose of rei)lacing
extinct families. By this proceeding he not only
lost a profitable thea'trical patent which he had en-
joyed for some years, but became embroiled in a
quarrel with his old friend Addison, which arose
during a war of pamphlets, in which Addison took
the side of the ministry. That eminent person for-
got his dignity so far as to sjicak of Steele as ' Little
Dicky, whose trade it was to write pami)hlets ;'
and it is highly creditable to Steele, that, notwith-
standing so gross an insult, he retained both the
feeling and the language of respect for his anta-
gonist, and was content with administering a mild
reproof through the medium of a quotation from the
tragedy of Cato. 'Every reader,' says Dr John-
son, 'surely nmst regret that these two illustri(ju3
friends, after so many yenrs passed in confidence
and endearment, in unity of interest, conformity of
opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part
in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was
bcllnm plusquam civile, as Lucan expresses it. Why
could not faction find other advocates? But among
the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed
to number the instabilities of friendship.'* During
his long intercourse with Addison, Steele, though
completely eclipsed by his friend, never evinced
towards liim tlie slightest symptom of envy or
jealousy, but, on the contrary, seems to have looked
up to him with uniform admiration and respect.
Though Steele realised considerable sums by his
writings, as well as by his places under government,
and the theatrical patent, and farther increased his
resources by marrying a lady of fortune in South
Wales, he was alwa3's at a loss for money, which, it
may be said, he could neither want nor keep. With
many amiable features of character — such as good-
nature, vivacity, candour, urbanity, and affection —
and with a high admiration of virtue in the abstract,
his conduct, as we have seen, was frequently incon-
sistent with tlie rules of propriety — a circumstance
which is attributed in part to his pecuniary embar-
rassments. Being once reproached by Whiston, a
strange but disinterested enthusiast in religion, for
giving a vote in parliament contrary to his former
professed opinions, he replied, ' Mr Whiston, you
can walk on foot, but I cannot ;' a sentiment which,
if serious, certainly laj's him open to the severest
censure. But on various trying occasions, his poli-
tical virtue stood firm ; and it is only justice to
mention, that when his affairs became involved
shortly before his death, he retired into Wales solely
for the purpose of doing justice to his creditors, at
a time when he had the fairest prospect of satisfy-
ing their claims to the uttermost farthing.f He died
at Llangunnor, ne.ar Caermartlien, in 1729. Bv the
Steele's nouse at Llangunnor.
publication of his private correspondence in 1787,
from the originals in the British Museum, his cha-
racter has been exhibited in a very amialJe light,
and it would be difficult to point out any productions
more imbued with tender feeling than the letters
written to his wife, both before and after marriage.
* Life of Addison.
t liee Uibbop Iloadly's works, vol. i p. xii.
eo-
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
In manner as veil as matter, the writings of Steele
are inferior to those of Addison. He aimed only
at giving his papers ' an air of common speech ;' and
though improved by the example of Addison, his
stvie never attained to accuracy or grace. Vivacity
and ease are the highest qualities of his composition.
He had, however, great fertility of invention, both
as respects incident and character. His personages
are drawn with dramatic spirit, and with a liveli-
ness and airy facilit}-, that blinds the reader to his
defects. The Spectator Club, with its fine portraits
of Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport,
"Will Honcj-comb, &c., will ever remain a monument
of the felicity of his fancy, and his power of seizing
upon the shades and peculiarities of character. If
Addison heightened the humour and interest of the
different scenes, to Steele belongs the merit of the
original design, and the first conception of the
actors.
We have already spoken of the prose style of
Addison, and Dr Johnson's eulogium on it has al-
most passed into a proverb in the history of our
literature. ' Whoever wishes,' says the critic and
moralist, ' to attain an English style, familiar but
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must
give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.'
There he will find a rich but chaste vein of humour
and satire — lessons of morality and religion divested
of all austerity and gloom — criticism at once pleas-
ing and profound — and pictures of national character
and manners that must ever charm from their viva-
city and truth. The mind of Addison was so happily
constituted, that all its faculties appear to have been
in healthy vigour and due proportion, and to have
been under the control of correct taste and principles.
Greater energy of character, or a more determined
hatred of vice and tyrann}', would have curtailed
his usefulness as a public censor. He led the nation
gently and insensilily to a love of virtue and consti-
tutional freedom, to a purer taste in morals and litera-
ture, and to the importance of those everlasting
truths which so warmly engaged his heart and ima-
gination. Besides his inimitable essays, Addison
wrote Bemarhs on Several Parts of Italy in the years
1701, 1702, 1703, in which he has considered the
passages of the ancient poets that have any rela-
tion to the places and curiosities he saw. The
style of this early work is remarkable for its order
and simplicity, but seldom rises into eloquence. He
published also Dialoyues on the Usefulness of Ancient
Medals, especially in relation to the Latin and Greek
Poets, a treatise uniting patient research and origi-
nality of thought and conception. Pope addressed
some beautiful lines to Addison on these Dialogues,
in which he has complimented him with his usual
felicity and grace : —
Touched by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine ;
Her gods and godlike heroes rise to view,
And all her faded garlands bloom anew.
Nor blush these studies thy regard engage :
These pleased the fathers of poetic rage ;
The verse and sculpture bore an equal part,
And art reflected images to art.
The learning of Addison is otherwise displayed in
his unfinished treatise on the Evidences of the Chris-
tian Rehgion, in whi(;h he reviews the heathen phi-
los<)i)t)ers and historians who advert to the spread
of Christianity, and also touches on a part of the
subject now more fully illustrated — the fulfilment of
the Scripture prophecies. Tlie Whig Examiners of
Addison are clever, witty, party productions. He
ridicules liis opponents witliout bitterness or malice,
yet with a success that far outstripped competition.
1^ hen we consider that this great ornament of our
literature died at the age of forty-seven, and that
the greater part of his manhood was spent in tlie
discharge of important ofiicial duties, we are equally
surprised at the extent of his learning and the va-
riety and versatility of his genius.
We select the following papers by Steele from the
' Tatler,' ' Spectator,' and ' Guardian.'
[Agreeable Companions and Flatterers.^
An old acquaintance who met me this morning
seemed overjoyed to see me, and told me 1 looked as
well as he had known me do these forty years ; but,
continued he, not quite the man you were when we
visited together at Lady Brightly's. Oh ! Isaac, those
days are over. Do you think there are any such fine
creatures now living as we then conversed with ? lie
went on with a thousand incoherent circumstances,
which, in his imagination, must needs please me ; but
they had the quite contrary effect. The flattery with
which he began, in telling me how well 1 wore, was
not disagreeable ; but his indiscreet mention of a set
of acquaintance we had outlived, recalled ten thou-
sand things to my memory, which made me reflect
upon my present condition with regret. Had he in-
deed been so kind as, after a long absence, to felici-
tate me upon an indolent and easy old age, and men-
tioned how much he and I had to thank for, who at
our time of day could walk firmh% eat heartih', and
converse cheerfully, be had kept up my pleasure in
myself. But of all mankind, there are none so shock-
ing as these injudicious civil people. They ordinarily
begin upon something that they know must be a satis-
faction ; but then, for fear of the imputation of flat-
tery, they follow it with the last thing in the world
of which you would be reminded. It is this that per-
plexes civil persons. The reason that there is such a
general outcry among us against flatterers, is, that
there are so very few good ones. It is the nicest art
in this life, and is a part of eloquence which does not
want the preparation that is necessary to all other
parts of it, that your audience should be your well-
wishers ; for praise from an enemy is the most pleas-
ing of all commendations.
It is generally to be observed, that the person most
agreeable to a man for a constancy, is he that has r.o
shining qualities, but is a certain degree above great
imperfections, whom he can live with as his inferior,
and who will either overlook or not observe his little
defects. Such an easy companion as this, either now
and then throws out a little flattery, or lets a man
silently flatter himself in his superiority to hira. If
you take notice, there is hardly a rich man in the
world who has not such a led friend of small consi-
deration, who is a darling for his insignificancy. It
is a great ease to have one in our own shape a species
below us, and who, witliout being listed in our service,
is by nature of our retinue. These dejiendents are of
excellent use on a rainy day, or when a man has not
a mind to dress ; or to exclude solitude, when one has
neither a mind to that or to company. There are of
this good-natured order who are so kind to divide
themselves, and do these good offices to many. Five
or six of them visit a whole quarter of the towni, and ex-
clude the spleen, without fees, from the families they
frequent. If they do not prescribe physic, they can
be company when you take it. Very great benefactors
to the rich, or those whom they call people at their
ease, are your persons of no consequence. 1 have
known some of them, by the help of a little cunning,
make delicious flatterers. They know the course of tho
town, and the general characters of persons ; by this
means they will sometimes tell the most agreeable
falsehoods imaginable. They will acquaint yon that
such one of a quite contrary party said, that thouirh
you were engaged in dirt'ercnt interests, yet he bad
606
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SIR RICHARD STEELS.
the greatest respect for jour good sense and address.
When one of these has a little cunning, he passes his
time in the utmost satisfaction to himself and his
friends ; for his position is never to report or speak a
displeasing thing to his friend. As for letting him
go on in an error, he knows advice against them is
the office of persons of greater talents and less dis-
cretion.
The Latin word for a flatterer (assentator) implies
no more than a person that barely consents ; and in-
deed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or
maintain him, cannot be bought too dear. Such a
one never contradicts you, but gains upon you, not by
a fulsome way of commending you in broad terms,
but liking whatever you propose or utter ; at the same
time is ready to beg your pardon, and gainsay yoM, if
you chance to speak ill of yourself. An old lady is
very seldom without such a companion as this, who
can recite the names of all her lovers, and the matches
refused by her in the days when she minded such
vanities (as she is pleased to call them, though she so
much approves the mention of them). It is to be
noted, that a woman's flatterer is generally elder than
herself, her years sen'ing to recommend her patroness's
age, and to add weight to her complaisance in all
other particulars.
We gentlemen of small fortunes are extremely
necessitous in this particular. I have, indeed, one
who smokes with me often ; but his parts are so low,
that all the incense he does me is to fill his pipe with
me, and to be out at just as many whiffs as I take.
This is all the praise or assent that he is capable of,
yet there are more hours when I would rather be in
his company than that of the brightest man I know.
It would be a hard matter to give an account of this
inclination to be flattered ; but if we go to the bottom
of it, we shall find that the pleasure in it is something
like that of receiving monev which lay out. Every
man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is
glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him ;
it is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him
in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money is
good. All that we want to be pleased with flattery,
is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us.
It is by this one accident that .absurd creatures often
outrun the most skilful in this art. Their want of
ability is here an advantage, and their bluntness, as
it is the seeming effect of sincerity, is the best cover
to artifice.
Terence introduces a flatterer talking to a coxcomb,
whom he cheats out of a livelihood, and a third per-
son on the stage makes on him this pleasant remark,
* This fellow has an art of making fools madmen.'
The love of flatter}' is indeed sometimes the weakness
of a great mind ; but you see it also in persons who
otherwise discover no manner of relish of anything
above mere sensuality. These latter it sometimes
improves, but alway-s debases the former. A fool is
in himself the object of pity till he is flattered. By
the force of that, his stupidity is raised into affecta-
tion, and he becomes of dignity enough to be ridi-
culous. I remember a droll, that upon one's saying
the times are so ticklish that there must great care
be taken what one says in conversation, answered
with an air of surliness and honesty. If people will be
free, let them be so in the manner that I am, who
never abuse a man but to his face. He had no repu-
tation for saying dangerous truths ; therefore when it
was repeated. You abuse a man but to Ms face ? Yes,
says he, I flatter him.
It is, indeed, the greatest of injuries to flatter any
but the unhappy, or such as are displeased with them-
selves for some infirmity. In this latter case we have
a member of our club, that, when Sir Jeffrey falls
asleep, wakens him with snoring. This makes Sir
Jeffrey hold up for some moments the longer, to see
there are men younger than himself among us, who
are more lethargic than he is.
When flattery is practised upon any other con-
sideration, it is the most abject thing in nature ; nay,
I caimot tliink of any character below the flatterer,
except he that envies him. You meet with fellows
prepared to be as mean as possible in their condescen-
sions and expressions ; but they want persons and
talents to rise up to such a baseness. As a coxcojcb
is a fool of parts, so a flatterer is a knave of parts.
The best of this order that I know, is one who dis-
guises it under a spirit of contradiction or reproof.
He told an arrant driveller the other day, that he
did not care for being in company with him, because
he heard he turned his absent friends into ridicule.
And upon Lady Autumn's disputing with him about
something that happened at the Revolution, he replied
with a very angry tone, Pray, madam, give me leave
to know more of a thing in which I was actually con-
cerned, than you who were then in your nurse's arms.
\^Quack Advertisements.']
It gives me much despair in the design of reforming
the world by my speculations, when I find there
always arise, from one generation to another, succes-
sive cheats and bubbles, as naturally as beasts of prey
and those which are to be their food. There is hardly
a man in the world, one would think, so ignorant as
not to know that the ordinary quack-doctors, who
publish their abilities in little brown billets, distri-
buted to all who pass by, are to a man impostoi-s and
murderers ; yet such is the credulity of the vulsrar,
and the irajiudence of these professors, that the affair
still goes on, and new promises of what was never
done before are made every day. 'What aggravates
the jest is, that even this promise has been made aa
long as the memory of man can trace it, and yet no-
thing performed, and yet still prevails. As I was
passing along to-day, a paper given into my hand by
a fellow without a nose, tells us as follows what good
news is come to to^vn, to wit, that there is now a cer-
tain cure for the French disease, by a gentleman just
come from his travels.
' In Russel Court, over against the Cannon Ball, at
the Surgeons' Arms, in Drury Lane, is lately come
from his travels a surgeon, who hath practised surgery
and physic, both by sea and land, these twenty-four
years. He, by the blessing, cures the yellow jaundice,
green-sickness, scurvy, dropsy, surfeits, long sea voy-
ages, campaigns, kc, as some people that has been
lame these thirty j-ears can testify ; in short, he cureth
all diseases incident to men, women, or children.'
If a man could be so indolent as to look upon this
havoc of the human species which is made by vico
and ignorance, it would be a good ridiculous work ti
comment upon the declaration of this accomplished
traveller. There is something unaccountably taking
among the vulgar in those who come from a great
way otf. Ignorant people of quality, as many there
are of such, dote excessively this way ; many instances
of which every man will suggest to himself, without
my enumeration of them. The ignorants of lowei
order, who cannot, like the upper ones, be profuse of
their money to those reconmiended by coming from a
distance, are no less complaisant than the others ; foi
they venture their lives for the same admiration.
' The doctor is lately come from his travels, and
has practised both by sea and land, and therefore
cures the green-sickness, long sea voyages, and cam
paigns.' Both by sea and land! I will not answe'
for the distempers called ' sea voyages and cam-
paigns,' but I daresay that of green-sickness might
be as well taken care of if tlie doctor stayed asliore.
But the art of managing mankind is only to make
them stare a little to keep up their astoni.shment ;
007
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 1727.
to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have
something in their sleeve, in which they must think
you are deeper than they are. There is an ingenious
fellow, a barber, of my acquaintance, who, besides
his broken fiddle and a dried sea-monster, has a
twine-cord, strained with two nails at each end,
over hia window, and the words, ' rainy, dry, wet,' and
so forth, ivritten to denote the weather, according to
the rising or falling of the cord. We very great scho-
lai-s are not apt to wonder at this ; but I observed a
very honest fellow, a chance customer, who sat in the
chair before me to be shaved, fix his eye upon this
miraculous performance during the operation upon
his .chin and face. When those and his head also
were cleared of all incumbrances and excrescences, he
looked at the fish, then at the fiddle, still grubling in
his pockets, and casting his eye again at the twine,
and the words writ on each side ; then altered his
mind as to farthings, and gave my friend a silver six-
pence. The business, as I said, is to keep up the
amazement ; and if my friend had only the skeleton
and kit, he must have been contented with a less
payment. But the doctor we were talking of, adds to
his long voyages the testimony of some people ' that
has been thirty years lame.' When I received my
paper, a sagacious fellow took one at the same time,
and read until he came to the thirty years' confine-
ment of his friends, and went off very well convinced
of the doctor's sufficiency. You have many of these
prodigious persons, who have had some extraordinary
accident at their birth, or a great disaster in some
part of their lives. Anything, however foreign from
the business the people want of you, will convince
them of your ability in that you- profess. There is a
doctor in Mouse Alley, near Wapping, who sets up
for curing cataracts upon the credit of having, as his
bill sets forth, lost an eye in the emperor's service.
His patients come in upon this, and he shows his
muster-roll, which confirms that he was in his impe-
rial majesty's troops ; and he puts out their eyes with
great success. Who would believe that a man should
be a doctor for the cure of bursten children, by declar-
ing that his father and grandfather were born bursten ?
But Charles Ingoltson, next door to the Harp in Bar-
bican, has made a pretty penny by that asseveration.
The generality go upon their first conception, and
think no further ; all the rest is granted. They take
it that there is something uncommon in you, and give
you credit for the rest. You may be sure it is upon
that I go, when, sometimes, let it be to the purpose or
not, I keep a Latin sentence in my front ; and 1 was
not a little pleased when I observed one of my readers
say, casting his eye on my twentieth paper, ' More
Latin still ? What a prodigious scholar is this man !'
But as I have here taken much liberty with this
learned doctor, I must make up all I have said by
repeating what he seems to be in earnest in, and
honestly promise to those who will not receive him as
a great man, to wit, ' That from eight to twelve, and
from two till six, he attends for the good of the public
to bleed for threepence.'
[Story-Telling.]
Tom Lizard told us a story the other day, of some
persons which our family know very well, with so much
humour and life, that it caused a great deal of mirth
at the tea-table. His brother Will, the Teni])lar, was
highly delighted with it ; and the next day being
with some of his Inns-of-court acquaintance, resolved
(whether out of the benevolence or the pride of his
heart, I will not detcnuine) to entertain them with
what he called 'a pleasant humour enough.' I was
in great pain for him when I heard him begin ; and
wa.s not at all surprised to find the company very little
novcd by it. Will blushed, looked round the room,
and with a forced laugh, ' Faith, gentlemen,' said he,
' I do not know what makes you look so grave : it was
an admirable story when I heard it.'
When I came home, I fell into a profound contem-
plation upon story-telling, and, as 1 have nothing so
much at heart as the good of my country, I resolved
to lay down some precautions upon this subject.
I have often thought that a story-teller is bom, as
well as a poet. It is, I think, certain that some men
have such a peculiar cast of mind, that they see things
in another light than men of grave dispositions. !Men
of a lively imagination and a mirthful temper will
represent things to their hearers in the same manner as
they themselves were affected with them ; and whereas
serious spirits might perhaps have been disgusted at
the sight of some odd occurrences in life, yet the very
same occurrences shall please them in a well-told
story, where the disagreeable parts of the images are
concealed, and those only which are pleasing exhibited
to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art,
but what we call a ' knack ;' it doth not so much
subsist upon wit as upon humour; and I will add,
that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of
the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions
of the mind. I know very well that a certain gra-
vity of countenance sets some stories off to advantage,
where the hearer is to be surprised in the end. But
this is by no means a general rule ; for it is frequently
convenient to aid and assist by cheerful looks and
whimsical agitations. I will go yet further, and affirm
that the success of a story very often depends upon
the make of the body, and the formation of the fea-
tures, of him who relates it. I have been of this opi-
nion ever since I criticised upon the chin of Dick
Dewlap. I very often had the weakness to repine at
the prosperity of his conceits, which made him pass
for a wit with the widow at the coffee-house, and the
ordinary mechanics that frequent it ; nor could I
myself forbear laughing at them most heartily, though
upon examination 1 thought most of them very fiat
and insipid. I found, after some time, that the merit
of his wit was founded upon the shaking of a fat
paunch, and the tossing up of a pair of rosy jowLs.
Poor Dick had a fit of sickness, which robbed him of
his fat and his fame at once ; and it was full three
months before he regained his reputatipn, which rose
in proportion to his floridity. He is now very jolly
and ingenious, and hath a good constitution for wit.
Those who are thus adorned with the gifts of nature,
are apt to show their parts with too nmch ostentation.
I would therefore advise all the professors of this art
never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of
the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they serve
to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very com-
mon are generally irksome ; but may be aptly intro-
duceil, provided they be only hinted at and mentioned
by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new,
should never be ushered in without a short and perti-
nent character of the chief persons concerned, because,
by that means, you may make the comj)any acquainted
with them ; and it is a certain rule, that slight and
trivial accounts of those who are familiar to us, ad-
minister more mirth than the brightest points of wit
in unknown characters. A little circumstance in
the complexion or dress of the man you are talking
of, sets his image before the hearer, if it be chosen
aptly for the story. Thus, I remember Tom Lizard,
after having made his sisters meiry with an account
of a formal old man's way of complimenting, owned
very frankly that his story would not have been worth
one farthing, if he had made the hat of hini whom he
represented one inch narrower. Besides the marl<!ng
distinct characters, and selecting pertinent circum-
stances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time,
and end smartly ; so that there is a kind of drama
in the forming of a story ; and the manner of con-
600
KMJLIM 1 LJ TEJIATUKE.
ducting and pointing it is the same as in an fpii;iani.
It is a miserable thinjr, after one hath raised tlie ex-
pectation of tlie company by humorous character*
and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far.
There is no retreating ; and how poor is it for a story-
teller to end his relation by saying, ' That's all !'
As the choosing of pertinent circumstances is the
life of a story, and that wherein humour principally
consists, so the collectors of impertinent i)articulars
are the very bane and opiates of conversation. Old
men are great transgressors this way. Poor Ned
Poppy — he's gone ! — was a very honest man, but was
so excessively tedious over his pipe, that he was not
to be endured. He knew so exactly what they had
for dinner when such a thing happened, in what
ditch his bay horse had his sprain at that time, and
how his man John — no, it was William — started a
hare in the common field, that he never got to the
end of his tale. Then he was extremely particular
in marriages and intermarriages, and cousins twice
or thrice removed, and whether such a thing hap-
pened at the latter end of July or the beginning of
August. He had a marvellous tendency likewise to
digressions ; insomuch, that if a considerable person
was mentioned in his story, he would straightway
launch out into an episode of him ; and again, if in
that person's story he had occasion to remember a
third man, he broke off, and gave us his history, and
so on. He alwaj-s put me in mind of what Sir William
Temple informs us of the tale-tellers in the north of
Ireland, who are hired to tell stories of giants and
enchanters to lull people asleep. These historians
are obliged, by their bargain, to go on without stop-
ping ; so that after the patient hath, by this benefit,
enjoyed a long nap, he is sure to find the operator
proceeding in his wo-k. Ned procured the like effect
in me the last time 1 was with him. As he was in
the third hour of hi> story, and very thankful that
his memory did not fail him, I fiiirly nodded in the
zlbow chair. He was much affronted at this, till I
Lid him, 'Old friend, you have your infirmity, and
I have mine.'
But of all evils in story-telling, the humour of tell-
ing tales one after another in great numbers, is the
least supportable. Sir Harry Pandolf and his son
gave my Lady Lizard great oifence in this particular.
Sir Harry hath what they call a string of stories, which
he tells over every Christmas. When our family visits
there, we are constantly, after su iper, entertained with
the Glastonburv Thorn. When we have wondered at
that a little, 'Ay, but father,' saith the son, ' let us
have the Spirit in the Wood.' After that hath been
laughed at, ' Ay, but father,' cries the booby again,
' tell us how you served the robber.' ' Alack-a-day,'
saith Sir Harry with a smile, and rubbing his fore-
head, ' I have almost forgot that, but it is a plea-
sant conceit to be. sure.' Accordingly he tells that
and twenty more in the same independent order, and
without the least variation, at this daj', as he hath
done, to my knowledge, ever since the Revolution. I
must not forget a very odd compliment that Sir Harry
always makes my lady when he dines here. After
dinner he says, with a feigned concern in his coun-
tenance, ' Madam, I have lost by you to-day.' ' How
so. Sir Harry V replies my lady. ' Madam,' says he, ' I
have lost an excellent appetite.' At this his son and
heir laughs immoderately, and winks upon Mrs Anna-
bella. This is the thirty-third time that Sir Harry
hath been thus arch, and I can bear it no longer.
As the telling of stories is a great help and life to
conversation, I always encourage them, if they are
pertinent and innocent, in opposition to those gloomy
mortals who disdain everything but matter of fact.
Those grave fellows are my aversion, who sift every-
thing with the utmost nicety, and find the malignity
of a lie in a piece of humour pushed a little beyond
exact truth. I likewise have a poor opinion of those
who have got a trick of keeping a steadv countenance,
th.at cock their hats and look glum when a ].leasant*
thing is said, and ask, ' Well, and what then !' Men
of wit and parts should treat one another with bene-
volence ; and I will lay it down as a maxim, that if
you seem to have a good opinion of another man's
wit, he will allow you to have judgment.
Having given these samples of Steele's composi-
tion, we now add some of the best of Addison's
pieces • —
[T/ie Political Ujfhohterer.]
There lived some years since, within my neighbour-
hood, a very grave person, an ui)ho!sterer, who'seemed
a man of more than ordinary ajiplication to business.
He was a very early riser, and was often abroad two
or three hours before any of his neighbours. He had
a particular carefulness in the knitting of his brows,
and a kind of impatience in all his motions, that
plainly discovered he was always intent on matters of
importance. Upon my inquiry into his life and con-
versation, I found him to be the greatest newsmonger
in our quarter ; that he rose before day to read The
Postman ; and that he would take two or three turns
to the other end of the to\vn before his neighboure
were up, to see if there were any Dutch mails come
in. He had a wife and several children ; but was
much more inquisitive to know what passed in Poland
than in his own family, and was in greater pain and
anxiety of mind for King Augustus's welfare than that
of his nearest relations. He looked extremely thin in
a dearth of news, and never enjoyed himself in a
westerly wind. This indefatigable kind of life was
the ruin of his shop ; for about the time that his
favourite prince left the crown of Poland, he broke
and disappeared.
This man and his affairs had been long out of mv
mind, till about three days ago, as I was walking- iii
St James's Park, I heard somebody at a distance
hemming after me : and who should it be but my old
neighbour the upholsterer ? I saw he was reduced to
extreme i)overty, by certain shabby superfluities in
his dress ; for notwithstanding that it was a very
sultry day for the time of the year, he wore a loose
greatcoat and a muff, with a long campaign wi" out
of curl ; to which he had added the ornament of a
pair of black garters buckled under the knee. TJpon
his coming up to me, I was going to inquire into his
present circumstances, but was prevented by his
asking me, with a whisper, whether the last letters
brought any accounts that one might rely upon from
Bender 1 I told hiin, none that I heard of; and
asked him whether he had yet married his eldest
daughter ? He told me no : But pray, says he, tell
me sincerely, what are your thoughts of the kin"- of
Sweden ? for though his wife and children v.ere
starving, I found his chief concern at present was for
this great monarch. 1 told him, that I looked upon
him as one of the first heroes of the .age. But pray,
says he, do you think there is anj-lhing in the story
of his wound I And finding me surj)rised at the ques-
tion, Nay, says he, I only j)ropose it to you. I an-
swered, that I thought there Mas no reason to doubt
of it. But why in the heel, says he, more tha^i in any
other part of the body? Because, said I, the bullet
chanced to light there.
This extraordinary dialogue was no sooner ended,
but he began to launch out into a long dissertaiion
upon the affairs of the north ; and after having spent
some time on them, he told me lie was in a great j er-
j)lexity how to reconcile tlie Supplement witli the
English Post, and Jiad been just now examining what
the other papers say upon the same subject. The
GOD
40
FROM 1689
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1727.
Divily Courant, says he, has these words, We have ad-
vices from very good hands, that a certain prince has
some matters of great importance under consideration.
This is very mysterious ; but the Postboy leaves us more
in the dark, for he tells us that there are private in-
timations of measures taken by a certain prince, which
time ^vill bring to light. Now the Postman, says he,
■who used to be ver}' clear, refers to the same news in
these words : The late conduct of a certain prince
affords great matter of speculation. This certain
prince, says the upholsterer, whom they are all so
cautious of naming, I take to be . Upon
which, though there was nobody near us, he whispered
something in my ear, which I did not hear, or think
worthy my while to make him repeat.*
We were now got to the upper end of the Mall,
where were three or four very odd fellows sitting to-
gether upon the bench. These I found were all of
them politicians, who used to sun themselves in that
place every day about dinner time. Observing them
to be curiosities in their kind, and my friend's ac-
quaintance, 1 sat down among them.
The chief politician of the bench was a great asserter
of paradoxes. He told us, with a seeming concern,
that by some news he had lately read from ^Muscovy,
it appeared to him that there was a storm gathering
in the Black Sea, which might in time do hurt to the
naval forces of this nation. To this he added, that
for his part he could not wish to see the Turk driven
out of Europe, which he believed could not but be
prejudicial to our woollen manufacture. He then
told us, that he looked upon the extraordinary re-
volutions which had lately happened in those parts
of the world, to have risen chiefly from two persons
who were not much talked of ; and those, says he, are
Prince MenzikofF and the Duchess of Mirandola. He
backed his assertions with so many broken hints, and
such a show of depth and wisdom, that we gave our-
selves up to his opinions.
The discourse at length fell upon a point which
seldom escapes a knot of true born Englishmen :
Whether, in case of a religious war, the Protestants
would not be too strong for the Papists ? This we
unanimously determined on the Protestant side. One
who sat on my right hand, and, as I found by his dis-
course, had been in the West Indies, assured us, that
it would be a very easy matter for the Protestants to
beat the pope at sea ; and added, that whenever such
a war does break out, it must turn to the good of the
Leeward Islands. Upon this, one who sat at the end
of the bench, and, as I afterwards found, was the geo-
grapher of the company, said, that in case the Papists
should drive the Protestants from these parts of
Europe, when the worst came to the worst, it would
be impossible to beat them out of Norway and Green-
land, provided the northern crowns hold together, and
the Czar of Muscovy stand neuter.
He further told us for our comfort, that there were
vast tracts of lands about the pole, inhabited neither
by Protestants nor Papists, and of greater extent than
all the Roman Catholic dominions in Europe.
When we had fully discussed this point, my friend
the upholsterer began to exert himself upon the pre-
sent negotiations of peace, in which he deposed princes,
settled the bounds of kingdoms, and balanced the
power of Europe, with great justice and impartiality.
I at length took my leave of the company, and was
going away ; but had not gone thirty yards, before
the upholsterer hemmed again after me. Upon his
advancing towards me with a whisper, I expected to
hear some secret piece of news, which he had not
thought fit to communicate to the bench; but instead
of that, he desired me in my ear to lend him half-a-
♦ The prince Inre alluded to so mysteriously was the 60-caUed
•retender, Jamol Stuart, son of King Jaraes LL
crown. In compassion to so needy a statesman, and
to dissipate the confusion I found he was in, I told
him, if he pleased I would give him five shillings, to
receive five pounds of him when the great Turk was
driven out of Constantinople ; which he very readily
accepted, but not before he had laid down to me the
impossibility of such an event, as the affairs of Europe
now stand.
[The Vision of MirzaJ]
When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several
oriental manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among
others I met with one entitled ' The Visions of Mirza,'
which I have read over with great pleasure. I intend
to give it to the public when I have no other enter-
tainment for them, and shall begin with the first
vision, which I have translated word for word as fol-
lows : —
On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to
the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy,
after having washed m3'self, and offered up my morn-
ing devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in
order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and
prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of
the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation
on the vanity of human life ; and passing from one
thought to another, Surely, said I, man is but a sha-
dow, and life a dream. Whilst I was thus musing, I
cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was
not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit
of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his
hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his
lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was
exceedingly sweet, and wrought into a variety of
tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and alto-
gether different from anything I had ever heard. They
put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played
to the departed souls of good men upon their tirst
arrival in paradise, to wear out the im{)ressions of tlie
last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of
that happy place. ^ly heart melted away in secret
raptures.
I had been often told that the rock before me was
the haunt of a genius, and that several had been en-
tertained with music who had passed by it, but never
heard that the musician had before made himself
visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those
transporting airs which he played, to taste the plea-
sures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like
one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving
of his hand, directed me to approach the place where
he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due
to a superior nature ; and as my heart was entirely
subdued by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell
down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon
me witli a look of compassion and affability that fami-
liarised him to my imagination, and at once dis-
pelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I
approached him. He lifted me from the ground,
and taking me by the hand, ' Mirza,' said he, * I
have heard thee in thy soliloquies ; follow me.'
He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock,
and placing me on the top of it, ' Cast thine eyes e:ist-
ward,' said he, ' and tell me what thou seest.' ' I
see,' said I, ' a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of
water rolling through it.' ' The valley that thou
seest,' said he, ' is the vale of misery, and the tide
of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of
eternity.' ' What is the reason,' said I, ' that the
tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and
again loses itself in a thick mist at the other ?'
' What thou seest,' said he, ' is that portion of
eternity which is called Time, measured out by the
sun, and reaching from the beginning of tlie world to
its consummaiioii. Examine now,' said he, ' this
610
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and
tell me what thou discoverest in it.' 'I see a
bridge,' said I, ' standing in the midst of the tide'
* The bridge thou seest,' said he, ' is Human Life ;
consider it attentively.' Upon a more leisurely sur-
vey of it, I found that it consisted of threescore and
ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which,
added to those that were entire, made up the number
to about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the
genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a
thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away
the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition
I now beheld it. ' But tell me further,' said he,
' what thou discoverest on it.' ' I see multitudes of
people passing over it,' said I, ' and a black clou<l
hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more atten-
tively, I saw several of the passengers dropping
through the bridge into the great tide that flowed
underneath it ; and upon further examination, per-
ceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay
concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no
sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the
tide, and immediately disappeared. These hidden
pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the
bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke
through the cloud, but many of them fell into them.
They grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied
and lay closer together towards the end of the arches
that were entire.
There were indeed some persons, but their number
was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling
march on the broken arches, but fell through one
after another, being quite tired and spent with so
long a walk.
I passed some time in the contemplation of this
wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects
which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep
melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in
the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at every-
thing that stood by them to save themselves. Some
were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful
posture, and, in the midst of a speculation, stumbled,
and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in
the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and
danced before them ; but often when they thought
themselves within the reach of them, their footing
failed, and down they sank. In this confusion of
objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands,
and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the
bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which
did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might
have escaped had they not been thus forced upon
them.
The genius seeing me indulge myself on this melan-
choly prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon
it. ' Take thine eyes off" the bridge,' said he, ' and
tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not com-
prehend.' Upon looking up, ' What mean,' said I,
' those great flights of birds that are perpetually
hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from
time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cor-
morants, and, among many other feathered creatures,
several little winged boys, that perch in great num-
bers upon the middle arches.' ' These,' said the
genius, ' are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair,
Love, with the like cares and passions that infest
Human Life.'
I here fetched a deep sigh. ' Alas,' said I, ' man
was made in vain! — how is he given away to misery
and mortality! — tortured in life, and swallowed up
in death!' Tha genius being moved with compassion
towards me, bade me quit so uncomfortable a prospect.
• Look no more,' said he, ' on man in the first stage
of his existence, in his setting out for eteniity, but cast
thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears
the several generations of mortals that fall into it.'
I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether
or no the good genius strengthened it with any super-
natural force, or dissipated part of the mist tliat was
before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the
valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth
into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of ada-
niant running through the midst of it, and dividing
it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on
one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing
in it ; but the other appeared to me a vast ocean
planted with innumerable islands that were covered
with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thou-
sand little shining seas that ran among them. I
could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with
garlands upon their heads, juissing among the trees,
lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on
beds of flowers, and could hear a confused harmony
of singing birds, falling waters, hiinum voices, and
musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the
discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the
wings of an eagle that I might fly away to those happy
seats, but the genius told me there was no passage
to them except through the Gates of Death that I
saw opening every moment upon the bridge. ' The
islands,' said he, ' that lie so fresh and green before
thee, and with which the whole f.ice of the ocean
appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in
number than the sands on the sea-shore ; there are
myriads of islands behind those which thou here dis-
coverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine
imagination, can extend itself. These are the man-
sions of good men after death, who, according to the
degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are
distributed among these sevsial islands, which abound
with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable
to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled
in them. Every island is a pj»radise accommodated to
its respective inhabitants. Are not these, Mirza !
habitations worth contending for? Does life appear
miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning
such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will con-
vey thee to so happy an existence ? Think not man
was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved
for him.' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on
these happy islands. At length, said T, ' Show me
now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under
those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other
side of the rock of adamant.' The genius making
me no answer, I turned about to address myself to
him a second time, but I found that he had left me.
I then turned again to the vision which I had been
so long contemplating, but instead of the rolling tide,
the arched bridge, and the ha])])y islamls, I saw no-
thing but the long hollow valley of Ragdat, with
oxen, sheep, and camels, grazing upon the sides of it.
[Sir Roger Dc Covcrleifs Visit to Westminster Abbey.}
My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me the othe.
night that he had been reading my paper upon
Westminster Abbey, ' in which,' says he, ' tliere are a
great many ingenious fancies.' He told lue, at the
same time, that he observed I had promised another
paper u])on the tombs, and that he should be glad to
go and see them with me, not havim: visited them
since he had read history. I could not at first ima-
gine how this came into the knight's liead, till I
recollected that he had been very busy all last sum-
mer upon Raker's Chronicle, which he has quoted
several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Free-
port since his last coining to town. Accordingly, I
promised to call upon him the next morning, that wo
might go together to the abbey
I found the knight under the butler's har ds «h..
always .shaves him. He was no sooner dr.-<> .-.1. \]\ku
he called for a glass of the widvw 'I'minV. wattr,
Oil
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727.
which he told me he always drank before he went
abroad. He recommended to me a dram of it at the
same time, with so much heartiness, that I could not
forbear drinking it. As soon as 1 had got it down, I
found it very unpalatable ; upon which the knight,
observing that I had made several wry faces, told me
that he knew I should not like it at first, but that it
was the best thing in the world against the stone or
gravel.
I could have wished, indeed, that he had acquainted
me with the virtues of it sooner ; but it was too late
to complain, and I knew what he had done was out
of good will. Sir Roger told me further, that he
looked upon it to be very good for a man whilst he
stayed in town, to keep off infection, and that he got
together a quantity of it upon the first news of the
sickness being at Dantzic : when of a sudden, turning
short to one of his servants, who stood behind him, he
bade him call a hackney-coach, and take care that it
was an elderly man that drove it.
He then resumed his discourse upon Mrs Truby's
water, telling me that the widow Truby was one who
did more good than all the doctors and apothecaries
in the country ; that she distilled every poppy that
grew within five miles of her ; that she distributed
her medicine gratis among all sorts of people ; to
which the knight added, that she had a very great
jointure, and that the whole country would fain have
it a match between bini and her; ' and truly,' says
Sir Roger, ' if I had not been engaged, perhaps I could
not have done better.'
His discourse was broken off by liis man's telling
him he had called a coach. Upon our going to it,
after having cast his eye upon the wheels, he asked
the coachman if his axletree was good. Upon the
fellow's telling him he would warrant it, the knight
turned to me, told me he looked like an honest man,
and went in without further ceremony.
We had not gone far, when Sir Roger, popping out
his head, called the coachman do\vn from his box, and
upon presenting himself at the window, asked him if
he smoked. As I was considering what this would
end in, he bade him stop by the way at any good
tobacconist's, and take in a roll of the best Virginia.
Nothing material happened in the remaining part of
our journey, till we were set down at the west end of
the abbey.
As we went up the body of the church, the knight
pointed at the trophies upon one of the new monu-
ments, and cried out, ' A brave man, I warrant him !'
Passing afterwards by Sir Cloudesley Shovel, he flung
his head that way, and cried, ' Sir Cloudesley Shovel !
a very gallant man !' As we stood before Busby's
tomb, the knight uttered himself again after the same
manner, ' Dr Rusby ! a great man ! he whipped my
grandfather ; a very great man ! I should have gone
to him myself, if 1 had not been a blockhead ; a very
great man!'
We were immediately conducted into the little
chapel on the right hand. Sir Roger, planting him-
self at our historian's elbow, was very attentive to
everything he said, i)articularly to the account he
gave us of the lord who had cut off the king of Mo-
rocco's head. Among several other figures, he was
very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil upon his
knees ; and concluding them all to be great men, was
conducted to the figure which represents that martyr
to good housewifery, who died by the prick of a needle.
Upon our interjjreter's telling us that she was a maid
of honour to Queen Elizabeth, the kniglit was very
inquisitive into her name and family ; and after hav-
ing regarded her finger for some time, ' I wonder,'
says lie, ' that Sir Rich.ard Baker has said nothing of
her in his Chronicle.'
W- were then conveyed to the two coronation
ibairs, where my old friend, after having heard that
the stone underi-cath the most ancient of them, which
was brought from Scotland, was called .Jacob's pillar,
sat himself down in the chair ; and looking like the
figure of an old Gothic king, asked our interpreter,
' what authority they had to say that Jacob had ever
been in Scotland V The fellow, instead of returning
him an answer, told him ' that he hoped his honour
would pay his forfeit.' I could observe Sir Roger a little
ruffled upon being thus trepanned ; but our guide not
insisting upon his demand, the knight soon recovered
his good humour, and whispered in my ear, that ' if
Will Wimble were with us, and saw those two chairs,
it would go hard but he would get a tobacco-stopper
out of one or t'other of them.'
Sir Roger, in the next place, laid his hand upon
Edward III.'s sword, and leaning upon the pommel
of it, gave us the whole history of the Black Prince ;
concluding, that in Sir Richard Baker's opinion, Ed-
ward III. was one of the greatest princes that ever
sat upon the English throne.
We were then sho^vn Edward the Confessor's tomb ;
upon which Sir Roger acquainted us, that ' he was
the first who touched for the evil :' and afterwards
Henry IV. 's ; upon which he shook his head, and told
us ' there was fine reading in the casualties of that
reign.'
Our conductor then pointed to that monument
where there is the figure of one of our English kings
without a head ; and upon giving us to know that
the head, w-hich was of beaten silver, had been stolen
away several years since ; ' Some Whig, I'll warrant
you,' says Sir Roger ; ' you ought to lock up your
kings better ; they will carry oft" the body too, if you
do not take care.'
The glorious names of Henry V. and Queen Eliza-
beth gave the knight great opportunities of shining,
and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, ' who,' as
our knight observed with some surprise, ' had a great
many kings in him, whose monuments he had not
seen in the abbey.'
For my o>vn part, I could not but be pleased to sea
the knight show such an honest passion for the glory
of his country, and such a respectful gratitude to the
memory of its princes.
I must not omit, that the benevolence of my good
old friend, which flows out towards every one he con-
verses with, made him very kind to our interpreter,
whom he looked upon as an extraordinary man ; for
which reason he shook him by the hand at parting,
telling him that he should be very glad to s'>e him
at his lodgings in Norfolk Buildings, and talk ovei
these matters with him more at leisure.
{The Woi-Tcs of Creation.]
I was yesterday about sunset walking in the open
fields, until the night insensibly fell upon me. I at
first amused myself with all the richness and variety
of colours which appeared in the western parts of
heaven. In proportion as they faded away and went
out, several stars and planets appeared one after
another, until the whole firmament was in a glow.
The Hueness of the ether vi'as exceedingly heightened
and enlivened by the season of the year, and by the
rays of all those luminaries that passed through it.
The galaxy appeared in its most beautiful white. To
complete the scene,'' the full moon rose at length in
that clouded majesty which Milton takes notice of,
and opened to the eye a new picture of nature, which
was more finely shaded, and disposed among softer
lights, than that which the sun had before discovered
to us.
As I was surveying the moon walking in her bright-
ness, and taking her progress among the constella-
tions, a thought rose in me which I believe veiy often
perplexes and disturbs men of serious and contuni-
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
plative natures. David himself fell into it in that
reflection : ' When I consider the heavens the work of
thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast
ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him,
ana the son of man that thou regardest him !' In the
same manner, when I considered that infinite host of
stars, or, to speak more philosophically, of suns, which
were then shining upon me, with those iimumerable
seta of planets or worlds which were moving round
their respective suns — when I still enlarged the idea,
and supposed another heaven of suns and worlds
rising still above this which we discovered, and these
still enlightened by a superior firmament of lumi-
naries, which are planted at so great a distance, that
they may appear to the inhabitants of the former as
the stars do to us — in short, while I pursued this
thought, I could not but reflect on that little insig-
nificant figure which I myself bore amidst the im-
mensity of God's works.
Were the sun which enlightens this part of the
creation, with all the host of planetary worlds that
move about him, utterly extinguished and annihi-
lated, they would not be missed more than a gi-ain of
sand upon the sea-shore. The space they possess is
so exceedingly little in comparison of the whole, that
it vrould scarce make a blank in the creation. The
chasm would be imperceptible to an eye that could
take in the whole compass of nature, and pass from
one end of the creation to the other ; as it is possible
there may be such a sense in ourselves hereafter, or in
creatures which are at present more exalted than our-
selves. We see many stars by the help of glasses
which we do not discover with our naked eyes ; and
the finer our telescopes are, the more still are our
discoveries. Huygenius carries this thought so far,
that he does not think it impossible there may be
stars whose light has not yet travelled down to us since
their first creation. There is no question but the
universe has certain bounds set to it ; but when we
consider that it is the work of infinite power prompted
by infinite goodness, with an infinite space to exert
itself in, how can our imagination set any bounds to
it?
To return, therefore, to my first thought ; I could
not but look upon myself with secret horror as a being
that was not worth the smallest regard of one who
had so great a work under his care and superinten-
dency. I was afraid of being overlooked amidst the
immensity of nature, and lost among that infinite
variety of creatures which in all probability swarm
through all these immeasurable regions of matter.
In order to recover myself from this mortifying
thought, I considered that it took its rise from those
narrow conceptions which we are apt to entertain of
the divine nature. We ourselves cannot attend to
many different objects at the same time. If we are
careful to inspect some things, we must of course
neglect others. This imperfection which we observe
in ourselves is an imperfection that cleaves in some
degree to creatures of the highest capacities, as they
are creatures ; that is, beings of finite and limited
natures. The presence of every created being is con-
fined to a certain measure of space, and consequently
his observation is stinted to a certain number of
objects. The sphere in which we move, and act, and
understand, is of a wider circumference to one crea-
ture than another, according as we rise one above
another in the scale of existence. But the widest of
these our spheres has its circumference. When, there-
fore, we reflect on the divine nature, we are so usei
and accustomed to this imperfection in ourselves, tha,
we cannot forbear in some measure ascribing it feo Him
in whom there is no shadow of imperfection. Our
reason indeed assures us that his attributes are in-
finite ; but the poorness of our conceptions is such,
that it cannot forbear setting bounds to everything it
contemplates, until our reason comes again to our
succour, and throws down all those little prejudices
wliich rise in us unawares, and are natural to the
mind of man.
We shall, therefore, utterly extinguish this melan-
choly thought of our being overlooked by our Maker,
in the multiplicity of his works and the infinity of
those objects among which he seems to be incessantly
employed, if we consider, in the first place, that he is
omnipresent ; and, in the second, that he is omni-
scient.
If we consider him in his omnipresence, his being
passes through, actuates, and supports the whole
frame of nature. His creation, and every part of it,
is full of him. There is nothing he has made that is
either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which
he does not essentially inhabit. His substance is
within the substance of every being, whether material
or immaterial, and as intimately present to it as that
being is to itself. It would be an imperfection Ln
him were he able to remove out of one place into an-
other, or to withdraw himself from anything he has
created, or from any part of that space which is dif-
fused and spread abroad to infinity. In short, to
speak of him in the language of the old philosopher,
he is a being whose centre is everywhere, and his cir-
cumference nowhere.
In the second place, he is omniscient as well as
omnipresent. His omniscience, indeed, necessarily
and naturally flows from his omnipresence : he can-
not but be conscious if every motion that arises in
the whole material vorld, which he thus essentially
pervades ; and of every thought that is stirring in the
intellectual world, to every part of which he is thus
intimately united. Several moralists have considered
the creation as the temple of God, which he has built
with his own hands, and which is filled with his pre-
sence. Others have considered infinite space as the
receptacle, or rather the habitation, of the Almighty.
But the noblest and most exalted way of considering
this infinite space is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who
calls it the sensorium of the Godhead. Brutes and
men have their sensoriola, or little sensoriums, by
which they apprehend the presence and perceive the
actions of a few objects that lie contiguous to them.
Their knowledge and obsen-ation turn within a very
narrow circle. But as God Almighty cannot but
perceive and know everything in which he resides,
infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is,
as it were, an organ to omniscience.
