iisaii it- — ' * — f-,^~T-' "^ 1 s 1 E f \^ ' E. F EH t , .... ii;v mm\ Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT mm. Red Letter Library ESSAYS BY SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 11 T^BE^Cd fffO Introduction We are inclined to think of Temple to-day, if we ever think of him at all, as the lover to whom Dorothy Osborne wrote such charming letters, or as the patron under whose roof the unhappy romance of Swift and Stella had its birth. In the eighteenth century he stood on a literary pedestal. Pope looked to him as the standard of correct English. Johnson cited him as " the first writer who gave cadence to English prose " — a bewildering dictum from the biographer, and imitator, of Sir Thomas Browne. Goldsmith has told us that "his style is the model by which the best prose writers in the reign of Queen Anne formed themselves". But Temple has a claim to remembrance apart from the merely academic interest of his place in the development of English prose or his relation to those affaires de ccxur which are all that present-day readers seem to care for in the memories of the Past. The nature of his claim is indicated in Elia's INTRODUCTION delightful essay on "The Genteel Style in Writing ". A real and living personality de- taches itself from the somewhat faded back- ground of his sedate and leisurely disquisition — a personal note that is neither poignant nor insistent, but suave, restful, and, for those who have the patience to take the author on his own terms, not without a peculiar fascination. If Macaulay's famous reading of Temple's character were correct, it would not be worth while to listen to the pretended self-revelation of one whose most intimate talks with his reader were only a calculated pose. " A tem- per not naturally good, but under strict com- mand ; a constant regard to decorum ; a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life ; a disposition to be con- tent with small and certain winnings rather than go on doubling the stakes"; these seem to Macaulay to be " the most remarkable features " of Temple's character, and they are features, as he reasonably enough maintains, that "may be perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, with coldness of heart, and with the most intense selfishness ". But Macaulay was notoriously incapable of appreciating the more delicate shades and half-tones of char- acter. He seemed even to resent the very ex- istence of qualities which did not lend them- INTRODUCTION selves to reproduction by his crude method of glaring high lights and contrasts. Temple's most susceptible years were spent in an atmosphere of fierce political and religious strife. The chief impression which was left upon his mind was an aversion from the ex- tremes of party spirit, or, as he preferred to call it, from " faction ". The dutiful son of a moderate Roundhead, he had his earliest education at the hands of a Royalist uncle, the pious and learned Hammond. Any bias that Hammond's teaching may have given to Temple's ideas was strengthened by an al- liance with the daughter of an enthusiastically Royalist house. Temple's domestic happiness depended upon the mutual accommodation of his father's standpoint and the standpoint which his wife brought into her new home. He was sensitive — perhaps abnormally sensi- tive — to the feelings and views of those whom he loved. It is not unreasonable to trace the neutral complexion of his political opinions as much to the necessity of conciliating alike both paternal and conjugal prejudices as to caution and worldly prudence. It was inevit- able that he should choose diplomacy rather than politics as the more desirable career. As a diplomatist he established a great and de- served reputation. He proved himself saga- INTRODUCTION clous, frank, and winning. " He never had a mind to make anybody kind to him, without compassing his design." As he himself con- fessed, he often acted according to Solomon's advice, neither to oppose the mighty, nor to go about to stop the current of a river. He had little of that " heroic virtue " upon which he wrote a long and rather tedious essay. Yet few or none of the public men of that age could honestly say, as Temple could, and did : " I stand always upon the ground of having never done either an unjust or ungentlemanly action in my life, or an unfaithful one to the service of my master or my country ". Most of Swift's allusions to his former patron suggest an unpleasing kind of pomposity. Yet Swift had written in his diary, on the death of Temple, that with him died '* all that was good and amiable among men ". In the last years of his life, living secluded and surrounded only by dependents and the admiring devotion of his family. Temple may have grown into some of the airs of a grand seigneur. His health was poor. He suffered much, and was impatient of pain, disliking to be seen by anyone, except a servant or two, while the fits of gout were upon him. His love of a rural life was genuine. He was, so his sister Lady Giffard has re- corded, " sensible extremely to good air and INTRODUCTION good smells " — one reason, over and above his shrinking from the rough-and-tumble of politics, why he w^as always anxious to escape from the smoke of London to his garden at Sheen. But he never forgot, in the pleasure which he derived from tying up his apricots and watch- ing over his white figs and soft peaches, which he esteemed " the best sorts of all among us ", that he was the author of the Triple Alliance; and he never could bear to think with patience of the failure that had so soon overtaken his great experiment in Constitution-makings There was, as Macaulay has more than hinted, a strain of valetudinarianism in Temple's nature. There may even have been a touch of eifeminacy. His sister and his wife — probably in this order of prece- dency, for Lady GifFard was a strong-minded woman, who accompanied her brother in his most arduous tasks — filled a larger place in his life than any of his men friends. Their in- fluence can be felt in the purity and refinement which, in an age of licence and coarseness, give an almost unique distinction to his writing. Probably it appears, too, in the tenacity with which he clings to old associations. He loves the old, long-winded romances that he had read with his wife in the days of courtship. He deplores the mocking tone which disfigures the INTRODUCTION literature and conversation of the Restoration, and looks back regretfully to the more serious, dignified, and courtly spirit that reigned in society when the first Charles was King. His high admiration of Sir Philip Sidney was a sur- vival from the boyish days when his imagination was captured by the genius loci at Penshurst. Even the affectation of scholarship which be- trayed him into so many ludicrous blunders has its sentimental side. It is his way of paying tribute to the " Giants before the Flood "; the portents of omnivorous but uncritical erudition that flourished before learning was frightened away, from Universities as well as Courts, by the din of arms. When a new race of courtiers sprang up, who preferred lampoons to letters, Temple was ready to defend unfashionable scholarship against frivolous charges of pe- dantry, and speaks with regretful wonder of the vast acquisitions of a Casaubon. A stately but graceful figure, he still moves amongst his green lawns and gay parterres, or along the sunny side of a vine-covered wall, now recalling some decorous anecdote that he has gathered at Nimeguen on the Hague, now moralizing on the unwisdom of attempting to force Nature, " by observing how seldom God Almighty does it Himself, by so few true and undisputed miracles, as we see or hear of in INTRODUCTION the world " ; and anon falling into a more solemn train of meditation, as in that famous thought which Goldsmith admired so much that he more than once adopted it as his own: "When all is done, Human Life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over". Temple's writings are, in the phrase of Bacon, neither to be swallowed nor chewed. If we wish to savour their elusive quality aright we must treat them as he would have done his favourite peaches : pluck them so tenderly as not to brush off the delicate bloom, and let their cool freshness imperceptibly communicate itself to the jaded palate. J. A. NICKLIN. Contents Page Upon the Gardens of Epicurus - - 13 An Essay upon the Cure of the Gout by Moxa - - . - - - 67 Of Health and Long Life . _ _ 103 Of Poetry ------ 151 An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning - - - - - 199 Memoirs - - - - - -251 UPON THE GARDENS divert them. This last is the common busi- ness of common men, who seek it by all sorts of sports, pleasures, play or business. But, be- cause the two first are of short continuance, soon ending with weariness, or decay of vigour and appetite, the return whereof must be attended, before the others can be renewed; and because play grows dull if it be not enlivened with the hopes of gain, the general diversion of mankind seems to be business, or the pursuit of riches in one kind or other; which is an amusement that has this one advantage above all others, that it lasts those men who engage in it to the very ends of their lives: none ever growing too old for the thoughts and desires of increasing his wealth and fortunes, either for himself, his friends, or his posterity. In the first and most simple ages of each country, the conditions and lives of men seem to have been very near of kin with the rest of the creatures ; they lived by the hour, or by the day, and satisfied their appetite with what they could get from the herbs, the fruits, the springs they met with when they were hungry or dry; then, with what fish, fowl, or beasts they could kill, by swiftness or strength, by craft or contrivance, by their hands, or such instruments as wit helped or necessity forced them to invent. When a man had got enough for the day, he laid up the rest for the morrow, and spent one day in labour that he might pass the other at ease; and lured on by the pleasure of this bait, when he was in vigour, and his game fortunate, he would provide for 14 OF EPICURUS as many days as he could, both for himself and his children, that were too young to seek out for themselves. Then he cast about, how by sowing of grain, and by pasture of the tamer cattle, to provide for the whole year. After this, dividing the lands necessary for these uses, first among children, and then among servants, he reserved to himself a pro- portion of their gain, either in the native stock, or something equivalent, which brought in the use of money; and where this once came in none was to be satisfied, without having enough for himself and his family, and all his and their posterity for ever ; so that I know a certain Lord who professes to value no lease, though for an hundred or a thousand years, nor any estate or possession of land, that is not for ever and ever. From such small beginnings have grown such vast and extravagant designs of poor mortal men: yet none could ever answer the naked Indian, why one man should take pains, and run hazards by sea and land all his life that his children might be safe and lazy all theirs: and the precept of taking no care for to-morrow, though never minded as impracti- cable in the world, seems but to reduce man- kind to their natural and original condition of life. However, by these ways and degrees, the endless increase of riches seems to be grown the perpetual and general amusement, or business of mankind. Some few in each country make those higher flights after honour and power, and to these 15 UPON THE GARDENS ends sacrifice their riches, their labour, their thought, and their lives; and nothing diverts nor busies men more than these pursuits, which are usually covered with the pretences of serving a man's country, and of public good. But the true service of the public is a business of so much labour and so much care, that though a good and wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it by his Prince or his country, and thinks he can be of more than vulgar use, yet he will seldom or never seek it; but leaves it commonly to men who, under the disguise of public good, pursue their own designs of wealth, power, and such bas- tard honours as usually attend them, not that which is the true, and only true reward of virtue. The pursuits of ambition, though not so general, yet are as endless as those of riches, and as extravagant; since none ever yet thought he had power or empire enough : and what Prince soever seems to be so great, as to live and reign without any further desires, or fears, falls into the life of a private man, and enjoys but those pleasures and entertainments, which a great many several degrees of private fortune will allow, and as much as human nature is capable of enjoying. The pleasures of the senses grow a little more choice and refined; those of imagination are turned upon embellishing the scenes he chooses to live in; ease, conveniency, elegancy, magnificence, are sought in building first, and then in furnishing houses or palaces : the i6 (C217) OF EPICURUS admirable imitations of nature are introduced by pictures, statues, tapestry, and other such achievements of arts. And the most exquisite delights of sense are pursued, in the contriv- ance and plantation of gardens ; which, with fruits, flowers, shades, fountains, and the music of birds that frequent such happy places, seem to furnish all the pleasures of the several senses, and, with the greatest, or at least the most natural perfections. Thus the first race of Assyrian Kings, after the conquests of Ninus and Semiramis, passed their lives, till their empire fell to the Medes. Thus the Caliphs of Egypt, till desposed by their Mamalukes. Thus passed the latter parts of those great lives of Scipio, Lucullus, Augustus, Diocletian. Thus turned the great thoughts of Henry II of France, after the end of his wars with Spain. Thus the present King of Morocco, after having subdued all his competitors, passes his life in a country villa, gives audience in a grove of orange -trees planted among purling streams. And thus the King of France, after all the successes of his councils or arms, and in the mighty elevation of his present greatness and power, when he gives himself leisure from such de- signs or pursuits, passes the softer and easier parts of his time in country houses and gar- dens, in building, planting, or adorning the scenes, or in the common sports and enter- tainments of such kind of lives. And those mighty Emperors, who contented not them- selves with these pleasures of common human- ( c 217 ) 17 2 UPON THE GARDENS ity, fell Into the frantic or the extravagant; they pretended to be Gods or turned to be Devils, as Caligula and Nero, and too many others known enough in story. Whilst mankind is thus generally busied or amused, that part of them, who have had either the justice or the luck to pass in common opinion for the wisest and the best part among them, have followed another and very different scent; and instead of the common designs of satisfying their appetites and their passions, and making endless provisions for both, they have chosen what they thought a nearer and a surer way to the ease and felicity of life, by endeavouring to subdue, or at least to temper their passions, and reduce their appetites to what nature seems only to ask and to need. And this design seems to have brought philo- sophy into the world, at least that which is termed moral, and appears to have an end not only desirable by every man, which is the ease and happiness of life, but also in some degree suitable to the force and reach of human nature: for, as to that part of philo- sophy which is called natural, I know no end it can have, but that of either busying a man's brains to no purpose, or satisfying the vanity so natural to most men of distinguishing them- selves, by some way or other, from those that seem their equals in birth, and the common advantages of it; and whether this distinction be made by wealth or power, or appearance of knowledge, which gains esteem and applause in the world, is all a case. More than this I i8 OF EPICURUS know no advantage mankind has gained by the progress of natural philosophy, during so many ages it has had vogue in the world, excepting always, and very justly, what we owe to the mathematics, which is in a manner all that seems valuable among the civilized nations, more than those we call barbarous, whether they are so or no, or more so than ourselves. How ancient this natural philosophy has been in the world is hard to know; for we find frequent mention of ancient philosophers in this kind, among the most ancient now extant with us. The first who found out the vanity of it seems to have been Solomon, of which discovery he has left such admirable strains in Ecclesiastes. The next was Socrates, who made it the business of his life to explode it, and introduce that which we call moral in its place, to busy human minds to better purpose. And indeed, whoever reads with thought what these two, and Marcus An- toninus, have said upon the vanity of all that mortal man can ever attain to know of nature, in its originals or operations, may save himself a great deal of pains, and justly conclude, that the knowledge of such things is not our game; and (like the pursuit of a stag by a little spaniel) may serve to amuse and to weary us, but will never be hunted down. Yet I think those three I have named may justly pass for the wisest triumvirate, that are left us upon the records of story or of time. After Socrates, who left nothing in writing, 19 UPON THE GARDENS many sects of philosophers began to spread in Greece, who entered boldly upon both parts of natural and moral philosophy. The first with the greatest disagreement, and the most eager contention that could be upon the greatest subjects: as, whether the world were eternal, or produced at some certain time ? whether, if produced, it was by some eternal Mind, and to some end, or by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or some particles of eter- nal matter ? whether there was one world, or many ? whether the soul of man was a part of some etherial and eternal substance, or was corporeal ? whether, if eternal, it was so before it came into the body, or only after it went out : There were the same contentions about the motions of the heavens, the magni- tude of the celestial bodies, the faculties of the mind, and the judgment of the senses. But all the different schemes of nature that have been drawn of old, or of late, by Plato, Aris- totle, Epicurus, Des Cartes, Hobbs, or any other that I know of, seem to agree but in one thing, which is, the want of demonstration or satisfaction, to any thinking and unpossessed man; and seem more or less probable one than another, according to the wit and eloquence of the authors and advocates that raise or defend them; like jugglers' tricks, that have more or less appearance of being real, according to the dexterousness and skill of him that plays 'em; whereas perhaps, if we were capable of know- ing truth and nature, these fine schemes would prove like rover shots, some nearer and some OF EPICURUS further off, but all at great distance from the mark; it may be, none in sight. Yet in the midst of these and many other such disputes and contentions in their natural philosophy, they seemed to agree much better in their moral; and, upon their enquiries after the ultimate end of man, which was his happi- ness, their contentions or differences seemed to be rather in words, than in the sense of their opinions, or in the true meaning of their several authors or masters of their sects: all concluded that happiness was the chief good, and ought to be the ultimate end of man; that, as this was the end of wisdom, so wisdom was the way to happiness. The question then was, in what this happiness consisted? The contention grew warmest between the Stoics and Epicureans; the other sects, in this point, siding in a manner with one or the other of these in their conceptions or expressions. The Stoics would have it to consist in virtue, and the Epicureans in pleasure; yet the most reasonable of the Stoics made the pleasure of virtue to be the greatest happiness; and the best of the Epicureans made the greatest plea- sure to consist in virtue ; and the difference between these two seems not easily discovered. All agreed, the greatest temper, if not the total subduing of passion, and exercise of reason, to be the state of the greatest felicity; to live without desires or fears, or those perturbations of mind and thought, which passions raise; to place true riches in wanting little, rather than in possessing much, and true pleasure in 21 UPON THE GARDENS temperance, rather than in satisfying the senses; to live with indifference to the common enjoy- ments and accidents of life, and with constancy upon the greatest blows of fate or of chance; not to disturb our minds with sad reflexions upon what is past, nor with anxious cares or raving hopes about what is to come; neither to disquiet life with the fears of death, nor death with the desires of life; but in both, and in all things else, to follow nature; seem to be the precepts most agreed among them. Thus reason seems only to have been called in to allay those disorders which itself had raised, to cure its own wounds, and pretends to make us wise no other way, than by render- ing us insensible. This at least was the pro- fession of many rigid Stoics, who would have had a wise man, not only without any sort of passion, but without any sense of pain, as well as pleasure; and to enjoy himself in the midst of diseases and torments, as well as of health and ease : a principle, in my mind, against common nature and common sense; and which might have told us in fewer words, or with less circumstance, that a man, to be wise, should not be a man; and this perhaps might have been easy enough to believe, but nothing so hard as the other. The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of mind, and indolence of body; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we OF EPICURUS feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countries, constitutions of laws and re- ligion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions : what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by the Sceptics indisturbance; by the Molinists quietism ; by common men peace of con- science; seems all to mean but great tran- quillity of mind, though it be made to proceed from so diverse causes, as human wisdom, innocence of life, or resignation to the will of God. An old usurer had the same notion, when he said. No man could have peace of conscience, that ran out of his estate ; not comprehending what else was meant by that phrase, besides true quiet and content of mind; which, however expressed, is, I suppose, meant by all to be the best account that can be given of the happiness of man, since no man can pretend to be happy without it. I have often wondered how such sharp and violent invectives came to be made so generally against Epicurus, by the ages that followed him, whose admirable wit, felicity of expres- sion, excellence of nature, sweetness of con- versation, temperance of life, and constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by his scholars, and honoured By the Athenians. But this injustice may be fastened chiefly upon the envy and malignity of the Stoics at first, then upon the mistakes of some gross pretenders to his sect (who took pleasure only to be sensual) and afterwards, upon the 23 UPON THE GARDENS piety of the primitive Christians, who esteemed his principles of natural philosophy more opposite to those of our religion, than either the Platonists, the Peripatetics, or Stoics themselves : yet, I confess, I do not know why the account, given by Lucretius of the Gods, should be thought more impious than that given by Homer, who makes them not only subject to all the weakest passions, but per- petually busy in all the worst or meanest actions of men. But Epicurus has found so great advocates of his virtue, as well as learning and inventions, that there need no more ; and the testimonies of Diogenes Laertius alone seem too sincere and impartial to be disputed, or to want the assistance of modern authors : if all failed, he would be but too well defended by the excel- lence of so many of his sect in all ages, and especially of those who lived in the compass of one, but the greatest in story, both as to per- sons and events: I need name no more than Cssar, Atticus, Maecenas, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace ; all admirable in their several kinds, and perhaps unparalleled in story. Cc-Esar, if considered in all lights, may justly challenge the first place in the registers we have of mankind, equal only to himself, and surpassing all others of his nation and his age, in the virtues and excellencies of a statesman, a captain, an orator, an historian ; besides all these, a poet, a philosopher, when his leisure allowed him; the greatest man of counsel and of action, of design and execution; the greatest 24 OF EPICURUS nobleness of birth, of person, and of counte- nance; the greatest humanity and clemency of nature, in the midst of the greatest provocations, occasions, and examples of cruelty and revenge: 'tis true, he overturned the laws and constitu- tions of his country, yet 'tv/as after so many others had not only begun, but proceeded very far, to change and violate them; so as, in what he did, he seems rather to have prevented others, than to have done what himself de- signed ; for, though his ambition was vast, yet it seems to have been raised to those heights, rather by the insolence of his enemies than by his own temper ; and that what was natural to him was only a desire of true glory, and to acquire it by good actions as well as great, by conquests of barbarous nations, ex- tent of the Roman empire; defending at first the liberties of the Plebeians, opposing the faction that had begun in Sylla, and ended in Pompey ; and, in the whole course of his victories and successes, seeking all occasions of bounty to his friends, and clemency to his enemies. Atticus appears to have been one of the wisest and best of the Romans ; learned with- out pretending, good without affectation, bountiful without design, a friend to all men in misfortune, a flatterer to no man in great- ness or power, a lover of mankind, and beloved by them all; and, by these virtues and dis- positions, he passed safe and untouched, through all the flames of civil dissensions that ravaged his country the greatest part of UPON THE GARDENS his life ; and, though he never entered into any public affairs, or particular factions of his state, yet he was favoured, honoured, and courted by them all, from Sylla to Augustus. Maecenas was the wisest counsellor, the truest friend, both of his Prince and his coun- try, the best Governor of Rome, the happiest and ablest negotiator, the best judge of learn- ing and virtue, the choicest in his friends, and thereby the happiest in his conversation that has been known in story; and, I think, to his conduct in civil, and Agrippa's in military affairs, may be truly ascribed all the fortunes and greatness of Augustus, so much celebrated in the world. For Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, they deserve, in my opinion, the honour of the greatest philosophers, as well as the best poets of their nation or age. The two first, besides \^ what looks like something more than human in their poetry, were very great naturalists^ and admirable in their morals : and Horace, besides the sweetness and elegancy of his lyrics, appears, in the rest of his writings, so great a master of life, and of true sense in the conduct of it, that I know none beyond him. It was no mean strain of his philosophy to refuse being Secretary to Augustus, when so great an emperor so much desired it. But all the different sects of philosophers seem to have agreed in the opinion of a wise man's abstain- ing from public affairs, which is thought the meaning of Pythagoras's precept, to abstain from baans, by which the affairs or public 26 OF EPICURUS ^iA^'^^f. resolutions in Athens were managed. They thought that sort of business too gross and material for the abstracted fineness of their speculations. They esteemed it too sordid and too artificial for the cleanness and simpli- city of their manners and lives. They would have no part in the faults of a government ; and they knew too well, that the nature and passions of men made them incapable of any that was perfect and good ; and therefore thought all the service they could do to the state they lived under, was to mend the lives and manners of particular men that composed it. But, where factions were once entered and rooted in a State, they thought it madness for good men to meddle with public aff'airs; which made them turn their thoughts and entertainments to any thing rather than this ; and Heraclitus, having, upon the factions of the citizens, quitted the government of his city, and amusing himself to play with the boys in the porch of the temple, asked those who wondered at him. Whether 'twas not better to play with such boys, than govern such men? But above all, they esteemed public business the most contrary of all others to that tranquillity of mind, which they esteemed and taught to be the only true felicity of man. For this reason Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden; there he studied, there he exercised, there he taught his philosophy; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contri- bute so much to both the tranquillity of mind 27 UPON THE GARDENS and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercises of working or walking, but above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the body and mind. Though Epicurus be said to have been the first that had a garden in Athens, whose citizens before him had theirs in their villas or farms without the city ; yet the use of gardens seems to have been the most ancient and most general of any sorts of possession among mankind, and to have preceded those of corn or of cattle, as yielding the easier, the pleasanter, and more natural food. As it has been the inclination of Kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has been the common favourite of public and private men; a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest; and indeed an employment and a possession, for which no man is too high nor too low. If we believe the Scripture, we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the life of a man in a garden the happiest he could give him, or else he would not have placed Adam in that of Eden ; that it was the state of innocence and pleasure ; and that the life of husbandry and cities came after the fall, with guilt and with labour. Where Par.idise was has been much debated, 28 OF EPICURUS and little agreed ; but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be con- jectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it, as what was much in use and delight among the Kings of those eastern countries. Strabo, describing Jericho, says, " Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam aliae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax, palmis abundans, spatio stadiorum centum, totus irriguus, ibi est Regia et Balsami Paradisus". He mentions another place to be " prope Libanum et Paradisum". And Alexander is written to have seen Cyrus's tomb in a Paradise, being a tower not very great, and covered with a shade of trees about it. So that a Paradise among them seems to have been a large space of ground, adorned and beautified with all sorts of trees, both of fruits and of forest, either found there before it was inclosed, or planted after ; either cultivated like gardens, for shades and for walks, with fountains or streams, and all sorts of plants usual in the climate, and pleasant to the eye, the smell, or the taste; or else employed, like our parks, for inclosure and harbour of all sorts of wild beasts, as well as for the pleasure of riding and walking : and so they were of more or less extent, and of different entertain- ment, according to the several humours of the Princes that ordered and inclosed them. Semiramis is the first we are told of in story that brought them in use through her empire, and was so fond of them, as to make one 29 UPON THE GARDENS wherever she built, and in all, or most of the provinces she subdued; which are said to have been from Babylon as far as India. The Assyrian Kings continued this custom and care, or rather this pleasure, till one of them brought in the use of smaller and more regular gardens : for having married a wife he was fond of, out of one of the provinces, where such Paradises or gardens were much in use, and the country lady not well bearing the air or inclosure of the palace in Babylon to which the Assyrian Kings used to confine themselves ; he made her gardens, not only within the palaces, but upon terraces raised with earth, over the arched roofs, and even upon the top of the highest tower; planted them with all sorts of fruit trees, as well as other plants and flowers, the most pleasant of that country ; and thereby made at least the most airy gardens, as well as the most costly, that have been heard of in the world. This lady may probably have been native of the provinces of Chasimir, or of Damascus, which have in all times been the happiest regions for fruits of all the East, by the excel- lence of soil, the position of mountains, the frequency of streams, rather than the advan- tages of climate. And 'tis great pity we do not yet see the history of Chasimir, which Monsieur Bernier assured me he had trans- lated out of Persian, and intended to publish; and of which he has given such a taste in his excellent Memoirs of the Mogul's country. The next gardens we read of are those of 30 OF EPICURUS Solomon, planted with all sorts of fruit trees and watered with fountains; and, though we have no more particular description of them, yet we may find they were the places where he passed the times of his leisure and delight, where the houses as well as grounds were adorned with all that could be of pleasing and elegant, and were the retreats and enter- tainments of those among his wives that he loved the best; and 'tis not improbable that the Paradises mentioned by Strabo were planted by this great and wisest king. But the idea of the garden must be very great, if it answers at all to that of the gardener, who must have employed a great deal of his care, and of his study, as well as of his leisure and thought, in these entertainments, since he writ of all plants, from the cedar to the shrub. What the gardens of the Hesperides were, we have little or no account, further than the mention of them, and thereby the testimony of their having been in use and request, in such remoteness of place and antiquity of time. The garden of Alcinous, described by Homer, seems wholly poetical, and made at the pleasure of the painter; like the rest of the romantic palace in that little barren island of Phasacia or Corfu. Yet, as all the pieces of this transcendent genius are composed with excellent knowledge, as well as fancy, so they seldom fail of instruction as well as delight, to all that read him. The seat of this garden, joining to the gates of the palace, the compass 31 UPON THE GARDENS of the inclosure being four acres, the tall trees of shade, as well as those of fruit, the two fountains, the one for the use of the garden, and the other of the palace, the continual succession of fruits throughout the whole year, are, for aught I know, the best rules or provisions that can go towards composing the best gardens ; nor is it unlikely that Homer may have drawn this picture after the life of some he had seen in Ionia, the country and usual abode of this divine poet; and indeed, the region of the most refined pleasures and luxury, as well as invention and wit : for the humour and custom of gardens may have descended earlier into the lower Asia, from Damascus, Assyria, and other parts of the eastern empires, though they seem to have made late entrance, and smaller im- provement in those of Greece and Rome ; at least in no proportion to their other inven- tions or refinements of pleasure and luxury. The long and flourishing peace of the two first empires gave earlier rise and growth to learning and civility, and all the consequences of them, in magnificence and elegancy of build- ing and gardening; whereas Greece and Rome were almost perpetually engaged in quarrels and wars either abroad or at home, and so were busy in actions that were done under the sun, rather than those under the shade. These were the entertainments of the softer nations, that fell under the virtue and prowess of the two last empires, which from those conquests brought home mighty increases 32 OF EPICURUS both of riches and luxury, and so perhaps lost more than they got by the spoils of the East. There may be another reason for the small advance of gardening in those excellent and more temperate climates, where the air and soil were so apt of themselves to produce the best sorts of fruits, without the necessity of cultivating them by labour and care; whereas the hotter climates, as well as the cold, are forced upon industry and skill, to produce or improve many fruits that grow of themselves in the more temperate regions. However it were, we have very little mention of gardens in old Greece, or in old Rome, for pleasure or with elegance, nor of much curiousness or care, to introduce the fruits of foreign climates, contenting themselves with those which were native of their own; and these were the vine, the olive, the fig, the pear, and the apple: Cato, as I remember, mentions no more; and their gardens were then but the necessary part of their farms, intended particularly for the cheap and easy food of their hinds or slaves employed in their agriculture, and so were turned chiefly to all the common sorts of plants, herbs, or legumes (as the French call them) proper for common nourishment; and the name of " hortus " is taken to be from " ortus ", because it perpetually furnishes some rise or production of something new in the world. Lucullus, after the Mithridatic war, first brought cherries from Pontus into Italy, ( c 217 ) 33 3 UPON THE GARDENS which so generally pleased, and were so easily propagated in all climates, that within the space of about an hundred years, having travelled westward with the Roman con- quests, they grew common as far as the Rhine, and passed over into Britain. After the conquest of Afric, Greece, the lesser Asia, and Syria, were brought into Italy all the sorts of their " mala ", which we inter- pret apples, and might signify no more at first, but were afterwards applied to many other foreign fruits : the apricots, coming from Epire, were called "mala Epirotica"; peaches from Persia, "mala Persica"; citrons of Media, " Medica " ; pomegranates from Carthage, "Punica"; quinces, " Cathonea ", from a small island in the Grecian seas; their best pears were brought from Alexandria, Numidia, Greece, and Numantia, as appears by their several appellations: their plums, from Armenia, Syria, but chiefly from Damascus. The kinds of these are reckoned, in Nero's time, to have been near thirty, as well as of figs; and many of them were entertained at Rome with so great applause, and so general vogue, that the great Captains, and even consular men, who first brought them over, took pride in giving them their own names (by which they ran a great while in Rome), as in memory of some great service or pleasure they had done their country; so that not only laws and battles, but several sorts of apples or " mala ", and of pears, were called Manlian and Claudian, Pompeian 34 OF EPICURUS and Tiberian ; and by several other such noble names. Thus the fruits of Rome, in about an hundred years, came from countries as far as their conquests had reached ; and like learning, architecture, painting, and statuary, made their great advances in Italy about the Augustan age. What was of most request in their common gardens in Virgil's time, or at least in his youth, may be conjectured by the description of his old Corycian's gar- dens in the fourth of the Georgics, which begins: Namque sub Oebali^e memini me turribus altis. Among flowers, the roses had the first place, especially a kind which bore twice a year; and none other sorts are here mentioned besides the narcissus, though the violet and the lily were very common, and the next in esteem, especially the " breve lilium ", which was the tuberose. The plants he mentions are the *' apium ", which though commonly inter- preted parsley, yet comprehends all sorts of smallage, whereof celery is one; '^cucumis", which takes in all sorts of melons, as well as cucumbers; "olus", which is a common word for all sorts of pot-herbs and legumes; "verbenas", which signifies all kinds of sweet or sacred plants that were used for adorning the altars; as bays, olive, rosemary, myrtle: the " acanthus " seems to be what we called pericanthe; but what their "heders" were, that deserved place in a garden, I cannot guess, 35 UPON THE GARDENS unless they had sorts of ivy unknown to us; nor what his " vescum papaver " was, since poppies with us are of no use in eating. The fruits mentioned are only apples, pears, and plums; for olives, vines, and figs were grown to be fruits of their fields, rather than of their gardens. The shades were the elm, the pine, the lime tree, and the " platanus ", or plane tree, whose leaf and shade, of all others, was the most in request; and, having been brought out of Persia, was such an inclination among the Greeks and Romans, that they usually fed it with wine instead of water: they believed this tree loved that liquor, as well as those that used to drink under its shade; which was a great humour and custom, and perhaps gave rise to the other, by observing the growth of the tree, or largeness of the leaves, where much wine was spilt or left, and thrown upon the roots. 'Tis great pity the haste, which Virgil seems here to have been in, should have hindered him from entering farther into the account or instructions of gardening, which he said he could have given, and which he seems to have so much esteemed and loved, by that admirable picture of this old man's felicity, which he draws like so great a master, with one stroke of a pencil in those four words: Regum ffiquabat opes animis — that in the midst of these small possessions, upon a few acres of barren ground, yet he equalled all the wealth and opulence of 36 OF EPICURUS Kings, in the ease, content, and freedom of his mind. I am not satisfied with the common accepta- tion of the "mala aurea " for oranges; nor do I find any passage in the authors of that age, which gives me the opinion that these were otherwise known to the Romans than as fruits of the eastern climates. I should take their " mala aurea " to be rather some kind of apples, so called from the golden colour, as some are amongst us ; for otherwise, the orange tree is too noble in the beauty, taste, and smell of its fruit ; in the perfume and virtue of its flowers ; in the perpetual verdure of its leaves, and in the excellent uses of all these, both for pleasure and health, not to have deserved any particular mention in the writings of an age and nation so refined and exquisite in all sorts of delicious luxury. The charming description Virgil makes of the happy apple must be intended either for the citron, or for some sort of orange growing in Media, which was either so proper to that country, as not to grow in any other, (as a certain sort of fig was to Damascus) or to have lost its virtue by changing soils, or to have had its effect of curing some sort of poison that was usual in that country, but particular to it: I can- not forbear inserting those few lines out of the second of Virgil's Georgics, not having ever heard any body else take notice of them: Media fert tristes succos, tarduiiicjue saporem Felicis mali; quo non prsesentius ullum, 37 UPON THE GARDENS Pocula si quando sasvas infecere novercse, Auxilium venit, ac membris agit atra venena. Ipsa ingens arbos, faciemque similliina lauro; Et, si non alios late jactaret odores, Laurus erit: folia baud ullis labentia ventis; Flos apprima tenax: animas et olentia Medi Ora fovent illo, ac senibus medicantur anhellis. Media brings pois'nous herbs, and the flat taste Of the bless'd apple, than which ne'er was found A help more present, when curs'd step-dames mix Their mortal cups, to drive the venom out. 'T is a large tree, and like a bays in hue; And, did it not such odours cast about, 'T would be a bays; the leaves with no winds tall, The flowers all excel: with these the Medes Perfume their breaths, and cure old pursy men. The tree being so like a bays or laurel, the slow or dull taste of the apple, the virtue of it against poison, seem to describe the citron. The perfume of the flowers and virtues of them, to cure ill scents of mouth or breath, or shortness of wind in pursy old men, seem to agree most with the orange: if " flos apprima tenax " mean only the excellence of the flower above all others, it may be intended for the orange; if it signifies the flowers growing most upon the tops of the trees, it may be rather the citron; for I have been so curious as to bring up a citron from a kernel, which at twelve years of age began to flower; and I observed all the flowers to grow upon the top branches of the tree, but to be nothing so high or sweet- scented as the orange. On the other side, I have always heard oranges to pass for a cordial juice, and a great preservative against 38 OF EPICURUS the plague, which is a sort of venom; so that I know not to which of these we are to ascribe this lovely picture of the happy apple; but I am satisfied by it, that neither of them was at all common, if at all known in Italy, at that time, or long after, though the fruit be now so frequent there in fields (at least in some parts), and make so common and delicious a part of gardening, even in these northern climates. 'Tis certain those noble fruits, the citron, the orange, and the lemon, are the native product of those noble regions, Assyria, Media, and Persia ; and, though they have been from thence transplanted and propagated in many parts of Europe, yet they have not arrived at such perfection in beauty, taste, or virtue, as in their native soil and climate. This made it generally observed among the Greeks and Romans, that the fruits of the East far excelled those of the West. And several writers have trifled away their time in deducing the reasons of this difference, from the more benign or powerful influences of the rising sun. But there is nothing more evident to any man that has the least knowledge of the globe, and gives himself leave to think, than the folly of such wise reasons, since the regions that are East to us are West to some others ; and the sun rises alike to all that lie in the same latitude, with the same heat and virtue upon its first approaches, as well as in its progress. Besides, if the eastern fruits were the better only for that position of climate, then those of India should excel those of Persia; which we 39 UPON THH GARDENS do not find by comparing the accounts of those countries: but Assyria, Media, and Persia have been ever esteemed, and will be ever found the true regions of the best and noblest fruits in the world. The reason of it can be no other than that of an excellent and proper soil, being there extended under the best climate for the production of all sorts of the best fruits; which seems to be from about twenty-five to about thirty-five degrees of latitude. Now the regions under this climate in the present Persian empire (which comprehends most of the other two, called anciently Assyria and Media) are composed of many provinces full of great and fertile plains, bounded by high mountains, especially to the North; watered naturally with many rivers, and those, by art and labour, derived into many more and smaller streams, which all conspire to form a country, in all circumstances the most proper and agreeable for production of the best and noblest fruits. Whereas if we survey the regions of the western world, lying in the same latitude between twenty-five and thirty-five degrees, we shall find them extend either over the Mediterranean Sea, the ocean, or the sandy barren countries of Africa; and that no part of the continent of Europe lies so southward as thirty-five degrees. Which may serve to dis- cover the true genuine reason why the fruits of the East have been always observed and agreed to transcend those of the West. In our north-west climates, our gardens are very different from what they were in Greece 40 OF EPICURUS and Italy, and from what they are now in those regions in Spain or the southern parts of France. And as most general customs in countries grow from the different nature of climate, soils, or situations, and from the necessities or industry they impose, so do these. In the warmer regions, fruits and flowers of the best sorts are so common and of so easy production, that they grow in fields, and are not worth the cost of inclosing, or the care of more than ordinary cultivating. On the other side, the great pleasures of those climates are coolness of air, and whatever looks cool even to the eyes, and relieves them from the unpleasant sight of dusty streets, or parched fields. This makes the gardens of those countries to be chiefly valued by largeness of extent (which gives greater play and openness of air), by shades of trees, by frequency of living streams, or fountains, by perspectives, by statues, and by pillars and obelisks of stone scattered up and down, which all conspire _to make any place look fresh and cool. On the contrary, the more northern climates, as they suffer little by heat, make little provision against it, and are careless of shade, and seldom curious in fountains. Good statues are in the reach of few men, and common ones are generally and justly despised or neglected. But no sorts of good fruits or flowers, being natives of the climates, or usual among us (nor indeed the best sort of plants, herbs, salads for our kitchen ~ gardens them- 41 UPON THE GARDENS selves), and the best fruits not ripening without the advantage of walls and palisadoes, by reflexion of the faint heat we receive from the sun, our gardens are made of smaller compass, seldom exceeding four, six, or eight acres ; inclosed with walls, and laid out in a manner wholly for advantage of fruits, flowers, and the product of kitchen-gardens in all sorts of herbs, salads, plants, and legumes, for the common use of tables. These are usually the gardens of England and Holland, as the first sort are those of Italy, and were so of old. In the more temperate parts of France and in Brabant (where I take gardening to be at its greatest height) they are composed of both sorts, the extent more spacious than ours; part laid out for flowers, others for fruits; some standards, some against walls or palisadoes, some for forest trees and groves for shade, some parts wild, some exact; and fountains much in request among them. But after so much ramble into ancient times, and remote places, to return home and con- sider the present way and humour of our gardening in England; which seem to have grown into such vogue, and to have been so mightily improved in three or four and twenty years of his Majesty's reign, that perhaps few countries are before us, either in the elegance of our gardens, or in the number of our plants; and, I believe, none equals us in the variety of fruits which may be justly called good; and from the earliest cherry and strawberry, to the last apples and pears, may furnish every day of 42 OF EPICURUS the circling year. For the taste and perfection of what we esteem the best, I may truly say that the French, who have eaten my peaches and grapes at Sheen, in no very ill year, have generally concluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten in France, on this side Fontainebleau; and the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony; I mean those which come from the stone, and are properly called peaches, not those which are hard, and are termed pavies; for these cannot grow in too warm a climate, nor ever be good in a cold; and are better at Madrid than in Gascony itself. Italians have agreed my white figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there; for in the latter kind, and the blue, we cannot come near the warm climates, no more than in the Fontignac or Muscat grape. My orange trees are as large as any I saw when I was young in France, except those of Fontainebleau, or what I have seen since in the Low Countries, except some very old ones of the Prince of Orange's; as laden with flowers as any can well be, as full of fruit as I suffer or desire them, and as well tasted as are com- monly brought over, except the best sorts of Seville and Portugal. And thus much I could not but say in defence of our climate, which is so much and so generally decried abroad, by those who never saw it; or, if they have been here, have yet perhaps seen no more of it than what belongs to inns, or to taverns and ordinaries; who accuse our country for their 43 UPON THE GARDENS own defaults, and speak ill, not only of our gardens and houses, but of our humours, our breeding, our customs and manners of life, by what they have observed of the meaner and baser sort of mankind; and of company among us, because they wanted themselves, perhaps, either fortune or birth, either quality or merit, to introduce them among the good. I must needs add one thing more in favour of our climate, which I heard the King say, and I thought new and right, and truly like a King of England that loved and esteemed his own country; 'twas in reply to some of the company that were reviling our climate, and extolling those of Italy and Spain, or at least of France: he said, he thought that was the best climate where he could be abroad in the air with pleasure, or at least without trouble or inconvenience, the most days of the year, and the most hours of the day; and this he thought he could be in England, more than in any country he knew of in Europe. And I believe it is true, not only of the hot and the cold, but even among our neighbours in France, and the Low Countries themselves; where the heats or the colds, and changes of seasons, are less treatable than they are with us. The truth is, our climate wants no heat to produce excellent fruits; and the default of it is only the short season of our heats or summers, by which many of the latter are left behind and imperfect with us. But all such as are ripe before the end of August are, for aught I know, as good with us as any where else. 44 OF EPICURUS This makes me esteem the true region of gardens in England to be the compass of ten miles about London; where the accidental warmth of air, from the fires and steams of so vast a town, makes fruits, as well as corn, a great deal forwarder than in Hampshire or Wiltshire, though more southward by a full degree. There are, besides the temper of our climate, two things particular to us, that contribute much to the beauty and elegance of our gardens, which are the gravel of our walks, and the fineness and almost perpetual greenness of our turf. The first is not known any where else, which leaves all their dry walks, in other countries, very unpleasant and uneasy. The other cannot be found in France or in Holland as we have it, the soil not admitting that fine- ness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness in France, during most of the summer; nor indeed is it to be found but in the finest of our soils. Whoever begins a garden ought, in the first place and above all, to consider the soil, upon which the taste of not only his fruits, but his legumes, and even herbs and salads, will wholly depend; and the default of soil is without remedy: for, although all borders of fruit may be made with what earth you please (if you will be at the charge), yet it must be renewed in two or three years, or it runs into the nature of the ground where it is brought. Old trees spread their roots further than any body's care extends, or the forms of the garden will allow; 45 UPON THE GARDENS and, after all, where the soil about you is ill, the air is so too in a degree, and has influence upon the taste of fruit. What Horace says of the productions of kitchen-gardens, under the name of " caulis ", is true of all the best sorts of fruits, and may determine the choice of soil for all gardens. Caale soburbano, qai siccis crevit in agris, Dulciorj irriguis nihil est elutius hortis. Plar.'s :'::::-. dry fields those of the town excel; Nc-.r.:r._ :r.:re tasteless is than watered grounds. Any rr.sn had better thro-.v a-.vay his care 5:-i h:5 rr rey upon any thing else, than upon £ V r::r. :.