The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
by unknown · English · Gutenberg #21679 · 401,482 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
Editor: Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis W. Halsey
Release date: June 4, 2007 [eBook #21679]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21679
Credits: Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST OF THE WORLD'S CLASSICS, RESTRICTED TO PROSE. VOLUME III (OF X) - GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND I ***
Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: MILTON, BACON, CHAUCER, and SHAKESPEARE.]
THE BEST
_of the_
WORLD'S CLASSICS
RESTRICTED TO PROSE
HENRY CABOT LODGE
_Editor-in-Chief_
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
_Associate Editor_
With an Introduction, Biographical and
Explanatory Notes, etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES
Vol. III
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--I
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
* * * * *
The Best of the World's Classics
VOL. III
GREAT BRITAIN AND
IRELAND--I
1281-1745
* * * * *
CONTENTS
VOL. III--GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--I
RICHARD DE BURY--(Born in 1281, died in 1345.)
In Praise of Books.
(From the "Philobiblon")
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE--(Reputed author.)
I The Route from England to Constantinople.
(From the "Travels")
II At the Court of the Great Chan.
(From the "Travels")
JOHN WYCLIF--(Born about 1324, died in 1384.)
The Baptism of Christ.
(Being a translation from the Gospel of Mark)
GEOFFREY CHAUCER--(Born about 1340, died in 1400.)
Of Acquiring and Using Riches.
(One of the prose "Canterbury Tales")
WILLIAM CAXTON--(Born about 1422, died in 1491.)
Of True Nobility and Chivalry.
(From the "Game and Playe of Chesse." Translated by Caxton from
the French original)
SIR THOMAS MALORY--(Born about 1430, died after 1470.)
Of the Finding of a Sword for Arthur. (From the "Morte d'Arthur")
SIR THOMAS MORE--(Born in 1478, died in 1535.)
Life in Utopia.
(From the "Utopia")
JOHN KNOX--(Born in 1505, died in 1572.)
An Interview with Mary Queen of Scots.
(From the "History of the Reformation in Scotland")
ROGER ASCHAM--(Born in 1515, died in 1568.)
Of Gentle Methods in Teaching.
(From the "Schoolmaster")
JOHN FOXE--(Born in 1516, died in 1587.)
The Death of Anne Boleyn.
(From the "Book of Martyrs")
SIR WALTER RALEIGH--(Born in 1552, died in 1618.)
The Mutability of Human Affairs.
(From the Preface to the "History of the World")
FRANCIS BACON--(Born in 1561, died in 1626.)
I Of Travel.
(From the "Essays")
II Of Riches.
(From the "Essays")
III Of Youth and Age.
(From the "Essays")
IV Of Revenge.
(From the "Essays")
V Of Marriage and Single Life.
(From the "Essays")
VI Of Envy.
(From the "Essays")
VII Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature.
(From the "Essays")
VIII Of Studies.
(From the "Essays")
IX Of Regiment of Health.
(From the "Essays")
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE--(Born in 1564, died in 1616.)
I Brutus to His Countrymen.
(From "Julius Cæsar")
II Shylock in Defense of His Race.
(From the "Merchant of Venice")
III Hamlet to the Players.
(From "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark")
BEN JONSON--(Born in 1573, died in 1637.)
Shakespeare and Other Wits.
(From "Timber; or, Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter")
IZAAK WALTON--(Born in 1593, died in 1683.)
I The Antiquity of Angling.
(From Part I, Chapter IV, of "The Compleat Angler")
II Of the Trout.
(From Part I, Chapter IV, of "The Compleat Angler")
III The Death of George Herbert.
(From the "Lives")
JAMES HOWELL--(Born in 1595, died in 1666.)
I The Bucentaur Ceremony in Venice.
(From the "Familiar Letters")
II The City of Rome in 1621.
(From the "Familiar Letters")
SIR THOMAS BROWNE--(Born in 1605, died in 1682.)
I Of Charity in Judgments.
(From the "Religio Medici")
II Nothing Strictly Immortal.
(From Chapter V of "Urn Burial")
JOHN MILTON--(Born in 1608, died in 1674.)
I Of His Own Literary Ambition.
(From "The Reason of Church Government")
II A Complete Education Defined.
(From the "Tractate on Education")
III On Reading in His Youth.
(From the "Apology for Smectymnus")
IV In Defense of Books.
(From the "Areopagitica")
V A Noble and Puissant Nation.
(From the "Areopagitica")
VI Of Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue.
(From the "Areopagitica")
LORD CLARENDON--(Born in 1608, died in 1674.)
Of Charles I.
(From the "History of the Rebellion")
THOMAS FULLER--(Born in 1608, died in 1661.)
Qualities of the Good Schoolmaster.
(From "The Holy and Profane State")
JEREMY TAYLOR--(Baptized in 1613, died in 1667.)
The Benefits of Adversity.
(From the "Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying")
ABRAHAM COWLEY--(Born in 1618, died in 1667.)
I Of Obscurity.
(From the "Essays")
II Of Procrastination.
(From the "Essays")
GEORGE FOX--(Born in 1624, died in 1691.)
An Interview with Oliver Cromwell.
(From the "Journal")
JOHN BUNYAN--(Baptized in 1628, died in 1668.)
I A Dream of the Celestial City.
(From "The Pilgrim's Progress")
II The Death of Valiant-for-truth and of Stand-fast.
(From "The Pilgrim's Progress")
III Ancient Vanity Fair.
(From "The Pilgrim's Progress")
JOHN DRYDEN--(Born in 1631, died in 1700.)
Of Elizabethan Dramatists.
(From the "Essay on Dramatic Poetry")
SAMUEL PEPYS--(Born in 1633, died in 1703.)
I Of Various Doings of Mr. and Mrs. Pepys.
(From the "Diary")
II England Without Cromwell.
(From the "Diary")
GILBERT BURNET--(Born in 1643, died in 1715.)
Charles II.
(From the "History of Our Own Times")
DANIEL DEFOE--(Born in 1661, died in 1731.)
I The Shipwreck of Crusoe.
(From "The Life and Surprizing Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe")
II The Rescue of Man Friday.
(From "The Life and Surprizing Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe")
III In the Time of the Great Plague.
(From the "History of the Great Plague")
JONATHAN SWIFT--(Born in 1667, died in 1745.)
I On Pretense in Philosophers.
(From "Gulliver's Travels")
II On the Hospitality of the Vulgar.
(From No. 1 of _The Tatler_)
III The Art of Lying in Politics.
(From _The Examiner_)
IV A Meditation upon a Broomstick
V Gulliver Among the Giants.
(From "Gulliver's Travels")
JOSEPH ADDISON--(Born in 1672, died in 1719.)
I In Westminster Abbey.
(From No. 26 of _The Spectator_)
II Will Honeycomb and His Marriage.
(From Nos. 105 and 530 of _The Spectator_)
III Pride of Birth.
(From No. 137 of _The Guardian_)
IV Sir Roger and His Home.
(From Nos. 2 and 106 of _The Spectator_)
* * * * *
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--I
1281-1745
RICHARD DE BURY
Born in 1281, died in 1345; the son of Sir Richard
Aungerville, his own name being taken from his birthplace,
Bury St. Edmonds; educated at Oxford, and became a
Benedictine monk; tutor to Edward III; dean of Wells
Cathedral in 1333; bishop of Durham the same year; high
chancellor of England in 1334; founded a library at Oxford;
his "Philobiblon" first printed at Cologne in 1473.
IN PRAISE OF BOOKS[1]
The desirable treasure of wisdom and knowledge, which all men covet
from the impulse of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the
world; in comparison with which, precious stones are vile, silver is
clay, and purified gold grains of sand; in the splendor of which, the
sun and moon grow dim to the sight; in the admirable sweetness of
which, honey and manna are bitter to the taste. The value of wisdom
decreaseth not with time; it hath an ever-flourishing virtue that
cleanseth its possession from every venom. O celestial gift of divine
liberality, descending from the Father of light to raise up the
rational soul even to heaven; thou art the celestial alimony of
intellect, of which whosoever eateth shall yet hunger, and whoso
drinketh shall yet thirst; a harmony rejoicing the soul of the
sorrowful, and never in any way discomposing the hearer. Thou art the
moderator and the rule of morals, operating according to which none
err. By thee kings reign, and lawgivers decree justly. Through thee,
rusticity of nature being cast off, wits and tongues being polished,
and the thorns of vice utterly eradicated, the summit of honor is
reached and they become fathers of their country and companions of
princes, who, without thee, might have forged their lances into spades
and plowshares, or perhaps have fed swine with the prodigal son.