Were the soul separate from the body, and with
one glance of thought should start beyond tlie bounds
of the creation — should it for millions of years con-
tinue its progress through infinite space with the same
activity — it would still find itself within tlie embrace
of its Creator, and encompassed round with the im-
mensity of the Godhead. While we are in the body,
he is not less present with us because he is concealed
from us. ' Oh that I knew where I might find him !'
says Job. ' Behold I go forward, but he is not there ;
and backward, but I cannot perceive him : on the left
hand where he does work, but I cannot behold him :
he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see
him.' In short, reason as vrell as revelation assures
us that he cannot be absent from us, notwithstanding
he is undiscovered by us.
In this consideration of God Almighty's omnipre-
sence and omniscience, ever}' uncomfortable thought
vanishes. He cannot but regard everything that has
being, especially such of his creatures who fear they
are not regarded by him. He is privy to all their
thoughts, and to that anxiety of heart in particular
which is apt to trouble them on this occasion : for as
it is impossible he should overlo(>k any of his crea-
turee, so we may be confident that he regards with an
eye of mercy those who endeavour to recommend
613
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
themselves to his notice, and in an unfeigned humi-
lity of heart think themselves unworthy that he
should be mindful of them.
EUSTACE BUDGELL.
Eustace Budgell has already been mentioned as
one of the contributors to the ' Spectator.' He was
a relation of Addison, who patronised him with
much kindness, and procured for him several lucra-
tive offices in Ireland. Thirty-seven numbers of
the ' Spectator' are ascribed to Budgell ; and though
Dr Johnson says that these were either written by
Addison, or so much improved by liim that they
were made in a manner his own,* there seems to be
no sufficient authority for the assertion, which, in
itself, a])pears somewhat improbable, as Addison
was not likely to allow anotlier to obtain the credit
due to himself. It is true that the stj-le and humour
resemble those of Addison; but as the two writers
were nmch together, a successful attempt on Bud-
gell's part to imitate the productions of his friend,
was probable enough. In 1717, Budgell, who, not-
withstanding the good sense and sound morality of
his writings in the ' Spectator,' was a man of ex-
treme vanity and rcvengefid feeling, had the impru-
dence to lampoon the Irish viceroy, by whom he
had been deeply offended ; the result of which was
his dismissal from office, and return to England.
During the prevalence of the South-Sea scheme, he
lost a fortune of £20,000, and subsequently figured
principally as a virulent party writer, and an advo-
cate of free-thinking. At length his declining repu-
tation suffered a mortal blow by the establishment
against him of the cliarge of having forged a testa-
ment in his own favour. It is to this circumstance
that Pope alludes in the couplet —
Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on my quill,
And write whate'er he please — except my will.
Some j'ears afterwards, this wretched man, finding
life imsupportable, deliberately committed suicide,
by leaping from a boat while shooting London
Bridge. This took place in 1737. There was found
in his bureau a slip of paper, on which he had writ-
ten —
What Cato did, and Addison approved,
Cannot be wrong.
But in this he certainly misrepresented the opinion
of Addison, who has put the following words into
the mouth of the dying Cato : —
Yet methinks a beam of light breaks in
On my departing soul. Alas ! I fear
I've been too hasty. ye powers that search
The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts.
If I have done amiss, impute it not.
The best may err, but you are good.
The contributions of Budgell to the 'Spectator'
are distinguished by the letter X. We select one
of them, on
[Tlie Art of Growing Rich.l
Lucian rallies the philosophers in his time, who
could not agree whether they should admit riches into
the number of real goods ; the professors of the severer
sects threw them quite out, while others as resolutely
inserted them.
I am apt to believe, that as the world grew more
pohte, the rigid doctrines of tlie first were wholly dis-
:<irded ; and I do not find any one so hard i at pre-
* See BosweU's Life of Johnson, vol. iii
sent as to deny that there are very great advantages
in the enjoyment of a plentiful fortune. Indeed tho
best and wisest of men, though they may possibly
despise a good part of those things which the world
calls pleasures, can, I think, hardly be insensible of
that weight and dignity which a moderate share of
wealth adds to their characters, counsels, and actions.
We find it is a general complaint in professions and
trades, that the richest members of them are chiefly
encouraged, and this is falsely imputed to the ill-
nature of mankind, who are ever bestowing their
favours on such as least want them ; whereas, if we
fairly consider their proceedings in this case, we shall
find them founded on undoubted reason ; since, sup-
posing both equal in their natural integrity, I ought,
in common prudence, to fear foul play from an indi-
gent person, rather than from one whose circumstances
seem to have placed him above the bare temptation
of money.
This reason also makes the commonwealth regard
her richest subjects as those who are most concerned
for her quiet and interest, and consequently fitted to
be intrusted with her highest employments. On the
contrary, Catiline's saying to those men of desperate
fortunes who applied themselves to him, and of whom
he afterwards composed his army, that ' they had no-
thing to hope for but a civil war,' was too true not to
make the impressions he desired.
I believe I need not fear but that what I have said
in praise of money will be more than sufiicient with
most of my readers to excuse the subject of my pre-
sent paper, which I intend as an essay on ' The ways
to raise a man's fortune, or the art of growing rich.'
The first and most infallible method towards the
attaining of this end is thrift : all men are not equally
qualified for getting money, but it is in the power of
every one alike to practise this virtue ; and I believe
there are few persons who, if they please to reflect on
their past lives, will not find, that had they saved all
those little sums which they have spent unnecessarily,
they might at present have been masters of a compe-
tent fortune. Diligence justly claims the next place
to thrift ; I find both these excellently well recom-
mended to common use in the three following Italian
proverbs : —
' Never do that by pro.xy which yo\x can do yourself.
* Never defer that until to-morrow which you can do
to-day.'
' Never neglect small matters and expenses.'
A third instrument in growing rich is method in
business, which, as well as the two former, is also at-
tainable by persons of the meanest capacities.
The famous De Witt, one of the greatest statesmen
of the age in which he lived, being asked by a friend
how he was able to despatch that multitude of afiairs
in which he was engaged ? replied, That his whole art
consisted in doing one thing at once. If, says he, I
have any necessary despatches to make, I think of
nothing else until those are finished ; if any domestic
afiairs require my attention, 1 give myself up wholly
to them until they are set in order.
In short, we often see men of dull and phlegmatic
tempers arriving to great estates, by making a regular
and orderly disposition of their business ; and that,
without it, the greatest parts and most lively imagi-
nations rather puzzle their affairs, than bring them to
a happy issue.
From what has been said, I think I may lay it
down as a mjixim, that every man of good common
sense may, if he pleases, in his particular station of
life, most certainly be rich. The reason why we some-
times see that men of the greatest capacities are not
so, is either because they despise wealth in compari-
son of something else, or, at least, are not content to
begetting an estate, unless they may do it their jwn
614
ENGLISH LITERATURE
JOHN HUGHES.
wav, and at the same time enjoy all the pleasures and
gratifications of life.
But besides these ordinary forms of growing rich, it
must be allowed that there is room for genius as well
in this as in all other circumstances of life.
Though the ways of getting money were long since
rery numerous, and though so many new ones hare
been found out of late years, there is certainly still
remaining so large a field for invention, that a man
of an indifferent head might easily sit down and draw
up such a plan for the conduct and support of his life,
as was never yet once thought of.
We daily see methods put in practice by hungry
and ingenious men, which demonstrate the power of
invention in this particular.
It is reported of Scaramouche, the first famous
Italian comedian, that being in Paris, and in great
want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near
the door of a noted perfumer in that city, and when
any one came out who had been buying snuff, never
failed to desire a taste of them : when he had by this
means got together a quantity made up of several
different sorts, he sold it again at a lower rate to the
same perfumer, who, finding out the trick, called it
Tabac de millc JJeurs, or ' Snuff of a thousand flowers.'
The story farther tells us, that by this means he got
a very comfortab; '' subsistence, until, making too much
haste to grow rich, he one day took such an unreason-
able pinch out of the box of a Swiss ofiicer, as engaged
him in a quarrel, an>'. obliged him to quit this inge-
nious way of life.
Nor can I in this place omit doing justice to a
youth of my own country, who, though he is scarce
yet twelve j'ears old, has, with great industry and ap-
plication, attained to the ai*. of beating the grenadiers'
march on his chin. I am credibly informed, that by
this means he does not only maintain himself and his
mother, but that he is laying up money every day,
with a design, if the war continues, to purchase a
drum at least, if not a pair of colours.
I shall conclude these instances with the device of
the famous Rabelais, when he was at a great distance
from Paris, and without money to bear his expenses
thither. This ingenious author being thus sharp set,
got together a convenient quantity of brick-dust, and
having disposed of it into several papers, writ upon
one, 'poison for monsieur,' upon a second, 'poison
for the dauphin,' and on a third, ' poison for the king.'
Having made this provision for the royal family of
France, he laid his papers so that his landlord, who
was an inquisitive man, and a good subject, might get
a sight of them.
The plot succeeded as he desired ; the host gave
immediate intelligence to the secretary of state. The
secretary presently sent down a special messenger,
who brought up the traitor to court, and provided him
at the king's expense with proper accommodations on
the road. As soon as he appeared, he was known to be
the celebrated Rabelais ; and his powder upon exami-
nation being found very innocent, the jest was only
laughed at ; for which a less eminent droll would
have been sent to the galleys.
Trade and commerce might doubtless be still
varied a thousand ways, out of which would arise such
branches as have not yet been touched. The famous
Doily is still fresh in every one's memory, who raised
a fortune by finding out materials for such stuffs as
might at once be cheap and genteel. I have heard it
affirmed, that, had not he discovered this frugal me-
thod of gratifying our pride, we should hardly have
been so well able to carry on the last war.
I regard trade not only as highly advantageous to
the commonwealth in general, but as the most natu-
ral and likely method of making a man's fortune,
having observed, since my being a Spectator in the
world, greater estates got about 'Change than at
Whitehall or St .Tames's. I believe I may also add,
that the first acquisitions are generally attended with
more satisfaction, and as good a conscience.
I must not, however, close this essay without observ-
ing, that what has been said is only intended for per-
sons in the common ways of thriving, and is not de-
signed for those men who, from low beginnings, push
themselves up to the top of states and the most con-
siderable figures in life. !My maxim of saving is not
designed for such as these, since nothing is more usual
than for thrift to disappoint the ends of amhition ; it
being almost impossible that the mind shcwld be in-
tent upon trifles, while it is, at the same time, form-
ing some great design.
I may therefore compare these men to a great poet,
who, as Longinus says, while he is full of the most
magnificent ideas, is not always at leisure to mind
the little beauties and niceties of his art.
I would, however, have all my readers take great
care how they mistake themselves for uncommon
geniuses and men above rule, since it is very easy for
them to be deceived in this particular.
JOHN HUGHES.
Very different from Budgell's character was that
of John Hughes, the other principal contributor to
the ' Spectator.' To this individual, who was dis-
tinguished by a mild, amiable, contented, and pious
disposition, and considerable abilities as a pleasing
writer, are attributed two papers and several letters
in the ' Tatler,' eleven papers and thirteen letters in
the ' Spectator,' and two papers in the ' Guardian.'
The high reputation which he at one time enjoyed
as a writer of poetry, has now justly declined. In
translation, however, both in poetry and prose, he
made some highly successful efforts. Of several
dramatic pieces which he produced. The Siege of
Damascus alone has escaped from oblivion. In this
play, the morality, diction, and imagery, claim much
admiration; but it is too little fitted to move the
passions to be a favourite on the stage. Though
still occasionally acted, it affords greater pleasure in
the closet. So highly did Addison esteem the talent
of Hughes, that he requested him to furnish the
fifth act of 'Cato;' and it was not till some pro-
gress had been made in the labour, that a change
of purpose on Addison's part interfered. In the
opinion of I)r Josepli Warton, ' Plughos was very
capable of writing this fifth act. " The Siege of
Damascus" is a better tragedy than " Cato," though
Pope affected to speak slightingly of its tiuthor.'*
The reputation of Hughes was well sustained by the
manner in wliich he edited the works of Spenser,
The virtues of this estimable person (who died in
1720, at tlie age of forty-three) were affectionately
commemorated by Sir Richard Steele, in a publica-
tion called The Theatre. ' All the periodical essays
of Hughes,' says Dr Drake, ' are written in a style
which is, in general, easy, correct, and elegant : they
occasionally exhibit wit and humour ; and they uni-
formly tend to inculcate the best precepts, moral,
prudential, and religious.' f One of his best is on
[Amlition.'\
If we look abroad upon the great multitude of
mankind, and endeavour to trace out the principles
of action in every individual, it will, I think, seem
highly probable that ambition runs through the whole
species, and that every man, in proportion to the
vigour of his complexion, is more or less actuated by
* Note to Pope's proloijiic to Cato.
t Drake's Essays, iii. 50.
615
^ROM 1689
cycloiv>:dia of
TO 17-27.
it. It is, indeed, no uncommon thing to meet with
men who, by the natural bent of their inclinations,
and without the discipline of philosophy, aspire not
to the heights of power and grandeur ; who never set
their hearts' upon a numerous train of clients and
dependencies, nor other gay appendages of greatness ;
who are contented with a competency, and will not
molest their tranquillity to gain an abundance ; but
it is not therefore to be concluded that such a man is
not ambitious : his desires may have cut out another
channel, and detei-mined him to other pursuits ; the
motive, however, may be still the same ; and in these
cases likewise the man may be equally pushed on
with the desire of distinction.
Though the pure consciousness of worthy actions,
abstracted from the views of popular applause, be to
a generous mind an ample reward, yet the desire of
distinction was doubtless implanted in our natures as
an additional incentive to exert ourselves in virtuous
excellence.
This passion, indeed, like all others, is frequently
perverted to evil and iinioble purposes, so that we may
account for man}' of the excellencies and follies of life
upon the same innate principle, to wit, the desire of
being remarkable ; for this, as it has been differently
cultivated by education, study, and converse, will bring
forth suitable effects, as it falls in with an ingenuous
disposition or a corrupt mind ; it does accordingly
express itself in acts of magnanimity or selfish cun-
ning, as it meets with a good or weak understanding.
As it has been employed in embellishing the mind,
or adorning the outside, it renders the man eminently
praiseworthy or ridiculous. Ambition, therefore, is
not to be confined only to one passion or pursuit ; for
as the same humours, in constitutions otherwise diffe-
rent, affect the body after different manners, so the
same aspiring principle within us sometimes breaks
forth upon one object, sometimes upon another.
It cannot be doubted but that there is as great a de-
sire of glory in a ring of wrestlers or cudgel-players, as
in any other more refined competition for superiority.
No man that could avoid it would ever suffer his
head to be broken but out of a principle of honour.
This is the secret spring that pushes them forward ;
and the superiority which they gain .above the undis-
tinguished many, does more than repair those wounds
they have received in the combat. It is Mr Waller's
Dpinion, that Julius Caisar, had he not been master of
the Roman empire, would in all probability have
made an excellent wrestler.
* Great Julius, on the mountains bred,
A flock perhaps or herd had led ;
He that the world subdued, had been
But the best wrestler on the green.'
That he subdued the world, was owing to the acci-
dents of art and knowledge : had he not met with
those advantages, the same sparks of emulation would
have kindled within him, and prompted him to dis-
tinguish himself in some enterprise of a lower nature.
Since, therefore, no man's lot is so unalterably fixed
in this life, but that a thousand accidents may either
forward or disappoint his advancement, it is, me-
thinks, a pleasant and inoffensive speculation, to
consider a great man as divested of all the adventi-
tious circumstances of fortune, and to bring him down
in one's imagination to that low station of life, the
nature of which bears some distant resemblance to
that high one he is at present possessed of. Thus one
may view him exercising in miniature those talents
of nature which, being drawn out by education to
their full length, enable him for the discharge of
some important employment. On the other hand,
one may raise uneducated merit to such a pitch of
^eatness, as may seem equal to the possible extent
■jf his improved capacity.
Thus nature furnislies a man with a general appe-
tite of glory ; education determines it to this or that
particular object. The desire of distinction is not, 1
think, in any instance more observable than in the
variety of outsides and new ap]iearances which the
modish part of the world are obliged to provide, in
order to make themselves remarkable ; for anything
glaring or particular, either in behaviour or appaiel,
is known to have this good effect, that it catches the
eye, and will not suffer you to pass over the person so
adorned without due notice and observation. It has
likewise, upon this account, been frequently resented
as a very great slight, to leave any gentleman out of
a lampoon or satire, who has as much right to be
there as his neighbour, because it supposes the person
not eminent enough to be taken notice of. To this
passionate fondness for distinction, are owing various
frolicsome and irregular practices, as sallying out into
nocturnal exploits, breaking of windows, singing of
catches, beating the watch, getting drunk twice a day,
killing a great number of horses, with many other en-
terprises of the like fiery nature; for certainly many
a man is more rakish and extravagant than he would
willingly be, were there not others to look on and give
their approbation.
One very common, and at the same time the most
absurd ambition that ever showed itself in human
nature, is that which comes upon a man with expe-
rience and old age, the season when it might be
expected he should be wisest ; and therefore it can-
not receive any of those lessening circumstances which
do, in some measure, excuse the disorderly ferments
of youthful blood : I mean the passion for getting
mone}', exclusive of the character of the provident
father, the affectionate husband, or the generous
friend. It may be remarked, for the comfort of honest
poverty, that this desire reigns most in those who
have but few good qualities to recommend them. This
is a weed that will grow in a barren soil. Humanity,
good nature, and the advantages of a liberal educa-
tion, are incompatible with avarice. It is strange to
see how suddenly this abject passion kills all the noble
sentiments and generous ambitions that adorn human
nature ; it renders the man who is over-run with it a
peevish and cruel master, a severe parent, an unso-
ciable husband, a distant and mistrustful friend. But
it is more to the present purpose to consider it as an
absurd passion of the heart, rather than as a vicious
affection of the mind. As there are frequent instances
to be met with of a proud humility, so this passion,
contrary to most others, affects applause, by avoiding
all show and appearance ; for this reason, it will not
sometimes endure even the common decencies of
apparel. ' A covetous man will call himself poor,
that you may soothe his vanity by contradicting him.'
Love, and the desire of glory, as they are the most
natural, so they are capable of being refined into the
most delicate and rational passions. It is true, the
wise man who strikes out of the secret paths of a
private life, for honour and dignity, allured by the
splendour of a court, and the unfelt weight of public
employment, whether he succeeds in his attempts or
not, usually comes near enough to this painted great-
ness to discern the daubing ; he is then desirous of
extricating himself out of the hurry of life, that he
may pass away the remainder of his days in tranquil-
lity and retirement.
It may be thought, then, but common prudence in
a man not to change a better state for a worse, nor
ever to quit that which he knows he shall take up
again with pleasure ; and yet if human life be not a
little moved with the gentle gales of hope and fears,
there may be some danger of its stagnating in an un-
manly indolence and security. It is a known story
of Domitian, that after he had possessed himself of
the Roman empire, his desires turned upon catching
616
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DANIEL DEFOB.
flies. Active and masculine spirits in the vigour of
j'outh neither can nor ought to renial;. at rest ; if
they debar themselves from aiming at a noble object,
their desires will move downwards, and they will feel
themselves actuated by some low and abject passion.
Thus, if you cut off the top branches of a tree, and
will not suffer it to grow any higher, it will not there-
fore cease to grow, but will quickly shoot out at the
bottom. The man, indeed, who goes into the world
only with the narrow views of self-interest, who
catches at the applause of an idle multitude, as he
can find no solid contentment at the end of his jour-
ney, so he deserves to meet with disappointments in
his way ; but he who is actuated by a nobler prin-
ciple, whose mind is so far enlarged as to take in the
prospect of his country's good, who is enamoured with
that praise which is one of the fair attendants of
virtue, and values not those acclamations which are
not seconded by the impartial testimony of his own
mind ; who repines not at the low station which Pro-
Tidence has at present allotted him, but yet would
willingly advance himself by justifiable means to a
more rising and advantageous ground ; such a man is
warmed with a generous emulation ; it is a virtuous
movement in him to wish and to endeavour that his
power of doing good ma}' be equal to his will.
The man who is fitted out by nature, and sent into
the world with great abilities, is capable of doing
great good or mischief in it. It ought, therefore, to
be the care of education to infuse into the untainted
youth early notices of justice and honour, that so the
possible advantages of good parts may not take an
evil turn, nor be perverted to base and unworthy'
purposes. It is the business of religion and philo-
sophy not so much to extinguish our passions, as to
regulate and direct them to valuable well-chosen
objects ; when these have pointed out to us which
course we may lawfully steer, it is no harm to set out
all our sail ; if the storms and tempests of adversity
should rise upon us, and not suffer us to make the
haven where we would be, it will, however, prove no
small consolation to us in these circumstances, that
we have neither mistaken our course, nor fallen into
calamities of our o^vn procuring.
Religion, therefore, were we to consider it no farther
than as it interposes in the affairs of this life, is
highly valuable, and worthy of great veneration ; as
it settles the various pretensions, and otherwise inter-
fering interests of mortal men, and thereby consults
the harmony and order of the great community ; as it
gives a man room to play his part and exert his
abilities ; as it animates to actions truly laudable in
themselves, in their effects beneficial to society ; as it
inspires rational ambition, corrects love, and elevates
desire.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITER8.
DANIEL DEFOE.
The political contests of this period engaged a
host of miscellaneous writers. The most powerful
and effective belonged to the Tory or Jacobite
party ; but the Whigs possessed one unflinching and
prolific champion — Uaxiel Defoe — the fiither or
founder of the English novel. This excellent writer
was a native of London, flie son of a St Giles butcher,
and Dissenter. Daniel was born in 1661, and was
intended to be a Presbyterian minister, but entered
into trade. He joined the insurrection of the Duke
of Monmouth, but escaped punishment ; and when
the Revolution came, was one of its steadiest friends
and warmest admirers. He was successively a hosier,
a tile-maker, and a woollen-merchant ; but without
success. As an author, he made, in 1G99, a lucky
renture. His True-born Englishman, a j)oetical satire
on the foreigners, and a defence of King William
and the Dutch, had an almost une.xampled sale.
Defoe was in reality no poet, but he could reason
Daniel Defoe.
in verse, and had an unlimited command of homely
and forcible language. The opening lines of this
satire have often been quoted —
Wherever God erects a house of praver.
The devil always builds a chapel there ;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largust congregation.
Various political tracts followed from the active
pen of our author. In 1702 he wrote an ironical
treatise against the High Church party, entitled
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which was
voted a libel by the House of Commons : ami the
author being apprehended, was fined, pilloried, and
imprisoned. He wrote a hymn to the pillory, which
he wittily styled
A hieroglyphic state- machine.
Condemned to punish fancy in ;
and Pope alluded to the circumstance witli the
spirit of a political partisan, not that of a friend to
literature or liberty, in his ' Dunciad' —
Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe.
The political victim lay nearlj' two j-ears in Xew-
gate, during which he carried on a periodical work,
The lieview. published twice a week. The character
of Defoe, notwithstanding his political persecution,
must have stood high ; for he was employed by the
cabinet of Queen Anne on a mission to Scotland to
advance the great measure of the Union, of which
he afterwards wrote a history. He again tried his
hand at political irony, and was again thrown into
prison, and fined £800. Neither Vvliig nor Tory
could understand Defoe's ironical writings. Hi's
confinement this time lasted, however, only a few
months. Admonished by dear-bought experience,
our author now abandoned politics, and in 1719
appeared his llobinson Crusoe. The extraordinary
success of this work prompted him to write a variety
of other fictitious narratives, as Moll Flanders, Cap-
tain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack, The
History of the Great Plague in London in 16C5, &e.
When he had exhausted this veui, lie applied liim-
self to a Political History of the Devil, A System of
Magic, The Complete Dnglish Tradesman, A Tour
'Through Great Britain, and other works. The life of
this active and voluminous writer was closed in
617
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727.
April 1731. It seems to have been one of continued
struiTgle with want, dulness, and persecution. He
died insolvent, author of two hundred and ten books
anil iiamphlets. I'osterity has separated the wheat
from the chaff of Defoe's writings : his political
tracts have sunk into oblivion ; but his works of
fiction still charm by their air of truth, and the
simple natural beauty of their style. As a novelist,
he was the father of Richardson, and partly of
Fielding ; as an essayist, he suggested the ' Tatler'
and ' Spectator ;' and in grave irony he may have
given to Swift his first lessons. The intensity of
feeling characteristic of the dean — his merciless
scorn and invective, and fierce misanthropy — were
unknown to Defoe, who nnist have been of a
cheerful and sanguine temperament ; but in iden-
tifying himself with his personages, whether on sea
or land, and depicting their adventures, he was not
inferior to Swift. His imagination had no visions
of surpassing loveliness, nor anj' rich combinations
of humour and eccentricity, yet he is equally at
home in the plain scenes of English life, in the wars
of the cavaliers, in the haunts of dissipation and in-
famy, in the roving adventures of the buccaneers,
and in the appalling visitations of the Great Plague.
The account of the plague has often been taken for
a genuine and authentic history, and even Lord
Chatham believed the Memoirs of a Cavalier to be
X true narrative. In scenes of diablerie and witch-
craft, he preserves the same unmoved and truth-like
demeanour. The apparition of Mrs Veal at Canter-
bury, 'the eighth of September 1705,' seems as
true and indubitable a fact as any that ever passed
before our eyes. Unfortunately, the taste or cir-
cumstances of Defoe led him mostly into low life,
and his characters are generally such as we cannot
sympathise with. The whole arcana of roguery and
villany seem to have been open to him. His ex-
periences of Newgate were not without their use to
the novelist. It might be thought that the good
taste which led Defoe to write in a style of such
pure and unpretending English, instead of the in-
flated manner of vulgar writers, would have dic-
tated a more careful selection of his subjects, and
kept him from wandering so frequently into the low
and disgusting purlieus of vice. But this moral
and tasteful discrimination seems to have been
wholly wanting. He was too good and religious
a man to break down the distinctions between
virtue and crime. He selected the adventures
of pirates, pickpockets, courtesans, and other cha-
racters of the same stamp, because they were
likely to sell best, and made the most attractive
narrative ; but he nowhere holds them up for imita-
tion, lie evidently felt most at home where he had
to descend, not to rise, to his subject. The circum-
stances of Robinson Crusoe, his shipwreck and
residence in the solitary island, invest that incom-
parable tale with more romance than any of his
other works. ' Pathos,' says Sir Walter Scott, ' is
not Defoe's general characteristic ; he had too little
delicacy of mind. When it comes, it comes un-
called, and is created by the circumstances, not
sought f )r by the author. The excess, for instance,
of tlie natural longing for human society which
Crusoe manifests while on board of the stranded
Spanish vessel, by falling into a sort of agony, as he
repeated the words, '" Oh, that l>ut one man had
been saved ! — oh, that there had been but one !" is
in the highest degree pathetic. Tlic agonizing re-
flections of the solitary, when he is in danger of
being driven to sea, in his rash attempt to circum-
navigate his island, are also aflTecting.' To these
itriking passages may be added the description of
Crusoe's sensations on finding the foot-print on the
sand — an incident conceived in the spirit of poetry.
The character of Friday, though his appearance on
the scene breaks the solitary seal of the roTnance,
is a highly interesting and pleasing delineation, that
gives a charm to savage life. The great success of
this novel induced the author to write a continua-
tion to it. in which Crusoe is again brought among
the busy haunts of men ; the attempt Wiis hazardous,
and it proved a failure. The once solitary island,
peopled by mariners and traders, is disenchanted, and
becomes tame, vulgar, and conmionplace. The rela-
tion of adventures, not the delineation of character
and passion, was the forte of Defoe. His inven-
tion of common incidents and situations seems to
have been unbounded ; and those minute references
and descriptions ' immediatel.v lead us,' as has been
remarked by Dunlop in his History of Fiction, 'to
give credit to the whole narrative, since we think
they would hardh' have been mentioned unless they
had been true. The same circumstantial detail of
fiicts is remarkable in " Gulliver's Travels," and we
are led on by them to a partial belief in the most
improbable narrations.' Defoe, however, is more
natural even than Swift ; and his style, though in-
ferior in directness and energy, is more copious. He
was strictly an original writer, with strong clear
conceptions ever rising up in his mind, which he
was able to embody in language equally perspi-
cuous and forcible. He had both read and seen
much, and treasured up an amount of knowledge
and observation certainly not equalled by the store
of any writer of that day. When we consider the mis-
fortunes and sufferings of Defoe ; that his spirit had
been broken, and his means wasted, by persecution ;
that his health was struck down by apoplexy, and
upwards of fifty-five years had passed over him —
his composition of ' Robinson Crusoe,' and the long
train of fictions which succeeded it, must appear a
remarkable instance of native genius, self-reliance,
and energy of character.
The ])o\ver of Defoe in feigning reality, or forg'
ing the handwriting of nature, as it has been forcibly
termed, may be seen in the narrative of Mrs Veal's
apparition ; which, as complete in itself, and suited
to our limits, we subjoin. It was prefixed to a
religious book, ' Drelincourt on Death,' and had the
effect of drawing attention to an otherwise im-
saleable and neglected work. The imposition was
a bold one — perhaps the least defensible of all De-
foe's inventions ; and there is, as Sir Walter Scott
observes, ' a matter-of-fact business-like style in
the whole account of the transaction, which be-
speaks inefiable powers of self-possession.'
A tr'ii£ Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal, the
next day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at
Canterbury, the Eighth of Septcmhei; 1705, it;hich
Apparition recommends the pcnisal of DrclincourCs
Book of Consolatiofns against the Fears of Death,
This thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and
on so good authority, that my reading and conversa-
tion has not given me anything like it. It is fit to
gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer. Mrs
BargTiive is the person to whom Mrs Veal appeared
after her death ; she is my intimate friend, and I can
avouch for her reputation for these last fifteen or
sixteen years, on my own knowledge ; and I can con-
firm the good character she had from her youth to the
time of my acquaintance. Though, since this relation,
she is calumniated by some people that are frienils to
the brother of Mrs Veal who aj)peared, who tliink
the relation of this appearance to be a reflection, and
endeavour what they can to blast Mrs Bargrave'.s re-
putation, and to laugh the story out of countenance.
G18
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DAMEL DEFOE.
But by the circumstance thereof, and the cheerful dis-
position of Mrs Bargrave, notwithstanding the ill
usage of a very wicked husband, there is not yet the
least sign of dejection in her face ; nor did I ever hear
her let fall a desponding or nuirniuring expression ;
nay, not when actually under her husband's barbarity,
which I have been a witness to, and several other per-
sons of undoubted reputation.
Now, you must know Mrs Veal was a maiden
gentlewoman of about thirty years of age, and for some
years last pa.st had been troubled with fits, which
were perceived coming on her by her going oif from
her discourse very abruptly to some impertinence. She
was maintained by an only brother, and kept his house
in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and her
brother a very sober man to all appearance ; but now
he does all he can to null and quash the story. Mrs
Veal was intimately acquainted with ^Mrs Bargrave
from her childhood. Mrs Veal's circumstances were
then mean ; her father did not take care of his chil-
dren as he ought, so that they were exposed to hard-
ships. And Mrs Bargrave in those days had as unkind
a father, though she wanted neither for food nor
clothing ; while Mrs Veal wanted for both, insomuch
that she would often say, ' Mrs Bargrave, you are not
only the best, but the only friend I have in the world ;
and no circumstance of life shall ever dissolve my
friendship.' They would often condole each other's
adverse fortunes, and read together Drelincourt upon
Death, and other good books ; and so, like two Chris-
tian friends, they comforted each other under their
sorrow.
Some time after, Mr Veal's friends got him a place
in the customhouse at Dover, which occasioned Mrs
Veal, by little and little, to fall off from her intimacy
with Mrs Bargrave, though there was never any such
thing as a quarrel ; but an indifferency came on by
degrees, till at last Mrs Bargrave had not seen her in
two years and a half, though above a twelvemonth of
the time Mrs Bargrave hath been absent from Dover,
and this last half year, has been in Canterbury about
two months of the time, dwelling in a house of her
oivn.
In this house, on the eighth o. September, one thou-
sand seven hundred and five, sis was sitting alone in
the forenoon, thinking over her unfortunate life, and
arguing herself into a due resignation to Providence,
though her condition seemed hard : ' And,' said she,
' I have been provided for hitherto, and doubt not but
I shall be still, and am well satisfied that my afflic-
tions shall end when it is most fit for me.' And then
took up her sewing work, which she had no sooner
done but she hears a knocking at the door ; she went
to see who was there, and this proved to be Mrs Veal,
her old friend, who was in a riding habit. At that
moment of time the clock struck twelve at noon.
' Madam,' says Mrs Bargrave, ' I am surprised to
see you, you have been so long a stranger ;' but told
her she was glad to see her, and otfered to salute
her, which Mrs Veal complied with, till their lips
almost touched, and then Mrs Veal drew her hand
across her own eyes, and said, ' I am not very well,'
and so waived it. She told Mrs Bargrave she was
going a journey, and had a great mind to see her first.
' But,' says Mrs Bargrave, ' how can you take a journey
alone ? I am amazed at it, because I know j-ou have
a fond brother.' ' Oh,' says Mrs Veal, ' I gave my
brother the slip, and came away, because I had so
great a desire to see you before I took my journey.'
So Mrs Bargrave went in with her into another room
within the first, and Mrs Veal sat her down in an
elbow-chair, in which Mrs Bargrave was sitting when
she heard Mrs Veal knock. ' Then,' says Mrs Veal,
' ray dear friend, I am come to renew our old friend-
ship again, and beg your pardon for my breach of
it; and if you can forgive me, you are the best
of women.' ' Oh,' says Mrs Bargrave, ' do not men-
tion such a thing; I have not had an uneasy thought
about it ; I can easily forgive it.' ' What did you
think of me?' said Mrs Veal. Says Mrs Bargrave,
' I thought you were like tlic rest of the world,
and that prosperity had made you forget yourself
and me.' Then Mrs Veal reminded Mrs Bargrave
of the many friendly offices she did her in former
days, and much of the conversation they had with
each other in the times of their adversity ; what books
they read, and what comfort in particular they re-
ceived from Drelincourt's Book of Death, which was
the best, she said, on the subject ever wrote. She also
mentioned Dr Sherlock, and two Dutch books, which
were translated, wrote upon death, and several others.
But Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions
of death, and of the future state, of any who had
handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs Bargrave
whether she had Drelincourt ? She said, ' Yes.' Says
Mrs Veal, ' Fetch it.' And so ^Irs Bargrave goes up
stairs, and brings it down. Says Mrs Veal, ' Dear
Mrs Bargrave, if the eyes of our faith were as open as
the eyes of our body, we should see numbers of angels
about us for our guard. The notions we have of
Heaven now are nothing like what it is, as Drelin-
court says ; therefore be comforted under your afflic-
tions, and believe that the Almighty has a particular
regard to you, and that your afflictions are marks of
God's favour ; and when they have done the business
they are sent for, they shall be removed from you.
And believe me, my dear friend, believe what I say
to you, one minute of future happiness will infinitely
reward you for all your sufferings. For I can never
believe (and claps her hand upon her knee with
great earnestness, which, indeed, ran through most of
her discourse) that ever God will suffer you to spend
all your days in this afflicted state. But be assured
that your afflictions shall leave you, or ycu them, in a
short time.' She spake in tliat pathetical and
heavenly manner, that ^Irs Bargrave wept several
times, she was so deeply affected with it.
Then Mrs Veal mentioned Dr Kenrick's Ascetic,
at the end of which he gives an account of the lives
of the primitive Christians. Their pattern she re-
commended to our imitation, and said, ' Their conver-
sation was not like this of our age. For now,' says
she, ' there is nothing but vain frothy discourse, which
is far difterent from theirs. Theirs was to edification,
and to build one another up in faith, so that they
were not as we are, nor are we as they were. But,'
said she, ' we ought to do as they did ; there was a
h'earty friendship among them ; but where is it now to
be found V Says Mrs Bargi'ave, ' It i^ hard indeed to
find a true friend in these days.' Says Mrs Veal,
' !Mr Norris has a fine copy of verses, called Friend-
ship in Perfection, which I wonderfully admire. Have
you seen the book V says Mrs Veal. ' No,' says Mrs
Bargrave, ' but I have the verses of my own ^vriting
out.' ' Have you ?' says Mrs Veal ; ' then fetch
them ;' which she did from above stairs, and offered
them to Mrs Veal to read, who refused, and waived
the thing, saying, ' holding down her head would
make it ache ;' and then desiring Mrs Bargrave to
read them to her, which she did. As they were ad-
miring Friendship, Mrs Veal said, ' Dear Mrs Bar-
grave, I shall love you for ever.' In these verses
there is twice used the word ' Elysian.' ' Ah !' says
Mrs Veal, ' these poets have such names for Heaven.'
She would often draw her hand across her own eyes,
and say, ' Mrs Bargrave, do not you think I am
mightily impaired by my fits V ' No,' says Mrs Bar-
grave, ' I think you look as well as ever I knew you.'
After this discourse, which the apparition put in
much finer words than Mrs Bargrave said she could
pretend to, and as much ic re than she can remember
(for it cannot be thought that au hour and three
619
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
quiirtors' cmiversation could all be retained, thougli
t!ie iiiaiu of it she thinks she does), she said to Mrs
liargrave she would have her write a letter to her
brother, and tell hiiii she would have him give rings
to such and such ; and that there was a purse of gold
in her cabinet, and that she would have two broad
pieces given to her cousin Watson.
Talking at this rate, Mrs Bargrave thought that a
fit was coming upon her, and so placed herself on a
chair just before her knees, to keep her from falling to
the ground, if her fits should occasion it ; for the
elbow-chair, she thought, would keep her from falling
on either side. And to divert Airs Veal, as she
thought, took hold of her gown sleeve several times,
and commended it. INIrs Veal told her it was a
scoured silk, and newly made up. But for all this,
Airs Veal persisted in her request, and told Mrs Bar-
grave she must not deny her. And she would have
her tell her brother all their conversation when she
had opportunity. ' Dear Mrs Veal,' says Mrs Bar-
grave, ' this seems so impertinent, that I cannot tell
how to comply with it ; and what a mortifying story
will our conversation be to a young gentleman. Why,'
says Mrs Bargrave, ' it is much better, methinks, to
do it yourself.' ' No,' says Mrs Veal, ' though it seems
impertinent to you now, you will see more reasons
for it hereafter.' Airs Bargrave, then, to satisfy her
importunity, was going to fetch a pen and ink, but
Mrs Veal said, ' Let it alone now, but do it when I
am gone ; but you must be sure to do it ;' which was
one of the last things she enjoined her at parting, and
80 she promised her.
Then Airs \'eal asked for Mrs Bargrave's daughter ;
she said she was not at home. ' But if you have a
mind to see her,' says Mrs Bargrave, ' I'll send for
her.' ' Do,' says Airs Veal ; on which she left her,
and went to a neighbour's to see her ; and by the time
Mrs Bargrave was returning. Airs Veal was got with-
out the door, in the street, in the fivce of the beast-
market, on a Saturday (which is market-day), and
stood ready to part as soon as Airs Bargrave came to
her. She asked her why she was in such haste. She
said she must be going, though perhaps she might not
go her journey till Alonday ; and told Airs Bargrave
she hoped she should see her again at her cousin
Watson's, before she went whither she was going.
Then she said she would take her leave of her, and
walked from Airs Bargrave, in her view, till a tumino'
interrupted the sight of her, which was three quarters
after one in the afternoon.
Airs Veal died the 7th of September, at twelve o'clock
at noon, of h^r fits, and had not above four hours'
senses before her death, in which time she received
the sacrament. The next day after Airs Veal's appear-
ance, being Sunday, Airs Bargrave was mightily in-
disposed with a cold and a sore throat, that she could
not go out that day ; but on Monday morning she
sends a person to Captain Watson's, to know if Mrs
Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs Bargrave's
inquiry, and sent her word she was not there, nor was
expected. At this answer, Airs Bargrave told the
maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made
some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on
her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's, though
she knew none of the family, to see if Airs Veal was
there or not. They said they wondered at her asking,
for that she had not been in town ; they were sure, if
she had, she would have been there. Saj's Airs Bar-
grave, ' I am sure she was with me on Saturday
almost two hours.' They said it was impossible, for
they must have seen her if she had. In comes Cap-
tain Watson, while they were in dispute, and said
that Airs Veal was certainly dead, and the escutcheons
were making. This strangely surprised Airs Bargrave,
<hen she sent to the person immediately who ha<l the
c*re of them, and found it true. Then she related
the whole story to Captain Watson's family ; and what
gown she had on, and how striped ; and tliat Airs Veai
told her that it was scoured. Then Airs \\'atson cried
out, ' You have seen her indeed, for none knew, but
Airs A'eal and myself, that the gown was scoured.' And
Airs \Vatson owned that she described the gown ex-
actly ; ' for,' said she, ' I helped her to make it up.' This
Airs Watson blazed all about the town, and avouched
the deniousti'atinu of the truth of Airs Bargravt's
seeing Airs Veal's apparition. And Captain \\'atson
carried two gentlemen immediately to Airs Bargi-ave's
house, to hear the relation from her own mouth. And
when it spread so fast, that gentlemen and persons of
quality, the judicious and sceptical part of the world,
flocked in upon her, it at last became such a task, that
she was forced to go out of the way ; for they were in
general extremely satisfied of the trutii of the thing,
and plainly saw that Airs Bargrave was no hyjiochon-
driac, for she always appears with such a cheerful air
and pleasing mien, that she has gained the favour and
esteem of all tlie gentry ; and it is thought ii great
favour if they cau but get the relation from her own
mouth. I should have told you before, that Airs Veal
told Airs Bargrave that her sister and brother-in-law
were just come do^ni from London to see her. Says
Mrs ]3argra^•e, ' How came you to order matters so
strangely V ' It could not be helped,' said Airs Veal.
And her brother and sister did come to see her, and
entered the to\NTi of Dover just as Mrs Veal was ex-
piring. Mrs Bargrave asked her whether she would
drink some tea. Says Airs Veal, ' I do not care if I
do ; but I'll warrant you this mad fellow (meaning
Airs Bargrave's husband) has broke all j'our trinkets.'
' But,' says Airs Bargrave, ' I'll get something to drink
in for all that ;' but Airs Veal waived it, and said,
' It is no matter ; let it alone ;' and so it passed.
All the time I sat with Airs Bargrave, which was
some hours, she recollected fresh sayings of Airs Veal.
And one material thing more she told Airs Bargrave,
that old Air Bretton allowed Airs Veal ten pounds
a-year, which was a secret, and unknown to Airs Bar-
grave till Airs Veal told her.
Airs Bargrave never varies in her story, which
puzzles those who doubt of the truth, or are unwilling
to believe it. A servant in the neighbour's yard ad-
joining to Airs Bargrave's house, heard her talking to
somebody an hour of the time Airs Veal was with her.
Mrs Bargrave went out to her next neighbour's the
very moment she parted with Airs Veal, and told her
what ravishing conversation she had witli an old friend,
and told the whole of it. Drelincourt's Book of Death
is, since this happened, bought up strangely. And it
is to be observed, that, notwithstanding all the trouble
and fatigue Airs Bargrave has undergone upon this
account, she never took the value of a farthing, nor
suffered her daujjhter to take anything of any body,
and therefore can have no interest in telling the story.
But Air Veal does what he can to stifle the matter,
and said he would see Airs Bargrave: but yet it is
certain matter of fact that he has been at Captain
Watson's since the death of his sister, and yet never
went near Airs Bargrave ; and some of his friends
report her to be a liar, and that she knew of Air Bret-
ton's ten pounds a-year. But the person who pretends
to say so, has the reputation to be a notorious liar
among persons whom I know to be of undoubted
credit. Now, Air Veal is more of a gentleman than
to say she lies, but says a bad husband has crazed
her ; but she needs only present herself, and it will
effectually confute that pretence. Air Veal says he
asked his sister on her death-bed whether she had a
mind to dispose of anything? And she said no. Now,
the things which Airs A'eal's apparition would have
disposed of, were so trifling, and nothing of justice
aimed at in the disposal, that the design of it a[>poar8
to me to be only in order to make Airs Bargrave bo
620
ilSCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITEKATURE.
DANIEL DEPOK.
to demonstrate the truth of her appearance, as to
Fati.^fy the -n-orld of the reality thereof, as to -what
she had seen and heard ; and to secure her reputation
among the reasonable and understanding part of man-
kind. And then, again, Mr Veal owns that there was
a purse of gold ; but it was not found in her cabinet,
but in a comb-box. This looks improbable ; for that
Mrs Watson oivned that ^Mrs Veal was so very careful
of the key of her cabinet, that she would trust nobody
with it ; and if so, no doubt she would not trust her
gold out of it. And Mrs Veal's often drawing her
hands over her eyes, and asking Mrs Bargrave whether
her fits had not impaired her, looks to me, as if she
did it on purpose to remind Mrs Bargrare of her fits,
to prepare her not to think it str.ange that she should
put her upon writing to her brother, to dispose of
rings and gold, which looked so much like a dying
person's request ; and it took accordingly with Mrs
Bargrave as the effect of her fits coming upon her,
and was one of the many instances of her wonderful
love to her and care of her, that she should not be
affrighted, which, indeed, appears in her whole ma-
nagement, particularly in her coming to her in the
da3--time, waiving the salutation, and v.hen she was
alone ; and then the manner of her parting, to pre-
vent a second attempt to salute her.
Now, why Mr Veal should think this relation a
reflection (as it is plain he does, by his endeavouring
to stifle it), I cannot injagine ; because the generality
believe her to be a good spirit, her discourse was so
heavenly. Her two great errands were, to comfort
Mrs Bargrave in her affliction, and to ask her forgive-
ness for her breach of friendship, an<l with a pious
discourse to encourage her. So that, after all, to
suppose that Mrs Bargrave could hatch such an in-
vention as this from Friday noon till Saturday noon
(supposing that she knew of Tvlrs Veal's death the
very first moment), without jumbling circumstances,
and without any interest too, she must be more witty,
fortunate, and wicked, too, than any indifferent per-
son, I daresay, will allow. I asked Mrs Bargrave
several times if she was sure she felt the gown? She
answered modestly, ' If my senses be to be relied on,
I am sure of it.' I asked her if she heard a sound
when she clapped her hands upon her knee? She
said she did not remember she did, but said she ap-
peared to be as much a substance as I did who talked
with her. ' And I may,' said she, ' be aa soon per-
suaded that your apparition is talking to me now, as
that I did not really see her ; for I was under no man-
ner of fear, and received her as a friend, and parted
with her as such. I would not,' says she, ' give one
farthing to make any one believe it ; I have no in-
terest in it ; nothing but trouble is entailed upon me
for a long time, for aught I know ; and had it not
come to light by accident, it would never have been
made public' But now she says she will make her
OT\'n private use of it, and keep herself out of the way
as much as she can ; and so she has done since. She
says she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to har
to hear the relation ; and that she had told it to a room-
ful of people at the time. Several particular gentle-
men have had the story from JIrs Bargrave's own
mouth.
This thing has very much affected me, and I am
as well satisfied as I am of the best-grounded matter
of fact. And why we should dispute matter of fact,
because we cannot solve things of which we can have
no certain or demonstrative notions, seems strange to
me ; Mrs Bargrave's authority and sincerity alone
would have been undoubted in any other case.
[The Great Plagv£ in London.]
Much about the same time I walked out into the
fields towards Bow, for I had a great mind to see
how things were managed in the river, and among tiie
shijts ; aiKl as 1 had some concern in shipping, 1 had
a notion that it had been one of the best ways of
securing one's self from the infection, to have retired
into a ship ; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity
in that point, I turned away over the fields, from Bow
to Bromley, and down to Rlackwall, to the stairs that
are there for landing or taking water.
Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank or
sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked a
while also about, seeing the houses all shut up ; at
last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this
poor man. First 1 asked him how people did there-
abouts ? Alas ! sir, says he, almost desolate ; all dead
or sick ; Here are very few families in this part, or
in that village, pointing at Poplar, where half of
them are not dead already, and the rest sick. Then
he, pointing to one house. There they are all dead,
said he, and tlie house stands open ; nobody dares go
into it. A poor thief, says he, ventured in to steal
something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was
carried to the churchyard too, last night. Then he
pointed to several other houses. There, says he, they
are all dead, the man and his wife and five children.
There, says he, they are shut up; you see a watchman
at the door ; and so of other houses. "Why, says I,
what do you here all alone ? \Vhy, says he, I am a
poor desolate man ; it hath pleased God I am not
yet visited, though my family is, and one of my
children dead. How do you mean then, said I, that
you are not visited ? Why, says he, that is my house,
pointing to a very little low boarded hou-e, aiid there
my poor wife and two children lire, said he, if they
may be said to live ; for my wife and one of the
children are visited, but I do not come at them. And
with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully
down his face ; and so they did down mine too, I
assure you.