- vet or moist ground. Peaches ;-.: .r rt- ' ■'". have no taste but upon a sand c: iTi-.e.; zu: the richer these are, the better; and neither salads, pease, or beans have at all the taste upon a clay or rich earth, as they have upon either of the others, though the size and colour of fruits and plants may, perhaps, be more upon the worse soils. Next to your choice of soil, is to suit your plants to your ground, since of this everyone is not master ; though perhaps Varro's judg- ment, upon this case, is the wisest and the best; for to one that asked him, "v. hat he should do if his father or ancestors had left him. a seat in :\l air, or ur . ill soil?" he answered, " Wi-.v, seil i:. ' uv another in good." "But -.vhat if I _-r::: 'get half the worth?" " Wi'v, ti'.en, ::--.e a cuarter; but however sell it for any thing, rather than live upon it." 46 OF EPICURUS Of all sorts of soil, the best is that upon a sandy gravel, or a rosiny sand; whoever lies upon either of these may run boldly into all the best sort of peaches and grapes, how shallow soever the turf be upon them ; and whatever other tree will thrive in these soils, the fruits shall be of a much finer taste than any other: a richer soil will do well enough for apricots, plums, pears, or figs; but still the more of the sand in your earth the better, and the worse the more of the clay, which is proper for oaks, and no other tree that I know of Fruits should be suited to the climate among us, as well as the soil; for there are degrees of one and the other in England, where 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the best fruits; as peaches or grapes hardly, I doubt, beyond Northampshire, at the furthest northwards ; and I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums; and in these (by bestow- ing south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have done in attempts upon peaches and grapes; and a good plum is certainly better than an ill peach. When I was at Cosevelt, with that Bishop of Munster that made so much noise in his time, I observed no other trees but cherries in a great garden he had made. He told me the reason was, because he found no other fruit would ripen well in that climate, or upon that soil ; and therefore, instead of being 47 UPON THE GARDENS curious in others, he had only been so in the sorts of that, whereof he had so many as never to be without them from May to the end of September. As to the size of a garden, which will perhaps, in time, grow extravagant among us, I think from four or five to seven or eight acres is as much as any gentleman need design, and will furnish as much of all that is expected from it as any nobleman will have occasion to use in his family. In every garden, four things are necessary to be provided for, flowers, fruit, shade, and water; and whoever lays out a garden without all these, must not pretend it in any perfection: it ought to lie to the best parts of the house, or to those of the master's commonest use, so as to be but like one of the rooms out of which you step into another. The part of your garden next your house (besides the walks that go round it) should be a parterre for flowers, or grass plots bordered with flowers; or if, according to the newest mode, it be cast all into grass plots and gravel walks, the dryness of these should be relieved with fountains, and the plainness of those with statues; otherwise, if large, they have an ill effect upon the eye. However, the part next the house should be open, and no other fruit but upon the walls. If this take up one half of the garden, the other should be fruit trees, unless some grove for shade lie in the middle. If it take up a third part only, then the next third may be dwarf trees, and the last standard fruit; or else 48 OF EPICURUS the second part fruit trees, and the third all sorts of winter greens, which provide for all seasons of the year. I will not enter upon any account of flowers, having only pleased myself with seeing or smelling them, and not troubled myself with the care, which is more the ladies' part than the men's ; but the success is wholly in the gardener. For fruits, the best we have in England, or, I believe, can ever hope for, are, of peaches, the white and red maudlin, the minion, the chevereuse, the ramboullet, the musk, the admirable, which is late ; all the rest are either varied by names, or not to be named with these, nor worth troubling a garden in my opinion. Of the pavies or hard peaches, I know none good here but the Newington, nor will that easily hang till 'tis full ripe. The forward peaches are to be esteemed only because they are early, but should find room in a good garden, at least the white and brown nutmeg, the Persian, and the violet musk. The only good nectarines are the murry and the French; of these there are two sorts, one very round, and the other something long, but the round is the best: of the murry there are several sorts, but, being all hard, they are seldom well ripened with us. Of grapes, the best are the chasselas, which is the better sort of our white muscadine (as the usual name was about Sheen); 'tis called the pearl grape, and ripens well enough in common years, but not so well as the common black, or currant, which is something a worse ( C 217 ) 49 4 UPON THE GARDENS grape. The parsley is good, and proper enough to our climate ; but all white fron- tiniacs are difficult, and seldom ripe unless in extraordinary summers. I have had the honour of bringing over four sorts into England ; the arboyse from the Franche Comte, which is a small white grape, or rather runs into some small and some great upon the same bunch ; it agrees well with our climate, but is very choice in soil, and must have a sharp gravel ; it is the most delicious of all grapes that are not muscat. The Burgundy, which is a grizelin or pale red, and of all others is surest to ripen in our climate, so that I have never known them to fail one summer these fifteen years, when all others have; and have had it very good upon an east wall. A black muscat, which is called the dowager, and ripens as well as the common white grape. And the fourth is the grizelin frontignac, being of that colour, and the highest of that taste, and the noblest of all grapes I ever eat in England ; but requires the hottest wall and the sharpest gravel ; and must be favoured by the summer too, to be very good. All these are, I suppose, by this time, pretty common among some gardeners in my neighbourhood, as well as several per- sons of quality ; for I have ever thought all things of this kind, the commoner they are made, the better. Of figs there are among us the white, the blue, and the tawny: the last is very small, bears ill, and I think but a bawble. Of the 50 OF EPICURUS blue there are two or three sorts, but little different, one something longer than the other; but that kind, which smells most, is ever the best. Of the white I know but two sorts, and both excellent, one ripe in the beginning of July, the other in the end of September, and is yellower than the first; but this is hard to be found among us, and difficult to raise, though an excellent fruit. Of apricots, the best are the common old sort, and the largest masculine; of which this last is much improved by budding upon a peach stock. I esteem none of this fruit but the Brussels apricot, which grows a standard, and is one of the best fruits we have ; and which I first brought over among us. The number of good pears, especially summer, is very great, but the best are the blanquet, robin, rousselet, rosati, sans, pepin, jargonel. Of the autumn, the buree, the verte — longue, and the bergamot. Of the winter, the vergoluz, chasseray, St. Michael, St. Ger- main, and ambret. I esteem the bon-chretien with us good for nothing but to bake. Of plums, the best are St. Julian, St. Cath- erine, white and blue pedrigon, queen-mother. Sheen plum, and cheston. Beyond the sorts I have named, none I think need trouble himself, but multiply these rather than make room for more kinds; and I am content to leave this register, having been so often desired it by my friends upon their designs of gardening. 51 UPON THE GARDENS I need say nothing of apples, being so well known among us; but the best of our climate, and I believe of all others, is the golden pippin; and for all sorts of uses ; the next is the Kentish pippin; but these I think are as far from their perfection with us as grapes, and yield to those of Normandy, as these to those in Anjou, and even these to those in Gascony. In other fruits the defect of sun is in a great measure supplied by the advan- tage of walls. The next care to that of suiting trees with the soil, is that of suiting fruits to the position of walls : grapes, peaches, and winter pears, to be good, must be planted upon full south, or south-east : figs are best upon south-east, but will do well upon east and south-west : the west are proper for cherries, plums, or apricots, but all of them are improved by a south wall both as to early and taste: north, north-west, or north-east deserve nothing but greens; these should be divided by woodbines or jessamines between every green, and the other walls, by a vine between every fruit tree; the best sorts upon the south walls, the com- mon white and black upon east and west, because the other trees being many of them (especially peaches) very transitory; some apt to die with hard winters, others to be cut down and make room for new fruits : without this method the walls are left for several years unfurnished ; whereas the vines on each side cover the void space in one summer, and, when the other trees are grown, make only 52 OF EPICURUS a pillar between them of two or three foot broad. Whoever would have the best fruits, in the most perfection our climate will allow, should not only take care of giving them as much sun, but also as much air as he can; no tree, unless dwarf, should be suffered to grow within forty foot of your best walls, but the farther they lie open is still the better. Of all others, this care is most necessary in vines, which are observed abroad to make the best wines, where they lie upon sides of hills, and so most exposed to the air and the winds. The way of pruning them too is best learned from the vineyards, where you see nothing in winter but what looks like a dead stump; and upon our walls they should be left but like a ragged staff, not above two or three eyes at most upon the bearing branches; and the lower the vine and fewer the branches, the grapes will be still the better. The best figure of a garden is either a square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a descent ; they have all their beauties, but the best I esteem an oblong upon a de- scent. The beauty, the air, the view makes amends for the expense, which is very great in finishing and supporting the terrace walks, in levelling the parterres, and in the stone stairs that are necessary from one to the other. The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, wae that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess 53 UPON THE GARDENS of Bedford, esteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Doctor Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost ; but greater sums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want sense in proportion to money, or if nature be not followed ; which I take to be the great rule in this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far as the conduct not only of our lives, but our governments. And whether the greatest of mortal men should attempt the forcing of nature, may best be judged by observing how seldom God Almighty does it himself, by so few true and undisputed miracles as we see or hear of in the world. For my own part, I know not three wiser precepts for the conduct either of Princes or private men, than . . . Servare modum, finemque tueri, Naturamque fequi. Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situa- tion, and are above the regards of common expense. It lies on the side of a hill (upon which the house stands) but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden, the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace gravel walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I 54 OF EPICURUS remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange trees, out of flower and fruit: from this walk are three descents by- many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in the several quarters; at the end of the terrace walk are two summer - houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters, open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer- houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over these two cloisters are two terraces covered with lead, and fenced with balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two summer-houses, at the end of the first terrace walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange house, and the other for myrtles, or other more common greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that pur- pose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now. From the middle of the parterre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a grotto that lies between them (covered with lead, and flat) into the lower garden, which is all fruit trees ranged about the several quarters of a wilderness which is very shady; the walks 55 UPON THE GARDENS here are all green, the grotto embellished with figures of shell rockwork, fountains, and waterworks. If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens; but this want is sup- plied by a garden the other side the house, which is all of that sort, very wild, shady, and adorned with rough rockwork and fountains. This was Moor Park when I was acquainted with it, and the sweetest place, I think, that I have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad; what it is now, I can give little account, having passed through several hands that have made great changes in gardens as well as houses ; but the remembrance of what it was is too pleasant ever to forget, and therefore I do not believe to have mis- taken the figure of it, which may serve for a pattern to the best gardens of our manner, and that are most proper for our country and climate. What I have said of the best forms of gardens, is meant only of such as are in some sort regular ; for there may be other forms wholly irregular that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others ; but they must owe it to some ex- traordinary dispositions of nature in the seat, or some great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance, which may reduce many dis- agreeing parts into some figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, be very agreeable. 56 OF EPICURUS Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from others who have lived much among the Chinese ; a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe, as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly iil some certain proportions, symmetries, or uni- formities ; our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one another, and at exact distances. The Chinese scorn this way of planting, and say, a boy that can tell an hundred may plant walks of trees in straight lines, and over against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed : and, though we have hardly any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they have a particular word to ex- press it, and, where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the " sharawadgi " is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem. And whoever observes the work upon the best India gowns, or the painting upon their best screens or porcelains, will find their beauty is all of this kind (that is) without order. But I should hardly advise any of these attempts in the figure of gardens among us; they are adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands; and, though there may be more honour if they succeed well, yet there 57 UPON THE GARDENS is more dishonour If they fail, and 'tis twenty to one they will ; whereas, in regular figures, 'tis hard to make any great and remarkable faults. The picture I have met with in some re- lations of a garden made by a Dutch Governor of their colony, upon the Cap de Bonne Esperance, is admirable, and described to be of an oblong figure, very large extent, and divided into four quarters, by long and cross walks, ranged with all sorts of orange trees, lemons, limes, and citrons ; each of these four quarters is planted with the trees, fruits, flowers, and plants that are native and proper to each of the four parts of the world; so as in this one inclosure are to be found the several gardens of Europe, Asia, Afric, and America. There could not be, in my mind, a greater thought of a gardener, nor a nobler idea of a garden, nor better suited or chosen for the climate, which is about thirty degrees, and may pass for the Hesperides of our age, whatever or wherever the other was. Yet this is agr-eed by all to have been in the islands or continent upon the south-west of Africa: but what their forms or their fruits were, none, that I know, pretend to tell; nor whether their golden apples were for taste, or only for sight, as those of Monte- zuma were in Mexico, who had large trees, with stocks, branches, leaves, and fruits, all admirably composed and wrought of gold ; but this was only stupendous in cost and art, and answers not at all, in my opinion, the delicious varieties of nature in other gardens. 58 OF EPICURUS What I have said of gardening is perhaps enough for any gentleman to know, so as to make no great faults, nor be much imposed upon in the designs of that kind, which I think ought to be applauded, and encouraged in all countries; that and building being a sort of creation, that raise beautiful fabrics and figures out of nothing, that make the con- venience and pleasure of all private habitations, that employ many hands, and circulate much money among the poorer sort and artisans, that are a public service to one's country, by the example as well as effect, which adorn the scene, improve the earth, and even the air itself in some degree. The rest, that be- longs to this subject, must be a gardener's part ; upon whose skill, diligence, and care, the beauty of the grounds and excellence of the fruits will much depend. Though if the soil and sorts be well chosen, well suited, and disposed to the walls, the ignorance or care- lessness of the servants can hardly leave the master disappointed, I will not enter further upon his trade, than by three short directions or advices: first, in all plantations, either for his master or himself, to draw his trees out of some nursery that is upon a leaner and lighter soil than his own where he removes them: without this care they will not thrive in several years, perhaps never, and must make way for new, which should be avoided all that can be; for life is too short and uncertain, to be renewing often your planta- tions. The walls of your garden, without their 59 UPON THE GARDENS furniture, look as ill as those of your house; so that you cannot dig up your garden too often, nor too seldom cut them down. The second is, in all trees you raise, to have some regard to the stock, as well as the graft or bud; for the first will have a share in giving taste and season to the fruits it produces, how little soever it is usually observed by our gar- deners. I have found grafts of the same tree, upon a bon-chretien stock bring chasseray pears that lasted till March, but with a rind green and rough : and others, upon a metre-john- stock, with a smooth and yellow skin, which were rotten in November. I am apt to think, all the difference between the St. Michael and the ambrette pear (which has puzzled our gar- deners) is only what comes from this variety of the stocks; and by this, perhaps, as well as by raising from stones and kernels, most of the new fruits are produced every age. So the grafting a crab upon a white thorn brings the lazarolli, a fruit esteemed at Rome, though I do not find it worth cultivating here ; and I believe the cidrato (or hermaphrodite) came from budding a citron upon an orange. The best peaches are raised by buds of the best fruits upon stocks, growing from stones of the best peaches ; and so the best apples and pears, from the best kinds grafted upon stocks, from kernels also of the best sorts, with respect to the season, as well as beauty and taste. And I believe so many excellent winter pears, as have come into France since forty years, may have been found out by grafting summer pears 60 OF EPICURUS of the finest taste and most water upon winter stocks. The third advice is, to take the greatest care and pains in preserving your trees from the worst disease, to which those of the best fruits are subject in the best soils, and upon the best walls. 'Tis what has not been (that I know of) taken notice of with us, till I was forced to observe it by the experience of my gardens, though I have since met with it in books both ancient and modern. I found my vines, peaches, apricots, and plums upon my best south walls, and sometimes upon my west, apt for several years to a soot, or smuttiness upon their leaves first, and then upon their fruits, which were good for nothing the years they were so affected. My orange trees were likewise subject to it, and never prospered while they were so: and I have known some collections quite destroyed by it. But I can- not say that ever I found either my figs or pears infected with it, nor any trees upon my east walls, though I do not well conjecture at the reason. The rest were so spoiled with it, that I complained to several of the oldest and best gardeners of England, who knew nothing of it, but that they often fell into the same misfortune, and esteemed it some blight of the spring. I observed after some years, that the diseased trees had very frequent, upon their stocks and branches, a small insect of a dark brown colour, figured like a shield, and about the size of a large wheat-corn; they stuck close to the bark, and in many places covered it, bi UPON THE GARDENS especially about the joints: in winter they are dry, and thin-shelled, hut in spring they begin to grow soft, and to fill with moisture, and to throw a spawn like a black dust upon the stocks, as well as the leaves and fruits. I met afterwards with the mention of this disease, as known among orange trees, in a book written upon that subject in Holland, and since in Pausanias, as a thing so much taken notice of in Greece, that the author describes a certain sort of earth which cures pedicuhs v'ltls, or the lice of the vine. This is of all others the most pestilent disease of the best fruit trees, and upon the very best soils of gravel and sand (especially where they are too hungry) ; and is so contagious, that it is propagated to new plants raised from old trees that are infected, and spreads to new ones that are planted near them, which makes me imagine that it lies in the root, and that the best cure were by application there. But I have tried all sorts of soil without effect, and can prescribe no other remedy, than to prune your trees as close as you can, especially the tainted wood, then to wash them very clean with a wet brush, so as not to leave one shell upon them that you can discern: and upon your oranges to pick off every one that you can find, by turning every leaf, as well as brushing clean the stocks and branches. Without these cares and diligences, you had better root up any trees that are infected, renew all the mould in your borders or boxes, and plant new sound trees, rather 62 OF EPICURUS than suffer the disappointments and vexation of your old ones. I may perhaps be allowed to know some- thing of this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the State, and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say, that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavoured to escape from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths or circles of life. Inter cuncta leges et percunctabere doctos Qua ratione queas traducere leniter asvum, Quid curas minuat, quid te tibi reddet amicum, Quid pure tranquillet, honos, an dulce lucellum, An secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitae. But above all the learned read, and ask By what means you may gently pass your age, What lessens care, what makes thee thine own friend, What truly calms the mind; honour, or wealth, Or else a private path of stealing life. These are questions that a man ought at least to ask himself, whether he asks others or 63 UPON THE GARDENS no, and to choose his course of life rather by his own humour and temper, than by common accidents, or advice of friends; at least if the Spanish proverb be true, that a fool knows more in his own house than a wise man in another's. The measure of choosing well is, whether a man likes what he has chosen; which, I thank God, has befallen me; and though, among the follies of my life, building and planting have not been the least, and have cost me more than I have the confidence to own; yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years without ever going once to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make so small a remove; for when I am in this corner, I can truly say with Horace: Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus, Quid sentire putas, quid credis, amice, precari? Sit mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus, ut mihi vivam Quod superest xvi, si quid superesse volcnt Di. Sit bona librorum et provisas frugis in annum Copia, ne fluitem dubia? spe pendulus horae. Hoc fatis est orasse Jovem, qui donat et aufert. Me when the cold Digentian stream revives. What does my friend believe I think or ask.? 64 OF EPICURUS Let me yet less possess, so I may live, Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. May I have books enough, and one year's store, Not to depend upon each doubtful hour; This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away. That which makes the cares of gardening more necessary, or at least more excusable, is, that all men eat fruit that can get it; so as the choice is only, whether one will eat good or ill; and between these the difference is not greater in point of taste and delicacy, than it is of health: for the first I will only say, that whoever has used to eat good will do very great penance, when he comes to ill: and, for the other, I think nothing is more evident than, as ill or unripe fruit is extremely unwholesome, and causes so many untimely deaths, or so much sickness about autumn, in all great cities where 'tis greedily sold as well as eaten; so no part of diet, in any season, is so healthful, so natural, and so agreeable to the stomach, as good and well-ripened fruits; for this I make the measure of their being good: and, let the kinds be what they will, if they will not ripen perfectly in our climate, they are better never planted, or never eaten. I can say it for myself at least, and all my friends, that the season of summer fruits is ever the season of health with us, which I reckon from the beginning of June to the end of September: and for all sicknesses of the stomach (from which most others are judged to proceed) I do not think any that are, like me, the most subject to them, shall com- ( c 217 ) 65 5 THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS plain, whenever they eat thirty or forty cherries before meals, or the like proportion of straw- berries, white ligs, soft peaches, or grapes perfectly ripe. But these after Michaelmas I do not think wholesome with us, unless attended by some fit of hot and dry weather, more than is usual after that season: when the frosts or the rain hath taken them they grow dangerous, and nothing but the autumn and winter pears are to be reckoned in season, besides apples, which, with cherries, are of all others the most innocent food, and perhaps the best physic. Now whoever will be sure to eat good fruit, must do it out of a garden of his own; for, besides the choice so necessary in the sorts, the soil, and so many other circum- stances that go to compose a good garden, or produce good fruits, there is something very nice in gathering them, and choosing the best, even from the same tree. The best sorts of all among us, which I esteem the white figs and the soft peaches, will not carry without suffer- ing. The best fruit that is bought has no more of the master's care, than how to raise the greatest gains; his business is to have as much fruit as he can upon as few trees; whereas the way to have it excellent is to have but little upon many trees. So that for all things out of a garden, either of salads or fruits, a poor man will eat better, that has one of his own, than a rich man that has none. And this is all I think of necessary and useful to be known upon this subject. 66 An Essay upon the Cure of the Gout by Moxa (Written to Monsieur De Zulichem) NiMEGUEN, June 1 8, 1677. I never thought it would have befallen me to be the first that should try a new experi- ment, any more than to be author of any new invention: being little inclined to practise upon others, and as little that others should practise upon me. The same warmth of head disposes men to both, though one be commonly esteemed an honour, and the other a reproach. I am sorry the first, and the worst of the two, is fallen to my share, by which all a man can hope is to avoid censure, and that is much harder than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to avoid censure, a man must pass his life with- out saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. This might serve the turn, if all men were just; but, as they are, I doubt nothing will, and that 'tis the idlest pretension in the world 67 AN ESSAY UPON THE to live without it; the meanest subjects censuring the actions of the greatest Prince; the silliest servants, of the u'isest master; and young children, of the oldest parents. Therefore I have not troubled myself to give any account of an experiment I made by your persuasion, to satisfy those who imputed it to folly, rashness, or impatience; but to satisfy you who proposed the thing in kindness to me, and desired the relation of it in kindness to other men. I confess your engaging me first in this adventure of the Moxa, and desiring the story of it from me, is like giving one the torture, and then asking his confession; which is hard usage to an innocent man and a friend. Be- sides, having suffered the first, I took myself to have a right of refusing the other. But I find your authority with me is too great to be disputed in either; and the pretence of public good is a cheat that will ever pass in the world, though so often abused by ill men, that I wonder the good do not grow ashamed to use it any longer. Let it be as it will, you have what you asked, and cannot but say that I have done, as well as suffered, what you had a mind to engage me in. I have told you the story with the more circumstance, because many questioned the disease, that they might not allow of the cure; though the certainty of one, and force of the other, has been enough evidenced by two returns since I left you at the Hague, which passed with the same success. The reasonings upon this method, 68 CURE OF THE GOUT which seem to confirm the experiment, and other remedies for the gout here reflected on, are aimed at the same end for which you seemed so much to desire this relation. The digres- sions I cannot excuse otherwise, than by the confidence that no man will read them, who has not at least as much leisure as I had when I writ them; and whosoever dislikes or grows weary of them, may throw them away. For those about temperance, age, or their effects and periods, in reference to public business, they could be better addressed to none, than to you, who have passed the longest life with the most temperance, and the best health and humour of any man I know; and, having run through so much great and public business, have found out the secret so little known, that there is a time to give it over. I will pretend but to one piece of merit in this relation, which is to have writ it for you in English, because the language I always observed to have most of your kindness among so many others of your acquaintance. If your partiality to that, and to me, and to your own request, will not excuse all the faults of this paper, I have nothing more to say for it, and so will leave you to judge of it as you please. Among all the diseases to which the in- temperance of this age disposes it (at least in these northern climates), I have observed none to increase so much within the compass of my memory and conversation as the gout, nor any I think of worse consequence to mankind; 69 AN tSSAY UPON THE because it falls generally upon persons engaged in public affairs and great employments, upon whose thoughts and cares (if not their motions and their pains) the common good and service of their country so much depends. The general officers of armies, the Governors of provinces, the public Ministers in councils at home, and embassies abroad (that have fallen in my way) being generally subject to it in one degree or other. I suppose the reason of this may be, that men seldom come into those posts till after forty years old, about which time the natural heat beginning to decay, makes way for those distempers they are most inclined to by their native constitutions, or by their customs and habits of life. Besides, persons in those posts are usually born of families noble and rich, and so derive a weakness of constitution from the ease and luxury of their ancestors, and the delicacy of their own education: or if not, yet the plenty of their fortunes from those very employments, and the general custom of living in them at much expense, engages men in the constant use of great tables, and in frequent excesses of several kinds, which must end in diseases when the vigour of youth is past, and the force of exercise (that served before to spend the humour) is given over for a sedentary and unactive life. These I take to be the reasons of such persons being so generally subject to such accidents more than other men; and they are so plain, that they must needs occur to any one that thinks. But the ill consequence of it is 70 CURE OF THE GOUT not so obvious, though perhaps as evident to men that observe; and may be equally con- firmed by reasons and examples. It is that the vigour of the mind decays with that of the body, and not only humour and invention, but even judgment and resolution, change and languish, with ill constitution of body, and of health; and by this means public business comes to suffer by private infirmities, and Kingdoms or States fall into weaknesses and distempers or decays of those persons that manage them. Within these fifteen years past, I have known a great fleet disabled for two months, and thereby lose great occasions, by an indisposi- tion of the Admiral, while he was neither well enough to exercise, nor ill enough to leave the command. I have known two towns of the greatest consequence lost, contrary to all forms, by the Governor's falling ill in the time of the sieges. I have observed the fate of a campania deter- mine contrary to all appearances, by the caution and conduct of a general, which were attributed, by those that knew him, to his age and in- firmities, rather than his own true qualities, acknowledged otherwise to have been as great as most men of the age. I have seen the coun- sels of a noble country grow bold or timorous, according to the fits of his good or ill health that managed them, and the pulse of the government beat high or low with that of the Governor : and this unequal conduct makes way for great accidents in the world : 71 AN ESSAY UPON THE nay, I have often reflected upon the counsels and fortunes of the greatest Monarchies, rising and decaying sensibly with the ages and healths of the Princes and chief officers that governed them. And I remember one great Minister that confessed to me, when he fell into one of his usual fits of the gout, he was no longer able to bend his mind or thoughts to any public business, nor give audiences beyond two or three of his own domestics, though it were to save a kingdom ; and that this proceeded, not from any violence of pain, but from a general languishing and faintness of spirits, which made him, in those fits, think nothing worth the trouble of one careful or solicitous thought. For the approaches or lurkings of the gout, the spleen, or the scurvy, nay, the very fumes of indigestion, may indispose men to thought and to care, as well as diseases of danger and pain. Thus, accidents of health grow to be acci- dents of State, and public constitutions come to depend, in a great measure, upon those of particular men; which makes it perhaps seem necessary, in the choice of persons for great employments (at least such as require constant application and pains), to consider their bodies, as well as their minds; and ages and health, as well as their abilities. When I was younger than I am, and thereby a worse judge of age, I have often said that what great thing soever man proposed to do in his life, he should think of achieving it by fifty years old. Now I am approaching 72 CURE OF THE GOUT that age, I think it much more than I did before ; and that no man rides to an end of that stage without feeling his journey in all parts, whatever distinctions are made between the mind and the body, or between judgment and memory. And tho' I have known some few, who might perhaps be of use in council, upon great occasions, till after threescore and ten; and have heard that the two late Ministers in Spain, Counts of Castriglio and Pignoranda, were so till fourscore ; yet I will not answer that the very conduct of public affairs, under their Ministry, has not always tasted of the lees of their age. I observe in this assembly at Nimeguen, from so many several parts of Christendom, that, of one and twenty Ambassadors, there are but three above fifty years old; which seems an argument of my opinion being in a manner general : nor can I think the period ill calculated, at least for a great General of armies, or Minister of State, in times or scenes of great action, when the care of a State or an army ought to be as constant as the chemics' fire, to make any great production; and, if it goes out for an hour, perhaps the whole opera- tion fails. Now, I doubt whether any man after fifty be capable of such constant applica- tion of thought, any more than of long and violent labour or exercise, which that certainly is, and of the finest parts. Besides, none that feel sensibly the decays of age, and his life wearing off, can figure to himself those ima- ginary charms in riches and praise, that men 73 AN ESSAY UPON THE are apt to do in the warmth of their blood ; and those are the usual incentives towards the attempt of great dangers, and support of great trouble and pains. To confirm this by examples, I have heard that Cardinal Mazarine, about five and fifty, found it was time to give over : that the present Grand Vizier, who passes for one of the greatest men of that empire, or this age, began his Ministry about twenty - eight : and the greatest 1 have observed, which was that of Monsieur De Witt, began at three and thirty, and lasted to forty -eight, and could not, I believe, have gone on many years longer at that height, even without that fatal end. Among other qualities which entered into the composition of this Minister, the great care he had of his health, and the little of his life, were not, I think, the least con- siderable ; since from the first he derived his great temperance, as well as his great bold- ness and constancy from the other. And if intemperance be allowed to be the common mother of gout, or dropsy, and of scurvy, and most other lingering diseases, which are those that infest the State, I think temper- ance deserves the first rank among public virtues, as well as those of private men ; and doubt whether any can pretend to the con- stant steady exercise of prudence, justice, or fortitude, without it. Upon these grounds whoever can propose a way of curing, or preventing the gout (which entered chiefly into those examples I have CURE OF THE GOUT mentioned of public affairs suffering by private indispositions) would perhaps do a service to Princes and States, as well as to particular men; which makes me the more willing to tell my story and talk out of my trade, being strongly possessed with a belief that what 1 have tried or thought, or heard upon this subject, may go a great way in preventing the growth of this disease where it is but new, though perhaps longer methods are necessary to deal with it when it is old. From my grandfather's death I had reason to apprehend the stone, and from my father's life the gout, who has been for this many years, and still continues, much afflicted with it. The first apprehension has been, I con- fess, with me ever the strongest, and the other hardly in my thoughts, having never de- served it by the usual forms; nor had I ever, I thank God, the least threat from either of them, till the last year at the Hague, being then in the seven and fortieth year of my age; when about the end of February, one night at supper, I felt a sudden pain in my right foot, which, from the first moment it began, increased sensibly, and in an hour's time to that degree, that though I said nothing, yet others took notice of it in my face, and said, they were sure I was not well, and would have had me go to bed. I confessed I was in pain, and thought it was with some sprain at tennis: I pulled off my shoe, and with some ease that gave me stirred not till the company broke up, which was about three hours after my pain 75 AN ESSAY UPON THE began. I went away to bed, but it raged so much all night, that I could not sleep a wink. I endured it till about eight next morning, in hopes still of stealing some rest; but then making my complaints, and shewing my foot, they found it very red and angry; and, to relieve my extremity of pain, began to apply common poultices to it; and by the frequent change of them I found some ease, and continued this exercise all that day, and a great part of the following night, which I passed with very little rest. The morning after, my foot began to swell, and the violence of my pain to assuage, though it left such a soreness, that I could hardly suffer the clothes of my bed, nor stir my foot but as it was lifted. By this time my illness, being enquired after about the town, was concluded to be the gout; and being no longer feverish, or in any extremity of pain, I was content to see company. Every body that came to visit me found something to say upon the occasion ; some made a jest of it, or a little reproach ; others were serious in their mirth, and made me compliments, as upon a happy accident and sign of long life. The Spaniards asked me albricias for telling me the news, that I might be sure it was the gout; and in short, none of the company was in ill humour but I, who had rather by half have had a fever or a worse disease at that time, where the danger might have been greater, but the trouble and the melancholy would, I am sure, have been less. Though I had never feared the gout, yet I 76 CURE OF THE GOUT had always scorned it as an effect commonly of intemperance; and hated it, as what I thought made men unfit for any thing after they were once deep engaged in it : besides, I was pressed in my journey at that time to Nimeguen by his Majesty's commands, to assist at the treaty there. Most of the Ambassadors from the several parts of Christendom were upon their way : one of my collegues was already upon the place, and I had promised immediately to follow; for by our commission we were to be two to act in that mediation: and, to help at this pinch, I had always heard that a fit of the gout used to have six weeks at the least for its ordinary period. With these comforts about me, and sullenness enough to use no remedy of a hundred that were told me. Monsieur Zulichem came to see me (among the rest of my friends), who, I think, never came into company without saying something that was new, and so he did upon my occasion. For talking of my illness, and approving of my obstinacy against all the common prescriptions; he asked me whether I had never heard the Indian way of curing the gout by Moxa ? I told him no, and asked him what it was ? He said it was a certain kind of moss that grew in the East Indies ; that their way was, whenever any body fell into a fit of the gout, to take a small quantity of it, and form it into a figure broad at bottom as a twopence, and pointed at top ; to set the bottom exactly upon the place where the violence of the pain was fixed ; then with a small round perfumed match (made like- n AN ESSAY UPON THE wise in the Indies) to give fire to the top of the moss ; which burning down by degrees, came at length to the skin, and burnt it till the moss was consumed to ashes: that many times the first burning would remove the pain; if not, it was to be renewed a second, third, and fourth time, till it went away, and till the person found he could set his foot boldly to the ground and walk. I desired him to tell me how he had come acquainted with this new operation. He said, by the relation of several who had seen and tried it in the Indies, but particularly by an ingenious little book, written of it by a Dutch Minister at Batavia, who being extremely tor- mented with a fit of the gout, an old Indian woman, coming to see him, undertook to cure him, and did it immediately by this Moxa; and, after many experiments of it there, had written this treatise of it in Dutch for the use of his countrymen, and sent over a quantity of the moss and matches to his son at Utrecht to be sold, if any would be persuaded to use them. That, though he could not say whether experiment had been made of it here, yet the book was worth reading; and, for his part, he thought he should try it, if ever he should fall into that disease. I desired the book, which he promised to send me next morning ; and this discourse of Monsieur Zulichem busied my head all night. I hated the very name of the gout, and thought it a reproach ; and for the good sign people called it, I could not find that 78 CURE OF THE GOUT mended an ill thing; nor could I like any sign of living long in weakness or in pain. I deplored the loss of my legs, and confine- ment to my chamber at an age that left me little pleasure but of walking and of air ; but the worst circumstance of all was the sentence passed upon it of being without cure. I had passed twenty years of my life, and several accidents of danger in my health, with- out any use of physicians; and, from some ex- periments of my own, as well as much reading and thought upon that subject, had reasoned myself into an opinion, that the use of them and their methods (unless in some sudden and acute disease) was itself a very great venture; and that their greatest practisers practised least upon themselves, or their friends. I had ever quarrelled with their studying art more than nature, and applying themselves to methods, rather than to remedies; whereas the know- ledge of the last is all that nine parts in t&n of the world have trusted to in all ages. But for the common remedies of the gout, I found exceptions to them all; the time of purging was past with me, which otherwise I should certainly have tried upon the authority of the great Hippocrates, who says it should be done upon the first motion of the humour in the gout. For poultices, I knew they allayed pain; but withal, that they drew down the humours, and supplied the parts, thereby making the passages wider, and apter to re- ceive them in greater quantity; and I had often heard it concluded, that the use of them 79 AN ESSAY UPON THE ended in losing that of one's limbs, by weaken- ing the joint upon every fit. For plasters that had any effect, I thought it must be by dis- persing or repelling the humours, which could not be done without endangering perhaps some other disease of the bowels, the stomach, or the head. Rest and warmth either of clothes, or bathings, I doubted would in a degree have the effects of poultices; and sweating was proper for prevention, rather than remedy. So that all I could end in, with any satisfac- tion, was patience and abstinence; and though I easily resolved of the last, yet the first was hard to be found in the circumstances of my business as well as of my health. All this made me rave upon Monsieur Zulichem's new operation; and for the way of curing by fire I found twenty things to give me an opinion of it. I remembered what I had read of the Egyptians of old, who used it in most diseases; and what I had often heard of that practice still continuing among the Moors of Afric, so that a slave is seldom taken (as both Spaniards and Portugueses affirm) who has not many scars of the hot iron upon his body, which they use upon most distempers, but especially those of the head, and conse- quently in physic as well as in surgery-. In the time of the Incas' reign in Peru (which I take to have been one of the greatest con- stitutions of absolute monarchy that has been in the world), no composition was allowed by the laws to be used in point of medicine, but only simples proper to each disease. 80 CURE OF THE GOUT Burning was much in use either by natural or artificial fires; particularly for all illness of teeth, and soreness or swelling of the gums (which they were subject to from their near- ness to the sea), they had an herb which never failed of curing it, and, being laid to the gums, burnt away all the flesh that was swelled or corrupted, and made way for new that came again as sound as that of a child. I remem- bered to have had myself, in my youth, one cruel wound cured by scalding medicament, after it was grown so putrefied as to have (in the surgeon's opinion) endangered the bone; and the violent swelling and bruise of another taken away as soon as I received it, by scalding it with milk. I remembered the cure of chil- blains, when I was a boy (which may be called the children's gout), by burning at the fire, or else by scalding brine, that has (I suppose) the same effect. I had heard of curing the stings of adders and bites of mad dogs, by im- mediately burning the part with a hot iron; and of some strange cures of frenzies, by casual applications of fire to the lower parts; which seems reasonable enough, by the violent re- vulsion it may make of humours from the head, and agrees with the opinions and prac- tice I mentioned before, of Egypt and Africa. Perhaps blistering in the neck, and hot pigeons, may be in use among us upon the same grounds; and in our methods of surgery, nothing is found of such effect in the case of old ulcers as fire,- which is certainly the greatest drawer and drier, and thereby the ( c 217 ) 8i 6 AN ESSAY 'upon THE greatest cleanser that can be found. I knew very well that, in diseases of cattle, there is nothing more commonly used, nor with greater success; and concluded it was but a tender- ness to mankind that made it less in use amongst us, and which had introduced corro- sives and caustics to supply the place of it, which are indeed but artificial fires. I mention all these reflexions, to shew that the experiment I resolved to make was upon thought, and not rashness or impatience (as those called it that would have dissuaded me from it); but the chief reason was, that I liked no other, because I knew they failed every day, and left men in despair of being ever well cured of the gout. Next morning I looked over the book which Monsieur Zulichem had promised me, written by the Minister at Batavia. I pretended not to judge of the Indian philosophy, or reason- ings upon the cause of the gout; but yet thought them as probable as those of physicians here, and liked them so much the better, be- cause it seems their opinion in the point is general among them, as well as their method of curing; whereas the differences among ours are almost as many in both, as there are physicians that reason upon the causes, or practise upon the cure of that disease. They hold that the cause of the gout is a malignant vapour that falls upon the joint between the bone and the skin that covers it, which, being the most sensible of all parts of the body, causes the violence of the pain. That the 82 CURE OF THE GOUT swelling is no part of the disease, but only an effect of it, and of a kindness in nature, that, to relieve the part affected, calls down humours to damp the malignity of the vapour, and thereby assuage the sharpness of the pain; which seldom fails, whenever the part grows very much swelled. That consequently the swellings and returns of the gout are chiefly occasioned by the ill methods of curing it at first. That this vapour, falling upon joints which have not motion, and thereby heat enough, to dispel it, cannot be cured other- wise than by burning, by which it immediately evaporates; and that this is evident by the present ceasing of the pain upon the second, third, or fourth application of the Moxa, which are performed in a few minutes' time. And the author affirms it happens often there that upon the last burning, an extreme stench comes out of the skin where the fire had opened it. Whatever the reasonings were, which yet seemed ingenious enough ; the experiments alleged with so much confidence, and to be so general in those parts, and told by an author that writ like a plain man, and one whose profession was to tell truth, helped me to resolve upon making the trial. I was confirmed in this resolution by a German physician. Doctor Theodore Coledy, who was then in my family, a sober and intelligent man, whom I dispatched immediately to Utrecht, to bring me some of the Moxa, and learn the exact method of using it, from the 83 AN ESSAY UPON THE man that sold it, who was son to the Minister of Batavia. He returned with all that be- longed to this cure, having performed the whole operation upon his hand by the man's direction. I immediately made the experi- ment in the manner before related, setting the Moxa just upon the place where the first violence of my pain began, which was the joint of the great toe, and where the greatest anger and soreness still continued, notwithstanding the swelling of my foot, so that I had never yet, in five days, been able to stir it, but as it was lifted. Upon the first burning, I found the skin shrink all round the place; and whether the greater pain of the fire had taken away the sense 'of a smaller or no, I could not tell; but I thought it less than it was: I burnt it the second time, and upon it observed the skin about it to shrink, and the swelling to flat yet more than at first. I began to move my toe, which I had not done before ; but I found some remainders of pain. I burnt it the third time, and observed still the same effects with- out, but a much greater within, for I stirred the joint several times at ease; and, growing bolder, I set my foot to the ground without any pain at all. After this, I pursued the method prescribed by the book, and the author's son at Utrecht, and had a bruised clove of garlic laid to the place that was burnt, and covered with a large plaster of diapalma, to keep it fixed there ; and when this was done, feeling no more pain, and treading still 84 CURE OF THE GOUT bolder and firmer upon it, I cut a slipper to let in my foot, swelled as it was, and walked half a dozen turns about the room, without any pain or trouble, and much to the surprise of those that were about me, as well as to my own. For, though I had reasoned myself beforehand into an opinion of the thing, yet I could not expect such an effect as I found, which seldom reaches to the degree that is promised by the prescribers of any remedies, whereas this went beyond it, having been applied so late, and the prescription reaching only to the first attack of the pain, and before the part begins to swell. For the pain of the burning itself, the first time it is sharp, so that a man may be allowed to complain; I resolved I would not, but that I would count to a certain number, as the best measure how long it lasted. I told sixscore and four, as fast as I could; and when the fire of the Moxa was out, all pain of burning was over. The second time was not near so sharp as the first, and the third a great deal less than the second. The wound was not raw, as I expected, but looked only scorched and black; and I had rather endure the whole trouble of the operation, than half a quarter of an hour's pain in the degree I felt it the first whole night. After four and twenty hours, I had it opened, and found a great blister drawn by the garlic, which I used no more, but had the blister cut, which ran a good deal of water, but filled again by the next night; and this 85 AN ESSAY UPON THE contlnueJ for three days, with only a plaster of diapalma upon it ; after which time the blister dried up, and left a sore about as big as a two-pence, which healed and went away in about a week's time longer; but I continued to walk every day, and without the least return of pain, the swelling still growing less, though it were near six weeks before it was wholly gone. I favoured it all this while more than I needed, upon the common opinion that walking too much might draw down the humour; which I have since had reason to conclude a great mistake, and that, if I had walked as much as I could from the first day the pain left me, the swelling might have left me too in a much less time. The talk of this cure ran about the Hague, and made the conversation in other places, as well as in the visits I received while I kept my chamber, which was about a fortnight after the burning. Monsieur Zulichem came to me among the rest of the good company of the town, and much pleased with my success, as well from his own great humanity and par- ticular kindness to me, as from the part he had in being the first prescriber of my cure, and from the opinion it gave him of a common good fortune befallen all that felt or were in danger of the gout. Among others he told it to, Monsieur Serin- champs was one, an Envoy of the Duke of Lorrain's, then in town; a person very much and very deservedly esteemed among all the good company in town, and to whom every 86 CURE OF THE GOUT body was kind upon the score of his own good humour, or his master's ill fortunes: he had been long subject to the gout, and with con- stant returns of long and violent fits two or three times in a year. He was a man frank and generous, and loved to enjoy health whilst he had it, without making too much reflexion upon what was to follow; and so, when he was well, denied himself nothing of what he had a mind to eat or drink; which gave him a body full of humours, and made his fits of the gout as frequent and violent as most I have known: when they came, he bore them as he could, and forgot them as soon as they were past, till a new remembrance. At this time he lay ill of a cruel fit, which was fallen upon his knee, and with extreme pain: when he heard of my cure, he sent to me first for the relation of it; and upon it, for my Moxa, and for Coleby to apply it. He suffered it; but after his pleasant way roared out, and swore at me all the while it was burning, and asked if I took him for a sorcerer, that I sent to burn him alive? yet, with all this, the pain went away upon it, and returned no more to the same place; but he was something dis- couraged by a new pain falling some days after upon his elbow on the other side, which gave him a new fit, though gentler and shorter than they used to be. About the same time one of the maids of my house was grown almost desperate with the toothache, and want of sleep upon it, and was without remedy. The book gives the 87 AN ESSAY UPON THE same cure for certain in that illness, by burn- ing upon the great vein under the ear; and the man who sold it at Utrecht had assured Coleby he had seen many cures by it in that kind. We resolved to try ; which was done, and the pain immediately taken away, and the wench perfectly well, without hearing of it any more, at least while she was in my house. Thus passed the first experiment ; upon which Monsieur Zulichem, giving an account of it to some of his friends at Gresham College, came to me before I left the Hague, formally to desire me from them, and from himself, that I would give a relation of it that might be made public, as a thing which might prove in appearance of common utility to so great numbers as were subject to that disease; and told me, that some of Gresham College had already given order for translating into English the little Batavian treatise. I commended the care of publishing it among us, and thereby inviting others to an experiment I had reason to approve ; but excused myself from any relation of my own, as having too much busi- ness at that time, and at all times caring little to appear in public. I had another reason to decline it, that ever used to go far with me