Where, then, most potent, most longed-for treasure, art thou
concealed? and where shall the thirsty soul find thee? Undoubtedly,
indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the
Most High, the Light of light, the Book of Life, hath established
thee. There then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those
who knock thou openest quickly. In books Cherubim expand their wings,
that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to
pole, from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the
south. In them the Most High, Incomprehensible God himself is
contained and worshiped. In them the nature of celestial, terrestrial,
and infernal beings is laid open. In them the laws by which every
polity is governed are decreed, the offices of the celestial hierarchy
are distinguished, and tyrannies of such demons are described as the
ideas of Plato never surpassed, and the chair of Crito never
sustained.
In books we find the dead as it were living: in books we foresee
things to come; in books warlike affairs are methodized; the rights of
peace proceed from books. All things are corrupted and decay with
time. Satan never ceases to devour those whom he generates, insomuch
that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion, if God had not
provided mortals with a remedy in books. Alexander, the ruler of the
world; Julius[2] the invader of the world and the city, the first who
in unity of person assumed the empire in arms and arts; the faithful
Fabricius,[3] the rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a
memorial if the aid of books had failed them. Towers are razed to the
earth, cities overthrown, triumphal arches moldered to dust; nor can
the king or pope be found, upon whom the privilege of a lasting name
can be conferred more easily than by books. A book made renders
succession to the author; for as long as the book exists, the author,
remaining immortal, can not perish; as Ptolemy witnesseth; in the
prolog of his Almagest,[4] he (he says) is not dead, who gave life to
science.
What learned scribe, therefore, who draws out things new and old from
an infinite treasury of books, will limit their price by any other
thing whatsoever of another kind? Truth, overcoming all things, which
ranks above kings, wine, and women, to honor which above friends
obtains the benefit of sanctity, which is the way that deviates not,
and the life without end, to which the holy Boethius attributes a
threefold existence in the mind, in the voice, and in writing, appears
to abide most usefully and fructify most productively of advantage in
books. For the truth of the voice perishes with the sound. Truth,
latent in the mind, is hidden wisdom and invisible treasure; but the
truth which illuminates books, desires to manifest itself to every
disciplinable sense, to the sight when read, to the hearing when
heard; it, moreover, in a manner commends itself to the touch, when
submitting to be transcribed, collated, corrected, and preserved.
Truth confined to the mind, tho it may be the possession of a noble
soul, while it wants a companion and is not judged of, either by the
sight or the hearing, appears to be inconsistent with pleasure. But
the truth of the voice is open to the hearing only, and latent to the
sight (which shows as many differences of things fixt upon by a most
subtle motion), beginning and ending as it were simultaneously. But
the truth written in a book being not fluctuating, but permanent,
shows itself openly to the sight passing through the spiritual ways of
the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagination; it
enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the couch of
memory, and there congenerates the eternal truth of the mind.
Lastly, let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in
books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness
of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters
that instruct us without rods and ferulas, without hard words and
anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not
asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing;
if you mistake them, they never grumble, if you are ignorant, they can
not laugh at you.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From the "Philobiblon," a treatise on books, translated
from the original Latin into English in 1852 by John Englis. The Latin
text and a new translation by Andrew J. West were printed by the
Grolier Club of New York in 1887.]
[Footnote 2: The reference is to Julius Cæsar.]
[Footnote 3: The Roman Consul, general and ambassador to Pyrrhus in
280, who was noted for inflexible honesty.]
[Footnote 4: The best-known work of Ptolemy of Alexandria, astronomer
and mathematician, who lived in the first half of the second century.]
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
Reputed author of a book of "Travels" of the fourteenth
century, a compilation intended as a guide to pilgrims in
the Holy Land, and based upon works by William of Boldensele
(1336) and Friar Odoric of Pordenone (1330).
I.
THE ROUTE FROM ENGLAND TO CONSTANTINOPLE[5]
He that will pass over the sea and come to land, to go to the city of
Jerusalem, he may wend many ways, both on sea and land, after the
country that he cometh from; for many of them come to one end. But
trow not that I will tell you all the towns, and cities and castles
that men shall go by; for then should I make too long a tale; but all
only some countries and most principal steads that men shall go
through to go the right way.
First, if a man come from the west side of the world, as England,
Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or Norway, he may, if that he will, go
through Almayne and through the kingdom of Hungary, that marches to
the land of Polayne, and to the land of Pannonia,[6] and so to
Silesia.
And the King of Hungary is a great lord and a mighty, and holds great
lordships and much land in his hand. For he holds the kingdom of
Hungary, Sclavonia, and of Comania a great part, and of Bulgaria that
men call the land of Bougiers, and of the realm of Russia a great
part, whereof he has made a duchy, that lasts unto the land of
Nyfland,[7] and marches to Prussia. And men go through the land of
this lord, through a city that is called Cypron,[8] and by the castle
of Neasburghe, and by the evil town, that sit toward the end of
Hungary. And there pass men the river Danube. This river of Danube is
a full great river, and it goeth into Almayne, under the hills of
Lombardy, and it receives into him forty other rivers, and it runs
through Hungary and through Greece and through Thrace, and it enters
into the sea, toward the east so rudely and so sharply, that the water
of the sea is fresh and holds its sweetness twenty mile within the
sea.
And after, go men to Belgrade, and enter into the land of Bourgiers;
and there pass men a bridge of stone that is upon the river of
Marrok.[9] And men pass through the land of Pyncemartz and come to
Greece to the city of Nye, and to the city of Fynepape,[10] and after
to the city of Dadrenoble,[11] and after to Constantinople, that was
wont to be called Bezanzon.[12] And there dwells commonly the Emperor
of Greece. And there is the most fair church and the most noble of all
the world; and it is of Saint Sophie. And before that church is the
image of Justinian the emperor, covered with gold, and he sits upon a
horse crowned. And he was wont to hold a round apple of gold in his
hand; but it is fallen out thereof. And men say there, that it is a
token that the emperor has lost a great part of his lands and of his
lordships; for he was wont to be Emperor of Roumania and of Greece, of
all Asia the less, and of the land of Syria, of the land of Judea in
the which is Jerusalem, and of the land of Egypt, of Persia, and of
Arabia. But he has lost all but Greece; and that land he holds all
only. And men would many times put the apple into the image's hand
again, but it will not hold it. This apple betokens the lordship that
he had over all the world, that is round. And the other hand he lifts
up against the East, in token to menace the misdoers. This image
stands upon a pillar of marble at Constantinople.
II
AT THE COURT OF THE GREAT CHAN[13]
The men of Tartary have let make another city that is called Caydon.
And it has twelve gates, and between the two gates there is always a
great mile; so that the two cities, that is to say, the old and the
new, have in circuit more than twenty mile.
In this city is the court of the great Chan in a full great palace and
the most passing fair in all the world, of the which the walls be in
circuit more than two mile. And within the walls it is full of other
palaces. And in the garden of the great palace there is a great hill,
upon the which there is another palace; and it is the most fair and
the most rich that any man may devise. And all about the palace and
the hill be many trees bearing many diverse fruits. And all about the
hill be ditches great and deep, and beside them be great fish ponds on
that one part and on that other. And there is a full fair bridge to
pass over the ditches. And in these vivaries be so many wild geese and
ganders and wild ducks and swans and herons that it is without number.
And all about these ditches and vivaries is the great garden full of
wild beasts. So that when the great Chan will have any disport on
that, to take any of the wild beasts or of the fowls, he will let
chase them and take them at the windows without going out of his
chamber.
This palace, where his court is, is both great and passing fair. And
within the palace, in the hall, there be twenty-four pillars of fine
gold. And all the walls be covered within of red skins of beasts that
men call panthers, that be fair beasts and well smelling; so that for
the sweet odor of those skins no evil air may enter into the palace.
Those skins be as red as blood, and they shine so bright against the
sun, that scarcely no man may behold them. And many folk worship these
beasts, when they meet them first at morning, for their great virtue
and for the good smell that they have. And those skins they prize more
than tho they were plate of fine gold.
And in the midst of this palace is the reservoir for the great Chan,
that is all wrought of gold and of precious stones and great pearls.