But, said I, why do you not come at them ? How can
you abandon your own flesh and blood ? Oh, sir,
says he, the Lord forbid ; I do not abandon them ; I
work for them as nmch as 1 am able ; and, blessed be
the Lord, I keep them from want. And with that I
observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven with a
countenance that presently told me I had happened
on a man that was no h\-pocrite, but a serious, reli-
gious, good man ; and his ejaculation was an expres-
sion of thankfulness, that, in such a condition as he
was in, he should be able to say his family did not
want. Well, says I, honest man, that is a great
mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do
you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful
calamity that is now upon us all ] Why, sir, says he,
I am a waterman, and there is my boat, says he, and
the boat serves me for a house ; I work in it in the
day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I
lay it down upon that stone, says he, showing me a
broad stone on the other side of the street, a good
way from his house ; and then, says he, I halloo and
call to them till I make them hear, and they vome and
fetch it.
Well, friend, says I, but how can you get money as
a waterman 1 Does anybody go by water these times ?
Yes, sir, says he, in the way I am employed there
does. Do you see there, says he, five ships lie at
anchor? pointing down the river a good way below the
town ; and do you see, says he, eight or ten ships lie
at the chain there, and at anchor yonder ? pointing
above the town. All those ships have families on
board, of their merchants and owners, and such like,
who have locked themselves up, and live on board,
close shut in, for fear of the infection ; and I tend
on them to fetch things for them, carry lette's, and
do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not
be obliged to come on shore ; and every night I fasten
my boat on board one of the ship's boats, and there 1
621
r
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
sleep bj myself ; and blessed be God, I am preserved
hitherto.
Well, said I, friend, but will they let you come on
board after j'ou hare been on shore here, when this
has been such a terrible place, and so infected as it is 1
Why, as to that, said he, I very seldom go up the
ship-side, but deliver what I bring to their boat, or
lie by the side, and they hoist it on board ; if I did,
I think they are in no danger from me, for I never
go into any house on shore, or touch anybody, no, not
of my own family ; but I fetch provisions for them.
Nay, says I, but that may be worse, for you must
have those provisions of somebody or other ; and since
all this part of the town is so infected, it is dan-
gerous so much as to speak with anybody ; for tlie
village, said I, is, as it were, the beginning of London,
though it be at some distance from it.
That is true, added he, but you do not understand
me right. I do not buy provisions for them here ; I
row up to Greenwich, and buy fresh meat there, and
sometimes I row down the river to Woolwich, and buy
there ; then I go to single farm-houses on the Kentish
side, where I am known, and buy fowls, and eggs, and
butter, and bring to the ships, as they direct me,
sometimes one, sometimes the other. I seldom
come on shore here ; and I came only now to call my
wife, and hear how my little family do, and give them
a little money which I received last night.
Poor man ! said I, and how much hast thou gotten
for them ?
I have gotten four shillings, said he, which is a
gre.at sum, as things go now with poor men ; but they
have gi\en me a bag of bread too, and a salt fish, and
some flesh ; so all helps out.
Well, said I, and have you given it them yet ?
No, said he, but I have called, and my wife has
answered that she cannot come out yet ; but in half
an hour she hopes to come, and I am waiting for her.
Poor woman ! says he, she is brought saJl}' down ; she
has had a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she
will recover, but I fear the child will die ; but it is
the Lord ! Here he stopt, and wept very much.
Well, honest friend, said I, thou hast a sure com-
forter, if thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to
the will of God; he is dealing with us all in judg-
ment.
Oh, sir, says he, it is infinite mercy if any of us are
spared ; and who am I to repine !
Say'st thou so, said I ; and how much less is my
faith than thine ! And here my heart smote me, sug-
gesting how much better this poor man's foundation
was, on which he staid in the danger, than mine ;
that he had nowhere to fly ; that he had a family to
bind him to attendance, which I had not ; and mine
was mere presumption, his a true dependence and a
courage resting on God ; and yet, that he used all
possible caution for his safety.
I turned a little way from the man while these
thoughts engaged me ; for, indeed, I could no more
refrain from tears than he.
At length, after some farther talk, the poor woman
opened the door, and called Robert, Robert ; he
answered, and bid her stay a few moments and he
would come ; so he ran do^^^l the common stairs to
his boat, and fetched up a sack in which was the pro-
visions he had brought from the ships ; and when he
returned, he hallooed again ; then he went to the
great stone which he showed me, and emptied the
sack, and laid all out, everything by themselves, and
then retired ; and his wife came with a little boy to
fetch them away ; and he called, and said, such a
captain had sent such a thing, and such a captain
such a thing; and at the end adds, (iod has sent it
all, give thanks to him. When the poor woman had
taken u]) all, she was so weak, she could not carry it
%t once in, though the weight was not much neither;
so she left the biscuit, which was in a little bag, and
left a little boy to watch it till she came again.
Well, but, says I to him, did you leave her the four
shillings too, which you said was your week's pay '.
Yes, yes, says he, you shall hear her own it. So he
calls again, Rachel, Rachel, which, it seems, was her
name, did you tiike up the money ? Yes, said she.
How much was it ? said he. Four shillings and a
groat, said she. Well, well, says he, the Lord keep
you all ; and so he turned to go away.
As I could not refrain contributing tears to this
man's story, so neither could I refrain my charity for
his assistance ; so I called him. Hark thee, friend, said
I, come hither, for I believe thou art in health, that I
may venture thee ; so I pulled out my hand, v.hich
was in my pocket before. Here, says I, go and call
thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more com-
fort from me ; God will never forsake a family that
trust in him as thou dost : so I gave him four other
shillings, and bid him go lay them on the stone, and
call his wife.
I have not words to express the poor man's thank-
fulness, neither could he express it himself, but by
tears running down his face. He called his wife, and
told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon
hearing their condition, to give them all that money ;
and a great deal more such as that he said to her.
The woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness,
as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it
up ; and I parted with no money all that year that I
thought better bestowed.
[Tlie TrouUes of a Young Thief.']
[From the ' Life of Colonel Jack."]
I have often thought since that, and with some
mirth too, how I had really more wealth than I knew
what to do with [five pounds, his share of the plunder] ;
for lodging I had none, nor any box or drawer to hide
my money in, nor had 1 any pocket, but such as I say
was full of holes ; I knew nobody in the world that
I could go and desire them to lay it up for me ; for
being a poor, naked, ragged boy, they would presently
say 1 had robbed somebody, and perhaps lay hold of
me, and my money would be my crime, as they say
it often is in foreign countries ; and now, as I was full
of wealth, behold 1 was full of care, for what to do to
secure my money I could not tell ; and this held me
so long, and was so vexatious to me the next day,
that 1 truly sat down and cried.
Nothing could be more perplexing than this money
was to me all that night. I carried it in my hand Oi
good while, for it was in gold all but 14s. ; and that is
to say, it was four guineas, and that 14s. was more dif-
ficult to carry than the four guineas. At last I sat
down and pulled oft' one of my shoes, and put the
four guineas into that ; but after I had gone awhile,
my shoe hurt me so I could not go, so I was fain to
sit domi again, and take it out of my shoe, and carry
it in my hand ; then I found a dirty linen rag in the
street, and I took that up, and wrapt it altogether, and
carried it in that a good way. I have often since heard
people say, when they have been talking of money
that they could not get in, I wish I had it in a foul
clout : in truth, I had mine in a foul clout ; for it
was foul, according to the letter of that saying, but it
served me till I came to a convenient place, and then
I sat down and washed the cloth in the kennel, and
so then put my money in again.
Well, I carried it home with me to my lodging 'n
the glass-liouse, and when 1 went to go to sleep, I
knew not what to do with it ; if I had let any of the
black crew I was with know of it, I should have been
smothered in the ashes for it, or robbed of it, or some
trick or other put upon me tor it ; so I knew not what
to do, but lay with it in my hand, and my hand in
622
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DAMEL DF.POE.
my bofom ; but then sleep went from my eyes. Oh,
the weight of human care! I, a poor beggar boy,
could not sleep, so soon as I had but a little money,
to keep, who, before that, could hare slept upon a
heap of brick-bats, stones, or cinders, or anywhere, as
sound as a rich man does on his down bed, and
sounder too.
Every now and then dropping asleep, I should
dream that my money was lost, and start like one
frightened ; then, finding it fast in my hand, try to
go to sleep again, but could not for a long while ; then
drop and start again. At last a fancy came into my
head, that if I fell asleep, I should dream of the
money, and talk of it in my sleep, and tell that I had
money ; which, if 1 should do, and one of the rogues
should hear me, they would pick it out of my bosom,
and of my hand too, without waking me ; and after
that thought I could not sleep a wink more ; so I
passed that night over in care and anxiety enough,
and this, I may safely say, was the first night's rest
that I lost by the cares of this life, and the deceitful-
ness of riches.
As soon as it was da}', I got out of the hole we lay
in, and rambled abroad in the fields towards Stepney,
and there I mused and considered what I should do
with this money, and many a time I wished that I
had not had it ; for, after all my ruminating upon it,
and what course I should take with it, or where I
should put it, I could not hit upon any one thing, or
any possible meth )d to secure it ; and it perplexed me
so, that at last, as I said just now, I sat down and
cried heartily.
When my crying was over, the case was the same ;
I had the money still, and what to do with it I could
not tell : at last it came into my head that I should
look out for some hole in a tree, and see to hide it
there, till I should have occasion for it. Big with this
discovery, as I then thought it, I began to look about
me for a tree ; but there were no trees in the fields
about Stepney or ]\Iile-end that looked fit for my pur-
pose ; and if there were any, that I began to look nar-
rowly at, the fields were so full of people, that they
would see if 1 went to hide anything there, and I
thought the people eyed me, as it were, and that two
men in particular followed me to see what I intended
to do.
This drove me further off, and I crossed the road at
Mile-end, and in the middle of the town went do^vn
a lane that goes away to the Blind Beggar's at Beth-
nal Green. When I got a little way in the lane, I
found a footpath over the fields, and in those fields
several trees for m}' turn, as I thought ; at last, one
tree had a little hole in it, pretty high out of my
reach, and I climbed up the tree to get it, and when
■I came there, I put my hand in, and found, as I
thought, a place very fit ; so I placed my treasure
there, and was mighty well satisfied with it ; but
behold, putting my hand in again, to lay it more
commodiously, as I thought, of a sudden it slipped
away from me, and I found the tree was hollow, and
my little parcel was fallen in out of my reach, and how
far it might go in I knew not ; so that, in a word, my
money was quite gone, irrecoverably lost ; there could
be no room so much as to hope ever to see it again,
for 'twas a vast great tree.
As young as 1 was, I was now sensible what a fool
I was before, that I could not think of ways to keep
my mone}', i)ut I must come thus far to throw it into
a hole where I could not reach it : well, I thrust my
hand quite up to rny elbow, but no bottom was to be
found, nor any end of the hole or cavity ; I got a stick
of the tree, and thrust it in a great way, but all was
one ; then I cried, nay, roared out, I was in such a
passion ; then I got down the tree again, then up
again, and thrust in my hand again till 1 scratched
my arm and made it bleed, and cried all the while
most violently ; then I began to think 1 liad not po
much as a haHpenny of it left for a halfpenny roll,
and 1 was hungry, and then I cried again : then I
came away in despair, crj'ing and roaring like a littie
boy that had been whipped ; then I went back again
to the tree, and up the tree again, and thus I did
several times.
The last time I had gotten up the tree, I happened
to come down not on the same side that I went up
and came down before, but on the other side of the
tree, and on the other side of the bank also ; and
behold, the tree had a great oj)en place in the side of
it close to the ground, as old liollow trees often have ;
and looking in the open place, to my inexpressible
joy there lay my money and mj' linen rag, all wrapped
up just as I had put it into the hole : for the tree be-
ing hollow all the way up, there had been some moss or
light stuff, which I had not judgment enough to know
was not firm, that had given way when it came to
drop out of my hand, and so it had slipped quite
down at once.
I was but a child, and I rejoiced like a child, for I
hollowed quite out aloud when I saw it ; then I ran
to it and snatched it up, hugged and kissed tlie dirty
rag a hundred times ; then danced and jumped about,
ran from one end of the field to the other, and, in
short, I knew not what, much less do 1 know now
what I did, though 1 shall never forget the thing ;
either what a sinking grief it was to my heart when I
thought I had lost it, or what a flood of joy over-
whelmed me when I had got it again.
While I was iix the first transport of my jov, as I
have said, I ran about, and knew not what I did ;
but when that was over, I sat do\\Ti, opened the foul
clout the money was in, looked at it, told it, found it
was all there, and then 1 fell a-cni'ing as violently as
I did before, when 1 thought I had lost it.
[Advice to a Youth of Rambling Disposition^]
[From ' Robinson Crusoe.']
Being the third son of the family, and not bred to
any trade, my head began to be filled very early with
rambling thoughts. My father, who was verv ancient,
had given me a competent share of learning, as far as
house education and a country free school generally
go, and designed me for the law: but I would be
satisfied with nothing but going to sea ; and my in-
clination to this led me so strongly against tne will —
nay, the commands — of my father, and against all
the intreaties and persuasions of my mother and other
friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in
that propension of nature, tending directly to the life
of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious
and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my
design. He called me one morning into his chamber,
where he was confined by the gout, and exjiostulated
very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked
me what reasons, more than a mere wandering incli-
nation, I had for leaving my father's house and mv
native country, where I niigbt be well introduced, anil
had a prospect of raising my fortune by applicatii-ti
and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. Ilo
told me it was only men of desperate fortunes on one
hand, or of aspiring superior fortunes on the other,
who w^ent abroad upon adventures, to rise by enter-
prise, and make themselves famous in undertakings
of a nature out of the common road ; tliat these
things were all either too far above me, or too far
below me ; that mine was the middle state, or what
might be called the upper station of low life, which
he had found, by long experience, wa-s the best state
in the world — the most suited to human liappiness ;
not exposed to the miseries and hardsiiips, tlie labour
and suiferings, of the mechanic part of mankind, and
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition,
and envy, of the upper part of mankind. He told
me I might judge of the happiness of this state by
this one thing, namely, that this was the state of life
which all other people envied ; that kings have fre-
quently lamented the miserable consequences of being
bom to great things, and wislied they had been placed
in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean
and the great ; tliat the wise man gave his testimony
to this, as the just standard of true felicity, when he
prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find
that the calamities of life were shared among the
upper and lower part of mankind ; but that the middle
station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed
to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of
mankind ; nay, they were not subjected to so many
distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind,
as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and ex-
travagances on one hand, or by hard labour, want of
necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other
hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural
consequences of their way of living ; that the middle
station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues,
and all kind of enjoyments ; that peace and plenty
were the handmaids of a middle fortune ; that tem-
perance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all
agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were
the blessings attending the middle station of life ;
that this way men went silently and smoothly through
the world, and comfortably out of it ; not embarrassed
with the labours of the hands or of the head ; not sold
to a life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed with
perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace
and the body of rest ; not enraged with the passion
of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for
great things — but in easy circumstances, sliding
gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the
sweets of living without the bitter ; feeling that they
are happy, and learning, by every day's experience,
to know it more sensibly.
After this he pressed me eamestlj', and in the most
affectionate manner, not to play the young man, or to
precipitate myself into miseries, which nature, and
the station of life I was born in, seem to have pro-
vided against ; that I was under no necessity of seek-
ing my" bread ; that he would do well for me, and
endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life
which he had been just recommending to me; and
that, if I was not very easy and happy in the world,
it must be my mere fate, or fault, tliat must hinder
it ; and that he should liave notliing to answer for,
having thus discharged his duty, in warning me
against measures which he knew would be to my
hurt. In a word, that as he would do very kind
things for me, if I would stay and settle at home as
he directed, so he wouM not have so much hand in
my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to
go away ; and, to close all, he told me I had my
elder brother for my example, to whom he had used
the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going
into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his
young desires prompting him to run into the army,
where he was killed ; and though he said he would
not cease to pray for mc, yet he would venture to say
to me, that if 1 did take this foolish step, God would
not bless me — and I would have leisure hereafter to
reflect upon having neglected his counsel, when there
might be none to assist in my recovery.
BERNARD MANDEVILLE.
Bernard Mandeville, author of The Fable of
The Bees, was a nervous and graphic writer, who
squandered upon useless and lax speculations powers
that would have fitted him admirably for being a
novelist or essayist. He was born in Holland in 1G70,
but seems early to have come to England, where
he practised as a phj'sician. After some obscure
works, Mandeville produced, in 172.3, his celebrated
Fable of The Bees, or Private Vices Made Public
Benefits, Avhich was soon rendered conspicuous by
being presented by the grand jury of Middlesex, on
account of its immoral and pernicious tendency.
Bishop Berkeley answered the arguments of the
Fable, and Mandeville replied in Letters to Dion. He
also published Free Thoughts on Religion, and An In-
quiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of
Christianittj in War, both of which, like his Fable,
were of questionable tendency. He died in 1733.
The satire of MandevUle is general, not individual;
yet his examples are strong and lively pictures. He
describes the faults and corruptions of different pro-
fessions and forms of society, and then attempts to
show that they are subservient to the grandeur and
worldly happiness of the whole. If mankind, he
says, could be cured of the failings they are naturally
guilty of, they would cease to be capable of forming
vast, potent, and polite societies. His object was
chiefly to divert the reader, being conscious that
mankind are not easily reasoned out of their follies.
Another of the paradoxes of Mandeville is, that
charity schools, and all sorts of education, are inju-
rious to the lower classes. The view which he takes
of human nature is low and degrading enough to
have been worthy the adoption of Swift ; and some
of his descriptions are not inferior to those of the
dean. For example :
\_Flattcry of the Great.}
If you ask me where to look for those beautiful
shining qualities of prime ministers, and the great
favourites of princes, that are so finely painted in
dedications, addresses, epitaphs, funeral sermons, and
inscriptions, I answer, There, and nowhere else, '\^'^here
would you look for the excellency of a statue but in
that part which j'ou see of it ? 'Tis the polished
outside only that has the skill and labour of the
sculptor to boast of ; what is out of sight is untouched.
Would you break the head or cut open the breast to
look for the brains or the heart, you would onlj' show
your ignorance, and destroy the workmanship. This
has often made me compare the virtues of great men
to your large China jars : they make a fine show,
and are ornamental even to a chimney. One would,
by the bulk they appear in, and the value that is set
upon them, think they might be very useful ; but
look into a thousand of them, and you will find no-
thing in them but dust and cobwebs.
\_Society Compared to a Botd of Pwicli.}
Abundance of moderate men I know that are ene-
mies to extremes will tell me that frugality might hap-
pily supply the place of the two vices, prodigality and
avarice ; that if men had not so many profuse ways
of spending wealth, they would not be tempted to so
many evil practices to scrape it together, and conse-
quently that the same number of men, by equally
avoiding both extremes, might render themselves
more happy, and be less vicious without than they
could with them. Whoever argues thus, shows him-
self a better man than he is a politician. Frugality
is like honesty, a mean starving virtue, that is only
fit for small societies of good peaceable men, who are
contented to be poor so they may be easy ; but in a
large stirring nation, you may have soon enough of
it. 'Tis an idle dreaming virtue that employs no
hands, and therefore very useless in a trading country,
where there are vast numbers that one way or other
must be all set to work. Prodigality has a thousand
624
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ANDREW FI.KTCIIER.
inventions to keep people from sitting still, that
frugality would never think of; and as this must
consume a prodigious wealth, so avarice again know?
innumerable tricks to rake it together, which frugality
would scorn to make use of.
Authora are always allowed to compare small things
to great ones, especially if they ask leave first ; but to
compare great things to mean trivial ones is unsuffer-
able, unless it be in burlesque ; otherwise, I would
compare the body politic (I confess the simile is very
low) to a bowl of punch. Avarice should be tlie
sourincr, and prodigality the sweetening of it. The
water t would call the ignorance, folly, and credulity
of the floating insipid multitude ; whilst wisdom,
honour, fortitude, and the rest of the sublime qualities
of men, which, separated by art from the dregs of
nature, the fire of glory has exalted and refined into
a spiritual essence, should bean equivalent to brandy.
I don't doubt but a Westphalian, Laplander, or any
other dull stranger that is unacquainted with the
wholesome composition, if he was to taste the several
ingredients apart, would think it impossible they
should make any tolerable liquor. The lemons would
be too sour, the sugar too luscious, the brandy, he
will say, is too strong ever to be drunk in any quan-
tity, and the water he will call a tasteless liquor, only
fit for cows and horses ; yet experience teaches us that
the ingredients I named, judiciously mixed, will
make an excellent liquor, liked of and admired by
men of exquisite palates.*
[Pomp and Superfluity.]
If the great ones of the clergy, as well as the laity,
of any country whatever, had no value for earthly
pleasures, and did not endeavour to gratify their
appetites, why are envy and revenge, so raging among
them, and all the other passions, improved and refined
upon in courts of princes more than anywhere else ;
and why are their repasts, their recreations, and whole
manner of I'ving, always such as are approved of,
coveted, and '-mitated by the most sensual people of
the same country ? If, despising all visible decora-
tions, they were only in love with the embellishments
of the mind, why should they borrow so many of the
implements, and make use of the most darling toys,
of the luxurious 1 Why should a lord treasurer, or a
bishop, or even the Grand Signior, or the Pope of
Rome, to be good and virtuous, and endeavour the
conquest of his passions, have occasion for greater
revenues, richer furniture, or a more numerous attend-
ance as to personal service, than a private man ?
What virtue is it the exercise of which requires so
much pomp and superfluity as are to be seen by all
men in power? A man has as much opportunity to
practise temperance that has but one dish at a meal,
as he that is constantly served with three courses and
a dozen dishes in each. One may exercise as much
patience and be as full of self-denial on a few flocks,
without curtains or tester, as in a velvet bed that is
sixteen foot high. The virtuous possessions of the
mind are neither charge nor burden : a man may
bear misfortunes with fortitude in a garret, forgive
injuries a-foot, and be chaste, though he has not a
shirt to his back ; and therefore I shall never believe
but that an indifl^erent skuller, if he was intrusted
with it, might carry all the learning and religion that
one man can contain, as well as a barge with six oars,
especially if it was but to cross from Lambeth to
* This simile of Mandeville may have suggested the rery
humorous one in the ' lU-jccted Addresses," where Cobbett is
made to say — ' ICngland is a large earthenware pipkin. John
Hull is the beef thrown into it. Taxes are the hot water he
boils in. Itotten boroughs are 4he fuel that blazes under this
same pipkin. Parliament ig the ladle that stirs the taudgc-
podge."
Westminster ; or that humility is so ponderous a
virtue, that it requires six horses to draw it.
ANDREW FLETCHER OF SALTOUN.
Andrew Fletcher, born in 16.5.3, the son of a
Scottish knight, succeeded early to the family estate
of Saltonn,and represented the sliire of Lotliinn in
the Scottish parliament in the reign of Charles II.
lie opposed the arbitrary designs of the Duke of
York, afterwards James II., and retired to Holland.
His estate was confiscated ; but he returned to Kng-
hind with the Duke of Monmouth in 1(585. Hap-
pening, in a personal scuffle, to kill the mayor of
Lynn, Fletcher again went aViroad, and travelled in
Spain. He returned at the jjcriod of the Revolution,
and took an active part in Scottish aflf'airs. His
opinions were republican, and he was of a luuiglity
unbending temper ; ' brave as the sword he wore,'
according to a contemporary, ' and bold as a lion: a
sure friend, and an irreconcilable enemy: would lose
his life readily to serve his country, and would not
do a base thing to save it.' Fletcher opposed the
union of Scotland with England in 1707, believing,
with many zealous but narrow-sighted patri(jts of
that day, that it would eclipse the glory of ancient
Caledonia. He died in 1716. Fletcher wrote several
political discourses. One of these, entitled A?i Ac'
count of a Com-ersation concernivq a Right Herniation
of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, in a
Letter to the ^Tarquis of Montrose, the Earls of Rothes,
Roxburgh, and Haddington, from London, the fr.\t of
December, 1703, is forcibly written, and contains
some strong appeals in favour of Scottish independ-
ence, as well as some just and manly sentiments. In
this letter occurs a saying often quoted, and which
has been (by Lord Brougham and others) erroneously
ascribed to the Earl of Chatham : ' I knew a very
wise man that believed that if a man were permitted Ic
make all the ballads, he need not care icho should make
the laws of a nation.' The newspaper may now be
said to have supplanted the ballad ; yet, during the
late war, the naval songs of Dibdin fanned the flame
of national courage and patriotism. An excessive
admiration of the Grecian and Roman republics led
Fletcher to eulogise even the slavery that jirevailed
in those states. He represents their condition as
happy and useful ; and, as a contrast to it, he paints
the state of the lowest class in Scotland in colours
that, if true, show how frightful!}' disorganised the
country was at that period. In his Second Discourse
on the Affairs of Scotland, 1C98, there occurs the fol-
lowing sketch : —
* There are at tliis day in Scotland (besides a
great many poor families very meanly provided for
by the church boxes, with others who, by living on
bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thou-
sand people begging from door to door. These are not
only no way advantageous, but a very grievous
burden to so poor a country. And though the imm-
ber of them be perhaps double to what it was for-
merly, by reason of this present great distress, yet
in all times there have been about one hundred thou-
sand of those vagabonds, who have lived without
any regard or subjection either to the laws of the
land, or even those of God and nature. No magis-
trate coidd ever be informed, or discover, which
way one in a hundred of these wretches died,
or that ever they were baptised. Many murders
have been discovered among them ; and they are
not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor
tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some kind
of provision, to perhaps forty such villains in one
day, are sure to be msulted by them), but they
rob many poor people who live in houses distant
6-26
41
FBOK 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727.
from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many
thousands ofthcm meet togetlier in the mountains,
wliere they feast and riot for many days ; and at
country weddings, markets, burials, and the like
pubhc "occasions, they are to be seen, both men and
■women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and
fighting togetlier. These are such outrageous dis-
orders, that it were better for the nation they were
Bold to the galleys or West Indies, than that they
should continue any longer to be a burdeu and curse
upon us.'
JONATHAN SWIFT.
The most powerful and original prose writer of
this period was I)r Swift, the celebrated dean of
St Patrick's. We have already noticed his poetry,
which formed only a sort of interlude in the strangely
mingled drama of his life. None of his works were
written for mere fame or solitary gratification. His
restless and insatiate ambition prompted liim to
wield his pen as a means of advancing his interests,
or expressing his personal feelings, caprices, or re-
sentment. In a letter to Bolingbroke, he says —
' All my endeavours, from a boj', to distinguish my-
self, were only for want of a great title and fortune,
that I might be used like a lord by those wlio have
an opinion of my parts — wb.ether right or wrong, it
is no great matter ; and so the reputation of wit or
great learning does the office of a blue ribbon, or of
a coach and six horses.' This was but a poor and
sordid ambition, and it is surprising that it bore
such fruit. The first work of any importance by
Swift was a political tract, written in 1701, to vin-
dicate the Whig patriots, Somers, Halifax, and
Portland, who had been inipeaclied by the House of
Conmions. The author was then of the ripe age of
thirty-four ; for Swift, unlike his friend Pope, came
but slowly to the maturity of his powers. The
treatise was entitled A Discourse of the Contests ani
Dissensions between the IVublesand Commons of Athens
and Rome. It is plainly written, without irony or
eloquence. One sentence (the last in the fimrth
chapter) closes with a fine simile. 'Although,' he
says, ' most revolutions of government in Greece
and Rome began with the tyranny of the people,
yet they generally concluded in that of a single per-
son : so that an usurping populace is its own dupe ; a
mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for
some single tyrant, whose state and power may ad-
vance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct
as those worms that die with weaving magnificent
habits for beings of a superior nature to their own.'
Swift's next work was his Battle of the Books, vrritten
to support his patron. Sir William Temple, in his
dispute as to the relative merits of ancient and
modern learning. ' The Battle of the Books' exhi-
bits all the characteristics of Swift's st^-le, its per-
sonal satire, and strong racy humour. These qualities
were further displayed in his Tale of a Tub, Avritten
about the same time, and first published in 1704.
The object of his powerful satire was here of a
higher cast ; it was to ridicule the Roman Catholics
and Presbyterians, with a view of exalting the High
Church of England party. His three heroes, Peter,
Martin, and Jack, represent Popery, the Church of
England, and the I'rotestant dissenters ; and their
adventures, if not very decorous, are at least irre-
sistibly lu<iicrous. How any clergyman could write
and publish in such a strain on religious subjects,
must ever remain a marvel. But Swift published
anonymously. He soon grew dissatisfied with the
Whigs, and his next publications united him with
tl'P Tory party. In 1708 appeared his Sentiments
of a Church of England Man, in licspect to lieligion
and Government, his Letters on Ote Sacramental Test,
Argument against the Abolition of Christianili/, and
Predictions for the Year 1708, hi/ Isaac Bicherstaff,
Esq. Various political tracts followed, the most
conspicuous of which are. The Conduct of the Allies,
published in 1712, and The Public Spirit of the Whigs,
in 1714. The latter incensed the Duke of Argyle
and other peers so much, that a proclamation offer-
ing a reward of £300 was issued for the discovery of
the author. In 1713, Swift was rewarded with the
deaner}' of St Patrick's in Dublin ; but the destruc-
tion of all his hopes of further preferment followed
soon after, on the accession of the House of Hanover
to the throne, and the return of the Whig party
to power. He withdrew to Ireland, a disappointed
man, full of bitterness against many of the men and
tilings of his age. His feelings jiartly found vent
in several works which he jiublished on national
subjects, and which rendered him exceedingly po-
pular — A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish
Manufactures, and Letters b)/ M. D. Drapier iigainst
Wood's patent for supplying Ireland with a copper
coinage. His talents were in full vigour, and his
mind, ever active, poured forth a vast number of
slight pieces on the topics of the da}-. In 1726 ap-
peared Gullivei's Travels, the most original and
extraordinar}' of all his productions. A few of his
friends — Pope, Bolingbroke, Gay. and Arbuthnot —
were in the secret as to the autliorship of this sati-
rical romance ; but it puzzled the world in no ordi-
nary degree, and this uncertainty tended to increasi'
the interest and attraction of the work. Vi'liile
courtiers and politicians recognised in the adventures
of Gulliver many satirical allusions to the conn and
politics of England — to Walpole, Bolingbroke, tlie
Prince of Wales, the two contending parties in the
state, and various matters of secret history- — the
great mass of ordinary readers saw and felt onlv the
Avonder and fascination of the narrative. The ap-
pearance, occupations, wars, and inm-^uits of the tiny
Lillii)utians — the gigantic Brolxlingnagians- — the
fearful, misanthropic picture of the Yahoos — with
the philosophic researches at Laputa — all jiossessed
novelty and attraction for the mere unlearned reader,
who was alternately agitated with emotions of sur-
prise, delight, astonishment, pity, and reprobation.
The charm of Swift's style, so simple, pure, and un-
affee^tcd, and the apparent earnestness and sincerity
with which he dwells on the most improbable cir-
cumstances, are displayed in full jierfection in Gul-
liver, which was the most carefully finished of all
his works. Some tracts on ecclesiastical questions,
and the best of his poetry, were afterwards produced.
His other prose works were, A History of the Four
Last Years of Queen Anne (not published till long
after his death). Polite Conversation, a happy satire
on the frivolities of fashionable life, and Directions
for Servants, a fragment which also appeared after
his death, and on which he bestowed considerable
pains. It exemplifies the habit of minute observa-
tion which distinguished Swift, and which some-
times rendered him no very agreeable inmate of a
house. Various editions of Swift's works have been
published, but the best and most complete is that by
Sir Walter Scott, in nineteen volumes. His rank as
a writer has long since been established. In origi-
nality and strength he has no superior, and in wit
and irony — the latter of which
he was born to introduce.
Refined it first, and showed its use —
he sliines equally pre-eminent. He was deficient in
purity of t.iste and loftiness of imagination. The
frequency with which he dwells on gross and dis-
gusting images, betravs a callousness of feeling that
626
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
wholly debarred him from the purer regions of
romance. He could
Laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair ;
though it was still, as Coleridge has remarked,
' the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.'
Of the ' serious air' of Cervantes, which Tope has
also bestowed on his friend, the traces are less fre-
(Hient and distinct. We can scarcely conceive him
to have ever read the ' Faery Queen' or ' Midsummer
Night's Dream.' The palpable and familiar objects
of life were the sources of his inspiration ; and in
fictitious narrative, he excels, like Rich.ardson and
Defoe, by painting and grouping minute particu-
lars, that impart to his most extravagant conceptions
an air of sober truth and reality. Always full of
thought and observation, his clear perspicuous style
never tires in the perusal. "When exhausted by the
works of imaginative writers, or the ornate periods
of statesmen and philosophers, tlie plain, earnest,
and manly pages of Swift, his strong sense, keen
observation, and caustic wit, are felt to be a legacy
of inestimable value. He was emphatically a master
in English literature, and as such, with all his faults,
is entitled to our reverence.
The satirical vein of Swift is well exemplified in
his 'Argument against Abolishing Christianity,' the
ver^' title of wliicli is a specimen of grave irony. It
runs as follows: — 'An Argument to prove that the
Abolishing of Christianity in England may, as
things now stand, be attended with some incon-
veniences, and perhai)s not produce those m an j- good
effects proposed tliereby.' Two specimens of this
tract are presented.
\_Tnconvcii{e)Kcs from a Proposed Abolition of
Ohridianity.]
I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit
and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at
the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happen
to fall in their way, and offend their eyes ; but, at
the .same time, those wise reformers do not consider
what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to
be always provide<l with objects of scorn and contempt,
in order to exercise and improve their talents, and
divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on
themselves ; especially when all this may be done
without the least imaginable danger to their persons.
And to urge another argument of a parallel nature :
if Christianity were once abolished, how could the
free-thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of
profound learning, be able to find another subject so
calculated in all points whereon to display their
abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should
we be deprived of from those whose genius, by con-
tinu;il practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery
and invectives against religion, and would, therefore,
be never able to shine or distinguish themselves on
any other subject ! ^Ve are daily complaining of the
great decline of wit among us, aiid would we take
away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have
left"? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a
wit or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible
stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide
them with materials? What other subject through
all art or nature could have produced Tindal for a
profound author, or furnished him with readers? It
is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorneth
and distin^uisheth the writer. For had a hundred
Buch pens as these been employed on the side of
religion, they would immediately have sunk into
eili'nce and oblivion.
Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears
altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christi-
anity may, perhaps, bring the church in danger, or
at least put the senate to the trouble of another secur-
ing vote. I desire I may not be misunderstood ; I
am far from presuming to affirm or think that the
ciiurch is in danger at present, or as things now stand,
but we know not how soon it may be so, when the
Christian religion is repealed. As plausible as this
project seems, there may a dangerous design lurk
under it. Nothing can be more notorious than that
the atheists, deists, socinians, anti-trinitarians, and
other subdivisions of free-thinkers, are persons of little
zeal for the i)resent ecclesiastical establishment.
Their declared opinion is for repealing the sacramen-
tal test; they are very indifferent with regard to
ceremonies ; nor do they hold tlie_/MS dirlnum of epis-
copacy. Therefore this may be intended as one poli-
tic step towards altering the constitution of the church
established, and setting up presbytery in its stead ;
whicli I leave to be farther considered by those at the
helm.
And therefore if, notwithstanding all I have said,
it shall still be thought necessary to have a bill
brought in for repealing Christianity, I would humbly
offer an amendment, that, instead of the word Chris-
tianiti/. may be put religion in general ; which I con-
ceive will nmch better answer all the good ends pro-
posed bj' the projectors of it. For as long as we leave
in being a God and his Providence, with all the ne-
cessary consequences which curious and inquisitive
men will be apt to draw from such premises, we do
not strike at the root of the evil, although we should
ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of
the Gospel. For of what use is freedom of thought,
if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the
sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of .-ill
objections against Christianity? And therefore the
free-thinkers consider it a sort of edifice, wherein all
the parts have such a nmtual dependence on each
other, that if you happen to pull out one single nail,
the whole fabric nmst fall to the ground.
[Arguments for the Abolition of Christianity Treated.']
It is likewise urged, that there are by computation
in this kingdom above ten thousand parsons, whose
revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops,
would suffice to maintain at least two hundred young
gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and free-thinking,
enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry,
and prejudices, who might be an ornament to the
court and town ; and then, again, so great a number
of able [bodied] divines might be a recruit to our
fleet and armies. This, indeed, appears to be a con-
sideration of some weight ; but then, on the other
side, several things deserve to be considered likewise :
as, first, whether it may not be thought necessary that
in certain tracts of country, like what we call parishes,
there should be one man at least of abilities to read
and write. Then it seems a wrong computation, that
the reveiuies of the church throughout this island
would be large enough to maintain two hundred
young gentlemen, or even half that number, aftei
the present refined way of living, that is, to allow
each of them such a rent as, in the modern form of
sj)eech, would make them easy, * *
Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of
Christianity, is the clear gain of one day in seven,
which is now entirely lost, and consecjuently the
kingdom one-seventh less considerable in trade, busi-
ness, and pleasure ; besides the loss to the public wf
so many stately structures now in the hands of the
clergy, which ndght be converted into ]>lay-liouses,
market-houses, exchanges, couuuon dormitories, and
other public edifices.
I hope I shall be forgiven a h;ird word if 1 call thi«
a cavil. I readily own there hath been an old cus-
tom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the
6-27
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
churches every Sunday, and that shops are still fre-
quently shut up, in order, as it is conceived, to pre-
serve the memory of that ancient practice ; but how
this can prove a hindrance to business or pleasure, is
hard to imagine. What if the men of pleasure are
forced, one day in the week, to game at home instead
of the chocolate house ? are not the taverns and cof-
feehouses open ? can there be a more convenient sea-
eon for taking a dose of physic ? is not Sunday the
chief day for traders to sum up the accounts of the
week, and for lawyers to prepare their briefs? But I
would fain know how it can be pretended that the
churches are misapplied? where are more appoint-
ments and rendezvouses of gallantry ? where more
care to appear in the foremost box with greater ad-
vantage of dress? where more meetings for business?
where more bargains driven of all sorts ? and where so
many conveniences or incitements to sleep ?
There is one advantage, greater than any of the
foregoing, proposed by the abolishing of Christianity :
that it will utterly extinguish parties among us, by
removing those factious distinctions of high and low
church, of Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church
of England, which are now so many grievous clogs
upon public proceedings, and are apt to dispose men
to prefer the gratifying themselves, or depressing their
adversaries, before the most important interest of the
state.
1 confess, if it were certain that so great an advan-
tage would redound to the nation by this expedient, I
would submit, and be silent ; but will any man say, that
if the words drinking, cheating, lying, stealing, were
by act of parliament ejected out of the English tongue
and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning
chaste and temperate, honest and just, and lovers of
truth ? Is this a fair consequence ? Or if the physicians
would forbid us to pronounce the words gout, rheuma-
tism, and stone, would that expedient serve like so
many talismans to destroy the diseases themselves?
Are party and faction rooted in men's hearts no deeper
than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded upon
no firmer principles ? and is our own language so poor,
that we cannot find other terms to express them ? Are
envy, pride, avarice, and ambition, such ill nomen-
clators, that they cannot furnish aj)pellations for their
owners ? Will not heydukes and niamalukes, manda-
rines and pashaws, or any other words formed at
pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the
ministry from others who would be in it if they could ?
What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of
Bpeech, and, instead of the word church, make it a
question in politics, whether the Monument be in
danger ? Because religion was nearest at hand to fur-
nish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so bar-
ren we can find no other ? Suppose, for argument sake,
that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs Mrs
Tofts, and the Trimmers Valentini,' would not Mar-
garitians, Toftians, and Valentinians be very tolerable
marks of distinction? The Prasini and V'eniti, two
most virulent factions in Italy, began (if I remember
right) by a distinction of colours in ribbons ; and we
might contend with as good a grace about the dignity
of the blue and the green, which would serve as pro-
perly to divide the court, the parliament, and the
kingdom between them, as any terms of art whatsoever
borrowed from religion. And therefore I think there
is little force in this objection against Christianity, or
prospect of so great an adrantage as is proposed iu the
abolishing of it.
It is again objected, as a very absurd ridiculous
custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much
less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven
against the lawfulness of those methods most in use
towards the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure,
> Singers then in rogue.
which are the constant practice of all men alive.
But this objection is, I think, a little unworthy so
refined an age as ours. Let us ar^ue this matter
calmly : I appeal to the breast of any polite free-
thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a pre-
dominant passion, he hath not always felt a wonder-
ful incitement by reflecting it was a thing forbidden ;
and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste,
the wisdom of the nation hath taken special care that
the ladies should be furnished with prohibited silks,
and the men with prohibited wine. And indeed it
were to be wished that some other prohibitions were
promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the
town ; which, for want of such expedients, begin al-
ready, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving
way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen.
[Ludicrous Image of Fanaticism.']
[From a ' Discourse on the Operation of the Spirit."]
It is recorded of Mahomet, that upon a visit he was
going to pay in Paradise, he had an ofl^er of several
vehicles to conduct him upwards ; as, fiery chariots,
winged horses, and celestial sedans ; but he refused
them all, and would be borne to heaven on nothing
but his ass. Now, this inclination of Mahomet, as
singular as it seems, hath since been taken up by a
great number of devout Christians, and doubtless with
good reason. For, since that Arabian is known to
have borrowed a moiety of his religious system from
the Christian faith, it is but just he should pay re-
prisals to such as would challenge them ; wherein the
good people of England, to do them all right, have not
been backward. For though there is not any other
nation in the world so plentifully j)rovided with car-
riages for that journey, either as to safety or ease,
yet there are abundance of us who will not be satis-
tied Avith any other machine besides this of Mahomet.
A Meditation upon a Broomstick, according to tlit
style and mantw of the Hon. Robert Boyle''s Medita-
tions.
This single stick, which you now bthold inglo-
riously lying in that neglected corner, 1 once knew in
a flourishing state in a forest ; it was full of sap, full
of leaves, and full of boughs ; but now in vain does
the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by
tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless
trunk ; it is now at best but the reverse of what it
was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the
earth, and the root in the air ; it is now handled by
every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery,
and, by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make
her things clean, and be nasty itself; at length, worn
out to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is
either throAni out of doors, or condemned to the last
use of kindling a fire. A\'hen I behold this, I siglied,
and said within myself. Surely mortal man is a
broomstick! nature sent him into the world strong
and lusty, in a thriving condition, wenring his own
hair on his head, the proper branches of this reason-
ing vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has
lopped ofll" his green boughs, and left him a withered
trunk ; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig,
valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs,
all covered with powder, that never grew on liis head ;
but now, should this our broomstick pretend to enter
the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore,
and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of
the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule
and despise its vanity. I'artial judges that we are of
our own excellences, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perliaps you will s.iy, is an
emblem of a tree standing on its head : and pray,
what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal
628
MISCr.I.I.ANEOlS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his
head where his heels should be — grovelling on the
earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a
universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover
of grievances ; rakes into every slut's corner of nature,
bringing hidden corruptions to the light, and raises a
mighty dust where there was none before, sharing
deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he
pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in
slavery to women, and generally the least deserving ;
till, worn to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is
either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle
flames for others to warm themselves by.
[^ dvmiures of Gulliver in Brohdingnafj .']
[Thrown amongst a people described as about ninety feet
high, Gulliver is taken in charge by a young lady connected
M'ith the court, who had two boxes made in which to keep him
and carry him about.]
I should have lived happy enough in that country,
if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridi-
culous and troublesome accidents, some of which I
shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried
me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box,
and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me
in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember,
before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one
day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me
down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf
applf^ trees, I must need show my wit by a silly allu-
sion between him and the trees, which happens to
hold in their language as it doth in ours. Where-
upon the malicious rogue watching his opportunity,
when 1 was walking under one of them, shook it
directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each
of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumb-
ling about my ears ; one of them hit me on the back
as 1 chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on
my face ; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf
was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the
provocation.
Another day Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth
grass-plat to divert mystlf, while she walked at some
distance with her governess. In the meantime there
suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was
immediately by the force of it struck to the ground ;
and when I was down, the hail-stones gave me such
cruel bangs all over the body, as if I had been pelted
with tennis-balls ; however, I made a shift to creep
on all fours, and shelter myself by lying flat on my
face, on the lee-side of a border of lemon thyme, but
so bruised from head to foot, that 1 could not go
abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be
wondered at, because nature in that country observ-
ing the same proportion through all her operations, a
hail-stone is near eighteen hundred times as large as
one in Europe, which I can assert upon experience,
having been so curious to weigh and measure them.
But a more dangerous accident happened to me in
the same garden, when my little nurse, believing she
had put me in a secure j)lace, which I often intreated
her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts, and
having left my box at home to avoid the trouble of
carrying it, went to another part of the garden with
her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance.
While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small
white spaniel belonging to one of the chief gardeners,
having got by accident into the garden, happened to
range near the place where I lay ; the dog, following
the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his
mouth ran straight to his master, wagging his tail,
and set me gently on the ground. By good fortune
he had been so well taught, that I was carried between
his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my
clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well,
and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible
fright ; he gently took me up in both his hands, and
asked me how I did ; but 1 was so amazed and out
of breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few
minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to
my little nurse, who by this time had returned to the
place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies
when I did not appear, nor answer when she called :
she severely reprimanded the gardener on account of
his dog. But the thing was hushed up, and never
known at court ; for the girl was afraid of the queen's
anger, and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not
be for my reputation that such a story should go about.
This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch
never to trust me abroad for the future out of her
sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and
therefore concealed from her some little unlucky
adventures that happened in those times when I was
left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the gar-
den, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely
drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he
would have certainly carried me away in his talons.
Another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill,
I fell to my neck in the hole, through which that ani-
mal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not
worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my
clothes.
I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mor-
tified to observe in those solitary walks that the
smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of
me, but would hop about me, within a yard's distance,
looking for worms and other food with as much in-
difference and security as if no creature at all were
near them. I remember, a thrush had the confidence
to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a piece of
cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my
breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these
birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavour-
ing to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture
within their reach ; and then they would hop back
unconcerned to hunt for worms or snails, as they did
before. But one day I took a thick cudgel, and threw
it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet, that I
knocked him down, and seizing him be the neck with
both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse.
However, the bird, who had onl}' been stunned, re-
covering himself, gave me so many boxes with his
wings on both sides of my head and body, though I
held him at arm's length, and was out of the reach of
his claws, that I was twenty times thinking to let him
go. But I was .soon relieved by one of o>ir servants,
who wrung oft' the bird's neck, and I had him next
day for dinner by the queen's command. This liimet,
as near as I can remember, seemed to be somewhat
larger than an England swan.
The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my
sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert nie when
I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how
to handle ii sail or an oar, and whether a little exer-
cise of rowing might not be convenient for my health !
I answered, that I understood both very well ; for al-
though my proper employment had been to be surgeon
or doctor to the ship, yet often upon a pinch I was forced
to work like a common mariner. But I could not see
how this could be done in their countr}-, where the
smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war
among ua, and such a boat as I could man.ige would
never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said if
I would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make
it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in.
The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my in-
structions, in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with
all its tackling, able conveniently to ludd eight Kuro-
jieans. Wlien it was finished, the (juecn was so de-
lighted, that she ran with it in her lap to the kinjj
who ordered it to be put in a cistern full cf water with
6'29
FROM 1689
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
TO 1727.
inc in it by way of trial ; wliere I could not manage
my two sculls, or little oars, for want of room. But
the queen had before contrived another project. She
ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three
hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eiglit deep, which
being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on
the Hoor along the wall in an outer room of the palace.
11 had a cock near the bottom to let out the water,
when it began to grow stale ; and two servants could
easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to
row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen
and her ladies, who thought themselves well enter-
tained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would
put up my sail, and then my business was only to
steer, while the ladies gave nie a gale with their fi\ns ;
and, when they were weary, some of the pages would
blow my sail forward with their breath, while 1 showed
my art by steering starboard or larboard, as 1 pleased.
When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back
my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry.
In this exercise I once met an accident, which had
like to have cost me my life; for one of the pages
ba'^ing put my boat into the trough, the governess,
who attended Lilumdalclitch, very officiously lifted me
up to place me in the boat, but I happened to slip
through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen
down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest
chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a
corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman's
stomacher ; the head of the pin passed between my
shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus 1
was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch
ran to my relief.
Another time, one of the servants whose office it
was to fill my trough every third day with fresh water,
was so careless as to let a huge frog (not perceiving it)
slip out of his pail. The frog lay concealed till 1 was
put into my boat, but then seeing a resting-place,
climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side,
that I was forced to balance it with all my weight on
the other, to prevent overturning. When the frog was
got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat,
and then over my head, backwards and forwards,
daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime.