upon all new inventions or experiments, which is, that the best trial of them is by time, and observing whether they live or no ; and that one or two trials can pretend to make no rule, no more than one swallow a summer; and so before I told my story to more than my friends, I had a mind to make more trials myself, or 88 CURE OF THE GOUT see them made by other people as wise as I had been. During the confinement of this fit, I fell into some methods, and into much discourse upon the subject of the gout, that may be perhaps as well worth reflexion by such as feel or apprehend it, as what I have told of this Indian cure. In the first place, from the day I kept my chamber, till I left it, and began to walk abroad, I restrained myself to so regular a diet, as, to eat flesh but once a day, and little at a time, without salt or vinegar; and to one moderate draught, either of water or small ale. I concluded to trust to abstinence and exercise, as I had ever resolved, if I fell into this disease; and if it continued, to con- fine myself wholly to the milk diet, of which I had met with very many and great examples, and had a great opinion even in long and in- veterate gouts. Besides this refuge, I met with, in my visits and conversation arising upon my illness, many notions or medicines very new to me, and reflexions that may be so perhaps to other men. Old Prince Maurice of Nassau told me, he laughed at the gout, and though he had been several times attacked, yet it never gave him care nor trouble. That he used but one remedy, which was, whenever he felt it, to boil a good quantity of horse-dung from a stone-horse of the hermelinne colour, as he called it in French, which is a native white, with a sort of a raw nose, and the same commonly about the eyes: that, when this was well boiled in water, he set his leg in a pail- 89 AN ESSAY UPON THE ful of It, as hot as he could well endure it, re- newing it as it grew cool for above an hour together: that, after it, he drew his leg im- mediately into a warm bed, to continue the perspiration as long as he could, and never failed of being cured. Whether the remedy be good, or the circumstances of colour signify any thing more, than to make more mystery, I know not; but I observed that he ever had a set of such hermelinne horses in his coach, which he told me was on purpose that he might never want this remedy. The Count Kinski, Ambassador from the Emperor to the treaty at Nimeguen, gave me a receipt of the salt of hartshorn, by which a famous Italian physician of the Emperor's had performed mighty cures upon many others as well as himself, and the last year upon the Count Montecuculi: the use of this I am apt to esteem, both from the quality given it of provoking sweat extremely, and of taking away all sharpness from whatever you put it in; which must both be of good effect in the cure of the gout. The Rhyngrave, who was killed last summer before Maestricht, told me his father the old Rhyngrave, whom I knew very well, had been long subject to the gout, and never used other method or remedy, than, upon the very first fit he felt, to go out immediately and walk, what- ever the weather was, and as long as he was able to stand, and pressing still most upon the foot that threatened him; when he came home he went to a warm bed, and was rubbed very 90 CURE OF THE GOUT well, and chiefly upon the place where the pain began. If it continued, or returned next day, he repeated the same course, and was never laid up with it ; and before his death recommended this course to his son, if he should ever fall into that accident. A Dutchman, who had been long in the East Indies, told me, in one part of them, where he had lived some time, the general remedy of all that were subject to the gout was rubbing with hands ; and that whoever had slaves enough to do that constantly every day, and relieve one another by turns, till the motion raised a violent heat about the joints where it was chiefly used, was never troubled much, or laid up by that disease. My youngest brother told me he had a keeper very subject to it, but that it never laid him up, but he was still walking after his deer, or his stud, while he had the fits upon him as at other times, and often from morning to night, though in pain all the while. This he gave me as one instance, that poor and toiling men have sometimes the gout, and that many more may have it, who take no more notice of it than his keeper did; who yet he confessed used to bring the fits of gout upon him, by fits of drinking, which no doubt is a receipt that will hardly fail, if men grow old in the custom. Monsieur Serinchamps told me, a Lorrain surgeon had undertaken to cure it by a more extraordinary way than any of these, which was by whipping the naked part with a great 91 AN ESSAY UPON THE rod of nettles till it grew all over blistered; and that he had once persuaded him to per- form this penance In a sharp fit he had, and the pain In his knee so violent, as helped him to endure this remedy. He said It v\^as cruel; that all where he was whipped grew so angry, and swelled as well as blistered, that he thought It had given him a fever that night. The next morning the part was all as stiff as a boot, and the skin like parchment; but that, keeping It anointed with a certain oil likewise of nettles, It passed In two days, and the gout too, without feeling any more pain that fit. All these things put together, with what a great physician writes of cures by whipping with rods, and another with holly, and by other cruelties of cutting or burning, made me certainly conclude, that the gout was a companion that ought to be treated like an enemy, and by no means like a friend, and that grew troublesome chiefly by good usage ; and this was confirmed to me by considering that it haunted usually the easy and the rich, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because they can endure little : that make much of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not making much of themselves too: that take care to carry it presently to bed, and keep it safe and warm, and indeed lay up the gout for two or three months, while they give out that the gout lays up them. On the other side, it hardly approaches the rough and the poor, such as labour for meat, and 92 CURE OF THE GOUT eat only for hunger; that drink water, either pure, or but discoloured with malt; that know no use of wine, but for a cordial, as it is, and perhaps was only intended : or if such men happen by their native constitutions to fall into the gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure to be sick ; or they use it like a dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as they did before; they keep it wet and cold; or if they are laid up, they are perhaps forced by that to fast more than before, and if it lasts, they grow impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it ; and all this while perhaps never know the very name of the gout. But to follow my experiment: I passed that summer here at Nimeguen, without the least remembrance of what had happened to me in the spring, till about the end of September, and then began to feel a pain that I knew not what to make of, in the same joint, but of my other foot: I had flattered myself with hopes that the vapour had been exhaled, as my learned authors had taught me, and that there- by the business had been ended ; this made me neglect my Moxa for two days, the pain not being violent, till at last my foot began to swell, and I could set it no longer to the ground. Then I fell to my Moxa again, and burnt it four times before the pain went clear away, as it did upon the last, and I walked at ease, as I had done the first time, and within six days after above a league, without the least return of any pain. 93 AN ESSAY UPON THE I continued well till this spring, when about the end of March, feeling again the same pain, and in the same joint, but of the first foot; and finding it grow violent, I immedi- ately burnt it, and felt no more after the third time; was never ofi^" my legs, nor kept my chamber a day. Upon both these last experi- ments I omitted the application of garlic, and contented myself with a plaster only of diapalma, upon the place that was burnt, which crusted and healed in very few days, and without any trouble. I have since con- tinued perfectly well to this present June; and with so much confidence of the cure, that I have been content to trouble myself some hours with telling the story, which, 'tis possible, may at one time or other be thought worth making public, if I am further confirmed by more time and experiments of my own, or of others. And thereby I may not only satisfy Monsieur Zulichem, but my- self too, who should be sorry to omit any good I thought I could do to other men, though never so unknown. But this cure, I suppose, cannot pretend to deal with inveterate gouts, grown habitual by long and frequent returns, by dispositions of the stomach to convert even the best nourishment into those humours, and the vessels to receive them. For such constitutions, by all I have discovered or considered upon this subject, the remedies '(if any) are to be proposed either from a constant course of the milken diet, con- tinued at least for a year together; or else from 94 CURE OF THE GOUT some of those methods commonly used in the cure of a worse disease (if at least I may be bold with one that is so much in vogue); the usual exceptions to the first are not only so long a constraint but the weakness of spirits whilst it continues, and the danger of fevers whenever it is left off. There may, I believe, be some care necessary in this last point, upon so great a change ; but for the other, I have met with no complaints among those that have used it; and Count Egmont, who has done so, more, I believe, than any other man, has told me he never found himself in so much vigour, as in the midst of that course. I have known so many great examples of this cure, and heard of its being so familiar in Austria, that I wonder it has gained no more ground in other places, and am apt to conclude from it, that the loss of pain is generally thought to be purchased too dear by the loss of pleasure. For the other, I met with a physician, whom I esteemed a man of truth, that told me of several great cures of the gout, by a course of guiacum, and of two patients of his own that had gone so far as to be fluxed for it, and with success. And indeed there seems nothing so proper, as what pretends to change the whole mass of the blood, or else a long course of violent perspiration. But the mischief is, that the gout is commonly the disease of aged men, who cannot go through with these strong remedies, which young men play with upon other occasions ; and the reason, I suppose, why these ways are so little practised, is be- 95 AN ESSAY UPON THE cause it happens so seldom that young men have the gout. Let the disease be new or old, and the remedies either of common or foreign growth, there is one ingredient of absolute necessity in all cases: for whoever thinks of curing the gout, without great temperance, had better resolve to endure it with patience : and I know not whether some desperate degrees of abstinence would not have the same effect upon other men, as they had upon Atticus, who, weary of his life as well as his physicians, by long and cruel pains of a dropsical gout, and despairing of any cure, resolved by degrees to starve himself to death; and went so far, that the physicians found he had ended his disease instead of his life; and told him, that to be well, there would need nothing but only resolve to live. His answer was noble; that since dying was a thing to be done, and he was now so far on his way, he did not think it worth the while to return. This was said and done, and could indeed have been so by none but such a man as Atticus, who was singular in his life, as well as his death, and has been ever, I confess, by me as much esteemed in both, as any of those that have made greater figures upon the busy scenes of their own times, and since in records of story and of fame. But perhaps some such methods might suc- ceed with others upon the designs to live, as they did with him upon those to die ; and though such degrees may be too desperate, 96 CURE OF THE GOUT yet none of temperance can, I think, be too great for those that pretend the cure of in- veterate gouts, or indeed of most other dis- eases to which mankind is exposed, rather by the viciousness, than by the frailty, of their natures. Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body, and tranquillity of mind; the best guardian of youth, and support of old age ; the precept of reason, as well as religion ; and physician of the soul, as well as the body ; the tutelar Goddess of health, and universal medicine of life, that clears the head and cleanses the blood, that eases the stomach and purges the bowels, that strengthens the nerves, enlightens the eyes, and comforts the heart: in a word, that secures and perfects the digestion, and thereby avoids the fumes and winds to which we owe the colic and the spleen; those crudities and sharp humours that feed the scurvy and the gout, and those slimy dregs, out of which the gravel and stone are formed within us — diseases by which we often condemn ourselves to greater torments and miseries of life, than have perhaps been yet invented by anger or revenge, or inflicted by the greatest tyrants upon the worst of men. I do not allow the pretence of temperance to all such as are seldom or never drunk, or fall into surfeits; for men may lose their health without losing their senses, and be intemperate every day without being drunk perliaps once in their lives: nay, for ought I know, if a man ( c 217 ) 97 7 AN ESSAY UPON THE should pass the month in a college-diet, without excess or variety of meats or of drinks, but only the last day give a loose in them both, and so far till it comes to serve him for physic rather than food, and he utter his stomach as well as his heart ; he may perhaps, as to the mere considerations of health, do much better than another that eats every day, but as men do generally in England, who pretend to live well in Court or in town ; that is, in plenty and luxury, with great variety of meats, and a dozen glasses of wine at a meal, still spurring up ap- petite when it would lie down of itself; flushed every day, but never drunk; and, with the help of dozing three hours after dinner, as sober and wise as they were before. But that which I call temperance, and reckon so necessary in all attempts and methods of curing the gout, is a regular and simple diet, limited by every man's experience of his own easy digestion, and thereby proportioning, as near as well can be, the daily repairs to the daily decays of our wasting bodies. Nor can this be determined by measures and weights, or any general Lessian rules; but must vary with the vigour or decays of age, or of health, and the use or disuse of air, or of exercise, with the changes of appetite ; and thereby what every man may find or suspect of the present strength or weakness of digestion : and in case of excesses, I take the German proverbial cure, by a hair of the same beast, to be the worst in the world; and the best to be that which is called the monk's diet, to eat till you are sick, and fast till 98 CURE OF THE GOUT you are well again. In all courses of the gout, the most effectual point I take to be abstinence from wine, further than as a cordial, where faintness or want of spirits require it: and the use of water where the stomach will bear it, as I believe most men's will, and with great advantage of digestion, unless they are spoiled with long and constant use of wines or other strong drinks. In that case they must be weaned, and the habit changed by degrees, and with time, for fear of falling into consump- tions, instead of recovering dropsies or gouts. But the wines used by those that feel or fear this disease, or pursue the cure, should rather be Spanish or Portugal, than either French or Rhenish ; and of the French, rather the Provence or Languedoc, than the Bourdeaux or Campagne ; and of the Rhenish, the Rhin- gaw and Bleker, of which at least it may be said that they do not so much harm as the others. But I have known so great cures, and so many, done by obstinate resolutions of drink- ing no wine at all, that I put more weight upon the part of temperance, than any other. And I doubt very much whether the great increase of that disease in England, within these twenty years, may not have been occa- sioned by the custom of so much wine intro- duced into our constant and common tables: for this use may be more pernicious to health, than that of taverns and debauches, according to the old style, which were but by fits, and upon set or casual encounters. I have some- 99 AN ESSAY UPON THE times thought that this custom of using wine, of our common drinic, may alter in time the very constitution of our nation, I mean the native tempers of our bodies and minds, and cause a heat and sharpness in our humours, which is not natural to our cli- mate. Our having been denied it by nature, is argument enough that it was never in- tended us for common use ; nor do I believe it was in any other countries, there being so small a part of the world where it grows; and where it does, the use of it pure being so little practised, and in some places defended by customs or laws. So the Turks have not known it, unless of late years; and I have met with many Spaniards, that never tasted it pure in their lives; nor, in the time when I was in France, did I observe any I conversed with to drink it unmixed at meals. The true use of wine is either as I mentioned, for a cordial ; and I believe there is not a better to such as drink it seldom : or else what the mother of Lemuel tells her son, " Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that are heavy of heart ; let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more". At least it ought to be reserved for the times and occa- sions of feast and of joy, and be treated like a mistress rather than a wife, without aban- doning either our wits to our humours, or our healths to our pleasure, or that of one sense to those of all the rest, which I doubt it impairs. This philosophy, I suppose, may lOO CURE OF THE GOUT pass with the youngest and most sensual men, while they pretend to be reasonable ; but, whenever they have a mind to be other- wise, the best way they can take is to drink or to sleep, and either of them will serve the turn. of Health and Long Life I can truly say that, of all the paper I have blotted, which has been a great deal in my time, I have never written any thing for the public without the intention of some public good. Whether I have succeeded, or no, is not my part to judge ; and others, in what they tell me, may deceive either me or them- selves. Good intentions are at least the seed of good actions ; and every man ought to sow them, and leave it to the soil and the seasons whether they come up or no, and whether he or any other gather the fruit. I have chosen those subjects of these essays, wherein I take human life to be most con- cerned, and which are of most common use, or most necessary knowledge ; and wherein, though I may not be able to inform men more than they know, yet I may perhaps give them the occasion to consider more than they do. This is a sort of instruction that no man can dislike, since it comes from himself, and is made without envy or fear, constraint or obli- gation, which make us commonly dislike what 103 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE is taught us by others. All men would be glad to be their own masters, and should not be sorry to be their own scholars, when they pay no more for their learning than their own thoughts, which they have commonly more store of about them than they know what to do with, and which, if they do not apply to something of good use, nor employ about something of ill, they will trifle away upon something vain or impertinent: their thoughts will be but waking dreams, as their dreams are sleeping thoughts. Yet, of all sorts of instruc- tions, the best is gained from our own thoughts as well as experience : for, though a man may grow learned by other men's thoughts, yet he will grow wise or happy only by his own ; the use of other men's towards these ends is but to serve for one's own reflexions; otherwise they are but like meat swallowed down for pleasure or greediness, which only charges the stomach, or fumes into the brain, if it be not well digested, and thereby turned into the very mass or substance of the body that re- ceives it. Some writers, in casting up the goods most desirable in life, have given them this rank: health, beauty, and riches. Of the first I find no dispute, but to the two others much may be said : for beauty is a good that makes others happy rather than one's self; and, how riches should claim so high a rank, I cannot tell, when so great, so wise, and so good a part of man- kind have in all ages preferred poverty before them. The Therapeuts and Ebionites among 104 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE the Jews, the primitive monks and modern friars among Christians, so many Dervishes among the Mahometans, the Brachmans among the Indians, and all the ancient philosophers; who, whatever else they differed in, agreed in this of despising riches, and at best esteeming them an unnecessary trouble or incumbrance of life: so that whether they are to be reckoned among goods or evils is yet left in doubt. When I was young and in some idle com- pany, it was proposed that every one should tell what their three wishes should be, if they were sure to be granted; some were very plea- sant, and some very extravagant ; mine were health, and peace, and fair weather ; which, though out of the way among young men, yet perhaps might pass well enough among old : they are all of a strain, for health in the body is like peace in the State and serenity in the air: the sun, in our climate at least, has some- thing so reviving, that a fair day is a kind of sensual pleasure, and of all others the most innocent. Peace is a public blessing, without which no man is safe in his fortunes, his liberty, or his life: neither innocence nor laws are a guard of defence; no possessions are enjoyed but in danger or fear, which equally lose the pleasure and ease of all that fortune can give us. Health is the soul that animates all enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless, if not dead, without it : a man starves at the best and the greatest tables, makes faces at the noblest and most delicate wines, is old and impotent in 105 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE seraglios of the most sparkling beauties, poor and wretched in the midst of the greatest treasures and fortunes : with common diseases strength grows decrepit, youth loses all vigour, and beauty all charms; music grows harsh, and conversation disagreeable ; palaces are prisons, or of equal confinement ; riches are useless, honour and attendance are cumbersome, and crowns themselves are a burden : but, if dis- eases are painful and violent, they equal all con- ditions of life, make no difference between a Prince and a beggar ; and a fit of the stone or the colic puts a King to the rack, and makes him as miserable as he can do the meanest, the worst and most criminal of his sub- jects. To know that the passions or distempers of the mind make our lives unhappy, in spite of all accidents and favours of fortune, a man perhaps must be a philosopher ; and requires much thought, and study, and deep reflexions. To be a Stoic, and grow insensible of pain, as well as poverty or disgrace, one must be perhaps something more or less than a man, renounce common nature, oppose common truth and constant experience. But there needs little learning or study, more than common thought and observation, to find out that ill health loses not only the enjoy- ments of fortune, but the pleasures of sense, and even of imagination, and hinders the common operations both of body and mind from being easy and free. Let philosophers reason and differ about the chief good or happi- io6 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE ness of man ; let them find it where they can, and place it where they please; but there is no mistake so gross, or opinion so impertinent (how common soever) as to think pleasures arise from what is without us, rather than from what is within ; from the impression given us of objects, rather than from the disposition of the organs that receive them. The various effects of the same objects upon different persons, or upon the same persons at different times, make the contrary most evident. Some distempers make things look yellow, others double what we see; the commonest alter our tastes and our smells, and the very foulness of ears changes sounds. The difference of tem- pers, as well as of age, may have the same effect, by the many degrees of perfection or imperfection in our original tempers, as well as of strength or decay, from the differences of health and of years. From all which 'tis easy, without being a great naturalist, to conclude that our perceptions are formed, and our imaginations raised upon them, in a very great measure, by the dispositions of the organs through which the several objects make their impressions ; and that these vary according to the different frame and temper of the others; as the sound of the same breath passing through an oaten pipe, a flute, or a trumpet. But to leave philosophy, and return to health. Whatever is true in point of happiness depend- ing upon the temper of the mind, 'tis certain that pleasures depend upon the temper of the 107 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE body; and that, to enjoy them, a man must be well himself, as the vessel must be sound to have your wine sweet; for otherwise, let it be never so pleasant and so generous, it loses the taste; and pour in never so much, it all turns sour, and were better let alone. Whoever will eat well, must have a stomach; who will relish the pleasure of drinks, must have his mouth in taste; who will enjoy a beautiful woman, must be in vigour himself; nay, to find any felicity, or take any pleasure in the greatest advantages of honour and fortune, a man must be in health. Who would not be covetous, and with reason, if this could be purchased with gold ? who not ambitious, if it were at the command of power, or restored by honour? But alas! a white staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor a blue rib- band bind up a wound so well as a fillet: the glitter of gold or of diamonds will but hurt sore eyes, instead of curing them ; and an aching head will be no more eased by wear- ing a crown than a common nightcap. If health be such a blessing, and the very source of all pleasure, it may be worth the pains to discover the regions where it grows, the springs that feed it, the customs and methods by which it is best cultivated and preserved. Towards this end, it will be neces- sary to consider the examples or instances we meet with of health and long life, which is the consequence of it ; and to observe the places, the customs, and the conditions of those who enjoyed them in any degree ex- io8 OF HEALTH AND LOiNG LIFE traordinary; from whence we may best guess at the causes, and make the truest conclu- sions. Of what passed before the flood, we know little from Scripture itself, besides the length of their lives; so as I shall only observe upon that period of time, that men are thought neither to have eat flesh nor drunk wine be- fore it ended : for to Noah first seems to have been given the liberty of feeding upon living creatures, and the prerogative of planting the vine. Since that time we meet with little mention of very long lives in any stories either sacred or prophane, besides the Patriarchs of the Hebrews, the Brachmans among the old Indians, and the Brazilians at the time that country was discovered by the Europeans. Many of these were said then to have lived two hundred, some three hundred years. The same terms of life are attributed to the old Brachmans ; and how long those of the Patriarchs were is recorded in Scripture. Upon all these I shall observe, that the Patriarchs' abodes were not in cities, but in open countries and fields : that their lives were pastoral, or employed in some sorts of agriculture : that they were of the same race, to which their marriages were generally con- fined : that their diet was simple, as that of the ancients is generally represented, among whom flesh or wine was seldom used but at sacrifices or solemn feasts. The Brachmans were all of the same races, lived in fields and in woods, after the course of their studies were 109 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE ended, and fed only upon rice, milk, or herbs. The Brazilians, when first discovered, lived the most natural original lives of mankind, so fre- quently described in ancient countries, before laws, or property, or arts made entrance among them ; and so their customs may be concluded to have been yet more simple than either of the other two. They lived without business or labour, further than for their necessary food, by gathering fruits, herbs, and plants: they knew no drink but water; were not tempted to eat nor drink beyond common thirst or appetite; were not troubled with either public or do- mestic cares, nor knew any pleasures but the most simple and natural. From all these examples and customs it may probably be concluded, that the common ingredi- ents of health and long life (where births are not impaired from the conception by any derived infirmities of the race they come from) are great temperance, open air, easy labour, little care, simplicity of diet, rather fruits and plants than flesh, which easier corrupts ; and water, which preserves the radical moisture, without too much increasing the radical heat : whereas sickness, decay, and death, proceed commonly from the one preying too fast upon the other, and at length wholly extinguishing it. I have sometimes wondered, that the re- gions of so much health and so long lives were all under very hot climates; whereas the more temperate are allowed to produce the strongest and most vigorous bodies. But weaker constitutions may last as long as the OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE strong, if better preserved from accidents ; so Venice glass, as long as an earthen pitcher, if carefully kept ; and, for one life that ends by mere decay of nature or age, millions are inter- cepted by accidents from without or diseases within ; by untimely deaths or decays ; from the effects of excess and luxury, immoderate repletion or exercise; the preying of our minds upon our bodies by long passions or consuming cares, as well as those accidents which are called violent. Men are perhaps most betrayed to all these dangers by great strength and vig- our of constitution, by more appetite and larger fare in colder climates: in the warm, excesses are found more pernicious to health, and so more avoided ; and, if experience and reflexion do not cause temperance among them, yet it is forced upon them by the faintness of ap- petite. I can find no better account of a story Sir Francis Bacon tells, of a very old man, whose customs and diet he inquired ; but he said he observed none besides eating before he was hungry and drinking before he was dry ; for by that rule he was sure never to eat nor drink much at a time. Besides, the warmth of air keeps the pores open, and by continual perspiration breathes out those humours, which breed most diseases, if in cooler climates it be not helped by exercise. And this I take to be the reason of our English constitutions finding so much benefit by the air of Montpelier, especially in long colds or consumptions, or rather lingering diseases ; though I have known some who OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE attributed the restoring of their health there as much to the fruits as the air of that place. I know not whether there may be any thing in the climate of Brazil more propitious to health than in other countries : for, besides what was observed among the natives upon the first European discoveries, I remember Don Francisco de Melo, a Portugal Ambas- sador in England, told me, it was frequent in his country for men spent with age or other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship them- selves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there to go on a great length, some- times of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the force of that vigour they recovered with that remove. Whether such an effect might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of life and heat, when their natural heat was so far decayed ; or whether the piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains, I cannot tell : perhaps the play is not worth the candle. I do not remember, either in story or modern observation, any examples of long life common to any parts of Europe, which the temper of the climate has probably made the scene of luxury and excesses in diet. Greece and Rome were of old celebrated, or rather de- famed, for those customs, when they were not known in Asia nor Afric; and how guilty our colder climates are in this point, beyond the warmer of Spain and Italy, is but too well 112 I OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE known. It is common among Spaniards of the best quality, not to have tasted pure wine at forty years old. 'Tis an honour to their laws, that a man loses his testimony who can be proved once to have been drunk ; and I never was more pleased with any reply, than that of a Spaniard, who, having been asked whether he had a good dinner at a friend's house, said, "Si, Senhor, a via sabrado"; "Yes, Sir, for there was something left". The great trade in Italy, and resort of strangers, especially of Germans, has made the use of wine something more frequent there, though not much among the persons of rank, who are observed to live longer at Rome and Madrid, than in any other towns of Europe, where the qualities of the air force them upon the greatest tem- perance, as well as care and precaution. We read of many Kings very long-lived in Spain; one, I remember, that reigned above seventy years. But Philip de Comines observes that none in France had lived to threescore, from Charlemain's time to that of Lewis XI, whereas in England, from the Conquest to the end of Queen Elizabeth (which is a much shorter period of time) there have reigned five Kings and one Queen, whereof two lived sixty- five years, two sixty-eight, and two reached at least the seventieth year of their age. I wondered upon this subject when Monsieur Pompone, French Ambassador in my time at the Hague, a person of great worth and learning, as well as observation, told me there, that in his life he had never heard of any man in (C217) 113 8 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE France that arrived at a hundred years ; and I could imagine no reason for it, unless it be that the excellence of their climate, sub- ject neither to much cold nor heat, gave them such a liveliness of temper and humour, as disposed them to more pleasures of all kinds than in any other countries. And, I doubt, pleasures too long continued, or rather too frequently repeated, may spend the spirits, and thereby life too fast, to leave it very long ; like blowing a fire too often, which makes it indeed burn the better, but last the less. For as pleasures perish themselves in the using, like flowers that fade with gather- ing, so 'tis neither natural nor safe to continue them long, to renew them without appetite, or ever to provoke them by arts or imagination where nature does not call; who can best tell us when and how much we need, or what is good for us, if we were so wise as to consult her. But a short life and a merry carries it, and is without doubt better than a long with sorrow or pain. For the honour of our climate it has been observed by ancient authors, that the Britons were longer -lived than any other nation to them known. And in modern times there have been more and greater examples of this kind than in any other countries of Europe. The story of old Parr is too late to be for- gotten by many now alive, who was brought out of Derbyshire to the court in King Charles I's time, and lived to a hundred and fifty-three years old ; and might have, as H4 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE was thought, gone further, if the change of country air and diet for that of the town had not carried him off, perhaps untimely at that very age. The late Robert, Earl of Leicester, who was a person of great learning and obser- vation, as well as of truth, told me several stories very extraordinary upon this subject; one, of a Countess of Desmond, married out of England in Edward IV's time, and who lived far in King James's reign, and was counted to have died some years above a hundred and forty ; at which age she came from Bristol to London to beg some relief at Court, having long been very poor by the ruin of that Irish family into which she was married. Another he told me was of a beggar at a bookseller's shop, where he was some weeks after the death of Prince Henry; and ob- serving those that passed by, he was saying to his company that never such a mourn- ing had been seen in England : this beggar said, no, never since the death of Prince Arthur. My Lord Leicester, surprised, asked what she meant, and whether she remembered it : she said, very well : and upon his more curious inquiry told him that her name was Rainsford, of a good family in Oxfordshire : that, when she was about twenty years old, upon the falseness of a lover, she fell dis- tracted ; how long she had been so, nor what passed in that time, she knew not ; that, when she was thought well enough to go abroad, she was fain to beg for her living : that she was "5 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE some time at this trade before she recovered any memory of what she had been, or where bred : that, when this memory returned, she went down into her country, but hardly found the memory of any of her friends she had left there ; and so returned to a parish in South- wark, where she had some small allowance among other poor, and had been for many years ; and once a week walked into the city, and took what alms were given her. My Lord Leicester told me, he sent to inquire at the parish, and found their account agree with the woman's : upon which he ordered her to call at his house once a week, which she did for some time; after which he heard no more of her. This story raised some discourse upon a remark of some in the company, that mad people are apt to live long. They alleged examples of their own knowledge: but the result was, that, if it were true, it must proceed from the natural vigour of their tempers, which disposed them to passions so violent as ended in frenzies: and from the great abstinence and hardships of diet they are forced upon by the methods of their cure, and severity of those who had them in care ; no other drink but water being allowed them, and very little meat. The last story I shall mention from that noble person, upon this subject, was of a morrice-dance in Herefordshire; whereof, he said, he had a pamphlet still in his library, written by a very ingenious gentleman of that county: and which gave an account how, such a year of King James's reign, there went about no OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE the country a set of morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a maid Marian, and a tabor and pipe: and how these twelve, one with another, made up twelve hundred years. 'Tis not so much, that so many, in one small county, should live to that age, as that they should be in vigour and in humour to travel and to dance. I have, in my life, met with two of above a hundred and twelve; whereof the woman had passed her life in service ; and the man, in common labour, till he grew old, and fell upon the parish. But I met with one who had gone a much greater length, which made me more curious in my inquiries. 'Twas an old man who begged usually at a lonely inn, upon the road in Staffordshire; who told me, he was a hundred and twenty-four years old: that he had been a soldier in the Cales voyage, under the Earl of Essex, of which he gave me a sensible account. That, after his return, he fell to labour in his own parish, which was about a mile from the place where I met him. That he continued to work till a hundred and twelve, when he broke one of his ribs by a fall from a cart, and, being thereby disabled, he fell to beg. This agreeing with what the master of the house told me, was reported and believed by all his neighbours. I asked him what his usual food was; he said, milk, bread, and cheese, and flesh when it was given him. I asked him what he used to drink; he said, "O Sir, we have the best water in our parish that is in all the neighbourhood " : whether he 117 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE never drank any thing else? he said, "Yes, if any body gave it him, but not otherwise " : and the host told me, he had got many a pound in his house, but never spent one penny. I asked if he had any neighbours as old as he; and he told me, but one, v^^ho had been his fellow- soldier at Cales, and was three years older; but he had been most of his time in a good service, and had something to live on now he was old. I have heard, and very credibly, of many in my life, above an hundred years old, brought as witnesses upon trials of titles, and bounds of land: but I have observed most of them have been of Derbyshire, Staffordshire, or Yorkshire, and none above the rank of common farmers. The oldest I ever knew any persons of quality, or indeed any gentleman either at home or abroad, was fourscore and twelve. This, added to all the former recites or observations, either of long-lived races or persons in any age or country, makes it easy to conclude, that health and long life are usually blessings of the poor, not of the rich, and the fruits of temperance, rather than of luxury and excess. And, in- deed, if a rich man does not, in many things, live like a poor, he will certainly be the worse for his riches: if he does not use exercise, which is but voluntary labour; if he does not restrain appetite by choice, as the other does by necessity. If he does not practise some- times even abstinence and fasting, which is the last extreme of want and poverty: if his cares and his troubles increase with his riches, or ii8 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE his passions with his pleasures; he will cer- tainly impair in health, whilst he improves his fortunes, and lose more than he gains by the bargain; since health is the best of all human possessions, and without which the rest are not relished or kindly enjoyed. It is observable in story, that the ancient philosophers lived generally very long; which may be attributed to their great temperance, and their freedom from common passions, as well as cares, of the world. But the friars, in many orders, seem to equal them in all these, and yet are not observed to live long; so as some other reason may be assigned: I can give none, unless it be the great and constant con- finement of the last, and liberty of the others: I mean not only that of their persons to their cloisters (which is not universal among them), but their condition of life, so tied to rules, and so absolutely subject to their superiors' commands, besides the very confinement of their minds and thoughts to a certain compass of notions, speculations, and opinions. The philosophers took the greatest liberty that could be; and allowed their thoughts, their studies, and inventions, the most unconfined range over the whole universe. They both began and continued their profession and condition of life at their own choice, as well as their abodes: whereas among the friars, though they may be voluntary at first, yet, after their vows made, they grow necessary, and thereby constrained. Now 'tis certain, that as nothing damps or depresses the spirits 119 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE like great subjection or slavery, either of body or mind; so nothing nourishes, revives, and fortifies them like great liberty. Which may possibly enter among other reasons, of what has been observed about long life being found more in England, than in others of our neighbour countries. Upon the general and particular surveys already made, it may seem that the moun- tainous or barren countries are usually the scenes of health and long life: that they have been found rather in the hills of Palestine and Arcadia, than in the plains of Babylon or of Thessaly: and among us in England, rather upon the peak of Derbyshire, and the heaths of Staffordshire, than the fertile soils of other counties, that abound more in people and in riches. Whether this proceeds from the air being clearer of gross and damp exhalations, or from the meaner condition, and thereby harder fare, and more simple diet; or from the stronger nourishment of those grains and roots which grow in dry soils, I will not determine: but think it is evident, from common experience, that the natives and inhabitants of hilly and barren countries have not only more health in general, but also more vigour, than those of the plains, or fertile soils; and usually exceed them even in size and stature. So the largest bodies of men that are found in these parts of Europe are the Switzers, the Highlanders of Scotland, and the northern Irish. I remember King Charles the Second (a prince of much and various knowledge, and curious observation). OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE upon this subject falling in discourse, asked me, what could be the reason, that in moun- tainous countries the men were commonly larger, and yet the cattle of all sorts smaller, than in others. I could think of none, unless it were that, appetite being more in both, from the air of such places, it happened that, by the care of parents in the education of children, these seldom wanted food of some sort or other, enough to supply nature, and satisfy appetite, during the age of their growth, which must be the greater, by the sharpness of hunger, and strength of digestion in drier airs: for milk, roots, and oats abound in such countries, though there may be scarcity of other food or grain. But the cattle, from the shortness of pasture and of fodder, have hardly enough to feed in summer; and very often want, in winter, even necessary food for sustenance of life; many are starved, and the rest stunted in their growth, which, after a certain age, never advances. Whether this be a good reason, or a better may be found, I believe one part of it will not be contested by any man that tries; which is, that the open dry air of hilly countries gives more stomach than that of plains and vallies, in which cities are commonly built, for the convenience of water, of trade, and the plenty of fruits and grains produced by the earth, with much greater increase and less labour, in softer than in harder grounds. The faintness of appetite in such places, especially in great cities, makes the many endeavours to relieve and provoke it OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE by art, where nature fails: and this is one great ground of luxury, and so many, and various, and extravagant inventions to heighten and improve it: which may serve perhaps for some refinement in pleasure; but not at all for any advantages of health or of life: on the contrary, all the great cities, celebrated most by the con- course of mankind, and by the inventions and customs of the greatest and most delicate luxury, are the scenes of the most frequent and violent plagues, as well as other diseases. Such are, in our age. Grand Cairo, Con- stantinople, Naples, and Rome; though the exact and constant care, in this last, helps them commonly to escape better than others. This introduces the use, and indeed the necessity, of physic, in great towns and very populous countries; which remoter and more barren or desolate places are scarce acquainted with. For, in the course of common life, a man must either often exercise, or fast, or take physic, or be sick; and the choice seems left to ever)' one as he likes. The two first are the best methods and means of preserving health: the use of physic is for restoring it, and curing those diseases which are generally caused by the want or neglect of the others; but is neither necessary, nor perhaps useful, for con- firming health, or to the length of life, being generally a force upon nature; though the end of it seems to be rather assisting nature, than opposing it in its course. How ancient, how general the study or profession of this science lias been in the world. OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE and how various the practice, may be worth a little inquiry and observation, since it so nearly concerns our healths and lives. Greece must be allowed to have been the mother of this, as much or more than of other sciences, most whereof are transplanted thither from more ancient and more eastern nations. But this seems to have first risen there, and with good reason: for Greece having been the first scene of luxury we meet with in story, and having thereby occasioned more diseases, seemed to owe the world that justice of providing the remedies. Among the more simple and original customs and lives of other nations it entered late, and was introduced by the Grecians. In ancient Babylon, how great and populous soever, no physicians were known, nor other methods for the cure of diseases, besides abstinence, patience, domestic care; or, when these succeeded not, exposing the patient in the market, to receive the instruc- tion of any persons that passed by, and pretended by experience or inquiries to have learned any remedies for such an illness. The Persian Emperors sent into Greece for the physicians they needed, upon some extremity at first, but afterwards kept them residing with them. In old Rome they were long unknown; and, after having entered there, and continued for some time, they were all banished, and returned not in many years, till their fondness of all the Grecian arts and customs restored this, and introduced all the rest, among them; where they continued in use and esteem, 123 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE during the greatness of that empire. With the rise and progress of the fierce northern powers and arms, this, as well as all other learning, was in a manner extinguished in Europe. But, when the Saracen empire grew to such a height in the more eastern and southern parts of the world, all arts and sciences, following the traces of greatness and security in States or governments, began to flourish there, and this among the rest. The Arabians seem to have first retrieved and restored it in the Mahometan dominions; and the Jews in Europe, who were long the chief professors of it in the Gothic kingdoms, having been always a nation very mercurial, of great genius and application to all sorts of learning after their dispersion; till they were discouraged by the persecutions of their religion and their persons, among most of the Christian States. In the vast territories of India there are few physicians, or little esteemed, besides some European, or else of the race either of Jews or Arabs. Through these hands and places, this science has passed with greatest honour and applause: among others, it has been less used or esteemed. For the antiquity of it, and original in Greece, we must have recourse to ^sculapius, who lived in the age before the Trojan war, and whose son Machaon is mentioned to have assisted there; but, whether as a physician, or a surgeon, I do not find: how simple the beginnings of this art were may be observed 124 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE by the story, or tradition, of ^sculapius going about the country with a dog and a she-goat always following; both which he used much in his cures; the first for licking all ulcerated wounds, and the goat's milk for diseases of the stomach and the lungs. We find little more recorded of either his methods or medicines; though he was so successful by his skill, or so admired for the novelty of his profession, as to have been honoured with statues, esteemed son of Apollo, and worshipped as a god. Whoever was accounted the god of physic, the Prince of this science must be by all, I think, allowed to have been Hippocrates. He flourished in the time of the first renowned philosophers of Greece (the chief of whom was Democritus), and his writings are the most ancient of any that remain to posterity: for those of Democritus and others of that age are all lost, though m.any were preserved till the time of Antoninus Pius, and perhaps something later; and 'tis probable were suppressed by the pious zeal of some Fathers, under the first Christian Emperor. Those of Hippocrates escaped this fate of his age, by being esteemed so useful to human life, as well as the most excellent upon all subjects he treats. For he was a great philosopher and naturalist, before he began the study of physic, to which both these are perhaps necessary. His rules and methods continued in practice as well as esteem, without any dispute, for many ages, till the time of Galen: and I have heard a great physician say, that his aphorisms are 1^5 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE still the most certain and uncontrolled of any that science has produced. I will judge but of one, which, in my opinion, has the greatest race and height both of sense and judgment that I have read in so few words, and the best expressed: " Ars longa, vita brevis, ex- perientia fallax, occasio praeceps, judicium dif- ficile ". By which alone, if no more remained of that admirable person, we may easily judge how great a genius he was, and how perfectly he understood both nature and art. In the time of Adrian, Galen began to change the practice and methods of physic, derived to that age from Hippocrates; and those of his new institution continue generally observed to our time. Yet Paracelsus, about two hundred years ago, endeavoured to overthrow the whole scheme of Galen, and introduce a new one of his own, as well as the use of chymical medi- cines; and has not wanted his followers and admirers ever since, who have, in some mea- sure, compounded with the Galenists, and brought a mixed use of chymical medicines into the present practice. Doctor Harvey gave the first credit, if not rise, to the opinion about the circulation of the blood, which was expected to bring in great and general innovations into the whole practice of physic, but has had no such effect. Whether the opinion has not had the luck to be so well believed as proved, sense and ex- perience having not well agreed with reason and speculation: or, whether the scheme has not been pursued so far, as to draw it into 126 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE practice: or, whether it be too fine to be capable of it, like some propositions in the mathematics, how true and demonstrative so- ever, I will not pretend to determine. These great changes or revolutions in the physical empire have given ground to many attacks that have been made against it, upon the score of its uncertainty, by several wise and learned men, as well as by many ignorant and malicious. Montaigne has written a great deal, and very ingeniously, upon this point; and some sharp Italians; and many physicians are too free upon the subject, in the conver- sation of their friends. But as the noble Athenian inscription told Demetrius that he was in so much a god, as he acknowledged himself to be a man: so we may say of phy- sicians, that they are the greater, in so much as they know and confess the weakness of their art. 'Tis certain, however, that the study of physic is not achieved in any eminent degree, without very great advancements in other sciences: so that whatever the profession is, the professors have been generally very much esteemed upon that account, as well as of their own art, as the most learned men of their ages; and thereby shared with the two other great professions in those advantages most commonly valued, and most eagerly pur- sued; whereof the divines seem to have had the most honour, the lawyers the most money, and the physicians the most learning. I have known, in my time, at least five or six, that, besides their general learning, were the greatest 127 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE wits in the compass of my conversation. And whatever can be said of the uncertainty of their art, or disagreement of its professors, they may, I believe, confidently undertake that when divines arrive at certainty in their schemes of divinity; or lawyers in those of law; or politicians in those of civil govern- ment: the physicians will do it likewise in the methods and practice of physic; and have the honour of finding out the universal medi- cine, at least as soon as the chymists shall the philosopher's stone. The great defects in this excellent science seem to me chiefly to have proceeded from the professors' application (especially since Galen's time) running so much upon method, and so little upon medicine; and in this to have ad- dicted themselves so much to composition, and neglected too much the use of simples, as well as the inquiries and records of specific remedies. Upon this occasion, I have sometimes won- dered why a registry has not been kept in the colleges of physicians, of all such as have been invented by any professors of every age, found out by study or by chance, learned by inquiry, and approved by their practice and experience. This would supply the want of skill and study: arts would be improved by the experience of many ages, and derived by the succession of ancestors. As many professions are tied to certain races in several nations, so this of physic has been in some; by which parents were induced to the cares of improving and 128 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE augmenting their knowledge, as others do their estates; because they were to descend to their posterity, and not die with them- selves, as learning does in vulgar hands. How many methods as well as remedies are lost, for want of this custom in the course of ages! and which perhaps were of greater effect and of more common benefit than those that, succeeding in their places, have worn out the memory of the former, either by chance or negligence, or different humours of persons and times. Among the Romans there were four things much in use, whereof some are so far out of practice in ours, and other late ages, as to be hardly known any more than by their names; these were bathing, fumigation, friction, and jactation. The first, though not wholly dis- used among us, yet is turned out of the ser- vice of health, to that of pleasure; but may be of excellent effect in both. It not only opens the pores, provokes sweat, and thereby allays heat; supples the joints and sinews; unwearies and refreshes more than any thing, after too great labour and exercise; but is of great effect in some acute pains, as of the stone and cholic; and disposes to sleep, when many other remedies fail. Nor is it improbable, that all good effects of any natural baths may be imitated by the artificial, if composed with care and skill of able naturalists or physicians. Fumigation, or the use of scents, is not, that I know, at all practised in our modern physic, nor the power and virtue of them considered (C217) 129 9 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE among us: yet they may have as much to do good, for aught I know, as to do harm, and contribute to health as well as to diseases ; which is too much felt by experience in all that are infectious, and by the operations of some poisons that are received only by the smell. How reviving as well as pleasing some scents of herbs or flowers are, is obvious to all: how great virtues they may have in diseases, especially of the head, is known to few, but may be easily conjectured by any thinking man. What is recorded of Democritus, is worth remarking upon this subject: that being spent with age, and just at the point of death; and his sister bewailing that he should not live till the feast of Ceres, which was to be kept three or four days after; he called for loaves of new bread to be brought him, and with the steam of them under his nose prolonged his life till the feast was past, and then died. Whether a man may live some time, or how long, by the steam of meat, I cannot tell: but the justice was great, if not the truth, in that story of a cook, who, observing a man to use it often in his shop, and asking money because he confessed to save his dinner by it, was ad- judged to be paid by the chinking of his coin. I remember that walking in a long gallery of the Indian house at Amsterdam, where vast quantities of mace, cloves, and nutmegs were kept in great open chests ranged all along one side of the room, I found something so reviv- ing by the perfumed air, that I took notice of it to the company with me, which was a great 130 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE deal, and they all were sensible of the same effect. Which is enough to shew the power of smells, and their operations both upon health and humour. Friction is of great and excellent use, and of very general practice in the eastern coun- tries, especially after their frequent bathings; it opens the pores, and is the best way of all forced perspiration; is very proper and effectual in all swellings and pains of the joints, or others in the flesh, which are not to be drawn to a head and break. 