And at four corners of the reservoir be four serpents of gold. And all
about there is made large nets of silk and gold and great pearls
hanging all about the reservoir. And under the reservoir be conduits
of beverage that they drink in the emperor's court. And beside the
conduits be many vessels of gold, by the which they that be of
household drink at the conduit.
And the hall of the palace is full nobly arrayed, and full
marvellously attired on all parts in all things that men apparel with
any hall. And first, at the chief of the hall is the emperor's throne,
full high, where he sits at the meat. And that is of fine precious
stones, bordered all about with pure gold and precious stones, and
great pearls. And the steps that he goes up to the table be of
precious stones mingled with gold.
And at the left side of the emperor's seat is the seat of his first
wife, one degree lower than the emperor; and it is of jasper, bordered
with gold and precious stones. And the seat of his second wife is also
another seat more lower than his first wife; and it is also of jasper,
bordered with gold, as that other is. And the seat of the third wife
is also more low, by a degree, than the second wife. For he has always
three wives with him, where that ever he be.
And after his wives, on the same side, sit the ladies of his lineage
yet lower, after that they be of estate. And all those that be married
have a counterfeit made like a man's foot upon their heads, a cubit
long, all wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made
with peacocks' feathers and of other shining feathers; and that stands
upon their heads like a crest, in token that they be under man's foot
and under subjection of man. And they that be unmarried have none
such.[14]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: From the "Travels," the earliest extant book written in
English. In this specimen the spelling has been in part modernized.
First printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1429. "Mandeville" has been called
the "Father of English Prose."]
[Footnote 6: An old name for Hungary.]
[Footnote 7: Now known as Livonia, one of the Baltic provinces of
Russia.]
[Footnote 8: Now Oedenburg, a city of Hungary.]
[Footnote 9: The Morava, one of the chief rivers of Servia.]
[Footnote 10: Philippolis.]
[Footnote 11: Adrianople.]
[Footnote 12: An old form of the word Byzantium, a town founded by
Megariaus in the seventh century B.C. When Constantine founded the
city to which he gave his own name, Byzantium, lying east of it, was
included within the city limits.]
[Footnote 13: From the "Travels."]
[Footnote 14: The quaint words in which "Mandeville" concludes his
book are these: "And I, John Mandeville, knight, above said (altho I
be unworthy), that departed from our countries and passed the sea, the
year of grace a thousand three hundred and twenty-two, that have
passed many lands and many isles and countries, and searched many full
strange places, and have been in many a full good honorable company,
and at many a fair deed of arms (albeit that I did none myself, for
mine unable insuffisance), now I am come home, in spite of myself, to
rest, for gouts arthritic that me distrain, that define the end of my
labor; against my will (God knows)."]
JOHN WYCLIF
Born about 1324, died in 1384; "The Morning Star of the
Reformation"; educated at Oxford; rector in Lincolnshire and
Buckinghamshire; Royal ambassador to papal nuncios at Bruges
in 1374; in sermons attacked the Church of Rome; five papal
bulls, authorizing his imprisonment, signed against him;
threw off allegiance to the Church and wrote fearlessly
against papal claims; died of paralysis; his bones in 1428
exhumed and burnt and his ashes cast into the river Swift by
order of the synod of Constance; his translation of the
Bible from the Vulgate, completed about 1382 was the first
complete translation ever made.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST[15]
1. The bigynnynge of the gospel of Jhesu Crist, the sone of God.
2. As it is writun in Ysaie, the prophete, Lo! I send myn angel bifore
thi face, that schal make thi weye redy before thee.
3. The voyce of oon cryinge in desert. Make ye redy the weye of the
Lord, make ye his pathis rihtful.
4. Jhon was in desert baptisynge, and prechinge the baptym of
penaunce, into remiscioun of synnes.
5. And alle men of Jerusalem wenten out to him, and al the cuntree of
Judee; and weren baptisid of him in the flood of Jordan, knowlechinge
her synnes.
6. And John was clothid with heeris of camelis, and a girdil of skyn
abowte his leendis; and he eet locusts, and hony of the wode, and
prechide, seyinge:
7. A strengere than I schal come aftir me, of whom I knelinge am not
worthi for to vndo, _or vnbynde_, the thwong of his schoon.
8. I have baptisid you in water; forsothe he shal baptise you in the
Holy Goost.
9. And it is don in thoo dayes, Jhesus came fro Nazareth of Galilee,
and was baptisid of Joon in Jordan.
10. And anoon he styinge vp of the water, sayth heuenes openyd, and
the Holy Goost cummynge doun as a culuere, and dwellynge in hym.
11. And a voys is maad fro heuenes, thou art my sone loued, in thee I
haue plesid.
12. And anon the Spirit puttide hym in to desert.
13. And he was in desert fourty dayes and fourty nightis, and was
temptid of Sathanas, and was with beestis and angelis mynstriden to
hym.
14. Forsothe aftir that Joon was taken, Jhesus came in to Galilee,
prechinge the gospel of the kyngdam of God,
15. And seiynge, For tyme is fulfillid, and the kyngdam of God shal
come niy; forthinke yee, _or do yee penaunce_, and bileue yee to the
gospel.
16. And he passynge bisidis the see of Galilee, say Symont, and
Andrew, his brother, sendynge nettis into the see; sothely thei weren
fishers.
17. And Jhesus seide to hem, Come yee after me; I shal make you to be
maad fishers of men.
18. And anoon the nettis forsaken, thei sueden hym.
19. And he gon forth thennes a litil, say James of Zebede, and Joon,
his brother, and hem in the boot makynge nettis.
20. And anoon he clepide him; and Zebede, her fadir, left in the boot
with hirid seruantis, their sueden hym.
21. And thei wenten forth in to Cafarnaum, and anoon in the sabotis he
gon yn into the synagoge, taughte them.
22. And thei wondreden on his techynge; sothely he was techynge hem,
as hauynge power, and not as scribis.
23. And in the synagoge of hem was a man in an vnclene spirit, and he
cried,
24. Seyinge, What to vs and to thee, thou Jhesu of Nazareth? haste
thou cummen bifore the tyme for to destroie vs? Y woot thot thou art
the holy of God.
25. And Jhesus thretenyde to hym, seyinge, Wexe dowmb, and go out of
the man.
26. And the vnclene goost debrekynge hym, and cryinge with grete vois,
wente awey fro hym.
27. And alle men wondriden, so that thei soughten togidre among hem,
seyinge, What is this thinge? what is this newe techyng? for in power
he comaundith to vnclene spirits, and thei obeyen to hym.
28. And the tale, or _tything_, of hym wente forth anoon in to al the
cuntree of Galilee.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: Part of Chapter I of the Gospel of St. Mark, as
translated by Wyclif. It will be noted that Wyclif's orthography is
irregular, the same word being often spelled differently on the same
page. This selection is printed in the original as a specimen of the
English of Wyclif's time.]
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Born about 1340, died in 1400; son of a London vintner;
taken prisoner in Brittany in 1359 while serving with the
king's army; sent to Italy on a royal embassy in 1374 and
again in 1378; besides the "Canterbury Tales," wrote many
books; a large number once attributed to him are now
considered spurious.
OF ACQUIRING AND USING RICHES[16]
When Prudence had heard her husband avaunt himself of his riches and
of his money, disparaging the power of his adversaries, she spake and
said in this wise: Certes, dear sir, I grant you that ye are rich and
mighty, and that riches are good to 'em that have well obtained 'em,
and that well can use 'em; for, just as the body of a man may not live
without soul, no more may it live without temporal goods, and by
riches may a man get him great friends; and therefore saith Pamphilus:
If a neatherd's daughter be rich, she may chose of a thousand men
which she will take to her husband; for of a thousand men one will not
forsake her nor refuse her. And this Pamphilus saith also: If thou be
right happy, that is to say, if thou be right rich, thou shalt find a
great number of fellows and friends; and if thy fortune change, that
thou wax poor, farewell friendship and fellowship, for thou shalt be
all alone without any company, except it be the company of poor folk.
And yet saith this Pamphilus, moreover, that they that are bond and
thrall of linage should be made worthy and noble by riches.