The largeness of its features made it appear the most
deformed animal that can be conceived. However, I
desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. I
banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and at
last forced it to leap out of the boat.
But the greatest danger 1 ever underwent in that
kingdom was from a monkey, who belonged to one
of the clerks of the kitchen. Glumdalclitch had
Rocked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere
upon business, or a visit. The weather being very
warm, the closet-window was left open, as well as the
windows and the door of my bigger box, in which I
usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency.
As I sat quietly meditating at my t.able, I heard
something bounce in at the closet-window, and skip
about from one side to the other ; whereat, although
I were much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but
not stirring from my seat ; and then I saw this frolic-
some animal frisking and leaping up and down, till
at last he came to my box, which he seemed to
view with great pleasure and curiosity, j)eeping in at
the door and every window. I retrented to the farther
corner of my room, or box, but the monkey looking
in at every side put me into such a fright, that I
wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the
bed, as 1 might easily have done. After some time
spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last
espied me, and reaching one of liis paws in at the
door, AS a cat does when she plays with a mouse,
although I often shifted place to avoid him, lie at
length seized the la))pet of my coat (which, being
made of tVat cc uutry 's silk, was very thick and strong),
and dragged nie out. He took me up in his right fore-
foot, and held me as a nurse does a child she is going
to suckle, just as I have seen the fame sort of crea-
ture do with a kitten in Europe ; and when I
offered to struggle, he squeezed me so hard, that 1
thought it more prudent to submit. I have good
reason to believe that he took me i'or a young one of
his own species, by his often stroking my lace very
gently with his other paw. In these diveisions he
was interrupted by a noise at the closet-door, as if
somebody were opening it ; whereupon he suddenly
leaped up to the window, at which he had come in,
and thence upon the leads and gutters, walking upon
three legs, and holding me in the fourth, till he
clambered up to a roof that was next to ours. I
heard Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he
was carrying me out. The poor girl was almosc dis-
tracted ; that quarter of the palace was all in an
uproar ; the servants ran for ladders ; the monkey
was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the
ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of
his fore-paws, and feeding me with the other, by
cramming into my mouth some victuals he had
squeezed out of the bag on one side of his chaps, and
patting me when I would not eat ; whereat many of
the rabble below could not forbear laughing ; neither
do I think they justly ought to be blani&d, for with-
out question the sight was ridiculous enough to every-
body but myself. Some of the people threw up stones,
hoping to drive the monkey down ; but this was
strictly forbidden, or else very probably my brains
had been dashed out.
The ladders were now applied, and mounted by
several men, which the monkey observing, and finding
himself almost encompassed, not being able to make
speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a
ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some
time, five hundred yards from the ground, expecting
every moment to he blown down by the wind, or to
fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over
and over from the ridge to the eaves ; but an honest
lad, one of mj'nurse's footmen, climbed up, and putting
me into his breeches-pocket, brought me down safe.
I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the mon-
key had crammed down my throat ; but my dear
little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a small
needle, and then I fell a vomiting, which gave me
great relief. Yet I was so weak, and bruised in the
sides with the squeezes given me by this odious ani-
mal, that 1 was forced to keep my bed a fortnight.
The king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to
inquire after my health, and her majesty made nie
several visits during my sickness. 'I'he monkey was
killed, and an order made that no such animal should
be kept about the palace.
AV'hen I attended the king after my recovery to re-
turn him thanks for his favours, he was pleased to
rally me a good deal upon this adventure. He asked
me what my thoughts and speculations were while I
lay in the monkey's paw ; how I liked the vic-
tuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and
whether the fresh air on the roof had shai'pened my
stomach. He desired to know what I would have
done upon such an occasion in my own countiy. I
told his majesty that in Kurope we had no monkeys
except such as were brought for curiosities from other
places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen
of them together, if they presumed to attack me.
And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was
so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an ele-
phant), if my fears had sufiered me to think so far as
to make use of my hanger (looking fiercely, and clap-
ping my hand upon the hilt as I spoke) when he
poked his paw into my chamber, perha])s I should
have given him such a wound as would have made
him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put
630
MISCELLANEOCS WRITERS,
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SV/IPT,
it in. This I delivered in a firm tone, like a. person
wlio was jealous lest his courage should be called in
question. However, my speech produced nothing else
besides loud laughter, which call the respect due to
his majesty from those about him could not make
them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an
attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself
honour among those who are out of all degree of
equality or comparison with him. And yet I have
seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in
England since my return, where a little contemptible
varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or
common sense, shall presume to look with importance,
and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons
of the kingdom.
[Satire on Pretended Philosophers and Projectors.]
[In the description of his fancied Academy of Lagado in
Gulliver's Travels, Swift ridicules those quack pretenders to
science and knavish projectors who were so common in his
day, and whose schemes sometimes led to ruinous and distress-
ing consequences.]
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went
for many days to the academy. Every room hatli in
if, one or more projectors, and I believe I could not
le in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a intagre aspect, with
sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged,
and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and
skin, were all of the same colour. He had been eight
years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of
cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermeti-
cally sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw in-
clement summers. He told me he did not doubt in
eight years more that he should be able to supply the
governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate ;
but he complained that his stock was low, and in-
treated me to give him something as an encourage-
ment to ingenuity, especially since this had been a
Tery dear season for cucumbers. 1 made him a snuill
present, for my lord had furnished me with money on
purpose, because he knew their practice of begging
from all who go to see them.
I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder,
who likewise showed me a treatise he had written
concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended
to publish.
There was a most ingenious architect, who had con-
trived a new method for building houses, by beginning
at the roof, and working downwards to the founda-
tion ; which he justified to me by the like practice of
those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.
In another apartment I was highly pleased with a
projector who had found a device of ploughing the
ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs,
cattle, and labour. The method is this : in an acre
of ground, you bury, at six inches distance, and eight
deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chesnuts, and other
masts or vegetables, whereof these animals are fondest ;
then you drive six hundred or more of them into the
field, where in a few days they will root up the whole
ground in search of their food, and make it fit for sow-
ing, at the same time manuring it with their dung. It
is true, upon experiment they found the charge and
trouble very great, and they had little or no crop.
However, it is not doubted that this invention may be
capable of great improvement.
I went into another room, where the walls and ceil-
ing were all hung round with cobwebs, except a nar-
row passage for the artist to go in aiid out. At my
entrance he called aloud to me not to disturb his
webs. He lamented the fatal mistake the world had
been so long in, of using silk-worms, while we had
such plenty of domestic insects, who infinitely excelled
the former, because they understood how to weave as
well as spin. And he proposed farther, that by em-
ploying spiders, the charge of dyeing silks would bo
wholly saved ; whereof I was fully convinced w!ien
he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully
coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders ; assuring u-=,
that the webs would take a tincture from them ; and
as he had them of all hues, he hoi>ed to fit everybody's
fancy, as soon as he could find j)roper food for the flies,
of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to
give a strength and consistence to the threads.
There was an astronomer who had undertaken to
place a sun-dial ui)on the great weathercock on the
town-house, by adjusting the annual and-diumal mo-
tions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coin-
cide with all accidental turning of the winds.
I visited many other apartments, but shall not
trouble my reader with all the curiosities I observed,
being studious of brevity.
I had hitherto only seen one side of the academy,
the other being appropriated to the advancers of spe-
culative learning, of whom I shall say something
when I have mentioned one illustrious person more,
who is called among them the universal artist. He
told us he had been thirty years employing his
thoughts for the improvement of human life. He
had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and
fifty men at work ; some were condensing air into a dry
tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and let-
ting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate ; others
softening marble for pillows and pin-cushions ; others
petrifying the hoofs of a living horse to preserve tliem
from foundering. The artist himself was at that time
busy upon two great designs ; the first to sow land
with chafi', wherein he atlirmed the true seminal vir-
tue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several
experiments, which I was not skilful enough to com-
prehend. The other was, by a certain composition of
gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly ajjplied,
to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs,
and he hoped in a reasonable time to propagate the
breed of naked sheep all over the kingdom.
We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy,
where, as I have already said, the projectors in specu-
lative learning resided.
The first professor I saw was in a veiT' large room,
with forty pupils about him. After salutation, ob-
serving me to look earnestly upon a frame which took
up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of
the room, he said, perhaps I might wonder to see
him employed in a project for improving speculative
knowledge by practical and meclianical operations.
Ikit the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness,
and he flattered himself that a more noble exalted
thought never sprang in any other man's Iiead. Every
one knew how laborious the usual method is of attain-
ing to arts and sciences ; whereas by his contrivance,
the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and
with a little bodily labour, may write books in philo-
sophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology,
without the least assistance from genius or study. He
then led me to the frame, about the sides whereof all
his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square,
placed in the middle of the room. The superficies
was composed of several bits of wood, about the big-
ness of a die, but some larger than others. They
were all linked together by slender wires. These bits
of wood were covered on every square with paper
pasted on them ; and on these j)apers were written all
the words of their language in their several moods,
tenses, and declensions, but without any order. The
professor then desired me to (jbserve, for he was going
to set his engine at work. The pupils, at his com-
mand, took each of them hold of an iron handle,
whereof there were forty fixed rouiul the edges of tho
frame, and giving them a sudden turn, the whole dis-
position of the words was entirely changed. He then
commanded six-and-thirty of the lads to rca.i the
661
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO ?.727.
scvoml lines softly as they appeared upon the frame ;
aiul where they found three or four words together
that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to
the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work
was repeated three or four times, and at every turn
tlie engine was so contrived, that the words shifted
ir.to new i)laces as the square bits of wood moved
upside down.
Six hours a-day the young students were employed
in this labour ; and the professor showed me several
volumes in large folio, already collected, of broken
sentences, which he intended to piece together, and
out of those rich materials to give the world a com-
plete body of all arts and sciences, which, however,
might be still improved, and much expedited, if the
public would raise a fund for making and employing
five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the
managers to contribute in common their several col-
lections.
He assured me that this invention had employed all
his thoughts from his youth ; that he had emptied
the whole vocabulary into his frame, and madfe the
strictest computation of the general proportion there
is in books, between the numbers of particles, nouns,
and verbs, and other parts of speech.
1 made my humblest acknowledgments to this il-
lustrious person for his great comnmnicativeness, and
promised, if ever 1 had the good fortune to return to
my native country, that I would do him justice, as
the sole inventor of this wonderful machine, the form
and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate
upon paper. I told him, although it were the custom
of our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each
other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it
became a controversy which was the right owner, j-et
I would take such caution that he should have the
honour entire without a rival.
We next went to the school of languages, where
three professors sat in consultation upon improving
that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting
polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and
participles ; because, in reality, all things imaginable
are but nouns.
The other was a scheme for entirely abolishing all
words whatsoever ; and this was urged as a great ad-
vantage in point of health as well as brevity : for, it
is plain, that every word we speak is in some degree
a diminutation of our lungs by corrosion, and conse-
quently contributes to the shortening of our lives.
An expedient was therefore offered, that since words
are only names for things, it would be more conve-
nient for all men to carry about them such things as
were necessary to express the particular business they
arc to discourse on. And this invention would cer-
tainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as
health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction
with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to
raise a rebellion, unless they might be allowed the
liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner
of their forefathers ; such constant irreconcilable ene-
mies to science are the common people. However,
many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new
scheme of expressing themselves by things ; which
hath only this inconvenience attending it, that if a
man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he
nmst be obliged in proportion to carry a greater
bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford
one or two strong servants to attend him. I have
often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under
the weight of their packs, like pedlers among us, who,
when they met in the streets, would lay down their
loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an
hour together ; then put up their imi)lements, help
each other to resume their burdens, and take their
leave. But, for short conversations, a man may carry
implements in his pockets and under his arms, enough
to supply him, and in his house he cannot be at a
loss ; therefore the room where company meet to
practise this art is full of all things ready at hand,
requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial
converse.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention
was, that it would serve as a universal language to
be understood in all civilised nations, whose goods
and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly
resembling, so that their uses might easily be compre-
hended. And thus ambassadors would be qualified
to treat with foreign princes or ministers of state, to
whose tongues they were utter strangers.
I was at the mathematical school, where the master
taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to
us in Europe. The proposition and demonstration
were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed
of a cephalic tincture. This the student was to
swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days
following eat nothing but bread and water. As the
wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain,
bearing the proposition along with it. But the suc-
cess hfith not hitherto been answerable, partly by some
error in the quantum or composition, and partly by
the perverseness of lads ; to whom this bolus is so
nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and dis-
charge it upwards before it can operate ; neither have
they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence
as the prescription requires.
In the school of political projectors I was but ill
entertained, the professors appearing in my judgment
wholly out of their senses, which is a scene that never
fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people
were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to
choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom,
capacity, and virtue ; of teaching ministers to consult
the public good ; of rewarding merit, great abilities,
and eminent services ; of instructing princes to know
their true interest, by placing it on the same founda-
tion with that of their people ; of choosing for employ-
ments persons qualified to exercise them ; with many
other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered
before into the heart of man to conceive, and con-
firmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing
so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers
have not maintained for truth.
But, however, I sliall so far do justice to this part
of the academy, as to acknowledge that all of them
were not so visionary. There was a most ingenious
doctor, who seemed to be pe;-fectly versed in the
whole nature and system of government. This illus-
trious person had very usefully employed his studies
in finding out effectual remedies for all diseases and
corruptions to which the several kinds of public ad-
ministration are subject by the vices or infirmities of
those who govern, as well as by the licentiousness of
those who are to obey. For instance, whereas all
writers and reasoners have agreed that there is a strict
universal resemblance between the natural and poli-
tical body, can there be anything more evident than
that the health of both must be preserved, and the
diseases cured, by the same prescriptions. It is al-
lowed that senates and great councils are often
troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other pec(;anfc
humours; with many diseases of the head, and more
of the heart ; with strong convulsions; with grievou.s
contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands,
but especially the right ; with spleen, flatus, vertigoes,
and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours full of
foetid purulent nuitter ; with sour frothy ructations;
with canine ajppetites, and crudeness of digestion ;
besides many others needless to mention. This doctor
therefore proposed, that upon the meeting of a senate,
certain [physicians should attend at the three first days
of their sitting, and at the closo of each dav's debate
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JONATHAN SWIFT.
feel the pulses of every senator ; after which, having
maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of
the several maladies, and the methods of cure, tliey
should on the fourth day return to the senate-house,
attended by their apothecaries stored with proper
medicines ; and, before the members sat, administer
to each of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corro-
sives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgics,
icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several
cases required; and, according as these medicines
should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them at the next
meeting.
This projoct could not be of any great expense to
the public, and might, in my poor opinion, be of
much use for the despatch of business in those coun-
tries where senates have any share in the legislative
power ; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few
mouths which are now closed, and close many more
which are now open ; curb the petulancy of the young,
and correct the positiveness of the old ; rouse the
stupid, and damp the pert.
Again, because it is a general complaint that the
favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak
memories, the same doctor proposed, that whoever
attended a first minister, after having told his busi-
ness with the utmost brevity, and in the plainest
words, should, at his departure, give the said minister
a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread
on his corns, or lug him tlirice by both ears, or run a
pin into his body, or pinch his arms black and blue,
to prevent forgetfulness ; and at every levee day re-
peat the same operation, until the business were done
or absolutely refused.
He likewise directed that every senator in the
great council of a nation, after he had delivered his
opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be
obliged to give his vote directly contrary ; because if
that were done, the result would infallibly terminate
in the good of the public.
When parties in a state are violent, he offered a
wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method
is this : You take a hundred leaders of each party ;
3'ou dispose them into couples of such whose heads
are nearest of a size ; then let two nice operators saw
off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in
Buch manner that the brain may be equally divided.
Let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged, apply-
ing each to the head of his opposite party-man. It
seems indeed to be a work that requireth some exact-
ness ; but the professor assured us, that, if it were
dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible.
For he argued thus : that the two half brains being
left to debate the matter between themselves within
the space of one skull, would soon come to a good
understanding, and produce that moderation, as well
as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in
the heads of those who imagine they came into the
world only to watch and govern its motions : and as
to the difference of brains in quantity or quality,
among those who are directors in faction, the doctor
assured us, from his owu knowledge, that it was a
perfect trifle.
I heard a very warm debate between two professors,
about the most commodious and effectual ways and
means of raising money without grieving the subject.
The first affirmed, the justest method would be to lay
a certain tax upon vices and folly, and the sum fixed
upon every man to be rated after the fairest manner
by a jury of his neighbours. The second was of an
opinion directly contrary ; to tax those qualities of
body and mind for which men chiefly value them-
selves ; the rate to be more or less according to the
degrees of excelling, the decision whereof should be left
entirely to their own breast. The highest tax was upon
men who are the greatest favourites of the otlier sex,
and the assessments according to the number and
natures of the favours they have received, for which
they are allowed to be their own vouchers. AVit,
valour, and politeness, were likewise proposed to be
largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by
every person giving his own word for the quantum of
what lie possessed. Rut as to honour, justice, wisdom,
and learning, they sliould not be taxed at all, be-
cause they are qualifications of so singular a kind,
that no man will either allow them in his neighbour,
or value them in himself.
The women were proposed to be taxed according to
their beauty and skill in dressing, wherein they had
the same privilege with the men, to be determined by
their own judgment. But constancy, cliastity, good
sense, and good nature, were not rated, because they
would not bear the charge of collecting.
To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it
was proposed that the members should raffle for em-
ployments ; every man first taking an oath, and giving
security that he would vote for the court, whether he
won or no ; after which the losers had in their turn
the liberty of rafHing upon the next vacancy. Thus,
hope and expectation would be kept alive ; none
would complain of broken promises, but impute their
disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders
are broader and stronger than those of a ministrv.
Another professor showed me a large paper of in-
structions for discovering plots and conspiracies against
the government.
I told him, that in the kingdom of Tribnia, by the
natives called Langden, w^here I had long sojourned,
the bulk of the people consisted wholly of discoverers,
witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences,
swearers, together with their several subservient and
subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the con-
duct, and pay of ministers and their deputies. The
plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship
of those persons who desire to raise bheir own charac-
ters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to
a crazy administration ; to stifle or divert general dis-
contents ; to fill their coffers with forfeitures ; and
raise or sink the opinion of public credit, is either
shall best answer their private advantage. It is first
agreed and settled among them what sus].ected per-
sons shall be accused of a plot ; then effectual care is
taken to secure all their letters and other papers, and
put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered
to a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the
mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters.
For instancp, they can deciplier a close-stool to signify
a privy-council ; a flock of geese, a senate ; a lame
dog, an invader ; the plague, a standing army ; a buz-
zard, a minister ; the gout, a high-priest ; a gibbet, a
secretary of state; a chamber-pot, a committee of
grandees ; a sieve, a court lady ; a broom, a revolu-
tion ; a mouse-trap, an employment ; a bottomless
pit, the treasury ; a sink, a court ; a cap and bells, a
favourite ; a broken reed, a court of justice ; an empty
tun, a general ; a running sore, the administration.
When this method fails, they have two others more
efl^ectual, which the learned among them call acros-
tics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all ini-
tial letters into political meanings ; thus, N shall sig-
nify a plot, B a regiment of horse, L a fleet at sea. Or,
secondly, by transj.osing the letters of the alphabet,
in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest
designs of a discontented party. So, for exanij)le, if
I should say in a letter to a friend. Our brother Tom
hath just got the piles, a man of skill in tliis art would
discover how the same letters which compose that
sentence may be analysed into the following words —
Resist — a plot is brought home — the tower. And this
is the anagramatic method.
The professor made nic great acknowledgments for
communicating these observations, and promised to
make honourable mention of me in his treatise.
633
FROM 1689
CYCLOPiEDIA OF
W)172fl.
[ThoriyJits on Various Subjects.]
^Vc have just religion enough to make us hale, but
not enough to make us love one another.
^\'hen we desire or solicit anything, our minds run
whoUv on the good side or circumstances of it ; when
it is obtained, our mind runs only on the bad ones.
^\'hen a true genius appeareth in the world, you
may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces
are all in confederacy against him.
I am apt to think that, in the day of judgment,
there will be small allowance given to the wise for
their want of morals, or to the ignorant for their want
of faith, because both are without excuse. This
renders the advantages equal of ignorance and know-
ledge. But some scruples in the wise, and some vices
in the ignorant, will perhaps be forgiven upon the
strength of temptation to each.
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is
in laying taxes on the next : ' Future ages shall talk
of this ; this shall be famous to all posterity :' whereas
their time and thoughts will be taken up about pre-
sent things, as ours are now.
It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side
setteth up false lights, and maketh a great noise, that
the enemy may believe them to be more numerous
and strong than they really are.
I have kno\vn some men possessed of good qualities,
which were very serviceable to others, but US'- less to
themselves ; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to
inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the
owner within.
If a man would register all his opinions upon love,
politics, religion, learning, &c., beginning from his
youth, and so goon to old age, what a bundle of incon-
sistencies and contradictions would appear at last !
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lop-
ping oft' our desires, is like cutting off our feet when
we want shoes.
The reason why so few marriages are happy, is be-
cause young ladies spend their time in making nets,
not in making cages.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miser-
able, fur the happy impute all their success to pru-
dence and merit.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest
offices : so, climbing is performed in the same posture
with creeping.
Censure is the tax a man payeth to the public for
being eminent.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones
you gave before.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives,
and the sincerest part of our devotion.
The common fluency of speech in many men and
most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and
scarcity of words : for whoever is a master of language,
and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speak-
ing, to hesitate upon the choice of both ; whereas
common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one
set of words to clothe them in, and these are always
ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a
church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd
is at the door.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride.
Vain men delight in telling what honours have been
done them, what great company they have kept, and
the like; by which they plainly confess that these
honours were more than their due, and such as their
friends would not believe if they had not been told :
whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours
below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I
therefore delj ver it as a maxim, that whoever desires
the charactei of a proud man, ought to conceal his
Tanity.
Every man desireth to live long, but no mau would
be old.
If books and laws continue to increase as they have
done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for
future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man
a lawyer.
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. [IIow true of
Swift himself!]
If a man maketh me keep my distance, the comfort
is, he keepeth his at the same time.
Xery few men, properly speaking, live at present,
but are providing to live another time.
Praise is the daughter of present power.
Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth, are
said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak
things that sui-prise and astonish : strange, so many
hopeful princes, so many shameful kings ! If they
happen to die young, they would have been prodigies
of wisdom and virtue : if they live, they are often pro-
digies indeed, but of another sort.
The humour of exploding many things under the
name of trifles, fopperies, and only imaginary goods,
is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity,
and a great check to virtuous actions. For Instance,
with regard to fame ; there is in most people a reluc-
tance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe,
even among the vulgar, how fond they are to have an
inscription over their grave. It requireth but little
philosophy to discover and observe that there Is no
intrinsic value in all this ; however, if it be founded
in our nature, as an incitement to virtue, it ought not
to be ridiculed.
[Overstraiiied Politeness, or Vulgar Hospital ity.]
[From ' The Tatler.']
Those inferior duties of life which the French call
Ics petites morales, or the smaller morals, are with us
distinguished by the name of good manners or breed-
ing. This I look upon, in the general notion of it, to
be a sort of artificial good sense, adapted to the mean-
est capacities, and introduced to make mankind easy
in their commerce with each other. Low and little
understandings, without some rules of this kind, would
be perpetually wandering into a thousand indecencies
and irregularities in behaviour ; and in their ordinary
conversation, fall into the same boisterous familiarities
that one observeth amongst them when a debauch
hath quite taken away the use of their reason. In
other Instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of
common discretion, the very end of good breeding is
wholly perverted ; and civility, Intended to make us
easy, is employed in laying chains and fetters upon
us, in debarring us of our wishes, and in crossing our
most reasonable desires and Inclinations. This abuse
relgneth chiefly in the country, as I found to my vexa-
tion, when I was last there, in a visit I made to a
neighbour about two miles from my cousin. As soon
as I entered the parlour, they put me into the great
chair that stood close by a huge fire, and kept me
there by force, until I was almost stifled. Then a boy
came in great hurry to pull oft' my boots, which I in
vain opposed, urging, that I must return soon after
dinner. In the meantime, the good lady whispered
her eldest daughter, and slipped a key into lier hand.
The girl returned instantly with a beer-glass half full
of aqua mirahilis and syrup of gllly-flowers. I took
as much as I had a mind for ; but madam vowed I
should drink it oft" (for she was sure it would Jo me
good, after coming out of the cold air), and I was forced
to obey ; which absolutely took away my stomach.
When dinner came in, I had a mind to sit at a dis-
tance from the fire ; but they told me it was as much
as my life was worth, and set me with my back just
against it. Although my appetite were q\iite gone, I
resolved to force down as much as 1 could ; and lie-
63J
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPE.
sired the leg of a pullet. Indeed, Mr Bickerstaff, says
the lady, you must eat a wing to oblige rne ; and so
put a couple upon my plate. I was persecuted at this
rate during the whole meal. As often as I called for
small beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant
brought me a brimmer of October. Some time after
dinner, I ordered my cousin's man, who came with me,
to get ready the horses, but it was resolved I should
not stir that night ; and when I seemed pretty much
bent upon going, they ordered the stable door to be
locked ; and the children hid my cloak and boots.
The next question was, what I would have for supper?
I said I never eat anything at night ; but was at last,
in my own defence, obliged to name the first thing that
came into my head. After three hours spent chiefly
in apologies for my entertainment, insinuating to me,
' That this was the worst time of the year for provi-
sions ; that they were at a great distance from any
market ; that they were afraid I should be starved ;
and that they knew they kept me to my loss,' the
lady went and left me to her husband (for they took
special care I should never be alone). As soon as her
back was turned, the little misses ran backwards and
forwards every moment ; and constantly as they came
in or went out, made a curtsy directly at me, which
in good manners I was forced to return with a bow,
and, your humble servant, pretty ]Miss. Exactly at
eight the mother came up, and discovered by the red-
ness of her face that supper was not far otf. It was
twice as large as the dinner, and my persecution
doubled in proportion. I desired at my usual hour
to go to my repose, and was conducted to my chamber
by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole train of
children. They importuned me to drink something
before I went to bed ; and upon my refusing, at last
left a bottle of stinf^o, as they called it, for fear I should
■wake and be thirsty in the night. I was forced in the
morning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because
they would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb
me at the hour I desired to be called. I was now re-
solved to break through all measures to get away ;
and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of
cold beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and
stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentle-
man would needs see me part of my way, and carry
me a short cut through his own grounds, which he
told me would save half a mile's riding. This last
piece of civilit}- had like to have cost me dear, being
once or twice in danger of my neck, by leaping over
his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt ;
when my horse, having slippel his bridle, ran away,
and took us up more than ai hour to recover him
again. It is evident, that none of the absurdities I
met with in this visit proceeded from an ill intention,
but from a wrong judgment of complaisance, and a
misapplication in the rules of it.
ALEXANDER POPE.
In 1737 Pope published, by subscription, a volume
of letters between himself and his literary friends,
including Swift, Bolingbroke, Gay, and Arbuthnot.
Part of the collection had been previously obtained
by surreptitious means, and printed by Curll, a no-
torious publisher of that day. Johnson and Wurton
conceived that Pope had connived at this breacli of
private confidence ; but it has been satisfactorily
shown that the poet was ignorant of the publication,
and that his indignation on discovering it was ex-
pressed with all the warmtli of sincerity. The letters
excited the curiosity of the public ; and Pope com-
plied with the general intreaty to give a genuine
edition of his correspondence. Additions were after-
wards made to the collection, wliich went througli
everal editions. The experiment was new to the
j)ublic. ' Pope's epistolary excellence,' s.iys Jolinson,
' had an open field; he liad no English rival, living
or dead.' Tlie letters of Lord Bacon, Strafford, and
other statesmen, had lieen published, but they de-
scended little into the details of familiar life. Sprat
suppressed the correspondence of Cowley, under tlie
impression, finely expressed b}- an old writer, that
private letters are commonly of too tender a coiniw-
sition to thrive out of the bosom in wliich they were
first planted ; and the correspondence of Pope was
tlie first attempt to interest tlie jiulilic in the senti-
ments and opinions of literary mm. and the expres-
sion of private friendship. As literature was the
business of Pope's life, and composition his first and
favourite pursuit, he wrote always with a view to
admiration an<l fame. He knew that if his letters
to his friends did not come before the public in a
printed shape, they would be privately circulated,
and might atiTect his reputation with those he was
ambitious of ]^leasing. Hence he seems alwiij-s to
have written with care. His letters are generally too
elaborate and artificial to have been the spontaneous
effusions of private confidence. Many of them are
beautiful in thought and imagery, and evince a taste
for pictuiesque scenery and description, that it is to
be regretted the poet did not oftener indulge. Others,
as the exquisite one describing a journey to Oxford,
in company with Bernard Lintot, possess a fine vein
of comic humour and observation. Swift was infe-
rior to Pope as a letter-writer, but he discloses more
of his real character. He loved Pope as much as he
could any man, and the picture of their friendship,
disclosed in their correspondence, is honourable to
both. They had both risen to eminence by their
own talents ; they had mingled with the great and
illustrious ; had exchanged witli each other in jiri-
vate their common feelings and sentiments ; had par-
taken of the vicissitudes of public affairs ; seen their
friends decay and die off; and in their old age,
mourned over the evils and afflictions incident to the
decline of life. Pope's affection soothed the jealous
irritability and misanthropy of Swift, and survived
the melancholy calamity which rendered his friend
one of the most pitiable and afiecting objects among
mankind.
[0)1 Sichiess and Death.']
To Sir Richard Steele.— Jultj 15, 1712.
You formerly observed to me that nothing made
a more ridiculous figure in a man's life than the dis-
parity we often find in him sick and well ; thus one
of an unfortunate constitution is jierpetually exhibit-
ing a miserable examj)Ie of the weakness of his mind,
and of his body, in their turns. 1 have had frequent
opportunities of late to consider myself in these ditle-
rent views, and, I hope, have received some advaL-
tage by it, if what ^Valler says be true, that
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed.
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has mode.
Then surely sickness, contributing no less than old
age to the shaking down this scaffolding of the body,
may discover the inward structure more plainly.
Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a
diffidence in our earthly state, and inspires us with
the thoughts of a future, better than a thousand
volumes of philosophers and divines. It gives so
warning a concussion to those props of our vanity, our
strength and youth, that we think of fortifying our-
selves within, when there is so little dependence upon
our out-works. Youth at tlie very best is but a be-
trayer of human life in a gentler and sniooiher man-
ner than a^e : it is like a stream that n:urishes a
6.35
FROM 161)9
CYCLOPEDIA OF
tov.n.
plant upon a bank, and causes it to flourish and
blossjm 'o the sight, but at the same time is under-
mining it at the root in secret. My j'outh has dealt
more fairly and openly with me ; it has affbrded
several prospects of my danger, and given me an
advatitage not very common to young men, that the
attractions of the world have not dazzled me very
much : and I begin, where most people end, with a
full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambi-
tion, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human plea-
sures. When a smart fit of sickness tells me this
scurvy tenement of my body will fall in a little time,
I am even as unconcerned as was that honest Hiber-
nian, who, being in bed in the great storm some years
ago, and told the house would tumble over his head,
made answer, ' What care I for the house? I am only
a lodger.' I fancy it is the best time to die when one
is in the best humour; and so excessively weak as I
now am, I may say with conscience, that I am not at
all uneasy at the thought that many men, whom I
never had any esteem for, are likely to enjoy this
world after me. When I reflect what an inconsider-
able little atom every single man is, with respect to
the whole creation, methinks it is a shame to be con-
cerned at the removal of such a trivial animal as I
am. The morning after my exit, the sun will rise as
bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants
spring as green, the world will proceed in its old
course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as
fast, as they were used to do.* The memory of man
(as it is elegantly expressed in the Book of Wisdom)
passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that
tarrieth but one day. There are reasons enough, in
the fourth chapter of the same book, to make any
young man contented with the prospect of death.
* For honourable age is not that which standeth in
length of time, or is measured by number of years.
But wisdom is the gray hair to man, and an unsjjotted
life is old age. He was taken away speedily, lest
wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit
beguile his soul,' &c. — I am your, &c.
[Pope to Swift — On his Retirement.']
January 18, 1714.
Whatever apologies it might become me to make
at any other time for writing to you, I shall use none
now, to a man who has owned himself as splenetic as
a cat in the country. In that circumstance, I know
by experience a letter is a very useful as well as an
amusing thing : if you are too busied in state afl^airs
to read it, yet you may find entertainment in folding
it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyra-
midical, or twisting it into a serpentine form : or if
your disposition should not be so mathematical, in
taking it with you to that place where men of studious
minds are apt to sit longer than ordinary ; where,
after an abrupt division of the paper, it may not be
unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines
together. All these amusements I am no stranger to
in the country, and doubt not (by this time) you
begin to relish them in your present contemplative
situation,
I remember, a man who was thought to have some
knowledge in the world used to aflirm, that no people
in town ever complained they were forgotten by their
friends in the country ; but my increasing experience
convinces me he was mistaken, for I find a great many
here grievously complaining of you upon this score.
I am told further, that you treat the few you corre-
spond with in a very arrogant style, and tell them
you admire at their insolence in disturbing your
* It is important to remember that Pope, when he wrote in
ihis manner, was only twenty-four.
meditations, or even inquiring of your retreat ; but
this I will not positively assert, because I never re-
ceived any such insulting epistle from you. My Lord
Oxford says you have not written to him once since you
went ; but this perhaps may be only policy in him or
you ! and I, who am half a Whig, must not entirely
credit anything he atfirms. At Button's, it is reported
you are gone to Hanover, and that Gay goes only on an
embassy to you. Others apprehend some dangerous
state trceatise from j'our retirement ; and a wit, whc
affiscts to imitate Balsac, says, that the ministry now
are like those heathens of old, who received their
oracles from the woods. The gentlemen of the Roman
Catholic persuasion are not unwilling to credit me,
when I whisper, that you are gone to meet some
Jesuits commissioned from the court of Rome, in
order to settle the most convenient methods to be
taken for the coming of the Pretender. Dr Arbuth-
not is singular in his opinion, and imagines your only
design is to attend at full leisure to the life and ad-
ventures of Scriblerus. This, indeed, must be granted
of greater importance than all the rest ; and I wish I
could promise so wtU of 3-ou. The top of my own
ambition is to contribute to that great work : and I
shall translate Homer by the by. Mr Gay has ac-
quainted you what progress I have made in it. I
cannot name Mr Gaj', without all the acknowledg-
ments which I shall ever owe you on his account. If
I writ this in verse, I would tell you you are like the
sun, and, while men imagine you to be retired or
absent, are hourly exerting j'our influence, and bring-
ing things to maturity for their advantage. Of all
the world, you are the man (without flattery) who
serve your friends with the least ostentation ; it is
almost ingratitude to thank you, considering your
temper ; and this is the period of all my letter which,
I fear, you will think the most impertinent. I am,
with the truest aflection, yours, &c.
\_Pope in Oxford.]
To Mrs Martha Blount. — 17I6.
Nothing could have more of that melancholy which
once used to please me, than my last d.ay's journey ;
for, after having passed through my favourite woods
in the forest, with a thousand reveries of past plea-
sures, I rid over hanging hills, whose tops were edged
with groves, and whose feet watered with winding
rivers, listening to the falls of cataracts below, and
the murmuring of the winds above ; the gloomy ver-
dure of Stonor succeeded to these, and then the shades
of the evening overtook me. The moon rose in the
clearest sky I ever saw, by whose solemn light I paced
on slowly, without company, or any interruption to
the range of my thoughts. About a mile before I
reached Oxford, all the bells tolled in different notes f
the clocks of every college answered one another, and
sounded forth (some in deeper, some a softer tone)
that it was eleven at night. All this was no ill pre-
paration to the life I have led since among those old
walls, venerable galleries, stone porticos, studious
walks, and solitary scenes of the university. 1 wanted
nothing but a black gown and a 8alar3', to be as
mere a book-worm as any there. I conformed myself
to the college hours, was rolled up in books, lay in
one of the most ancient, dusky parts of the university,
and was as dead to the world as any hermit of the
desert. If anything was alive or awake in me, it was
a little vanity, such as even those good men used to
entertain, when the monks of their own order extolled
their piety and abstraction. For I found myself re-
ceived with a sort of respect, which this idle part of
mankind, the learned, pay to their own species ; who
are as considerable here, as the busy, the gay, and
the ambitious are in your world.
638
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPB.
[Pope to Lady Mary Worthy Montayu m the Con-
tbient.'^
1717.
Madam — I no more think I can hare too many of
your letters, than that I could hare too many writings
to entitle me to the greatest estate in the world;
which 1 think so valuable a friendship as yours is
equal to. I am angry at every scrap of paper lost, as
at something that interrupts the history of my title ;
and though it is but an odd compliment to compare
a fine lady to Sibyl, your leaves, methinks, like hers,
are too good to be committed to the winds ; though I
have no other way of receiving them but by those un-
faithful messengers. I have had but three, and 1
reckon in that short one from Dort, which was rather
a dying ejaculation than a letter. But I have so
great an opinion of your goodness, that had I re-
ceived none, I should not have accused you of neglect
or insensibility. I am not so wrong-headed as to
quarrel with my friends the moment they don't write ;
I'd as soon quarrel at the sun the minute he did not
shine, which he is hindered from by accidental causes,
and is in reality all that time performing the same
course, and doing the same good offices as ever.
Yoi' have contrived to say in your last the two
most pleasing things to me in nature ; the first is,
that whatever be the fate of your letters, you will
continue to write in the discharge of your conscience.
This is generous to the last degree, and a virtue you
ought to enjoy. Be assured, in return, my heart shall
be as ready to think you have done every good thing,
as yours can be to do it ; so that you shall never be
able to fiivour 3'our absent friend, before he has
thought himself obliged to you for the very favour
you are then conferring.
The other is, the justice you do me in taking what
I write to you in the serious manner it was meant ; it
is the point upon which I can bear no suspicion, and
in which, above all, I desire to be thought serious : it
would be the most vexatious of all tyranny, if you
ghould pretend to take for raillery what is the
mere disguise of a discontented heart, that is un-
willing to make you as melancholy as itself; and for
wit, what is really only the natural overflowing and
warmth of the same heart, as it is improved and
awakened by an esteem for you : but since you tell
rae you believe me, I fancy my expressions have not
at least been entirely unfaithful to those thoughts,
to which I am sure they can never be equal. May
God increase your faith in all truths that are as great
as this ! and depend upon it, to whatever degree your
belief may extend, you can never be a bigot.
If you could see the heart I talk of, you would
really think it a foolish good kind of thing, with
some qualities as well deserving to be half laughed
at, and half esteemed, as any in the world : its grand
foible, in regard to you, is the most like reason of any
foible in nature. Upon my faith, this heart is not,
like a great warehouse, stored only with my own
goods, with vast empty spaces to be supplied as faj-t
as interest or ambition can fill them up ; but it is
every inch of it let out into lodgings for its friends,
and shall never want a corner at your service ; where
1 dare affirm, madam, your idea lies as warm and as
close as any idea in Christendom. * *
If this distance (as you are so kind as to say) en-
larges your belief of my fiiendship, I assure you it has
so extended my notion of your value, that 1 begin to
be impious on your account, and to wish that even
glauglitcr, ruin, and desolation, might interpose be-
tween you and Turkey ; I wish you restored to us at
the expense of a whole people. I barely hope you
will forgive mo for saying this, but I fear (Jod will
scarce forgive me for desiring it.
Make me less wicked, then. Is there no other cx-
pedien* to return you and your infant in peace to the
bosom of your country? I hear you are going to
Hanover ; can there be no fiivourable planet at this
conjuncture, or do you only come back so far to die
twice ? Is Eurydice once more snatched to the shades ?
If ever mortal had reason to hate the king, it is I ;
for it is my misfortune to be almost the only inno-
cent man whom he has made to suffer, both by his
government at home and his negotiations abroad.
[Death of Two Lovers hy Lightning.']
To Lady Mary Wortley Montagi;.— 17I8.
* * I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper
with an accident that happened just under my eyes,
and has made a great impression upon me. 1 have
just passed part of this summer at an old romantic
seat of my Lord Harcourt's, which he lent me.* It
overlooks a common field, where, under the shade of a
haycock, sat two lovers, as constant as ever were found
in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name
of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Ilewet ;
of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man,
about five-and-twenty ; Sarah, a browii woman of
eighteen. John had for several months borne the
labour of the day in the same field with Sarah ; when
she milked, it was his morning and evening charge
to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the
talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbour-
hood ; for all they aimed at was the blameless pos-
session of each other in marriage. It was but this very
morning that he had obtained her parents' consent,
and it was but till the next week that they were to wait
to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals
of their work, they were talking of their wedding-
clothes ; .and John was now matching several kinds
of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to
make her a present of knots for the day. While they
were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a
terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that
drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or
hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath,
sunk on a haycock, and John (who never separated
from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three
heaps together to secure her. Immediately there was
heard so loud a crack as if heaven had burst asunder.
The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety,
called to one another: those that were nearest our
lovers hearing no answer, step])ed to the place where
they lay : they first saw a little smoke, and after,
this faithful pair — John with one arm about his
Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if
to screen her from the lightning. They were struck
dead, and already grown stiff and cold ii this tender
posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their
bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little sii 'eJ,
and a small spot between her breasts. They were
buried the next day in one grave, whero my Lord
Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument
over them. Of the following epitaphs which I made,
the critics have chosen the godly one : I like neither,
but wish you had been in England to have done this
office better: I think it was what you could iijt have
refused me on so moving an occasion.
When Eastern lovers feed the funeral firo,
On the same pile their faithful pair expire;
Here pitying Heaven that virtue mutual founc/,
And blasted both that it might ncitlier wound.
Hearts so sincere the Almighty saw well ]deascd,
Sent his own lightning, and the victims seized.
* The house of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire. Here Pop*
traiiblated i)art of the Odyssey. lie partioiilarly describes it ia
the subsequent letter, in a style wliich recalls thcfrravc Inininur
of AddJBon, and fiircshadowB the Uraccbridpe Hall of Wash-
injjtnn Irviiip. A view nf the hou'C and of the church bo^idil
which wcri; buried thi.' liglitningstruck lovers is on next page.
(i:J7
FROM 1689
CYCLOP.SEDIA OF
TO 1727.
Think not, by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire ;
Victims so pure Heaven saw well pleased,
Aud snatched thein in celestial fire.
Live well, and fear no sudden fate :
When God calls virtue to the grave,
Alike 'tis justice, soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save.
Virtue unmoved can hear the call,
Aud face the Hash that melts the ball.
Upon the whole, I cannot think these people un-
happy. The greatest happiness, next to living as
they would have done, was to die as they did. The
greatest honour people of this low degree could have,
was to be remembered on a little monument ; unless
you will give them another — that of being honoured
with a tear from the finest eyes in the world. I
know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is
the very emanation of good sense and virtue : the
finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the
easieiit.
IDcsa'iption of an Aiicicnt English Country Scati]
To Ladv Mary Wortlby Montagu.
Dear Madam — It is not possible to express the
least part of the joy your return gives me; time only
and experience will convince you how very sincere it
is. I excessively long to meet you, to say so nmch,
so very much to you, that I believe I shall say no-
thing. I have given orders to be sent for, the fii-st
minute of your arrival (which 1 beg you will let them
know at Air Jervas's). 1 am fourscore miles from
London, a short journey compared to that I so often
thought at least of undertaking, rather than die with-
out seeing you again. Though the place 1 am in
is such as 1 would not quit for the town, if I did not
value you more than any, nay, everybody else there;
and you will be convinced how little the town has
engaged ray affections in your absence from it, when
you know what a place this is which I prefer to it ; I
shall therefore describe it to you at large, as the true
picture of a genuine ancient country-seat.
Stanton Ilarcourt, Oxfordshire,
You must expect nothing regular in my description
of a house that seems to be built before rules were in
fashion : the whole is so disjointed, and the parts so
detached from each other, and yet so joining agiin,
one cannot tell how, that (in a poetical fit) you would
imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time,
where twenty cottages had taken a dance together,
were all out, and stood still in amazement ever since.
A stranger would be grievously disappointed who
should ever think to get into this house the right
way. One would expect, after entering through the
porch, to be let into the hall ; alas ! nothing less,
you find yourself in a brewhouse. From the parlour
you think to step into the drawing-room ; but, upon
opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced by a
flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in
your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. On each side
our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on
the outside, which would do as well within, for whcn-
STer we make a fire, we let the smoke out of the
windows. Over the parlour-window hangs a sloping
balcony, which time has turned to a very convenient
penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable
tower, so like that of the church just by, that the
jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steejile.
The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with
long tables, images of ancient hospitality ; orna-
mented with monstrous horns, about twenty broken
pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they
say were used in the civil wars. Here is one vast
arched window, beautifully darkened with divers
scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be great
propriety in tliis old manner of blazoning upon glass,
ancient families being like ancient windows, in the
course of generations seldom free from cracks. One
shining pane bears date l'Jfi6. The youthful face of
Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece than to all
the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can
.^ay after this that glass is fniil, when it is not half so
perishable as human beauty or glory ? For In another
pane you see the memory of a knigiit preserved, wlose
marble nose is mouldered from his monument in tha
638
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATIRE.
ALEXANDER POPE.
church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to re-
flect that the most authentic record of so ancient a
family should lie at the mercy of every boy that
throws a stone ? In this hall, in former day^, have
dined gartered knights and courtly dames, witli
ushers, sewers, and seneschals ; and yet it was but
the other night that an owl flew in hither, and mis-
took it for a barn.
This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high
threshold, into the parlour. It is furnished with
historical tapestry, whose mai'ginal fringes do confess
the moisture of the air. The other contents of this
room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crip-
pled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pic-
tures of mouldv' ancestors, who look as dismally as if
they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone
about them. These are carefully set at the further
corner ; for the windows being everywhere broken,
make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and
mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to
that use.
Next this parlour lies (as I said before) the pigeon-
house, by the side of which runs an entry that leads,
on one hand and the other, into a bed-chamber, a
buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study.
Then follow a brewhouse, a little green and gilt par-
lour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy.
A little further on the right, the servants' hall ; and
by the side of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet,
which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she
said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men
and maids. There are upon this ground-floor in all
twenty-four apartments, hard to be distinguished by
particular names ; among which I must not forget a
chamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber,
which seems to have been either a bedstead or a
cider-press.
Our best room above is very long and low, of the
exact proportion of a band-box : it has hangings of
the finest work in the world ; those, I mean, which
Arachne spins out of hei- own bowels: indeed the roof
is so decayed, that aftei a fM'ourable shower of rain,
we may (with Ciod's ' lessing) expect L crop of mush-
•ooms between the chinks of the floors.
All this upper storey has for many years had no
other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age
ren<lers them worthy of this venerable mansion, for
the very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since
these had not quitted it, we hope at least this house
may stand during the small remainder of days these
poor animals have to live, who Jire now too infirm to
remo\e to anotlier : they have still a small subsistence
left them in the few remaining books of the library.
I had never seen half what I have described, but
for an old starched gray-headed steward, who is as
nmch an antiquity as any in the place, and looks
like an old family picture walked out of its frame.
lie failed not, as we passed from room to room, to
relate several memoirs of the family ; but his obser-
vations were particularly curious in the cellar : he
showed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack,
and where were ranged the bottles of tent for toasts
in the morning : he pointed to the stands that sup-
ported the iron-hooped hogsheads of strong beer; then
stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered frag-
ment of an unframed picture: 'This,' says he, with
tears in his eyes, ' was poor Sir Thomas, once master
of the drink I told you of: he had two sons (poor
young masters !) that never arrived to the age of this
beer ; they both fell ill in this very cellar, and never
went out upon their own legs.' He could not pass by
a broken bottle without taking it up to show us the
arms of the fiimily on it. He then led me up the
tc.wer, by dark winding stone step-*, which landed us
ii to several little rooms, one above another; one of
ll.esc was nailed up, and my guide whispered to me
the occasion of it. It seems the course of this noble
blood was a little interrupted about two centuries
ago by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here
taken with a neighbouring prior; ever since which,
the room has been made up. The ghost of Lady
Frances is supposed to walk here; some prying maids
of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady
in a fardingale tlirough tlie key-hole ; but this matter
was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it.
I must needs have tired you with this Ivng letter ;
but what engaged me in the description was, a gene-
rous principle to preserve the memory of a thing that
must itself soon fall to ruin ; nay, perhaps, some part
of it before this reaches your hands. Indeed, 1 owe
this old house the same gratitude that we do to an
old friend that harbours \is in his declining condition,
nay, even in his last extremities. 1 have found this
an excellent place for retirement and study, where no
one Avho passes by can dream there is an inhabitant,
and even anybody that would visit me dares not
venture under my roof. You will not won<ler I have
translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat ; any
one that sees it will own I could not have chosen a
fitter or more likely place to converse with the dc«ad.