'Tis a saying among the Indians, that none can be much troubled with the gout who have slaves enough to rub them; and is the best natural account of some stories I have heard of persons who were said to cure several diseases by stroking. Jactations were used for some amusement and allay in great and constant pains, and to relieve that intranquillity which attends most diseases, and makes men often impatient of lying still in their beds. Besides, they help or occasion sleep, as we find by the common use and experience of rocking froward children in cradles, or dandling them in their nurses' arms. I remember an old Prince Maurice of Nassau, who had been accustomed to ham- mocks in Brazil, and used them frequently all his life after, upon the pains he suffered by the stone or gout; and thought he found ease, and was allured to sleep by the constant motion or swinging of those airy beds, which was assisted by a servant, if they moved too little by the springs upon which they hung. 13^ OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE In Egypt of old, and at this time in Bar- bary, the general method of cures in most diseases is by burning with a hot iron; so as the bodies of their slaves are found often to have many scars upon them remaining of those operations. But this and other uses and effects of fire I have taken notice enough of, in an essay upon the Indian cure by moxa in the gout. The ancient native Irish, and the Americans at the time of the first European discoveries and conquests there, knew nothing of physic beyond the virtues of herbs and plants. And in this the most polished nation agrees in a great measure with those that were esteemed most barbarous; and where the learning and voluptuousness are as great as were the native simplicity and ignorance of the others. For in China, though their physicians are admir- able in the knowledge of the pulse, and by that, in discovering the causes of all inward diseases; yet their practice extends little further in the cures beyond the methods of diet, and the virtues of herbs and plants either inwardly taken or outwardly applied. In the course of my life, I have often pleased or entertained myself with observing the various and fantastical changes of the diseases generally complained of, and of the remedies in common vogue, which were like birds of passage, very much seen or heard of at one season, and dis- appeared at another, and commonly succeeded by some of a very different kind. When I was very young, nothing was so much feared or talked of as rickets among children, and 132 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE consumptions among young people of both sexes. After these the spleen came in play, and grew a formal disease: then the scurvy, which was the general complaint, and both were thought to appear in many various guises. After these, and for a time, nothing was so much talked of as the ferment of the blood, which passed for the cause of all sorts of ailments, that neither physicians nor patients knew well what to make of And to all these succeeded vapours, which serve the same turn, and furnish occasion of complaint among per- sons whose bodies or minds ail something, but they know not what ; and among the Chineses would pass for mists of the mind or fumes of the brain, rather than indispositions of any other parts. Yet these employ our physicians per- haps more than other diseases, who are fain to humour such patients in their fancies of being ill, and to prescribe some remedies, for fear of losing their practice to others that pretend more skill in finding out the cause of diseases, or care in advising remedies, which neither they nor their patients find any effect of, besides some gains to one, and amusement to the other. This, I suppose, may have contributed much to the mode of going to the waters, either cold or hot, upon so many occasions, or else upon none besides that of entertainment, and which commonly may have no other effect. And 'tis well if this be the worst of the frequent use of those waters, which, though commonly innocent, yet are sometimes dangerous, if the temper of the 133 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE person or cause of the indisposition be un- happily mistaken, especially in people of age. As diseases have changed vogue, so have remedies in my time and observation. I re- member at one time the taking of tobacco, at another the drinking of warm beer, proved for universal remedies; then swallowing of pebble- stones, in imitation of falconers curing hawks. One doctor pretended to help all heats and fevers by drinking as much cold spring water as the patient could bear; at another time, swallowing up a spoonful of powder of sea biscuit after meals was infallible for all in- digestion, and so preventing diseases. Then coffee and tea began their successive reigns. The infusion of powder of steel have had their turns, and certain drops of several names and compositions: but none that I find have estab- lished their authority, either long or generally, by any constant and sensible successes of their reign, but have rather passed like a mode, which every one is apt to follow, and finds the most convenient or graceful while it lasts; and begins to dislike in both those respects when it goes out of fashion. Thus men are apt to play with their healths and their lives, as they do with their clothes; which may be the better excused, since both are so transitory, so subject to be spoiled with common use, to be torn by accidents, and at best to be so soon worn out. Yet the usual practice of physic among us runs still the same course, and turns, in a manner, wholly upon evacuation, either by bleeding, vomits, or some 134 I OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE sorts of purgation ; though it be not often agreed among physicians in what cases or what degrees any of these are necessary; nor among other men, whether any of them are necessary or no. Montaigne questions whether purging ever be so, and from many ingenious reasons: the Chineses never let blood ; and, for the other, 'tis very probable that Nature knows her own wants and times so well, and so easily finds her own relief that way, as to need little assistance, and not well to receive the common violences that are offered her, I remember three in my life and observation who were as downright killed with vomits as they could have been with daggers; and I can say for myself, upon an accident very near mortal, when I was young, that, sending for the two best physicians of the town, the first pre- scribed me a vomit, and immediately sent it me: I had the grace or sense to refuse it till the other came, who told me, if I had taken it I could not have lived half an hour. I observed a consult of physicians, in a fever of one of my near friends, perplexed to the last degree whether to let him blood or no, and not able to resolve, till the course of the dis- ease had declared itself, and thereby deter- mined them. Another of my friends was so often let blood, by his first physician, that a second, who was sent for, questioned whether he would recover it: the first persisted the blood must be drawn till some good appeared; the other affirmed that in such diseases, the whole mass was corrupted, but would purify 135 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE again when the accident was passed, like wine after a fermentation, which makes all in the vessel thick and foul for a season, but, when that is past, grows clear again of itself So much is certain, that it depends a great deal upon the temper of the patient, the nature of the disease in its first causes, upon the skill and care of the physician to decide whether any of these violences upon Nature are necessary or no, and whether they are like to do good or harm. The rest of our common practice consists in various compositions of innocent ingredients, which feed the hopes of the patient, and the apothecary's gains, but leave Nature to her course, who is the sovereign physician in most diseases, and leaves little for others to do, further than to watch accidents; where they know no specific remedies, to prescribe diets; and, above all, to prevent disorders from the stomach, and take care that Nature be not employed in the kitchen, when she should be in the field to resist her enemy; and that she should not be weakened in her spirits and strength, when they are most necessary to support and relieve her. 'Tis true, physicians must be in danger of losing their credit with the vulgar, if they should often tell a patient he has no need of physic, and prescribe only rules of diet or common use; most people would think they had lost their fee: but the excellence of a physician's skill and care is discovered by resolving first whether it be best in the case to administer any physic or none, to trust to Nature or to art; and the 136 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE next, to give such prescriptions, as, if they do no good, may be sure to do no harm. In the midst of such uncertainties of health and of physic, for my own part, I have, in the general course of my life, and of fnany acute diseases, as well as some habitual, trusted to God Almighty, to Nature, to temperance or abstinence, and the use of common remedies, either vulgarly known, and approved like pro- verbs by long observation and experience, either of my own, or such persons as have fallen in the way of my observation or inquiry. Among the plants of our soil and climate, those I esteem of greatest virtue and most friendly to health are sage, rue, saffron, ale- hoof, garlic, and elder. Sage deserves not only the just reputation it has been always in of a very wholesome herb, in common uses, and generally known, but is admirable in con- sumptive coughs, of which I have cured some very desperate, by a draught every morning of spring water, with a handful of sage boiled in it, and continued for a month. I do not question that, if it were used as tea, it would have at least in all kinds as good an effect upon health, if not of so much entertainment to the taste, being perhaps not so agreeable; and I had reason to believe when I was in Holland that vast quantities of sage were carried to the Indies yearly, as well as of tea brought over from those countries into ours. Rue is of excellent use for all illnesses of the stomach, that proceed from cold or moist humours ; a great digester and restorer of 137 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE appetite; dispels wind, helps perspiration, drives out ill humours, and thereby comes to be so much prescribed, and so commonly used in pestilent airs, and upon apprehensions of any contagion. The only ill of it lies in the too much or too frequent use, which may lessen and impair the natural heat of the stomach, by the greater heat of an herb very hot and dry; and therefore the juice made up with sugar into small pills, and swallowed only two or three at nights or mornings, and only when there is occasion, is the most innocent way of using it. Saffron is, of all others, the safest and most sdmple cordial, the greatest reviver of the heart and cheerer of the spirits, and cannot be of too common use in diet, any more than in medicine. The spirit of saffron is, of all others, the noblest and most innocent, and yet of the greatest virtue. I have known it restore a man out of the very agonies of death, when left by all physicians as wholly desperate. But the use of this and all spirits ought to be employed only in cases very urgent, either of decays or pains; for all spirits have the same effect with that mentioned of rue, which is, by frequent use, to destroy, and at last to ex- tinguish the natural heat of the stomach; as the frequent drinking wine at meals does in a degree, and with time, but that of all strong waters more sensibly and more dangerously. Yet a long custom of either cannot be suddenly broken without danger too, and must be changed with time, v/ith lessening the pro- 138 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE portions by degrees, with shorter first, and then with longer intermissions. Alehoof, or ground ivy, is, in my opinion, of the most excellent and most general use and virtue of any plants we have among us. 'Tis allowed to be most sovereign for the eyes, admirable in frenzies, either taken inwardly or outwardly applied. Besides, if there be a specific remedy or prevention of the stone, I take it to be the constant use of alehoof-ale, whereof I have known several experiences by others, and can, I thank God, allege my own for about ten years past. This is the plant with which all our ancestors made their common drink, when the inhabitants of this island were esteemed the longest livers of any in the known world; and the stone is said to have first come amongst us after hops were introduced here, and the staleness of beer brought into custom by preserving it long. 'Tis known enough, how much this plant has been decried, how generally soever it has been received in these maritime northern parts; and the chief reason which I believe gave it vogue at first was the preserving beer upon long sea-voyages: but for common health, I am apt to think the use of heath or broom had been of much more 'advantage, though none yet invented of so great and general as that of alehoof, which is certainly the greatest cleanser of any plant known among us; and which in old English signified that which was necessary to the making of ale, the common or rather universal drink heretofore of our nation. 139 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE Garlic has of all our plants the greatest strength, affords most nourishment, and sup- plies most spirits to those who eat little flesh, as the poorer people seldom do in the hotter, and especially the more eastern climates: so that the labour of the world seems to be per- formed by the force and virtue of garlic, leeks, and onions, no other food of herbs or plants yielding strength enough for much labour. Garlic is of great virtue in all colics, a great strengthener of the stomach upon decays of appetite or indigestion, and I believe is (if at least there be any such) a specific remedy of the gout. I have known great testimonies of this kind within my acquaintance, and have never used it myself upon this occasion, with- out an opinion of some success or advantage. But I could never long enough bear the con- straint of a diet I found not very agreeable myself, and at least fancied offensive to the company I conversed with. Besides, this disease is to me so hereditary, and come into ray veins from so many an- cestors, that I have reason to despair of any cure but the last, and content myself to fence against it by temperance and patience, without hopes of conquering such an inveterate enemy. Therefore I leave the use of garlic to such as are inveigled into the gout by the pleasure of too much drinking, the ill effects whereof are not more relieved by any other diet than by this plant, which is so great a drier and opener, especially by perspiration. Nor is it less used in many parts abroad as physic than 140 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE as food. In several provinces of France 'tis usual to fall into a diet of garlic for a fortnight or three weeks, upon the first fresh butter of the spring; and the common people esteem it a preservative against the diseases of the en- suing year; and a broth of garlic or onions is so generally used the next day after a debauch as to be called " soupe a I'yvroigne ". This is enough to shew the use as well as virtues of this northern spice, which is in mighty request among the Indians themselves, in the midst of so many others that enrich and perfume those noble regions. Elder is of great virtue in all indispositions arising from any watery humours: and not only the flowers and berries, but even the green bark, are used with effect, and perhaps equal success in their seasons. I have been told of some great cures of the gout, by the succeeding use of all three throughout the year: but I have been always too libertine for any great and long subjections, to make the trials. The spirit of elder is sovereign in colics ; and the use of it, in general, very beneficial in scurvies and dropsies: though, in the last, I esteem broom yet of more virtue, either brewed in common drink, or the ashes taken in white wine every morning, which may perhaps pass for a specific remedy; whereof we may justly complain that, after so long ex- perience of so learned a profession as physic, we yet know so very few. That which has passed of latter years for the most allowed in this kind, has been the 141 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE quinqulnna, or Jesuits' powder, in fevers, but especially agues. I can say nothing of it upon any experience of my own, nor many within my knowledge. I remember its entrance upon our stage with some disadvantage, and the repute of leaving no cures, without danger of worse returns. But the credit of it seems now to be established by common use and prescription, and to be improved by new and singular preparations; whereof I have very good and particular reasons to affirm, that they are all amusements; and that what virtue there is in this remedy, lies in the naked simple itself, as it comes over from the Indies, and in the choice of that which is least dried, or perished by the voyage. The next specific I esteem to be that little insect called millepedes: the powder whereof, made up into little balls with fresh butter, I never knew fail of curing any sore throat: it must lie at the root of the tongue, and melt down at leisure upon going to bed. I have been assured that Doctor Mayerne used it as a certain cure for all cancers in the breast; and should be very tedious if I should tell here, how much the use of it has been extolled by several within my knowledge, upon the admirable effects for the eyes, the scurvy, and the gout; but there needs no more to value it, than what the ancient physicians affirm of it in those three words: Digerit, Aperit, Abstergit, It digests. It opens. It cleanses. 142 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE For rheums in the eyes and the head, I take a leaf of tobacco put into the nostrils for an hour each morning to be a specific medicine: or betony, if the other be too strong or offen- sive. The effect of both is to draw rheums off the head, through their proper and natural channel. And old Prince Maurice of Nassau told me, he had by this preserved his eyes to so great an age, after the danger of losing them at thirty years old: and I have ever since used it with the same success, after great reasons near that age to apprehend the loss or decays of mine. In times and places of great contagion, the strongest preservative yet known is a piece of myrrh held in the mouth, when or where the danger is most apprehended; which I have both practised and taught many others with success, in several places where cruel plagues have raged : though in such cases, after all, the best and safest is to run away as soon as one can. Yet, upon this occasion, I think myrrh may pass for a specific in prevention, and may, for aught I know, be of use in remedies as the greatest enemy of corruption; which is known by the use of embalmings in the East. For all illnesses of stomach, or indigestions, proceeding from hot and sharp humours ; to which my whole family has been much sub- ject, as well as very many of my acquaintance, and for which powder of crabs' eyes and claws and burnt egg-shells are often prescribed as sweeteners of any sharp humours; I have 143 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE never found any thing of much or certain effect, besides the eating of strawberries, common cherries, white figs, soft peaches, or grapes, before every meal, during their seasons ; and, when those are past, apples after meals: but all must be very ripe. And this, by my own and all my friends' experience who have tried it, I reckon for a specific medicine in this illness so frequently complained of: at least, for the two first, I never knew them fail ; and the usual quantity is about forty cherries, without swallowing either skin or stone. I observe this the rather, because the recourse commonly made in this case to strong waters I esteem very pernicious, and which inevitably destroys the stomach with frequent use. The best, at least most innocent, of all distilled liquors is milk-water, made with balm, carduus, mint, and wormwood; which has many good effects in illnesses of the stomach, and none ill. The best and safest strong water, if any be so, for common use, I esteem to be that made of juniper berries, especially in accidents of stone and colic. Of all cordials, I esteem my Lady Kent's powder the best, the most innocent, and the most universal ; though the common practice of physic abounds in nothing more, and the virtue seems to be little else, besides an allusion of the name to the heart. Upon the gout I have writ what I had knowm or practised, in an essay of moxa ; and upon the spleen, what I had observed, in a chapter upon the dispositions of the 144 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE people in the Netherlands. I shall only add for the help of my fellow-sufferers in the first, that besides what is contained in that former essay, and since those pains have grown more diffused, and less fixed in one point, so as to be burned with moxa, which never failed of giving me present ease, I have found the most benefit from three methods. The first is that of moving the joint where the pain begins, as long as I am able in my bed; which I have often done, and counted five or six hundred times or more, till I found first a great heat, and then perspiration, in the part; the heat spends or disperses the humour within, and the perspiration drives it out;, and I have escaped many threats of ill fits by these motions : if they go on, the only poultice or plaster I have dealt with is wool from the belly of a fat sheep, which has often given me ease in a very little time. If the pains grow sharp, and the swellings so diffused as not to be burned with moxa, the best remedy, I have found, is from a piece of scarlet dipped in scalding brandy, laid upon the afflicted part, and the heat often renewed, by dropping it upon the scarlet as hot as can be endured. And from this I have often found the same success as from moxa, and without breaking the skin, or leaving any sore. To what I have said in another place of the spleen, I shall only add here, that what- ever the spleen is, whether a disease of the part so called, or of people that ail some- thing, but they know not what ; it is certainly (C217) 145 10 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE a very ill ingredient into any other disease, and very often dangerous. For, as hope is the sovereign balsam of life, and the best cordial in all distempers both of body or mind ; so fear, and regret, and melancholy apprehensions, which are the usual effects of the spleen, with the distractions, disquiets, or at least intranquillity they occasion, are the worst accidents that can attend any dis- eases ; and make them often mortal, which would otherwise pass, and have had but a common course. I have known the most busy Ministers of State, most fortunate cour- tiers, most vigorous youths, most beautiful virgins, in the strength or flower of their age, sink under common distempers, by the force of such weights, and the cruel damps and disturbances thereby given their spirits and their blood. 'Tis no matter what is made the occasion, if well improved by spleen and melancholy apprehensions: a disappointed hope, a blot of honour, a strain of conscience, an unfortunate love, an aching jealousy, a repining grief, will serve the turn, and all alike. I remember an ingenious physician, who told me, in the fanatic times, he found most of his patients so disturbed by troubles of conscience, that he was forced to play the divine with them before he could begin the physician ; whose greatest skill perhaps often lies in the infusing of hopes, and inducing some composure and tranquillity of mind, before they enter upon the other operations 146 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE of their art : and this ought to be the first endeavour of the patient too; without which, all other medicines may lose their virtue. The two great blessings of life are, in my opinion, health and good humour ; and none contribute more to one another: without health, all will allow life to be but a burden; and the several conditions of fortune to be all weari- some, dull, or disagreeable, without good hu- mour: nor does any seem to contribute towards the true happiness of life, but as it serves to increase that treasure, or to preserve it. What- ever other differences are commonly appre- hended in the several conditions of fortune, none perhaps will be found so true or so great, as what is made by those two circum- stances, so little regarded in the common course or pursuits of mortal men. Whether long life be a blessing or no, God Almighty only can determine, who alone knows what length it is like to run, and how 'tis like to be attended. Socrates used to say, that 'twas pleasant to grow old with good health and a good friend ; and he might have reason. A man may be content to live while he is no trouble to himself or his friends ; but, after that, 'tis hard if he be not content to die. I knew and esteemed a person abroad, who used to say, a man must be a mean wretch that desired to live after threescore years old. But so much, I doubt, is certain, that, in life as in wine, he that will drink it good must not draw it to dregs. 147 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE Where this happens, one comfort of age may be that, whereas younger men are usually in pain, when they are not in pleasure, old men find a sort of pleasure whenever they are out of pain. And, as young men often lose or im- pair their present enjoyments, by raving after what is to come, by vain hopes, or fruitless fears ; so old men relieve the wants of their age, by pleasing reflexions upon what is past. Therefore men, in the health and vigour of their age, should endeavour to fill their lives with reading, with travel, with the best con- versation, and the worthiest actions, either in their public or private stations ; that they may have something agreeable left to feed on, when they are old, by pleasing remem- brances. But, as they are only the clean beasts which chew the cud, when they have fed enough; so they must be clean and virtuous men that can reflect, with pleasure, upon the past accidents or courses of their lives. Besides, men who grow old with good sense, or good fortunes, and good nature, cannot want the pleasure of pleasing others, by assisting with their gifts, their credit, and their advice, such as deserve it ; as well as their care of chil- dren, kindness to friends, and bounty to ser- vants. But there cannot indeed live a more un- happy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of doing them to others ; and, in such a condition, it is time to leave them. 148 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE Thus have I traced, in this essay, what- ever has fallen in my way or thoughts to observe concerning life and health, and which I conceived might be of any public use to be known or considered : the plainness where- with it is written easily shews, there could be no other intention ; and it may at least pass like a Derbyshire charm which is used among sick cattle, with these words: if it does thee no good, it will do thee no harm. To sum up all, the first principle of health and long life is derived from the strength of our race or our birth ; which gave occasion to that saying, " Gaudeant bene nati " — Let them rejoice that are happily born. Accidents are not in our power to govern : so that the best cares or provisions for life and health that are left us, consist in the discreet and temperate government of diet and exercise: in both which all excess is to be avoided, especially in the common use of wine ; whereof the first glass may pass for health, the second for good humour, the third for our friends ; but the fourth is for our enemies. For temperance in other kinds, or in general, I have given its character and virtues in the essay of moxa, so as to need no more upon that subject here. When, in default or despite of all these cares, or by effect of ill airs and seasons, acute or strong diseases may arise, recourse must be had to the best physicians that are in reach, whose success will depend upon thought and care, as much as skill. In all 149 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE diseases of body or mind, it is happy to have an able physician for a friend, or discreet friend for a physician ; which is so great a blessing, that the wise man will have it to proceed only from God, where he says: "A faithful friend is the medicine of life, and he that fears the Lord shall find him". ISO Of Poetry The two common shrines to which most men offer up the application of their thoughts and their lives, are profit and pleasure; and, by their devotions to either of these, they are vul- garly distinguished into two sects, and called either busy or idle men. Whether these terms differ in meaning, or only in sound, I know very well may be disputed, and with appearance enough, since the covetous man takes perhaps as much pleasure in his gains as the voluptuous does in his luxury, and would not pursue his business unless he were pleased with it, upon the last account of what he most wishes and desires, nor would care for the increase of his fortunes unless he thereby proposed that of his pleasures too, in one kind or other; so that pleasure may be said to be his end, whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no. Much ado there has been, many words spent, or (to speak with more respect to the ancient philo- sophers) many disputes have been raised upon this argument, I think to little purpose, and 151 OF POETRY that all has been rather an exercise of wit, than an inquiry after truth ; and all contro- versies that can never end had better perhaps never begin. The best is to take words as they are most commonly spoken and meant, like coin as it most currently passes, without raising scruples upon the weight of the alloy, unless the cheat or the defect be gross and evident. Few things in the world, or none, will bear too much refining; a thread too fine spun will easily break, and the point of a needle too finely filed. The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things, and not only calls the followers or votaries of them by several names of busy and of idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first wisdom, and of the other wit, which is a Saxon word that is used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call " Ingenio ", and the French "Esprit", both from the Latin; but I think wit more peculiarly signifies that of poetry, as may occur upon remarks of the Runic language. To the first of these are attri- buted the inventions or productions of things generally esteemed the most necessary, useful, or profitable to human life, either in private possessions or public institutions: to the other, those writings or discourses which are the most pleasing or entertaining to all that read or hear them : yet, according to the opinion of those that link them together, as the inventions of sages and lawgivers themselves do please as 152 OF POETRY well as profit those who approve and follow them, so those of poets instruct and profit, as well as please, such as are conversant in them, and the happy mixture of both these makes the excellency in both those composi- tions, and has given occasion for esteeming, or at least for calling, heroic virtue and poetry divine. The names given to poets, both in Greek and Latin, express the same opinion of them in those nations: the Greek signifying makers or creators, such as raise admirable frames and fabrics out of nothing, which strike with won- der and with pleasure the eyes and imaginations of those who behold them ; the Latin makes the same word common to poets and to pro- phets. Now as creation is the first attribute and highest operation of Divine Power, so is prophecy the greatest emanation of Divine Spirit in the world. As the names in those two learned languages, so the causes of poetry are, by the writers of them, said to be divine, and to proceed from a celestial fire, or divine inspiration ; and, by the vulgar opinions, re- cited or related to in many passages of those authors, the effects of poetry were likewise thought divine and supernatural, and power of charms and enchantments were ascribed to it. Carmina vel coelo possunt deducere lunam, Carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulyssis, Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis. But I can easily admire poetry, and yet 153 OF POETRY without adoring it ; I can allow it to arise from the greatest excellency of natural temper, or the greatest race of native genius, without exceeding the reach of what is human, or giving it any approaches of divinity, which is, I doubt, debased or dishonoured by ascribing to it any thing that is in the compass of our action, or even comprehension, unless it be raised by an immediate influence from itself I cannot allow poetry to be more divine in its effects than in its causes, nor any operation produced by it to be more than purely natural, or to deserve any other sort of wonder than those of music, or of natural magic, however any of them have appeared to minds little versed in the speculations of nature, of occult qualities, and the force of numbers or of sounds. Whoever talks of drawing down the moon from heaven, by force of verses or of charms, either believes not himself, or too easily believes what others told him, or per- haps follows an opinion begun by the practice of some poet upon the facility of some people, who, knowing the time when an eclipse would happen, told them he would by his charms call down the moon at such an hour, and was by them thought to have performed it. When I read that charming description in Virgil's eighth Eclogue of all sorts of charms and fascinations by verses, by images, by knots, by numbers, by fire, by herbs, employed upon occasion of a violent passion, from a jealous or disappointed love; I have recourse to the strong impressions of fables and of poetry, to 154 OF POETRY the easy mistakes of popular opinions, to the force of imagination, to the secret virtues of several herbs, and to the powers of sounds : and I am sorry the natural history, or account of fascination, has not employed the pen of some person of such excellent wit and deep thought and learning as Casaubon, who writ that curious and useful treatise of Enthusiasm, and by it discovered the hidden or mistaken sources of that delusion, so frequent in all regions and religions of the world, and which had so fatally spread over our country in that age in which this treatise was so seasonably published. 'Tis much to be lamented that he lived not to complete that work in the second part he promised; or that his friends neglected the publishing it, if it were left in papers, though loose and unfinished. I think a clear account of enthusiasm and fascination, from their natural causes, would very much deserve from mankind in general, as well as from the commonwealth of learning : might perhaps prevent so many public disorders, and save the lives of many innocent, de- luded, or deluding people, who suffer so fre- quently upon account of witches and wizards. I have seen many miserable examples of this kind in my youth at home ; and, though the humour or fashion be a good deal worn out of the world within thirty or forty years past, yet it still remains in several remote parts of Germany, Sweden, and some other countries. But, to return to the charms of poetry, if the forsaken lover, in that Eclogue of Virgil, 155 OF POETRY had expected only from the force of her verses, or her charms, what is the burden of the song, to bring Daphnis home from the town where he was gone, and engaged in a new amour; if she had pretended only to revive an old fainting flame, or to damp a new one that was kindling in his breast ; she might, for aught I know, have compassed such ends by the power of such charms, and without any other than very natural enchantments. For there is no question but true poetry may have the force to raise passions, and to allay them, to change and to extinguish them, to temper joy and grief, to raise love and fear, nay, to turn fear into boldness, and love into indifference, and into hatred itself: and I easily believe that the disheartened Spartans were new animated, and recovered their lost courage, by the songs of Tyrtaeus ; that the cruelty and revenge of Phalarls were changed by the odes of Stesi- chorus into the greatest kindness and esteem; and that many men were as passionately enamoured by the charms of Sappho's wit and poetry, as by those of beauty in Flora or Thais; for 'tis not only beauty gives love, but love gives beauty to the object that raises it; and, if the possession be strong enough, let it come from what it will, there is always beauty enough in the person that gives it. Nor is it any great wonder that such force should be found in poetry, since in it are assembled all the powers of eloquence, of music, and of picture, which are allowed to make so strong impressions upon human 156 OF POETRY minds. How far men have been affected with all, or any, of these, needs little proof or testimony : the examples have been known enough in Greece and in Italy, where some have fallen downright in love with the ravishing beauties of a lovely object drawn by the skill of an admirable painter ; nay, painters them- selves have fallen in love with some of their own productions, and doted on them as on a mistress or a fond child; which distinguishes among the Italians the several pieces that are done by the same hand into several degrees of those made, " con studio", " con diligenza", or "con amore", whereof the last are ever the most excelling. But there needs no more instances of this kind than the stories related and believed by the best authors as known and undisputed : of the two Grecians, one whereof ventured his life to be locked up all night in the temple, and satisfy his passion with the embraces and enjoyment of a statue of Venus that was there set up, and designed for another sort of adoration; the other pined away and died for being hindered his per- petually gazing, admiring, and embracing a statue at Athens. The powers of music are either felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief, to give pleasure and pain, to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the Tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts, to assist and 157 OF POETRY heighten devotion itself. We need no recourse to the fables of Orpheus or Amphion, or the force of their music upon fishes and beasts; 'tis enough that we find the charming of serpents, and the cure or allay of an evil spirit or posses- sion, attributed to it in sacred writ. For the force of eloquence, that so often raised and appeased the violence of popular commotions, and caused such convulsions in the Athenian state, no man need more to make him acknowledge it than to consider Caesar, one of the greatest and wisest of mortal men, come upon the tribunal full of hatred and revenge, and with a determined resolution to condemn Labienus ; yet, upon the force of Cicero's eloquence (in an oration for his defence) begin to change countenance, turn pale, shake to that degree that the papers he held fell out of his hand, as if he had been frighted with words, that never was so with blows; and at last change all his anger into clemency, and acquit the brave criminal, in- stead of condemning him. Now, if the strength of these three mighty powers be united in poetry, we need not wonder that such virtues and such honours have been attributed to it, that it has been thought to be inspired, or has been called divine ; and yet I think it will not be dis- puted, that the force of wit and of reasoning, the height of conceptions and expressions, may be found in poetry as well as in oratory, the life and spirit of representation or pic- ture as much as in painting, and the force of 158 OF POETRY sounds as well as in music; and how far these three natural powers together may extend, and to what effect (even such as may be mistaken for supernatural or magical) I leave it to such men to consider, whose thoughts turn to such speculations as these, or who, by their native temper and genius, are, in some degree, disposed, or receive the impressions of them. For my part, I do not wonder that the famous Dr. Harvey, when he was reading Virgil, should sometimes throw him down upon the table, and say he had a devil ; nor that the learned Meric Casaubon should find such charming pleasures and emotions as he de- scribes upon the reading some parts of Lucre- tius; that so many should cry, and with down- right tears, at some tragedies of Shakespeare, and so many more should feel such turns or curdling of their blood, upon the reading or hearing of some excellent pieces of poetry ; nor that Octavia fell into a swoon, at the recital made by Virgil of those verses in the sixth of his ^neids. This is enough to assert the powers of poetry, and discover the ground of those opinions of old, which derived it from divine inspirations, and gave it so great a share in the supposed effects of sorcery or magic. But, as the old romances seem to lessen the honour of true prowess and valour in their knights, by giving such a part in all their chief adven- tures to enchantment, so the true excellency and just esteem of poetry seems rather debased than exalted by the stories or belief of the 159 OF POETRY charms performed by it, which, among the northern nations, grew so strong and so general that, about five or six hundred years ago, all the Runic poetry came to be decried, and those ancient characters in which they were written, to be abolished by the zeal of bishops, and even by orders and decrees of state, which has given a great maim, or rather an irrecoverable loss, to the story of those northern kingdoms, the seat of our ancestors in all the western parts of Europe. 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 poetry. 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 agree- able and delightful to mankind ; by the in- fluence of this sun are produced those golden and inexhausted mines of invention, which has furnished the world with treasures so highly esteemed, and so universally known and used, in all the regions that have yet been discovered. From this arises that elevation of genius, which can never be produced by any art or study, by pains or by industry, which cannot i6o OF POETRY be taught by precepts or examples; and there- fore 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 elegance, 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 re- quires so many several ingredients, or of more different sorts than this, nor that, to excel in any qualities, there are necessary so many gifts of nature, and so many improvements of learn- ing and of art. For there must be an universal genius, of great compass as well as great eleva- tion. There must be a sprightly imagination or fancy, fertile in a thousand productions, ranging over infinite ground, piercing 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 soundness of judgment, to distin- guish between things and conceptions, which, at first sight, or upon short glances, seem ( c 217 ) 161 11 OF POETRY alike ; to choose among infinite productions of wit and fancy, which are worth preserving and cultivating, and which are better stifled in the birth, or thrown away when they are born, as not worth bringing up. Without the forces of wit, all poetry is flat and languish- ing ; 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 employed 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, without this last, all the rest will not serve turn, and none ever was a great poet that applied himself much to any thing else. When 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. OF POETRY Whatever has been among those who are mentioned with so much praise or admiration by the ancients, but are lost to us, and un- known any further than their names, I think no man has been so bold among those that remain to question the title of Homer and Virgil, not only to the first rank, but to the supreme dominion in this state, and from whom, as the great lawgivers as well as Princes, all the laws and orders of it are, or may be, derived. Homer was, without dis- pute, the most universal genius that has been known in the world, and Virgil the most ac- complished. To the first must be allowed the most fertile invention, the richest vein, the most general knowledge, and the most lively expression: to the last, the noblest ideas, the justest institution, the wisest conduct, and the choicest elocution. To speak in the painter's terms, we find, in the works of Homer, the most spirit, force, and life ; in those of Virgil, the best design, the truest proportions, and the greatest graced the colouring in both seems equal, and indeed is in both admirable. Homer had more fire and rapture, Virgil more light and swiftness; or at least, the poetical fire was more raging in one, but clearer in the other, which makes the first more amazing, and the latter more agreeable. The ore was richer in one, but in the other more refined, and better allayed to make up excellent work. Upon the whole, I think it must be confessed that Homer was of the two, and perhaps o| all others, the vastest, the sublimest, and tl 163 OF POETRY most wonderful genius; and, that he has been generally so esteemed, there cannot be a greater testimony given, than what has been by some observed, that not only the greatest masters have found in his works the best and truest principles of all their sciences or arts, but that the noblest nations have derived from them the original of their several races, though it be hardly yet agreed whether his story be true or a fiction. In short, these two im- mortal poets must be allowed to have so much excelled in their kinds, as to have exceeded all comparison, to have even extinguished emulation, and in a manner confined true poetry, not only to their two languages, but to their very persons. And I am apt to believe so much of the true genius of poetry in general, and of its elevation in these two par- ticulars, that I know not whether of all the numbers of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making such a poet as Homer or Virgil, there may not be a thousand born capable of making as great generals of armies, or Ministers of State, as any the most renowned in story. I do not here intend to make a further critique upon poetry, which were too great a labour; nor to give rules for it, which were as great a presumption: besides, 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 164 OF POETRY severe in their censures, and exact in their rules, I think to very little purpose: for I know not why they might not have contented themselves with those given by Aristotle and Horace, and have translated them rather than commented 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 any body else. The truth is, there is something in the genius of poetry too libertine to be confined to so many rules: and whoever goes about to subject it to such 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 off the wings of your bees, confine them to their hive or their stands, and lay flowers before them, such as you think the sweetest, and like to yield the finest extraction; you had as good pull out their stings, and make arrant drones of them. They must range through fields, as well as gardens, choose such flowers as they please, and by proprieties and scents they only know and distinguish: they must work up their cells with admirable art, extract their honey with infinite labour, and sever it from the wax, with such distinction and choice, as belongs to none but themselves to perform or to judge. It would be too much mortification to these great arbitrary rulers among the French writers, or our own, to observe the worthy productions that have been formed by their rules, the. honour they have received in the world, i6s OF POETRY the pleasure they have given mankind; but, to comfort them, I do not know there was any great poet in Greece, after the rules of that art laid down by Aristotle; nor in Rome, after those by Horace, which yet none of our moderns pretend to have outdone. Perhaps Theocritus and Lucan may be alleged against this assertion: but the first offered no further than at idyls or eclogues ; and the last, though he must be avowed for a true and happy genius, and to have made some very high flights, yet he is so unequal to himself, and his muse is so young, that his faults are too noted, to allow his pretences. " Feliciter audet" is the true character of Lucan, as of Ovid, "Lusit amabiliter". After all, the utmost that can be achieved, or I think pre- tended, by any rules in this art, is but to hinder some men from being very 111 poets, but not to make any man a very good one. To judge who is so, we need go no further for instruction than three lines of Horace. . . . Ille meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, mode ponit Athenis. He is a poet. Who vainly anguishes my breast, Provokes, allays, and with false terror fills, Like a magician, and now sets me down In Thebes, and now in Athens, Whoever does not affect and move the same i66 OF_ POETRY present passions In you that he represents in others, and, at other times, raise images about you, as a conjurer is said to do spirits, trans- ports you to the places and to the persons he describes, cannot be judged to be a poet, though his measures are never so just, his feet never so smooth, or his sounds never so sw^eet. But instead of critique, or rules con- cerning poetry, I shall rather turn my thoughts to the history of it, and observe the antiquity, the uses, the changes, the decays, that have attended this great empire of wit. It is, I think, generally agreed to have been the first sort of writing that has been used in the world; and in several nations to have pre- ceded the very invention or usage of letters. This last is certain in America, where the first Spaniards met with many strains of poetry, and left several of them translated into their language, which seems to have flowed from a true poetic vein, before any letters were known in those regions. The same is probable of the Scythians, the Grecians, and the Germans. Aristotle says, the Aga- thyrsi had their laws all in verse; and Tacitus, that the Germans had no annals nor records but what were so; and, for the Grecian oracles delivered In them, we have no certain account when they began, but rather reason to believe it was before the introduction of letters from Phoenicia among them. Pliny tells it, as a thing known, that Pherecydes was the first who writ prose in the Greek tongue, and that he lived about the time of Cyrus, whereas 167 OF POETRY Homer and Hesiod lived some hundreds of years before that age; and Orpheus, Linus, Musasus, some hundreds before them : and of the Sibyls, several were before any of those, and in times as well as places, whereof we have no clear records now remaining. What Solon and Pythagoras writ is said to have been in verse, who were something older than Cyrus; and before them were Archilochus, Simonides, Tyrtasus, Sappho, Stesichorus, and several other poets famous in their times. The same thing is reported of Chald^ea, Syria, and China; among the ancient western Goths (our ancestors) the Runic poetry seems to have been as old as their letters; and their laws, their precepts of wisdom, as well as their records, their religious rites, as well as their charms and incantations, to have been all in verse. Among the Hebrews, and even in sacred writ, the most ancient is by some learned men esteemed to be the book of Job; and that it was written before the time of Moses, and that it was a translation into Hebrew out of the old Chaldaean or Arabian language. It may probably be conjectured, that he was not a Jew, from the place of his abode, which appears to have been seated between the Chaldeans of one side, and the Sabaeans (who were of Arabia) on the other; and, by many passages of that admirable and truly inspired poem, the author seems to have lived in some parts near the mouth of Euphrates, or the Persian Gulf, where he contemplated the i68 OF POETRY wonders of the deep, as well as the other works of nature common to those regions. Nor is it easy to find any traces of the Mosaical rites or institutions, either in the divine worship, or the morals related to, in those writings: for, not only sacrifices and praises were much more ancient in religious ser- vice than the age of Moses ; but the opinion of one deity, and adored without any idol or representation, was professed and received among the ancient Persians and Hetruscans and Chaldaeans. So that, if Job was an Hebrew, it is probable he may have been of the race of Heber, who lived in Chaldaea, or of Abraham, who is supposed to have left that country for the profession or worship of one God, rather than from the branch of Isaac and Israel, who lived in the land of Canaan. Now I think it is out of controversy, that th-i book of Job was written originally in verse, and was a poem upon the subject of the justice and power of God, and in vindication of His providence, against the common argu- ments of atheistical men, who took occasion to dispute it, from the usual events of human things, by which so many ill and impious men seem happy and prosperous in the course of their lives, and so many pious and just men seem miserable or afilicted. The Spanish translation of the Jews in Ferrara, which pre- tends to render the Hebrew (as near as could be) word for word, and for which all trans- lators of the Bible since have had great regard, gives us the two first chapters and the last 169 OF POETRY from the seventh verse In prose, as an his- torical introduction and conclusion of the work, and all the rest in verse, except the transitions from one part or person of this sacred dialogue to another. But, if we take the books of Moses to be the most ancient in the Hebrew tongue, yet the song of Moses may probably have been written before the rest ; as that of Deborah before the book of Judges, being praises sung to God upon the victories or successes of the Israelites, related in both. And I never read the last, without observing in it as true and noble strains of poetry and picture, as in any other language whatsoever, in spite of all dis- advantages from translations into so different tongues and common prose. If an opinion of some learned men, both modern and ancient, could be allowed, that Esdras was the writer or compiler of the first historical part of the Old Testament, though from the same divine inspiration as that of Moses and the other prophets, then the Psalms of David would be the first writings we find in Hebrew, and next to them the Song of Solomon, which was written when he was young, and Ecclesiastes when he was old: so that from all sides, both sacred and profane, it appears that poetry was the first sort of writing known and used in the several nations of the world. It may seem strange, I confess, upon the first thought, that a sort of style, so regular and so difficult, should have grown in use before the other, so easy and so loose: but, OF POETRY if we consider what the first end of writing was, it will appear probable from reason as well as experience; for the true and general end was but the help of memory, in preserv- ing that of words and of actions which would otherwise have been lost, and soon vanish away with the transitory passage of human breath and life. Before the discourses and disputes of philosophers began to busy or amuse the Grecian wits, there was nothing written in prose, but either laws, some