And just as by riches there come many goods, so by poverty come there
many harms and evils; and therefore says Cassiodore,[17] poverty the
mother of ruin, that is to say, the mother of overthrowing or falling
down; and therefore saith Piers Alphonse: One of the greatest
adversities of the world is when a free man by kind, or of birth, is
constrained by poverty to eat the alms of his enemy. And the same
saith Innocent in one of his books; he saith that sorrowful and
mishappy is the condition of a poor beggar, for if he asks not his
meat he dieth of hunger, and if he ask he dieth for shame; and dire
necessity constraineth him to ask; and therefore saith Solomon: That
better it is to die than for to have such poverty; and, as the same
Solomon saith: Better it is to die of bitter death, than for to live
in such wise.
By these reasons that I have said unto you, and by many other reasons
that I could say, I grant you that riches are good to 'em that well
obtained them, and to him that well uses riches; and therefore will I
shew you how ye should behave you in gathering of your riches, and in
what manner ye should use 'em. First, ye should get 'em without great
desire, by good leisure, patiently, and not over hastily, for a man
that is too desiring to get riches abandoneth him first to theft and
to all other evils; and therefore saith Solomon: He that hasteth him
too busily to wax rich, he shall be not innocent: he saith also, that
the riches that hastily cometh to a man soon lightly goeth and passeth
from a man, but that riches that cometh little and little waxeth alway
and multiplieth. And, sir, ye should get riches by your wit and by
your travail, unto your profit, and that without wrong or harm doing
to any other person; for the law saith: There maketh no man himself
rich, if he do harm to another wight; that is to say, that Nature
defendeth and forbiddeth by right, that no man make himself rich unto
the harm of another person.
And Tullius[18] saith: That no sorrow, no dread of death, nothing that
may fall unto a man, is so much against nature as a man to increase
his owyn profit to harm of another man. And though the great men and
the mighty men get riches more lightly than thou, yet shalt thou not
be idle nor slow to do thy profit, for thou shalt in all wise flee
idleness; for Solomon saith: That idleness teacheth a man to do many
evils; and the same Solomon saith: That he that travaileth and busieth
himself to till his land, shall eat bread, but he that is idle, and
casteth him to no business nor occupation, shall fall into poverty,
and die for hunger. And he that is idle and slow can never find
convenient time for to do his profit; for there is a versifier who
saith, that the idle man excuseth him in winter because of the great
cold, and in summer then by reason of the heat.
For these causes, saith Cato, waketh and inclineth you not over much
to sleep, for over much rest nourisheth and causeth many vices; and
therefore saith St. Jerome: Do some good deeds, that the devil, which
is our enemy, find you not unoccupied, for the devil he taketh not
lightly unto his working such as he findeth occupied in good works.
Then thus in getting riches ye must flee idleness; and afterward ye
should use the riches which ye have got by your wit and by your
travail, in such manner, that men hold you not too scarce, nor too
sparing, nor fool-large, that is to say, over large a spender; for
right as men blame an avaricious man because of his scarcity and
niggardliness, in the same wise he is to blame that spendeth over
largely; and therefore saith Cato: Use (saith he) the riches that thou
hast obtained in such manner, that men have no matter nor cause to
call thee neither wretch nor miser, for it is a great shame to a man
to have a poor heart and a rich purse; he saith also: The goods that
thou hast obtained, use 'em by measure, that is to say, spend
measurably, for they that foolishly waste and squander the goods that
they have, when they have no more proper of 'eir own, that they
prepare to take the goods of another man. I say, then, that ye should
flee avarice, using your riches in such manner, that men say not that
your riches are buried, but that ye have 'em in your might and in your
wielding; for a wise man reproveth the avaricious man, and saith thus
in two verse: Whereto and why burieth a man his goods by his great
avarice, and knoweth well that needs must he die, for death is the
end of every man as in this present life.
And for what cause or reason joineth he him, or knitteth he him so
fast unto his goods, that all his wits will not dissever him or depart
him from his goods, and knoweth well, or ought to know, that when he
is dead he shall nothing bear with him out of this world? And
therefore saith St. Augustine, that the avaricious man is likened unto
hell, that the more it swalloweth the more desire it hath to swallow
and devour. And as well as ye would eschew to be called an avaricious
man or a chinch, as well should ye keep you and govern you in such
wise, that men call you not fool-large; therefore, saith Tullius: The
goods of thine house should not be hid nor kept so close, but that
they might be opened by pity and debonnairety, that is to say, to give
'em part that have great need; but the goods should not be so open to
be every man's goods.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: One of the only two "Canterbury Tales" that were written
in prose, its title being "The Tale of Melibæus." The spelling here
has been partly modernized.]
[Footnote 17: Statesman and historian; born about 464 A.D.; an
administrative officer under Odoacer Theodoric, whose works were
published in 1679.]
[Footnote 18: Cicero.]
WILLIAM CAXTON
Born about 1422, died in 1491; the first English printer;
began to translate the "Histories de Troye" in 1469 and
issued the work in 1474, either at Cologne or Bruges;
translated and had printed in 1475 "The Game and Playe of
Chesse," the second printed English book; set up a press in
Westminster, London, in 1476, where he continued to print
books until his death.
OF TRUE NOBILITY AND CHIVALRY[19]
The knight ought to be made all armed upon an apt horse, in such wise
that he have an helmet on his head, and a spear in his right hand, and
covered with his shield; a sword and a mace on his left side; clad
with an hauberk and plates before his breast; leg harness on his legs;
spurs on his heels; on his hands his gauntlets. His horse well broken
and taught, and apt to battle, and covered with his arms. When the
knights be made they be bayned or bathed. That is the sign that they
should lead a new life and new manners; also they wake all the night
in prayers and orisons unto God that he will give them grace that they
may get that thing that they may not get by nature. The king or prince
girdeth about them a sword, in sign that they should abide and keep
him of whom they take their dispences and dignity.
Also a knight ought to be wise, liberal, true, strong, and full of
mercy and pity, and keeper of the people, and of the law, and right as
chivalry passeth other in virtue, in dignity, in honor, and in
reverence, right so ought he to surmount all other in virtue; for
honor is nothing else but to do reverence to another person for the
good and virtuous disposition that is in him. A noble knight ought to
be wise and proved before he be made knight; it behoveth him that he
had long time used the war and arms; that he may be expert and wise
for to govern others. For since a knight is captain of a battle, the
life of them that shall be under him lieth in his hand, and therefore
behooveth him to be wise and well advised. For sometimes art, craft
and engine is more worth than strength of hardiness of a man that is
not proved in arms, for otherwhile it happeneth that when the prince
of the battle relies on and trusteth in his hardiness and strength,
and will not use wisdom and engine for to run upon his enemies, he is
vanquished and his people slain. Therefore saith the philosopher that
no man should choose young people to be captains and governors,
forasmuch as there is no certainty in their wisdom. Alexander of
Macedon vanquished and conquered Egypt, Judæa, Chaldee, Africa, and
Assyria unto the marches of Bragmans more by the counsel of old men
than by the strength of the young men.
The very true love of the common weal and profit now-a-days is seldom
found. Where shalt thou find a man in these days that will expose
himself for the worship and honor of his friend or for the common
weal. Seldom or never shall he be found. Also the knights should be
large and liberal, for when a knight hath regard unto his singular
profit by his covetousness, he despoileth his people. For when the
soldiers see that they put them in peril, and their master will not
pay them their wages liberally, but intendeth to his own proper gain
and profit, then, when the enemies come, they turn soon their backs
and flee oftentimes. And thus it happeneth by him that intendeth more
to get money than victory, that his avarice is ofttimes cause of his
confusion.
Then let every knight take heed to be liberal, in such wise that he
ween not nor suppose that his scarcity be to him a great winning or
gain. And for this cause he be the less loved of his people, and that
his adversary withdraw to him them by large giving. For ofttime battle
is advanced more for getting of silver than by the force and strength
of men. For men see all day that such things as may not be achieved by
force of nature be gotten and achieved by force of money. And
forsomuch it behooveth to see well to that when the time of battle
cometh, that he borrow not, nor make no curtailment. For no man may be
rich that leaveth his own, hoping to get and take of others. Then
alway all their gain, and winning ought to be common among them except
their arms. For in like wise as the victory is common, so should the
despoil and booty be common unto them. And therefore David, that
gentle knight in the first book of Kings in the last chapter, made a
law: that he that abode behind by malady or sickness in the tents
should have as much part of the booty as he that had been in the
battle. And for the love of this law he was made afterward king of
Israel.