As soon as I return to the living, it shall be to con-
verse with the best of them. I hope, therefore, very
speedily to tell you in person how sincerely and un-
alterably I am, madam, your, &c.
I beg Mr Wortley to believe me his most humble
servant.
[Pope to Gay — On his Recovery.']
1722.
I faithfully assure you, in the midst of that melan-
choly with which I have been so long encompa.ssed,
in an hourly expectation almost of my mother's
death, there was no circumstance that rendered it
more unsupportable to me than that I could not leave
her to see you. Your own present escape from so
imminent danger I pray God may prove less preca-
rious than my poor mother's can be, whose life at
best can be but a short reprieve, or a longer dying.
But I fear even tliat is more than God will please to
grant me; for these two days past, her most dangerous
symptoms are returned upon her ; and unless there
be a sudden change, I must in a few days, if not in a
few hours, be deprived of her. In the afllicting pro-
spect before me, I know nothing that can so nmch
alleviate it as the view now given me (Heaven grant
it may increase !) of your recovery. In the sincerity
of my heart, 1 am excessively concerned not to b^
able to pay you, dear Gdy, any part of the debt, I
very gratefully remember, I owe you on a like sad
occasion, when you was here comforting me in her
last great illness. May your health augment as fast
as, I fear, hers must decline! I believe that vould
be ve'y fast. ]\Iay the life that is added to you be
passed in good fortune and tranquillity', rather of
your own giving to yourself, than from any expecta-
tions or trust in others ! ALay you and I live t'l-
gether, without wishing more felicity or acquisitions
t]\an friendship can give and receive witliout obliga-
tions to greatness ! God keep you, and tlirec or four
more of those I have known as long, that 1 may have
something worth the surviving my mother! Adieu,
dear Ga}', and believe me (while you live and wliile J
live), your, kc.
[^Sketch of Autumn Scenery.']
To Mr VtOBV.— October 10, 1/23.
Do not talk of the decay of the year ; the season is
good wlien the people are so. It is the best time in
tlie year for a painter ; there is more variety of coldur*
in the leaves ; the prospects begin to o[)en, through
the thinner woods over the valleys, and throui;li the
6;i!J
I
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 1727
high canopies of trees to the higher arch of hearen ;
the dews of the morning impearl every thorn, and
scatter diamonds on the verdant mantle of the earth ;
the forests are fresh and wholesome. What would
j'ou have! The moon shines too, though not for
lovers, these cold nights, but for astronomers.
[^Pope to Bishop Atterbury, in the Tower.']
May 17, 1723.
Once more I write to you, as I promised, and this
once, I fear, will be the last ! The curtain will soon
be drawn between my friend and me, and nothing
left but to wish you a long good-night.' May you
enjoy a state of repone in this life not unlike that
sleep of the soul which some have believed is to suc-
ceed it, where we lie utterly forgetful of that world
from which we are gone, and ripening for that to
which we are to go. If you retain any memory of
the past, let it only image to you what has pleased
you best ; sometimes present a dream of an absent
friend, or bring you back an agreeable conversation.
But, upon the whole, I hope you will think less of the
time past than of the future, as the former has been
less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do
not envy the world your studies ; they will tend to the
benefit of men against whom you can have no com-
plaint ; I mean of all posterity : and, perhaps, at
your time of life, nothing else is worth your care.
What is every year of a wise man's life but a censure
or critic on the pasti Those whose date is the
shortest, live long enough to laugh at one half of it ;
the boy despises the Infant, the man the boy, the phi-
losopher both, and the Christian all. You maj' now
begin to think your manhood was too much a pueri-
lity, and you will never suffer your age to be but a
«efvind infancy. The toys and baubles of your child-
pr>"d are hardly now more below you, than those toys
of our riper and our declining years, the drums and
rattles of ambition, cand the dirt and bubbles of ava-
rice. At this time, when you are cut off from a little
society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you
should bend your talents, not to serve a party or a
few, but all mankind. Your genius should mount
above that mist in which its participation and neigh-
bourhood with earth long involved it ; to shine abroad,
and to heaven, ought to be the business and the glory
of your present situation. Remember it was at such
\ time that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled
and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile,
or in their death. But why do 1 talk of dazzling or
blazing? — it was then that they did good, that they
gave light, and that they became guides to mankind
Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great,
and such I therefore hope will be yours. Resentment,
indeed, may remain, perhaps cannot be quite extin-
guished in the noblest minds ; but revenge never will
harbour there. Higher principles than those of the
first, and better principles than those of the latter,
■will infallibly influence men whose thoughts and whose
hearts are enlarged, and cause them to prefer the
whole to any part of mankind, especially to so small
a part as one's single self.
Believe me, my lord, I look upon you as a spirit
entered into anotiier life, as one just upon the edge of
immortality, whert the passions and affwtions must bo
much more exalted, and where j-ou ought to despise
all little views and all mean retrospects. Nothing is
worth your looking back ; and, tlierefore, look for-
ward, and make (as you can) the world look after
you. But take care that it be not with pity, but with
esteem and admiration.
1 am, with the greatest sincerity and passion for
Tour fame as well as happiness, your, kc.
' The bibliop went into exile the fullowing month.
Pope was one of the authors of the Memoirs oj
Marlinus Scriblerus, where he has lavished much
wit on subjects which are now mostly of little inte-
rest. He has ridiculed ' Burnet's History of his
Own Times' with infinite humour in Memoirs of
P. P., Clerk of this Parish ; and he contributed
several papers to the ' Guardian.' His prose works
contain also a collection of Thoughts on Various
Subjects, a few of which are here subjoined : —
[Paiiy Zeal.]
There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal
whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the
most violent ; for a bee is not a busier animal than a
blockhead. However, such instruments are necessary
to politicians ; and perhaps it may be with states as
with clocks, which must have some dead weight hang-
ing at them, to help and regulate the motion of the
finer and more useful parts.
{^Acknowledgment of Eiror.']
A man should never be ashamed to own he has
been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other
words, that he is wiser to day than he was yester-
day'.
{Disputation."]
What Tully says of war may be applied to disput-
ing ; it should be always so managed, as to remember
that the only true end of it is peace ; but generally
true disputants are like true sportsmen, their whole
delight is in the pursuit ; and a disputant no more
cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.
{Censorious People.]
Such as are still observing upon others, are like
those who are always abroad at other men's house.%
reforming everything there, while their own runs to
ruin.
{Growing Virtuous in Old Age.]
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only
make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
{Lying.]
He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task
he undertakes ; for he must be forced to invent twenty
more to maintain one.
{Hostile Critics.]
Get your enemies to read your works, in order to
mend them ; for your friend is so much your second-
self, that he will judge, too, like you.
{Sectarian Differences.]
There is nothing wanting to make all rational and
disinterested people in the world of one religion, but
that they should talk together every day.
{How to be Reputed a Wise Man.]
A short and certain way to obtain the character of
a reasonable and wise man is, whenever any one telU
you his opinion, to comply with him.
{Avarice.]
The character of covetousncss is what a man gene-
rally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill
grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in
expenses of any consequence. A very few pounds
a-year would case that man of the scandal of ava-
rice.
640
MISCELLANEOUS WRirEHS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ALEXANDER POPE-
\_Mmister Acquiring and Losing Office.l
A man coming to the water-side, is surrounded by
all the crew ; every one is officious, every one making
applications, every one offering his services ; the whole
bustle of the place seems to be only for him. The
same man going from the water-side, no noise made
about him, no creature takes notice of him, all let
him pass with utter neglect ! The picture of a
minister when he comes into power, and when he
goes out.
\Jleceipt to make an Epic PoemJ]
[From • The Guardian.']
It is no small pleasure to me, who am zealous in
the interests of learning, to think I may have the lion-
our of leading the town into a very new and uncommon
road of criticism. As that kind of literature is at
present carried on, it consists only in a knowledge of
mechanic rules, which contribute to the structure of
different sorts of poetrj- ; as the receipts of good house-
wives do to the making puddings of flour, oranges,
plums, or any other ingredients. It would, methinks,
make these my instructions more easily intelligible to
ordinary readers, if I discoursed of these matters in
the style in which ladies, learned in economics, dic-
tate to their pupils for the improvement of the kitchen
and larder.
I shall begin with Epic Poetry, because the critics
agree it is the greatest work human nature is capable
of. I know the French have already laid down many
mechanical rules for compositions of this sort, but at the
same time they cut off almost all undertakers from the
possibility of ever performing them ; for the first qua-
lification they unanimously require in a poet is a
genius. I shall here endeavour (for the benefit of my
countrv'men) to make it manifest that Epic Poems
maybe made 'without a genius;' na}', without learn-
ing or much reading. This must necessarily be of great
use to all those poets who confess they never read, and
of whom the world is convinced they never learn.
"What Moliere observes of making a dinner, that any
man can do it with money ; and, if a professed cook
cannot without, he has his art for nothing : the same
may be said of making a poem ; it is easily brought
about by him that has a genius ; but the skill lies in
doing it without one. In pursuance of this end, I
shall present the reader with a plain and certain re-
cipe, by which even sonneteers and ladies may be
qualified for this grand performance.
I know it will be objected, that one of the chief
qualifications of an Epic Poet, is to be knowing in all
arts and sciences. But this ought not to discourage
those that have no learning, as long as indexes and
dictionaries may be had, which are the compendium
of all knowledge. . Besides, since it is an established
rule, that none of the terms of those arts and sciences
are to be made use of, one may venture to affirm, our
poet cannot impertinently offend on this jioint.
The learning which will be more particularly necessary
to him, is the ancient geography of towns, mountains,
and rivers. For this let him take Cluverius, value
four-pence.
Another quality required, is a complete skill in
languages. To this I answer, that it is notorious per-
sons of no genius have been oftentimes great linguists.
To instance in the Greek, of which there are two sorts ;
the original Greek, and that from which our modern
authors translate. I should be unwilling to promise
impossibilities ; but, modestly speaking, this may be
learned in about an hour's time with ease. I have
known one who became a sudden jirofessor of Greek
immediately upon api)lication of the left-hand page
of the Cambridge Homer to his eye. It is, in these
days, with authors as with other men, the well-bred
are familiarly acquainted with them at first sight ;
and as it is sufficient for a good general to have
surveyed tlie ground he is to conquer, so it is
enough for a good poet to have seen the author he is
to be master of. But \o proceed to the purpose of this
paper.
For (he Falle. — * Take out of any old poem, his-
tory-book, romance, or legend (for instance, Geoffrey
of Monmouth, or Don Belianis of Greece), those parts
of story which afford most scope for long descriptions :
put these pieces together, and throw all the adven-
tures you fancy into one tale. Then take a hero whom
you may choose for the sound of liis name, and jtut liira
into the midst of these adventures : there let him
work for twelve hours ; at the end of wliich, you may
take him out ready prepared to conquer or to marry ;
it being necessary that the conclusion of an Epic
Poem be fortunate.'
To make an Episode. ' Take any remaining ad-
venture of our former collection, in which you could
no way involve your hero ; or any unfortunate acci-
dent that was too good to be thrown away ; and it
will be of use, applied to any other person wh(. may be
lost and evaporate in the course of the work, without
the least damage to the composition.'
For the ]Moral and Allegory. ' These you may ex-
tract out of the Fable aftenvards at j'our leisure. Be
sure you strain them sufficiently.'
For the Manners. — ' For those of the hero, take all
the best qualities you can find in all the celebrated
heroes of antiquity ; if they will not be reduced to a
consistency, lay them all on a heap upon him. But
be sure they are qualities which your patron would be
thought to have ; and to prevent any mistake which
the world may be subject to, select from the alphabet
those capital letters that compose his name, and set
them at the head of a dedication before your poem.
However, do not absolutely observe the exact quantity
of these virtues, it not being determined whether or
no it be necessary for the hero of a poem to be an
honest man. For the under characters, gather
them from Homer and Virgil, and change the name
as occasion serves.'
For the Machines. — ' Take of deities, male and fe-
male, as many as you can use ; separate them into
two equal parts, and keep Jupiter in the middle.
Let .Juno put him in a ferment, and Venus mollify
him. Remember on all occasions to make use of vo-
latile ^Mercury. If you have need of devils, draw
them out of iMilton's Paradise, and extract your spirits
from Tasso. The use of these machines is evident ;
for since no Epic Poem can possibly subsist without
them, the wisest way is to reserve them for your greatest
necessities. \\'hen you cannot extricate your hero by
any human means, or yourself by your own wits, seek
relief from Heaven, and the gods will do your busi-
ness very readily. This is according to the direct
prescription of Horace in his Art of Poetry.
Nee deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit
Never presume to make a god appear.
But for a business worthy of a god. — Roscommon.
That is to say, a poet should never call upon the
gods for their assistance, but when he is in great per-
plexity.'
For the Descriptions. — For a Tempest. ' Take Eurus,
Zephyr, Auster, and Boreas, and cast them together
into one verse : add to these, of rain, lightning, and
of thunder (the loudest you can), quantum snjHciC.
Mix your clouds and billows well together until they
foam, and thicken 3'our description here and there
with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your
head before you set it a-blowing.'
For a Battle. ' Pick a large quantity of images
and descriptions from Homer's Iliads, with a spice or
641
42
FOOM 1G89
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172'/.
two of Vii-g;il ; and if there remain any overplus, you
may lay tliera by for a skirmish. Season it well with
siiiiiles^ and it will make an excellent battle.'
For Burning a Town. ' If such a description be
necessary, because it is certain there is one in Virgil,
Old Troy is ready burnt to your hands. But if you
fear that would be thought borrowed, a chapter or two
of the Theory of the Conflagration, well circumstanced,
and done into verse, will be a good succedaneum.'
As for Similes and Metaphors, they may be found
all over the creation ; the most ignorant may gather
them ; but the danger is in applying them. For this
advise with your bookseller.
For the Lawjuarjc. — (I mean the diction.) * Here
it will do well to be an imitator of Milton, for you
will find it easier to imitate him in this than any-
thing else. Hebraisms and Grecisms are to be found
in him, without the trouble of learning the languages.
I knew a painter, who (like our poet) had no genius,
make his daubings to be thought originals by setting
them in the smoke. You may, in the same manner,
give the venerable air of antiquity to your piece, by
darkening it up and do\vn with Old English. With
this 3'ou may be easily furnished upon any occasion
by the dictionary commonly printed at the end of
Chaucer.
I must not conclude without cautioning all writers
without genius in one material point ; which is, never
to be afraid of having too much fire in their works. I
should advise rather to take their warmest thoughts,
and spread them abroad upon paper, for they are ob-
served to cool before they are read.
DR JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
Dr John Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope, Swift,
Gay, and Prior, was associated witli his brother wits
in some of the luimorous productions of tlie day,
called forth chiefly by political events. They were
all Jacobites, and keenly interested in tlie success of
their party. Arhutlinot was born at a place of tlie
same name in Kincardineshire, and having studied
medicine, repaired to London, where he became
known as an author and a wit. He wrote an Ex-
amination of Dr Woodward's Account of the Deluge,
and an Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical
Learning. In 1709 Arbuthnot was appointed physi-
cian in ordinary to tlie queen. The satirical Memoirs
of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of
Martinus Scriblerus, published in Pope's works, was
chiefly, if not wholly, written by Arbuthnot. The
design of this work, as stated by Pope, is to ridicule
all the false tastes in learning, under the character
of a man of capacity, that had dipped into every
art and science, but injudiciously in each. Cer-
vantes was the model of the witty authors ; but
though they may have copied his grave irony with
success, the fine humanity and imagination of the
Spanish novelist are wholly wanting in Scriblerus.
It is highly probable, however, that the character of
Cornelius Scriblerus suggested to Sterne the idea
of Walter Shandy. His oddities and absurdities
about the education of his son (in describing which
Arbutlniot evinces his extensive and curious learn-
ing), are fully equal to Sterne. Useful hints are
tlirown out amidst the ridicule and pedantry of Scrib-
lerus ; and what are now termed object lessons in
some schools, may have been derived from sucli ludi-
crous passages as the following : — ' The old gentle-
man so contrived it, to make everything contribute
to the improvement of his knowledge, even to his
very dress. He invented for him a geographical suit
of clothes, w/iich might give him some hints of tliat
science, and likevise some knowledge of the (com-
merce of differeu* nations. He had a Prench hat
with an African feather. Ilnlhuid shirts and Flanders
lace, Fjnglish cloth lined witli Indian silk ; his gloves
were Italian, and his shoes were Spanish. He was
made to observe tliis, and daily catechised thereupon,
which his father was wont to call " travelling at
home." He never gave him a fg or ati orange, but he
obliged him to give an account from what country it
came.'
A more complete and durable monument of the
wit and humour of Arbuthnot is his History of John
Bull, published in 1712, and designed to ridicule the
Duke of Marlborough, and render the nation discon-
tented with the war. The allegory in this piece is
well sustained, and the satirical allusions poignant
and happ3'. t)f the same description is Arbuthnot"s
Treatise concerning the Altercation or Scolding of the
Ancients, and his Art of Political Lying. His wit is
always pointed, and rich in classical allusion, without
being acrimonious or personally oftensive. Of tlie
serious performances of Arbuthnot, the most valuable
is a series of dissertations on ancient coins, weiglits,
and measures. He published also some medical works.
After the death of Queen Anne, when, both as a
ph^'sician and a politician, Arbuthnot suflTered a
heavy loss, he applied himself closely to his profes-
sion, and continued his luiafll'cted cheerfulness and
good nature. In his latter 3-ears he suffered much
from ill health : he died in 1735. The most severe
and dignified of the occasional productions of Dr
Arbuthnot is his epitaph on Colonel Chartres, a
notorious gambler and money-lender of the day,
tried and condemned for attempting to commit a
rape : —
'Here continueth to rot the bodj' of Francis Char-
tres, who, with an inflexible constancy, and inimit-
able unifi)rniity of life, persisted, in sjiite of age and
infirmities, in the practice of every human vice, ex-
cepting prodigality and hypocrisy; his insatiable
avarice exempted him from the first, his matchless
impudence from the second. Nor was lie more sin-
gular in the undeviating pravitv of his manners than
successful in accumulating wealth ; for, without trade
or profession, without trust of public money, and
without bribe-worth}' service, he accjuircd, or more
properly created, a ministerial estate. He was the
only person of his time who coulil cheat with the
mask of honesty, retain his primeval meanness wlien
possessed of ten thousand a-3'ear, and having daily
deserved the gibbet for what he did, was at last con-
demned to it for what he could not do. Oh, indignant
reader ! tliink not his life useless to mankind. Pro-
vidence connived at his execrable designs, to give to
after ages a conspicuous jiroof and example of how
small estimation is exorbitant wealth in the sight of
God, by his bestowing it on the most unworthy of
all mortals.'
Tlie History of John Bull.
Chap. I. — The Occasion of the Law-Suit. — I need
not tell you of the great quarrels that happened in
our neighbourhood since the death of the late Lord
Strutt ;' how the parson^ and a cunning attorney'' got
him to settle his estate uj)on his cousin Philip Baboon,''
to the great disappointment of his cousin Esquire
South.5 Some stick not to say, that the parson and
the attorney forged a will, for which they were well
paid by the lamily of the Baboons. Let that be as
' Charles II. of Spain died without isspe, and ^ Cardinal
Portocarero, and the '' Marslial of Harcourt, employed,
as is supposed, by tlie house of Bourbon, prevailed upon him
to make a will, by which he settled tlie sucecssiou of the
Spanish monarchy upon ■* I'hilip Bourbon, Duke of Anjou,
though his riRht had by the most solemn renunciations been
barred jii favour of ' the Archduke, Charles of Austria.
642
JIISCEILANEOtJS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR JOHN ARIlt lIINOT.
it will, it is matter of fact, that the honour and estate
hare continued ever since in the person of Philip
Baboon.
You know that the Lord Strutts have for many
years been possessed of a very jrreat landed estate,
well-conditioned, wooded, watered, with coal, salt,
tin, copper, iron, &c., all within tliemselves ; that it
has been the misfortune of that family to be the pro-
perty of their stewards, tradesmen, and inferior ser-
vants, which has brought great incumbrances upon
them ; at the same time, their not abating of their
expensive way of living has forced them to mortgage
their best manors. It is credibly reported, that the
butcher's and baker's bill of a Lord Strutt that lived
two hundred years ago, are not yet paid.
When Philip Baboon came first to the possession
of the Lord Strutt's estate, his tradesmen, as is usual
upon such iccasions, waited uj on him to wish him
joy and bespeak his custom ; the two chief were John
BulU the clothier, and N'ic. Frog the linen-draper.-
They told him that the Bulls and Frogs had served
the Lord Strutts with drapery ware for many years,
that they were honest and fair dealers, that their bills
had never been questioned, that the Lord Strutts lived
generously, avd never used to dirty their fingers with
pen, ink, and counters ; that his lordship might de-
pend upon their honesty ; that they would use him
as kindly as they had done his predecessors. The
young lord seemed to take all in good part, and dis-
missed them with a deal of seeming content, assuring
them he did not intend to change any of the honour-
able maxims of 1 is predecessors.
Chap. IT.- — How Bull and Frog greiv jealous that the
Lorrd Strutt intended to give all his euftom to his grand-
father, Lewis Bahoon? — It happened unfortunatf^v for
the peace of our neighbourhood, that this young lord
had an old cunning rogue, or (as the Scots call it) a
fahe loon of a grandfather, that one might justly call
a Jack of all trades-;^ sometimes you would see him
behind his counter selling broad-cloth, sometimes
measuring linen ; next day he would be dealing in
mercery ware ; high heads, ribbons, gloves, fans, and
lace, he understood to a nicety ; Charles Mather could
not bubble a young beau better with a toy ; nay, he
would descend even to the selling of tape, garters,
and shoebuckles. When shop was shut up, he would
go about the neighbourhood and earn half-a-crown
by teaching the young men and maidens to dance.
By these methods he had acquired immense riches,
which he used to squander^ away at back-sword,
quarter-staff, and cudgel-play, in which he took great
pleasure, and challenged all the country. You will
say it is no wonder if Bull and Frog should be jealous
of this fellow. ' It is not impossible (says Frog to
Bull) but this old rogue will take the management
of the young lord's business into his hands ; besides,
the rascal has good ware, and will serve him as cheap
as anybody. In that case, I leave you to judge what
must become of us and our families ; we must starve,
or turn journeymen to old Lewis Baboon ; therefore,
neighbour, I hold it advisable that we write to you>.g
Lord Strutt to know the bottom of this matter.'
Chap. III.— ^ copy of Bull and Frog's Letter to Lord
Stniti— 'My Lord — I suppose your lordship knows that
the Bulls and the Frogs have served the Lord Strutts
' The English and 2 the Dutch congratulated Philip upon
a guccession, which they were not able to prevent ; but to dis-
appoint tne ambition of ^ Louis XIV., and hinder the
French nation, whose * trade and character are thus de-
scribed, and whose king had a ' strong disposition to
war, from becoming too potent, an alliance was formed to
* procure a reasonable satisfaction to the house of Austria for
its pretensions to the Spanish succes.vou, and sufficient
with all sorts of drapery-ware time out of mind ; and
whereas we are jealous, not without reason, tliat your
lordship intends henceforth to buy of your grandsire,
old Lewis Baboon, this is to inform your lordship that
this proceeding does not suit with the circumstances
of our lamilies, wlio have lived and made a good figure
in the world by the generosity of the Lord Strutts.
Therefore we think fit to acquaint your lordship, that
you must find snflicient security' to us, our heirs and
assigns, that you will not employ Lewis Baboon ; or
else we will take our remedy at law, clap an action
upon you of L.-_'0,000 for old debts, seize and distrain
your goods and chattels, which, considering your
lordship's circumstances, will plunge you into difficul-
ties from which it will not be easy to extricate your-
self; therefore we hope, when your lordship has better
considered on it, you will comjily with the desire of,
your loving friends, Joh.n Bull, Nic. Fuog.
Some of Bull's friends advised him to take gentler
methods with the young lord ; but John naturally
loved rough play. It is impossible to express the
surprise of the Lord Strutt upon the receipt of this
letter. He was not flush in ready either to go to law,
or clear old debts, neither could he find good bail.
He offered to bring matters to a friendly acconmio-
dation, and promised upon his word of honour that
he would not change his drapers. But all to no pur-
pose, for Bull and Frog saw clearly that old Lewis
would have the cheating of him.
Chap. IV. — Hoiv BvJl and Frog u-ent to Lav; icith
Lord Strutt about the Premiie."^ and were joined by the
rest of the Tradesmen. — .\11 endeavours of accommoda-
tion between Lord Strutt and his drapers proved vain ;
jealousies increased ; and indeed it was rumoured
abroad that Lord Strutt had bespoke his new liveries
of old Lewis Baboon. This coming to Mrs Bull's^
ears, when John Bull came home, he found all his
family in an uproar. !Mrs Bull, you must know, waa
very apt to be choleric. 'You sot,' saj'S she, 'you
loiter about alehouses and taverns, spend your time
at billiards, ninepins, or puppet-shows, or ilaunt about
the streets in your new gilt chariot, never minding
me nor your numerous family. Don't you hear how
Lord Strutt has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon's
shop ? Don't you see how that old fox steals away
your customers, and turns you out of your business
every day, and you sit like an idle drone with your
hands in your pockets? Fie upon it ! up, man ; rouse
thj-self ; I'll sell to my shift before I'll be so used by
that knave.' You must think Mrs Bull had been
pretty well tuned up by Frog, who chimed in with
her learned harangue. No further delay now, but to
counsel learned in the law they go, who unanimously
assured them both of the justice and infallible suc-
cess of their lawsuit.
I told you before, that old Lewis Baboon was a sort
of a Jack of all trades, which ma<le the rest of the
trade.<;men jealous, as well as Bull and Frog ; they,
hearing of the quarrel, were glad of an opportunity of
joining against old Lewis Baboon, provided that Bull
and Frog would bear the charges of the suit ; even
lying Ned,' the chinmey sweeper of Savoy, and Tom,'*
the Portugal dustman, put in their claims ; and the
cause was put into the hands of Humphry Hocus,^ the
attorney.
A declaration was drawn up to show, ' That Bull
' security to England and Holland for their dominions, navi-
gation, and commerce, and to prevent the union of the two
monarchies, France and Spain." To eft'ect these purposes,
Queen Anne was, by ^ the parliament, precipitated into
the war as a principal. Among lier allies were ^ tho
I)ul<e of Savoy and * the king of Portugal ; and
5 John Clnirchill, Duke of Marlborough, was apiiointcd gtr
nerai-in-chief of the coufederatc army.
6-13
FUOM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727
and Frog had undoubted right bj prescription to be
drapers to the Lord Strutts ; that there were several
old contracts to that purpose ; that Lewis Baboon had
taken up the trade of clothier and draper, without
serving his time or purchasing his freedom ; that he
sold goods that were not marketable without the
stamp ; that he himself was more fit for a bully than
a tradesman, and went about through all the country
fairs challenging people to fight prizes, wrestling and
cudgel-play ;' and abundance more to this purpose.
Chap. V. — The tme characters of John Bnll, Nic.
Fj-og, and Hocus. — For the better understanding the
following history, the reader ought to know, that Bull,
in the main, was an honest plain-dealing fellow,
choleric, bold, and of a very unconstant temper ; he
dreaded not old Lewis either at back-sword, single
falchion, or cudgel-play ; but then he was very apt
to quarrel with his best friends, especially if they pre-
tended to govern him : if you flattered him, you
might lead him like a child. John's temper de-
pended very much upon the air ; his spirits rose and
fell with the weather-glass. John was quick, and un-
derstood his business very well ; but no man alive
was more careless in looking into his accompts, or
more cheated by partners, apprentices, and servants.
This was occasioned by his being a boon companion,
loving his bottle and his diversion ; for, to say truth,
no man kept a better house than John, nor spent his
money more generously. By plain and fair dealing,
John had acquired some plums, and might have
kept them, had it not been for his unhappy lawsuit.
Nic. Frog was a cunning sly rogue, quite the re-
verse of John in many particulars ; covetous, frugal ;
minded domestic afl^airs ; would pinch his belly to
save his pocket ; never lost a farthing by careless ser-
vants or bad debtors. He did not care much for any
sort of diversions, except tricks of high German
artists, and legerdemain ; no man exceeded Nic. in
these ; yet, it must be owned, that Nic. was a fair
dealer, and in that way acquired immense riches.
Hocus was an old cunning attorney ; and though
this was the first considerable suit that ever he was
engaged in, he showed himself superior in address to
most of his profession ; he kept always good clerks ;
he loved money, was smooth-tongued, gave good
words, and seldom lost his temper ; he was not worse
than an infidel, for he provided plentifully for his
family ; but he loved himself better than them all :
the neighbours reported that he was henpecked, which
was impossible by such a mild-spirited woman as his
wife was.i
Chap. VI. — Of the varioiis success of the Lawsuit. —
Law is a bottomless pit ; it is a cormorant, a harpy that
devours everything. John Bull was flattered by the
lawj'ers, that his suit would not last above a year or
two at most ; that before that time he would be in
quiet possession of his business ; yet ten long years
did Hocus steer his cause through all the meanders of
the law, and all the courts. No skill, no address was
wanting ; and, to say truth, John did not starve his
cause ; there wanted not yellow-boys to fee counsel,
hire witnesses, and bribe juries. Lord Strutt was
generally cast, never had one verdict in his favour ;2
and John was promised that the next, and the next,
would be the final determination. But alas ! that final
determination and happy conclusion was like an en-
chanted island ; the nearer John came to it, the further
• The Duchess of Marlborough was in reality a termagant.
• The war was carried on against France and Spain with
great success, and a peace might have been concluded upon
the principles of the alliance ; but a partition of the Spanish
dominions in favour of the house of Austria, and an engage-
ment that the same jwrson should never be king of France and
Spain, were not now thom-ht sufficient.
it went from him. New trials upon new points still
arose ; new doubts, new matters to be cleared ; in
short, la>vj'ers seldom part with so good a cause till
they have got the oyster, and their clients the shell.
John's ready money, book-debts, bonds, mortgages,
all went into the lawyer's pockets. Then John began
to borrow money upon bank-stock and East India
bonds. Now and then a farm went to pot. At lust'
it was thought a good expedient to set up Esquire
South's title to prove the will forged, and dispossess
Philip Lord Strutt at once. Here again was a new
field for the la>vyers, and the cause grew more intri-
cate than ever. John grew madder and madder ;
wherever he met any of Lord Strutt's servants, he tore
off their clothes. Now and then you would see them
come home naked, without shoes, stockings, and linen.
As for old Lewis Baboon, he was reduced to his last
shift, though he had as many as any other. His chil-
dren were reduced from rich silks to Doily stufis, his
servants in rags and bare-footed ; instead of good vic-
tuals, they now lived upon neck -beef and bullock's
liver. In short, nobody got much by the matter but
the men of law.
Chap. VII. — How John Bull xvas so mightily pleased
with his siiccess, that he was going to leave off his trade
and turn Lavyer. — It Js wisely observed by a great
philosopher, that habit is a second nature. This was
verified in the case of John Bull, who, from an honest
and plain tradesman, had got such a haunt about the
courts of justice, and such a jargon of law words, that
he concluded himself as able a lawyer as any that
pleaded at the bar or sat on the bench : He was
overheard one day talking to himself after this
manner : — ' How capriciously does fate or chance dis-
pose of mankind ! How seldom is that business
allotted to a man for which he is fitted by nature!
It is plain 1 was intended for a man of law : how did
my guardians mistake my genius in placing me, like
a mean slave, behind a counter? Bless me! what
immense estates these fellows raise by the law ; be-
sides, it is the profession of a gentleman. What a
pleasure is it to be victorious in a cause, to swagger
at the bar. What a fool am I to drudge any more in
this woollen trade : for a lawyer I was born, and a
lawyer 1 will be : one is never too old to learn. '^ All
this while John had conned over such a catalogue of
hard words, as were enough to conjure up the devil ;
these he used to babble indiflerently in all companies,
especially at coffee-houses ; so that his neighbour
tradesmen began to shun his company as a man that
was cracked. Instead of the afl^airs at Blackwell-hall
and price of broad cloth, wool, and baizes, he talks of
nothing but actions upon the case, returns, capias,
alias capias, demurrers, venire facias, replevins, super-
sedeas's,certioraris, writs of error, actions of trover and
conversion, trespasses, precipes and dedimus. This
was matter of jest to the learned in law ; however.
Hocus and the rest of the tribe encouraged John in his
fancy, assuring him that he had a great genius for
law, that they questioned not but in time he might
raise money enough by it to reimburse him all his
charges ; that, if he studied, he would undoubtedly
arrive to the dignity of a lord chief justice.^ As for
the advice of honest friends and neighbours, John de-
spised it ; he looked upon them as fellows of a low
genius, poor grovelling mechanics. John reckoned it
more honour to have got one favourable verdict, than
to have sold a bale of broad-cloth. As for Nic. Frog,
to say the truth, he was more prudent ; for, though
' It was insisted that the will in favour of Philip was con-
trary to treaty ; and there was a parliamentary declarjition for
continuing the war, till he should be dethroned.
* The manners and sentiments of the nation became extra'
v.agant and chimerical.
3 Uold the balance of power.
644
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
1)R JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
he followed his lawsuit closely, he neglected not his
ordinary business, but was both in court and in his
shop at the proper hours. * *
Part IL Chap. L — The character of John Bull's
Mother.^- — John had a mother, whom he loved and
honoured extremely ; a discreet, grave, sober, good-
conditioned, cleanlj' old gentlewoman as ever lived ;
she was none of your cross-grained, termagant, scold-
ing jades, that one had as good be hanged as live in
the house with, such as are always censuring the con-
duct, and telling scandalous stories of their neigh-
bours, extolling their own good qualities, and under-
valuing those of others. On the contrary, she was of
a meek spirit, and, as she was strictly virtuous herself,
so she always put the best construction upon the
words and actions of her neighbours, except where
they were irreconcilable to the rules of honesty and
decency. She was neither one of your precise prudes,
nor one of your ftmtastical old belles, that dress them-
selves like girls of fifteen ; as she neither wore a- ruff,
forehead-cloth, nor high-crowned hat, so she had laid
aside feathers, flowers, and crlmpt ribbons in her
head-dress, furbelo scarfs, and hooped petticoats. She
scorned to patch and paint, yet she loved to keep her
hands and her face clean. Though she wore no flaunt-
ing laced ruffles, she would not keep herself in a con-
stant sweat with greasy flannel ; though her hair was
not stuck with jewels, she was not ashamed of a
diamond cross : she was not, like some ladies, hung
about with toys and trinkets, tweezer-cases, pocket-
glasses, and essence bottles ; she used only a gold
watch and au almanac, to mark the hours and the
holidays.
Her furniture was neat and genteel, well fancied
with a bon gout. As she affected not the grandeur
of a state with a canopy, she thought there was no
offence in an elbow-chair; she had laid aside j'our
carving, gilding, and japan work, as being too apt to
gather dirt ; but she never could be prevailed upon to
part with plain wainscot and clean hangings. There
are some ladies that affect to smell a stink in every-
thing ; they are always highly perfumed, and con-
tinually burning frankincense in their rooms ; she
was above such affectation, yet she never would lay
aside the use of brooms and scrubbing brushes, and
scrupled not to lay her linen in fresh lavender.
She was no less genteel in her behaviour, well-bred,
without affectation, in the due mean between one of
your affected curtsying pieces of formality, and your
romps that have no regard to the common rules of
civility. There are some ladies that affect a mighty
regard for their relations : we nmst not eat to-day,
for my uncle Tom, or my t msin Betty, died this time
ten years ; let's have a ball to-night, it is my neigh-
bour such-a-one's birth-day. She looked upon all
this as grimace, yet she constantly observed her hus-
band's birth-day, her wedding-day, and some few more.
Though she was a truly good woman, and had a
sincere motherly love for her son John, yet there
wanted not those who endeavoured to create a misun-
derstanding between them, and they had so far pre-
vailed with him once, that he turned her out of
doors,"2 to his great sorrow, as he found afterwards, for
his affairs went on at sixes and sevens.
She was no less judicious in the turn of her conver-
sation and choice of her studies, in which she far ex-
ceeded all her sex ; your rakes that hate the company
of all sober grave gentlewomen, would bear hers ; and
she would, by her handsome manner of proceeding,
sooner reclaim them than some that were more sour
and reserved. She was a zealous preacher up of
chastity, and conjugal fidelity in wives, and by no
means a friend to the new-fangled doctrine of the iu-
' The church of England.
2 In tlie rebellion of lGi\.
dispensable duty of cuckoldom ; though she advanced
her opinions with a becoming assurance, yet she never
ushered them in, as some positive creatures will do,
with dogmatical assertions — tliisisinfallible ; 1 cannot
be mistaken ; none but a rogue can deny it. It has
been observed, that such people are oftener in the
wrong tlian anybody.
Though she had a thousand good qualities, she was
not without her faults, amongst which one might per-
haps reckon too great lenity to her servants, to wliom
she always gave good counsel, but often too gentle
correction. 1 thought I could not say less of John
Bull's mother, because she bears a partin the follow-
ing transactions.
Chap. XL — The character of John Bull's sifter^ Peg,
with the quarrels that happened bettveen Master and
Aftss in their childhood. — John had a sister, a poor girl
that had been starved at nurse ; anybody would have
guessed miss to have been bred up under the influence
of a cruel stepdame, and John to be the fondling of a
tender mother. John looked ruddy an<l plump, with
a pair of checks like a trumpeter ; miss looked pale
and wan, as if she had the green sickness ; and no
wonder, for John was the darling ; he had all the good
bits, was crammed with good puUetf chicken, pig,
goose, and capon, while miss Ixad only a little oat-
meal and water, or a dry crust without butter. John
had his golden pippins, peaches, and nectarines ; poor
miss a crab apple, sloe, or a blackberry. Master lay
in the best apartment, with his bedchamber towards
the south sun ; miss lodged in a garret, exposed to
the north wind, which shrivelled her countenance.
However, this usage, though it stunt"a the girl in her
growth, gave her a hardy constituiiou • she had life
and spirit in abundance, and knew ivhen she was ill-
used : now and then she would seize upon John's
commons, snatch a leg of a pullet, or a bit of good
beef, for which they were sure to go to fisty-cuffs.
Master was indeed too strong for her ; but miss would
not yield in the least point, but even wuen master
has got her down, she would scratch and bite like a
tiger ; when he gave her a cuff" on the ear, she would
prick him with her knitting-needle. John brought a
great chain one day to tie her to the bedpost, for
which affront miss aimed a penknife at his Ijeart.^ In
short, these quarrels grew up to rooted aversions ; they
gave one another nick-names ; she called him gundy-
guts, and he called her lousy Peg, though the girl was
a tight clever wench asan^' was ; and through her pale
looks you might discern spirit and vivacity, which
made her not, indeed, a perfect beauty, but some-
thing that was agreeal)le. It was barbarous in parents
not to take notice of these early quarrels, and make
them live better together, such domestic feuds proving
afterwards the occasion of misfortunes to them both.
Peg had, indeed, some odd humours and comical
antipath3', for which John would jeer her. ' What
think you of my sister Peg (says he), that faints at the
sound of an organ, and yet will dance and frisk at the
noise of a bag-j)i[)e?' 'What's tliat to you, gundy-
guts ? (quoth Peg) everybody's to choose their own
music' Tlien Peg had taken a fancy not to say her
pater noster, which made people imagine strange
things of her. Of the three brothers that have made
such a clutter in the world, Lord Peter, Martin, and
Jack,'* Jack had of late been her inclinations : Lord
Peter she detested ; nor did ^lartin stand much better
in her good graces ; but Jack had found the way to her
heart. * *
' The nation and church of Scotland.
2 Henry VIII., to unite the two kingdoms under one sovo-
reiRn, oft'ered his daughter Mary to James V. of Scotland , this
offer was rejected, and followed by a. war: to this event pro-
bably the author alludes. See page 303 of thib volume.
3 The I'ope, Luther, and Calvin.
6i&
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 1727
The following extract will serve as a specimen of
Dr Arbutlinot's serious composition. It is taken
from an essay on the
Usefulness of 3fatkcmafical Learning.
The advantages which accrue to the mind by ma-
thematical studies, consist chiefly in these things :
1st, In accustoming it to attention. 2d, In giving it a
habit of close and demonstratire reasoning. 3d, In
freeing it from j^i'cjudice, credidity, and superstition.
First, the mathematics make the mind attentive to
the objects which it considers. This they do by en-
tertaining it with a great variety of truths, which are
delightful and evident, but not obvious. Truth is the
same thing to the understanding as music to the ear
and beauty to the eye. The pursuit of it does really
as much gratify a natural faculty implanted in us by
our wise Creator, as the pleasing of our senses : only
in the former case, as the object and faculty are more
spiritual, the delight is the more pure, free from the
regret, turpitude, lassitude, and intemperance, that
commonly attend sensual pleasures. The most part
of other sciences consisting only of probable reason-
ings, the mind has not where to fix, and wanting suf-
ficient principles to pursue its searches upon, gives
vhem over as impossible. Again, as in mathematical
investigations truth may be found, so it is not always
obvious. This spurs the mind, and makes it diligent
and attentive. * *
The second advantage which the mind reaps from
mathematical knowledge, is a habit of clear, demon-
strative, and methodical reasoning. We are contrived
by nature to learn by imitation more than by precept ;
and I believe in that respect reasoning is much like
other inferior arts (as dancing, singing, &c.), acquired
by practice. By accustoming ourselves to reason
closely about quantity, we acquire a habit of doing
so in other things. It is surprising to see what super-
ficial inconsequential reasonings satisfy the most part
of mankind. A piece of wit, a jest, a simile, or a
quotation of an author, passes for a mighty argument :
with such things as these are the most part of authors
stuffed ; and from these weighty premises they infer
their conclusions. This weakness and effeminacy of
mankind, in being persuaded where they are de-
lighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets,
and men of wit. Those lumina 07-ationis are indeed
Tery good diversion for the fiincj', but are not the
proper business of the understanding ; and where a
man pretends to write on abstract subjects in a scien-
tifical method, he ought not to debauch in them.
Logical precepts are more useful, nay, they are abso-
lutely necessary, for a rule of formal arguing in pub-
lic disputations, and confounding an obstinate and
perverse adversarj', and exposing him to the audience
or readers. But, in the search of truth, an imitation
of the method of the geometers will carry a man far-
ther than all the dialectical rules. Their analysis is
the proper model we ought to form ourselves upon,
and imitate in the regular disposition and progress of
our inquiries ; and even he who is ignorant of the
nature of mathematical analysis, uses a method some-
what analogous to it. The composition of the geo-
meters, or their method of demonstrating truths
already found out, namely, by definitions of words
agreed upon, by self-evident truths, and propositions
that have been already demonstrated, is practicable
in other subjects, though not to the same perfection,
the natural want of evidence in the things themselves
not allowing it ; but it is imitable to a considerable
degree. I dare appeal to some writings of our own
age and nation, the authors of which have been ma-
thematically inclined. I shall add no more on this
head, but that one wlio is accustomed to the metho-
lical systems of truths which the geometers have
reared up in the several branches of those science?
which they have cultivated, will hardly bear with the
confusion and disorder of other sciences, but endea-
vour, as far as he can, to reform them.
Thirdly, mathematical knowledge adds vigour to
the mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and
superstition. This it does in two ways: 1st, By ac-
customing us to examine, and not to take things upon
trust. 2d, By giving us a clear and extensive know-
ledge of the system of the world, which, as it creates
in us the most profound reverence of the Almighty
and wise Creator, so it frees us from the mean and
narrow thoughts which ignorance and superstition are
apt to beget. * * The mathematics are friends to
religion, inasmuch as they charm the passions, re-
strain the impetuosity of imagination, and purge the
mind from error and prejudice. Vice is error, con-
fusion, and false reasoning; and all truth is more or
less opposite to it. Besides, mathematical studies
may serve for a pleasant entertainment for those houra
which young men are apt to throw away upon their
vices ; the delightfulncss of them being such as to
make solitude not only easy, but desirable.
LORD BOLINGBROKE.
Henry St John Viscount Bolingrroke was in
his own day the most conspicuous and illustrious of
that friendly band of Jacobite wits and poets who
adorned the reigns of Anne and George I. lie is
now the least popular of the whole. St John was
descended from an ancient family, and was born at
Battersea, in Surrej', in 1672. He was educated at
Eton and Oxford. After some years of dissipation
he entered parliament, and was successively secre-
tary at war and secretary of state. He was elevated
to the peerage in 1712. On the death of Queen
Anne, the seals of office were taken from him, and
he was threatened with impeachment for the share
he had taken in negotiating the treaty of Utrecht.
Bolingbroke retired to Prance, and entered into the
Pretender's service as secretary. Here, also, he be-
came unpopular, and was accused of neglect and in-
capacity. Dismissed from his second secretarj-ship,
he had recourse to literature, and produced his lie-
Jlections on Exile, aiul a letter to Sir William Wj-nd-
ham, containing a defence of his conduct. In 1723
he obtained a full pardon, and returned to England ;
his family inheritance was restored to him, but he
was excluded from the House of Lords. He com-
menced an active opposition to Walpole, and wrote a
number of political tracts against the Whig ministry.
In 1735 he retired again to France, and resided there
seven years, during which time he i>roduced his Let-
ters on the Study of History, and a Letter on the True
Use of lietirement. The last ten years of his life w-ere
spent at Battersea. In 1749 appeared his Letters on
the Spirit of Patriotism, and Idea of a Patriot King,
with a preface by David ^lallet, which led to a Ijitter
and acrimonious war of pami)hlets. Bolingbroke's
treatise had been put into the hands of Tope, that
he might have a few copies ]n-inted for private cir-
culation. After the death of Pope, it was found that
an impression of 1500 had been printed, and this
Bolingbroke affected to consider a heinous breach of
646
MISCELLANEOUS WniTEIlS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LOUD BOLINGBROKB.
trust. The transaction arose from Pope's admiration
of his friend ; he had ' not only expended his time in
correcting the work, but his money in printing it,
witliout any possibiHty of derivinf^ from it either
credit or advantage.' Tlie anger of Bolingbroke is
more justh' considered to iiave been only a pretext,
the real ground of offence being the poet's preference
of Warburton, to whom he left the valuable property
ill his printed works. Bolingbroke died in 1751, and
Bolingbroke's Monument in Battersea Church.
Mallet (to whom he had left all his manuscripts) pub-
lished a. complete edition of his works in five volumes.
A series of essays on religion and philosophy, first
published in this'collection, disclosed the noble author
as an opponent of Christianity. Of lofty irregular
views and character, vain, ambitious, and vindictive,
yet eloquent and imaginative, we may admire, but
cannot love Bolingbroke. The friendship of Tope was
the brightest gem in his coronet ; yet by one ungrate-
ful and unfeeling act he sullied its lustre, and,
Like the base .Tudean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.
The writings of Bolingbroke are animated by mo-
mentary or factious feeling, rather than by any
fixed principle or philosophical views. In expres-
sion he is often vivid and felicitous, with a rambling
yet lively style, and a power of moral painting
that presents pictures to the eye of the mind. In
one of his letters to Swift, we find him thus finely
moralising—' We are both in the decline of life, my
dear dean, and h.ave been some years going down"
the hill; lefus make the passage as smooth as we
can. Let us fence against physical evil by care,
and the use of those means which experience must
have pointed out to us ; let us fence against moral
evil by philosophy. We may, nay (if we will follow
nature and do not work up imagination against her
plainest dictates) we shall, of course, grow every year
more indifferent to life, and to the affliirs and inte-
rests of a system out of which we are soon to go.
Tliis is much better than stupidity. The decay of
passion strengthens philosophy, for passion may de-
cay, and stupidity not succeed. Passions (says Pope,
our divine, as you will see one time or other) are
the gales of life ; let us not complain that they do
not blow a storm. What hurt does age do )is in
subduing what we toil to subdue all our lives ? It is
now sixain the morning ; I recall the time (and am
glad it IS over) when about this hour I used to be
going to bed surfeited with pleasure, or jaded with
business ; my head often full of schemes, and my
heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune,
think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, serene,
an<l calm ; tb.at the past and even the present aff;iir3
of life stand like objects at a distance from me, where
I can keC)) olf the disagreeable, so as not to be
stnjngly affected by them, and from whence I can
draw the others nearer to me ? Passions, in their
force, would bring all these, naj', even future contin-
gencies, about my ears at once, and reason would ill
defend me in the scuffle.'