short sayings of wise men, or some riddles, parables, or fables, wherein were couched by the ancients many strains of natural and moral wisdom and knowledge, and, besides these, some short memorials of persons, actions, and of times. Now 'tis obvious enough to conceive, how much easier all such writings should be learned and remembered in verse, than in prose, not only by the pleasure of measures and of sounds, which gives a great impression to memory, but by the order of feet, which maices a great facility of tracing one word after an- other, by knowing what sort of foot or quan- tity must necessarily have preceded or followed the words we retain and desire to make up. This made poetry so necessary before letters were invented, and so convenient afterwards: and shews that the great honour and general request wherein it has always been, has not proceeded only from the pleasure and delight, but likewise from the usefulness and profit, of poetical writings. This leads me naturally to the subjects of 17 i OF POETRY poetry, which have been generally praise, instruction, story, love, grief, and reproach. Praise was the subject of all the songs and psalms mentioned in holy writ; of the hymns of Orpheus, of Homer, and many others; of the " Carmina Secularia " in Rome, composed all and designed for the honour of their gods; of Pindar, Stesichorus, and Tyrtasus in the praises of virtue, or virtuous men. The subject of Job is instruction concerning the attributes of God, and the works of nature. Those of Simonides, Phocillides, Theognis, and several other of the smaller Greek poets, with what passes for Pythagoras's, are instruc- tions in morality; the first book of Hesiod and Virgil's Georgics, in agriculture; and Lucretius in the deepest natural philosophy. Story is the proper subject of heroic poems, as Homer and Virgil in their inimitable Iliads and ^neids; and Fable, which is a sort of story, in the Metamorphosis of Ovid. The Lyric poetry has been chiefly conversant about love, though turned often upon praise too; and the vein of pastorals and eclogues has run the same course, as may be observed in Theocritus, Virgil, and Horace, who was, I think, the first and last of true Lyric poets among the Latins: grief has been always the subject of Elegy, and reproach that of Satire. The Dramatic poesy has been composed of all these; but the chief end seems to have been instruction, and under the disguise of fables, or the pleasure of story, to shew the beauties and the rewards of virtue, the deformities and misfortunes or punishment 172 OF POETRY of vice; by examples of both to encourage one, and deter men from the other; to reform ill customs, correct ill manners, and moderate all violent passions. These are the general sub- jects of both parts, though comedy give us but the images of common life, and tragedy those of the greater and more extraordinary passions and actions among men. To go further upon this subject w^ould be to tread so beaten paths, that, to travel in them, only raises dust, and is neither of pleasure nor of use. For the changes that have happened in poetry, I shall observe one ancient, and the others that are modern will be too remarkable, in the declines or decays of this great empire of wit. The first change of poetry was made by translating it into prose, or clothing it in those loose robes or common veils that disguised or covered the true beauty of its features, and exactness of its shape. This was done first by -^sop in Greek: but the vein was much more ancient in the eastern regions, and m.uch in vogue, as we may observe in the many parables used in the Old Testament, as weTl as in the New. And there is a book of fables of the sort of ^sop's, translated out of Persian, and pretended to have been so into that language out of the ancient Indian; but, though it seems genuine of the eastern countries, yet I do not take it to be so old, nor to have so much spirit, as the Greek. The next succession of poetry in prose seems to have been in the Miletian tales, which were a sort of little pastoral romances; and, though much in request in old 173 OF POETRY Greece and Rome, yet we have no examples, that I know, of them, unless it be the " Longi Pastoralia ", which gives a taste of the great delicacy and pleasure that was found so generally in those sort of tales. The last kind of poetry in prose, is that which in later ages has over-run the world under the name of Romances, which though it seems modern, and a production of the Gothic genius, yet the writing is ancient. The remainders of Petro- nius Arbiter seem to be of this kind, and that which Lucian calls his "True History": but the most ancient that passes by the name is Heliodorus, famous for the author's choosing to lose his bishopric, rather than disown that child of his wit. The true spirit or vein of ancient poetry in this kind seems to shine most in Sir Philip Sidney, whom I esteem 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; a person born capable not only of forming the greatest ideas, but of leaving the noblest examples, if the length of his life had been equal to the excellence of his wit and virtues. With him I leave the discourse of ancient poetry; and, to discover the decays of this empire, must turn to that of the modern, which was introduced after the decays, or rather extinction, of the old: as if, true poetry being dead, an apparition of it walked about. This mighty change arrived by no smaller occasions, nor more ignoble revolutions, than those which destroyed the ancient empire and 174 OF POETRY government of Rome, and erected so many new ones upon their ruins, by the invasions and conquests, or the general inundations of the Goths, Vandals, and other barbarous or northern nations, upon those parts of Europe that had been subject to the Romans. After the conquests made by Caesar upon Gaul, and the nearer parts of Germany, which were con- tinued and enlarged in the times of Augustus and Tiberius by their lieutenants or generals, great numbers of Germans and Gauls resorted to the Roman armies, and to the city itself, and habituated themselves there, as many Spaniards, Syrians, Grecians, had done before, upon the conquest of those countries. This mixture soon corrupted the purity of the Latin tongue, so that in Lucan, but more in Seneca, we find a great and harsh alloy entered into the style of the Augustan age. After Trajan and Adrian had subdued many German and Scythian nations on both sides of the Danube, the commerce of those barbarous people grew very frequent with the Romans; and I am apt to think that the little verses ascribed to Adrian, were in imitation of the Runic poetry. The ^^ Scythicas pati pruinas''^ of Florus shews their race or climate; and the first rhyme that ever I read in Latin, with little allusions of letters or syllables, is in that of Adrian at his death: O animula, vagula, blandula, Quae nunc abibis in loca, PaUidula, lurida, timidula, Nee ut soles dabis joca. 175 OF POETRY *Tis probable, the old spirit of poetry being lost or frighted away by those long and bloody wars with such barbarous enemies, this new ghost began to appear in its room even about that age; or else that Adrian, who affected that piece of learning as well as others, and was not able to reach the old vein, turned to a new one, which his expeditions into those countries made more allowable in an Emperor, and his example recommended to others. In the time of Boetius, who lived under Theodoric in Rome, we find the Latin poetry smell rank of this Gothic imitation, and the vein quite seared up. After that age, learning grew every day more and more obscured by that cloud of ignorance, which, coming from the North, and increasing with the numbers and successes of those barbarous people, at length overshadowed all Europe, for so long together. The Roman tongue began itself to fail or be disused, and by its corruption made way for the generation of three new languages in Spain, Italy, and France. The Courts of the Princes and Nobles, who were of the conquering nations, for several ages used their Gothic, or Frank, or Saxon tongues, which were mingled with those of Germany, where some of the Goths had sojourned long before they proceeded to their conquests of the more southern or western parts. Wherever the Roman colonies had long remained, and their language had been generally spoken, the common people used that still, but vitiated with the base alloy of their 176 OF POETRY provincial speech. This in Charlemain's time was caHed in France, " Rustica Romana ", and in Spain, during the Gothic reigns there, Romance; but in England, from whence all the Roman soldiers, and great numbers of the Britons most accustomed to their commerce and language, had been drained for the defence of Gaul against the barbarous nations that invaded it about the time of Valentinian, that tongue being wholly extinguished (as well as their own) made way for the entire use of the Saxon language. With these changes the ancient poetry was wholly lost in all these countries, and a new sort grew up by degrees, which was called by a new name of Rhymes, with an easy change of the Gothic word Runes, and not from the Greek, Rhythms, as is vulgarly supposed. Runes was properly the name of the ancient Gothic letters or characters, which were in- vented first or introduced by Odin, in the colony or kingdom of the Getes or Goths which he planted in the north-west parts, and round the Baltic Sea, as has been before related. But, because all the writings they had among them for many ages were in verse, it came to be the common name of all sorts of poetry among the Goths, and the writers or com- posers of them were called Runers or Rhymers. They had likewise another name for them, or for some sorts of them, which was Viises or Wises; and because the sages of that nation expressed the best of their thoughts, and what learning and prudence { c 217 ) 177 12 OF POETRY they had, in these kind of writings, they that succeeded best and with most applause were termed wise men; the good sense, or learn- ing, or useful knowledge contained in them was called wisdom; and the pleasant or facetious vein among them was called wit, which was applied to all spirit or race of poetry, where it was found in any man, and was generally pleasing to those that heard or read them. Of these Runes there were in use among the Goths above a hundred several sorts, some composed in longer, some in shorter lines, some equal, and others unequal, with many different cadencies, quantities, or feet, which in the pronouncing made many different sorts of original or natural tunes. Some were framed with allusions of words, or consonance oi syllables, or of letters, either in the same line, or in the distich, or by alternate succession and resemblance, which made a sort of gingle that pleased the ruder ears of that people. And because their language was composed most of monosyllables, and of so great num- bers, many must end in the same sound. Another sort of Runes were made, with the care and study of ending two lines, or each other of four lines, with words of the same sound; which being the easiest, requiring less art, and needing less spirit (because a certain chime in the sounds supplied that want, and pleased common ears) this in time grew the most general among all the Gothic colonies in Europe, and made rhymes or Runes pass 178 OF POETRY for the modern poetry in these parts of the world. This was not used only in their modern languages, but, during those ignorant ages, even in that barbarous Latin which remained and was preserved among the monks and priests, to distinguish them by some shew of learning from the laity, who might well admire it, in what degree soever, and reverence the pro- fessors, when they themselves could neither write nor read, even in their own language; I mean not only the vulgar laymen, but even the generality of Nobles, Barons, and Princes among them; and this lasted till the ancient learning and languages began to be restored in Europe about two hundred years ago. The common vein of the Gothic Runes was what is termed dithyrambic, and was of a raving or rambling sort of wit or invention, loose and flowing, with little art or confine- ment to any certain measures or rules; yet some of it wanted not the true spirit of poetry in some degree, or that natural inspiration which has been said to arise from some spark of poetical fire wherewith particular men are born; and, such as it was, it served the turn, not only to please, but even to charm, the ignorant and barbarous vulgar, where it was in use. This made the Runers among the Goths as much in request and admired, as any of the ancient and most celebrated poets were among the learned nations; for, among the blind, he that has one eye is a prince. They were, as well as the others, thought inspired, and the 179 OF POETRY charms of their Runic conceptions were gener- ally esteemed divine, or magical at least. The subjects of them were various, but commonly the same with those already observed in the true ancient poetry. Yet this vein was chiefly employed upon the records of bold and martial actions, and the praises of valiant men that had fought successfully or died bravely; and these songs or ballads were usually sung at feasts, or in circles of young or idle persons, and served to inflame the humour of war, of slaughter, and of spoils among them. More refined honour or love had little part in the writings, because it had little in the lives or actions, of those fierce people and bloody times. Honour among them consisted in victory, and love in rapes and in lust. But, as the true flame of poetry was rare among them, and the rest was but wild-fire that sparkled or rather crackled a while, and soon went out with little pleasure or gazing of the beholders ; those Runers, who could not raise admiration by the spirit of their poetry, endeavoured to do it by another, which was that of enchantments : this came in to supply the defect of that sublime and mar- vellous, which has been found both in poetry and prose among the learned ancients. The Gothic Runers, to gain and establish the credit and admiration of their rhymes, turned the use of them very much to incantations and charms, pretending by them to raise storms, to calm the seas, to cause terror in their enemies, to transport themselves in the air, 1 80 OF POETRY to conjure spirits, to cure diseases, and stanch bleeding wounds, to make women kind or easy, and men hard or invulnerable; as one of their most ancient Runers affirms of himself and his own achievements, by force of these magical arms : the men or women, who were thought to perform such wonders or enchant- ments, were from Vuses or Wises, the name of those verses wherein their charms were conceived, called Wizards or Witches. Out of this quarry seem to have been raised all those trophies of enchantment, that ap- pear in the whole fabric of the old Spanish romances, which were the productions of the Gothic wit among them, during their reign; and, after the conquests of Spain by the Saracens, they were applied to the long wars between them and the Christians. From the same, perhaps, may be derived all the visionary tribes of fairies, elves, and goblins, of sprites, and of bulbeggars, that serve not only to fright children into whatever their nurses please, but sometimes, by lasting impressions, to disquiet the sleeps and the very lives of men and women, till they grow to years of discretion ; and that, God knows, is a period of time which some people arrive to but very late, and perhaps others never. At least, this belief prevailed so far among the Goths and their races, that all sorts of charms were not only attributed to their runes or verses, but to their very characters ; so that, about the eleventh century, they were forbidden and abolished in Sweden, as they had been before in Spain, by i8i OF POETRY civil and ecclesiastical commands or constitu- tions ; and what has been since recovered of that learning or language has been fetched as far as Iceland itself. How much of this kind, and of this cre- dulity, remained even to our own age, may be observed by any man that reflects so far as thirty or forty years ; how often avouched, and how generally credited, were the stories of fairies, sprites, witchcrafts, and enchant- ments? In some parts of France, and not longer ago, the common people believed cer- tainly there were Lougaroos, or men turned into wolves; and I remember several Irish of the same mind. The remainders are woven into our very language ; Mara, in old Runic, was a goblin that seized upon men asleep in their beds, and toolc from them all speech and motion. Old Nicka was a sprite that came to strangle people who fell into the water : Bo was a fierce Gothic captain, son of Odin, whose name was used by his soldiers when they would fright or surprise their enemies ; and the proverb of rhyming rats to death came I suppose from the same root. There were, not longer since than the time I have mentioned, some remainders of the Runic poetry among the Irish. The great men of their Septs, among the many officers of their family, which continued always in the same races, had not only a physician, a huntsman, a smith, and such like, but a poet and a tale- teller ; the first recorded and -sung the actions of their ancestors, and entertained the com- 182 OF POETRY pany at feasts ; the latter amused them with tales when they were melancholy and could not sleep : and a very gallant gentleman of the North of Ireland has told me, of his own ex- perience, that in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these tale-tellers, that, when he lay down, would begin a story of a king, or a giant, a dwarf and a damsel, and such rambling stuff, and continue it all night long in such an even tone that you heard it going on, whenever you awaked; and he believed nothing any physicians give could have so good and so innocent effect, to make men sleep in any pains or distempers of body or mind. I remember, in my youth, some persons of our country to have said grace in rhymes, and others their constant prayers; and 'tis vulgar enough, that some deeds or con- veyances of land have been so, since the Con- quest. In such poor wretched weeds as these was poetry clothed, during those shades of igno- rance that overspread all Europe for so many ages after the sun-set of the Roman learning and empire together, which were succeeded by so many new dominions, or plantations of the Gothic swarms, and by a new race of customs, habit, language, and almost of nature ; but, upon the dawn of a new day, and the resurrec- tion of other sciences, with the two learned languages, among us, this of poetry began to appear very early, though very unlike itself, 183 OF POETRY and in shapes as well as clothes, in humour and in spirit, very different from the ancient. It was now all in rhyme, after the Gothic fashion; for indeed none of the several dialects of that language or alloy would bear the com- posure of such feet and measures, as were in use among the Greeks and Latins; and some that attempted it, soon left it off, despairing of success. Yet, in this new dress, poetry was not without some charms, especially those of grace and sweetness, and the ore began to shine in the hands and works of the first refiners. Petrarch, Ronsard, Spenser, met with much applause upon the subjects of love, praise, grief, reproach. Ariosto and Tasso entered boldly upon the scene of heroic poems ; but, having not wings for so high flights, began to learn of the old ones, fell upon their imi- tations, and chiefly of Virgil, as far as the force of their genius, or disadvantages of new languages and customs, would allow. The re- ligion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry, with a very agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of Christianity a place also in their poems. But the true reli- gion was not found to become fiction so well as a false had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed rather to debase religion, than to heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with morality, and to make in- struction, instead of story, the subject of an Epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very noble and high, but 184 OF POETRY his design was poor, and his moral lay so bare, that it lost the effect; 'tis true, the pill was gilded, but so thin that the colour and the taste were too easily discovered. After these three, I know none of the moderns that have made any achievements in heroic poetry worth recording. The wits of the age soon left off such bold adventures, and turned to other veins; as if, not worthy to sit down at the feast, they contented themselves with the scraps, with songs and sonnets, with odes and elegies, with satires and panegyrics, and what we call copies of verses upon any subjects or occasions ; wanting either genius or application for nobler or more laborious productions ; as painters, that cannot succeed in great pieces, turn to miniature. But the modern poets, to value this small coin, and make it pass, though of so much a baser metal than the old, gave it a new mix- ture from two veins which were little known or little esteemed among the ancients. There were indeed certain fairies, in the old regions of poetry, called Epigrams, which seldom reached above the stature of two, or four, or six lines, and which, being so short, were all turned upon conceit, or some sharp hits of fancy or wit. The only ancient of this kind among the Latins were the " Priapeia ", which were little voluntaries or extemporaries, written upon the ridiculous wooden statues of Priapus, among the gardens of Rome. In the decays of the Roman learning and wit, as well as language, Martial, Ausonius, and others fell 185 OF POETRY into this vein, and applied it indifferently to all subjects, which was before restrained to one, and dressed it something more cleanly than it was born. This vein of conceit seemed proper for such scraps or splinters into which poetry was broken, and was so eagerly followed, as almost to over -run all that was composed in our several modern languages ; the Italian, the French, the Spanish, as well as English, were for a great while, full of nothing else but conceit: it was an ingredient that gave taste to compositions which had little of themselves ; 'twas a sauce that gave point to meat that was flat, and some life to colours that were fading; and, in short, those who could not furnish spirit, supplied it with this salt, which may preserve things or bodies that are dead; but is, for aught I know, of little use to the living, or necessary to meats that have much or pleasing tastes of their own. However it were, this vein first overflowed our modern poetry, and with so little distinction, or judgment, that we would have conceit as well as rhyme in every two lines, and run through all our long scribbles as well as the short, and the whole body of the poem, whatever it is : this was just as if a building should be nothing but ornament, or clothes nothing but trimming ; as if a face should be covered over with black patches, or a gown with spangles; which is all I shall say of it. Another vein which has entered, and helped to corrupt our modern poesy, is that of ridicule; as if nothing pleased but what made one laugh, i86 OF POETRY which yet come from two very different affec- tions of the mind; for, as men have no dispo- sition to laugh at things they are most pleased with, so they are very little pleased with many things they laugh at. But this mistake is very general, and such modern poets as found no better way of pleasing, thought they could not fail of it by ridiculing. This was encouraged by finding conversation run so much into the same vein, and the wits in vogue to take up with that part of it which was formerly left to those that were called fools, and were used in great families only to make the company laugh. What opinion the Romans had of this character, appears in those lines of Horace : . . . Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defendit, alio culpante, solutos Qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis, Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hie niger est, hunc tu Romane caveto. And 'tis pity the character of a wit, in one age, should be so like that of a black in another. Rabelais seems to have been father of the ridicule ; a man of excellent and universal learning, as well as wit : and, though he had too much game given him for satire in that age, by the customs of courts and of convents, of processes and of wars, of schools and of camps, of romances and legends; yet he must be con- fessed to have kept up his vein of ridicule, by saying many things so malicious, so smutty, and so profane, that either a prudent, a modest, 187 OF POETRY or a pious man, could not have afforded, though he had never so much of that coin about him: and it were to be wished, that the wits who have followed his vein had not put too much value upon a dress, that better understandings would not wear (at least in public), and upon a compass they gave themselves, which other men would not take. The matchless writer of Don Quixote is much more to be admired, for having made up so excellent a composition of satire or ridicule, without those ingredients, and seems to be the best and highest strain that ever was, or will be, reached by that vein. It began first in verse, with an Italian poem called "La Secchia Rapita"; was pursued by Scarron in French, with his Virgil travesty; and in English by Sir John Mince, Hudibras, and Cotton, and with greater height of burlesque in the English than, I think, in any other lan- guage. But, let the execution be what it will, the design, the custom, and example are very pernicious to poetry, and indeed to all virtue and good qualities among men, which must be dis- heartened by finding how unjustly and undis- tinguished they fall under the lash of raillery, and this vein of ridiculing the good as well as the ill, the guilty and the innocent together. 'Tis a very poor, though common, pretence to merit, to make it appear by the faults of other men. A mean wit or beauty may pass in a room, where the rest of the company are allowed to have none; 'tis something to sparkle among diamonds, but to shine among pebbles i88 OF POETRY is neither credit nor value worth the pre- tending. Besides these two veins brought in to supply the defects of the modern poetry, much appli- cation has been made to the smoothness of language or style, which has at the best but the beauty of colouring in a picture, and can never make a good one, without spirit and strength. The academy set up by Cardinal Richelieu, to amuse the wits of that age and country, and divert them from raking into his politics and ministry, brought this in vogue; and the French wits have for this last age been in a manner wholly turned to the refine- ment of their language, and indeed with such success, that it can hardly be excelled, and runs equally through their verse and their prose. The same vein has been likewise much cultivated in our modern English poetry; and by such poor recruits have the broken forces of this empire been of late made up; with what success, I leave to be judged by such as consider it in the former heights, and the present declines, both of power and of honour; but this will not discourage, however it may affect, the true lovers of this mistress, who must ever think her a beauty in rags as well as in robes. Among these many decays, there is yet one sort of poetry that seems to have succeeded much better with our moderns than any of the rest, which is dramatic, or that of the stage: in this the Italian, the Spanish, and the French have all had their different merit, 189 OF POETRY and received their just applauses. Yet I am deceived, if our English has not in some kind excelled both the modern and the ancient, which has been by force of a vein natural perhaps to our country, and which with us is called humour, a word peculiar to our language too, and hard to be expressed in any other ; nor is it (that I know of) found in any foreign writers, unless it be Moliere, and yet his itself has too much of the farce, to pass for the same with ours. Shakespeare was the first that opened this vein upon our stage, which has run so freely and so pleasantly ever since, that I have often wondered to find it appear so little upon any others, being a subject so proper for them ; since humour is but a picture of particular life, as comedy is of general; and though it represents dispositions and customs less common, yet they are not less natural than those that are more frequent among men ; for, if humour itself be forced, it loses all the grace; which has been indeed the fault of some of our poets most celebrated in this kind. It may seem a defect in the ancient stage, that the characters introduced were so few, and those so common; as, a covetous old man, an amorous young, a witty wench, a crafty slave, a bragging soldier : the spectators met nothing upon the stage, but what they met in the streets, and at every turn. All the variety is drawn only from different and uncommon events ; whereas, if the characters are so too, the diversity and the pleasure must needs be 190 OF POETRY the more. But as of most general customs in a country there is usually some ground from the nature of the people or the climate, so there may be amongst us, for this vein of our stage, and a greater variety of humour in the picture, because there is a greater variety in the life. This may proceed from the native plenty of our soil, the unequalness of our climate, as well as the ease of our government, and the liberty of professing opinions and factions, which perhaps our neighbours may have about them, but are forced to disguise, and thereby they may come in time to be extinguished. Plenty begets wantonness and pride; wantonness is apt to invent, and pride scorns to imitate ; liberty begets stomach or heart, and stomach will not be constrained. Thus we come to have more originals, and more that appear what they are ; we have more humour, because every man follows his own, and takes a pleasure, perhaps a pride, to shew it. On the contrary, where the people are generally poor, and forced to hard labour, their actions and lives are all of a piece ; where they serve hard masters, they must follow his examples as well as commands, and are forced upon imitation in small matters, as well as obedience in great : so that some nations look as if they were cast all by one mould, or cut out all by one pattern (at least the common people in one, and the gentlemen in another): they seem all of a sort in their habits, their customs, and even their talk and 191 OF POETRY conversation, as well as in the application and pursuit of their actions and their lives. Besides all this, there is another sort of variety amongst us, which arises from our climate, and the dispositions it naturally pro- duces. We are not only more unlike one another than any nation I know, but we are more unlike ourselves too at several times, and owe to our very air some ill qualities as well as many good. We may allow some distempers incident to our climate, since so much health, vigour, and length of life have been generally ascribed to it ; for, among the Greek and Roman authors themselves we shall find the Britons observed to live the longest, and the Egyptians the shortest, of any nations that were known in those ages. Besides, I think none will dispute the native courage of our men, and beauty of our women, which may be elsewhere as great in particulars, but nowhere so in general; they may be (what is said of diseases) as acute in other places, but with us they are epidemical. For my own part, who have conversed much with men of other nations, and such as have been both in great employments and esteem, I can say very impartially, that I have not observed, among any, so much true genius as among the English; nowhere more sharpness of wit, more pleasant- ness of humour, more range of fancy, more penetration of thought, or depth of reflection among the better sort; nowhere more goodness of nature and of meaning, nor more plainness of sense and of life, than among the common 192 OF POETRY sort of country people; nor more blunt cour- age and honesty than among our seamen. But, with all this, our country must be con- fessed to be what a great foreign physician called it, the region of spleen ; which may arise a good deal from the great uncertainty and many sudden changes of our weather in all seasons of the year. And how much these affect the heads and hearts, especially of the finest tempers, is hard to be believed by men whose thoughts are not turned to such specula- tions. This makes us unequal in our humours, inconstant in our passions, uncertain in our ends, and even in our desires. Besides, our different opinions in religion, and the factions they have raised or animated for fifty years past, have had an ill effect upon our manners and customs, inducing more avarice, ambition, disguise (with the usual consequences of them), than were before in our constitution. From all this it may happen, that there is nowhere more true zeal in the many different forms of devotion, and yet nowhere more knavery under the shews and pretences. There are nowhere so many disputers upon religion, so many reasoners upon government, so many refiners in politics, so many curious inquisitives, so many pretenders to business and state-employ- ments, greater porers upon books, nor plodders after wealth; and yet nowhere more abandoned libertines, more refined luxurists, extravagant debauchees, conceited gallants, more dabblers in poetry as well as politics, in philosophy, and in chemistry. I have had several servants ( c 217 ) 193 13 OF POETRY far gone in divinity, others in poetry ; have known, in the families of some friends, a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian principles, and a laundress firm in those of Epicurus. What effect soever such a composition or medley of humours among us may have upon our lives or our government, it must needs have a good one upon our stage, and has given admirable play to our comical wits; so that, in my opinion, there is no vein of that sort, either ancient or modern, which excels or equals the humour of our plays. And, for the rest, I cannot but observe, to the honour of our country, that the good qualities amongst us seem to be natural, and the ill ones more accidental, and such as would be easily changed by the examples of Princes, and by the precepts of laws; such I mean, as should be designed to form manners, to restrain excesses, to en- courage industry, to prevent men's expenses beyond their fortunes, to countenance virtue, and raise that true esteem due to plain sense and common honesty. But to spin off this thread, which is already grown too long: what honour and request the ancient poetry has lived in, may not only be observed from the universal reception and use in all nations from China to Peru, from Scythia to Arabia, but from the esteem of the best and the greatest men, as well as the vulgar. Among the Hebrews, David and Solomon, the wisest Kings, job and Jeremiah, the holiest men, were the best poets of their nation and language. Among the Greeks, the two most 194 OF POETRY renowned sages and lawgivers were Lycurgus and Solon, whereof the last is known to have excelled in poetry, and the first was so great a lover of it, that to his care and industry we are said (by some authors) to owe the collec- tion and preservation of the loose and scattered pieces of Homer in the order wherein they have since appeared. Alexander is reported neither to have travelled nor slept without those admirable poems always in his company. Phalaris, that was inexorable to all other enemies, relented at the charms of Stesichorus his muse. Among the Romans, the last and great Scipio passed the soft hours of his life in the conversation of Terence, and was thought to have a part in the composition of his comedies. Caesar was an excellent poet as well as orator, and composed a poem in his voyage from Rome to Spain, relieving the tedious difficulties of his march with the entertainments of his muse. Augustus was not only a patron, but a friend and companion of Virgil and Horace, and was himself both an admirer of poetry, and a pretender too, as far as his genius would reach, or his busy scene allow. 'Tis true, since his age we have few such examples of great Princes favouring or affecting poetry, and as few per- haps of great poets deserving it. Whether it be that the fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern languages would not bear it; certain it is, that the great heights and excellency 195 OF POETRY both of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they are among us, they must be confessed to be the softest and sweetest, the most general and most innocent amusements of common time and life. They still find room in the Courts of Princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor or idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions and affections. I know very well, that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to these charms, would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into question : it may be thought at least an ill sign, if not an ill con- stitution, since some of the fathers went so far, as to esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing divine, and reserved 196 OF POETRY for the felicities of heaven itself. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and requests of these two entertainments will do so too: and happy those that content them- selves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent ; and do not trouble the world, or other men, because they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them! When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over. 197 An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning Ju-vat antiquos accedere fontes Whoever converses much among the old books will be something hard to please among the new; yet these must have their part too in the leisure of an idle man, and have many of them their beauties as well as their defaults. Those of story, or relations of matter of fact, have a value from their substance as much as from their form; and the variety of events is seldom without entertainment or instruction, how indifferently soever the tale is told. Other sorts of writings have little of esteem, but what they receive from the wit, learning, or genius, of the authors, and are seldom met with of any excellency, because they do but trace over the paths that have been beaten by the ancients, or comment, critique, and flourish upon them; and are at best but copies after those originals, unless upon subjects never touched by them; such as are all that relate to the different con- stitutions of religious laws, or governments in 199 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT several countries, with all matters of contro- versy that arise upon them. Two pieces that have lately pleased me (ab- stracted from any of these subjects) are, one in English upon the Antediluvian World; and another in French upon the Plurality of Worlds; one writ by a divine, and the other by a gentleman, but both very finely in their several kinds, and upon their several subjects, which would have made very poor work in common hands: I was so pleased with the last (I mean the fashion of it, rather than the matter, which is old and beaten) that I enquired for what else I could of the same hand, till I met with a small piece concerning poesy, which gave me the same exception to both these authors, whom I should otherwise have been very partial to. For the first could not end his learned treatise without a panegyric of modern learning and knowledge in comparison of the ancient: and the other falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read either of these strains with- out some indignation, which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me as sufficiency, the worst composition out of the pride and igno- rance of mankind. But, these two being not the only persons of the age that defend these opinions, it may be worth examining how far either reason or experience can be allowed to plead or determine in their favour. The force of all that I have met with upon this subject, either in talk or writing is, first, as to knowledge; that we must have more than 2CX) AND MODERN LEARNING the ancients, because we have the advantage both of theirs and our own, which is commonly illustrated by the similitude of a dwarf's stand- ing upon a giant's shoulders, and seeing more or farther than he. Next as to wit or genius, that, nature being still the same, these must be much at a rate in all ages, at least in the same climates, as the growth and size of plants and animals commonly are; and if both these are allowed, they think the cause is gained. But I cannot tell why we should conclude, that the ancient writers had not as much advantage from the knowledge of others, that were ancient to them, as we have from those that are ancient to us. The invention of printing has not per- haps multiplied books, but only the copies of them; and if we believe there were six hundred thousand in the library of Ptolemy, we shall hardly pretend to equal it by any of ours, not perhaps by all put together: I mean so many originals, that have lived any time, and thereby given testimony of their having been thought worth preserving. For the scribblers are in- finite, that, like mushrooms or flies, are born and die in small circles of time, whereas books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed. Besides the account of this lib- rary at Alexandria, and others very volumin- ous in the Lesser Asia and Rome, we have frequent mention of ancient writers in many of those books which we now call ancient, both philosophers and historians. 'Tis true, that, besides what we have in Scripture concerning 20X AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT the original and progress of the Jewish nation, all that passed in the rest of our world before the Trojan war is either sunk in the depths of time, wrapped up in the mysteries of fables, or so maimed by the want of testimonies, and loss of authors, that it appears to us in too obscure a shade, to make any judgment upon it. For the fragments of Manethon about the anti- quities of Egypt, the relations in Justin con- cerning the Scythian empire, and many others in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, as well as the records of China, make such excursions beyond the periods of time given us by the holy Scriptures, that we are not allowed to reason upon them. And this disagreement itself, after so great a part of the world became Christian, may have contributed to the loss of many ancient authors. For Solomon tells us even in his time, of writing many books there was no end; and whoever considers the subject and the style of Job, which by many is thought more ancient than Moses, will hardly think it was written in an r.ge or country that wanted either books or learning; and yet he speaks of the ancients then, and their wisdom, as we do now. But if any should so very rashly and pre- sumptuously conclude, that there were few books before those we have either extant or upon record; yet that cannot argue there was no knowledge or learning before those periods of time whereof they give us the short account. Books may be helps to learning and knowledge, and make it more common and diffused; but AND MODERN LEARNING I doubt whether they are necessary ones or no, or much advance any other science, beyond the particular records of actions or registers of time; and these perhaps might be as long preserved without them, by the care and exactness of tradition in the long successions of certain races of men, with whom they were intrusted. So in Mexico and Peru, before the least use or mention of letters, there was remaining among them the knowledge of what had passed in those mighty nations and governments for many ages. Whereas in Ireland, that is said to have flourished in books and learning be- fore they had much progress in Gaul or Brittany, there are now hardly any traces left of what passed there before the conquest made of that country by the English in Henry II's time. A strange but plain demonstration, how knowledge and ignorance, as well as civility and barbarism, may succeed each other in the several countries of the world; how much better the records of time may be kept by tradition in one country than by writing in another; and how much we owe to those learned languages of Greek and Latin, without which, for aught I know, the world in all these Western parts would hardly be known to have been above five or six hundred years old, nor any certainty remain of what passed in it before that time. 'Tis true, in the Eastern regions, there seems to have been a general custom of the priests, in each country, having been, either by their own choice, or by design of their governments, the perpetual conservers of knowledge and story. 203 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT Only In China, this last was committed par- ticularly to certain officers of State, who were appointed or continued, upon every accession to that Crown, to register distinctly the times and memorable events of each reign. In Ethi- opia, Egypt, Chaldsa, Persia, Syria, Judea, these cares were committed wholly to the priests, who were not less diligent in the registers of times and actions, than in the study and successive propagation thereby of all natural science and philosophy. Whether this was managed by letters, or tradition, or by both, 'tis certain the ancient colleges, or societies of priests, were mighty reservoirs or lal^es of know- ledge, into which some streams entered perhaps every age, from the observations or inventions of any great spirits, or transcendent geniuses, that happened to rise among them; and nothing was lost out of these stores, since the part of conserving what others have gained, either in knowledge or empire, is as common and easy, as the other is hard and rare among men. In these soils were planted and cultivated those mighty growths of Astronomy, Astrology, Magic, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, and ancient story. From these sources Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the ancients, are acknowledged to have drawn all those depths of knowledge or learning, which have made them so renowned in all succeeding ages. I make a distinction between these two, taking knowledge to be properly meant of things that are generally agreed to be true by consent of those that first found them out, or have been 204 AND MODERN LEARNING since instructed in them; but learning is the knowledge of the different and contested opinions of men in former ages, and about which they have perhaps never agreed in any; and this makes so much of one, and so little of the other, in the world. Now to judge whether the ancients or moderns can be probably thought to have made the greatest progress in the search and discoveries of the vast region of truth and nature, it will be worth enquiring, what guides have been used, and what labours employed, by the one and the other, in these noble travels and pursuits. The modern scholars have their usual re- course to the universities of their countries; some few it may be to those of their neigh- bours; and this, in quest of books, rather than men, for their guides, though these are living, and those, in comparison, but dead instructors; which like a hand with an inscription can point out the straight way upon the road, but can neither tell you the next turnings, resolve your doubts, or answer your questions, like a guide that has traced it over, and perhaps knows it as well as his chamber. And who are these dead guides we seek in our journey? They are at best but some few authors that remain among us, of a great many that wrote in Greek or Latin, from the age of Hippo- crates, to that of Marcus Antoninus, which reaches not much above six hundred years. Before that time I know none, besides some poets, some fables, and some few epistles; 205 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT and since that time, I know very few that can pretend to be authors, rather than tran- scribers or commentators of the ancient learning. Now to consider at what sources our ancients drew their water, and with what unwearied pains: 'tis evident, Thales and Pythagoras were the two founders of the Grecian philosophy; the first gave beginning to the Ionic sect, and the other to the Italic; out of which, all the others celebrated in Greece or Rome were derived or composed. Thales was the first of the Sophi, or wise men famous in Greece, and is said to have learned his Astronomy, Geometry, Astrology, Theology, in his travels from his country Miletus to Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete, and Delphos. Pythagoras was the father of philo- sophers, and of the virtues; having in modesty chosen the name of a lover of wisdom, rather than of wise; and having first introduced the names of the four cardinal virtues, and given them the place and rank they have held ever since in the world. Of these two mighty men remain no writings at all, for those golden verses that go under the name of Pythagoras are generally rejected as spurious, like many other fragments of Sybils, or old poets, and some entire poems that run with ancient names: nor is it agreed, whether he ever left any thing written to his scholars or contemporaries ; or whether all, that learned of him, did it not by the ear and memory; and all that remained of him, for some succeeding ages, were not by tradition. But, AND MODERN LEARNING whether these ever writ or no, they were the fountains out of which the following Greek philosophers drew all those streams that have since watered the studies of the learned world, and furnished the voluminous writings of so many sects, as passed afterwards under the common name of philosophers. As there were guides to those that we call ancients, so there were others that were guides to them, in whose search they travelled far and laboured long. There is nothing more agreed, than that all the learning of the Greeks was deduced origi- nally from Egypt or Phoenicia; but, whether theirs might not have flourished to that degree it did, by the commerce of the Ethiopians, Chaldaeans, Arabians, and Indians, is not so evident (though I am very apt to believe it), and to most of these regions some of the Grecians travelled in search of those golden mines of learning and knowledge. Not to mention the voyages of Orpheus, Mufaeus, Lycurgus, Thales, Solon, Democritus, Hero- dotus, Plato (and that vain Sophist, Apollonius, who was but an ape of the ancient philo- sophers), I shall only trace those of Pythago- ras, who seems, of all others, to have gone the farthest upon this design, and to have brought home the greatest treasures. He went first to Egypt, where he spent two and twenty years in study and conversation among the several colleges of priests, in Memphis, Thebes, and Heliopolis, was initiated in all their several mysteries, in order to gain admittance and 207 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT instruction in the learning and sciences that were there in their highest ascendant. Twelve years he spent in Babylon, and in the studies and learning of the priests or Magi of the Chaldasans. Besides these long abodes in those two regions celebrated for ancient learning, and where one author, according to their calcula- tions, says he gained the observations of in- numerable ages, he travelled likewise upon the same scent into Ethiopia, Arabia, India, to Crete, to Delphos, and to all the oracles that were renowned in any of these regions. What sort of mortals some of those may have been, that he went so far to seek, I shall only endeavour to trace out, by the most ancient accounts that are given of the Indian Brachmans, since those of the learned or sages in the other countries occur more frequent in story. These were all of one race or tribe, that was kept chaste from any other mixture, and were dedicated wholly to the service of the gods, to the studies of wisdom and nature, and to the counsel of their Princes. There was not only particular care taken of their birth and nurture, but even from their conception. For when a woman among them was known to have conceived, much thought and diligence was employed about her diet and entertain- ments, so far as to furnish her with pleasant imaginations, to compose her mind and her sleeps, with the best temper, during the time she carried her burden. This I take to be a strain beyond all the Grecian wit, or the constitutions even of their imaginary lawgivers, AND MODERN LEARNING who began their cares of mankind only after their birth, and none before. Those of the Brachmans continued in the same degree for their education and instruction, in which, and their studies, and discipline of their colleges, or separate abodes in woods and fields, they spent thirty-seven years. Their learning and institutions were unwritten, and only tradi- tional among themselves by a perpetual succes- sion. Their opinions in natural philosophy were, that the world was round, that it had a beginning, and would have an end, but reckoned both by immense periods of time; that the author of it was a Spirit, or a Mind, that per- vaded the whole universe, and was diffused through all the parts of it. They held the transmigration of souls, and some used dis- courses of infernal mansions, in many things like those of Plato. Their moral philosophy consisted chiefly in preventing all diseases or distempers of the body, from which they esteemed the perturbation of mind, in a great measure, to arise; then, in composing the mind, and exempting it from all anxious cares, esteem- ing the troublesome and solicitous thoughts, about past and future, to be like so many dreams, and no more to be regarded. They despised both life and death, pleasure and pain, or at least thought them perfectly indifferent. Their justice was exact and examplary; their temperance so great, that they lived upon rice or herbs, and upon nothing that had sensitive life. If they fell sick, they counted it such a mark of intemperance, that they would ( c 217 ) 209 14 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT frequently die out of shame and sullenness; but many lived a hundred and fifty, and some two hundred years. Their wisdom was so highly esteemed, that some of them were always employed to follow the courts of their Kings, to advise them upon all occasions, and instruct them in justice and piety; and upon this regard, Calanus, and some others, are said to have followed the camp of Alexander, after his conquest of one of their Kings. The magical operations reported of them are so wonderful, that they must either be wholly disbelieved, or will make easy way for the credit of all those that we so often meet with in the latter relations of the Indies. Above all the rest, their fortitude was most admirable in their patience and endurance of all evils, of pain, and of death; some standing, sitting, lying, without any motion whole days together in the scorching sun; others standing whole nights upon one leg, and holding up a heavy piece of wood or stone in both hands: without ever moving (which might be done, upon some sort of penances usual among them). They frequently ended their lives by their own choice, and not necessity, and most usually by fire; some upon sickness; others upon mis- fortunes; some upon mere satiety of life: so Calanus, in Alexander's time, burnt himself publicly, upon growing old and infirm; Zor- manochages, in the time of Augustus, upon his constant health and felicity, and to prevent his living so long as to fall into diseases or misfortunes. These were the Brachmans of AND MODERN LEARNING India, by the most ancient relations remaining of them, and which, compared with our modern (since navigation and trade have discovered so much of those vast countries) make it easy to conjecture that the present Baniams have derived from them many of their customs and opinions, which are still very like them, after the course of two thousand years. For how long nations, without the changes introduced by conquest, may continue in the same customs, institutions, and opinions, will be easily ob- served, in the stories of the Peruvians and Mexicans, of the Chineses and Scythians: these last being described by Herodotus, to lodge always in carts, and to feed commonly upon the milk of mares, as the Tartars are reported to do at this time, in many parts of those vast northern regions. From these famous Indians, it seems to be most probable that Pythagoras learned, and transported into Greece and Italy, the greatest part of his natural and moral philosophy, rather than from the Egyptians, as is commonly sup- posed ; for I have not observed any mention of the transmigration of souls, held among the Egyptians, more ancient than the time of Pythagoras : on the contrary, Orpheus is said to have brought out of Egypt all his mystical theology, with the stories of the Stygian lake, Charon, the infernal judges, which were wrought up by the succeeding poets (with a mixture of the Cretan tales, or traditions) into that part of the Pagan religion, so long observed by the Greeks and Romans. Now 'tis obvious, that AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT this was in all parts very different from the Pythagorean opinion of transmigration, which, though it was preserved long among some of the succeeding philosophers, yet never entered into the vulgar belief of Greece or Italy. Nor does it seem unlikely that the Egyp- tians themselves might have drawn much of their learning from the Indians; for they are observed, in some authors, to have done it from the Ethiopians ; and chronologers, I think, agree, that these were a colony that came anciently from the river Indus, and planted themselves upon that part of Africa, which from the name was afterwards called Ethiopia, and in all probability brought their learning and their customs with them. The Phoenicians are likewise said to have been anciently a colony that came from the Red Sea, and planted themselves upon the Mediterranean; and from thence spread so far the fame of their learning, and their navigations. To strengthen this conjecture, of much learning being derived from such remote and ancient fountains as the Indies, and perhaps China, it may be asserted with great evidence, that though we know little of the antiquities of India, beyond Alexander's time, yet those of China are the oldest that anywhere pretend to any fair records; for these are agreed, by the missionary Jesuits, to extend so far above four thousand years, and with such appearance of clear and undeniable testimonies, that those religious men themselves, rather than question their truth, by finding them contrary to the 2X2 AND MODERN LEARNING vulgar chronology of the Scripture, are content to have recourse to that of the Septuagint, and thereby to salve the appearances in those re- cords of the Chineses. Now though we have been deprived of the knowledge of what course learning may have held, and to what heights it may have soared, in that vast region, and during so great antiquity of time, by reason of the savage ambition of one of their Kings, who, desirous to begin the period of history from his own reign, ordered all books to be burnt, except those of physic and agriculture; so that what we have remaining besides, of that wise and ancient nation, is but what was either by chance, or by private industry, rescued out of that public calamity (among which were a copy of the records and successions of the crown); yet it is observable and agreed, that as the opinions of the learned among them are at present, so they were anciently, divided into two sects, whereof one held the trans- migration of souls, and the other the eternity of matter, comparing the world to a great mass of metal, out of which some parts are continu- ally made up into a thousand various figures, and after certain periods melted down again into the same mass. That there were many volumes written of old in natural philosophy among them ; that, near the age of Socrates, lived their great and renowned Confucius, who began the same design of reclaiming men from the useless and endless speculations of nature, to those of morality; but with this difference, that the bent of the Grecian seems to be chiefly 213 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT upon the happiness of private men or families, but that of the Chinese, upon the good tem- perament and felicity of such kingdoms or governments as that was, and is known to have continued for several thousands of years; and may be properly called a government of learned men, since no other are admitted into charges of the State. For my own part, I am much inclined to believe that, in these remote regions, not only Pythagoras learned the first principles, both of his natural and moral philosophy ; but that those of Democritus (who travelled into Egypt, Chaldaea, and India, and whose doctrines were after improved by Epicurus) might have been derived from the same fountains ; and that, long before them both, Lycurgus, who like- wise travelled into India, brought from thence also the chief principles of his laws and poli- tics, so much renowned in the world. For whoever observes the account already given of the ancient Indian and Chinese learn- ing and opinions, will easily find among them the seeds of all these Grecian productions and institutions : as the transmigration of souls, and the four cardinal virtues: the long silence enjoined his scholars, and propagation of their doctrines by tradition rather than letters, and abstinence from all meats that had animal life, introduced by Pythagoras: the eternity of mat- ter, with perpetual changes of form, the indo- lence of body, and tranquillity of mind, by Epicurus : and among those of Lycurgus, the care of education from the birth of children, 214 AND MODERN LEARNING the austere temperance of diet, the patient endurance of toil and pain, the neglect or con- tempt of life, the use of gold and silver only in their temples, the defence of commerce with strangers, and several others, by him established among the Spartans, seem all to be wholly In- dian, and different from any race or vein of thought or imagination, that have ever appeared in Greece, either in that age, or any since. It may look like a paradox, to deduce learn- ing from regions accounted commonly so bar- barous and rude. And it is true the generality of people were always so, in those eastern countries, and their lives wholly turned to agriculture, to mechanics, or to trades : but this does not hinder particular races or suc- cessions of men (the design of whose thought and time was turned wholly to learning and knowledge) from having been what they are represented, and what they deserve to be esteemed; since among the Gauls, the Goths, and the Peruvians themselves, there have been such races of men under the names of Druids, Bards, Amautas, Runers, and other barbarous appellations. Besides, I know no circumstances like to contribute more to the advancement of know- ledge and learning among men, than exact temperance in their races, great pureness of air and equality of climate, long tranquillity of empire or government : and all these we may justly allow to those eastern regions, more than any others we are acquainted with, at least till the conquest made by the Tartars 215 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT upon both India and China, in the latter cen- turies. However, it may be as pardonable to derive some parts of learning from thence, as to go so far for the game of chess, which some curious and learned men have deduced from India into Europe, by two several roads, that is, by Persia into Greece, and by Arabia into Afric and Spain. Thus much I thought might be allowed me to say, for the giving some idea of what those sages or learned men were, or may have been, who were ancients to those that are ancients to us. Now to observe what these have been, is more easy and obvious. The most ancient Grecians that we are at all acquainted with, after Lycurgus, who was certainly a great philo- sopher as well as lawgiver, were the seven sages: though the Court of Croesus is said to have been much resorted to by the sophists of Greece, in the happy beginnings of his reign. And some of these seven seem to have brought most of the sciences out of Egypt and Phoenicia, into Greece; particularly those of Astronomy, Astrology, Geometry, and Arithmetic. These were soon followed by Pythagoras (who seems to have introduced natural and moral philo- sophy), and by several of his followers, both in Greece and Italy. But of all these there remains nothing in writing now among us ; so that Hippocrates, Plato, and Xenophon are the first philosophers whose works have escaped the injuries of time. But that we may not conclude, the first writers we have of the Grecians, were the first learned or wise among 2X6 AND MODERN LEARNING them ; we shall find upon enquiry, that the more ancient sages of Greece appear, by the characters remaining of them, to have been much the greater men. They were generally Princes or lawgivers of their countries, or at least offered and invited to be so, either of their own or of others, that desired them to frame or reform their several institutions of civil government. They were commonly ex- cellent poets, and great physicians : they were so learned in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, and storms at sea, great droughts, 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 people, to make plagues cease; which qualities, whether upon any ground of truth or no, yet, if well believed, must have raised them to that strange height they were at, of common esteem and honour, in their own and succeeding ages. By all this may be determined, whether our moderns or our ancients may have had the greater and the better guides, and which of them have taken the greater pains, and with the more application in the pursuit of know- ledge. And, I think, it is enough to shew that the advantages we have from those we call the ancients, may not be greater than what they had from those that were so to them. But after all, I do not know whether the high flights of wit and knowledge, like those 217 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT of power and of empire in the world, may not have been made by the pure native force of spirit or genius, in some single men, rather than by any derived strength among them, however increased by succession; and whether they may not have been the achievements of nature, rather than the improvements of art. Thus the conquests of Ninus and Semiramis, of Alexander and Tamerlane, which I take to have been the greatest recorded in story, were at their height in those persons that began them ; and so far from being increased by their successors, that they were not preserved in their extent and vigour by any of them, grew weaker in every hand they passed through, or were divided into many, that set up for great Princes, out of several small ruins of the first empires, till they withered away in time, or were lost by the change of names, and forms of families, or governments. Just the same fate seems to have attended the highest flights of learning and of know- ledge, that are upon our registers. Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, were the first mighty con- querors of ignorance in our world, and made greater progresses in the several empires of science, than any of their successors have been since able to reach. These have hardly ever pretended more than to learn what the others taught, to remember what they invented, and, not able to compass that itself, they have set up for authors upon some parcels of those great stocks, or else have contented themselves 218 AND MODERN LEARNING only to comment upon those texts, and make the best copies they could, after those originals. I have long thought, that the different abili- ties of men, which we call wisdom or prudence for the conduct of public affairs or private life, grow directly out of that little grain of intellect or good sense which they bring with them into the world ; and that the defect of it in men comes from some want in their conception or birth. Dixitque semel nascentibus auctor, Quicquid scire licet. And though this may be improved or impaired in some degree, by accidents of education, of study, and of conversation and business, yet it cannot go beyond the reach of its native force, no more than life can beyond the period to which it was destined, by the strength or weaicness of the seminal virtue. If these speculations should be true, then I know not what advantages we can pretend to modern knowledge, by any we receive from the ancients: nay, 'tis possible men may lose rather than gain by them; may lessen the force and growth of their own genius, by constraining and forming it upon that of others; may have less knowledge of their own, for contenting themselves with that of those before them. So a man that only translates, shall never be a poet, nor a painter that only copies, nor a swimmer that swims always with bladders. So people that trust wholly to other's charity, and without industry of their own, will be 21Q AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT always poor. Besides, who can tell, whether learning may not even weaken invention, in a man that has great advantages from nature and birth; whether the weight and number of so many other men's thoughts and notions may not suppress his own, or hinder the motion and agitation of them, from which all invention arises; as heaping on wood, or too many sticks, or too close together, suppresses, and some- times quite extinguishes, a little spark that would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame ? The strength of mind, as well as of body, grows more from the warmth of exer- cise, than of clothes; nay, too much of this foreign heat rather makes men faint, and their constitutions tender or weaker than they would be without them. Let it come about how it will, if we are dwarfs, we are still so though we stand upon a giant's shoulders ; and even so placed, yet we see less than he, if we are naturally shorter sighted, or if we do not look as much about us, or if we are dazzled with the height, which often happens from weakness either of heart or brain. In the growth and stature of souls, as well as bodies, the common productions are of in- different sizes, that occasion no gazing, nor no wonder : but, though there are or have been sometimes dwarfs and sometimes giants in the world, yet it does not follow, that there must be such in every age nor in every country : this we can no more conclude, than that there never have been any, because there are none now, at least in the compass of our present AND MODERN LEARNING knowledge or inquiry. As I believe, there may have been giants at some time, and some place or other in the world, of such a stature, as may not have been equalled perhaps again, in several thousands of years, or in any other parts; so there may be giants in wit and know- ledge, of so over-grown a size, as not to be equalled again in many successions of ages, or any compass of place or country. Such, I am sure, Lucretius esteems and describes Epicurus to have been, and to have risen, like a prodigy of invention and knowledge, such as had not been before, nor was like to be again ; and I know not why others of the ancients may not be allowed to have been as great in their kinds, and to have built as high, though upon different schemes or foundations. Because there is a stag's head at Amboyse of a most prodigious size, and a large table at Memorancy cut out of the thickness of a vine-stock, is it necessary that there must be, every age, such a stag in every great forest, or such a vine in every large vineyard ; or that the productions of nature, in any kind, must be still alike, or something near it, because nature is still the same? May there not many circumstances concur to one production that do not to any other, in one or many ages ? In the growth of a tree, there is the native strength of the seed, both from the kind, and from the perfections of its ripening, and from the health and vigour of the plant that bore it: there is the degree of strength and excellence, in that vein of earth where it first took root: there is a propriety of 221 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT soil, suited to the kind of tree that grows in it : there is a. great favour or disfavour to its growth, from accidents of water and of shelter, from the kindness or unkindness of seasons, till it be past the need or the danger of them. All these, and perhaps many others, joined with the propitiousness of climate to that sort of tree, and the length of age it shall stand and grow, may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane tree, that shall deserve to be renowned in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other countries or times. May not the same have happened in the production, growth, and size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, and from many more circumstances that con- tributed towards it, than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or animal.^ May there not have been, in Greece or Italy of old, such prodigies of invention and learn- ing in philosophy, mathematics, physic, oratory, poetry, that none has ever since approached them, as well as there were in painting, statu- ary, architecture ? And yet their unparalleled and inimitable excellencies in these are undis- puted. Science and arts have run their circles, and had their periods in the several parts of the world: they are generally agreed to have held their course from East to West, to have begun in Chaldsea and Egypt, to have been trans- planted from thence to Greece, from Greece to Rome; to have sunk there, and, after many ages, to have revived from those ashes, and to AND MODERN LEARNING have sprung up again both in Italy and other more western Provinces of Europe. When Chaldsa and Egypt were learned and civil, Greece and Rome were as rude and barbarous as all Egypt and Syria now are, and have been long. When Greece and Rome were at their heights in arts and sciences, Gaul, Germany, Britain, were as ignorant and barbarous as any parts of Greece or Turkey can be now. These, and greater changes, are made in the several countries of the world, and courses of time, by the revolutions of empire, the devas- tations of armies, the cruelties of conquering, and the calamities of enslaved nations; by the violent inundations of water in some countries, and the cruel ravages of plagues in others. These sorts of accidents sometimes lay them so waste, that, when they rise again, 'tis from such low beginnings, that they look like new- created regions, or growing out of the original state of mankind, and without any records or remembrances, beyond certain short periods of time. Thus that vast continent of Norway is said to have been so wholly desolated by a plague, about eight or nine hundred years ago, that it was for some ages following a very desert, and since all overgrown with wood; and Ireland was so spoiled and wasted by the conquest of the Scutes and Danes, that there hardly remains any story or tradition what that island was, how planted or governed, above five hundred years ago. What changes have been made by violent storms, and inundations of the sea in the maritime Provinces of the Low Countries, 223 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT is hard to know, or to believe what is told, nor how ignorant they have left us of all that passed there before a certain and short period of time. The accounts of many other countries would perhaps as hardly, and as late, have waded out of the depths of time, and gulfs of ignorance, had it not been for the assistances of those two languages, to which we owe all we have of learning or ancient records in the world. For whether we have any thing of the old Chaldsian, Hebrew, Arabian, that is truely genuine or more ancient than the Augustan age, I am much in doubt ; yet it is probable the vast Alexandrian library must have chiefly consisted of books composed in those languages, with the Egyptian, Syrian, and Ethiopic, or at least translated out of them by the care of the Egyptian Kings or Priests, as the Old Testament was, wherein the Septuagints em- ployed left their name to that famous trans- lation. 'Tis very true and just, all that is said of the mighty progress that learning and know- ledge have made in these western parts of Europe, within these hundred and fifty years; but that does not conclude, it must be at a greater height than it had been in other coun- tries, where it was growing much longer periods of time ; it argues more how low it was then amongst us, rather than how high it is now. Upon the fall of the Roman empire, almost all learning was buried in its ruins: the northern nations, that conquered or rather overwhelmed 224 AND MODERN LEARNING it by their numbers, were too barbarous to preserve the remains of learning or civility more carefully than they did those of statuary or architecture, which fell before their brutish rage. The Saracens indeed from their con- quests of Egypt, Syria, and Greece, carried home great spoils of learning, as well as other riches, and gave the original of all that know- ledge which flourished for some time among the Arabians, and has since been copied out of many authors among them, as theirs have been out of those of the countries they had subdued; nor indeed do learning, civility, mo- rality, seem any where to have made a greater growth, in so short a time, than in that empire, nor to have flourished more than in the reign of their great Almanzor, under whose victorious ensigns Spain was conquered by the Moors; but the Goths, and all the rest of those Scythian swarms that from beyond the Danube and the Elbe, under so many several names, overran all Europe, took very hardly and very late any tincture of the learning and humanity that had flourished in the several regions of it, under the protection, and by the example and in- structions, of the Romans, that had so long possessed them : those northern nations were indeed easier induced to embrace the religion of those they had subdued, and by their devo- tion gave great authority and revenues, and thereby ease, to the Clergy, both secular and regular, through all their conquests. Great numbers of the better sort among the oppressed natives, finding this vein among them, and no { c 217 ) 225 15 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT other way to be safe and quiet under such rough masters, betook themselves to the pro- fession and assemblies of religious orders and fraternities, and among those only were pre- served all the poor remainders of learning, in these several countries. But these good men either contented them- selves with their devotion, or with the ease of quiet lives, or else employed their thoughts and studies to raise and maintain the esteem and authority of that sacred order, to which they owed the safety and repose, the wealth and honour they enjoyed. And in this they so well succeeded, that the conquerors were governed by those they had subdued, the great- est Princes by the meanest Priests, and the victorious Franks and Lombard Kings fell at the feet of the Roman Prelates. Whilst the clergy were busied in these thoughts or studies, the better sort among the laity were wholly turned to arms and to honour, the meaner sort to labour or to spoil; Princes taken up with wars among themselves, or in those of the holy land, or between the Popes and Emperors upon disputes of the ecclesiastical and secular powers ; learning so little in use among them, that few could write or read, besides those of the long robes. During this course of time, which lasted many ages in the Western parts of Europe, the Greek tongue was wholly lost, and the purity of the Roman to that degree, that what remained of it was only a certain jargon rather than Latin, that passed among the Monks and Friars who were at all 226 AND MODERN LEARNING learned; and among the students of the several universities, which served to carry them to Rome in pursuit of preferments or causes de- pending there, and little else. When the Turks took Constantinople, about two hundred years ago, and soon after possessed themselves of all Greece, the poor natives, fear- ing the tyranny of those cruel masters, made their escapes in great numbers to the neigh- bouring parts of Christendom, some by the Austrian territories into Germany, others by the Venetian into Italy and France ; several that were learned among these Grecians (and brought many ancient books with them in that language) began to teach it in these countries; first to gain subsistence, and afterwards favour in some Princes' or great men's courts, who began to take a pleasure or pride in coun- tenancing learned men. Thus began the res- toration of learning in these parts, with that of the Greek tongue; and soon after, Reuchlin and Erasmus began that of the purer and ancient Latin. After them, Buchanan carried it, I think, to the greatest height of any of the moderns before or since. The Monkish Latin upon this return was laughed out of doors, and remains only in the inns of Germany or Poland; and with the restitution of these two noble languages, and the books remaining of them (which many Princes and Prelates were curious to recover and collect) learning of all sorts began to thrive in these Western regions: and since that time, and in the first succeeding century, made perhaps a greater growth than in 227 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT any other that we know of in such a compass of time, considering into what depths of igno- rance it was sunk before. But why from thence should be concluded, that it has outgrown all that was ancient, I see no reason. If a strong and vigorous man at thirty years old should fall into a consump- tion, and so draw on till fifty in the extremest weakness and infirmity; after that, should be- gin to recover health till sixty, so as to be again as strong as men usually are at that age: it might perhaps truly be said in that case, that he had grown more in strength that last ten years than any others of his life; but not that he was grown to more strength and vigour than he had at thirty years old. But what are the sciences wherein we pre- tend to excel ? I know of no new philosophers, that have made entries upon that noble stage for fifteen hundred years past, unless Des Cartes and Hobbs should pretend to it ; of whom I shall make no critique here, but only say that, by what appears of learned men's opinions in this age, they have by no means eclipsed the lustre of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or others of the ancients. For grammar or rhetoric, no man ever disputed it with them; nor for poetry, that ever I heard of, besides the new French author I have mentioned; and against whose opinion there could, I think, never have been given stronger evidence, than by his own poems, printed together with that treatise. There is nothing new in Astronomy, to vie 228 AND MODERN LEARNING with the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system; nor in Physic, unless Harvey's circu- lation of the blood. But whether either of these be modern discoveries, or derived from old fountains, is disputed: nay, it is so too whether they are true or no; for though reason may seem to favour them more than the con- trary opinions, yet sense can very hardly allow them; and, to satisfy mankind, both these must concur. But if they are true, yet these two great discoveries have made no change in the conclusions of Astronomy, nor in the prac- tice of Physic, and so have been of little use to the world, though perhaps of much honour to the authors. What are become of the charms of Music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and ser- pents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed ; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable art ? 'Tis agreed by the learned, that the science of music, so admired of the ancients, is wholly lost in the world, and that what we have now is made up out of certain notes that fell into the fancy or observation of a poor friar, in chant- ing his matins. So as those two divine excel- lencies of music and poetry are grown, in a manner, to be little more, but the one fiddling, and the other rhyming ; and are indeed very worthy the ignorance of the friar, and tlie 229 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT barbarousness of the Goths that introduced them among us. What have we remaining of Magic, by which the Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians were ^ so renowned, and by which effects so wonder- ful, and to common men so astonishing, were produced, as made them have recourse to spirits, or supernatural powers, for some ac- count of their strange operations ? By Magic, I mean some excelling knowledge of nature, and the various powers and qualities in its several productions, and the application of cer- tain agents to certain patients, which, by force of some peculiar qualities, produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar observa- tion or comprehension. These are by ignorant people called Magic or conjuring, and such-like terms, and an account of them, much about as wise, is given by the common learned, from sympathies, antipathies, idiosyncrasies, talis- mans, and some scraps or terms left us by the Egyptians or Grecians of the ancient Magic; but the science seems, with several others, to be wholly lost. What traces have we left of that admirable science or skill in architecture, by which such stupendous fabrics have been raised of old, and so many of the wonders of the world been produced, and which are so little approached by our modern achievements of this sort, that they hardly fall within our imagination ? not to mention the walls and palace of Babylon, the pyramids of Egypt, the tomb of Mausolus, or colosse of Rhodes, the temples and palaces 230 AND MODERN LEARNING of Greece and Rome: what can be more ad- mirable in this kind than the Roman theatres, their aqueducts, and their bridges, among which that of Trajan over the Danube seems to have been the last flight of the ancient architecture ? The stupendous effects of this science sufficiently evince at what heights the mathematics were among the ancients; but if this be not enough, whoever would be satisfied need go no further than the siege of Syracuse, and that mighty defence made against the Ro- man power, more by the wonderful science and arts of Archimedes, and almost magical force of his engines, than by all the strength of the city, or number and bravery of the inhabitants. The greatest invention that I know of, in latter ages, has been that of the loadstone, and consequently the greatest improvement has been made in the art of navigation; yet there must be allowed to have been something stupendous in the numbers and in the build of their ships and galleys of old; and the skill of pilots, from the observation of the stars in the more serene climates, may be judged, by the navigations so celebrated in story, of the Tyrians and Cartha- ginians, not to mention other nations. How- ever, it is to this we owe the discovery and commerce of so many vast countries, which were very little, if at all, known to the an- cients, and the experimental proof of this ter- restrial globe, which was before only speculation, but has since been surrounded by the fortune and boldness of several navigators. From this great, tho' fortuitous invention, and the conse- 231 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT quence thereof, it must be allowed, that geo- graphy is mightily advanced in these latter ages. The vast continents of China, the East and West Indies, the long extent and coasts of Africa, with the numberless islands belonging to them, have been hereby introduced into our acquaintance, and our maps; and great increases of wealth and luxury, but none of knowledge, brought among us, further than the extent and situation of country, the customs and manners of so many original nations which we call bar- barous, and I am sure have treated them as if we hardly esteemed them to be a part of man- kind. I do not doubt, but many great and more noble uses would have been made of such conquests or discoveries, if they had fallen to the share of the Greeks and Romans in those ages when knowledge and fame were in as great request, as endless gains and wealth are among us now ; and how much greater dis- coveries might have been made, by such spirits as theirs, is hard to guess. I am sure ours, though great, yet look very imperfect, as to what the face of this terrestrial globe would probably appear, if they had been pursued as tar as we might justly have expected from the progresses of navigation since the use of the compass, which seems to have been long at a stand: how little has been performed of what has been so often and so confidently promised, of a north-west passage to the East of Tartary, and North of China r How little do we know of the lands on that side of the Magellan Straits that lie towards the South pole, which may be vast 232 AND MODERN LEARNING islands or continents, for aught any can yet aver, though that passage was so long since found out ? Whether Japan be island or con- tinent, with some parts of Tartary on the North side, is not certainly agreed. The lands of Yedso upon the North-East continent have been no more than coasted, and whether they may not join to the Northern continent of America, is by some doubted. But the defect or negligence seems yet to have been greater towards the South, where we know little beyond thirty-five degrees, and that only by the necessity of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in our East India voyages: yet a continent has been long since found out within fifteen degrees to South, and about the length of Java, which is marked by the name of New Holland in the maps, and to what extent none knows, either to the South, the East, or the West ; yet the learned have been of opinion, that there must be a balance of earth on that side of the line in some proportion to what there is on the other; and that it cannot be all sea from thirty degrees to the South pole, since we have found land to above sixty-five degrees towards the North. But our navigators that way have been confined to the roads of trade; and our discoveries bounded by what we can manage to a certain degree of gain. And I have heard it said among the Dutch, that their East India Company have long since forbidden, and under the greatest penalties, any further attempts of discovering that continent, having already more trade in those parts than they 233 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT can turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe might make great establishments of trade in some of those un- known regions, which might ruin or impair what they have already in the Indies. Thus we are lame still in geography itself, which we might have expected to run up to so much greater perfection by the use of the com- pass; and it seems to have been little advanced these last hundred years. So far have we been from improving upon those advantages we have received from the knowledge of the ancients, that, since the late restoration of learning and arts among us, our first flights seem to have been the highest, and a sudden damp to have fallen upon our wings, which has hindered us from rising above certain heights. The arts of painting and statuary began to revive with learning in Europe, and made a great but short flight ; so as, for these last hundred years, we have not had one master in either of them, who deserved a rank with those that flourished in that short period after they began among us. It were too great a mortification to think that the same fate has happened to us, even in our modern learning, as if the growth of that, as well as of natural bodies, had some short periods, beyond which it could not reach, and after which it must begin to decay. It falls in one country or one age, and rises again in others, but never beyond a certain pitch. One man, or one country, at a certain time runs a great length in some certain kinds of knowledge, but loses as much ground in others, 234 AND MODERN LEARNING • that were perhaps as useful and as valuable. There is a certain degree of capacity in the greatest vessel, and, when it is full, if you pour in still, it must run out some way or other, and the more it runs out on one side, the less runs out at the other. So the greatest memory, after a certain degree, as it learns or retains more of some things or words, loses and forgets as much of others. The largest and deepest reach of thought, the more it pur- sues some certain subjects, the more it neglects others. Besides, few men or none excel in all facul- ties of mind. A great memory may fail of invention ; both may want judgment to digest or apply what they remember or invent. Great courage may want caution; great prudence may want vigour ; yet all are necessary to make a great commander. But how can a man hope to excel in all qualities, when some are pro- duced by the heat, others by the coldness of brain and temper ? The abilities of man must fall short on one side or other, like too scanty a blanket when you are a-bed, if you pull it upon your shoulders you leave your feet bare; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are uncovered. But what would we have, unless it be other natures and beings than God Almighty has given us? The height of our statures may be six or seven feet, and we would have it sixteen ; the length of our age may reach to a hundred years, and we would have it a thou- sand. We are born to grovel upon the earth, 235 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT and we would fain soar up to the skies. We cannot comprehend the growth of a kernel or seed, the frame of ant or bee ; we are amazed at the wisdom of the one, and industry of the other ; and yet we will know the substance, the figure, the courses, the influences of all those glorious celestial bodies, and the end for which they were made: w^e pretend to give a clear account how thunder and lightning (that great artillery of God Almighty) is produced; and we cannot comprehend how the voice of a man is framed, that poor little noise we make every time we speak. The motion of the sun is plain and evident to some astronomers, and of the earth to others; yet we none of us know which of them moves, and meet with many seeming impossibilities in both, and beyond the fathom of human reason or comprehension. Nay, we do not so much as know what motion is, nor how a stone moves from our hand, when we throw it cross the street. Of all these that most ancient and divine writer gives the best account in that short satire, "Vain man would fain be wise, when he is born like a wild ass's colt ". But, God be thanked, his pride is greater than his ignorance, and what he wants in knowledge, he supplies by sufficiency. When he has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes there is no more to be seen ; when he is at the end of his line, he is at the bottom of the ocean ; when he has shot his best, he is sure none ever did nor ever can shoot better or beyond it. His own reason is the certain 236 AND MODERN LEARNING measure of truth, his own knowledge, of what is possible in nature; though his mind and his thoughts change every seven years, as well as his strength and his features; nay, though his opinions change every week or every day, yet he is sure, or at least confident, that his present thoughts and conclusions are just and true, and cannot be deceived : and, among all the miseries to which mankind is born and sub- jected in the whole course of his life, he has this one felicity to comfort and support him, that, in all ages, in all things, every man is always in the right. A boy of fifteen Is wiser than his father at forty, the meanest subject than his Prince or Governors; and the modern scholars, because they have, for a hundred years past, learned their lesson pretty well, are much more knowing than the ancients their masters. But let it be so, and proved by good reasons, is it so by experience too ? Have the studies, the writings, the productions of Gresham col- lege, or the late academies of Paris, outshined or eclipsed the Lyceum of Plato, the academy of Aristotle, the Stoa of Zeno, the garden of Epicurus? Has Harvey outdone Hippocrates; or Wilkins, Archimedes? Are D'Avila's and Strada's histories beyond those of Herodotus and Livy? Are Sleyden's commentaries be- yond those of Caesar? the flights of Boileau above those of Virgil ? If all this must be allowed, I will then yield Gondibert to have excelled Homer, as is pretended; and the mod- ern French poetry, all that of the ancients. And yet, I think, it may be as reasonably said, 237 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT that the plays in Moorfields are beyond the Olympic games; a Welsh or Irish harp, excels those of Orpheus and Arion ; the pyramid in London, those of Memphis ; and the French conquests in Flanders are greater than those of Alexander and Cassar, as their operas and panegyrics would make us believe. But the consideration of poetry ought to be a subject by itself For the books we have in prose, do any of the modern we converse with appear of such a spirit and force, as if they would live longer than the ancient have done ? If our wit and eloquence, our knowledge or inventions, would deserve it; yet our languages would not : there is no hope of their lasting long, nor of any thing in them ; they change every hundred years so as to be hardly known for the same, or any thing of the former styles to be endured by the latter; so as they can no more last like the ancients than excellent carv- ings in wood, like those in marble or brass. The three modern tongues most esteemed, are Italian, Spanish, and French; all imperfect dialects of the noble Roman; first mingled and corrupted with the harsh words and termina- tions of those many different and barbarous nations, by whose invasions and excursions the Roman empire was long infested : they were afterwards made up into these several languages, by long and popular use, out of those ruins and corruptions of Latin, and the prevailing lan- guages of those nations to which these several Provinces came in time to be most and longest subjected (as the Goths and Moors in Spain, 238 AND MODERN LEARNING the Goths and Lombards in Italy, the Franks in Gaul) besides a mingle of those tongues which were original to Gaul and to Spain, before the Roman conquests and establishments there. Of these, there may be some remainders in Biscay or the Asturias; but I doubt, whether there be any of the old Gallic in France, the subjection there having been more universal, both to the Romans and Franlcs. But I do not find the mountainous parts on the North of Spain were ever wholly subdued, or formerly governed, either by the Romans, Goths, or Saracens, no more than Wales by Romans, Saxons, or Normans, after their conquests in our island, which has preserved the ancient Biscayan and British more entire, than any native tongue of other Provinces, where the Roman and Gothic or Northern conquests reached, and were for any time established. 'Tis easy to imagine, how imperfect copies these modern languages, thus composed, must needs be of so excellent an original, being patched up out of the conceptions, as well as scKinds, of such barbarous or enslaved people; whereas the Latin was framed or cultivated by the thoughts and uses of the noblest nation that appears upon any record of story, and enriched only by the spoils of Greece, which alone could pretend to contest it with them. 'Tis obvious enough, what rapport there is, and must ever be, between the thoughts and words, the conceptions and languages of every country, and how great a difference this must make in the comparison and excellence of books; 239 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT and how easy and just a preference it must decree to those of the Greek and Latin, before any of the modern languages. It may, perhaps, be further affirmed in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are ^sop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles^ both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since, for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original; so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian with some others have attributed them to Lucian: but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and gov- ernment, such freedom of thought, such bold- ness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such know- ledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the 240 AND MODERN LEARNING scholar or the sophist ; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander. The next to these, in time, are Herodotus, Thucydides, Hippocrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle; of whom I shall say no more, than, what I think is allowed by all, that they are in their several kinds inimitable. So are Cassar, Sallust, and Cicero, in theirs, who are the ancientest of the Latin (I speak still of prose) unless it be some little of old Cato up'bn rustic affairs. The height and purity of the Roman style, as it began towards the time of Lucretius, which was about that of the Jugurthine war; so it ended about that of Tiberius; and the last strain of it seems to have been Velleius Paterculus. The purity of the Greek lasted a great deal longer, and must be allowed till Trajan's time, when Plutarch wrote, whose Greek is much more estimable than the Latin of Tacitus his contemporary. After this last, I know none that deserves the name of Latin, in comparison of what went before them, espe- cially in the Augustan age; if any, 'tis the little treatise of Minutius Felix. All Latin books that we have till the end of Trajan, and all Greek till the end of Marcus Antoninus, have a true and very estimable value. All written since that time seem to me to have little more than what comes from the relation of events we are glad to know, or the controversy of opinions in religion or laws, wherein the busy world has been so much employed. The great wits among the moderns have (C217) 241 16 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT been, in my opinion, and in their several kinds, of the Italian, Boccace, Machiavel, and Padre Paolo; among the Spaniards, Cervantes (who writ Don Quixote) and Guevara; among the French, Rabelais and Montaigne; among the English, Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden : I mention nothing of what is writ- ten upon the subject of divinity, wherein the Spanish and English pens have been most conversaift, and most excelled. The modern French are Voiture, Rochefaucault's Memoirs, Pussy's Amours de Gaul, with several other little relations or memoirs that have run this age, which are very pleasant and entertaining, and seem to have refined the French language to a degree that cannot be well exceeded. I doubt it may have happened there, as it does in all works, that, the more they are filed and polished, the less they have of weight and of strength; and, as that language has much more fineness and smoothness at this time, so I take it to have had much more force, spirit, and compass, in Montaigne's age. Since those accidents which contributed to the restoration of learning, almost extinguished in the western parts of Europe, have been ob- served, it will be just to mention some that may have hindered the advancement of it, in proportion to what might have been expected from the mighty growth and progress made in the first age after its recovery. One great reason may have been, that, very soon after the entry of learning upon the scene of Christen- dom, another was m.ade, by many of the 242 AND MODERN LEARNING new-learned men, into the inquiries and con- tests about matters of religion; the manners, and maxims, and institutions introduced by the clergy for seven or eight centuries past; the authority of Scripture and tradition ; of Popes and of Councils; of the ancient fathers, and of the latter schoolmen and Casuists; of ecclesiastical and civil power. The humour of ravelling into all these mystical or entangled matters, mingling with the interests and pas- sions of Princes and of parties, and thereby heightened or inflamed, produced infinite dis- putes, raised violent heats throughout all parts of Christendom, and soon ended in many defections or reformations from the Roman Church, and in several new institutions, both ecclesiastical and civil, in divers countries ; which have been since rooted and established in almost all the North-West parts. The end- less disputes and litigious quarrels upon all these subjects, favoured and encouraged by the interests of the several Princes engaged in them, either took up wholly, or generally employed, the thoughts, the studies, the ap- plications, the endeavours of all or most of the finest wits, the deepest scholars, and the most learned writers that the age produced. Many excellent spirits, and the most penetrating geniuses, that might have made admirable pro- gresses and advances in many other sciences, were sunk and overwhelmed in the abyss of disputes about matters of religion, without ever turning their looks or thoughts any other way. To these disputes of the pen succeeded those 243 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT of the sword ; and the ambition of great Princes and Ministers, mingled with the zeal, or covered with the pretences of religion, has for a hundred years past infested Christendom with almost a perpetual course, or succession, either of civil or of foreign wars: the noise and disorders whereof have been ever the most capital enemies of the Muses, who are seated, by the ancient fables, upon the top of Par- nassus, that is, in a place of safety and of quiet from the reach of all noises and disturbances of the regions below. Another circumstance that may have hin- dered the advancement of learning, has been a want or decay of favour in great Kings and Princes, to encourage or applaud it. Upon the first return or recovery of this fair stranger among us, all were fond of seeing her, apt to applaud her: she was lodged in palaces instead of cells; and the greatest Kings and Princes of the age took either a pleasure in courting her, or a vanity in admiring her, and in favouring all her train. The Courts of Italy and Ger- many, of England, of France, of Popes, and of Emperors, thought themselves honoured and adorned by the number and qualities of learned men, and by all the improvements of sciences and arts wherein they excelled. They were invited from all parts, for the use and entertainment of Kings, for the education and instruction of young Princes, for advice and assistance to the greatest Ministers; and, in short, the favour of learning was the humour and mode of the age. Francis I, Charles V, 2^4 AND MODERN LEARNING and Henry VIII (those three great rivals), agreed in this, though in nothing else. Many Nobles pursued this vein v^^ith great applica- tion and success; among whom, Picus de Mir- andula, a Sovereign Prince in Italy, might have proved a prodigy of learning, if his studies and life had lasted as long as those of the ancients : for I think all of them that writ much of v^hat v^^e have now remaining, lived old, whereas he died about three and thirty, and left the world in admiration of so much knowledge in so much youth. Since those reigns I have not observed, in our mod- ern story, any great Princes much celebrated for their favour of learning, further than to serve their turns, to justify their pretensions and quarrels, or flatter their successes. The honour of Princes has, of late, struck sail to their interests; whereas of old their interests, greatness, and conquests were all dedicated to their glory, and fame. How much the studies and labours of learned men must have been damped, for want of this influence and kind aspect of Princes, may be best conjectured from what happened on the contrary, about the Augustan age, when the learning of Rome was at its height, and per- haps owed it in some degree to the bounty and patronage of that Emperor, and Maecenas his favourite, as well as to the felicity of the empire, and tranquillity of the age. The humour of avarice, and greediness of wealth, have been ever, and in all countries where silver and gold have been in price and 245 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT of current use: but if It be true In particular men, that, as riches increase, the desires of them do so too, may it not be true of the general vein and humour of ages ? May they not have turned more to this pursuit of in- satiable gainSj since the discoveries and plan- tations of the West Indies, and those vast treasures that have flowed into these Western parts of Europe almost every year, and with such mighty tides for so long a course of time? Where few are rich, few care for it; where many are so, many desire it ; and most in time begin to think it necessary. Where this opinion grows generally in a country, the temples of honour are soon pulled down, and all men's sacrifices are made to those of for- tune, the soldier as well as the merchant, the scholar as well as the ploughman, the Divine and the Statesman as well as the lawyer and physician. Now I think that nothing is more evident in the world than that honour is a much stronger principle, both of action and Invention, than gain can ever be: That all the great and noble productions of wit and of courage have been inspired and exalted by that alone : That the charming flights and labours of poets, the deep speculations and studies of philosophers, the conquests of Emperors and achievements of heroes, have all flowed from this one source of honour and fame. The last farewell that Horace takes of his lyric poems, Epicurus of his Inventions In philosophy, Augustus of his empire and government, are all of the same 246 AND MODERN LEARNING strain; and as their lives were entertained, so their age was relieved, and their deaths softened, by the prospect of lying down upon the bed of fame. Avarice is, on the other side, of all passions the most sordid, the most clogged and covered with dirt and with dross, so that it cannot raise its wings beyond the smell of the earth: 'tis the pay of common soldiers, as honour is of commanders; and yet, among those themselves, none ever went so far upon the hopes of prey or of spoils, as those that have been spirited by honour or religion. 