Alexander of Macedon came in a time like a simple knight unto the
court of Porus, king of Ind, for to espy the estate of the king and
of the knights of the court. And the king received him right
worshipfully and demanded many things of Alexander and of his
constancy and strength, nothing weening that he had been Alexander,
but Antigone, one of his knights. And after he had him to dinner; and
when they had served Alexander in vessel of gold and silver with
diverse meats, after that he had eaten such as pleased him, he voided
the meat and took the vessel and held it to himself and put it in his
bosom or sleeves. Whereof he was accused unto the king. After dinner
then the king called him and demanded wherefore he had taken his
vessel, and he answered: Sir King, my lord, I pray thee to understand
and take heed thyself and also thy knights. I have heard much of thy
great highness, and that thou art more mighty and puissant in chivalry
and in dispences than is Alexander, and therefore I am come to thee, a
poor knight, which am named Antigone, for to serve thee. Then it is
the custom in the court of Alexander that what thing a knight is
served with, all is his, meat and vessel and cup. And therefore I had
supposed that this custom had been kept in thy court, for thou art
richer than he. When the knights heard this, anon they left Porus, and
went to serve Alexander, and thus he drew to him the hearts of them by
gifts, which afterward slew Porus that was king of Ind, and they made
Alexander king thereof. Therefore remember, knight, alway that with a
closed and shut purse thou shalt never have victory. Ovid saith that
he that taketh gifts, he is glad therewith, for they win with gifts
the hearts of the gods and of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 19: From the "Game and Playe of Chesse," translated by
Caxton from the French original.]
SIR THOMAS MALORY
Born about 1430, died after 1470; compiler and translator of
the "Morte d'Arthur" from French prose romances which had
been built up on earlier poems dealing with the life and
death of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table; the
"Morte d'Arthur" printed by Caxton in 1485.
OF THE FINDING OF A SWORD FOR ARTHUR[20]
And so Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur said, "I
have no sword." "No matter," said Merlin; "hereby is a sword that
shall be yours and I may." So they rode till they came to a lake,
which was a fair water and a broad; and in the midst of the lake King
Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair
sword in the hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, "yonder is the
sword that I spake of."
With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. "What damsel is
that?" said the King. "That is the Lady of the Lake," said Merlin;
"and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as fair a place as
any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this damsel will come to you
anon, and then speak fair to her that she will give you that sword."
Therewith came the damsel to King Arthur, and saluted him, and he her
again. "Damsel," said the King, "what sword is that which the arm
holdeth yonder above the water? I would it were mine, for I have no
sword." "Sir King," said the damsel of the lake, "that sword is mine,
and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it."
"By my faith," said King Arthur, "I will give you any gift that you
will ask or desire." "Well," said the damsel, "go ye into yonder
barge, and row yourself unto the sword, and take it and the scabbard
with you; and I will ask my gift when I see my time."
So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, tied their horses to two trees,
and so they went into the barge. And when they came to the sword that
the hand held, King Arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with
him; and the arm and the hand went under the water, and so came to the
land and rode forth.
Then King Arthur saw a rich pavilion. "What signifieth yonder
pavilion?" "That is the knight's pavilion that ye fought with
last--Sir Pellinore; but he is out; for he is not there: he hath had
to do with a knight of yours, that hight Eglame, and they have
foughten together a great while, but at the last Eglame fled, and else
he had been dead; and Sir Pellinore hath chased him to Carlion, and we
shall anon meet with him in the highway." "It is well said," quoth
King Arthur; "now have I a sword, and now will I wage battle with him
and be avenged on him." "Sir, ye shall not do so," said Merlin: "for
the knight is weary of fighting and chasing; so that ye shall have no
worship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched of
one knight living: and therefore my counsel is, that yet let him pass;
for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons after his
days. Also ye shall see that day in short space, that ye shall be
right glad to give him your sister to wife." "When I see him," said
King Arthur, "I will do as ye advise me."
Then King Arthur looked upon the sword and liked it passing well.
"Whether liketh you better," said Merlin, "the sword or the scabbard?"
"Me liketh better the sword," said King Arthur. "Ye are more unwise,"
said Merlin; "for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword: for while ye
have the scabbard upon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so
sore wounded--therefore keep well the scabbard alway with you." So
they rode on to Carlion.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 20: From the "Morte d'Arthur."]
SIR THOMAS MORE
Born in 1478, died in 1535; met Erasmus in London in 1497;
after 1503 devoted himself mainly to politics; entered
Parliament in 1504; ambassador to Flanders in 1515;
published "Utopia" in 1516; privy counsellor to Henry VIII
in 1518; present with the King at the Field of the Cloth of
Gold in 1520; speaker of the House of Commons in 1523;
defended the papacy against Luther; succeeded Wolsey as
chancellor in 1529; refused in 1534 to take the oath of
adherence to the act vesting the succession in the issue of
Anne Boleyn and committed to the Tower, indicted for high
treason and executed July 6th, 1535.
LIFE IN UTOPIA[21]
There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well built,
the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all
contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand
will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four miles' distance from
one another, and the most remote are not so far distant but that a man
can go on foot in one day from it to that which lies next it. Every
city sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot, to
consult about their common concerns; for that is the chief town of the
island, being situated near the center of it, so that it is the most
convenient place for their assemblies. The jurisdiction of every city
extends at least twenty miles; and where the towns lie wider, they
have much more ground. No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the
people consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords.
They have built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen;
which are well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for
country labor. Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to
dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in
it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a mistress set over
every family, and over thirty families there is a magistrate. Every
year twenty of this family come back to the town after they have
stayed two years in the country, and in their room there are other
twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country work from those
that have been already one year in the country, as they must teach
those that come to them the next from the town. By this means such as
dwell in those country farms are never ignorant of agriculture, and so
commit no errors which might otherwise be fatal and bring them under a
scarcity of corn. But tho there is every year such a shifting of the
husbandmen, to prevent any man being forced against his will to follow
that hard course of life too long, yet many among them take such
pleasure in it that they desire leave to continue in it many years.
These husbandmen till the ground, breed cattle, hew wood and convey it
to the towns either by land or water, as is most convenient. They
breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner: for
the hens do not sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs are laid
in a gentle and equal heat in order to be hatched; and they are no
sooner out of the shell, and able to stir about, but they seem to
consider those that feed them as their mothers, and follow them as
other chickens do the hen that hatched them. They breed very few
horses, but those they have are full of mettle, and are kept only for
exercising their youth in the art of sitting and riding them; for they
do not put them to any work, either of plowing or carriage, in which
they employ oxen. For tho their horses are stronger, yet they find
oxen can hold out longer; and as they are not subject to so many
diseases, so they are kept upon a less charge and with less trouble.
And even when they are so worn out that they are no more fit for
labor, they are good meat at last. They sow no corn but that which is
to be their bread: for they drink either wine, cider, or perry, and
often water, sometimes boiled with honey or licorice, with which they
abound; and tho they know exactly how much corn will serve every town
and all that tract of country which belongs to it, yet they sow much
more, and breed more cattle, than are necessary for their consumption,
and they give that overplus of which they make no use to their
neighbors.
When they want anything in the country which it does not produce, they
fetch that from the town, without carrying anything in exchange for
it. And the magistrates of the town take care to see it given them;
for they meet generally in the town once a month, upon a festival day.
When the time of harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send
to those in the towns, and let them know how many hands they will need
for reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being sent to
them, they commonly dispatch it all in one day.
He that knows one of their towns knows them all--they are so like one
another, except where the situation makes some difference. I shall
therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot; for
as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to this,
because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was none of
them better known to me, I having lived five years all together in it.
It lies upon the side of a hill, or rather a rising ground. Its figure
is almost square: for from the one side of it, which shoots up almost
to the top of the hill, it runs down, in a descent for two miles, to
the river Anider; but it is a little broader the other way that runs
along by the bank of that river. The Anider rises about eighty miles
above Amaurot, in a small spring at first. But other brooks falling
into it, of which two are more considerable than the rest, as it runs
by Amaurot it is grown half a mile broad; but it still grows larger
and larger, till after sixty miles' course below it, it is lost in the
ocean. Between the town and the sea, and for some miles above the
town, it ebbs and flows every six hours with a strong current. The
tide comes up about thirty miles so full that there is nothing but
salt water in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its
force; and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a
little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when
the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a
bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone,
consisting of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the town
which is farthest from the sea, so that the ships, without any
hindrance, lie all along the side of the town.