A loftier spirit of philosophy pervades the follow-
ing eloquent sentence on the independence of the
mind with respect to external circumstances and
situation : — ■' Believe me, the providence of God has
established such an order in the world, that of all
which belongs to us, the least valuable parts can
alone fdl under the will of others. Whatever is best
is safest, lies most out of the reach of human power,
can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this
great and beautiful work of nature — the world. Such
is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires
the world, where it makes the noblest jiart. These
are inseparably ours ; and as long as we remain in
one, we shall enjoy the other. Let us march, there-
fore, intrepidly, wherever we are led by the course of
human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what
coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not
find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall meet
with men and women, creatures of the same figure,
endowed M-ith the same faculties, and born under the
same laws of nature. We shall see the same virtues
and vices flowing from the same general principles,
but varied in a thousand different and contrary
modes, according to that infinite variety of laws and
customs wliich is established for the same universal
end — the preservation of societ3% We shall feel the
same revolutions of seasons ; and the same sun and
moon will guide the course of our year. The same
azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be every-
where spread over our heads. There is no part of
the world from whence we may not admire those
])lanets, which roll, like ours, in different orbits round
the same central sun ; from whence we may not dis-
cover an object still more stupendou.^, that army of
fixed stars hung up in tlie immense space of the uni-
verse, innumerable suns, whose liL'ams enlighten and
cherish the unlcnown worlds which roll around them ;
and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as
these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it
imports me little what ground I tread upon.'
[National Partialiti/ and Prejudice.']
There is scarce any folly or vice more epidemical
among the sons of men than that ridiculous and hurt-
ful vanity by which the people of each country are
apt to prefer themselves to those of every other ; and
to make their own customs, and manners, an 1 opinions,
the standards of right and wrong, of true and false.
The Chinese mandarins were strangely suipriscd, and
almost incredulous, when the Jesuits showed them
how small a figure their empire made in the general
map of the world. * * Now, nothing can contri-
bute more to prevent us from being tainted with tlu.'»
vanity, than to accustom ourselves early to contem-
plate the different nations of the earth, in that vast
map which history spreads before us, in their rise and
their fall, in their barbarous ami civilised states, in
the likeness and unlikenossof thcin all to one another,
and of each to itself. By frequently renewing tiiia
prospect to the mind, the Mexican with his cap and
coat of feathers, sacriticing a hunum victim to his god,
will not a])pear more savage to our eyes than the
Spaniard with a hat on his head, and a gonilla round
FROM 1639
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172V.
his ueck, sacrificing whole nations to his ambition,
his avarice, and even tlie wantonness of his cruelty.
I might show, by a multitude of other examples, how
history prepares us for experience, and guides us in
it ; and many of these would be both curious and im-
portant. I might likewise bring several other in-
stances, wherein history serves to purge the mind of
those national partialities and prejudices that we are
apt to contract in our education, and that experience
for the most part rather confirms than removes ; be-
cause it is for the most part confined, like our educa-
tion. But I apprehend growing too prolix, and shall
therefore conclude this head by observing, that though
an early and proper application to the study of his-
tory will contribute extremely to keep our minds free
from a ridiculous partiality in favour of our own
country, and a vicious prejudice against others, yet
the same study will create in us a preference of aftec-
tion to our own country. There is a stori,' told of
Ab^arus. He brought several beasts taken in diffe-
rent places to Rome, they say, and let them loose
before Augustus ; every beast ran immediately to that
part of the circus where a parcel of earth taken from
his native soil had been laid. Crechit Judcem Apella.
This tale might pass on Josephus ; for in him, I be-
lieve, I read it ; but surely the love of our countiy is
a lesson of reason, not an institution of nature. Edu-
cation and habit, obligation and interest, attach us to
it, not instinct. It is, however, so necessary to be
cultivated, and the prosperity of all societies, as well
as the grandeur of some, depends upon it so much,
that orators by their eloquence, and poets by their
enthusiasm, have endeavoured to work up this precept
of morality into a principle of passion. But the
examples which we find in history, improved by the
lively descriptions and the just applauses or censures
of historians, will have a much better and more per-
manent effect than declamation, or song, or the dry
ethics of mere philosophy.
[Absurdity of Useless Learning.']
Some [histories] are to be read, some are to be
studied, and some maybe neglected entirely, not only
without detriment, but with advantage. Some are
the proper objects of one man's curiosity, some of an-
other's, and some of all men's ; but all history is not
an object of curiosity for any man. He who impro-
perly, wantonly, and absurdly makes it so, indulges a
sort of canine appetite ; the curiosity of one, like the
hunger of the other, devours ravenously, and without
distmction, whatever falls in its way, but neither of
them digests. They heap crudity upon crudity, and
nourish °and improve nothing but their distemper.
Some such characters 1 have known, though it is not
the most common extreme into which men are apt to
fall. One of them I knew in this country. He joined
to a more than athletic strength of body a prodigious
memory, and to both a prodigious industry. He had
read almost constantly twelve or fourteen hours a-day
for five-and-twenty or thirty years, and had heaped
together as much learning as could be crowded into a
Lead. In the course of my acquaintance with him, I
consulted him once or twice, not oftener ; for I found
this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the
owner. The man was communicative enough ; but
nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be
otherwise ? he had never spared time to think ; all was
employed in reading. His reason had not the merit
of common mechanism. When you press a watch, or
pull a clock, they answer your question with precision ;
for they repeat exactly the hour of the day, and tell
you neither more nor less than you desire to know.
But when you asked this man a question, he over-
whelmed you by pouring forth all that the several
terms or words of your question recalled to his me-
mory ; and if he omitted anything, it was that very
thing to which the sense of the whole question should
have led him or confined him. To ask him a question
was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled
on with vast rapidity and confused noise, till the force
of it was spent ; and you went away with all the noise
in your ears, stunned and uninformed. I never left
him that 1 was not ready to say to him, Dieu vous fasse
la (/race ck dcvenir mains savant / — [' God grant you a
decrease of learning !'] — a wish that LaMothe le Vayer
mentions upon some occasion or other, and that he
would have done well to have applied to himself upon
many.
He who reads with discernment and choice, will
acquire less learning, but more knowledge ; and as
this knowledge is collected with design, and cultivated
with art and method, it will be at all times of imme-
diate and ready use to himself and others.
Thus useful anns in magazines we place.
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace ;
Nor thus alone the curious eye to please.
But to be found, when need requires, with ease.
You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's
Essay on Criticism, which was the work of his child-
hood almost ; but is such a monument of good sense
and poetiy, as no other, that I know, has raised in his
riper years.
He who reads without this discernment and choice,
and, like Bodin's pupil, resolves to read all, will not
have time, no, nor capacity neither, to do anything
else. He will not be able to think, without which it
is impertinent to read ; nor to act, without which it
is impertinent to think. He will assemble materials
with nmch pains, and purchase them at much expense,
and have neither leisure nor skill to frame them into
proper scantlings, or to prepare them for use. To
what purjiose should he husband his time, or leam
architecture ? he has no design to build. But then,
to what purpose all these quames of stone, all these
mountains of sand and lime, all these forests of oak
and deal ?
[Unreasonableness of Complaints of the Shortness of
Human Life.]
I think very differently from most men, of the
time we have to pass, and the business we have
to do, in this world. 1 think we have more of one,
and less of the other, than is commonly supposed.
Our want of time, and the shortness of human life,
are some of the principal commonplace complaints,
which we prefer against the established order of things ;
they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathe-
tic lamentations of the philosopher; but they are im-
pertinent and impious in both. The man of business
despises the man of pleasure for squandering his time
away ; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the
man of business for the same thing ; and yet both con-
cur superciliously and absurdly to find fault with the
Supreme Being for having given them so little time.
The philosopher, who mispends it very often as much
as the others, joins in the same cry, and authorises
this impiety. Theophrastus thought it extremely hard
to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he
had just learned how to live in it. His master Aris-
totle found fault with nature for treating man in this
respect worse than several other animals ; both very
unphilosophically ! and I love Seneca the better for
his quarrel with the Stagirite on this head. 'We see,
in so many instances, a just proportion of things, ac-
cording to their several relations to one another, that
philosophy should lead us to conclude this proportion
preserved, even where we cannot discern it ; instead
of leading us to conclude that it is not preserved where
we do not discern it, or where we think that we seo
648
MISCELLAntOLS WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LORD BOLINGBROKE.
the contrary. To conclude otherwise is shocking pre-
sumption. It is to presume that the system of the
universe would have been more wisely contrived, if
creatures of our low rank among intellectual natures
had been called to the councils of the Most High ; or
that the Creator ought to mend his work by the ad-
vice of the creature. That life which seems to our
self-love so short, when we compare it with the ideas
we frame of eternity, or even with the duration of
some other beings, will appear sutficient, upon a less par-
tial view, to all the ends of our creation, and of a just
proportion in the successive course of generations.
The term itself is long ; we render it short ; and the
want we complain of flows from our profusion, not
from our poverty. We are all arrant spendthrifts ;
some of us dissipate our estates on the trifles, some on
the superfluities, and then we all complain that we
want the necessaries, of life. The much greatest part
never reclaim, but die bankrupts to God and man.
Others reclaim late, and they are apt to imagine,
when they make up their accounts, and see how their
fund is diminished, that they have not enough re-
maining to live upon, because they have not the whole.
But they deceive themselves ; they were richer than
they thought, and they are not yet poor. If they hus-
band well the remainder, it will be found sufficient
for all the necessaries, and for some of the superflui-
ties, and trifles too, perhaps, of life ; but then the
former order of expense must be inverted, and the
necessaries of life must be provided, before they put
then.selves to any cost for the trifles or superfluities.
Let us leave the men of pleasure and of business,
who are often candid enough to own that they throw
away their time, and thereby to confess that they
complain of the Supreme Being for no other reason
than this, that he has not proportioned his bounty to
their extravagance. Let us consider the scholar and
philosopher, who, far from owning that he throws any
time away, reproves others for doing it ; that solemn
mortal, who abstains from the pleasures, and declines
the business of the world, that he may dedicate his
whole time to the search of truth and the improve-
ment of knowledge. When such a one complains of
the shortness of human life in general, or of his re-
maining share in particular, might not a man, more
reasonable, though less solemn, expostulate thus with
him : — ' Your complaint is indeed consistent with
your practice ; but you would not possibly renew your
complaint if you reviewed your practice. Though
reading makes a scholar, yet every scholar is not a
philosopher, nor every philosopher a wise man. It
cost you twenty years to devour all the volumes on
one side of youT library ; you came out a great critic
in Latin and Greek, in the oriental tongues, in history
and chronology; but you were not satisfied. You con-
fessed that these were the lilcrcB nihil sanantes, and
you wanted more time to acquire other knowledge.
You have had this time ; you have passed twenty
years more on the other side of your library, among
philosophers, rabbis, commentators, schoolmen, and
whole legions of modern doctors. You are extremely
well versed in all that has been written concerning
the nature of God, and of the soul of man, about
matter and form, body and spirit, and space and
eternal essences, and incorporeal substances, and the
rest of those profound speculations. You are a master
of the controversies that have arisen about nature
and grace, about predestination and free will, and all
the other abstruse questions that have made so much
noise in the schools, and done so much hurt in the
world. You are going on, as fast as the infirmities
you have contracted will permit, in the same course
of study ; but you begin to foresee that you shall
want time, and you make grievous complaints of the
shortness of human life. Give nie leave now to ask
you bow many thousand years God must prolong your
life in order to reconcile you to his wisdom and good-
ness ? It is j)lain,at least highly probable, that a life
as long as that of the most aged of tlie patriarchs
would be too short to answer your purposes ; sii.ce
the researches and disputes in which you are engaged
have been already for a much longer time the objects
of learned inquiries, and remain still as imperfect and
undetermini^d as they were at first. But let me ask
you again, and deceive neitlier yourself nor me, have
you, in the course of tliese forty years, once examined
the first principles and the fundamental facts on
which all those questions depend, with an absolute
indifl^erence of judgment, and with ascrupulous exact-
ness? with the same tliat you have employed in exa-
mining the various consequences drawn iVorn them,
and the heterodox opinions about them ? Have you
not taken them for granted in the whole course of
your studies 1 Or, if you have looked now and then
on the state of the proofs brought to maintain them,
have you not done it as a mathematician looks over a
demonstration formerly made — to refresh his momory,
not to satisfy any doubt * If you have thus examined,
it may appear marvellous to some that you have
spent so much time in many parts of those studies,
which have reduced you to this hectic condition of so
much heat and weakness. But if you have not thus
examined, it must be evident to all, nay, to yourself
on the least cool reflection, that you are still, notwith-
standing all your learning, in a state of ijrnorance.
For knowledge can alone produce knowledge ; and
without such an examination of axioms and facts, you
can have none about in*t're.ices.'
In this manner one might expostulate very reason-
ably with many a great scholar, many a profound
philosopher, many a dogmatical casuist. .A.nd it
serves to set the complaints about want of time, and
the shortness of human life, in a very ridiculous but
a true light.
\_Pleasurcs of a Patriot.']
Neither Montaigne in writing his essays, nor Des-
cartes in building new worlds, nor Burnet in framing
an antediluvian earth, no, nor Newton in discovering
and establishing the true laws of nature on experi-
ment and a sublinier geometry, felt more intelle<'tual
joys, than he feels who is a real patriot, who bends all
the force of his understanding, and directs all his
thoughts and actions, to the good of his country.
When such a man forms a political scheme, and
adjusts various and seemingly indejiendent parts in it
to one great and good design, lie is transported by
imagination, or absorbed in meditation, as much and
as agreeably as they ; and the satisfaction that arises
from the different importance of these objects, in
every step of the work, is vastly in his favour. It is
here that the speculative pliilosopher's laf)our and
pleasure end. But he who speculates in order to act,
goes on and carries his scheme into execution. His
labour continues, it varies, it increases ; but so does
his pleasure too. The execution, indeed, is often tra-
versed, by unforeseen and untoward circumstances,
ly the perverseness or treachery of friends, and by the
power or malice of enemies ; but the fir.-.t and the last
of these animate, and the docility and fidelity of some
men make amends for the perverseness and treachery
of others, ^\■hil.st a great event is in suspense, the
action warms, and the very suspense, made up of
hoj>e and fear, maintain no uii]ileasiiig agitation in
the mind. If the event is decided successfully, such a
man enjoys pleasure proportionable to the good he has
done — a pleasure like to that which is attributed to
the Supreme Being on a survey of his works. If tho
event is decided otherwise, and usur])ing courts or
overbearing parties prevail, such a man has still tho
testimony of hi« conscience, and a sense of the honoui
64:)
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
he has acquired, to soothe his mind and support his
courage. For although the course of state affairs be
to those who meddle in them lilce a lotter}', yet it is
a lotterj' wherein no good man can be a loser ; he
may he reviled, it is true, instead of being applauded,
and may suffer violence of many kinds. I will not
say, like Seneca, that the noblest spectacle which
God can behold is a virtuous man suffering, and
struggling with afBlctions ; but this 1 will say, that
the second Cato, driven out of the forum, and dragged
to prison, enjoyed more inward pleasure, and main-
tained more outward dignity, than they who insulted
him, and who triumphed ni the ruin of their coun-
try.
[in'se, Distinrjuiiihcd from Cunning Ministers.']
We may observe much the same difference between
wisdom and cunning, both as to the objects they pro-
pose and to the means they employ, as we observe
between the visual powers of different men. One sees
distinctly the objects that are near to him, their
immediate relations, and their direct tendencies : and
a sight like this serves well enough the purpose of
those who concern themselves no further. Tlie cunning
minister is one of those : he neither sees, nor is con-
cerneil to see, any further than his personal interests
and the support of his administration require. If
such a man overcomes any actual difficulty, avoids
any immediate distress, or, without doing either of
these effectually, gains a little time, by all the low
artifice which cunning is ready to suggest and baseness
of mind to employ, he triumphs, and is flattered by
his mercenary train on the great event ; which
amounts often to no more than this, that he got into
distress by one series of faults, and out of it by an-
other. The wise minister sees, and is concerned to
see, further, because government has a further concern :
he sees the objects that are distant as well as those
that are near, and all their remote relations, and
even their indirect tendencies. He thinks of fame as
well as of applause, and prefers that, which to be en-
joyed must be given, to that Avhich may be bought.
He considers his administration as a single day in the
great year of government ; but as a day that is
affected by those which went before, and that must
affect those which are to follow. He combines, there-
fore, and compares all these objects, relations, and
tendencies ; and the judgment he makes on an en-
tire, not a partial survey of them, is the rule of his
conduct. That scheme of the reason of state, which
lies open before a wise minister, contains all the great
principles of government, and all the great interests of
his country : so that, as he prepares some events, he
prepares against others, whether they be likely to hap-
pen during his administration, or in some future
time.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGP.
Few persons, and especially ladies, have united so
much solid sense and learning to wit, fancy, and
lively powers of description, as Lady jMary Wort-
ley Mo.NTAGU. In cpistolarj' composition slie has
very few equals, and scarcely a superior. Horace
Walpole may be more witty and sarcastic, and Cow-
per more unaffectedly natural, pure, and delightful ;
yet if we consider "the variety and novelty of the
objects descriiied in Lady Mary's letters, the fund of
anecdote and observation they display, the just re-
flections that spring out of them, and the happy
clearness and idiomatic grace of lier style, we shall
hesitate in j)lacing lier below any letter-writer that
England has yet produced. Thisaccomjilished lady
was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston,
and was horn in 1690. She was educated, like her
brotlicrs, in the Latin, Greek, and French languages.
In 1712 slie married ^Ir Edward Wortle}- Montagu,
and on lier husband being appointed a commissioner
of the treasury, she was introduced to the courtly
and polished circles, and made the friendship of Ad-
dison, Pope, Gay, and the other distinguished literati
of that period. Her personal beauty and the charms
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
of her conversation Avere then unrivalled. In 1716,
her husband was appointed ambassador to the Porte,
and Lady Mary accompanied him to Constantinojjle.
Durnig her journey and her residence in the Levant,
she corresponded with her sister the Countess of
Mar, Lady llich, Mr Pope, &c., delineating European
and Turkish scenery and manners with acctiracy and
minuteness. On observing among the villagers in
Turkey the practice of inoculating for the small-pox,
she became convinced of its utility and efficacy, and
applied it to her own son, at that time abmit tliree
j-ears old. By great exertions. Lady Mary afterwards
establislied the practice of inocuhition in England,
and conferred a lasting benefit on her native country
and on mankind. In 1718, her husband being recalled
from his embassy, she returned to England, and. by
the advice of Pope, settled at Twickenham. Tlie
rival wits did not long continue friends. Pope seems
to have entertained for Lady JIary a passion warmer
than friendship. He wrote high-flown panegyrics
and half-concealed love-letters to her, and she treated
them with silent contempt or ridicule. On one oc-
casion, he is said to have made a tender declaration,
which threw the lady into an immoderate fit of
laughter, and made the sensitive poet ever afterwards
her implacable enemy. Lady Mary also wrote verses,
town eclogues, and epigrams, and I'ope confessed
that she had too nuich wit for him. The cool self-
possession of the lady of rank and fasliion, joined to
her sarcastic powers, proved an overmatcli for the
jealous retired antlior, tremblingly alive to the shafts
of ridicule. In 1739, her health having declined,
Lady Mary again left England to reside abroad. Her
husband (who seems to have been little more than
a decent appendage to his accomplished wife) re-
mained at home. She visited Kome, Najiles, &c.,
and settled at Louverre, in the Venetian territory,
650
MISCELLANEOUS -WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LADY SIaRY WORTLEY MONTIOU.
■whence she corresponded freely and fully with her
female friends and relatives. 5lr Montagu died in
1761, and Lady Mary was prevailed upon tiy lier
daughter, the Countess of Bute, to return to England.
She arrived in October 1761, but died in the follow-
ing year. Her letters were first printed surrepti-
tiously in 1763. A more comjilete edition of her
■works was published in five volumes in 1803 ; and
another, edited by her great-grandson. Lord Wharn-
cliffe, with additional letters and information, in 1837.
The letters from Constantinople and France have
been printed in various shapes. Tiie wit and talent
of Lady Mary are visible throughout the whole of
her correspondence, but there is often a want of
feminine softness and delicacy. Her desire to con-
■vey scandal, or to paint graphically, leads her into
offensive details, which the more decorous taste of
the present age can hardly tolerate. She described
■what she saw and heard without being scrupulous ;
and her strong masculine understanding, and care-
lessness as to refinement in habits or expressions,
render her sometimes apparently unamiable and un-
feeling As models of the epistolary style, easy,
familiar, and elegant, no less than as pictures of
foreign scenery and manners, and fashionable gossip,
the letters of Lady Mary must, however, ever main-
tain a higli place in our national literature. They
are truly letters, not critical or didactic essays, en-
livened by formal compliment and elaborate wit, like
the correspondence of Pope.
{_To E. W. Montagu, Esq. — In prospect of Marriage.']
* * One part of my character is not so good,
nor t'other so bad, as you fancy it. Should we ever
live together, you would be disappointed both ways ;
you would find an easy equality of temper you do not
•expect, and a thousand faults you do not imagine.
You think if you married me I should be passion-
ately fond of you one month, and of somebody else
the next. Neither would happen. I can esteem, I
can be a friend ; but I don't know whether I can love.
Expect all that is complaisant and easy, but never
what is fond, in me. You judge very wTong of my
heart, when you suppose me capable of views of inte-
rest, and that anything could oblige me to flatter any-
body. Was I the most indigent creature in the world,
I should answer you as I do now, without adding or
diminishing. I am incapable of art, and 'tis because
I will not be capable of it. Could 1 deceive one mi-
nute, I should never regain my own good opinion ;
and who could bear to live with one they despised !
If you can resolve to live with a companion that
will have all the deference due to your superiority of
good sense, and that j-our proposals can be agreeable
to those on whom I depend, 1 have nothing to say
against them.
As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great
pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your ac-
count ; hut a retirement in the country is not so dis-
agreeable to me, as I know a few months would make
it tiresome to you. Where people are tied for life,
'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary of one
another. If I had all the personal charms that I
■want, a face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
You would be soon tired with seeing every day the
same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you would
have leisure to remark all the defects : which would
increase in proportion as the novelty lessened, which
is always a great charm. I should have the displea-
sure of seeing a coldness, which, though I could not
reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, yet it
would render me uneasy ; and the more, because I
know a love may be revived, which absence, incon-
stancy, or even infidelity, has extinguished ; but there
is no returning from a dcgout given by satiety. * *
[To the Same — On Matrimonial Happiness.']
* * If we marry, our happiness must consist it
loving one another : 'tis principally my concern to
think of the most probable method of making that
love eternal. You object against living in London ;
I am not fond of it myself, and readily give it up to
you, thougli I am assured there needs more art to
keep a fondness alive in solitude, where it generally
preys upon itself There is one article absolutely
necessary — to be ever beloved, one must be ever
airreeable. There is no such thing as being agree-
able without a thorough good humour, a natural
sweetness of temper, enlivened by cheerfulness. What-
ever natural funds of gaiety one is born with, 'tis
necessary to be entertained with agreeable objects.
Anybody capable of tasting pleasure, when they con-
fine themselves to one place, should take care 'tis the
place in the world the most agreeable. Whatever
you may now think (now, perhaps, you have some
fondness for me), though your love should continue
in its full force, there are hours when the most beloved
mistress would be troublesome. People .are not for
ever (nor is it in human nature that they should be)
disposed to be fond ; you would be glad to find in me
the friend and the companion. To be agreeably the
last, it is necessary to be gay and entertaining. A
perpetual solitude, in a place where you see nothing
to raise your s])irits, at length wears them out, anci
conversation insensibly falls into dull and insipid.
When I have no more to say to you, you will like me
no longer. How dreadful is that view ! You will
reflect, for my sake you have abandoned the conversa-
tion of a friend that you liked, and your situation in
a country where all things would have contributed to
make your life pass in (the true rolupfe) a smooth
tranquillity. / shall lose the vivacity which should
entertain you, and yoic will have nothing to recom-
pense you for what you have lost. Very few people
that have settled entirely in the country, but have
grown at length weary of one another. The ladj-'s
conversation generally falls into a thousand imperti-
nent effects of idleness ; and the gentleman fvlls in
love with his dogs and his horses, and out of love with
everything else. I am not now arguing in favour of
the town ; you have answered me as to that point.
In respect of your health, 'tis the first thing to be
considered, and I shall never ask you to do anything
injurious to that. But 'tis ray opinion, 'tis necessary
to be happy, that we neither of us think any place
more agreeable than that where we are. * *
[ To Mr Pope— Eastern Manners and Language.^
Adriavople, April 1, 0. S., I717.
■* * I no longer look upon Theocritus as a ro-
mantic writer ; he has only given a plain iniage of
the way of life amongst the peasants of his country,
who, before oppression had reduced them to want,
were, 1 suppose, all employed as the better sort of
them are now. I don't doubt, had he been bom a
Briton, but his Idylliumsha.d been filled with descrip-
tions of thrashing and churning, both which are un-
known here, the corn being all trodden out by oxen ;
the butter (I speak it with sorrow) unheard of.
I read over your Homer here with an infinite plea'
sure, and find several little passages explained that
I did not before entirely comprehend the beauty of;
many of the customs, and much of the dress then in
fashion, being yet retained. I don't wonder to find
more remains here of an age so distant, than is to be
found in any other country ; the Turks not taking that
pains to introduce their own maimers, as has been
generally jiractised by other nations, that imagine
themselves more polite. It would be too tedious to
you to point out uU the passages that relate to pr»-
651
FSOM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
sent customs. Rut I can assure you that the prin-
cesses and great ladies pass their time at their looms,
embroidering veils and robes, surrounded by their
maids, which are always very numerous, in the same
maun.er as we find Andromache and Helen described.
The description of the belt of Menelaus exactly re-
Bembles those that are now worn by the great men,
fastened before with broad golden clasps, and em-
broidered round with rich work. The snowy veil that
Helen throws over her face is still fashionable ; and
I never see half-a-dozcn of old bashaws (as I do very
often) with their reverend beards, sitting basking in
the sun, but I recollect good king Priam and his
counsellors. Their manner of dancing is certainly
the same that Diana is sung to have danced on the
banks of Eurotas. The great lady still leads the
dance, and is followed by a troop of young girls, who
imitate her steps, and, if she sings, make up the
chorus. The tunes are extremely gay and lively, yet
with something in them wonderfully soft. The steps
are varied according to the pleasure of her that leads
the dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely
more agreeable than any of our dances, at least in my
opinion. I sometimes make one in the train, but am
not skilful enough to lead ; these are the Grecian
dances, the Turkish being very different.
I should have told you, in the first place, that the
eastern manners give a great light into many Scrip-
ture passages that appear odd to us, their phrases
being commonly what we should call Scripture lan-
guage. The vulgar Turk is very different from what
is spoken at court, or amongst the people of figure,
who always mix so much Arabic and Persian in their
discourse, that it may very well be called another
language. And 'tis as ridiculous to make use of the
expressions commonly used, in speaking to a great
man or lady, as it would be to speak broad York-
shire or Somersetshire in the drawing-room. Besides
this distinction, they have what they call the siMune,
that is, a style proper for poetry, and which is the
exact Scripture style. I believe you will be pleased
to see a genuine example of this ; and I am very
glad I have it in my power to satisfy your curiosity,
by sending you a faithful copy of the verses that
Ibrahim Pasha, the reigning favourite, has made for
the young princess, his contracted wife, whom he is
not yet permitted to visit without witnesses, though
she is gone home to his house. He is a man of wit
and learning ; and whether or no he is capable of
writing good verse, you may be sure that on such an
occasion he would not want the assistance of the best
poets in the empire. Thus the verses may be looked
upon as a sample of their finest poetry ; and I don't
doubt 3'ou'll be of my mind, that it is most wonder-
fully resembling the Song of Solomon, which was also
addressed to a royal bride.
The nightingale now wanders in the vines :
Her passion is to seek roses.
I went down to admire the beauty of the vines :
The sweetness of your charms has ravished my soul.
Your e3'es are black and lovely,
But wild and disdainful as those of a etag.l
The wished possession is delayed from day to day ;
The cruel sultan Achmet will not permit me
To see those cheeks, more vermilion than roses.
I dare not snatch one of your kisses ;
The sweetness of your charms has ravished my soul.
Your eyes are black and lovely.
But wild and disdainful as those of a stag.
> Sir W. Jones, in the Preface to his Persian Grammar,
objects to this translation. The expression is merely analogous
to the BoOpit of liomee
The wretched Ibrahiru sighs in these verses :
One dart from your eyes has pierced through my
heart.
Ah ! when will the hour of possession arrive ?
Must I yet wait a long time?
The sweetness of your charms has ravished my soul.
Ah, sultana ! stag-eyed — an angel amongst angels !
I desire, and my desire remains unsatisfied.
Can )'ou take delight to prey upon my heart!
My cries pierce the heavens !
My eyes are without sleep !
Turn to me, sultana — let me gaze on thy beauty.
Adieu — I go down to the grave.
If you call me, I return.
My heart is — hot as sulphur ; sigh, and it will flame.
Crowni of my life ! — fair light of my eyes!
My sultana ! — my princess !
I rub ray fiice against the earth — I am drowned in
scalding tears — I rave!
Have you no compassion ? Will you not turn to look
upon me ?
I have taken abundance of pains to get these verses
in a literal translation ; and if you were acquainted
with my interpreters, I might spare myself the trouble
of assuring you, that they have received no poetical
touches from their hands. * *
[To Mrs S. C. — Inoculation for the Si)iall-pox.'\
Adrianople, April 1, 0. S., 1717.
* * Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell
you a thing that will make you wish yourself here.
The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us,
is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingraft-
ing, which is the term they give it. There is a set of
old women who make it their business to perform the
operation every autumn, in the month of September,
when the great heat is abated. People send to one
another to know if any of their family has a mind to
have the small-pox ; they make parties for this pur-
pose, and when tliey are met (commonly fifteen or
sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nut-
shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox,
and asks what vein you please to have opened. She
immediate]}' rips open that you offer to her with a
large needle (which gives you no more pain than a
common scratch), and puts into the vein as much
matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and
after that binds up the little wound with <a hollow bit
of shell ; and in this manner opens four or five veins.
The Grecians have commonly the superstition of
opening one in the middle of the foreliead, one in
each arm, and one on the breast, to mark the sign of
the cross ; but this has a very ill effect, all these
wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by those
that are not superstitious, who choose to have them
in the legs, or that part of the arm that ia concealed.
The children or young patients play together all the
rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the
eighth. Then the fever begins to seize tlieni, and
they keep their beds two d.ays, very seldom three.
They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in their
fiices, which never mark ; and in eight days' time,
they are as well as before their illness. A\'here they
are wounded, there remain running sores during the
distemper, which I don't doubt is a great relief to it.
Every year thousands undergo this operation ; and
the French ambassador says pleasantly, that tiiey
take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they
take the waters in other countries. There is no ex-
an)ple of any one that lias died in it ; and you may
believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this expe-
riment, Hinoo I intend to try it on my dear little
sou.
652
mSCKI,I.ANEOnS -WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATUPxE.
tADY MART WORTLEY MONTlGXr.
I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this use-
ful invention into fashion in England ; and 1 should
not fail to vrrite to some of our doctors rerj' particu-
larly about it, if I knew any one of them that I
thought had virtue enough to destroy such a consider-
' able branch of their revei;ue for the good of mankind.
But that distemper is t jo beneficial to them, not to
expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that
should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I
live to return, I may, however, have courage to war
with them. Upon this occasion, admire the heroism
in the heart of your friend, &c.
{To Lady Rick — France in 1718.]
Paris, Oct. 10, O. S., 1718.
* * The air of Paris has already had a good effect
upon me ; for I was never in better health, though I
have been extremely ill all the road from Lyons to
this place. You may judge how agreeable the jour-
ney ha,s been to me, which did not want that addition
to make mo dislike it. I think nothing so terrible as
objects of misery, except one had the God-like attri-
bute of being capable to redress them ; and all the
country villages of France show nothing else. AVhile
the post-liorses are changed, the whole town comes out
to beg, with such miserable starved faces, and thin tat-
tered clothes, they need no other eloquence to persuade
one of the wretchedness of their condition. This is all
the French magnificence till you come to Fountain-
bleau, where you are showed one thousand five hun-
dred rooms in the king's hunting palace. The apart-
ments of the royal family are very large, and richly
gilt : but I saw nothing in the architecture or paint-
ing worth remembering. * *
I have seen all the beauties, and such (I can't
help making use of the coarse word) nauseous crea-
tures ! so fantastically absurd in their dress ! so mon-
strously unnatural in their paints ! their hair cut
short, and curled round their faces, and so loaded with
powder, that it makes it look like white wooll and on
their cheeks to their chins, unmercifully laid on a shin-
ing red japan, that glistens in a most flaming manner, so
that they seem to have no resemblance to human faces.
I am apt to believe that they took the first hint of
their dress from a fair sheep newly ruddled. 'Tis
with pleasure I recollect my dear pretty countr)--
women : and if I was writing to anybody else, I should
say that these grotesque daubers give me still a higher
esteem of the natural charms of dear Lady Rich's
auburn hair, and the lively colours of her unsullied
complexion.
[To (he Countess of Bute — Consoling her in Affliction.'\
LouvERE, Aug. 20, 1752.
My dear Child — 'Tis impossible to tell you to what
degree I share with you in the misfortune that has
happened. I do not doubt your own reason will sug-
gest to V'ou all the alleviations that can serve on so
sad an occasion, and will not trouble you with the
commonplace topics that are used, generally to no
purpose, in letters of consolation. Disappointments
ought to be less sensibly felt at my age than yours ;
yet I own I am so far affected by this, that I have
need of all my philosophy to support it. However,
let me beg of you not to indulge a useless grief, to
the prejudice of your health, which is so necessary to
your family. Everything may turn out better than
you expect. We see so darkly into futurity, we never
know when we have real cause to rejoice or lament.
The worst appearances have often happy consequences,
as the best lead many times into the greatest misfor-
tunes. Human prudence is very straltly bounded.
What is most in our power, though little so, is the
disposition of our o^vn minds. Do not give way to
melancholy ; seek amusements ; be willing to be
diverted, and insensibly you will become so. Weak
people only place a merit in affliction. A grateful
remembrance, and whatever honour we can pay to
their memory, is all that is owing to the dead. Tears
and sorrow are no duties to them, and make us in-
capable of those we owe to the living.
I give you thanks for your care of my books. I
yet retain, and carefully cherish, my taste for read-
ing. If relays of eyes were to be hired like post-
horses, I would never admit any but silent compa-
nions ; they afford a constant variety of entertain-
ment, which is almost the only one pleasing in the
enjoyment, and inoffensive in the consequence. I am
sorry your sight will not permit you a great use of it :
the prattle of your little ones, and friendship of Lord
Bute, will supply the place of it. My dear child, en-
deavour to raise your spirits, and believe this advice
comes from the tenderness of your most affectionate
mother.
[To the Same — On Female Edtication.']
LouvERE, Jan. 28, N. S., 1753.
Dear Child — You have given me a great deal of
satisfaction by your account of your eldest daughter.
I am particularly pleased to hear she is a good arith-
metician ; it is the best proof of understanding : the
knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions
between us and brutes. If there is anything in blood,
you may reasonably expect your children should be en-
dowed with an uncommon share of good sense. Mr
Wortley's family and mine have both produced some
of the greatest men that have been bom in England ;
I mean Admiral Sandwich, and my grandfather, who
was distinguished by the name of Wise William. I
have heard Lord Bute's father mentioned as an extra-
ordinary genius, though he had not many opportuni-
ties of showing it ; and his uncle, the present Duke of
Argyll, has one of the best heads I ever knew. 1 will
therefore speak to you as supposing Lady 2\Iary not
only capable, but desirous of learning ; in that case
by all means let her be indulged in it. You will tell
me I did not make it a part of your education ; your
prospect was very different from hers. As you had
much in your circumstances to attract the highest
offers, it seemed your business to learn how to live in
the world, as it is hers to know how to be easy out of
it. It is the common error of builders and parents to
follow some plan they think beautiful (and perha].-s
is so), without considering that nothing is beautiful
which is displaced. Hence we see so many edifices
raised, that the raisers can never ii bal it, being too
large for their fortunes. Vistas are laid open over
barren heaths, and apartments contrived for a coolness
very agreeable in Italy, but killing in the north of
Britain : thus every woman endeavours to breed her
daughter a fine lady, qualifying her for a station in
which she will never appear, and at the same time in-
capacitating her for that retirement to which she is
destined. Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will
not only make her contented, but happy in it. No
entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure
so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor re-
gret the loss of expensive diversions, or variety of
company, if she can be amused with an author in her
closet. To render this amusement complete, slie
should be permitted to learn the languages. I have
heard it lamented that boys lose so many years in
mere learning of words : this is no objection to a girl,
whose time is not so precious : she caimot advance
herself in any profession, and has therefore more hours
to spare ; and as you say her memory is good, she
will be very agreeably employed this way. There are
two cautions to be given on this subject : first, not to
think herself learned when she can read Latin, or
653
FROM 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OF
TO 172/
eren Greek. Languages are more properly to be call-
ed vehicles of learning than learning itself, as may be
observed in man}- schoolmasters, who, though perhaps
critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon
earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not
words. I would no further wish her a linguist than to
enable her to read books in their originals, that are often
corrupted, and are always injured, by translations.
Two hours' application every morning will bring this
about much sooner than you can imagine, and she will
have leisure enough besides to run over the English
poetry, which is a more important part of a woman's
education than it is generally supposed. Many a
young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of
verses, which she would have laughed at if she had
kno^vn it had been stolen from Mr Waller. I re-
member, when I was a girl, I saved one of my com-
panions from destruction, who communicated to me
an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had
naturally a good taste, she observed the lines were
not so smooth as Prior's or Pope's, but bad more
thought and spirit than any of theirs. She was won-
derfully delighted with such a demonstration of her
lover's sense and passion, and not a little pleased with
her own charms, that had force enough to inspire such
elegancies. In the midst of this triumph, I showed
her that they were taken from Randolph's poems, and
the unfortunate transcriber was dismissed with the
scorn he deserved. To say truth, the poor plagiary
was very unlucky to fall into my hands ; that author
being no longer in fashion, would have escaped any
one of less universal reading than myself. You should
encourage your daughter to talk over with you what
she reads ; and as you are very capable of distingtiish-
ing, take care she does not mistake pert folly for wit
and humour, or rhyme for poetr}', which are the com-
mon errors of young people, and have a train of ill
consequences. The second caution to be given her
(jir.d which is most absolutely necessary), is to conceal
whatever learning she attains, with as much solicitude
as she would hide crookedness or lameness : the par-
ade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy, and
consequently the most inveterate hatred, of all lie and
she fools, which will certainly be at least three parts
in four of her acquaintance. The use of knowledge
in our sex, beside the amusement of solitude, is to
moderate the passions, and learn to be contented with
a small expense, which are the certain effects of a stu-
dious life ; and it may be preferable even to that fame
which men have engrossed to themselves, and will not
suffer us to share. You will tell me I have not ob-
served this rule mj'self ; but you are mistaken : it is
onh' inevitable accident that has given me any repu-
tation that way. I have always carefully avoided it,
and ever thought it a misfortune. The explanation
of this paragraph would occasion a long digression,
which I will not trouble you with, it being my pre-
sent design only to say what I think useful for the
instruction of my graiiddaughter, which I have much
at heart. If she has the same inclination (I should
say passion) for learning that I was born with, his-
tory, geography, and philosophy will furnish her with
materials to pass away cheerfully a longer life than is
allotted to mortals. I believe there are few heads
capable of making Sir Isaac Newton's calculations,
but the result of them is not difficult to be under-
stood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should
make her .affect the character of Lady , or Lady
• , or Mrs ; those women are ridiculous, not
because they have learning, but because they have it
not. One thinks herself .a complete historian, after
reading Echard's Roman History; another a profound
philosopher, having got by lieart some of Pope's uniti-
telU'jilj/c essays ; and a third an able divine, on the
strength of VVhitfielil's sermons ; thus you hear them
screaming politics and controversy.
It is a saying of Thucydides, that ignorance is bold,
and knowledge reserved. Indeed it is impossible to
be far advanced in it without being more humbled
by a conviction of human ignorance than elated by
learning. At tlie same time I recommend books, 1
neither exclude work nor drawing. I think it is as
scandalous for a woman not to know how to use a
needle, as for a man not to know how to use a sword.
I was once extremely fond of my pencil, and it was a
great mortification to me when my father turned off
my master, having made a considerable progress for
the short time I learned. My over-eagerness in the
pursuit of it had brought a weakness in my eyes, that
made it necessary to leave off; and all the advantage
I got was the improvement of my hand. I see by
hers that practice will make her a ready writer : she
may attain it by serving you for a secretary, when
your health or affairs make it troublesome to you to
write yourself; and custom will make it an agreeable
amusement to her. She cannot have too many for
that station of life which will probably be her fate.
The ultimate end of your education was to make you
a good wife (and I have the comfort to hear that you
are one) ; hers ought to be to make her happy in a
virgin state. I will not say it is happier, but it is
undoubtedly safer, than any marriage. In a lottery,
where there is (at the lowest computation) ten thou-
sand blanks to a prize, it is the most prudent choice
not to venture. I have always been so thoroughly
persuaded of this truth, that, notwithstanding the
flattering views I had for you (as I never intended
you a sacrifice to my vanity), I thought I owed you
the justice to lay before you all the hazards attending
matrimony : you may recollect I did so in the strongest
manner. Perhaps jou may have more success in the
instructing your daughter ; she has so much company
at home, she will not need seeking it abroad, and will
more readily take the notions you think fit to give
her. As you were alone in my family, it would have
been thought a great cruelty to suffer you no com-
panions of your own age, especially having so many
near relations, and I do not wonder their opinions in-
fluenced yours. I was not sorry to see you not deter-
mined on a single life, knowing it was not your father's
intention ; and contented myself with endeavouring to
make your home so easy, that you might not be in
haste to leave it.
I am afraid you will think this a very long insigni-
ficant letter. I hope the kindness of the design will
excuse it, being willing to give you every proof in my
power that I am your most affectionate mother.
METAPHYSICIANS.
Two distinguished philosophical writers adorn this
period, Shaftesbury and Berkeley. Both were ac-
complished and elegant authors, and botli, in their
opinions, influenced other minds. The nuinil .sevse
of the former was adopted by Ilutclieson, and the
idealism of Berkeley was reproduced by Hume.
EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of
Shaftesbury, was born in London in 1671. After a
careful private education, he travelled for some time,
and in 1693 entered the House of Commons. Pive
years afterwards, he repaired to Holland, and culti-
vated tlie society of Bayle and Le Clerc. On his
return he succeeded to the earldom, and sjioke fre-
quently in the House of Lords. All his parliamen-
tary appearances were creditable to his talents, and
honourable to his taste and feelings. His first juib-
lication was in 1 708, A Letter on Enthusiasm, prompted
by the extrav-.tgance of tiie French prophets, whose
654
METAPHYSICIANS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
EARL OP SIIAFTESBUKT.
zeal had degenerated into intolerance. In 1709 ap-
j)eared his Moralists, a I'hilusoplucal R/iapsodi/, and
Sensus Co7)imuuis, an essay upon the freedom of wit
and humour. In this hitter production he vindicates
the use of ridicule as a test of truth. In 1710 he
published another sliglit work, a Soliloquy, or Advice
to an Author. Soon afterwards ill health compelled
Lord Shaftesbury to seek a warmer climate. He
fixed on Naples, where he died in February 1713,
at the early age of forty-two. A complete collec-
tion of his works was published in 1716, in three
Tolumes, under the general title of Characteristics of
Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times.
Earl of Shaftesbury.
The style of Shaftesbury is lofty and mu-sical. He
bestowed great pains on the construction of liis sen-
tences, and tlie labour is too apparent. Desirous
also of blending the nobleman and man of the world
■with the author, a tone of assum])tion and familia-
rity deforms some of his arguments and illustrations.
He was an ardent admirer of the ancients, and in
his dialogue entitled ' The Moralists,' has adopted
in a great measure the elevated style of his favourite
Plato. With those who hold in like estimation the
works of that ' divine philosoplier,' and who are
willing to e.xchange continuity, precision, and sim
plicity, for melody and stateliness of diction, ' The
iloralists' cannot fail to be regarded, as it was bj-
Leibnitz and Monboddo, with entliusiastic admiration.
Tiie religious tendency of Shaftesbury's writings
has been extensively discussed. That he is a power-
ful and decided champion against the atheists, is
universally admitted ; but with respect to his opi-
nion of Christianity, different views have been en-
tertained. To any one, however, who candidly
considers the tone of levity and disparagement in
which, in many parts of the ' Characteristics,' he
speaks of revelation, a future state, and some other
Christian doctrines, we think it will appear that iJr
Leland had pood reason to include him among the
autliors replied to in his ' View of the Principal
Deistical Writers.' Tlie representation of Shaftes-
bury's views given by that eminent divine in his
fifth and sixth letters, seems to us well supyiorted,
and free from prejudice. A perusid of the ' Charac-
teristics' will make it evident that much of the con-
troversv wliich the work has occasioned has arisen
from the inconsistent opinions expressed in its dif-
ferent parts.
As a moralist. Lord Sliaftesbury holds the conspi-
cuous place of founder of that school of i)liilosoi)!ier3
by whom virtue and vice are regarded as naturally
and fundamentally distinct, and who consider man
to be endowed with a 'moral sense' by which these
are discriminated, and at once approved of or con-
demned, without reference to the self interest of him
wlio judges. In opposition to Ilobbes, lie maintains
that the nature of man is such as to lead to the
exercise of benevolent and disinterested affections in
the social state ; and he earnestly inculcates the doc-
trine, that virtue is more conducive than vice to the
temporal hapi)iness of those who practise it. He
speaks of 'conscience, or a natural sense of the odious-
ness of crime and injustice ;' and remarks, that as, in
the case of objects of the external senses, ' the sluqies,
motions, colours, and proportions of these latter being
presented to our eye, there necessarily results a
beauty or deformity, according to the different mea-
sure, arrangement, and disposition of their several
parts ; so, in behaviour and actions, when presented
to our understanding, there must be found, of neces-
sity, an apparent difference, according to the regu-
larity and irregularity of the subjects.' The niiud,
says he, 'feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable and
disagreeable, in the affections; and finds a foul and
fair, a Iiarmonious and a dissonant, as really and
truly here as in any musical numbers, or in the out-
ward forms or representations of sensible tilings.
Nor can it withhold its admiration and ecstacy, its
aversion and scorn, any more in what relates to one
than to the other of these subjects.' ' However false
or corrupt it be within itself, it finds the difference,
as to beauty and comeliness, between one heart and
another; and accordmgly, in all disinterested cases,
nuist approve in some measure of what is natural
and honest, and disapjirove what is dishonest and
corrupt.' Tliis doctrine, whicli in the pages of
Sliaftesbury is left in a very imperfect state, has
been successfully followed out by l)r Hutcheson of
Glasgow, and subsequently adopted and illustrated
by Reid, Stewart, and Brown. "^
^Platonic Representation of the Scale of Beauty and
Love.']
[From ' The Moralists.'t]
I have now a better idea of that melancholy you
discovered ; and, notwithstanding the humorous turn
you were pleased to give it, I am jiersuaded it has a
different foundation from any of those fantastical
* Gray the poet, who had almost as cordial a hatred as Swift
for philosophical novelties, has given a sarcastic view of
Shaftesbury's merits as an author, in a letter to his college
friend, Stonehewer : —
' You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came
to be a philosopher in vogue; I will tell you : First, lie was a
lord ; secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; tliirclly,
men are very [ircine 1 1 believe what tliey do not und.Tstand ;
fourtlily, tluy will believe anything at all, provided they are
under no obligation to believe it ; fifthly, they love to take a
new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he
was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more
than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An inter-
val of about forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm
A dead lord ranks but with commoners ; vanity is no longen
interested in tr.e matter, for tlie new road has become an old
one.'
t This passa','o receives from .Sir James Mackintosh the high
praise ' tliat there is scarcely any composition in our language
more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments, or more ei-
quioitcly elcfunt and musical in its diction.'
C55
FBOM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
causes I then assigned to it. Love, doubtless, is at
the bottom, but a nobler love than such as common
beauties inspire.
. Here, in my turn, I began to raise my voice, and
imitate the solemn way you had been teaching me.
Knowing as 3'ou are (continued I), well knowing and
experienced in all the degrees and orders of beauty,
in all the mysterious charms of the particular forms,
you rise to what is more general ; and with a larger
heart, and mind more comprehensive, you generously
seek that which is highest in the kind. Not capti-
vated by the lineaments of a fair face, or the well-
drawn proportions of a human body, V'ou view the life
itself, and embrace rather the mind which adds the
lustre, and renders chiefly amiable.