'Tis no wonder then, that learning has been so little advanced since it grew to be mercenary, and the progress of it has been fettered by the cares of the world, and disturbed by the desires of being rich, or the fears of being poor; from all which, the ancient Philosophers, the Brachmans of India, the Chal- daean Magi, and Egyptian Priests were disin- tangled and free. But the last maim given to learning has been by the scorn of pedantry, which the shallow, the superficial, and the sufficient among scholars first drew upon themselves, and very justly, by pretending to more than they had, or to more esteem than what they could deserve, by broach- ing it in all places, at all times, upon all occasions, and by living so much among themselves, or in their closets and cells, as to make them unfit for all other business, and ridiculous in all other conversations. As an infection that rises in a town, first falls upon children or weak consti- tutions, or those that are subject to other 247 AN ESSAY UPON ANCIENT diseases, but, spreading further by degrees, seizes upon the most healthy, vigorous, and strong ; and when the contagion grows very general, all the neighbours avoid coming into the town, or are afraid of those that are well among them, as much as of those that are sick; just so it fared in the commonwealth of learning : some poor weak constitutions were first infected with pedantry ; the contagion spread, in time, upon some that were stronger; foreigners, that heard there was a plague in the country, grew afraid to come there, and avoided the commerce of the sound, as well as of the diseased. This dislike or apprehension turned, like all fear, to hatred, and hatred to scorn. The rest of the neighbours began first to rail at pedants, then to ridicule them; the learned began to fear the same fate, and that the pigeons should be taken for daws, because they were all in a flock ; and, because the poorest and meanest of their company were proud, the best and the richest began to be ashamed. An ingenious Spaniard at Brussels would needs have it, that the history of Don Quixote had ruined the Spanish monarchy; for, before that time, love and valour were all romance among them ; every young cavalier, that en- tered the scene, dedicated the services of his life to his honour first, and then to his Mistress. They lived and died in this romantic vein ; and the old Duke of Alva, in his last Portugal expedition, had a young Mistress, to whom the glory of that achievement was devoted, by 248 AND MODERN LEARNING wKich he hoped to value himself, instead of those qualities he had lost with his youth. After Don Quixote appeared, and with that inimitable wit and humour turned all this romantic honour and love into ridicule ; the Spaniards, he said, began to grow ashamed of both, and to laugh at fighting and loving, or at least otherwise than to pursue their fortune, or satisfy their lust ; and the consequences of this, both upon their bodies and their minds, this Spaniard would needs have pass for a great cause of the ruin of Spain, or of its greatness and power. Whatever effect the ridicule of Knight- errantry might have had upon that monarchy, I believe that of pedantry has had a very ill one upon the commonwealth of learning ; and I wish the vein of ridiculing all that is serious and good, all honour and virtue, as well as learning and piety, may have no worse effects on any other state : 'tis the itch of our age and climate, and has overrun both the Court and the stage ; enters a house of Lords and Commons, as boldly as a coffee-house, debates of Council as well as private conversation; and I have known in my life more than one or two Ministers of State, that would rather have said a witty thing, than done a wise one; and made the company laugh, rather than the kingdom rejoice. But this is enough to excuse the im- perfections of learning in our age, and to cen- sure the sufficiency of some of the learned; and this small piece of justice I have done the ancients will not, I hope, be taken, any 249 AN ESSAY UPON LEARNING more than it is meant, for any injury to the moderns. I shall conclude with a saying of Alphonsus (surnamed the Wise) King of Arragon: " That among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued, in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to con- verse with, and old books to read ", I 250 Memoirs [Written for the satisfaction of my friends here- after, upon the grounds of my retirement, and re- solution never to meddle again with any public affairs from this present February, 1 680-1.] Upon my return from Nimeguen to the Hague, after the Emperor's ambassadors hav- ing signed the peace, the king signified his pleasure to me, by a letter from my lord treasurer, that he would have me come over to enter into the secretary's office in Mr. Coventry's room, according to the resolution he had taken the year before, when he sent for me over into England from Nimeguen to that purpose. I sent my humble acknowledgments to the king, in my answer to the lord treasurer's letter; but withal my humble excuses for not putting his majesty upon the use of an old beaten horse, in such hard service as I took that station then to be; and proposed my col- league, Sir Lionel Jenkins, for that purpose. And having long promised the great duke, that I would make him a visit at Florence, if I lived, I turned my thoughts wholly to get 251 MEMOIRS leave for that journey, as soon as the congress at Nimeguen should wholly break up, as it was like to do some time that spring, 1678-9. This gave some respite at Court to the reso- lutions of my return, and an overture for Sir Lionel Jenkin-s's coming over in my room; so that I prepared for a short return to Nimeguen; when most unexpectedly came a yacht to Rot- terdam, with letters from my lord treasurer, and from the earl of Sunderland, who had newly succeeded Sir Joseph Williamson. And in both those' dispatches, there was a positive command from the king for my immediate re- pair into England, in order to my entering upon the secretary's office. The king writ the same thing at the same time to the prince, and gave him leave to acquaint the States with it, which he did, as a thing he thought they would be pleased with (as he was himself, and indeed all my friends) ; though while I was forced to stay at the Hague, about a fortnight before my em- barking, they all found me in very different thoughts, both upon my discourses and my letters: insomuch that the prince told me, he looked upon it as a piece of predestination, that I should be secretary of state at last, in spite of all I had done so long to avoid it. Upon my arrival in England, I met with the most surprising scene that ever was: the Long Parliament dissolved, and the resolution taken for the duke's going into Holland, and that he was to part next day: so that I had only one occasion of speaking to him; when he told me MEMOIRS with great freedom the paces that had been made towards that resolution, much against his own opinion, and bid me remember what he foretold me, that however this was thought likely to stop the violent humour then raised by the plot, yet I should see it would go on next to my lord treasurer's ruin, though he did not expect it. When the duke was gone, and the king had told me, with the greatest kindness that could be, of his resolution to have me secretary; and that I had no reason to take it well, because he knew not one man besides in England that was fit for it upon Mr. Coventry's removal: and on the other side, my friends had told me, they had the money ready for me to lay down, which was five thousand pounds; I began to consider the ground, and the journey, and my own strength to go through with it. I found no- thing so necessary for his majesty's affairs abroad, and those of Christendom, as great union at home ; which might enable him to make such a figure as the preservation of his allies required; and indeed the general interest of Christendom; which seemed to depend wholly upon his majesty's measures. On the other side, I never saw greater disturbance in men's minds at home, than had been raised by the plot, and the pursuit of it in the parliament; and observed, that though it was generally be- lieved by both houses, by city and country, by clergy and laity, yet when I talked with some of my friends in private, who ought best to know the bottom of it, they only concluded 253 MEMOIRS that it was yet mysterious ; that they could not say the king believed it; but, however, that the parliament and nation were so generally and strongly possessed with it, that it must of necessity be pursued as if it were true, whether it was so or no: and that, without the king's uniting with his people upon this point, he would never grow either into ease at home, or consideration abroad. Upon three days' thought of this whole affair, I concluded it a scene unfit for such actors as I knew myself to be ; and resolved to avoid the secretary's place, or any other public employment at home, my character abroad still continuing. This I acquainted my nearest friends with ; ordered the money to be returned, which had been provided by them ; and fell into the consultations how I might get off this point, without any thing that might appear undutiful or ungrateful to his majesty. The elections were canvassing for a new parliament, and I ordered my pretensions so as they came to fail. In the meantime I deferred my entering into the secretary's place, till I might likewise enter into the house of com- mons, which both his majesty and lord treasurer were satisfied with, though not lord Sunderland. But when that parliament was chosen, and I not of the house, I represented to his majesty how unfit it was to have a parliament meet without his having one secretary of the house of commons, and how useful Mr. Coventry would be to him there ; and so obtained a 254 MEMOIRS respite till I could be chosen of the house ; which was endeavoured upon each doubtful election, especially that at Windsor, but how- ever could not be carried. The Short Parliament met, with the dis- putes between the Court and the commons about the speaker, begun indeed upon a pique between the treasurer and Mr. Seymour (after- wards Sir Edward Seymour), or rather between my lady Danby and him. However it was, this soon ran the house into such violences against my lord treasurer, as ended in his ruin; first by the king's sudden resolution to remove him, then by the commons continuing their pursuits and impeachments, and last, by his lordship's first concealing, and then producing himself in the face of this storm, which ended in the Tower. After these heats of the commons, which in- creased into new measures and motions among them, as they were swayed by popular humours upon the plot, and many new plots laid by the ambitions of private persons, carried on under covert of the other ; I never saw any man more sensible of the miserable condition of his affairs, than I found his majesty upon many discourses with him, which my foreign employments and correspondences made way for. But nothing he said to me moved me more, than when, upon the sad prospect of them all, he told me he had none left, with whom he could so much as speak of them in confidence, since my lord treasurer's being gone. And this gave, I suppose, his majesty 255 MEMOIRS the occasion of entering into more confidence with me, than I could deserve or expect. On the other side I found, that the counsel of my lord treasurer's removal had been carried on by the duke of Monmouth, in conjunction with the duchess of Portsmouth, and lord Essex, who was then in the greatest confi- dence with the duke of Monmouth, and by him and lord Sunderland newly brought into the treasury. I found my lord Sunderland at least in compliance with this knot, and that all 'were resolved to bring my lord Shaftes- bury again into Court, who was in confidence with the duke of Monmouth and lord Essex, and had a near relation to lord Sunderland. I observed the great affection his majesty had to the duke of Monmouth, and saw plainly the use his grace intended to make of it, in case he could introduce a ministry at his own de- votion, or in his interests : and this being a matter that might concern the very succession of the crown, and not only an injury to the duke, but through him to his children, and the Prince of Orange ; I resolved first, if it were possible, to break the growth of that ministry, though I saw no men whom I could design to fix in it, with any satisfaction or advantage to the king or his service. On the other side, I observed the parlia- ment to grow every day more violent, upon the support they received from the humours raised by the plot, and the incentives given them by the ambitions of persons playing that game. I saw a probability of matters growing 256 MEMOIRS to such a pass, that his majesty might be forced to part with them ; and yet I saw not authority enough left in the crown, either to do that without the venture of great mischiefs, or to live without another parliament till the present humours might cool. And both these considerations, meeting together, cast me upon the thoughts of the king's establishing a new council, of such a constitution as might either gain credit enough with the present parlia- ment, by taking in so many persons of those who had most among them, and thereby give ease and quiet both to the king and his people; or if, on the other side, the humours should grow outrageous and beyond opposing, the king might yet, at the head of such a council, with more authority and less hazard of ill consequences, either prorogue or dissolve them, as any necessities of his own, or extravagancies of theirs should require. For these ends it seemed necessary to take into the council some lords and commoners who were of most appearing credit and sway in both houses, without being thought either principled or interested against the govern- ment ; and mix them with others of his majesty's more general choice, for making up one half of the council, whilst the other half, being fifteen, were ever to be the present chief officers of his crown and household, who, being all of his majesty's known trust, as well as choice, would be sure to keep the council steady to the true interest of his majesty and the crown. ( c 217 ) 257 17 MEMOIRS But one chief regard, necessary to this con- stitution, was that of the personal riches of this new council; which, in revenues of land or offices, was found to amount to about three hundred thousand pounds a year; whereas those of a house of commons are seldom found to have exceeded four hundred thousand pounds. And authority is observed much to follow land: and at the worst, such a council might, out of their own stock, and upon a pinch, furnish the king so far as to relieve some great necessity of the crown. This whole matter was consulted and de- duced upon paper, only between the king and me, and lasted in the debate and digestion about a month: but when the forms and persons were agreed, and his majesty seemed much satisfied with the thing, and resolved to go on with it, I humbly desired him not to take a resolution of that importance, without first communicating it to three or four persons of those his majesty could most rely upon in point of judgment, secrecy, and affection to his service. The king resolved I should go and communicate the whole scheme, with all the particulars of it, to my lord Chancellor, lord Sunderland, and lord Essex ; but one after another; and with charge from him of the last secrecy ; and should bring him word of their opinions upon it: and, if they concurred with his, should appoint them to attend his majesty next morning; the Chancellor only entering into his lodgings by the common way, but the other two and I by the private one below. 258 MEMOIRS When I acquainted them with it, they all received it with equal amazement and pleasure. My lord Chancellor said it looked like a thing from heaven, fallen into his majesty's breast: lord Essex, that it would leave the parliament and nation in the same dispositions to the king which he found at his coming in: and lord Sunderland approved it as much as any. Next day we attended his majesty, and had a very long audience; upon which no difficulty arose but two, that were wholly personal. I had proposed lord Halifax as one of the lords, whom the king had indeed kicked at, in our first consultations, more than any of the rest: but upon several representations of his family, his abilities, his estate and credit, as well as talent to ridicule and unravel whatever he was spited at, I thought his majesty had been con- tented with it: but, at this meeting, he raised new difiiculties upon it, and appeared a great while invincible in them, though we all joined in the defence of it: and at last, I told the king we would fall upon our knees to gain a point that we all thought necessary for his service : and then his majesty consented. The other was concerning lord Shaftesbury, who had never been mentioned in our first debates; and the king either had not thought of him before upon this affair, or had not mentioned him to me, as knowing, upon all occasions of private discourse with his majesty, what opinion I had of that lord. But after my lord Halifax had passed, the king said there was another, who, if he were left out, 259 MEMOIRS might do as much mischief as any, and named lord Shaftesbury; to which the other three agreed: and concluded further, that he would never be content with a counsellor's place among thirty ; and therefore it was proposed to add one to the number, by making a pre- sident, which should be he. I disputed this point, from the first mention to the last con- clusion of it, foretelling he would destroy all the good that we expected from the whole constitution: and said all that I could with so much earnestness, that when, by his majesty's agreeing with the other three, I saw it would be concluded, I walked away to the other end of the room, not knowing well whether I should have gone out or not, if the door had been open; but turning again, I desired his majesty to remember, that I had no part in lord Shaftesbury's coming into his council or his affairs; that his majesty and the other three lords had resolved it without me; and that I was still absolutely against it. The king laughed, and turned my anger into a jest; and so went on with the rest of the constitution intended, till the whole was resolved and exe- cuted publicly in Easter 1679. The night before the thing was to be done, his majesty thought fit to tell it the Duke of Monmouth ; having kept it secret till then, further than to the four already named. Bat as soon as the duke of Monmouth knew, though only in general, that the council should be changed, he told it so many, that it was common talk next morning; which we inter- 260 MEMOIRS preted either lightness or vanity, to have it thought, that he had part in an aftair likely to pass so well. And indeed, when the thing was done in the forms that are known, it was received with general applause in the country, with bonfires in the city, and the same in Ireland: in Holland, the actions of the East- India Company rose upon it immediately, and very much; and the States designed one of their best and most considerable men. Mon- sieur Van Lewen, to come over Minister into England upon this occasion. France alone was unsatisfied with it, and Monsieur Barillon said it was making des Etats (States) and not des conseils (councils) ; but the reasons were easy to see, and so not much considered. The house of commons received it with most coldness, where the contrary was most expected: and the pretending knowers among them, who were not of the council, pretended now to know nothing of it, to expect new re- velations, to doubt it might be a new Court- juggle, and to refer it to time to tell what it was in truth; in the meanwhile to suspend their judgments. This was the first effect of my lord Shaftes- bury's good meaning to the king and his affairs, into which he was entered, but not with the personal or transcendent credit he aimed at with his majesty, and which he thought those who had been authors of this new constitution had the greatest share in. This made him fall in more absolutely with the duke of Monmouth, and use all their endeavours to raise such discon- 261 MEMOIRS tents and heats in the houses, upon the appre- hensions of popery, and propositions to prevent it, that the king found himself soon upon as uneasy terms with this session of parliament, as he had been with the last; the humours being engaged by my lord Shaftesbury's pre- tending among his patriots that the duke of Monmouth had so much credit with the king, that his majesty desired but a good occasion of consenting to all the parliament should insist on, which would be given him by their heat and obstinacy, in so popular a point as that against popery : and if that were once gained, the duke of Monmouth and he should be able to steer all the rest, to the satisfaction of those who called themselves the good or the honest party. Such a mischief could never have grown, if lord Shaftesbury had not worked himself up into credit, both in parliament and city, by the appearance of having it with the king, and in the council where he was president; and by the infusions given of his having or growing yet into greater by a more secret spring, which was the interest of the duke of Monmouth, and the kindness of his majesty increasing, as appeared since the duke's absence. I cannot believe but all this would have been avoided, if, upon the new constitution, lord Shaftes- bury had been left out, as a person marked by his majesty, and never to enter more into his affairs or confidence ; which the whole course of his life, from his very first entrance upon public stages, if examined never so strictly, 262 MEMOIRS would have given good ground for. But this fate, as I could not prevent by all my endea- vours, so I had foretold it his majesty the year before: when, upon my coming over, the king had fallen into all the violent expressions that could be against him; I told his majesty that, with his good leave, I would hold any wager, I should yet see that lord again in his business; and when the king asked me what made me think so, I said, because I knew he was restless while he was out, and would try every door to get in; had wit and industry to find out the ways; and, when money would work, had as much as any body to bestow, and skill enough to know where to place it. This turn in the king's affairs, upon this new constitution, gave me so great a vexation, and so ill a prospect, that, having delayed the time prescribed for every man's receivmg the sacrament according to law, after his entrance into public employment, till it was very near expired; I once resolved, by that omission, to make myself absolutely incapable of bearing any for the future; and was not persuaded to lay aside that thought till after long debates upon it with my wife and sister here at Sheen: but that matter passed in form, and I con- tinued barely of the council, with a resolution of not entering upon the secretary's office, though often and earnestly urged to it by lord Sunderland, with others of my friends. Upon the new constitution of the council, my lord Sunderland had, by Mr. Sidney, de- sired that we two might join together in per- 263 MEMOIRS feet confidence, and distinct from any others in the course of the king's aifairs, whether I would enter into the other secretary's office, or no; which I said I was very willing to embrace, though I knew no need of it, considering how much the general affairs were devolved upon the council, or the particular committees, and how much I thought It was fit that they should continue so, without running into any private channels. This confidence had not run on above a fortnight, when my lord Sunderland asked me if I were willing my lord Essex should be received into it; which I consented to, though with intimation to lord Sunderland of the opinion I had (for some time of late) of lord Essex, whom I thought I knew better than he did. So we met, for a while, once a day by turns, at each of our houses, and con- sulted upon the chief affairs that were then on the anvil, and how they might be best pre- pared for the parliament or the council: but matters growing very untoward, by the prac- tices of lord Shaftesbury, with the duke of Monmouth's cover at least, and upon the ill humour of the house of commons about the business of religion; and my lord Halifax ap- pearing unsatisfied, by observing where the king's confidence was: I proposed to my lords Sunderland and Essex, to receive him into all our consultations; which I thought would both enter him into credit with the king, and give us more ease In the course of his affairs. Lord Essex received this overture with his usual dry- ness; lord Sunderland opposed it a good deal, 264 MEMOIRS and told me, I should not find Lord Halifax the person I took him for, but one that could draw with no body, and still climbing up to the top himself. However, I continued reso- lute in pressing it, and so at length the thing was concluded, and we fell all four together into the usual meetings and consultations. The chief matters that lay before the king at that time were, first, the satisfaction of his people by falling into some measures with the parliament that might enable him to look abroad in such a figure as became the crown of England, and was necessary for preventing the common fears of a new invasion of France upon Flanders or Holland, which looked very desperate without some strong and resolute protection from England. The second was a resolution to be taken in answer to the instances made by Monsieur Van Lewen from the States, about a new guaranty to be given upon the late general peace by his majesty, particularly to Spain in the business of Flanders. The third was the giving some ease to Scotland, where the humours began to swell about this time ; and which we conceived could be no way done so easily, as by re- moval of the duke of Lauderdale ; a man too much hated both here and there, to be fit for the temper his majesty seemed resolved to use in his affairs. For this last, we could not upon any terms obtain it of the king, by all the arguments used (both jointly and severally) by us all four; 265 MEMOIRS the king's defence being a very true one, that we none of us knew Scotland so well as his majesty himself. For the second, we easily agreed upon the measures that seemed necessary for the satis- faction of the States, and the safety of Flanders; being all four of the committee, where all the foreign affairs were consulted; and taking the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury into the first digestion of this treaty with Holland, at a meeting for that purpose, at my lord Halifax's house ; which was the only time I ever had any thing to do, or so much as talk, with my lord Shaftesbury, further than the council chamber. For the first thing, which was the most im- portant, we found it more perplexed than we could imagine. Both houses of parliament seemed to have no eyes, but for the dangers of popery upon the duke's succession to the crown ; which humour was blown up by all the arts and intrigues of the duke of Mon- mouth and lord Shaftesbury. The king seemed willing to secure them all that could be against those fears, without changing the laws in point of succession. The house of commons were busy in finding out expedients to secure this point, but could agree on none ; being still diverted from fixing on any by lord Shaftes- bury's practices. The council fell upon the same scent with great earnestness and endea- vour ; and, after much hammering, agreed upon many heads to be offered the parliament, which are commonly enough known. 266 MEMOIRS These expedients were agreed to by all the council, except my lord Shaftesbury and me; who were against them, upon very different grounds. Mine were two : first, because I believed that nothing that came first from the king upon these points would be accepted by the commons; who, if they would be satisfied at all, I thought should first agree upon what, and leave it to the king to take or refuse. The second was, that as I did not see any certain ease these expedients would give the king, though agreed to by the houses ; so it was evident to all men, that they would leave the crown after him In shackles, which, put on upon the duke's occasion, and in his time, would not be easily knocked ofFby any successor. My lord Shaftes- bury's ground was plain, and so expressed by him upon all occasions; which was, that there could be no security against the duke, if once in possession of the crown: and this being well infused by his and the duke of Monmouth's friends into the house of commons, occasioned their sullen rejecting all the expedients offered them by the king, and laid the foundation for the proceedings of the late house of commons, and the strange disorders wherein they have left affairs at home, and thereby the desperate condition of affairs abroad. During all these transactions the three lords and I continued our constant meetings and consultations ; and with so much union, and so disinterested endeavours for the general good of his majesty's service and the king- dom's, that I could not but say to them, at 267 MEMOIRS the end of one of our meetings, that we four were either the four honestest men in Eng- land, or the greatest knaves; for we made one another at least believe, that we were the honestest men in the world. But this conjunction held not long: for, after the houses rejecting the expedients offered by the king and council, my lord Shaftesbury, finding himself neither in confidence with the king nor credit in the council, turned all his practices and hopes to the house of commons, and inflamed them to that degree, as made the three lords of my commerce begin to grow un- easy, and to cast about which way they might lay this storm. At length my lord Sunderland told me that lord Essex and lord Halifax were of opinion, that it was necessary to take in the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury into the first digestion of affairs, considering the in- fluence they had upon the house; and for this end to agree with them in the banishment of the duke, either for a certain term, or during the king's life: and desired to know whether I would fall into it with them, and join in bring- ing it about with the king. I told my lord Sunderland positively I would not: for, first, I would never have any thing to do with the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury; and next, I would never enter into matters of difference between the king and his brother; having upon several occasions told them both, that I would ever do all I could towards the union of the whole royal family, but never would have any thing to do in the divisions of 268 MEMOIRS It; and no man should ever reproach me with breaking my word, and much less the king or the duke. This was peremptory, and so it ended; and thereupon the three lords fell into meetings and consultations with the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury, which I knew nothing of, and began to come less to council, and to meet no more with my usual company, but upon occasion, and without the first confi- dence ; but we still continued our kindness where-ever we met, without my inquiring, or they communicating, what passed in their new consultations. But this lasted not long neither: for, within a fortnight or little more, they began to find the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury unreasonable, and like to prevail upon the house of commons to endeavour bringing the king into necessities of yielding all points to them, and thereby leaving the duke of Mon- mouth and lord Shaftesbury absolutely at the head of all affairs; so that the three lords began to make their complaints of it, and to fall upon the thoughts of proroguing the parliament, as the only remedy left in the present distemper. I agreed with them in this overture, and the rather, because I foresaw it would absolutely break the three lords from all commerce with the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury: and so we agreed to propose it to his majesty, and that it should be debated and resolved at council; where, the chief officers depending upon the king being one half of the council, and 269 MEMOIRS joining with others of us that were of his more indifferent choice, we concluded the resolution could not fail to be taken by the majority of the council, if the reasons and necessity of it should not prevail with some of those who seemed most in my lord Shaftesbury's confi- dence, to leave him upon this occasion. And in this resolution we parted, and appointed to meet again two days after for the fixing it with his majesty, upon my engaging to go for so long down into the country, where I staid my two days, and came up the third morning early. Upon my arrival, I found my lord Sunder- land had called or sent several times to my house the night before, and left word that he must needs speak with me so soon as I came to town. I sent immediately to Whitehall, but found his lordship was gone already with the king to the house of lords; whereupon I went to lord Essex, who was nearest me, and asked whether any thing new had happened. He told me that the king had found out there were remonstrances ready prepared in the house of commons, to inflame the city and nation upon the points of plot and popery; and that their three lordships having upon it consulted with his majesty, he had resolved the parliament should be prorogued that morning, upon the king's coming to the house, and that it could not be allowed time or vent by a debate of council ; which, for my part, I thought an ill omission, and that it ought to have the autho- rity of the king, with advice of his council, 270 MEMOIRS according to the usual forms : but it passed otherwise, and with very great resentment of both houses; and such rage of my lord Shaftes- bury, that he said upon it aloud In the house, that he would have the heads of those who were the advisers of this prorogation. During this session of parliament, I had several notices given me of a practice set on foot in the house of commons for impeaching me as one that had been an instrument of making the general peace; and this was urged by stories, of being a man of arbitrary prin- ciples, and one that had written several things, though without name, against the constitution of parliaments, and in favour of popery : and this went so far, that Mr. Montague went a great way from man to man in the house, to know whether, if such an accusation were brought in, they would be against me. Several went into it upon hatred to the late treasurer, whose friend they took me to be, and upon envy at my being designed for secretary of state; but yet in no such numbers that Mr. Montague could hope to make any thing of it: and when some of my friends acquainted me with it, I only desired them to obtain leave of the house, that I might hear my accusation at the bar of the house, and assured them that I should be glad to have that occasion of telling there both Mr. Montague's story and my own. This fell ; but upon the knowledge of these practices, my lord Sunderland and Mr. Sidney, who thought that a man who had such a part in the king's affairs ought to stand as well as 271 MEMOIRS he could with the house of commons, pressed me to suffer several small things I had formerly written, and of which copies had run, to be then printed, as they were, under the title of Miscellanea. They thought by that publica- tion men would see I was not a man of the dangerous principles pretended; and I might assure the world of being author of no books that had not my name. The thing seemed to pass well enough; only lord Halifax, commend- ing them to me in general, told me as a friend, that I should take heed of carrying too far that principle of paternal dominion (which was de- duced in the essay Of Government) for fear of destroying the rights of the people. So tender was every body of those points at that time. The three lords and I went on unanimous in our consultations; considering how to make way for a calmer and better-tempered session of parliament, after the short prorogation which had been made. To which purpose, we again endeavoured the removal of the duke of Lauder- dale, or at least the admission of other nobles of Scotland into those affairs. We concluded the measures with Holland in all points, to the satisfaction of their ambassador ; and thought of such acts of council, as might express his majesty's care for suppressing popery even in the intervals of parliament. We only disagreed in one point, which was the leaving some priests to the law upon the accusation of being priests only, as the house of commons had desired; which I thought wholly unjust, without giving them public warning by proclamation to be 272 MEMOIRS gone, or expect the penalties of law within such a time, since the connivances had lasted now through three Kings' reigns: upon this point, lord Halifax and I had so sharp a debate at lord Sunderland's lodgings, that he told me, if I would not concur in points which were so necessary for the people's satisfaction, he would tell every body I was a papist : and upon his affirming, that the plot must be handled as if it were true, whether it were so or no, in those points that were so generally believed by city or country as well as both houses ; I replied, with some heat. That the plot was a matter long on foot before I came over into England; that to understand it, one must have been here to observe all the motions of it; which not having done, I would have nothing to do with it: in other things I was content to join with them, where they thought I could be of use to the king's service; and where they thought there was none, I was very willing to be ex- cused, and very glad to leave his majesty's affairs in so good hands as theirs. Notwithstanding some such differences be- tween me and the three lords, yet we con- tinued our consultations and confidence; and two of them, lords Sunderland and Halifax, pressed me extremely about this time to come into the secretary's place : lord Halifax par- ticularly offering to bring it to a point with his uncle Coventry upon the money that was to be paid; pretending to be very desirous to see me posted there; and professing to grow weary of the business, since he could find no ( c 217 ) 273 18 MEMOIRS temper like to grow in the next session of par- liament between the king and them. For since the last prorogation, lord Shaftesbury had been busy in preparing fuel for next session, not without perpetual appearance of ill humour at council, which broke into spiteful repartees often betwixt him and lord Halifax. And on t'other side, the duke of Monmouth had broken all measures with lord Essex, with whom he had been long in the last confidence : so as this grew to a spited quarrel between these four; and though commonly smothered when they met, yet not without smoke appearing when they were observed. In this condition of affairs the rebellion in Scotland broke out; upon which it was plea- sant to observe the counterpaces that were made. The king was for suppressing it im- mediately, by forces from hence to be dis- patched and joined with those in Scotland, and the duke of Monmouth to go and command them all. Lord Shaftesbury shewed plainly at council, and in other places, that he was un- willing this rising should be wholly or too soon suppressed, or otherwise than by his friends in Scotland, who might be thereby introduced into the direction of affairs there, with the re- moval of the duke of Lauderdale: yet, on the other side, he was willing to see the duke of Monmouth grow great by such a command of the king's forces, both English and Scots; and agreed with that duke, to put the king upon another project at the same time, and to the same end, which was (upon the duke of Mon- 274 MEMOIRS mouth's carrying so many of the forces here into Scotland) to raise a troop of two hundred gentlemen for the guard and safety of the king's person, whereof the duke of Monmouth to be captain; and which was to be composed chiefly of officers who were out of employment, and whose merits were best known to the duke of Monmouth. On t'other side, lord Essex, though he agreed with the king's opinion to have the Scots' insurrection suppressed ; yet he had a mind it should be done by the Scots, to pre- vent the duke of Monmouth's growing greater than he yet was by that command; especially if it should be followed with success. And tho' he would not oppose his majesty in his reso- lution of sending the duke of Monmouth upon this expedition ; yet he did very openly the other design, which the king himself seemed much bent upon, as well as the duke of Mon- mouth, to raise the troop of two hundred gentlemen. The other two lords and I fell in with him in this last; though lord Essex was most instrumental in breaking it, by rais- ing invincible difficulties in the treasury, where he was at the head: so as, upon composition, money was found for the duke of Monmouth's marching into Scotland, and with great ease to him in his personal pretensions; and the new troop was let fall upon want of money. The duke of Monmouth went into Scotland; succeeded; took the body of rebels; suppressed absolutely the rebellion ; ordered the punish- ment of some ; gave pardon to the rest ; re- 275 MEMOIRS turned in triumph ; was received with great applauses and court from all ; with great ap- pearance of kindness and credit by the king, who was now removed to Windsor, and the council to Hampton Court, where the duke of Monmouth was received. The term of the prorogation of parliament drew near expiring, and all agreed that a session could not conveniently begin before October: and a day was appointed for considering that matter at council. The duke of Monmouth was greater than ever : lord Shaftesbury reckoned upon being so too, upon the next meeting of parliament, and at the cost of those whom he took to be the authors of the last prorogation; lords Essex and Halifax looked upon them- selves as most in his danger, and aimed at by lord Shaftesbury's threats, and out of all mea- sures with the duke of Monmouth. This in- duced a consultation among us, whether, con- sidering the distempers of the present parlia- ment, the best course were not to dissolve it, and have another called in October: wherein the three lords and I agreed; and the king was perfectly of the same mind, considering with what distempers that parliament both began and continued. So it was resolved that the king should propose, at next council, whether it were best to prorogue that parliament, or dissolve it, and at the same time call another; and that, in the meantime, the lord chancellor, and the other chief officers depending upon the king, should be acquainted with his mind, either by his majesty or the three lords. For, since 276 MEMOIRS the king's going to Windsor, I continued at Sheen, and only went to Hampton Court on council days; though the three lords came often to me, and pressed me as often to come as they did to Court, and lord Halifax pro- tested he would burn my house, and that, if I would not enter upon the secretary's office, his uncle Coventry would look out for some other chapman; for as soon as he had found one, he was resolved to part with it. I told him I was very willing, and would speak to the king, that his market should not be spoiled upon any occasion. Whether his lordship be- lieved me or no, I did so, and desired his majesty to think of some other for that place; for my ill health, increasing with my age, made me find myself unable to go through with the toils of that office, if executed in the forms and with the attendance it required. The king told me, he could not consent to it ; that if he should, he knew not a man in England fit for it besides me, so that I had no reason to take it kindly of him. I desired his majesty to give me leave and I would propose three persons, of which I would undertake every one should be fitter than I. The king would not so much as hear me name them; but told me, it was a point he had been so long fixed in, that he could not change his resolution. In our last meeting we had calculated how many at council could, in any probability, oppose the dissolving of the present parlia- ment, and calling another ; and we had con- cluded, there could not be above six in the 277 MEMOIRS whole council that could be against it at the most ; which we thought would be a great support to the king's resolution, against all the exclamations we expected from lord Shaftes- bury and his friends ; and at least, that it would be safe against the consequences which were usually deduced from the forms of call- ing parliaments always by advice of the council, that the dissolving of them ought to be so too, at least when it was not at their own desire. The council day came ; and when I came thither, and found the king and three lords, with some others already there, I asked lords Sunderland and Halifax whether all was pre- pared, and lord chancellor and other chief officers had been spoke to? They said, no, it had been forgotten or neglected ; but the king would do it to each of them apart as they came that morning, and before the council began. I thought it hard, a point of that im- portance should be neglected so long ; but was fain to content myself with what they told me would be done. The outward room, where the king was, filled apace ; every one made his leg to his majesty, and filled the circle about him as they came in : I was talking apart, in a corner of the room, till it grew late, and lord chancellor told the king that it was so, and I saw the king turn from the chancellor, and go into the council chamber : all followed ; the council sat ; the king proposed his thoughts, whether it were best for his affairs to prorogue this parliament till October, or to dissolve it, 278 MEMOIRS and call another at that time ; and desired their lordships' opinions upon it. I observed a general surprise at the board ; which made me begin to doubt, the king had spoke of it to few or none but the chancellor before he came in : but it soon appeared he had not so much as done that neither : for, after a long pause, he was the first that rose up, and spoke long and violently against the dissolution ; and was followed by lord Shaftesbury in the amplest manner, and most tragical terms ; lord Angle- sey followed them, by urging all the fatal con- sequences that could be ; the same style was pursued by lord chamberlain, and agreed to by the marquis of Worcester ; and pursued from the top to the very bottom of the table by every man there, and at a very full council, except the three lords who spoke for the dis- solution, but neither with half the length or force of argument they intended to have done ; leaving that part, as I supposed, to me, who was, 1 confess, well enough instructed in the case to have said more upon that argument : but I was spited from the first that I heard of my lord chancellor's speech, and still more and more as every man spoke, at the con- sequences happened by such a negligence of my friends, who had been perpetually about the king, and might so easily have effected what was agreed on, and thought so necessary. I was the last but one to speak, and saw argu- ment would signify nothing, after such in- equality was declared in number ; and so con- tented myself to say in short. That I thought 279 MEMOIRS it was every man's opinion that a happy agreement between his majesty and parliament was of necessity to his affairs both at home and abroad : that all the difference, in a con- tinuance of this, or assembling of another parliament, would depend only upon the likeli- hood of agreeing better and easier with one than with t'other: that his majesty had spoken so much of his despairing about any agreement with this present parliament, and the hopes he had of doing it with another, that, for my part, I thought that ought to decide it ; be- cause I thought his majesty could better judge of that point than any body else. So his majesty ordered the chancellor to draw up a proclama- tion for dissolving that parliament, and calling another to assemble in October following: and thereupon the council broke up, with the greatest rage in the world of the lord Shaftes- bury, lord Russell, and two or three more, and the general dissatisfaction of the whole board. After the council ended, every man's head began to fill with the thoughts of the new elections, and several spoke to the king upon that subject. I had resolved to stand for the university of Cambridge ; and, the duke of Monmouth being chancellor, I desired the king to speak to him, to write to some of his friends In my favour: he excused himself, first, upon engagements ; but the king pressed him upon mine, as a thing of importance; and that he could not be otherwise engaged before he knew of the parliament's being dissolved. I said a "good deal too upon it : but do what MEMOIRS the king could, by all he was pleased to say the duke of Monmouth would not be brought further, than to say he would not meddle in it one way or t'other ; which gave me the first plain and open testimony of his dispositions towards me, having ever received before all outward civilities, though without my visits or attendances. Yet, I think, his grace kept his word with me in this point better than I ex- pected : for my election in the university pro- ceeded with the most general concurrence that could be there, and without any difficulties I could observe from that side ; those which were raised coming from the bishop of Ely ; who owned the opposing me from the chapter Of Religion in my Observations on the Netherlands, which gave him an opinion that mine was for such a toleration of religion, as is there de- scribed to be in Holland. The council, after this day, was put off till the king's return to London, according to the use of that season; and everyone began to can- vass for elections in the ensuing parliament, upon which all his majesty's affairs seemed to depend. The king, in the meantime, resolved to do all that could help to make fair weather there. I told my friends I would take care of my election, and go down about it ; but, for the rest, would pass my time at home the re- mainder of the summer, and recommended the common cares to the three lords ; whose at- tendance, I knew, would not fail at Court, two of them from their offices, and the third from his humour; which he owned always 281 MEMOIRS must have business to employ it, or would else be uneasy. The summer was declining, but the duke of Monmouth in his greatest height, when the king fell sick at Windsor, and with three such fits of a fever as gave much apprehension, and that a general amazement; people looking upon any thing, at this time, that should happen ill to the king as an end of the world. I went to Windsor, after the second fit; and, having seen his majesty, observed more strength and fewer ill symptoms than had been reported; nor could I think him in danger, without accidents, which was to be the care of his physicians, who were some of them wholly of my mind. I found and left the three lords very diligent at Court, in attending both his person and affairs, which I was very glad of; and so came home without entering further into any discourses with them, than of his majesty's sickness, which was then the general discourse and care. About three or four days, having received as- surance of the king's certain recovery, by being free of any return of his fever fits, I went up to London to solicit a great arrear of my embassies due from the treasury. The com- missioners were met that morning at my lord Essex's house, whither I went straight ; but, by the way, heard that the duke was that night passed through London, and rode post to Windsor ; which I doubted not his highness had been induced to by the reports of the king's danger, upon the news of his sickness ; and made no further reflection upon it, than 282 MEMOIRS that of the great surprise, and martel en tete (uneasiness) that would be given lords Essex and Halifax by this sudden arrival of the duke, to whose interests they had run so counter, and with such heights, for several years. But, upon their late separating all measures from the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury, I thought I had field enough left for doing them good offices to the duke, when I should see him, which I resolved the next day. When I came to lord Essex's house, and asked for the commissioners, I found they were sat some time, but that lord Essex had newly left them together, and was gone up into his chamber, whither I was immediately sent for ; his servants went out and left him booted, and ready to get up on horseback. As soon as we were alone, he asked me, whether I had not met with strange news, and what I thought of it ? I said, it did not seem very strange that the duke should come, if he thought the king in danger. Lord Essex re- plied, yet 'twas strange he should come with- out leave from the king; and that, now his majesty was well, sure he would not think of staying three days : that he was going as fast as he could to Windsor, to see what all this business was ; and asked me if I would not go, which I excused for that day, but pro- mised the next. In this little discourse, I observed all along a sneering smile, which I knew not what to make of; I thought, if it were a countenance, it was better put on than was usual with his lordship ; and that he 283 MEMOIRS should be pleased with it at heart, I could not well imagine, knowing how things had passed between the duke and him. Next day I went to Windsor ; and the first man I met was lord Halifax, coming down trom Court on foot, and with a face of trouble ; and as soon as he saw me, with hands lift up two or three times; upon which I stopt, and alight- ing, asked what was the matter : he told me, I knew all as well as he ; that the duke was come ; that every body was amazed ; but where we were, or what would be next, nobody knew. He bid me go on to Court before the king went out ; said he was going to his lodging, to sit and think over this new world: but de- sired we might meet, and my lord Sunderland, after dinner. I went to the king ; and after him to the duke, who received me with great kindness, and presently carried me into a little inner room, and asked me smiling and very fa- miliarly whether I did not wonder to see him here : I told him, not at all, if he had thought the king in danger, for in that case his high- ness had nothing else to do : and that I be- lieved, upon the first news of his majesty's illness, he would come as near as he could, either to Newport or Calais, and there expect the next news ; but that, his majesty's sickness having passed so soon, I confessed I had not thought of his coming over. We talked of the king's recovery, what stay his highness would make, which he said should be as the king pleased, for he would obey him in every thing. 284 MEMOIRS I gave the duke a short account of affairs here, as they had passed since the constitu- tion of the council ; of the mischiefs had been occasioned by the lord Shaftesbury's having been brought in so much against my u^ill ; of his measures with the duke of Monmouth ; of the three lords having absolutely broken from him; of the credit they were grown into with the king; and of my confidence, they would never fall into any measures against his high- ness: upon which chapter I said a great deal that I thought necessary to make lords Essex and Halifax's court, which I was very glad to see so well received by the duke ; for, as to lord Sunderland, I had little reason to be- lieve he needed it, having ever been in with the Court in the whole course of his life. For myself, I only said at last that, because I did not know what our present distempers might end in if the next parliament should prove of the same humour with the two last, nor what measures his highness would fall into about staying or going away again ; I would only say that, let whatever would befall the king's af- fairs or his highness's, he might always reckon upon me as a legal man, and one that would always follow the crown as became me; nor could any thing make the least scruple in this resolution, unless things should ever grow so desperate, as to bring in foreigners, which (if ever it should be) would be a new case, and that I knew not what to think of. Upon this the duke laid his hand upon mine, and bid me keep there, and said that he would ask no 285 MEMOIRS more of me or any man : and so I parted after a long and very gracious audience, and came home that night, having missed my lords Halifax and Essex in the afternoon at lord Sunderland's, where we had appointed to meet, and I came, but they failed ; and lord Sun- derland and I talked deep into nothing, re- serving ourselves, as I thought, till the others came. 1 staid at home, making the reflections I could not avoid upon the carriage of my friends ; till within a kw days I heard the news of the duke of Monmouth's disgrace ; which though it came by some degrees, yet they were so sudden one after another as to make it appear a lost game in the king's favour and resolutions. Though nothing could seem more reasonable than that which it ended in, that, while the duke was abroad, the duke of Monmouth should be so too, having made his pretensions so evident, and pursued them so much to the prejudice of the king's affairs; however, I could not but wonder, how the duke had been able in so few days, or rather hours, to get so great a victory. I went within a day or two to London, found my lord Halifax in physic, but saw plainly his distemper was not what he called it; his head looked very full, but very unquiet ; and when we were left alone, all our talk was by snatches; sick- ness, ill humour, hate of town and business, ridiculousness of human life; and whenever I turned any thing to the present affairs after our usual manner, nothing but action of hands 286 MEMOIRS or eyes, wonder, and signs of trouble, and then silence. I came home, and satisfied enough upon what terms I was with my friends, though I knew not whence it came, or whither it went. But I soon found out the whole secret ; which was, that, upon the king's first illness, the lords Essex and Halifax, being about him, thought his danger great, and their own so too; and that, if any thing happened to the king's life, the duke of Monmouth would be at the head of the nation, in opposition to the duke upon pretence of popery, and in conjunction with lord Shaftesbury, who had threatened to have their heads upon prorogation of the last parlia- ment; which threat was applied by lords Essex and Halifax to themselves, reckoning lord Sun- derland out of danger by his relation to lord Shaftesbury, and the fair terms that had always made between them. This fright had so af- fected these lords, that, not staying to see what the king's second fit would be, they proposed to the king the sending immediately for the duke ; which being resolved, and the dispatch made with all the secrecy and speed imaginable, the duke came over; but finding the king re- covered, it was agreed to pass for a journey wholly of his own, and that it should be re- ceived by his majesty and the three lords with all signs of surprise. When this was done, they found the duke of Monmouth so enraged at this counsel, as well as lord Shaftesbury, that they saw no way but to ruin them both, and throw them quite out of the king's affairs, and 287 MEMOIRS joining themselves wholly with the dul?;e's in- terest; which they did for that time, till they had brought about all his highness desired for his security against the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury ; the first going over into Holland, and the other being turned out of the council. For my own part, though I was glad of any mortification that happened to the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury, whose de- signs had run the kingdom into such incurable divisions and distractions, at a time that our union was so necessary to the affairs of Chris- tendom abroad ; yet I was spited to the heart at the carriage of my friends towards me in this affair; and not so much for their taking such a resolution without my knowledge and concert (which they never had done since our first commerce) as for keeping me ignorant after the duke's coming over; and so far, as to let me make such a figure as I did, in doing all the good offices, and making all the court I could to the duke for lords Essex and Hali- fax, as I told them I would do ; while they were both in the depth and secret of his in- terests and counsels, and I, who had reason to think myself well with his highness, was left wholly out of all confidence both with him and with them. But I had reason to resent it yet further, when I found that some of them, perceiving the duke much unsatisfied with the constitution of the new council, had, to make their own court, laid the whole load of it upon me; whereas, if my lord chancellor, MEMOIRS lord Sunderland, and lord Essex had not fallen into it with the greatest applauses and en- deavours in the world to finish the draught of it, the thing had certainly died ; and for my own part, after I could not hinder my lord Shaftesbury's being brought in, I would have been very well content it should. I could not but tell my lord Sunderland of these resentments; and that I found myself so unfit for Courts, that I was resolved to pass the rest of my life in my own domestique, without troubling myself further about any public af- fairs, than not to appear sullen in not coming sometimes to general councils: and that lords Essex and Halifax's carriage to me had been such, after having been the two men of Eng- land I had it in my power and my fortunes most to oblige, that I would never have any thing more to do with them. This I said only to one person more, and how it came to be known by their two lordships, I cannot tell ; but there all commerce between us ended, further than what was common when we met at council, or in third places ; though lord Halifax came to an eclaircissement with me the spring after, which ended very well, and I did him the service I could upon occasion in the late house, as well as in council, upon their heats against him. I passed the rest of the summer at home, and left the three lords in the chief ministry and sole confidence, as outwardly appeared, both with the king and duke; and lord Essex told my brother. Sir John Temple, who was ( c 217 ) 289 19 MEMOIRS then here, that he had more credit with the king than all the rest of the ministers, or any man in England : but the refined courtiers, who observe countenances and motions, had no opinion of it; and, soon after, lords Essex and Halifax, upon the private examination of an intrigue I could never make any thing of, nor thought worth my enquiry, which was commonly called the meal-tub plot, took such a distaste at finding themselves mentioned in it, and yet left out of the secret examinations about it, that the duke was no sooner gone, but their discontents grew open against the Court; my lord Essex left the treasury; lord Halifax, in discourse to me, commended him for it, and told me his resolution to go down into the country, and though he could not plant melons as I did, being in the North, yet he would plant carrots and cucumbers, rather than trouble himself any more about public affairs; and accordingly he went down to Ruf- ford. To their nearer friends I heard they complained, that they found they had no sound part in the king's confidence or the duke's, that they were but other men's dupes, and did other men's work; and that, finding no measures would be taken for satisfying and uniting the kingdom, they would have no more part in public affairs. Upon lord Essex's leaving the treasury, Mr. Hyde came of course to be first commissioner; and he and Mr. Godolphin were brought into the council ; where I met them the next time 1 came, and welcomed them, as two persons 290 MEMOIRS that had always been my friends, and agreed with me in all my opinions and measures about affairs abroad, wherein only we had been conversant in our commerce, either at Nimeguen, the Hague, or at home. These two joined in confidence with lord Sunder- land ; and the other two lords being in dis- content or absent, and I keeping at home both upon my resolution and inclination, these three were esteemed to be alone in the secret and management of the king's af- fairs, and looked upon as the ministry. October came on, wherein the parliament was to meet. The duke was in Flanders : the duke of Monmouth in Holland : lord Shaftesbury endeavoured to inflame the reckon- ing of the late conduct and counsels against the sitting of the parliament, and to set afoot petitions in case they did not sit : the minis- ters were not able to stand the opening of the parliament, and so a short prorogation was expected some days before that appointed for their assembly. I had not been at Court or council in a month or six weeks ; when, being recovered of a fit of the gout, I came to town, and went to lord Sunderland, talked to him of my several arrears in the treasury, desired his help, which he promised with great kindness, and went with me to the king, where we proposed and agreed the way of my satis- faction. The king seemed very kind to me, but neither one nor t'other of them said a word to me of any public business. From the king's chamber we went to the council, 291 MEMOIRS where I expected nothing but such common things as I knew had passed, for a good while before ; and so all passed, till I thought the council was ending, when the king after a little pause told us that upon many considera- tions, which he could not at present acquaint us with, he found it necessary to make a longer prorogation than he had intended of the parliament : that he had considered all the consequences, so far as to be absolutely re- solved, and not to hear any thing that should be said against it: that he would have it pro- rogued till that time twelvemonth, and charged my lord chancellor to proceed accordingly. All at council were stunned at this sur- prising resolution, and the way of proposing it, except those few that were in the secret, and they thought fit to be silent, and leave the thing wholly upon his majesty : several others rose up, and would have entered into the reasonings and consequences of it, but the king would not hear them, and so all debate ended. After which I rose and told the king. That as to the resolution he had taken, I would say nothing, because he was resolved to hear no reasoning upon it; therefore I would only presume to offer him my humble advice as to the course of his future proceedings, which was, that his majesty in his affairs would please to make use of some council or other, and allow freedom to their debates and ad- vices; after hearing which, his majesty might yet resolve as he pleased: that if he did not think the persons or number of this present 292 MEMOIRS council suited with his affairs, it was in his power to dissolve them, and constitute another of twenty, of ten, or of five, or any number he pleased, and to alter them again when he would; but to make counsellors that should not counsel, I doubted whether it were in his majesty's power or no, because it implied a contradiction; and, so far as I had observed either of former ages or the present, I ques- tioned whether it was a thing had been prac- tised in England by his majesty's predecessors, or were so now by any of the present princes of Christendom : and therefore I humbly ad- vised him to constitute some such council, as he would think fit to make use of in the digestion of his great and public affairs. His majesty heard me very graciously, and seemed not at all displeased with any thing I had said; nor any other person of the lords of the council, but most very much to approve it: yet, after the council was up, my lord Sunderland came to me, told me he was never so surprised as at what I had said, and ex- pected it sooner from any man in England than me; that whatever resolutions had been taken about my business in the treasury, he was sure nothing should be done. I replied, that if he liked not what I said, he should have prevented it, by telling me, before I came to council, what was intended to be done; which if I had known, I would not have been there, no more than I had been so long before: and that, if my debt would not be paid, I must live the best I could without it. 293 MEMOIRS Not long before, the Prince of Orange writ me word, how much he found the duke unsatisfied with me, upon the belief that it was I had given the Prince those impressions and sentiments which he had upon the com- mon affairs of Christendom; whereas he could say on the contrary that it was he had given me mine, and should never change his own till he were convinced d^avotr tort (of being in the wrong) : however, that he thought fit out of friendship to me, to give me this advice. I was now in a posture to be admirably pleased with having no part in public affairs: the duke unsatisfied with me of late ; the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury from the very first; lords Essex and Halifax out of all commerce with me upon what had passed; great civility from the other ministers, but no communication; and the king himself, though very gracious, yet very reserved. Upon all this, and the melancholy prospect of our dis- tractions at home, and thereupon the disasters threatening abroad: but chiefly upon my own native humour, born for a private life, and particular conversation or general leisure ; I resolved to give over all part in public affairs, and came no more either to Court or council in a month's time, which I spent chiefly in the country. In this time the lord Russell, lord Cavendish, Sir H. Capel, and Mr. Powle, distasted at the late prorogation, as well as at the manner of it, and pretending to despair of being able to 294 MEMOIRS serve the king any longer, in a conduct of affairs so disagreeable to the general humour of the people, went to the king together, and desired his majesty to excuse their attendance any more upon him at council, which the king very easily consented to. Lord Salisbury, lord Essex, and lord Halifax seemed to have taken the same resolution, though not in so much form. Upon which I thought it might be a great prejudice to his majesty's affairs, to be left by so many at once: and that, if I wholly gave over at the same time, it would look like entering into a faction with persons who were only displeased with the present scene upon hopes of entering soon upon another, which was no part of my thoughts or designs. Therefore I resolved to go again to council, to shew I had not herded with those that had left it; and that my leaving it too might not occasion some men's greater distastes at the government. In the intermission I had made, my wife, continuing her commerce with my lady Sunder- land, had met my lord there; who, taking no notice of what had passed between us, asked her how I had proceeded in my business of the treasury, and whether I needed his help, which he offered with great friendliness if I had occasion. When I came up to town, and went the first time to council, after it was done I went to lord Sunderland, told him what regards towards his majesty had made me come up, and gave him thanks for his offers to my wife: I found him returned to his 295 MEMOIRS first temper towards me; entered Into common affairs, but always with professions of my re- solutions to retire, and my thoughts of a journey into Italy, which I had long promised the great duke. I lived on with my lord Sunderland in all kindness, though not con- fidence, which was now wholly between him and Mr. Hyde and Mr. Godolphin. I made use of his offers, and by his help came to an issue in the most difficult point of my business in the treasury. The second time I was at council, after my return from Sheen, my lord Sunderland told me he was to say something to me from the king, and desired we might meet after council was up. I went to his lodging, where he told me that Mr. Secretary Coventry being absolutely resolved to part with his place, and the king having found I had long declined it, had now thoughts of consenting to Sir Lionel Jenkins's coming into it upon a bargain with the secretary; but that the king would do nothing in it without first letting me know his thoughts ; and asked whether I had any thing to say upon it. I made no stop in the world, but told his lordship that the king could do nothing for me that I would take kinder than this; that I had several times pressed his majesty to a new choice, and once offered to name some to him that I knew were fit for it ; that I had resolved against it so long, that his majesty had no reason to re- member any of his engagements to me, how voluntary soever; but, that he was pleased to 296 MEMOIRS do it, was the most obliging in the world: and I was resolved immediately to go and make him my acknowledgments. I did so; they were extremely well taken; the king used me with great kindness; and Sir Lionel Jenkins came into the ofRce. I passed the winter in town, though with much indisposition ; going sometimes to the council, and sometimes to the foreign com- mittee, but not frequently to either, and meddling very little with any thing that passed there, unless it was what concerned the affairs of Ireland, which happened to be then hot upon the anvil ; the duke of Ormond and council of that kingdom having transmitted several acts over to the council here, both of grace and supplies, in order to a parliament to be held in Ireland. This brought lord Essex again into play, after so much discontent and so little attendance for several months at council: but his eye and heart had ever been bent upon his return to the government of Ireland ; which made him steer all by that compass, and pursue court or popular humour, as he thought either likeliest to further that end. Whenever the Irish acts came into council, he was sure to be there; first raising twenty difficulties in the particular acts, and arraigning not only the prudence, but common sense, of the lord-lieutenant and council there: then arguing against the assembling a parlia- ment in that kingdom: and at last introducing Sir James Sheen to make proposals of in- creasing the king's revenue there near eighty 297 MEMOIRS thousand pounds a year upon a new farm to himself and the company he offered to be joined with him; a farm indeed, as it was drawn up, not of the revenue, but of the crown of Ireland. This scheme was ever supported by lord Essex ; and ever opposed by me with more sharpness than was usual to me upon any de- bates, because I had found out the cheat of the whole thing, which lord Essex had set on foot as a great masterpiece of that cunning, which his friends used to say was his talent, and was one for which of all other talents I had ever the greatest aversion. The short of this story was, lord Essex had a mind to be lieutenant of Ireland, and to hinder any parliament being called till he came to the government. He saw himself out at Court ; and the hopes of getting in by his interest in parliament, now delayed by the prorogation longer than he could stay : he projects this farm with Sir James Sheen, and by him offers it to Mr. Hyde, with the advantages mentioned to the king's revenue ; but agrees with Sir James that if the bait were swallowed, he should, upon the conclusion of all, declare that he and his company were ready to perform all the conditions agreed on, but could not do it unless my lord Essex might be sent over lieutenant of Ireland ; without which the condition of that kingdom could never be settled enough for such advantages to the king's service and revenue. This I knew under secrecy from a confidant 29S MEMOIRS of Sir James Sheen, who had told himself this whole project, and the paces intended. Mr. Hyde, who was at the head of all matters concerning the king's revenue, had received this new proposal, and embraced it very warmly; whether prevailed upon by the specious show of so great Increases in the revenue, or by some new measures growing between him and lord Essex In other affairs, I never could determine: but such a patronage at council gave strength to the debates, being little opposed but by Sir Lionel Jenkins and me, who laid the matter so bare, that it drew out Into length that whole spring ; and the king joined wholly with me in the opinion of the thing, and so far, that when it was come to council or committee, his majesty sent particularly to me to be there. In the midst of these agitations, the duke came over out of Flanders, and resolution was taken for his going Into Scotland. I was ex- tremely concerned for the duke of Ormond, who had fallen into danger of the consequences threatened by these Intrigues and pursuits, after the most sensible blow that could be given him, by the death of his son; and was both of an age and merits to expect no more reverses of fortune, after so many as he had run through In the course of his loyalty. I saw Mr. Hyde violently bent upon Sir James Sheen's Imaginary project, and, I doubted, with some pique to the duke of Ormond, and partiality to lord Essex. The king seemed to grow weary of so much pursuit; and lord 299 MEMOIRS Sunderland was indifferent in the thing : so that I resolved to try if I could not engage the duke to support the duke of Ormond; and the second time I was with his highness, after his coming to Court, I fell into this whole business and the consequences of it, and laid open the secret of the thing. The duke seemed very favourable to lord Essex, and more indifferent to the duke of Ormond, than I expected ; which made me fall very freely into the character of them both, which the duke seemed at last to allow with the distinc- tion they deserved, and professed to desire the duke of Ormond should be continued; tho', if he were removed at any time, he still seemed to think lord Essex the fittest to succeed him. But I found, some days after, by Sir Lionel Jenkins, that his highness had been very glad to find me so fixed in that business to the duke of Ormond, and that he would give him what support he could. Upon the motions of this affair, I grew into more attendance upon his majesty, and more commerce both with lord Sunderland and Mr. Hyde ; with whom I always lived very well, though we differed so much in opinion upon this Irish business. But continuing still my resolutions of winding myself out of all public business; and to that end talking often to them of my design to make a journey to Florence, both upon occasion of my health and promise; they both proposed to me, if I had a mind to go into a hot country, to go into Spain, and do it with a character from the king, who was 300 MEMOIRS likely to have affairs there ; rather than make a journey like young gentlemen, only to see the country. I told them how unwilling I was to charge myself again with the ceremonies and fatigue of an embassy ; or to run again the hazard I had done so often already, of being undone by those employments: that, if I could resolve on it, I did not see what affairs the king could have in Spain, whilst he had such as he seemed to have at present in England ; nor could I see what use any leagues or mea- sures abroad could be to him, unless some union at home would enable him to support them. This conversation, however, was often renewed between us; and at last I found out, that to prepare for a good session of parliament next winter, the ministers were resolved upon all measures that might conduce towards it during the summer ; and, as one of the chief, were resolved to send ministers to Spain, Denmark, and other of the confederates, and enter with them into the strictest measures for the com- mon defence against the power of France. I found the ministers were mighty earnest to engage me in this embassy, as believing my charging myself with it would give a general opinion, both at home and abroad, of our sin- cerity in the thing. The king spoke to me, and seemed very desirous of my undertaking it. I defended myself a good while, having indeed no opinion the thing had a good root, or that the appearance of it would have the effect hoped for, upon the next meeting of parliament : but at last I brought it to this MEMOIRS point, that I would not charge myself with going to make the intended alliance in Spain; but, if the king should think fit to conclude it here with the Spanish ambassador, upon terms of mutual satisfaction, I would be content to go and cultivate it in Spain. This was done by the ministers ; the king declared me his am- bassador extraordinary at Madrid; I passed my privy seal, received my equipage, and spent the latter end of the summer in the preparations for my journey, which were in a manner finished about the middle of September; when the king told me that since the parliament drew so near, and so much depended upon it of all that concerned him either abroad or at home, he was resolved to have me stay at least the opening of it, by which we should judge of the further progress. From what seeds the discontents and violent proceedings of this last session grew, I have told already; but by what motions and degrees they came to such a height is another story, and may have had some roots which I did not discover; but what I observed was this. After the duke's return into Flanders, he had the king's leave to come over again in some months. The duke of Monmouth came back out of Hol- land without leave, and so came not to Court; and thereby seemed to make himself the head of those that were discontented, either with the duke's return, or the intermission of par- liament. In acting this part he was guided by lord Shaftesbury, who resolved to blow up the fire as high as he could this summer, so as 302 MEMOIRS to make the necessity the greater of the parlia- ment sitting at the time appointed. And, be- cause boldness looks like strength, to encourage his party with an opinion of both he engaged several lords, and among them lord Russell, to go with him to Westminster Hall publicly, and there, at the king's bench, to present the duke as a recusant. Though the matter had no consequences in the forms of the Court, yet it had a general one upon the minds ot the people, and a strong one upon the passions of all those persons that were so publicly en- gaged in this bold pace against the duke, which was breaking all measures with him, and enter- ing into the desperate resolution of either ruin- ing his highness or themselves: and I found it had a great effect upon the small circle of my acquaintance or observation. Lord Essex, who had pursued his return to the government of Ireland by engines at Court for six months past, began to let all that busi- ness of Sir James Sheen cool, and to reckon upon laying a surer foundation for that design, from the credit he intended to gain in the ap- proaching parliament. Upon this he began to fall into new commerce with lord Shaftesbury, who told him in these shameless words, " My lord, if you will come in to us, never trouble yourself, we'll make you lieutenant of Ireland". The way to this return was to oppose the duke's stay here upon the several passages he made, but chiefly upon that before the session of parliament. Lord Halifax, though he fell not in with lord Shaftesbury, yet was glad to 303 MEMOIRS make fair weather against the parliament met, by his oppositions to the duke. Lord Sunder- land was struck with the boldness of the lords' presentment in Westminster Hall, and the con- sequence of such men being so desperately en- gaged in an attempt wherein they were like to be seconded by the humour of the nation, upon the alarms of popery; which made him conclude the king would not be able to support the duke any longer, but would be forced to separate his interests from him at last : and he believed the king himself was of the same mind. Mr. Godolphin fell into the same thoughts with lord Sunderland, both of the thing itself, and of the king's mind in it: so as upon the de- bate in council concerning the duke's stay or going back into Scotland before the parliament met, these four joined absolutely in the reasons and advices for his going away; and though the rest of the council were generally of the contrary opinion, yet the king fell in with these four, and concluded the thing, against the duke's will and his friends, as I have been told; for during all these transactions I was in the country, with my thoughts and preparations wholly turned upon my Spanish embassy ; and I was the willinger to be there, upon the resolution I had long been fixed in, never to enter into any differences or personal matters between the king and his brother. The duke went away, and the parliament began, with the general knowledge of so many great persons having appeared so publicly against his highness in Westminster Hall, and 304 MEMOIRS so considerable ones in the Court itself and at the council table : those of the first gang fell immediately into the cabals of lords and com- mons who framed the bill of exclusion; wherein they were desperately engaged, not only, as they professed, upon opinion of national ends, but likewise upon that of self-preservation, having broken irreparably all measures already with the duke: the generality of the house of com- mons were carried, partly with the plausible- ness of the thing, calculated in appearance only against popery, without any private ends as was pretended, and partly with the opinion of the king's resolution to fall into it, upon the obser- vation of such lords of the Court having engaged so far in sending away the duke. All the duke of Monmouth's friends drove it on violently; not doubting he would lie in the duke's place, though no provision seemed to be made for that in the forms of the draught : and all these circumstances concurring, made so violent a tor- rent for carrying on this bill, as nothing could resist, or any ways divert ; and as it happens upon all occasions, the small opposition made by two or three men made the violence the greater. Besides these general circumstances, there were two more particular and personal, that seemed to me to have great influence upon the house: one was lord Russell setting himself, almost with affectation, at the head of this affair; who was a person in general repute of an honest worthy gentleman, without tricks or private ambition, and who was known to venture as great a stake perhaps as any subject of England. The ( c 217 ) 305 20 MEMOIRS other was Sir William Jones entering upon it so abruptly and so desperately as he did, if I mistake not, the first day he came into the house (at least I have been told so, for I was not there), which was some time after the session began, having been engaged in a dis- puted election. And this person having the name of the greatest lawyer of England, and commonly of a very wise man; besides this, of a very rich, and of a wary or rather timorous nature, made people generally conclude that the thing was certain and safe, and would at last be agreed on all parts, whatever coun- tenance were made at Court. The bill passed the house of commons, and was carried up by lord Russell to the house of lords ; as I think, for I was not there at the house. But, in the house of lords, it met with another kind of reception. The king was resolved, and declared against the bill : and though lord Shaftesbury, lord Essex, and, as I remember, about fifteen more, were violently for it, yet the rest of the house were firm and positive against it; among whom lord Halifax appeared most in the head of all debates; and so it was, after long contest, absolutely thrown out. This enraged the house of commons : and having failed of the only thing they seemed to have at heart made them fall upon persons ; engage first in the pursuit of lord Strafford to the block, upon the score of the plot; and then in addresses, either upon general discontents in the public affairs, or upon com- mon fame against particular men. 306 MEMOIRS During the whole proceedings of this session of parliament, I played a part very impertinent for a man that had any designs or ambitions about him ; but for me who had none (and whose head was fixed either upon my embassy into Spain, or upon my absolute retirement), the only one wherein I could have satisfied myself. As I never entered into public business by my own choice or pursuit, but always called into it by the king, or his ministers ; so I never made the common use of it, by ever asking either money, lands, or honour of his majesty; though I have been often enough urged to it by my friends, and invited by so great degrees of confidence and favour, as I have stood in with his majesty both often and long. I never had my heart set upon any thing in public affairs, but the happiness of my country, and greatness of the crown: and, in order to that, the union of both, by which alone I thought both could be achieved. When I fell first into despair of this, I fell first into a distaste of all public affairs; which has been nourished by a course of such accidents and turns of court, and personal in- constancies or infidelities, as I have related. By what means I came to be so long engaged, as to see this session of parliament, I have told; but it is not to be told, the vexation and trouble which the course of It gave mc. I knew very well that all the safety of Flanders and Holland depended upon the union of his majesty with his parliament, which might en- able him to make such a figure In Christendom, as the crown of England has done, and ought 307 MEMOIRS always to do. The Dutch had sent over Mon- sieur Van Lewen to make both Court and country sensible of this necessity that Chris- tendom was in ; and how much all would lie at the mercy of France, from the day they saw the hopes of it fail. The house of commons met, with such a bent upon what they thought the chief of their home concerns, that the name of any thing foreign would not be allowed among them ; nay, the mention of Spanish leagues, alliances with Holland, and measures intended by the king with other confederates, were laughed at as Court tricks, and too stale to pass any more. They fell downright upon a point invincible, which was the bill of ex- clusion ; and in default of that, upon heats against the government and the ministers, not without some glancing at the king. This was returned with heats at Court by those ministers that were chiefly touched ; which were lord Halifax, who, by a sudden turn, whereof I know no account, had at the beginning of the session fallen into the open defence of the duke's interests; and Mr. Hyde, who, by his relation to the duke, and by his education wholly at Court, was ever reckoned upon, as well as found to be, first in that point. Though I did not find by them, that they thought it would be to much purpose ; only they promised to agree with the king upon the draught of some expedients in the case, which lord Halifax had charged himself with, and should be charged with to the house of lords, during the heats of the commons. MEMOIRS For my own part, so soon as I saw the bent of the house of commons, the violence with which it was carried, and the distractions it was like to engage the kingdom in, at a time they were so little in season; I gave over first all hopes, and then all thoughts upon so unplea- sant a theme. In the business of the bill I never meddled, nor so much as reasoned either in or out of the house, having declared my opinion to the king and his ministers, that it was to no purpose to oppose it there; nor for the king to take notice of the commons' ad- dress upon it, further than to let them know that whenever any bills, or any addresses upon things of that nature, were brought to him from both houses, he would answer them. By this means I thought the king was sure of his end, for the bill would certainly fall as often as it came into the house of lords; and, if he should be forced to break the parliament, it would be better done upon invincible differ- ence between the two houses, than upon any between his majesty and the house of com- mons. But this opinion was not agreed to by the chief ministers. After that, I pressed both the king and them to bring such expedients as they told me were resolved on; that so we might make all the strength we could to support them in the house of commons, and thereby reduce things to some temper : but these, though daily talked of, never appeared. I went not often, either to the house or council; but when I did, and thought it to any purpose, I endeavoured to alLiy the heats on either side; 309 MEMOIRS and told the king I expected to be turned out of the house in the morning, and out of the council in the afternoon. Mr. Hyde asked me one day in the council chamber why I came so seldom to the house or council; I told him, 'twas upon Solomon's advice, neither to oppose the mighty, nor go about to stop the current of a river: upon which he said, I was a wise and a quiet man; and, if it were not for some cir- cumstances he could not help, he would do so too. I do not remember to have spoken in the house, but upon the motion of supplies for Tangier ; upon the digestion of the first ad- dress about general grievances ; and in the cases of my lord chief justice North, and my lord Halifax being impeached upon common fame: nor at any general councils, unless it were upon the house of commons' address against lord Halifax, and upon a debate about dissolving the parliament; wherein I desired the king and council never to lay aside the thoughts and endeavours of agreeing either with this or some other parliament, as a matter of so great necessity to the state of his majesty's affairs both abroad and at home. Lord Halifax answered me in few words, that everybody was sensible of the necessity of the king's agreeing with his parliaments, though not with this: and Mr. Seymour told me, he perfectly agreed with me in what I had said. The last thing I did, in house or council, was to carry the king's last answer to the commons, containing his resolutions never to consent to 310 MEMOIRS the exclusion of the duke ; which secretary Jenkins had been charged with the night before at council: but he was thought too unaccept- able to the house, it seems, for a message that was like to prove so; and next morning the king would have had Sir Robert Carr, or Mr. Godolphin have carried it, but they both ex- cused themselves; upon which the king sent for me. I told his majesty I did not very well under- stand why a thing, agreed upon last night at council table, should be altered in his chamber; but that I was very willing, however, to obey him, and the rather upon others having ex- cused themselves, and to shew his majesty that I intended to play no popular games : upon which I took the paper, and told the king that I was very sensible how much of his confidence I formerly had, and how much I had lost, with- out knowing the occasion; or else I might have had part in the consulting this change of what was last night resolved, as well as in executing it; and I would confess to his majesty, that I had not so good a stomach in business, as to be content only with swallowing what other people had chewed. Upon which I went away, and carried my message to the house, which was received just as was expected. I tell this passage freely, as I do all the rest, as the only thing I could imagine the king could ever take ill of me; and yet I know not how it could be a fault, more than in a point of manners neither, or the homeliness of expression. That which completed my resolution of re- 3^1 MEMOIRS cess from all public business was to find, as I thought, very plainly, that both parties, who could agree in nothing else, yet did it in this one point, of bringing things to the last extre- mity. Lord Shaftesbury and his party thought the points of popular discontents and petitions, or at least that of the king's wants, would at last bring the Court to their mercy in one par- liament or other. Those ministers who were past all measures with the house of commons thought there was no way, but by their heats, to bring the king to a dislike, and thereby to a disuse of parliaments. And by this likewise the duke's interest seemed at present only to be secured. So that, where both parties con- sented in dividing to extremity on each side, no man could think any longer of uniting; nor consequently to see the crown in such a pos- ture as I had ever wished it, and for our neighbours' sakes as well as our own. I found this yet more evident at the last debates, during my assistance at the foreign committee, concerning the answer his majesty should return to the repeated addresses of the house of commons, relating to the bill of ex- clusion. I was of opinion it should be, that, when both houses agreed upon an address to this purpose, he would give them an answer; but till then would suspend it, and not send a positive answer to one house upon so weighty an occasion, which for aught he knew might be contrary to the sense of the other. By this means he would be secure from the necessity of any direct breach with the commons; since 312 MEMOIRS he knew well enough, the lords would not con- sent to the address. And, if the parliament came to be dissolved, it were better for the king it should break upon differences between the two houses, than between his majesty and them; for this would give the nation an opinion, that he was resolved to live without parliaments hereafter; which might endanger perhaps our peace at home, but would however ruin the hopes of our neighbours abroad, who had no other of defending themselves against France, but by the power of England: that, if this parliament broke upon disputes or differ- ences between the two houses, it might yet be expected he would call another, and perhaps a third, and agree with some of them, by which alone he could be great and safe both at home and abroad. For it was between the king and his parliament, as between the mountain and Mahomet, who told the people what miracles he would do when he was at the top of the mountain; and to that purpose he would on such a day call it to him: he did so, but the mountain would not come; whereupon he said, that, if the mountain would not come to Ma- homet, he would go to the mountain; for unless they both met, no wonders could be done. The king seemed pleased with all I said, and with the comparison; but those of the committee, that were chief in the private measures taken at this time, were for a positive answer to be given the house of commons, let them take it how they pleased; and accordingly this was resolved. 313 MEMOIRS However, all these considerations or interests could not move the king to dissolve this parlia- ment, without calling another at the same time to meet at Oxford in the spring. Whereupon, the heads of the university at Cambridge sent to me, to know whether I intended to stand again for that election: I went to the king to acquaint him with it, and know his pleasure what answer I should return them: he seemed at first indifferent, and bid me do what I would: but when I said I was very indifferent too, and would do in it what his majesty liked best, he said, in a manner kind and familiar, that, considering how things stood at this time, he doubted my coming into the house would not be able to do much good ; and therefore he thought it as well for me to let it alone; which I said I would do. When I left the king I went to my lord Sunderland, and told him what had passed; who took this as the first certain sign of his majesty's having fixed his resolution, and left off all thoughts of agreeing with his parlia- ments, and of his having taken his measures another way, for the supply of his treasures in the ill condition they were in. He knew very well that, during the last session, the king had always told me, that he was resolved to propose some expedients to the houses upon which he had hopes they might agree : that he had ordered lord Halifax to draw them up, and had bid me reserve my credit in the house for that occasion : and that, if there were any thoughts of agreeing with the next parliament, 314 MEMOIRS the king, he was sure, would have been glad to have had me in the house. He said upon it, in some passion, that he now gave all for gone, and that he must confess I knew the king better than he had done; and so we parted. Within few days, employed wholly in my domestic concerns, and in order to the remove I intended, I left the town and went to Sheen: from whence I sent the king word by my son, that I would pass the rest of my life like as good a subject as any he had; but that I would never meddle any more with any public affairs; and desired his majesty would not be displeased with this resolution. The king very graciously bid him tell me that he was not angry with me, no,, not at all. I had not been above a week at Sheen, when my lady Northumberland (who lived then at Sion) came to my closet one morning, and told me that, the day before, my lord Sunderland, my lord Essex's names, and mine, were struck out of the council; which was the first word I heard of any such thing, and upon which I neither made any reflections nor enquiries; though many others seemed much to wonder, and enquired of me what could be the reason of my being joined with the other two lords whose proceedings had been very different. My lord Sunderland was, during the late session of parliament, fallen under a great displeasure of his majesty; and into an out- rageous quarrel with lord Halifax. The last happened, not only upon their dividing in the businesses of the parliament and council, but 315 MEMOIRS likewise upon lord Sunderland's entering into new commerce and measures with lord Shaftes- bury; as my lord Halifax told me, and which I should not have otherwise known ; for, if there were any such commerce, lord Sunder- land had made it a secret to me, as knowing too well the aversion I always had for that lord, and the whole course of his proceedings in all public affairs. But lord Sunderland told me another reason of the quarrel between him and lord Halifax; which, he said, broke out the same night a debate arose at council concerning an address of the house of commons against lord Halifax, wherein lord Sunderland had been of opinion, the king should not yield to it. But, after council, lord Halifax went to lord Sunderland's lodging, where they fell into discourse of what had passed; and lord Sunderland told him, that though he had given his opinion at council as he thought became him; yet, if such an address should ever be made against himself, he would certainly de- sire leave of the king to retire, as a thing that would be for his service. Upon this lord Halifax fell into such a passion, that he went out of the room, and from that time they hardly lived in any common civility where they met. The refiners thought lord Halifax, who saw himself topped by lord Sunderland's credit and station at Court, resolved to make this sudden turn of falling in with the king, upon the point then in debate about the bill of exclusion, wherein he found the king steady, 316 MEMOIRS and that my lord Sunderland would lose him- self; so that, falling into confidence with the king upon such a turn, he should be alone chief in the ministry, without competitor. At least the reasoners on this matter could find no other ground for such a change in lord Halifax's course,, after what he had so long steered, and so lately in having been the chief promoter of the duke's being sent away to Scotland just before the meeting of the parliament. The king's quarrels to my lord Sunderland, as far as I could observe, were chiefly two: first, his voting in the lords' house for the bill of exclusion, not only against the king's mind, but against his express command; which, for a person actually in his service, and in such a post as secretary of state, seemed something extraordinary. And I remember, when I spoke to him of it as what the king must resent, and what I was confident he would be steady in, he told me 'twas too late, for his honour was engaged, and he could not break it. The other was a memorial, sent over by Mr. Sidney, the king's envoy at the Hague, and given him by the pensioner Fagel, representing the sad consequences abroad of his majesty's not agreeing with his parlia- ments ; the danger of his allies, and of the Protestant religion ; and thereupon, though not directly, yet seeming to wish that the king would not break with them, though it were even upon the point of the bill of exclusion. This was, as I remember, the substance; for 317 MEMOIRS I never heard a word of it, either before or after its being received at the foreign com- mittee; where I was as much surprised at it as any one there, but had not the same thoughts of its original, as I find some other of the lords had. For they believed it a thing directed and advised from hence; and, in a word, by lord Sunderland to Mr. Sidney his uncle, as a matter that would be of weight to induce the king to pass the bill. But besides that, lord Sunderland protested to me, after council, that he knew nothing of it till he received a copy from Mr. Sidney, who sent the original to the other secretary. I thought he could not understand the king so ill, as to believe, that would be a motive to him to pass the bill, or that it could have any other effect than to anger him at the Dutch, for meddling in a matter that was domestic, not only to the nation, but to the crown. Besides, I observed the style to be of one that under- stood little of our constitution, by several ex- pressions in the paper; whereof one was, why the king should not prevent such consequences, when he might do it par un trait de plume (by a stroke with a pen); which shewed, the author thought our acts of parliament had been passed by the king's signing them. This, and the whole cast of it, made me believe it certainly came from the pensioner Fagel; a man of great piety and zeal in his religion, mightily concerned for all he thought would endanger it ; and besides, of great warmth and suddenness in pursuing any 318 MEMOIRS thought that possessed him. However, the king, as well as some of the committee, believed this was of my lord Sunderland's forge; and that many of the heats in the house of commons had been encouraged and raised to such height by his seeming to favour them; which, they might think, he would not do unless he believed the king would at length comply with them. These, I suppose, were the reasons of the resolution taken at Court to remove lord Sun- derland, both from the secretary's office and the council. What made my lord Essex be joined with him is a great deal more obvious; having ever since meeting of the parliament run up in the greatest heights and nearest measures with the duke of Monmouth and lord Shaftesbury, both in the bill of exclusion, and all other matters where he intervened, either in debates of parliament or of council; either concerning the bill, or several addresses against ministers. How I came to be joined with these two lords, by the king ordering our names to be struck out of the council book at the same time, I neither know, nor could ever give any reason, unless it were, what was com- monly guessed, of my being a friend of the Prince of Orange, or of my lord Sunderland, with whom I had a very long acquaintance, and of our families, as well as personal. For the first, I could think it no crime, consider- ing how little that Prince had ever meddled, at least to my knowledge, in any domestic concerns of his majesty, during all that passed 319 MEMOIRS since the first heats in parliament here, though he had been extreme sensible of the conse- quences they were like to have upon all his interests, and nearest concerns at home; which were, the preservation of Flanders from the French conquest, and thereby of Holland from falling by sudden treaties into an absolute de- pendence upon that crown. I can give no other reason, unless it were, that as my lord Salisbury had been struck out some days before, upon his having declared at council, that he would come there no more; so his majesty and his ministers might think, that upon my having taken the same resolu- tion as to that, and all public affairs, though signified only in private to his majesty, and with all the good manners that could be; yet it would be better for the king's affairs that I should be known to be put out of the council than to have quitted it of myself Nor was this resolution of mine taken in any heat, or rashly, but upon the best con- siderations and knowledge I had gained, both of the world, and of myself: by which I found, as Sancho did by governing his island, that he was not fit to govern any thing but his sheep; so, by serving long in Courts, or public affairs, I discovered plainly, that I was, at my age, and in the present conjunctures, fit for neither one nor t'other. I considered the world in the present pos- ture of affairs both abroad and at home : I knew very well the great designs of France, whereof the plan was drawn by Cardinal 320 MEMOIRS Richelieu, for the conquest of Flanders, and that part of Germany which lies on this side of the Rhine: how, upon this view, he had seized Lorrain, and engaged in a war with Spain: how he practised the Dutch into a treaty for the division of Flanders between them, till the States soon found the false pace they had made by an agreement to share with the lion, who thereupon would be soon master, both of the prey and of them. Hereupon they broke off this confederacy on the sudden, quitted the French in the midst of so great success, and had thereby almost occasioned the ruin of the French army at Tirlemont. I knew by tradition from a noble family, how that Cardinal had sent a private emissary, to endeavour the same measures with King Charles the First, or at least for his being passive in their conquest of Flanders. How that King had refused the first ; and, being pressed upon the other, had answered re- solutely, and bid him tell the Cardinal, that he would never suffer the conquest of Flan- ders ; and if the French attempted it, he would march himself in person to defend it. Upon this answer, the Cardinal replied to the gentleman that brought it, Va-t-il dit? par Dieu tl me le patera bien (Did he say so ? by G — d I'll make him pay dear for it); and therefore entered immediately into practices with some discontented nobles of Scotland then at Paris ; sent over two hundred thou- sand pistoles to others in that kingdom, and gave thereby a beginning to the first troubles ( c 217 ) 321 21 MEMOIRS that were raised there. From which time, the business of France has ever been to foment all divisions of England, whose interest they saw would be ever to cross their great design. However, Cardinal Mazarin, after having sur- mounted his own dangers in France, and the difficulties incident to a minority, pursued the plan left him by his predecessor: and by his measures taken with Cromwell, and the assistance of an immortal body of six thousand brave English, which were by agreement to be continually recruited, he made such a progress in Flanders, that Cromwell soon found the balance turned, and grown too heavy on the French side : whereupon he dispatched a gentleman privately to Madrid, to propose there a change of his treaty with France into one with Spain, by which he would draw his forces over into their service, and make them ten thousand, to be continually recruited, upon condition their first action should be to be- siege Calais, and, when taken, to put it into his hands. The gentleman sent upon this errand was past the Pyrenees when he was overtaken by the news of Cromwell's death; whereupon Mazarin, having not only lost his strongest support in Flanders, but observed how that design would never be served by any measures he could take in England, however it should be governed, by the most legal or most usurped powers, he resolved upon a peace with Spain; and made it at the Pyrenees, against the general sense, both of the chief persons in the Court and the army, but par- 322 MEMOIRS ticularly against the instances of Monsieur De Turenne, who engaged himself to conquer all that was left of Flanders in two campaigns more : but some domestic reasons prevailed with the Cardinal, besides his age and great infirmities, which ended his life not long after the peace was made. The present king, left in full peace with all his neighbours, in the flower of his youth, and instructed in the school of so able a minister, began to pursue the great design, by the three paces most necessary to advance it; which were, the wise management of his revenue, and heaping up a mass of treasure: the increase of his naval force, by building many great ships, and buying others from the Dutch: and by the purchase of Dunkirk in the year 1662, without which he could not have aspired to the conquest of Flanders, or to his greatness at sea; having no other haven upon the channel: after this, by fomenting on both sides the seeds of dissension between us and the Dutch, which were sprung from other covered roots. He saw us engaged in a war with Holland in 1665, and with such honour and successes, that the Dutch would soon have been forced to a peace, had not France first assisted them at land, against the Bishop of Munster; and then declared war against us, and set out his fleet for assisting the Dutch. This made the war more equally balanced, and thereby last till France, taking advantage at our division, invaded Flanders; and, by a surprise of the unprepared Spandiards, and {C217) 323 ^1* MEMOIRS two campaigns, carried the most considerable frontier places on both sides; as Douay, Lisle, Tournay, on the one side, Charleroy and Aeth on the other; by which they left the rest of Flanders at the mercy of another campaign. The Dutch were alarmed at these successes of so mighty a neighbour so near their own doors ; and we were spited at the French having declared war against us in favour of Holland, contrary to our expectations; and both together contributed to the peace at Breda in the end of the year 1667, and to our leagues with Holland with the triple alliance in 1668, for defence of the Spanish Nether- lands. Upon our peace with Holland, France stopped their career in Flanders, and made overtures of peace with Spain; by the offer of an alternative, either to retain their conquests in Flanders, or else the whole county of Bur- gundy. We and Holland forced in Spain to accept one of them; and the Spaniards, spited at this hardship upon them from neighbours who, they thought, had as much interest as they to preserve Flanders, chose the worst, which was to leave the frontiers of Flanders in the French hands, on purpose to give us and Holland the greater jealousy of France, and in hopes thereby to engage us all in a war with that crown. And upon these terms the peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668. After this, France turned all their counsels to break the measures between us and Holland which gave a stop to their great design. The Dutch were stanch ; but we gave way by the 324 MEMOIRS corruption of our ministers, and the French practices upon the dispositions of our Court ; which at length engaged us in a joint war of both crowns upon Holland in 1672, to the amazement of all men both abroad and at home, and almost to the utter ruin of that State ; till the Empire and Spain, roused by the danger of Holland, which must have ended in that of Flanders, and all the German pro- vinces on this side the Rhine, entered boldly into the war, for the assistance of the Dutch ; which gave them some breath, and carried the scene of the war into Flanders and Germany. At the same time, the discontents of the people and parliament at the war, and the necessity of declaring it against Spain as well as Holland, if we continued longer in it, prevailed with the king to make a separate peace with Holland in 1673, and to offer his mediation to all the parties engaged in the war ; which ended in the treaty of Nimeguen, and at last in a peace there, concluded in 1678 : whereby a frontier was left to the Spanish Netherl-mds on the Brabant side, by restitution of Aeth and Charle- roy, to satisfy the Dutch; but all that remained on the side of Flanders, after the peace of Aix, as Cambray, Air, St. Omer, with many others taken by France in the last war, were by this treaty left in their possession ; besides great pretences by dependencies, both in Flanders and Alsace ; so as Flanders was left at their mercy, whenever we or Holland should aban- don its defence. And, finding both nations in general but too sensible of our interest on that 3-3 MEMOIRS side, the councils of France began new prac- tices upon our Court, wherein they were en- couraged by our factions, and the necessities of money into which they had drawn the king. These were the progresses which France had made in their great design, by two wars, and two general treaties of peace ; whereof that at Nimeguen seemed more victorious than their arms had been. But they had made another, yet more important than either, by their prac- tices upon the Elector and Chapter of Cologne, having gained the majority of voices there for the succession of Prince William of Furstem- burg to that principality, whenever the present Elector should fail, who is old and infirm, and has, for some years past, deceived the world by living so long. Prince William, though a Ger- man, yet having long devoted himself to the French interests, and been refuged and sup- ported by that crown against the indignation and revenge of the Emperor, is as much a Frenchman as any bishop of that kingdom; so as, whenever he comes to the electorate, France will be absolute master of that principality ; and thereby cast shackles, not only upon the other Princes of the Rhine, but upon Holland too, both by cutting off their trade upon the Rhine, and by bordering upon their inland provinces, which are most exposed and hard to be defended : 'tis said he is likewise assured of the Chapter of Liege, in favour of the same Prince ; which if true, and this prin- cipality fall likewise under the same dominion, 326 MEMOIRS upon the death of the present Elector, France will then surround the frontiers of Brabant, and cut off all commerce, or means of defence between them and Luxemburg ; that they will not have above the work of one campaign to draw the net over the rest of Flanders, and re- duce all the great cities there; after which, the rest must follow, and thereby Holland be left to take what measures they can with France, and become at best a maritime pro- vince to that crown ; though, perhaps, under the name of a free State (for fear of dispeopl- ing their country) but with such dependence as will leave France the use both of their ships and money, upon occasion, in other parts. Whenever this happens, what condition Eng- land will be left in, upon such an increase of the French territory and land, as well as naval power, is easy to conjecture, but hard, how it can be prevented, otherwise than by our vigor- ous conjunction of counsels, as well as interests, with all the late confederates ; and by a firm union between the Court and the nation upon one common bottom, both at home and abroad, and chiefly for the preservation of Flanders against the French designs. I easily discovered how fit a posture we were in to engage in such resolutions. The nation divided into two strong factions with the greatest heats and animosities, and ready to break out into violence upon the first occa- sion. The heads on both sides desiring it, as grown past all temper or composure. The king involved in such necessities and disorders 327 MEMOIRS of his revenue, as, if he could not hope supplies from parliaments, would throw him upon seek- ing them from France ; which would end in such measures with that crown, as would leave them at liberty to pursue their great design by new attempts upon their neighbours ; who, without the support of England, must give way either by weak defences or submissive treaties. Upon the survey of all these circumstances, conjunctures, and dispositions, both at home and abroad, I concluded in cold blood that I could be of no further use or service to the king my master, and my country, whose true interests I always thought were the same, and would be both in danger when they came to be divided, and for that reason had ever en- deavoured the uniting them ; and had com- passed it, if the passions of some few men had not lain fatally in the way, so as to raise diffi- culties that I saw plainly were never to be sur- mounted. Therefore, upon the whole, I took that firm resolution, in the end of the year 1680, and the interval between the West- minster and Oxford parliaments, never to charge myself more with any public employ- ments ; but retiring wholly to a private life, in that posture take my fortune with my country, whatever it should prove : which as no man can judge, in the variety of accidents that attend human affairs, and the chances of every day, to which the greatest lives, as well as actions, are subject ; so I shall not trouble myself so much as to conjecture : fata viam inveniant. MEMOIRS Besides all these public circumstances, I considered myself in my own humour, temper, and dispositions, which a man may disguise to others, though very hardly, but cannot to him- self. I had learned by living long in Courts and public affairs, that I was fit to live no longer in either. I found the arts of a Court were contrary to the frankness and openness of my nature ; and the constraints of public business too great for the liberty of my humour and my life. The common and proper ends of both are the advancement of men's fortunes; and that I never minded, having as much as I needed, and, which is more, as I desired. The talent of gaining riches I ever despised, as observing it to belong to the most despisable men in other kinds : and I had the occasions of it so often in my way, if I would have made use of them, that I grew to disdain them, as a man does meat that he has always before him. Therefore, I never could go to service for nothing but wages, nor endure to be fettered in business when I thought it was to no pur- pose. I knew very well the arts of a Court are, to talk the present language, to serve the present turn, and to follow the present humour of the prince, whatever it is : of all these I found myself so incapable, that I could not talk a language I did not mean, nor serve a turn I did not like, nor follow any man's humour wholly against my own. Besides, I have had, in twenty years' experience, enough of the uncertainty of princes, the caprices of fortune, the corruption of ministers, the vio- 329 MEMOIRS lence of factions, the unsteadiness of counsels, and the infidelity of friends ; nor do I think the rest of my life enough to make any new experiments. For the ease of my own life, if I know my- self, it will be infinitely more in the retired than it has been in the busy scene ; for no good man can, with any satisfaction, take part in the divisions of his country, that knows and considers, as I do, what they have cost Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Florence, Germany, France, and England : nor can the wisest man foresee how ours will end, or what they are like to cost the rest of Christendom as well as ourselves. I never had but two aims in public affairs ; one, to see the king great as he may be by the hearts of his people, without which I know not how he can be great by the con- stitutions of this kingdom : the other, in case our factions must last, yet to see a revenue established for the constant maintaining a fleet of fifty men of war, at sea or in harbour, and the seamen in constant pay ; which would be at least our safety from abroad, and make the crown still considered in any foreign alliances, whether the king and his parliaments should agree or not in undertaking any great or national war. And such an establishment I was in hopes the last parliament at West- minster might have agreed in with the king, by adding so much of a new fund to three hundred thousand pounds a year out of the present customs. But these have both failed, and I am content to have failed with them. 330 MEMOIRS And so I take leave of all those airy visions w^hich have so long busied my head about mending the world ; and at the same time, of all those shining toys or follies that employ the thoughts of busy men : and shall turn mine w^holly to mend myself; and, as far as consists with a private condition, still pursuing that old and excellent counsel of Pythagoras, that we are, with all the cares and endeavours of our lives, to avoid diseases in the body, perturbations in the mind, luxury in diet, factions in the house, and seditions in the state. 331 DATE DUE k .^1 i t :v m tnM 1 (?199n •^w cs^ ^