There is likewise another river that runs by it, which, tho it is not
great, yet it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the same hill on
which the town stands, and so runs down through it and falls into the
Anider. The inhabitants have fortified the fountain-head of this
river, which springs a little without the towns; that so, if they
should happen to be besieged, the enemy might not be able to stop or
divert the course of the water, nor poison it; from thence it is
carried in earthen pipes to the lower streets. And for those places of
the town to which the water of that small river can not be conveyed,
they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water, which supplies
the want of the other.
The town is compassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are
many towers and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set
thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river
is instead of a ditch on the fourth side. The streets are very
convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds.
Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a
street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad. There
lie gardens behind all their houses; these are large, but inclosed
with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every
house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden.
Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so
they shut of their own accord; and there being no property among them,
every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten
years' end they shift their houses by lots. They cultivate their
gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs,
and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept
that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so
beautiful as theirs. And this humor of ordering their gardens so well
is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an
emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with
each other. And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town
that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the
town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens;
for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by
Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement
of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too
much for one man to bring to perfection.
Their records, that contain the history of their town and state, are
preserved with an exact care, and run backward seventeen hundred and
sixty years. From these it appears that their houses were at first low
and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built
with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three
stories high; the fronts of them are faced either with stone,
plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their walls they
throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat; and on them they lay a
sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that
it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than
lead. They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they
glaze their windows; they use also in their windows a thin linen
cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and
gives free admission to the light.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: The "Utopia" was written originally in Latin. It derived
its name from an imaginary island, the seat of an ideal state. Ralph
Robinson made a translation into English in 1551. Another translation
was made by Bishop Burnet in 1633.]
JOHN KNOX
Born in 1505, died in 1572; early influenced by George
Wishart, a Lutheran refugee who had found an asylum in
Scotland; a royal chaplain in 1550; assisted in the revision
of the Prayer-book; fled to the Continent after the
accession of Mary Tudor and visited Calvin; preached for a
time at Frankfort and afterward traveled and preached in
Scotland; occupied himself with the organization of the
Presbyterian Church, having frequent dramatic encounters
with Mary, Queen of Scots, whose sympathies were Catholic.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS[22]
The queen, in a vehement fume, began to cry out that never prince was
handled as she was. "I have," said she, "borne with you in all your
rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my
uncles; yea, I have sought your favors by all possible means. I
offered unto you presence and audience, whensoever it pleased you to
admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God I shall be
anes [once] revenged." And with these words scarcely could Marnock,
her secret chamber-boy, get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the
tears; and the owling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech.
The said John did patiently abide all the first fume, and at
opportunity answered: "True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been
at diverse controversies, into the which I never perceived your Grace
to be offended at me. But when it shall please God to deliver you from
that bondage of darkness and error, in the which ye have been
nourished, for the lack of true doctrine, your majesty will find the
liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Without the preaching-place,
Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me, and there,
Madam, I am not master of myself, but man [must] obey Him who commands
me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the
earth."
"But what have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage?"
"If it please your majesty," said he, "patiently to hear me, I shall
shew the truth in plain words. I grant your Grace offered me more than
ever I required; but my answer was then, as it is now, that God hath
not sent me to await upon the courts of princesses, nor upon the
chambers of ladies; but I am sent to preach the evangel of Jesus
Christ to such as please to hear it; and it hath two parts--repentance
and faith. And now, Madam, in preaching repentance, of necessity it
is, that the sins of men be so noted, that they may know wherein they
offend; but so it is, that the most part of your nobility are so
addicted to your affections, that neither God, His word, nor yet their
commonwealth, are rightly regarded. And therefore, it becomes me so
to speak that they may know their duty."
"What have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage? Or what are ye
within this commonwealth?"
"A subject born within the same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I
neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me--how
abject that ever I be in your eyes--a profitable member within the
same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such
things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the
nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness of me.
And therefore, Madam, to yourself I say that which I speak in public
place: whensoever that the nobility of this realm shall consent that
ye be subject to an unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them
lieth to renounce Christ, to banish His truth from them, to betray the
freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort
to yourself."
At these words, owling was heard, and tears might have been seen in
greater abundance than the matter required. John Erskine of Dun--a man
of meek and gentle spirit--stood beside, and entreated what he could
to mitigate her anger, and gave unto her many pleasing words of her
beauty, of her excellence, and how that all the princes of Europe
would be glad to seek her favors. But all that was to cast oil in the
flaming fire. The said John stood still, without any alteration of
countenance, for a long season, while that the queen gave place to her
inordinate passion, and in the end he said: "Madam, in God's presence
I speak: I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures;
yea, I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys, whom my own
hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your majesty's weeping. But,
seeing that I have offered unto you no just occasion to be offended,
but have spoken the truth, as my vocation craves, I may sustain,
albeit unwillingly, your majesty's tears, rather than hurt my
conscience, or betray my commonwealth."
Herewith was the queen more offended, and commanded the said John to
pass forth of the cabinet, and to abide further of her pleasure in the
chamber. The Laird of Dun tarried, and Lord John of Coldingham came
into the cabinet, and so they both remained with her near the space of
an hour. The said John stood in the chamber, as one whom men had never
seen--so were all effrayed--except that the Lord Ochiltree bare him
company; and therefore began he to forge talking of the ladies, who
were there sitting in all their gorgeous apparel, which espied, he
merrily said: "O fair ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if
it should ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven
with all this gay gear! But fie upon that knave Death, that will come
whether we will nor not! And when he has laid on his arrest, the foul
worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so tender; and the
silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that it can neither carry with
it gold, garnishing, targeting, pearl, nor precious stones." And by
such means procured he the company of women; and so passed the time
till that the Laird of Dun willed him to depart to his house.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 22: From the "History of the Reformation in Scotland." The
spelling has been modernized. After the arrival of Mary in Scotland in
1561, Knox had several interviews with her, followed by an open
rupture with her party in the government of Scotland, and by his
retirement into comparative privacy. Burton, the historian of
Scotland, believes that the dialog here given took place in French,
rather than in the language in which Knox reports it. Mary's habitual
speech was French and Knox knew the language well.]
ROGER ASCHAM
Born in 1515, died in 1568; educated at Cambridge, where he
taught Greek; became a tutor to Princess Elizabeth,
afterward to the Queen, in 1548; served as Latin Secretary
to Queens Mary and Elizabeth, 1563-68; his work, "The
Schoolmaster," published in 1570.
OF GENTLE METHODS IN TEACHING[23]
Yet some will say that children, of nature, love pastime, and mislike
learning; because, in their kind, the one is easy and pleasant, the
other hard and wearisome. Which is an opinion not so true as some men
ween. For the matter lieth not so much in the disposition of them that
be young, as in the order and manner of bringing up by them that be
old; nor yet in the difference of learning and pastime. For, beat a
child if he dance not well, and cherish him tho he learn not well, you
shall have him unwilling to go to dance, and glad to go to his book;
knock him always when he draweth his shaft ill, and favor him again
tho he fault at his book, you shall have him very loth to be in the
field, and very willing to be in the school. Yea, I say more, and not
of myself, but by the judgment of those from whom few wise men will
gladly dissent; that if ever the nature of man be given at any time,
more than other, to receive goodness, it is in innocency of young
years, before that experience of evil have taken root in him. For the
pure clean wit of a sweet young babe is like the newest wax, most
able to receive the best and fairest printing; and like a new bright
silver dish never occupied, to receive and keep clean any good thing
that is put into it.
And thus, will in children, wisely wrought withal, may easily be won
to be very well willing to learn. And wit in children, by nature,
namely memory, the only key and keeper of all learning, is readiest to
receive and surest to keep any manner of thing that is learned in
youth. This, lewd and learned, by common experience know to be most
true. For we remember nothing so well when we be old as those things
which we learned when we were young. And this is not strange, but
common in all nature's works. "Every man seeth (as I said before) new
wax is best for printing, new clay fittest for working, new-shorn wool
aptest for soon and surest dyeing, new fresh flesh for good and
durable salting." And this similitude is not rude, nor borrowed of the
larder-house, but out of his school-house, of whom the wisest of
England need not be ashamed to learn. "Young grafts grow not only
soonest, but also fairest, and bring always forth the best and
sweetest fruit; young whelps learn easily to carry; young popinjays
learn quickly to speak." And so, to be short, if in all other things,
tho they lack reason, sense, and life, the similitude of youth is
fittest to all goodness, surely nature in mankind is most beneficial
and effectual in their behalf.