Nor is the enjoyment of such a single beauty suffi-
cient to satisfy such an aspiring soul. It seeks how
to combine more beauties, and by what coalition of
these to fonn a beautiful society. It views commu-
nities, friendships, relations, duties ; and considers
by what harmony of particular minds the general
harmony is composed, and common weal established.
*Nor satisfied even with public good in one community
of men, it frames itself a nobler object, and with en-
larged affection seeks the good of mankind. It dwells
with pleasure amidst that reason and those orders on
which this fair correspondence and goodly interest is
established. Laws, constitutions, civil and religious
rites ; whatever civilises or polishes rude mankind ;
the sciences and arts, philosophy, morals, virtue ; the
flourishing state of human affairs, and the perfection
of human nature; these are its delightful prospects,
and this the charm of beauty which attracts it.
Still ardent in this pursuit (such is its love of order
and perfection), it rests not here, nor satisfies itself
with the beauty of a part, but extending further its
communicative bounty, seeks the good of all, and
affects the interest and prosperity of the whole. True
to its native world and higher country, 'tis here it
seeks order and perfection, wishing the best, and
hoping still to find a just and wise administration.
And since all hope of this were vain and idle, if no
Universal Mind presided; since, without such a su-
preme intelligence and providential care, the dis-
tracted universe must be condemned to suffer infinite
calamities, 'tis here the generous mind labours to
discover that healing cause by which the interest of
the whole is secureh' established, the beauty of things,
and the universal order happily sustained.
This, Palemon, is the labour of your soul ; and this
its melancholy : when unsuccessfully pursuing the
supreme beauty, it meets with darkening clouds which
intercept its sight. iVIonsters arise, not those from
Libyan deserts, but from the heart of man more fer-
tile, and with their horrid aspect cast an unseemly
reflection upon nature. She, helpless as she is thought,
and working thus absurdly, is contemned, the govern-
ment of the world arraigned, and Deity made void.
Much is alleged in answer, to show why nature errs ;
and when she seems most ignorant or perverse in her
productions, I assert her even then as wise and provi-
dent as in her goodliest works. For 'tis not then
that men complain of the world's order, or abhor the
face of things, when they see various interests mixed
and interfering ; natures subordinate, of diflerent
kinds, opposed one to another, and in their diflerent
operations submitted, the higher to the lower. 'Tis,
on the contrary, from this order of "inferior and supe-
rior things, that we admire the world's beauty, founded
thus on contrarieties ; whilst from such various and
disagreeing principles a universal concord is estab-
lished.
Thus in the several orders of terrestrial forms, a
resignation is required— a sacrifice and mutual yield-
ing of natures one to another. The vegetables by
their death sustain the animals, and animal bodies
dissolved enrich the earth, and raise again the vege-
table world. The numerous insects are reduced by
the superior kinds of birds and beasts ; and these
again are checked by man, who in his turn submits
to other natures, and resigns his form, a sacrifice in
common to the rest of things. And if in natures so
little exalted or pre-eminent above each other, the
sacrifice of interests can appear so just, how much
more reasonably may all inferior natures be subjected
to the superior nature of the world ! — that world,
Palemon, which even now transported you, when the
sun's fainting light gave way to these bright constel-
lations, and left you this wide system to contemplate.
Here are those laws which ought not, nor can sub-
mit to anything below. The central powers which
hold the lasting orbs in their just poise and move-
ment, must not be controlled to save a fleeting form,
and rescue from the precipice a puny animal, whose
brittle frame, however protected, must of itself so
soon dissolve. The ambient air, the inward vapours,
the impending meteors, or whatever else is nutrimen-
tal or preservative of this earth, must operate in a
natural course ; and other good constitutions must
submit to the good habit and constitution of the all-
sustaining globe. Let us not wonder, therefore, if by
earthquakes, storms, pestilential blasts, nether or
upper fires, or floods, the animal kinds are oft afilicted,
and whole species perhaps involved at once in com-
mon ruin. Nor need we wonder if the interior form,
the soul and temper, partakes of this occasional de-
fonnity, and sympathises often with its close partner.
Who is there that can wonder either at the sicknesses
of sense or the depravity of minds inclosed in such
frail bodies, and dependent on such pervertible or-
gans ?
Here, then, is that solution you require, and hence
those seeming blemishes cast upon nature. Nor is
there ought in this beside what is natural and good.
'Tis good which is predominant ; and every corruptible
and mortal nature, by its mortality and corruption,
yields only to some better, and all in common to that
best and highest nature which is incorruptible and
immortal.
BISHOP BERKELEY.
Dr George Berkeley, to whom Pope assigned
' every virtue under heaven,' was born at Thomas-
town, in the county of Kilkenn}-, in 1684. II*; was
distinguished at Dublin university for his proficiency
in mathematical studies, and became a fellow of Tri-
nity college. In 1709 appeared his Tlieory of Vision,
and in 1710 the Principles 0/ Human Knowlechje. In
1713 1)6 published his Three Dialogues between ITylas
and Phihnous, in which his ideal system was developed
m language singularly animated and imaginative. He
now became acquainted with Swift, Pope, Steele,
and the other members of that brilliant circle, by
whom he seems to have been sincerely beloved. He
accompanied the Earl of Peterborough, as cliaplain
and secretarv', in his embassy to SicUy, and after-
wards travelled on the continent as tutor to Mr
Ashe, son of the Bishop of Clogher. This second
excursion engaged him upwards of four years.
While abroad, we find him writing thus justly and
finely to Pope : ' As merchants, antiquaries, men of
pleasure, &c., have all diflTerent views in travelling,
I know not wliether it miglit not be worth a poet's
while to travel, in order to store liis mind with
strong images of nature. Green fields and groves,
flowery meadows and purling streams, are nowhere
in such perfection as in England ; but if you would
know liglitsonie days, warm suns, and blue skies,
you must come to Italy ; and to enable a man to de-
scribe rocks and precipices, it is absolutely necessary
656
METAPHYSICIANS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BISHOP BERKEr.KT.
that he pass the Alps.' While at Paris, Berkeley
visited the French philosopher Malebranche, then
in ill health, from a disease of the lunCTs. A dispute
easued as to the ideal system, and IMalebranche was
so impetuous in argument, that he brought on a
violent increase of his disorder, which carried liim
off in a few days. This must have been a more than
ideal disputation to the amiable Berkeley, who
could not but be deeply afflicted by such a tragic
result. On his return, he published a Latin tract,
De Molu, and an essay on the fatal South-Sea
Scheme in 1720. Pope introduced him to the Earl
of Burlington, and by that nobleman he was recom-
mended to the Duke of Grafton, lord-lieutenant
of Ireland. His grace made Berkeley his chaplain,
and afterwards appointed him to the deanery of
Derry. It Avas soon evident, however, that per-
sonal aggrandisement was never an object of inte-
rest with this benevolent philosopher. He had long
bren clierishing a project, which he announced as
a ' scheme for converting the savage Americans
to Christianity, by a college to be erected in the
Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Ber-
muda.' In this college, he most ' exorbitant!}' pro-
f)osed,' as Swift humorously remarked, ' a whole
mndred pounds a-year for himself, forty pounds for
a fellow, and ten for a student.' No anticipated
difficulties could daunt him, and he communicated
his enthusiasm to others. Coadjutors were obtained,
a royal charter was granted, and Sir Robert Walpole
promised a sum of £20,000 from the government to
promote the undertaking. In 1728 Berkeley and
his friends sailed for Rhode Island. There they re-
mained for seven years ; but the minister proved
faithless : the promised sum was never paid, and
the philosopher returned to Europe. In his forced
retirement, he had applied himself to his literary
pursuits, and in 1732 he published The Minute Philo-
sopher, a series of moral and philosophical dialogues.
Fortune again smiled on Berkeley : he became a
favourite with Queen Caroline, and in 1734 was ap-
pointed to the bishopric of Cloyne. Lord Chester-
field afterwards offered him the see of Clogher, which
was double the value of that of Cloyne ; but he de-
clined the preferment. Some useful tracts were
afterwards published by the bishop, including one on
tar-water, which he considered to possess high me-
dicinal virtues. Another of his works is entitled
The Querist; containing several Queries proposed to
the Consideration of the Public. In 1752 he removed
with his family to Oxford, to superintend the educa-
tion of one of his sons ; and, conscious of the impro-
priety of residing apart from his diocese, he endea-
voured to exchange his bisliopric for some canonry
or college at Oxford. Failing of success, he wrote
to resign his bishopric, worth £1400 per annum ;
hut the king declared that he should die a bishop,
though he gave him liberty to reside where he
pleased. This incident is honourable to both parties.
In 1753 the good prelate died suddenly at his resi-
dence at Oxford, and his remains were interred in
Christ-church, where a monument was erected to
his memory. The life of Berkeley presents a strik-
ing picture of patient labour and romantic enthu-
siasm, of learning and genius, benevolence and worth.
His dislike to the pursuits and troubles of ambition
are thus expressed by him to a friend in 1747:—
' In a letter from England, which I told you came a
■week ago, it was said that several of our Irish bishops
were earnestly contending for the primacy. Pray,
who are they ? I thought Bishop Stone was only
talked of at present. I ask this question merely
out of curiosity, and not from any interest, I assure
you. I am no man's rival or competitor in this mat-
ter. I am not in love 'vith feasts, and crowds, and
visits, and late hours, and strange faces, and a hurry
of affairs, often insignificant. For my own private
satisfaction, I had rather be master of my tin]e than
wear a diadem. I repeat these things to you, that
I may not seem to have declined all steps to the
primacy out of singularity, or pride, or stupidity,
but from solid motives. As for the argument from
the oi)portunity of doing good, I observe, that duty
obliges men in high station not to decline occasions
of doing good ; but duty doth not oblige men to solicit
such high stations.' lie was a poet as well as a ma-
thematician and philosopher, and had he cultivated
the ligliter walks of literature, might liave shone
with lustre in a field which he but rarely visited.
He wrote some essays for tlie ' Guardian' of his
friend Steele ; and when inspired with his trans-
atlantic mission, he penned the following fine moral
verses, that seem to shadow forth the fast accom-
plishing greatness of the new woi-ld :—
Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning
in America.
The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme.
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame.
In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth,' such scenes ensue.
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true :
In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools :
There shall he sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and nobksc hearts.
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay ;
Such as she bred when fresh and young.
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.
Westward the course of emj)ire talies its way ;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
The works of Berkeley form an important land-
mark in metaphysical science. At first his valu-
able and original ' Theory of Vision' was considered
a philosophical romance, yet his doctrines afe now
incorporated with every system of optics. The
chief aim of Berkeley was ' to distinguish the im-
mediate and natural objects of sight from the seem-
ingly instantaneous conclusions which experience and
habit teach us to draw from them in our earliest
infancy ; or, in the more concise metaphysical lan-
guage of a later period, to draw the line between
the original and the acquired perceptions of the
eye.'* The ideal system of Berkeley was written
to expose the sophistry of materialism, hut it is
defective and erroneous. He attempts to prove
that extension and figure, hardness and softness,
and all other sensible qualities, are mere ideas
of the mind, which cannot possibly exist in an in-
sentient substance — a theory which, it has beea
justly remarked, tends to unhinge the whole frame
of the human understanding, by shaking our con-
fidence in those princijjles of belief whicli form an
essential part of its constitution. Our ideas he
* Dugald Stewart.
6S7
43
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OP
TO 172/.
'evidently considered not as states of the individual
mind, but as separate things existing in it, and
capable of existing in other minds, but in them
alone ; and it is in consequence of these assumptions
that his system, if it were to be considered as a
system of scepticism, is chiefly defective. But
having, as he supposed, these ideas, and conceiving
that they did not perisli when they ceased to exist
in his mind, since the same ideas recurred at inter-
Tals, he deduced, from the necessity which there
eeemed for some omnipresent mind, in which they
might exist during the intervals of recurrence, the
necessary existence of the Deity ; and if, indeed, as
he supposed, ideas be something different from the
mind itself, recurring only at intervals to created
minds, and incapable of existing but in mind, the
demonstration of some infinite omnipresent mind, in
which they exist during these intervals of recur-
rence to finite minds, must be allowed to be perfect.
The whole force of the pious demonstration, there-
fore, which Berkeley flattered himself with having
urged irresistibly, is completely obviated by the
simple denial, that ideas are anything more than the
mind itself affected in a certain manner ; since, in
this case, our ideas exist no longer than our mind is
affected in that particular manner which constitutes
each particular idea ; and to say that our ideas exist
in the divine mind, would thus be to say, only, that
our mind itself exists in the divjne mind. There is
not the sensation of colour in addition to the mind,
nor the sensation of fragrance in addition to the
mind; but the sensation of colour is the mind exist-
ing in a certain state, and the sensation of fragrance
is the mind existing in a different state.'* The
style of Berkeley has been generally admired : it
is clear and unaffected, with the easy grace of the
polished pliilosopher. A love of description and of
external nature is evinced at times, and possesses
something of the freshness of Izaak Walton.
[Industry.']
[From ' An Essay tcwards preventing the Ruin of Great
Britain," written goon after the affair of the South -Sea
Scheme.]
Industry is the natural sure way to wealth ; this is
80 true, that it is impossible an industrious free peo-
ple should want the necessaries and comforts of life,
or an idle enjoy them under any form of government.
Money is so far useful to the public, as it promoteth
industry, and credit having the same effect, is of the
same, value with money ; but money or credit circu-
lating through a nation from hand to hand, without
producing labour and industry in the inhabitants, is
direct gaming.
It is not impossible for cunning men to make such
plausible schemes, as may draw those who are less
skilful into their own and the public ruin. But
surely there is no man of sense and honesty but
must see and own, whether he understands the game
or not, that it is an evident folly for any people, instead
of prosecuting the old honest methods of industry
and frugality, to sit down to a public gaming-table
and play off their money one to another.
The more methods there are in a state for acquiring
riches without industry or merit, the less there will be
of either in that state : this is as evident as the ruin
that attends it. Besides, when money is shifted from
hand to hand in such a blind fortuitous manner, that
some men shall from nothing acquire in an instant
vast estates, without the least desert ; while others
are as suddenly stripped of plentiful fortunes, and
kft on the parish by their own avarice and credulity,
* Dr Thomas Brown.
what can be hoped for on the one hand but abandoned
luxury and wantonness, or on the other but extreme
madness and despair 1
In short, all projects for growing rich by sudden and
extraordinary methods, as they operate violently on
the passions of men, and encourage them to despise
the slow moderate gains that are to be made by an
honest industry, must be ruinous to the public, and
even the winners themselves will at length be involved
in the public ruin. * *
God grant the time be not near when men shall
say, ' This island was once inhabited by a religious,
brave, sincere people, of plain uncorrupt manners,
respecting inbred worth rather than titles and appear-
ances, assertors of liberty, lovers of their country,
jealous of their own rights, and unwilling to infringe
the rights of others ; improvers of learning and useful
arts, enemies to luxury, tender of other men's lives,
and prodigal of their own ; inferior in nothing to the
old Greeks or Romans, and superior to each of those
people in the perfections of the other. Such were our
ancestors during their rise and greatness ; but they
degenerated, grew servile flatterers of men in power,
adopted Epicurean notions, became venal, corrupt,
injurious, which drew upon them the hatred of God
and man, and occasioned their final ruin.'
[Prejudices and Opinions.']
Prejudices are notions or opinions which the mind
entertains without knowing the grounds and reasons
of them, and which are assented to without examina-
tion. The first notions which take possession of the
minds of men, with regard to duties social, moral, and
civil, may therefore be justly styled prejudices. The
mind of a young creature caimot remain empty ; if
you do not put into it that which is good, it will be
sure to receive that which is bad.
Do what you can, there will still be a bias from
education ; and if so, is it not better this bias should
lie towards things laudable and useful to society 1
This bias still operates, although it may not always
prevail. The notions first instilled have the earliest
influence, take the deepest root, and generally are
found to give a colour and complexion to the subse-
quent lives of men, inasmuch as they are in truth the
great source of human actions. It is not gold, or
honour, or power, that moves men to act, but the
opinions they entertain of those things. Hence it
follows, that if a magistrate should say, ' No matter
what notions men embrace, I will take heed to their
actions,' therein he shows his weakness ; for, such as
are men's notions, such will be their deeds.
For a man to do as he would be done by, to love
his neighbour as himself, to honour his superiors, to
believe that God scans all his actions, and will reward
or punish them, and to think that he who is guilty of
falsehood or injustice hurts himself more than any
one else ; are not these such notions and principles as
every wise governor or legislator would covet above
all things to have firmly rooted in the mind of every
individual under his care? This is allowed even by
the enemies of religion, who would fain have it
thought the offspring of state policy, honouring its
usefulness at the same time that they disparage its
truth. What, therefore, cannot be acquired by every
man's reasoning, must be introduced by precept, and
riveted by custom ; that is to say, the bulk of man-
kind must, in all civilised societies, have their minds,
by timely instruction, well seasoned and furnished
with proper notions, which, although the grounds or
proofs thereof be unknown to them, will neverthe-
less influence their conduct, and so far render them
useful members of the state. But if you strip men
of these their notions, or, if you will, prejudices, with
regard to modesty, decency, justice, charity, and the
€58
I
HISTORICAt WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
JOHN STETPK.
like, you will soon find them so many monsters,
utterly unfit for human society.
I desire it may be considered that most men >yant
leisure, opportunity, or faculties, to derive conclusions
from their principles, and establish morality on a
foundation of human science. True it is (as St Paul
observes) that the ' invisible things of God, from the
creation of the world, are clearly seen ;' and from
thence the duties of natural religion may be dis-
covered. But these things are seen and discovered
by those alone who open their eyes and look narrowly
for them. Now, if you look throughout the world,
you shall find but few of these narrow inspectors and
inquirers, very few who mako it their business to
analyse opinions, and pursue them to their rational
source, to examine whence truths spring, and how
they are inferred. In short, you shall find all men
full of opinions, but knowledge only in a few.
It is impossible, from the nature and circumstances
of human kind, that the multitude should be philo-
sophers, or that they should know things in their
causes. We see every day that the rules, or conclu-
sions alone, are sufficient for the shopkeeper to state
his account, the sailor to navigate his ship, or the
carpenter to measure his timber ; none of which un-
derstand the theory, that is to say, the grounds and
reasons either of arithmetic or geometry. Even so in
moral, political, and religious matters, it is manifest
that the rules and opinions early imbibed at the first
dawn of understanding, and without the least glimpse
of science, may yet produce excellent effects, and be
Tery useful to the world ; and that, in fact, they are
so, will be very visible to every one who shall observe
what passeth round about him.
It may not be amiss to inculcate, that the differ-
ence between prejudices and other opinions doth not
consist in this, that the former are false and the lat-
ter true ; but in this, that the former are taken upon
trust, and the latter acquired by reasoning. He who
hath been taught to believe the immortality of tlie
soul, may be as right in his notion as he who hath
reasoned himself into that opinion. It will then by
no means follow, that because this or that notion is a
prejudice, it must be therefore false. The not distin-
guishing between prejudices and errors is a prevailing
oversight among our modern free-thinkers.
There may be, indeed, certain mere prejudices or
opinions, which, having no reasons either assigned or
assignable to support them, are nevertheless enter-
tained by the mind, because they are intruded be-
times into it. Such may be supposed false, not be-
cause they were early learned, or learned without
their reasons, but because there are in truth no rea-
sons to be given for them.
Cerfainly if a notion may be concluded false be-
cause it was early imbibed, or because it is with most
men an object of belief rather than of knowledge, one
may by the same reasoning conclude several proposi-
tions of Euclid to be false. A simple apprehension
of conclusions, as taken in themselves, without the
deductions of science, is what falls to the share of
mankind in general. Religious awe, the precepts of
parents and masters, the wisdom of legislators, and
the accumulated experience of ages, supply the place
of proofs and reasonings with the vulgar of all ranks ;
I would say that discipline, national conetitution,
and laws human or Divine, are so many plain land-
marks which guide them into the paths wherein it is
presumed they ought to tread.
[From ' Maxiras Concerning Patr{otism,.''\
A man who hath no sense of Cut:] cr conscience,
would you make such a one guardian to your child?
If not, why guardian to the state?
A fop, or man of pleasure, makes but a scurvy
patriot.
He who says there is no such thing as an honest
man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
The patriot aims at his private good in the public.
The knave makes the public subservient to his private
interest. Tlie former considers himself as part of a
whole, the latter considers himself as the whole.
Moral evil is never to be committed ; physical evil
may be incurred either to avoid a greater evil, or to
procure a good.
When the heart is right, there is true patriotism.
The fawning courtier and the surly squire oftea
mean the same thing — each his own interest.
Ferments of the worst kind succeed to perfect in-
action.
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL
AVRITERS.
In these departments we have no very distin-
guished names, unless it be tiiat of Bentley as a
classical critic.
LAWRENCE ECHARD.
Lawrence Echard (1671-1730) was a volumi-
nous writer and historian. After receiving educa-
tion at the university of Cambridge, he entered into
orders, and obtained the livings of Welton and Elk-
ington in Lincolnshire. In 1712 he was preferred to
the archdeaconry of Stowe, and became also a pre-
bendary in the cathedral of Lincoln. His leisure was
devoted to liistorical pursuits, and he published a
History of England, a General Ecclesiastical Historp,
a Histon/ of Home, a General Gazetteer, &c. His
History of England was attacked by Calamy and
Oldniixon ; but it long maintained its ground ; and
his Ecclesiastical History has been often reprinted.
Without aiming at philosojihical analysis or inves-
tigation, Echard was a careful compiler, with com-
petent learning and judgment.
JOHN strype.
John Strype (1643-1737) was a laboriou.- collec-
tor and literary antiquary. His works afford ample
illustrations of ecclesiastical history and biography
at periods of strong national interest and importance,
and they are now reckoned among the most valu-
able of our standard memorials. The writings of
Strype consist of a Life of Archbi.Jiop Cranmer
(1694), a Life of Sir Thomas Smith (1698), a Life
of Bishop Aylmer (1701), a Life of Sir John Chehe
(1705), Annals of the Beformatioji, four volumes
(1709-31), a Life of Archbishop Grindal {\710). Life
and Letters (f Archbishop Purher (1711), Life of
Archbishop Whitgft (1718), Ecclesiastical Memorials,
three volumes (1721). He also edited Stow's Sur-
vey of London, and part of Dr Lightfoot's works.
Strype was the son of a foreign refugee, John Van
Stryp, a native of Brabant, who fled to England on
account of his religion, and followed tlie business of
a silk merchant. The son received a classical edu-
cation at Cambridge, and entering into holy orders,
became successively curate of Theydon-Boys, in
Esse.K, preacher in Low Leyton, rector of Terring,
in Sussex, and lecturer at Hackney. He resigned
his clerical cliarges in 1724, and frcnn this time till
his death, which happened in liis ninety-fourth year,
he resided at Hackney with Mr Harris, an apothe
cary, wlio was married to his granddaughter. Faith-
ful and laborious, Strj-pe was highly respected by
the dignitaries of the chiircli of Kn.Ljhind. A correct
and elegant reprint of his works has proceeded from
the Clarendon press at Oxford.
659
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172>.
POTTER AND KENNETT.
Dr Potter (1674-1747), archbishop of Canter-
bury, is known as autlior of a valuable work on the
antiquities of Greece, in two volumes octavo. The
researches of modern philologists, especially among
the Germans, have greatly enriched this department
of literature ; but Potter led the way. and supplied
a groundwork for future scholars. He also edited
the writings of Lycophron, and wrote several theo-
logical treatises and discourses on church govern-
ment, which were collected and printed at Oxford
in 1753, in three volumes. With the learning of
the English hierarchj', Dr Potter is said to have
united too much of the.pomp and pride Avhich occa-
sionally mark its dignitaries ; and it is related that
he disinherited his son for marrying below his rank
in life.
BasilKennett (1674-1714) performed for Roman
antiquities what Archbishop Potter did for Grecian.
His liorncB AntiqucB Notitia, or the Antiquities of
Rome, in one volume octavo, was a respectable con-
tribution to historical literature, and for nearly a
century held its place as the standard work upon
the subject. It was then partly superseded' by the
Roman Antiquities of Dr Adam; but recent times
have seen both thrown into tlie background, in
consequence of the vast additions which have
been made to our knowledge of ancient Rome, its
people, and their institutions, chiefly by German
scholars, and partly by the investigations at Pom-
peii and Herculaneum. Kennett was educated at
Corpus Christi college, Oxford, and became chap-
lain to the English factory at Leghorn, where he
was in danger from the Inquisition. He was greatly
esteemed by his contemporaries for his learning,
piety, and modesty. Besides his Roman Antiqui-
ties, he wrote Lives of the Grecian Poets, an Exposi-
tion of the Creed, and a collection of sermons.
RICHARD BENTLEY.
Dr Richard Bentley (1662-1742) was perhaps
the greatest classical scholar that England has pro-
duced. He was educated at Cambridge, and became
chaplain to Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester. He
was afterwards appointed preacher of the lecture
instituted by Boyle for the defence of Christianity,
and delivered a series of discourses against atheism.
In these Bentley introduced the discoveries of New-
ton as illustrations of his argument, and the lec-
tures were highly popular. His next public ap-
pearance was in the famous controversy with the
Honourable Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, rela-
tive to the genuineness of the Greek epistles of
Phalaris. This controversy we have already spoken
of in our section on Sir William Temple. ]\Iost
of the wits and scholars of that period joined with
Boyle against Bentley ; but he triumphantly esta-
blished his position that the epistles are spurious,
while the poignancy of his wit and sarcasm, and
the sagacity evinced in his conjectural emendations,
■were unequalled among his Oxford opponents.
Bentley was afterwards made master of Trinity
college, Cambridge; and in 1716 he was also ap-
pointed regius professor of divinity. His next
literary performances were an edition of Horace,
and editions of Terence and Phasdrus. The talent
he had displayed in making emendations on the
classics, tempted him, in an 'evil hour,' to edit
Milton's Paradise Lost in the same spirit. The
critic was then advanced in years, and had lost some
portion of his critical sagacity and discernment,
while it is doubtful if he could ever have entered
into the loftier conceptions and sublime flights of
the English poet. His edition was a decided failure.
Bentley's Seat, in Trinity College Chapel.
Some of his emendations destroy the happiest and
choicest expressions of the poet. The sublime line,
' No light, but rather darkness visible,'
Bentley renders,
' No light, but rather a transpicuous glooiu.'
Another fine Miltonic passage —
' Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements,'
is reduced into prose as follows : —
' Then, as 'twas well observed, our torments may
Become our elements.'
Such a critic could never have possessed poetical
sensibility, however extensive and minute might be
his verbal knowledge of the classics. Bentley died
at Cambridge in 1742. He seems to have been the
impersonation of a combative spirit. His college life
was spent in continual war with all who were offi-
cially connected with him. He is said one day, on
finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked
— ' Why read a book that you cannot quote ?' — a
saying which aflTords an amusing illustration of the
nature and object of his literary studies.
[Authority of Reason in JReliffious Matters.']
We profess ourselves as much concerned, and aa
truly as [the deists] themselves are, for the use and
authority of reason in controversies of faith. We
look upon right reason as the native lamp of the soul,
placed and kindled there by our Creator, to conduct
us in the whole course of our judgments and actions.
True reason, like its divine Author, never is its'df
deceived, nor ever deceives any man. Even revela-
tion itself is not shy nor unwilling to ascribe its own
ceo
THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR FRANCIS ATTERBURT.
first credit and fundamental authority to the test and
testimony of reason. Sound reason is the touchstone
to distinguish that pure and genuine gold from baser
metals ; revelation truly divine, from imposture and
enthusiasm : so that the Christian religion is so far
from declining or fearing the strictest trials of reason,
that it everywhere appeals to it ; is defended and
supported by it ; and indeed cannot continue, in the
Apostle's description ("James i. 27), 'pure and unde-
filed' without it. It is the benefit of reason alone,
under the Providence and Spirit of God, that we our-
selves are at this day a reformed orthodox church :
that we departed from the errors of poperj', and that
we knew, too, where to stop ; neither running into the
extravagances of fanaticism, nor sliding into the in-
difFerency of libertinism. Whatsoever, therefore, is
inconsistent with natural reason, can never be justly
imposed as an article of faith. That the same bod}'
is in many places at once, that plain bread is not
bread ; such things, though they be said with never
so much pomp and claim to infallibility, we have
still greater authority to reject them, as being con-
trary to common sense and our natural faculties ;
as subverting the foundations of all faith, even the
grounds of their own credit, and all the principles of
civil life.
So far are we from contending with our adversaries
about the dignity and authority of reason ; but then
we differ with them about the exercise of it, and the
extent of its province. For the deists there stop, and
set bounds to tlieir faith, where reason, their only
guide, does not lead th<^ waj' further, and walk along
before them. We, on the contrary, as (Deut. xsxiv.)
Moses wa,s shown by divine power a true sight of the
promised land, though himself could not pass over to
it, so we think reason may receive from revelation
some further discoveries and new prospects of things,
and be fully convinced of the reality of them ; though
itself cannot pass on, nor travel those regions ; cannot
penetrate the fund of those truths, nor advance to the
utmost bounds of them. For there is certainly a wide
difference between what is contrary to reason, and
what is superior to it, and out of its reach.
DR FRANCIS ATTERB17RY.
Dr Fr.\kcis Atterbury (1662-1731), .in Oxford
divine and zealous high churchman, was one of the
combatants in the critical warfare with Bentley
about the epistles of Phalaris. Originally tutor to
Lord Orrery, he was, in 1713, rewarded for his
Tory zeal by being named Bishop of Rochester.
Under the new dynasty and Whig government, his
zeal carried him into treasonable practices, and, in
1722, he was apprehended on suspicion of being
concerned in a plot to restore the Pretender, and
was committed to the Tower. A bill of pains and
penalties was preferred against him, and he was
deposed and outlawed. Atterbury now went into
exile, and resided first at Brussels and afterwards
at Paris, continuing to correspond with Pope, Boling-
broke, and his other Jacobite friends, till his death.
The works of this accomplished, but restless and
aspiring prelate, consist of four volumes of sermons,
Bome visitation charges, and his epistolary corre-
spondence, which was extensive. His style is easy
and elegant, and he was a very impressive preacher.
The good taste of Atterbury is seen in his admira-
tion of Milton, before fashion had sanctioned the
applause of the great poet. His letters to Pope
breathe the utmost affection and tenderness. The
following farewell letter to the poet was sent from
the Tower, April 10, 1723:—
'Dear Sir — I thank you for all the instances of
your friendship, both before and since my misfor-
tunes. A little time will complete them, and sepa-
rate you and me for ever. But in wliat part of the
world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere
kindness to me; and will please myself with the
thought that I still live in your esteem and affection
as much as ever I did ; and that no accident of life,
no distance of time or place, will alter 3-ou in that
respect. It never can me, who liave loved and valued
}ou ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it
when I am not allowed to tell you so, as the case
will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr Ar-
buthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, wliich was
inucli to tlie purpose, if anything can be said to be
to the purpose in a case that is already determined.
Let him know my defence will be sucli, that neither
my friends need blush for me, nor will my enemies
have great occasion to triumpli, though sure of the
victory. I shall want his advice before I go abroai
in many things. But I question whether I shall be
permitted to see him or anybody, but such as are
absolutely necessary towards the despatch of my
private affairs. If so, God bless you both ! and may
no part of the ill fortune that attends me ever pur-
sue either of you. I know not but I may call upon
you at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way
of spending my time at the deanery, which did not
seem calculated towards managing plots and conspi-
racies. But of that I shall consider. You and I havfe
spent many hours together upon much pleasanter
subjects ; and, that I may preserve the old custom,
I shall not part with you now till I have closed this
letter with three lines of Milton, Miiich you wiU, I
know, readily, and not without some degree of con-
cern, apply to your ever affectionate, &c.
Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon J
The world was all before him where to choose
His place of rest, and Providence his guide.'
\_Usef Illness of Church Mmic.']
The use of vocal and instrumental harmony in
divine worship I shall recommend and justify from
this consideration : that they do, wlien wisely em-
ployed and managed, contribute extremely to awaken
the attention and enliven the devotion of all serious
and sincere Christians ; and their usefulness to this
end will appear on a double account, as they remove
the ordinary hindrances of devotion, and as they
supply us further with sjjeclal helps and advantages
towards quickening and improving it.
By the melodious harmony of the church, the ordi-
nary hindrances of devotion are removed, particu-
larly these three ; that engagement of thought which
we often bring with us into the church from what we
last converse with ; those accidental distractions that
may happen to us during the course of divine serv-ice;
and that weariness and flatness of mind which s^me
weak tempers may labour under, by reason even of
the length of it.
When we come into the sanctuary immediately
from any worldly affair, as our very condition of life
does, alas ! force many of us to do, we come usually
with divided and alienated minds. The business, the
pleasure, or the amusement we left, sticks f.ist to us,
and perhaps engrosses that heart for a time, which
should then be taken up altogether in spiritual
addresses. But as soon as the sound of the sacred
hymns strikes us, all that busy swarm of thoughts
presently disperses: by a grateful violence we are
forced into the duty that is going forward, and, as
indevout and backward as we were before, find our-
selves on the sudden seized with a sacred warmth,
ready to cry out, with holy David, ' My heart is
fixed, God, my heart is fixed ; I will sing and
give praise.' Our misapplication of mind at such
times is often so great, and we so deeply immersed
661
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727
in it, that there needs some verj' strong and powerful
charm to rouse us from it ; and perhaps nothing is of
greater force to this purpose than the solemn and
awakening airs of church music.
For the same reason, those accidental distractions
that may happen to us are also best cured by it.
The strongest minds, and best practised in holy duties,
may sometimes be surprised into a forgetfulness of
what they are about by some violent outward im-
pressions ; and every slight occasion will serve to call
off the thoughts of no less willing though much
weaker worshippers. Those that come to see, and to be
seen here, will often gain their point ; will draw and
detain for awhile the eyes of the curious and unwary.
A passage in the sacred story read, an expression used
in the common forms of devotion, shall raise a foreign
reflection, perhaps, in musing and speculative minds,
and lead them on from thought to thought, and point
to point, till they are bewildered in their own imagi-
nations. These, and a hundred other avocations,
will arise and prevail ; but when the instruments of
praise begin to sound, our scattered thoughts pre-
sently take the alarm, return to their post and to
their duty, preparing and arming themselves against
their spiritual assailants.
Lastly, even the length of the service itself becomes
a hindrance sometimes to the devotion which it
was meant to feed and raise ; for, alas ! we quickly
tire in the performance of holy duties ; and as
eager and unwearied as we are in attending upon
secular business and trifling concerns, yet in divine
oflSces, I fear, the expostulation of our Saviour is
applicable to most of us, ' \\'hat ! can ye not watch
with me one hour!' Tills infirmity is relieved, this
hindrance prevented or removed, by the sweet har-
mony that accompanies several parts of the service,
and returning upon us at lit intervals, keeps our at-
tention up to the duties when we begin to flag, and
makes us insensible of the length of it. Happily,
therefore, and wisely is it so ordered, that the morn-
ing devotions of the church, which are much the
longest, should share also a greater proportion of the
harmony which is useful to enliven them.
But its use stops not here, at a bare removal of the
ordinary impediments to devotion ; it supplies us also
with special helps and advantages towards furthering
and improving it. For it adds dignity and solemnity
to public worship ; it sweetly influences and raises
our passions whilst we assist at it, and makes us do
our duty with the greatest pleasure and cheerfulness ;
all which are very proper and powerful means towards
creating in us that holy attention and erection of
mind, the most reasonable part of this our reasonable
service.
Such is our nature, that even the best things, and
most worthy of our esteem, do not always employ and
detain our thoughts in proportion to their real value,
unless they be set otf and greatened by some outward
circumstances, which are fitted to raise admiration
and surprise in the breasts of those who hear or
behold them. And this good effect is wrought in us
by the power of eacred music. To it we, in good
measure, owe the dignity and solemnity of our public
worship ; which else, I fear, in its natural simplicity
and plainness, would not so strongly strike, or so
deeply aflPect the minds, as it ought to do, of the slug-
gish and inattentive, that is, of the far greatest part
of mankind. But when voice and instruments are
skilfully adapted to it, it appears to us in a majestic
air and shape, and gives us very awful and reverent
impressions, which while they are upon us, it is im-
possible for us not to be fixed and composed to the
utmost. We are then in the same state of mind that
the devout patriarch was when he awoke from his
holy dream, and ready with him to say to ourselves,
' Surely the Lord is in this place, aud I knew it not !
How dreadful is this place ! This is none other but
the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'
Further, the availableness of hivrmony to promote a
pious disposition of mind will appear from the great
influence it naturally has on the passions, which,
when well directed, are the wings and sails of the
mind, that speed its passage to perfection, and are of
particular and remarkable use in the offices of devo-
tion ; for devotion consists in an ascent of the mind
towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul,
and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers
of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds
serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper
object ; these it first calls forth and encourages, and
then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to
all of them, as the matter of the hymns sung gives an
occasion for the employment of them ; but the power
of it is cMefly seen in advancing that most heavenly
passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts,
and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true
devotion ; which recommends what we do in virtue of
it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves ; and
without which all our spiritual offerings, our prayers,
and our praises, are both insipid and unacceptable.
At this our religion begins, and at this it ends ; it is
the sweetest companion and improvement of it here
upon earth, and the very earnest and foretaste of
heaven ; of the pleasures of which nothing further is
revealed to us, than that they consist in the practice
of holy music and holy love, the joint enjoyment of
which, we are told, is to be the happy lot of all pious
souls to endless ages.
Now, it naturally follows from hence, which was the
last advantage from whence I proposed to recommend
church music, that it makes our duty a pleasure, and
enables us, by that means, to perform it with the
utmost vigour and cheerfulness. It is certain, that
the more pleasing an action is to us, the more keenly
and eagerly are we used to employ ourselves in it ;
the less liable are we, while it is going forward, to
tire, and droop, and be dispirited. So that whatever
contributes to make our devotion taking, within such
a degree as not at the same time to dissipate and dis-
tract it, does, for that very reason, contribute to our
attention and holy warmth of mind in performing it.
What we take delight in, we no longer look upon as
a task, but return to always with desire, dwell upon
with satisfaction, and quit with uneasiness. And this
it was which made holy David express himself in so
pathetical a manner concerning the service of the
sanctuary: 'As the hart panteth after the water-
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, God. When,
oh when, shall I come to appear before the presence of
God r The ancients do sometimes use the metaphor
of an army when they are speaking of the joint devo-
tions put up to God in the assembly of his saints.
They say we there meet together in troops to do vio-
lence to heaven ; we encompass, we besiege the throne
of God, and bring such a united force, as is not to be
withstood. And I suppose we may as innocently
carry on the metaphor as they have begun it, and
say, that church music, when decently ordered, may
have as great uses in this army of supplicants, as the
sound of the trumpet has among the host of the
mighty men. It equally rouses the courage, equally
gives life, and vigour, and resolution, and unani-
mity, to these holy assailants.
DB SAMUEL CLARKE.
Dr Samuel Clarke, a distinguished divine,
scholar, and metaphysician, was born at Norwich
(whicli his father represented in parliament) on the
11th of October, 1675. His powers of reflection
and abstraction are said to have been developed
when a mere boy. His biographer, Winston, relntes
662
THEOLOGICAL WRITF.RS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR SAMUEL CLARK.S.
that 'one of his parents asked him, when he was
yery J'oung, Whether God could do every thinij?
He answered, Yes ! He was asked again, 'Whether
God could tell a lie? He answered, No ! And he
understood the question to suppose tliat tliis was the
only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say,
so young was he then, that he thought there wiis
anything else which God could not do ; while yet
he well rememhered, that he had even then a clear
conviction in his own mind, that there was one
thing which God could not do — that he could not
annihilate that space v.liieh was in the room where
they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary
existence of space hecanie a leading feature in the
mind of the future philosopher. At Caius' college,
Cambridge, Clarke cultivated natural philosophy
with such success, that in his twenty-second year
he published an excellent translation of Hohault's
Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the
Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was
taught by Rohault, wliose work was at that time the
text-book in tlie university. ' And this certainh','
says Bishop Iloadly, ' was a more prudent method
of introducing trutli imknown before, than to at-
tempt to throw aside tliis treatise entirely, and write
a new one instead of it. The success answered
exceedingly well to his hopes ; and he may justly
be styled a great benefactor to the university in this
attempt. For by this means the true philosojihy
has, without any noise, prevailed ; and to tliis day
the translation of Rohault is, generally speaking, the
standard text for lectures, and his notes the first
direction to those who are willing to receive the
reality and truth of things in the place of inven-
tion and romance.' Four editions of Clarke's trans-
lation of Rohault were required before it ceased
to be used in the university ; but at length it was
superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian
philosophy was avowedly adopted. Having entered
the church, Clarke found a patron and friend in I)r
Moore, bishop of Norwich, and was appointed his
chaplain. Between the years 1699 and 1702, he
published several theological essays on baptism,
repentance, &c., and executed paraphrases of the
four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These tracts were afterwards published in two
volumes. The bishop next gave him a living at
Norwich ; and his reputation stood so high, that in
1704 he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture.
His boyish musings on eternity and space were now
revived. He selected as the subject of his first
course of lectures, the Being and AUrilmtes of God ;
and the second year he chose the Evidences of
Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were
published in two volumes, and attracted notice and
controversy, from their containing Clarke's cele-
brated, argument a priori for the existence of God,
the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium an-
nexed to Newton's Principia. According to Sir Isaac
and his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not
substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal
Being, whose attributes they are, must exist of
necessity also. The existence of God, therefore, is a
truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from
those conceptions of space and time which are inse-
parable from the human mind. Professor Dugald
Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursu-
ing this lofty argument, soared into regions where
he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandncss of
the conception, and its connexion with the prin-
ciples of natural religion. ' For when once we have
established, from the evidences of design everywhere
manifested around us, the existence of an intelligent
ftnd powerful cnuse, we are unavoidably led to ajjply
to tills cause our conceptions of immensity and etei'ity.
and to conceive Him as filling the infinite extent of
both with his presence and with his power. Hence
we associate with the idea of God those awful im-
pressions which are naturally produced by tlie idea
of infinite sj)ace, and jierhaps still more by the idea
of endless duration. Nor is this all. It is from the
innnensity of space that the notion of infinity is
originally derived ; and it is hence that we transfer
the expression, by a sort of metaphor, to other sub-
jects. When we speak, therefore, of infinite power,
wisdom, and goodness, our notions, if not wholly
borrowed from space, are at least greatly aided by
this analogy ; so that the conceptions of immensity
and eternity, if they do not of themselves demon-
strate tlie existence of God, yet necessarily enter
into the ideas we form of his nature and attributes.'*
How beautifullj' has Pope clothed this magnificent
conception in verse ! —
' All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the sold ;
That, changed tlirough all, and yet in all the same ;
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame ;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and hlossonis in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.' f
The followers of Sjiinoza built their pernicious
theory upon the same argument of endless space; but
Pope has spiritualised the idea by placing God as
the soul of all, and Clarke's express object was to
show that the subtleties they had advanced against
religion, might he better emjiloyed in its favour.
Such a mode of argument, however, is beyond the
faculties of man ; and Winston only repeated a com-
mon and obvious truth, when he told Clarke that in
the commonest weed in his garden were contained
better arguments for the being and attributes of the
Deity than in all his metaphysics.
The next subject that engaged the studies of
Clarke was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immor-
tality of the Soul, in reply to Mr Henry Dodwell and
Collins. He also translated Newton's Ojitics into
Latin, and was rewarded by his guide, philosopher,
and friend, with a present of L.. 500. In 1709 he ob-
tained the rectory of St James's, Westminster, took
his degree of D.D., and was made chajilain in ordi-
nary to the queen. In 1712 he edited a splendid
edition of Crosar's Commentaries, with corrections
and emendations, and also gave to the world an ela-
borate treatise on the Scrij)ture iJoctrine of the Tri-
nity. The latter involved him in considerable trouble
with the church authorities; for Clarke espoused the
Arian doctrine, wliieh he also advocated in a series
of sermons. He next appeared as a controversialist
with Leibnitz, the German philosopher, who had
represented to the Princess of Wales, afterwards the
queen consort of George If., that the Newtonian
philosophy was not only physically false, but inju-
rious to religion. Sir Isaac Newton, at the request
of the princess, entered the lists on the mathemati-
cal part of the controversy, and left the philosophi-
cal part of it to Dr Clarke. The result was trium-
phant for the English system ; and Clarke, in 1717,
collected and published the jiajiers which had [mssed
between him and Leibnitz. In 1724, he put to jness
a series of sermons, seventeen in number. Many of
them are excellent, but others are tinctured with
his metajihysical jirodilections. He aimed at ren-
dering scriptural jirinciple a iireci'pt conformabh> to
what he calls eternal reason and the fitness of things,
and hence his sermons have failed in becoming popu-
* Stewart's Dissertation, Encyclopiudia Britanuioa.
t Essay on Man. — Kp. I.
663
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172/
lar or useful. ' He wlio aspires,' says Robert Hall,
' to a reputation that shall survive the vicissitudes
of opinion and of time, must aim at some other cha-
racter than that of a metaphysician.' In his prac-
tical sermons, however, there is much sound and
admirable precept. In 1727, Dr Clarke was offered,
but declined, the appointment of Master of the ISIint,
vacant by the death of his illustrious friend, Newton.
The situation was worth £1500 a-year, and the dis-
interestedness and integrity of Clarke were strik-
ingly evinced by his declining to accept an office of
Buch honour and emoluments, because he could not
reconcile himself to a secular employment. His
conduct and character must liave excited the admi-
ration of the queen, for we learn from a satirical
allusion in Pope's Moral Epistle on the Use of
Riches (first published in 1731), that her majesty
had placed a bust of Dr Clarke in her hermitage in
the royal grounds. ' The doctor duly frequented
the court,' saj-s Pope in a note ; ' but he should
have added,' rejoins Warburton, ' with the inno-
cence and disinterestedness of a hermit.' In 1729,
Clarke published the first twelve books of the Iliad,
with a Latin version and copious annotations ; and
Homer has never had a more judicious or acute
commentator. The last literary efforts of this inde-
fatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an
Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing
several volumes of sermons for the press. These
were not published till after his death, which took
place on the 17th of May 1729. The various talents
and learning of Dr Clarke, and his easy cheerful
disposition, earned for him the highest admiration
and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphy-
Bician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensive-
ness and originality, but possessed more skill and
logical foresight (the natural result of his habits
of mathematical study); and he has been justly
celebrated for the baldness and ability with which
he placed himself in the breach against the Neces-
sitarians and Fatalists of his times. His moral
doctrine (which supposes virtue to consist in the
regulation of our conduct according to certain fit-
nesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar
congruity of certain relations to each other) being
inconsequential unless we have previously distin-
guished the ends which are morally good from those
that are evil, and limited the conformity to one of
these classes, has been condemned by Dr Thomas
Brown and Sir James Mackintosh.* His specula-
tions were over-refined, and seem to have been co-
loured by his fondness for mathematical studies, in
forgetfulness that mental philosophy cannot, like
physical, be demonstrated by a.xioms and definitions
m the manner of the exact sciences. On the whole,
we may say, in the emphatic language of IMackin-
* See Brow-n's Philosophy and the Dissertations of Stewart
and Mackintosh. Warburton, in his notes on Pope, thus sums
up the moral doctrine : ' Dr Clarke and WoUaston considered
moral obligation as arising from the essential difTerences and
relations of things ; Shaftesbury iind Ilutcheson, as arising
from the moral sense ; and the generality of divines, as arising
solely from the will of God. On these three principles practi-
cal morality has been built by tliese different writers." ' Thus
has God been pleased,' adds Warburton, ' to give three differ-
ent excitements to the practice of virtue ; that men of all ranks,
constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one
or other of them; something tliat would hit their palate,
satisfy their reason, or subdue their will. But this admirable
provision for the support of virtue hath been in some measure
defeated by its pretended advocates, who iiave sacrilegiously
untwisted this threefold cord, and each running away with
the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the
tLrone of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw
all Jo it.'^Divine Legation, book L
tosh, that Dr Clarke was a man 'eminent at once as
a divine, a mathematician, a metajihysical ])hilo-
sopher, and a j)hik)loger ; and, as the interpreter
of Homer and Cfesar, the scholar of Newton, and
the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not
unworthy of correspondence with the highest order
of human spirits.'
[Natural and Essential Difference of Right and WrongJ]
The principal thing that can, with any colour of
reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who
deny the natural and eternal difference of good and
evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes he to de-
fine exactly the bounds of right and wrong ; the
variety of opinions that have obtained even among
understanding and learned men, concerning certain
questions of just and unjust, especially in political
matters ; and the many contrary laws that have been
made in divers ages and in different countries con-
cerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very
different colours, by diluting each other very slowly
and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in
either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and
so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible
even for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the
one ends and the other begins ; and yet the colours may
really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but
entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black :
so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice
and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from oc-
curring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of
right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be
some latitude in thejudgment of different men, and the
laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are never-
theless in themselves totally and essentially different ;
even altogether as much as white and black, light and
darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted
their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear
much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no,
because every man, having an absolute right in his
own goods, it may seem that the members of any
society may agree to transfer or alter their own pro-
perties upon what conditions they shall think fit. But
if it could be supposed that a law had been made at
Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part
of the world, whereby it had been commanded or
allowed that every man might rob by violence, and
murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith
should be kept with any man, nor any equitable com-
pacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of
his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be
among them in other matters, would have thought
that such a law could have authorised or excused,
much less have justified such actions, and have made
them become good : because 'tis plainly not in men's
power to make falsehood be truth, though they may
alter the property of their goods as they please. Now
if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential differ-
ence between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot
but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident,
the difference between them must be also essential and
unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and
most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be
discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from
the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right
and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be
concluded that just and unjust were not essentially
different by nature, but only by positive constitution
and custom, it would follow equally, that they were
not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even
iu the most flagrant cases that can be supposed ;
which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr llobbcs
himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and
discovering plainly, by his shifting expressioi\s, his
secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain
664
i
THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITP:RATURE.
DR BENJAMIN HOADLT.
necessary and eternal dift'erences of things, and cer-
tain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of dif-
ferent things, or different relations one to another, not
depending on any positive constitutions, but founded
unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and
unavoidably arising from the differences of the things
themselves.
DR "WILLIAM LOWTH.
Dr "William Lowth (1661-1732) was distin-
guished for his classical and theological attainments,
and the liberality with which he conununicated his
stores to others. He publislied a Vindication of the
Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Ohl and Netv
j Testaments (1692), Directions for the Profitable JRcad-
I ing of the Holy Scriptures, Commentaries on the Pro-
\ phets, &c. He furnished notes on Clemens Alex-
I andriiius for Potter's edition of that ancient autlior,
remarks on Josephus for Hudson's edition, and an-
notations on the ecclesiastical historians for Ilead-
I ing's Cambridge edition of those authors. He also
j assisted Dr Chandler in his Defence of Christianity
] from the Prophecies. His learning is said to have
I been equally extensive and profound, and he accom-
panied all his reading with critical and philological
remarks. Born in London, Dr Lowth took his de-
grees at Oxford, and experiencing the countenance
and supjiort of the bishop of Winchester, became
the chaplain of that prelate, a prebend of the
cathedral of Winchester, and rector of Buriton.
DR BENJAMIN HOADLY.
Dr Benjamin Hoadly, successively bishop of
Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Wincliester, was a
prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the
weight of his talents and learning into the scale of
Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by
the Tory and Jacobite parties. Hoadly was born
in 1676. In KOe,"* while rector of St Peter's-le-Poor,
London, he attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and
thus incurred the enmity and ridicule of Swift
and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688,
and attacked the doctrines of divine right and
passive obedience with such vigour and perse-
verance, that, in 1709, the House of Commons re-
commended him to the favour of tlie queen. Her
majesty does not appear to have complied with this
request ; but her successor, George I., elevated him
to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation to
the bench, Hoadly published a work against the
nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king
at St James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or
Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and
vehement dispute, known by the name of the Ban-
gorian Controversy, in which forty or fifty tracts
were published. The Lower House of Convocation
* Hoadly printed, in 1702, ' A Letter to the Rev. Mr Fleet-
wood, occasioned by his Essay on Miracles.' In the preface to
a volume of tracts published in 1715, in which that letter was
reprinted, the eminent author spealis of Fleetwood in the fol-
lowing terms: — 'This contains some points, relating to the
subject of miracles, in which I differed long ago from an ex-
cellent person, now advanced, by his merits, to one of the
highest stations in the church. When it first appeared in the
world, he had too great a soul to make the common return of
resentment or contempt, or to esteem a difference of opinion,
expressed with civility, to be an unpardonable afl'ront. So far
from it, tliat he not only was pleased to e.xpre.-is some good
liking of the manner of it, but laid hold on an opportunity,
which then immediately ottered itself, of doing the writer a
very considerable pit^e of service. I tliink myself obliged,
upon this occasion, to acknowledge this in a public manner,
wisliing tliat such a procedure way at length cease to be un-
common and singular."
took up Iloadly's works with warnitli, ami [lassed a
censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the
government and discipline of the church, and to
imiiugn and inipcach the regal supremacy in mat-
tiTs ecclesiastical. Tlie controversy was conducted
with unbecoming violence, and several bisliops and
other grave divines (the excellent Sherlock among
the number) forgot the dignity of tlieir station and
tlie spirit of Christian charity in tlie heat of i)arty
warfare. Pope alludes sarcastically to Hoadly 's
sermon in the ' Dunciad' —
Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
Yet silent bowed to Chrisfs no kingdom here.
The truth, however, is, that there was ' nothing
whatever in Iloadly's sermon injurious to tlie esta-
blished endowments and privileges, nor to the dis-
cipline and government of the Englisli eliurch, even
in theory. If this had been the case, he niiglit have
been reproached with some inconsistency in becom-
ing so large a partaker of her honours and emolu-
ments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures
for open immoralities, though denying all church
authority to oblige any one to external conununion,
or to pass any sentence which should determine the
condition of men with respect to the favour or dis-
pleasure of God. Another great questiMi in this
controversy was that of religious liberty as a civil
riglit, which the convocation explicitly denied. And
anotlier related to the nnich debated exercise of
private judgment in religion, which, as one jiarty
meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps
unreasonably exaggerated.'* The style of Hoadly's
controversial treatises is strong and logical, but
without any of the graces of composition, and hence
they have fallen into comparative oblivion. He was
author of several other works, as Terms of Accep-
tance, lieasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the
Sacrament, &c. A complete edition of his works
was published by his son in three folio volumes ;
his sermons are now considered the most valuable
portion of his writings. There can be no doubt
that the independent and liberal mind of Iloadly,
aided by his station in the church, tended materially
to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then
prevailed in the church of P^ngland.
The first extract is from Hoadly "s sermon on The
Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, preaclied
before the king on 31st March, 1717, and which,
as already mentioned, gave rise to the celebrated
Bangorian controversy.
[Tlie Kingdom of Christ not of this World.l
If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom
of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be
the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all
points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty
God ; and that all his subjects, in what station soever
they may be, are equally subjects to him ; and that
no one of them, any more than another, hath autho-
rity either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or
to imi)0se a sense upon the old ones, which is the
same thing; or to judge, censure, or punish the ser-
vants of another master, in nnitters relating i)urely to
conscience or salvation. If any person hath any other
notion, either through a long use of words with incon-
sistent meanings, or through a negligence of thought,
let him but ask himself whether the church of Christ
be the kingdom of Christ or not ; and if it be, whether
tiiis notion of it doth not absolutely exclude all other
legislators and j\nlges in matters relating to conscience
or the favour of Cod, or whether it can be his king*
* IIiUlanr« Constitutional History of England.
665
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 172<
doin if any mortal men have such a power of legisla-
tion and judgment in it. This inquiry will bring us
back to the first, which ia the only true account of the
church of Christ, or the kingdom of Christ, in the
mouth of a Christian ; that it is the number of men,
whether small or great, whether dispersed or united,
who truly and sincerely are subjects to Jesus Christ
alone as their lawgiver and judge in matters relating
to the favour of God and their eternal salvation.
The next principal point is, that, if the church be
the kingdom of Christ, and this 'kingdom be not of
this world,' this must appear from the nature and end
of the laws of Christ, and of tliose rewards and punish-
ments which ar« the sanctions of his laws. Now, his
laws are declarations relating to the favour of God in
another state after this. They are declarations of
those conditions to be performed in this world on our
part, without which God will not make us happy in
that to come. And they are almost all general ap-
peals to the will of that God ; to his nature, known
by the common reason of mankind, and to the imita-
tion of tliat nature, which must be our perfection.
The keeping his commandments is declared the w.ay
to life, and the doing his will the entrance into the
kingdom of heaven. The being subjects to Christ, is
to this very end, that we may tlie better and more
effectually perform the will of God. The laws of this
kingdom, therefore, as Christ left thcra, have nothing
of this world in their view ; no tendency either to the
exaltation of some in worldly pomp and dignity, or
to their absolute dominion over the faith and religious
conduct of others of his subjects, or to the erecting of
any sort of temporal kingdom under the covert and
name of a spiritual one.
The sanctions of Christ's law are rewards and punish-
ments. But of what sort ? Not the rewards of this
world ; not the offices or glories of this state ; not the
pains of prisons, banishments, fines, or any lesser and
more moderate penalties ; nay, not the much lesser
negative discouragements that belong to human so-
ciety. He was far from thinking that these could be
the instruments of such a persuasion as he thought
acceptable to God. But, as the great end of his king-
dom was to guide men to happiness after the short
images of it were over here below, so he took his
motives from that place where his kingdom first be-
gan, and where it was at last to end ; from those re-
wards and punishments in a future state, which had
no relation to this world ; and to show that his ' king-
dom was not of this world,' all the sanctions which he
thought fit to give to his laws were not of this world
at all.
St Paul understood this so well, that he gives an
account of his own conduct, and that of others in the
same station, in these words : ' Knowing the terrors of
the Lord, we persuade men :' whereas, in too many
Christian countries since his days, if some who profess
to succeed hira were to give an account of their own
conduct, it must be in a quite contrary strain : ' Know-
ing the terrors of this world, and having them in our
•power, we do not persuade men, but force their out-
ward profession against their inward persuasion.'
Now, wherever this is practised, whether in a great
degree or a small, in that place there is so far a change
from a kingdom which is not of this world, to a king-
dom which ifl of this world. As soon as ever you hear
of any of the engines of this world, whether of the
greater or the lesser sort, you must immediately think
that then, and so far, the kingdom of this world takes
place. For, if the very essence of God's worship be
spirit and truth, if religion be virtue and charity,
under the belief of a Supreme Governor and Judge, if
true real faith cannot be the effect of force, and if
there can be no reward where there is no willing
choice — then, in all or any of these casep, to apply
force or flattery, worldly pleasure or pain, in to act
contrary to the interests of true religion, as it is
j)lainly opposite to the maxims upon which Christ j
founded his kingdom ; who chose the motives which |
are not of this world, to support a kingdom which is
not of this world. And indeed it is too visible to be
hid, that wherever the rewards and punishments are
changed from future to present, from the world to
come to the world now in possession, there the king-
dom founded by our Saviour is, in the nature of it,
so far changed, that it is become, in such a degree,
what he professed his kingdom was not — that is, of
this world ; of the same sort with other common
earthly kingdoms, in wliich the rewards are worldly
honours, jiosts, offices, pomp, attendt.nce, dominion ;
and the punishments are prisons, fines, banishments,
galleys and racks, or something less of the same sort.
[Ironical View of Protestant InfallihilityJ]
[From the ' Pedication to Pope Clement XI., prefixed to Sir
R. Steele's Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Re-
ligion throughout the 'World.']
Your holiness is not perhaps aware how near the
churches of us Protestants have at length come to
those privileges and perfections which you boast of as
peculiar to your own : so near, that many of the
most quick-sighted and sagacious persons have not
been able to discover any other diflcrence between us,
as to the main principle of all doctrine, government,
worship, and discipline, but tliis one, namely, that
you cannot err in anything you determine, and we
never do : that is, in other words, that you are infixl-
lible, and we always in the right. We cannot but
esteem the advantage to be exceedingly on our side
in this case ; because we have all the benefits of in-
fallibility without the absurdity of pretending to it,
and without the uneasy task of maintaining a point
so shocking to the understanding of mankind. And
you must pardon us if we cannot help thinking it to
be as great and as glorious a privilege in iw to be
always in the right, without the pretence to infalli-
bility, as it can be in you to be always in the wrong
with it.
Thus, the synod of Dort (for whose unerring deci-
sions public thanks to Almighty God are every three
years offered up with the greatest solemnity by the
magistrates in that country), the councils of the re-
formed in France, the assembly of the kirk of Scot-
land, and (if I may presume to name it) the convoca-
tion of England, have been all found to have the very
same unquestionable authority which your church
claims, solely upon the infallibility which resides in
it ; and the people to be under the very same strict
obligation of obedience to their determinations, which
with you is the consequence only of an absolute in-
fallibility. The reason, ther<!fore, why we do not
openly set up an infallibility is, because we can do
without it. Authority results as well from power as
from right, and a majority of votes is as strong a
foundation for it as infiillibility itself. Councils that
may err, never do : and besides, being composed of
men whose peculiar business it is to be in the right,
it is very immodest for any private person to think
them not so ; because this is to set up a private
corrupted understanding aboye a public uncorrupted
judgment.
Thus it is in the north, as well as the south;
abroad, as well as at home. All maintain the exercise
of the same authority in themselves, which yet they
know not how so much as to speak of without ridicule
in others.
In England it stands thus : The synod of Dort is
of no weight ; it determined many doctrines wrong.
The assembly of Scotland hath nothing of a true
authority ; and is very much out in its scheme o|
doctrines, worship, and government. But the church
666
THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
CHARLES LESLIE.
of England is vested with all authority, and justly
chalk'ngeth all obedience.
If one crosses a river in the north, there it stands
thus : The church of England is not enough reforni-
«»<1 ; its doctrines, worship, and government, have too
much of antichristian Rome in them. But the kirk
of Scotland hath a divine right from its only head,
Jesus Christ, to meet and to enact what to it shall
seem fit, for the good of his church.
Thus, we left you for your enormous unjustifiahle
claim to an unerring spirit, and have found out a
way, unknown to your holiness and your predecessors,
of claiming all the rights that belong to infallibility,
even whilst we disclaim and abjure the thing itself.
As for us of the church of England, if we will
believe many of its greatest advocates, we have bishops
in a succession as certainly uninterrupted from the
apostles, as your church could communicate it to us.
And upon this bottom, which makes us a true church,
we have a right to separate from you; but no persons
living have a right to differ or separate from ms. And
they, again, who differ from us, value themselves upon
something or other in which we are supposed defective,
or upon being free from some superfluities which we
enjoy ; and think it hard, that any will he still going
further, and refine upon their scheme of worship and
discipline.
Thus we have indeed left you; y)ut we have fixed
ourselves in your seat, and make no scruple to re-
semble you in our defences of ourselves and censures
of others whenever we think it proper.
We have all sufficiently felt the load of the two
topics of hertsij and schism. We have been persecuted,
hanged, burned, massacred (as your holiness well
knows) for heretics and schismatics. But all this hath
not made us sick of those two words. We can still
throw them about us, and play them off upon others,
as plentifully and as fiercely as they are dispensed to
us from your quarter. It often puts me in mind
(your holiness must allow me to be a little ludicrous, if
you admit me to your conversation), it often, I say,
puts me in mind of a play which 1 have seen amongst
some merry people : a man strikes his next neigh-
bour with all his force, and he, instead of returning it
to the man who gave it, communicates it, with equal
zeal and strength, to another ; and this to another ;
and so it circulates, till it returns perhaps to him who
set the sport agoing. Thus your holiness begins the
attack. You call vs heretics and schismatics, and
burn and destroy nj as suc^h ; though, God knows,
there is no more right anywhere to use heretics or
schismatics barbarously, than those who think and
speak as their superiors bid them. But so it is. You
thunder out the sentence against its. We think it ill
manners to give it you back again ; but we throw it
out upon the next brethren that come in our way ;
and they upon others : and so it goes round, till some
perhaps have sense and courage enough to throw it
back upon those who first began the disturbance by
pretending to authority where there can be none.
We have not indeed now the power of burning
heretics, as our forefathers of the Reformation had.
The civil power hath taken away the act which con-
tinued that glorious privilege to them, upon the re-
monstrance of several persons that they could not
sleep whilst that act was awake. But then, every-
thing on this side death still remains untouched to
us: we can molest, harass, imprison, and ruin any
man who pretends to be wiser tlian his Ijetters. And
the more unspotted the man's character is, the more
necessary we think it to take such crushing methods.
Since the toleration hath been authorised in these
nations, the legal zeal of men hath fallen the lieavier
upon heretics (for it nmst always, it seems, be exer-
cised upon some sort of persons or other) ; and amongst
these, chiefly upon sucL as differ fidi us in points in
which, above all others, a difference of opinion is most
allowable ; such ac, are acknowledged to be very ab-
struse and unintelligible, and to have been in all ages
thought of and judged of with the same difference and
variety.
CHARLES LESLIE.
Charles Leslie (1650-1722), author of a work
still popular, A Short and Easy Method with the
Deists, was a son of a bishop of Cloghcr, who is said
to have been of a Scottish family. Educated at
Trinity college, Dublin, Charles Leslie studied the
Charles Leslie.
law in London, but afterwards turned his attention to
divinity, and in 1680 took orders. As chancellor of
the cathedral of Connor, he distinguished himself by
several disputations with Catholic divines, and by
the boldness with which he ojjposed the pro-popish
designs of King James. Nevertheless, at the revo-
lution, he adopted a decisive tone of Jacobitisni,
from which he never swerved through life. Remov-
ing to London, he was chiefly engaged for several
years in writing controversial works against quakers,
Socinians, and deists, of which, however, none are
now remembered, besides the little treatise of which
the title has been given, and which appeared in 1699.
He also wrote many occasional and pericxlical tracts
in behalf of the house of Stuart, to whose cause his
talents and celebrity certainly lend no small lustre.
Being for one of these publications obligetl to leave
the country, he repaired in 1713 to the court of the
Chevalier at Bar le Due, and was well received.
James allowed him to have a chapel fitted up for
the English service, and was even expected to lend
a favourable ear to liis arguments against popery,
but this expectation proved vain. It was not pos-
sible for an earnest and bifter controversialist like
Leslie to remain long at rest in such a situation,
and we are not therefore surprised to find him re-
turn in disgust to England in 1721. He soon after
died at his liouse of Glaslough, in the county of
Monaghan. The works of tliis remarkable man
have been collected in seven volumes ((Oxford, IS.'ii),
and it nnist be allowed that they ])hue their author
very high in the list of controversial writers, the in-
genuity of the arguments being only t'cjiualled by the
C67
FROM 1689
CYCLOPEDIA OF
TO 1727.
keenness iind pertinacity with which they are on
all occasions followed out ; but aniddern reader sighs
to think of vivid talents spent, with life-long perse-
verance, on discussions which have tended so little
to benefit mankind.
■WILLIAM WHISTON.
William Whiston (1667-1752) was an able but
eccentric scholar, and so distinguished as a mathe-
matician, that he was made deputy professor of
mathematics in the university of Cambridge, and
afterwards successor to Sir Isaac Newton, of whose
principles he was one of tlie most successful ex-
pounders. Entering into holy orders, he became
cliaplain to the bishop of Norwich, rector of Lowe-
stoffe, &c. He was also appointed Boyle lecturer
in the university, but was at length expelled for
promulgating Arian opinions. He then went to
London, where a subscription was made for him,
and he delivered a series of lectures on astronomy,
which were patronised by Addison and Steele.
Towards the close of his life, Whiston became a
Baptist, and believed that the millennium was ap-
proaching, when the Jews would all be restored.
Had he confined himself to matliematical studies,
he would have earned a high name in science ; but
his time and attention were dissipated by his theo-
logical pursuits, in which he evinced more zeal tlian
judgment. His works are numerous. Besides a
Theory of the Earth, in defence of the Mosaic ac-
count of the creation, published in 1696, and some
tracts on the Newtonian system, he wrote an Essay
on the Revelation of St John (1706), Sermons on the
Scripture Prophecies (1708), Primitive Christianity
lievived, five volumes, (1712), Memoirs of his own
Life, (1749-50), &c. An extract from the last men-
tioned book is subjoined : —
[Anecdote of the Discovery of the Newtonian
Philosophy.\
After I had taken holy orders, I returned to the
college, and went on with my own studies there, par-
ticularly the mathematics and the Cartesian philo-
sophy, which was alone in vogue with us at that time.
But it was not long before I, with immense pains, but
no assistance, set myself with the utmost zeal to the
study of Sir Isaac Newton's wonderful discoveries in
his ' Philosophiaj Naturalis Prlncipia Mathematica,'
one or two of which lectures 1 had heard him read in
the public schools, though I understood them not at
all at that time — being indeed greatly excited thereto
by a paper of Dr Gregory's, when he was professor in
Scotland, wherein he had given the most prodigious
commendations to that work, as not only right in all
things, but in a manner the effect of a plainly divine
genius, and had already caused several of his scholars
to keep acts, as we call them, upon several branches
of the Newtonian philosophy ; while we at Cambridge,
poor wretches, were ignominiously studying the fic-
titious hypotheses of the Cartesian, which Sir Isaac
Newton had also himself done formerly, as I have
heard him say. What the occasion of Sir Isaac New-
ton's leaving the Cartesian philosophy, and of dis-
covering his amazing theory of gravity was, I have
heard him long ago, soon after my first acquaintance
with him, which was 1C.04, thus relate, and of which
Dr Pemberton gives the like account, and somewhat
more fully, it: the preface to his explication of his phi-
losophy. Ic was this: an inclination came into Sir
Isaac's mind to try whether the same power did not
keep the moon in her orbit, notwithstanding her pro-
jectile velocity, which he knew always tended to
go along a straight line the tangent of that orbit,
nbich makes btoues and all heavy bodies with us
fall downward, and which we call gravity? taking
this postulatum, which had been thouglit of bctore.
that such power might decrease in adujilicate propor-
tion of the distances from the earth's centre. U])on
Sir Isaac's first trial, when he took a degree of a
great circle on the earth's surface, whence a degree at
the distance of the moon was to be determintd also,
to be sixty measured miles only, according to the
gross measures then in use, he was in some degree
disappointed ; and the power that restrained the moon
in her orbit, measured hy the versed sines of that
orbit, appeared not to be quite the same that was to
be ex[)ccted had it been the power of gravity- alone
by which the moon was there influenced. Upon this
disappointment, which made Sir Isaac suspect that
this power was partly that of gravity and partly that
of Cartesius's vortices, he threw aside the paper of
his calculation, and went to other studies. However,
some time afterward, when Monsieur Picart had
much more exactly measured the earth, and found
that a degree of a great circle was sixty-nine antl a-
half such miles, Sir Isacac, in turning over some of his
former papers, lighted upon this old imperfect calcula-
tion, and, correcting his former error, discovered that
this power, at the true correct distance of the moon
from the earth, not only tended to the earth's centre,
as did the conmion power of gravity with us, but was
exactly of the right quantity ; and that if a stone
was carried up to the moon, or to sixty semi-diameters
of the earth, and let fall downward by its gravity,
and the moon's owtx menstrual motion was stopped,
and she was let fall by that power which before re-
tained her in her orbit, they would exactly fall to-
wards the same point, and with the same velocity ;
which was therefore no other power than that of
gravity. And since that power appeared to extend as
far as the moon, at the distance of 240,000 miles,
it was but natural, or rather necessary, to suppose
it might reach twice, thrice, four times, &c., the same
distance, with the same diminution, according to the
squares of such distances perpetually : which n'^ble
discovery proved the happy occasion of the invention
of the wonderful Newtonian philosophy.
DR PHILIP DODDRIDGE.
Dr Philip Doddridgk, a distinguished noncon-
formist divine and author, was born in London, June
26, 1702. His grandfather had been ejected from
the living of Shepperton, in Middlesex, by the act
of uniformity in 1662 ; and his father, a man engaged
in mercantile pursuits in London, married the only
daughter of a German, who had fled from Prague to
escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia,
after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Pala-
tine, when to abjure or emigrate were the only alter-
natives. The pious parents of Doddridge early in-
structed him in religious knowledge. ' I have heard
him relate,' says his biographer, Mr Job Orton,
' that his mother taught him the history of the Old
and New Testaments, before he could read, by the
assistance of some Dutch tiles in the chimney in the
room where they commonly sat ; and her wise and
pious reflections ujion the stories there represented
were the means of making some good impressions
upon his heart, which never wore out ; and there-
fore this method of instruction he frequently recom-
mended to parents.' In 1712, Doddridge w.-is sent
to school at Kingston-upon-Thames; but botli his
parents dying within three years afterwards, he was
removed to St Albans, and whilst there, was solennily
admitted, in his sixteentli year, a member of the
nonconforming congregation. His religious im-
pressions were ardent and sincere; and when, in
1718, the Duchess of Bedfcrd made him an offer to
668
THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR PHILIP DODDRIDGE.
educate him for tlie ministry in the churt'li of
Enghmd, Doddridge decHned, from consfientious
scruples, to avail himself of this advantage. A
generous friend, I)r Clarke of St Albans, now stepped
forward to patronise the studious youth, and in 1719
he was placed at an academy established at Kib-
worth, Leicestershire, for the education of dissenters.
Here he resided three years, pursuing his studies for
the ministr}-, and cultivating a taste for elegant litera-
ture. To one of his fellow-pupils who had condoled
■with him on being buried alive, Doddridge writes
in the following happy strain : — ' Here I stick close
to those delightful studies which a favourable ])ro-
vidence has made the business of my life. One day
passeth away after another, and I only know that it
passetli pleasantly with me. As for the world about
me, I have very little concern with it. I live almost
like a tortoise shut up in its shell, almost always in
the same town, the same house, the same chamber ;
yet I live like a prince — not, indeed, in the pomp of
greatness, but the pride of liberty; master of my
books, master of my time, and, I hope I may add,
master of myself. I can willingly give up the
charms of London, the luxury, the company, the
popularity of it, for the secret pleasures of rational
emploj-ment and self-approbation : retired from ap-
plause and reproach, from envy and contempt, and
the destructive baits of avarice and ambition. So
that, instead of lamenting it as my misfortune,
you should congratulate me upon it as my happi-
ness, that I am confined in an obscure village, see-
ing it gives me so many valuable advantages to the
most important purposes of devotion and philo-
sophy, and, I hope I may add, usefulness too.' The
obscure village had also further attractions. It
appears from the correspondence of Doddridge (pub-
lished by his great-grandson in 1829), that the young
divine was of a susceptible temperament, and was
generally in love with some fair one of the neigh-
bourhood, with whom he kept up a constant and
lively inu;rchange of letters. The levity or gaiety
of some of these epistles is remarkable in one of so
staid and devout a public character. His style is
always excellent — correct and playful like that of
Cowper, and interesting from tlie very egotism and
carelessness of the Avriter. To one of his female
corresp(Midents he thus describes his situation : —
' You know I love a country life, and here we
have it in perfection. I am roused in the morning
with the ci.irping of sparnjws, the cooing of pigeons,
the lowing of kine, the bleating of sheep, and, to
complete the concert, the grunting of swine and
neighing of horses. We have a mighty pleasant
garden and orchard, and a fine arbour under some
tall shady limes, that form a kind of lofty dome, of
■which, as a native of the great city, you may per-
haps catch a glimmering idea, if I name the cupola
of St Paul's. And then, on the other side of tlie
house, there is a large space which we call a wilder-
ness, and which, I fancy, would please you ex-
tremely. The ground is a dainty green sward ; a
brook runs sparkling through the middle, and there
are two large fish-ponds at one end ; both tlie ponds
and the brook are surrounded with willows; and
there are several shady walks under the trees, be-
sides little knots of young willows interspersed at
convenient distances. Tiiis is the nursery of our
lambs and calves, with whom I have tlie honour to
be intimately acquainted. Here I generally spend
the evening, and pay my respects to the setting sun,
when the variety and the beauty of the prospect in-
spire a pleasure that I know not how to express. I
am sometimes so transported with these inanimate
beauties, that I fancy I am like Adam in Paradise ;
and it is my only misfortune that I want an Eve, |
and have none but the birds of the air, and the beasts
of the field, for my companions.'
To another lady, whom he styles ' aunt,' he ad-
dressed the following C()mj)linientary efiusion, more
like the epistle of a cavalier poet than of a noncon-
formist preacher: —
' You see, madam, I treat you with rustic simpli-
city, and perha])s talk more like an uncle than a
nephew. But I think it is a necessary truth, that
ought not to be concealed because it may possibly
disoblige. In short, madam, I will tell you roundly,
that if a lady of your character cannot bear to hear
a word in her own commendation, she must ratlier
resolve to go out of the world, or not attend to any-
thing that is said in it. And if you are determined
to indulge this unaccountable humour, depend njion
it, that with a thousand excellent qualities anil
agreeable accomplishments, you will be one of tJie
most unhappy creatures in the world. I assure you,
madam, you will meet with affliction every day of
j-our life. You frown wlicn a home-bred unthink-
ing boy tells you that he is extremely entertained
with your letters. Surely you are in a downright
rage whenever you converse with gentlemen of re-
fined taste and solid judgment ; for I am sure, let
them be ever so much upon their guard, they cannot
forbear tormenting you about an agreeable person, a
fine air, a sparkling wit, steady prudence, and unaf-
fected piety, and a thousand other things that I am
afraid to name, although even I can dimly perceive
them ; or, if they have so much humility as not to
talk of them to your face, j'ou will be sure to hear
of them at second hand. Poor aunt! I jjrofess I
pity you; and if I did but know any om circum-
stance of your character that was a little kfective,
I would be sure to expatiate upon it out of pure
good nature.'
From his first sermon, delivered at the age of
twenty, Doddridge became a marked preacher among
the dissenters, and had calls to various congrega-
tions. In 1729 he settled at Northampton, and be-
came celebrated for his abilities, diligence, and zeal.
Here he undertook to receive pupils, and was so
successful, that in a few years he engaged an assis-
tant, to whom he assigned the care of the junior
pupils, and the direction of the academy during his
absence. He first appeared as an author in 1730,
when he published a pamphlet on the Means of lie-
vlving the Dissenting Interest. He afterwards applied
himself to the composition of practical religious
works. His Sermons on the Education of Children
(1732), Serinons to Young People (1735), and Ten
Sermons on the Power ami Grace of Christ, and the
Evidences of his Gloi-ious Gospel (1736), were all well
received by the public. In 1741 appeared his Prac-
tical Discourses on Pegencration, and in 174.5 The
Pise and Progress of Peligion in the Soul. The latter
forms a body of jiractical divinity and Christian
experience which has never been surpassed by any
work of the same nature. In 1747 appeared his still
popular work. Some Remarkable Passages in the Life
of ColonelJames Gardiner, who was slain hy the Pebels
at the Battle of Prestojipans, Sept. 21, 174.'j. Gardiner
was a brave Scottish officer, who had served with
distinction under Marlborough, and was aid-de-
camp to the Earl of Stair on his embassy to Paris.
From a gay libertine life he was suddenly converted
to one of the strictest i)iety, by what he conceived to
be a supernatural interference, namely, a visible re-
presentation of Clirist upon the cross, suspended in
the air, amidst an unusual blaze of light, and accom-
panied by a declaration of the words, ' (Jli, sinner 1
did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns?'
From the period of this vision till his death, twenty-
six years afterwards, Colonel Gardiner niaintaineU
£69
FROM *689
CYCLOPEDIA OP
-o 1727.
the life and character of a sincere and zealous Chris-
tian, united with that of an intrepid and active
^(fficer. Besides several single sermons and charges
delivered at the ordination of some of his brethren,
Dr Doddridge published an elaborate work, the re-
sult of many j-ears' studj', entitled The Family Expo-
sitor, Containing a Version and Par^-phrase of the New
Testament, with Critical Notes, and a Practical Im-
provement of each Section. This compendium of j
Scriptural knowledge was received with the greatest
approbation both at home and abroad, and was
translated into several languages. Doddridge con-
tinued his useful and laborious life at Northampton
for many years; but his health failing, he was,
in 1751, advised to remove to a warmer climate for
the winter. The generosity of his friends supplied
ample funds for his stay abroad, and in September
of the same year he sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon.
He arrived there on the 21st of October, but sur-
vived only five days, dying October 26, 1751. The
solid learning, unquestioned piety, and truly Catholic
liberality and benevolence of Dr Doddridge, secured
jfor him the warm respect and admiration of his con-
temporaries of all sects. He heartily wished and
prayed for a greater union among Protestants, and
longed for the happy time when, to use his own words,
' the question would be, not how much we may
lawfully impose, and how much we may lawfully
dispute, but on the one side what we may waive, and
on the other what we may acquiesce in, from a prin-
ciple of mutual tenderness and respect, without dis-
pleasing our common Lord, and injuring that great
cause of original Cliristianity which he hatli ap-
pointed us to guard.' As an author, the reputation
of Doddridge depends chiefly on his ' Family Expo-
sitor,' to which the only objection that has been
urged, is the occasional redundance of some of his
paraphrases. His interpretation of particular texts
and passages may also be variously judged of; but
the solid learning and research of the author, his
critical acuteness, and the persuasive earnestness of
his practical reflections, render the work altogether
an honour to English theological literature. Dr
Doddridge was author of what Johnson calls ' one
of the finest epigrams in the English language.'
Tne subject is his family motto, ' Dum vivimus
vivamus,' which, in its primary signification, is not
very suitable to a Christian divine, but he para-
phrased it thus: —
Live while you live, the epiciire would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day.
Live while you live, the s&cred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views let both united be ;
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.
Our specimens of Doddridge are exclusively from
his letters.
[T%e Dangerous Illness of a Daughter."]
[Written from Northampton, August 1740, to Mrs Doddridge.]
When I came down to prayer on Lord's day morn-
ing, at eight o'clock, inunediately after the short
prayer with which you know we begin family worship,
Mrs Wilson (who has indeed showed a most prudent
and tender care of the children, and managed her
trust very well during your absence) came to me in
tears, and told me that Mr Knott wanted to speak
with me : I immediately guessed his errand, especially
when I saw he was so overwhelmed with grief that he
could scarcely utter it. It was natural to ask if my
child were dead? He told me she was yet alive, but
that the doctor had hardly any hopes at all, for she
was seized at two iu the morninj with a chilliness,
which was attended with convulsions. No one, ni}- dear,
ran judge so well as yourself what I must feel on such
an occasion ; yet I found, as 1 had just before done
in my secret retirements, a most lively sense of the
love and care of God, and a calm sweet resignation to
his will, though the surprise of the news was almost
as great as if my child had been seized in full health ;
for everybody before told me she was quite in a safe
and comfortable way. I had now no refuge but prayer,
in which the countenances of my pupils, when I told
them the story, showed how much they were disposed
to join with me. I had before me Mr Clark's book of
the Promises ; and though I had quite forgotten it,
yet so it happened that I had left otf, the Sabbath
before, in the middle of a section, and at the begin-
ning of the sixty-fifth page, so that the fresh words
which came in course to be read were Matt. xxi. 22,
' And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,
believing, you shall receive ;' the next, * If ye abide
in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what
ye will, and it shall be done to you ;' then followed,
' Whatsoever ye shall ask my Father in my name, he
will give it you ;' ' Ask and receive, that your joy
may be full ;' ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name
that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the
Son ;' ' If ye ask anything in my name I will do it ;'
and at last, ' The prayer of faith shall save the sick,
and the Lord shall raise him up.' These scriptures
falling thus undesignedly and unexpectedly in my
way, at that moment, and thus directly following each
other, in ttie order in which I have transcribed them,
struck me and the whole family very sensibly ; and I
felt great encouragement earnestly to plead them in
prayer, with a very firm persuasion that, one way or
another, God would make this a very teaching cir-
cumstance to me and the family. Then Mr Bunyan
came, and pleaded strongly against blistering her ;
but I told him it was matter of conscience to me to
follow the prescriptions of the doctor, though I left
the issue entirely to God, and felt a dependence in
him alone. I then wrote you the hasty lines which I
hope you received by the last post, and renewed my
applications to God in secret, reviewing the promises
which had so much astonished and revived me in the
family, when those words, ' the prayer of faith shall
save the sick,' came on my heart, as if it had been
from the very mouth of God himself; so that I could
not forbear replying, before I was well aware, ' then
it shall ;' and I was then enabled to pray with that
penetrating sense of God's almighty power, and with
that confidence in his love, which I think I never had
before in an equal degree ; and I thought 1 then felt
myself much more desirous that the child might be
spared, if it were but a little while, and from this ill-
ness, as in answer to prayer, than on account of her
recovery simply, and in itself, or of my own enjoy-
ment of her. 1 lay open all my heart before you, my
dear, because it seems to me something of a singular
experience. While I was thus employed, with an
ardour of soul which, had it long continued, would
have weakened and exhausted my spirits extremely,
I was told that a gentleman wanted me : this grieved
me exceedingly, till I found it was Mr Huttoii, now
of the Moravian church, whose Christian exhortations
and consolations were very reviving to me. lie said,
among other things, ' God's will concerning you is,
that you should be happy at all times, and in all cir-
cumstances ; and particularly now, in this circum-
stance ; happy in your child's life, happy in its health,
happy in its sickness, ha[)py in its death, happy in its
resurrection !' He promised to go and pray for it, and
said he had known great effects attending such a
method.
So it was, that from that hour the child began to
mend, as I wrote word to you by him that evening,
and by Mr GiSey yesterday morning. I cannot pre-
670
fHEOLOGlCAL WRITERS.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DR PHILIP DODDRIDGE.
tend to say that I am assured she will recover ; but
I am fully persuaded, that if she does not, God will
make her death a blessing to us ; and 1 think she
will be spared.
[Happy Devotional Feelings of Doddridge.']
[To Mrs Doddridge, from Northampton, October 1742.]
I hope, my dear, you will not be offended when I
tell you that I am, what I hardly thought it possible,
without a miracle, that I should have been, very
easy and happy without you. !My days begin, pass,
and end in pleasure, and seem short because they are
so delightful. It may seem strange to say it, but
really so it is, I hardly feel that I want anything. I
often think of you, and pray for you, and bless God
on your account, and please myself with the hope of
many comfortable days, and weeks, and years with
you ; yet I am not at all anxious about your return,
or indeed about anything else. And the reason, the
great and sufficient reason is, that I have more of the
presence of God with me than I remember ever to
have enjoyed in any one month of my life. He en-
ables me to live for him, and to live with him.
When I awake in the morning, which is always be-
fore it is light, I address myself to him, and converse
with him, speak to him while I am lighting my
candle and putting on my clothes, and have often more
delitrht before I come out of my chamber, though it be
hardly a quarter of an hour after my awaking, than I
have enjoyed for whole days, or, perhaps, weeks of my
life. He meets me in my study, in secret, in family
devotions. It is pleasant to read, pleasant to com-
pose, pleasant to converse with my friends at home ;
pleasant to visit those abroad — the poor, the sick ;
pleasant to write letters of neces.sary business by which
any good can be done ; pleasa!it to go out and preach
the gospel to poor souls, of which some are thirsting
for it, and others dying without it ; pleasant in the
week day to think how near another Sabbath is ;
but, oh ! much, much more pleasant, to think how
near eternity is, and how short the journey through
this wilderness, and that it is but a step from earth to
heaven.
I cannot forbear, in these circumstances, pausing a
little, and considering whence this happy scene just
at this time arises, and whether it tends. Whether
God is about to bring upon me any peculiar trial, for
which this is to prepare me ; whether he is shortly
about to remove me from the earth, and so is giving
me more sensible prelibations of heaven, to prepare
me for it ; or whether he intends to do some peculiar
services by me just at this time, which many other
circumstances lead me sometimes to hope ; or whether
it be that, in answer to your prayers, an<l in compas-
sion to that distress which I must otherwise have felt
in the absence and illness of her who has been so ex-
ceedingly dear to me, and was never more sensibly dear
to me than now he is pleased to favour me with this
teaching experience ; in consequence of which, I freely
own I am less afraid than ever of any event that can
possibly arise, consistent with his nearness to my
heart, and the tokens of his paternal and covenant
love. I will muse no further on the cause. It is
enough, the effect is so blessed.
[ Vindication of Religioits Opinions.']
[Addressed, November 1742, to the Rev. Mr Bourne.]
Had the letter which I received from you so many
nionths ago been merely an address of common friend-
ship, I hope no hurry of business would have led me
to delay so long the answer which civility and grati-
tud i would in that case have required ; or had it been
to request any service in my power to you, sir, or to
•uy of your family or friends, I would not willingly
have neglected it so many days or hours : but when
it contained nothing material, except an \inkind in-
sinuation, that you esteemed me a dishonest man, who,
out of a design to please a party, had written what he
did not believe, or, as you thought fit to exjiresa
yourself, had 'trimmed it a little with the gosj)el of
Christ,' I thought all that was neccss.ary, after having
fully satisfied my own conscience on tliat head, which,
I bless God, I very easily did, was to forgive and i)ray
for the mistaken brother who had done me the injury,
and to endeavour to forget it, by turning my thoughts
to some more pleasant, important, and useful subject.
I imagined, sir, that for me to give you an assurance
under my hand that I meant honestly, would signify
very little, whether you did or did not already believe
it ; and as I had little particular to say on the doc-
trines to which you referred, I thought it would be of
little use to send you a bare confession of my faith,
and quite burdensome to enter into a long detail and
examination of arguments which have on one side and
the other been so often discussed, and of which the
world has of late years been so thoroughly satiated.
On this account, sir, I threw aside the beginning of
a long letter, which I had prepared in answer to
yours, and with it your letter itself; and 1 believe I
may safely say, several weeks and months have
passed in which I have not once recollected an3'thing
relating to this affair. But I have since been cer-
tainly informed that you, interpreting my silence as
an acknowledgment of the justice of your charge,
have sent copies of your letter to several of your
friends, who have been industrious to propagate them
far and near ! This is a fact which, had it not been
exceedingly well attested* I should not have believed ;
but as I find it too evident to be questioned, you
must excuse me, sir, if I take the liberty to expostu-
late with you upon it, which, in present circumstances,
I apprehend to be not only justice to myself, but, on
the whole, kindness and respect for you.
Though it was unkind readily to entertain the sus-
picions you express, I do not so much complain of
your acquainting me with them ; but on what ima-
ginable humane or Christian principle could you
communicate such a letter, and grant copies of it !
With what purpose could it be done, but with a
design of aspersing my character? and to what pur-
pose could you desire my character to be rcjiroached ?
Are you sure, sir, that I am not intending the honour
of God and the good of souls, by my various labours
of one kind and another — so sure of it, that you will
venture to maintain at the bar of Christ, before th(?
throne of God, that 1 was a person whom it was vour
dut}' to endeavour to discredit? for, considering me
as a Christian, a minister, and a tutor, it could not
be merely an indifferent action ; na}', considering me
as a man, if it was not a duty, it was a crime!
I will do you the justice, sir, to suppose you hav<!
really an ill opinion of me, and believe I mean other-
wise than I write ; but let me ask, what reason have
3'ou for that opinion? Is it because you cannot tliink
me a downright fool, and conclude that every one
who is not must be of your opinion, and is a knave if
he does not declare that he is so? or is it from any-
thing particular which you a{)prehciKl you know of
my sentiments contrary to what ni}- writings declare t
He that searches my heart, is witness that what I
wrote on the very passage you except against, I wrote
as what appeared to me most agreiable to trutli, and
most subservient to the purposes of His glorv and the
edification of my readers ; and I see no reason to alter
it in a second edition, if I should rej)rint my Kxposi-
tion, though I had infinitely rather the book should
perish than advance anything contrary to tlie tenor
of the gospel, and subversive to the souls of men. I
guard against apprehending Christ to lie a mere crea-
ture, or another God, inferior to the Father, or co*
671
r
FROH 1689
CYCLOPAEDIA OP ENGLISH LITERATURE.
TO 1727.
ordinate with him. And you will maintain that 1
believe him to be so ; from whence, sir, does your
eyidence of that arise? If from my writings, 1 ap-
prehend it must be in consequence of some inference
you draw from them, of laying any just foundation
for which I am not at present aware ; nor did I ever
intend, I am sure, to say or intimate anything of the
kind. If from report, I must caution you against
rashly believing such reports. I have heard some
stories of me, echoed back from your neighbourhood,
which God knows to be as false as if 1 had been re-
ported to have asserted the divine authority of the
Alcoran ! or to have written Hobbe's Leviathan ; and
I can account for them in no other way than by sup-
posing, either that coming through several hands,
every one mistook a little, or else that some people
have such vivid dreams, that they cannot distinguish
them from realities, and so report them as facts ;
though how to account for their propagating such
reports so zealously, on any principles of Christianity
or common humanity, especially considering how far
I am from having offered them any personal injury,
would amaze me, if I did not know how iM party zeal
debases the understandings of those who in other
matters are wise and good. All I shall add with
regard to such persons is, that I pray God this evil
may not be laid to their charge.
I have seriously reflected with myself, whence it
should come that such suspicions should arise of my
being in what is generally called the Arian scheme,
and the chief causes I can discover are these two :
my not seeing the arguments which some of my
brethren have seen against it in some disputed texts,
and my tenderness and regard to those who, I have
reason to believe, do espouse it, and whom I dare not '
in conscience raise a popular cry against ! Nor am I
at all fond of urging the controversy, lest it should
divide churches, and drive some who are wavering,
as indeed I myself once was, to an extremity to which
I should be sorry to see such worthy persons, as some
of them are, reduced.
Permit me, sir, on so natural an occasion, to con-
clude with expressing the pleasure with which I have
heard that you of late have turned your preaching
from a controversial to a more practical and useful
strain. I am persuaded, sir, it is a manner of using
the great talents which God has given you, which
will turn to the most valuable account with respect
to yourself and your flock ; and if you would please
to add another labour of love, by endeavouring to
convince some who may be more open to the convic-
tion from you than from others, that Christian can-
dour does not consist in judging the hearts of their
brethren, or virulently declaring against their supposed
bigotry, it would be a very important charity to them,
and a favour to, reverend and dear sir, your very
affectionate brother and humble servant,
P. Doddridge.
P. S. — I heartily pray that God may confirm your
health, and direct and prosper all your labours, for
the honour of bis name and the Gospel of his Son.
The multiplicity of my business has obliged me to
write this with so many interruptions, that I hope
you will excuse the inaccuracies it may contain. My
meaning I am sure is good, and, I hope, intelligible ;
and I am heartily willing that, with what measure I
mete, it may be measured to me again.
DR ■WILLIAM NTCOLSON — DR MATTHEW TINDAL —
UR HUMPHREY PRIDEAUX.
Dr William Nicolson (1655-1727), successively
bishop of Carlisle and Londonderry, and lastly
archbishop of Cashel, was a learned antiquary and
investigator of our early records. He publislied
Historical Libraries of England, Scotland, and Ire-
land (collected into one volume, in 1776), being a
detailed catalogue or list of books and mannscripta
referring to the history of each nation. He also
wrote An Essay on the Border Laws, A Treatise on
the Laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and A Description
of Poland and Denmark. The only professional
works of Dr Nicolson are a preface to Chaniber-
layne's Polyglott of the Lord's Prayer, and some
able pamphlets on the Bangorian controversj'.
Dr Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) was a zealous
controversialist, in times when controversy was pur-
sued with much keenness by men fitted for higlier
duties. His first attacks were directed against
priestly power, but he ended in opposing Chris-
tianity itself; and Paine and other later writers
against revelation, have drawn some of their wea-
pons from the armoury of Tindal. Like Drj'den,
and many others, Tindal embraced the Roman Ca-
tholic religion when it became fashionable in the
court of James II. ; but he abjured it in 16S7, and
afterwards became an advocate under William III.,
from whom he received a pension of £200 per
annum. He wrote several political and theological
tracts, but the work by which he is chiefly known,
is entitled Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the
Gospel a liepnblication of the Religion of Nature,
Tiie tendency of this treatise is to discredit re-
vealed religion : it was answered by Waterland j
and Tindal replied by reiterating his former state-
ments and arguments. He wrote a second volume
to this work shortly before his death, but Dr Gib-
son, the bishop of London, interfered, and prevented
its publication. Tindal left a legacy of £2000 to
Eustace Budgell, one of the writers in the Spec-
tator, and it was reported that Budgell had assisted
in his friend's work against Cliristianity. Tindal's
nephew Mas author of a continuation of Rapin'a
Historv^ of England.
Dr IIumphrey Prideaux (1648-1724) was author
of a still popular and valuable work, the Connexion
of the History of the Old and New Testament, the
first part of which was published in 1715, and the
second in 1717. He wrote also a Life of Mahomet
(1697), Directions to Churchwardens (1707), and A
Treatise on Tithes (\710). Prideaux's 'Connexion'
is a work of great research, connecting the Old with
the New Testament by a luminous historical sum-
mary. Few books have had a greater circulation,
and it is invaluable to all students of divinity. Its
author was highly respected for his learning and
piety. He was archdeacon of Sufl^olk, and at one
time Hebrew lecturer at Christ-church, Oxford.
His extensive library of oriental books has bciea
preserved in Clare Hall, Cambridge, to which college
it was presented by himselfl
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
19
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