Therefore, if to the goodness of nature be joined the wisdom of the
teacher, in leading young wits into a right and plain way of
learning; surely children kept up in God's fear, and governed by His
grace, may most easily be brought well to serve God and their country,
both by virtue and wisdom.
But if will and wit, by farther age, be once allured from innocency,
delighted in vain sights, filled with foul talk, crooked with
wilfulness, hardened with stubbornness, and let loose to disobedience;
surely it is hard with gentleness, but impossible with severe cruelty,
to call them back to good frame again. For where the one perchance may
bend it, the other shall surely break it: and so, instead of some
hope, leave an assured desperation, and shameless contempt of all
goodness; the furthest point in all mischief, as Xenophon doth most
truly and most wittily mark.
Therefore, to love or to hate, to like or to contemn, to ply this way
or that way to good or to bad, ye shall have as ye use a child in his
youth.
And one example whether love or fear doth work more in a child for
virtue and learning, I will gladly report; which may be heard with
some pleasure, and followed with more profit.
Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to
take my leave of that noble lady, Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding
much beholding. Her parents, the duke and duchess, with all the
household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I
found her in her chamber, reading Phædo Platonis in Greek, and that
with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in
Boccace. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I
asked her why she would leese [lose] such pastime in the park? Smiling
she answered me: "I wisse, all their sport in the park is but a shadow
to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never
felt what true pleasure meant." "And how came you, madame," quoth I,
"to this deep knowledge of pleasure? and what did chiefly allure you
unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained
thereunto?" "I will tell you," quoth she, "and tell you a truth, which
perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever
God gave me, is, that He sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so
gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or
mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink,
be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else,
I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so
perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so
cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nibs, and
bobs, and other ways which I will not name, for the honor I bear them,
so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time
come that I must go to Mr. Elmer; who teacheth me so gently, so
pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all
the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him,
I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning, is full
of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book
hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure
and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed,
be but trifles and troubles unto me."
I remember this talk gladly, both because it is so worthy of memory,
and because also it was the last talk that ever I had, and the last
time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 23: From "The Schoolmaster."]
JOHN FOXE
Born in 1516, died in 1587; educated at Oxford; became in
1584 tutor to the children of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey;
in order to escape persecution as a Protestant, fled to the
Continent at the accession of Mary Tudor; returned to
England in 1559, becoming in 1563 prebendary in Salisbury
Cathedral; his "Book of Martyrs" first published in 1563.
THE DEATH OF ANNE BOLEYN[24]
In certain records thus we find, that the king, being in his justs at
Greenwich, suddenly, with a few persons, departed to Westminster; and
the next day after, Queen Anne, his wife, was had to the Tower, with
the Lord Rochford, her brother, and certain other, and the nineteenth
day after, was beheaded. The words of this worthy and Christian lady,
at her death, were these: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to
die; for, according to the law, and by the law, I am judged to death,
and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to
accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused, and
condemned to die; but I pray God save the king, and send him long to
reign over you, for a gentler or a more merciful prince was there
never; and to me he was a very good, a gentle, and a sovereign lord.
And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge
the best. And thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all; and I
heartily desire you all to pray for me. The Lord have mercy on me; to
God I recommend my soul." And so she kneeled down, saying, "To Christ
I commend my soul; Jesus, receive my soul," repeating the same divers
times, till at length the stroke was given, and her head was stricken
off.
And this was the end of that godly lady and queen. Godly I call her,
for sundry respects, whatsoever the cause was, or quarrel objected
against her. First, her last words, spoken at her death, declared no
less her sincere faith and trust in Christ than did her quiet modesty
utter forth the goodness of the cause and matter, whatsoever it was.
Besides that, to such as wisely can judge upon cases occurrent, this
also may seem to give a great clearing unto her, that the king, the
third day after, was married in his whites unto another. Certain this
was, that for the rare and singular gifts of her mind, so well
instructed, and given toward God, with such a fervent desire unto the
truth, and setting forth of sincere religion, joined with like
gentleness, modesty, and pity toward all men, there have not many such
queens before her borne the crown of England. Principally, this one
commendation she left behind her, that, during her life, the religion
of Christ most happily flourished, and had a right prosperous course.
Many things might be written more of the manifold virtues, and the
quiet moderation of her mild nature; how lowly she would bear, not
only to be admonished, but also of her own accord would require her
chaplains plainly and freely to tell whatsoever they saw in her
amiss. Also, how bountiful she was to the poor, passing not only the
poor example of other queens, but also the revenues almost of her
estate: insomuch that the alms which she gave in three-quarters of a
year, in distribution, is summed to the number of fourteen or fifteen
thousand pounds; besides the great piece of money which her Grace
intended to impart into four sundry quarters of the realm, as for a
stock, there to be employed to the behoof of poor artificers and
occupiers. Again, what a zealous defender she was of Christ's gospel
all the world doth know, and her acts do and will declare to the
world's end. Amongst which other her acts, this is one, that she
placed Master Hugh Latimer in the bishopric of Worcester, and also
preferred Dr. Sharton to his bishopric, being then accounted a good
man. Furthermore, what a true faith she bore unto the Lord, this one
example may stand for many: for that, when King Henry was with her at
Woodstock,[25] and there being afraid of an old blind prophecy, for
the which neither he nor other kings before him durst hunt in the said
park of Woodstock, nor enter into the town of Oxford, at last, through
the Christian and faithful counsel of that queen, he was so armed
against all infidelity, that both he hunted in the aforesaid park, and
also entered into the town of Oxford, and had no harm. But because
touching the memorable virtues of this worthy queen, partly we have
said something before, partly because more also is promised to be
declared of her virtuous life (the Lord so permitting), by other who
then were about her, I will cease in this matter further to proceed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: From the "Book of Martyrs."]
[Footnote 25: At Woodstock was one of the residences of Henry VIII and
earlier kings. The Black Prince was born there and Elizabeth was there
imprisoned by Queen Mary. After the battle of Blenheim, the place was
given in perpetuity to Marlborough, and his famous residence Blenheim
erected there. It is about eight miles from Oxford.]
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Born in 1552, died in 1618; educated at Oxford; commanded an
English Company in Ireland in 1580; a favorite of Queen
Elizabeth; obtained a charter to colonize Virginia in 1584,
and sent out several expeditions, none of which founded
permanent settlements; introduced tobacco into Europe, and
the potato into Ireland; took an active part against the
Armada in 1588; explored the Oronoko in 1595; charged with
having plotted to place Arabella Stuart on the throne in
1603, and sent to the Tower, where he wrote his "History of
the World"; sailed again for the Oronoko in 1616; and on his
return, the expedition having failed, condemned and
executed.
THE MUTABILITY OF HUMAN AFFAIRS[26]
If we truly examine the difference of both conditions--to wit, of the
rich and mighty, whom we call fortunate, and of the poor and opprest,
whom we count wretched--we shall find the happiness of the one, and
the miserable estate of the other, so tied by God to the very instant,
and both so subject to interchange (witness the sudden downfall of the
greatest princes, and the speedy uprising of the meanest persons), as
the one hath nothing so certain whereof to boast, nor the other so
uncertain whereof to bewail itself.
For there is no man so assured of his honor, of his riches, health, or
life but that he may be deprived of either, or all, the very next hour
or day to come. _Quid vesper vehat, incertum est_; what the evening
will bring with it is uncertain.
And yet ye can not tell, saith St. James, what shall be to-morrow.
To-day he is set up, and to-morrow he shall not be found, for he is
turned into dust, and his purpose perisheth. And altho the air which
compasseth adversity be very obscure, yet therein we better discern
God than in that shining light which environeth worldly glory; through
which, for the clearness thereof, there is no vanity which escapeth
our sight. And let adversity seem what it will--to happy men,
ridiculous, who make themselves merry at other men's misfortunes; and
to those under the cross, grievous--yet this is true, that for all
that is past, to the very instant, the portions remaining are equal to
either. For, be it that we have lived many years (according to
Solomon), "and in them all we have rejoiced"; or be it that we have
measured the same length of days, and therein have evermore sorrowed;
yet, looking back from our present being, we find both the one and the
other--to wit, the joy and the wo--sailed out of sight; and death,
which doth pursue us and hold us in chase from our infancy, hath
gathered it. _Quicquid ætatis retro est, mors tenet_; whatsoever of
our age is past, death holds it.
So as, whosoever he be to whom fortune hath been a servant, and the
time a friend, let him but take the account of his memory (for we have
no other keeper of our pleasures past), and truly examine what it hath
reserved, either of beauty and youth, or foregone delights; what it
hath saved, that it might last, of his dearest affections, or of
whatever else the amorous springtime gave his thoughts of contentment,
then invaluable, and he shall find that all the art which his elder
years have can draw no other vapor out of these dissolutions than
heavy, secret, and sad sighs. He shall find nothing remaining but
those sorrows which grow up after our fast-springing youth, overtake
it when it is at a stand, and overtop it utterly when it begins to
wither; insomuch as, looking back from the very instant time, and from
our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature hath as little
sense of all his former miseries and pains as he that is most blest,
in common opinion, hath of his forepast pleasures and delights. For
whatsoever is cast behind us is just nothing; and what is to come,
deceitful hope hath it. _Omniæ quæ eventura sunt in incerto jacent._
Only those few black swans I must except who, having had the grace to
value worldly vanities at no more than their own price, do, by
retaining the comfortable memory of a well-acted life, behold death
without dread, and the grave without fear, and embrace both as
necessary guides to endless glory....
If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of boundless
ambition in mortal men, we may add, that the kings and princes of the
world have always laid before them the actions, but not the ends of
those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with
the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other,
till they find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice
of God while they enjoy life, or hope it, but they follow the counsel
of death upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the
wisdom of the world without speaking a word, which God, with all the
words of His law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. Death, which
hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and
loves him, is always deferred. "I have considered," saith Solomon,
"all the works that are under the sun, and, behold, all is vanity and
vexation of spirit"; but who believes it, till death tells it us? It
was death, which, opening the conscience of Charles V. made him enjoin
his son Philip to restore Navarre, and King Francis I. of France to
command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the
Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected.
It is therefore death alone that can suddenly make man to know
himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects,
and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent,
yea, even to hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of
the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest
in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass
before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein
their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it.
O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast
persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the
world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and
despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness,
all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over
with these two narrow words, _Hic jacet_!
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 26: From the preface to the "History of the World."]
FRANCIS BACON
Born in 1561, died in 1626; commonly styled "Lord" Bacon,
but incorrectly, his title being Baron Verulam and Viscount
St. Albans; educated at Cambridge; entered Parliament in
1584; solicitor-general in 1607; privy counsellor in 1616;
lord keeper in 1617; lord chancellor in 1618; tried for
bribery, condemned, fined and removed from office in 1621;
one of the chief founders of modern inductive science;
author of "Advancement of Learning" (1605), the "Novum
Organum" (1620), "Essays" (1597-1625), a "History of Henry
VII" (1622) and other works.
I
OF TRAVEL[27]
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a
part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath
some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow
well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been
in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things
are worthy to be seen in the country where they go; what acquaintances
they are to seek; what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth. For
else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a
strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen
but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein
so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if
chance were fitter to be registered than observation. Let diaries
therefore be brought in use. The things to be seen and observed are:
the courts of princes, specially when they give audience to
ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes;
and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries,
with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and
fortifications of cities and towns, and so the havens and harbors;
antiquities and ruins; libraries, colleges, disputations, and
lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of
state and pleasure, near great cities; armories; arsenals; magazines;
exchanges; burses; warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing,
training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the
better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes;
cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in
the places where they go. After all which the tutors or servants ought
to make diligent study. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings,
funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put
in mind of them; yet are they not to be neglected.
If you will have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and
in short time to gather much, this you must do. First, as was said, he
must have some entrance into the language before he goeth. Then he
must have such a servant or tutor as knoweth the country, as was
likewise said. Let him carry with him also some card or book
describing the country where he traveleth; which will be a good key to
his inquiry. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay long in one
city or town; more or less as the place deserveth, but not long; nay,
when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from
one end and part of the town to another; which is a great adamant of
acquaintance. Let him sequester himself from the company of his
countrymen, and diet in such places where there is good company of the
nation where he traveleth. Let him, upon his removes from one place to
another, procure recommendation to some person of quality residing in
the place whither he removeth; that he may use his favor in those
things he desireth to see or know. Thus he may abridge his travel with
much profit.
As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel; that which is
most of all profitable is acquaintance with the secretaries and
employed men of ambassadors: for so in traveling in one country he
shall suck the experience of many. Let him also see and visit eminent
persons in all kinds, which are of great name abroad; that he may be
able to tell how the life agreeth with the fame. For quarrels, they
are with care and discretion to be avoided. They are commonly for
mistresses, healths, place, and words. And let a man beware how he
keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome persons; for they will
engage him into their own quarrels. When a traveler returneth home,
let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether
behind him; but maintain a correspondence by letters with those of his
acquaintance which are of most worth. And let his travel appear rather
in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture; and in his discourse
let him be rather advised in his answers, than forwards to tell
stories; and let it appear that he doth not change his country
manners for those of foreign parts; but only prick in some flowers of
that he hath learned abroad into the customs of his own country.
II
OF RICHES
I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. The Roman word
is better, _impedimenta_. For as the baggage is to an army, so is
riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it
hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or
disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except
it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. So saith Solomon,
"Where much is, there are many to consume it; and what hath the owner
but the sight of it with his eyes?" The personal fruition in any man
cannot reach to feel great riches: there is a custody of them; or a
power of dole and donative of them; or a fame of them; but no solid
use to the owner. Do you not see what feigned prices are set upon
little stones and rarities? and what works of ostentation are
undertaken, because there might seem to be some use of great riches?
But then you will say, they may be of use to buy men out of dangers or
troubles. As Solomon saith, "Riches are as a stronghold, in the
imagination of the rich man."
But this is excellently exprest, that it is in imagination, and not
always in fact. For certainly great riches have sold more men than
they have bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest
get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
Yet have no abstract or friarly contempt of them. But distinguish as
Cicero saith well of Rabirius Posthumus, _In studio rei amplificandæ
apparebat, non avaritiæ prædam, sed instrumentum bonitari quæri_.[28]
Harken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering of riches: _Qui
festinat ad divitias, non erit insons_.[29] The poets feign, that when
Plutus (which is Riches) is sent from Jupiter, he limps and goes
slowly; but when he is sent from Pluto, he runs and is swift of foot.
Meaning that riches gotten by good means and just labor pace slowly;
but when they come by the death of others (as by the course of
inheritance, testaments, and the like), they come tumbling upon a man.
But it might be applied likewise to Pluto, taking him for the devil.
For when riches come from the devil (as by fraud and oppression and
unjust means), they come upon speed.
The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul. Parsimony is one
of the best, and yet is not innocent; for it withholdeth men from
works of liberality and charity. The improvement of the ground is the
most natural obtaining of riches; for it is our great mother's
blessing, the earth's; but it is slow. And yet where men of great
wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly. I
knew a nobleman in England, that had the greatest audits of any man in
my time; a great grazier, a great sheep-master, a great timber man, a
great collier, a great corn-master, a great lead-man, and so of iron,
and a number of the like points of husbandry. So as the earth seemed a
sea to him, in respect of the perpetual importation. It was truly
observed by one, that himself came very hardly to a little riches, and
very easily to great riches. For when a man's stock is come to that,
that he can expect the prime of markets, and overcome those bargains
which for their greatness are few men's money, and be partner in the
industries of younger men, he cannot but increase mainly.
The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest; and furthered
by two things chiefly: by diligence, and by a good name for good and
fair dealing. But the gains of bargains are of a more doubtful nature;
when men shall wait upon others' necessity, broke by servants and
instruments to draw them on, put off others cunningly that would be
better chapmen, and the like practises, which are crafty and naught.
As for the chopping of bargains, when a man buys not to hold but to
sell over again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the seller
and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if the hands be well
chosen that are trusted. Usury is the certainest means of gain, tho
one of the worst; as that whereby a man doth eat his bread in _sudore
vultus alieni_;[30] and besides, doth plough upon Sundays. But yet
certain tho it be, it hath flaws; for that the scriveners and brokers
do value unsound men to serve their own turn. The fortune in being the
first in an invention or in a privilege doth cause sometimes a
wonderful overgrowth in riches; as it was with the first sugar man in
the Canaries.[31] Therefore if a man can play the true logician, to
have as well judgment as invention, he may do great matters;
especially if the times be fit.
He that resteth upon gains certain shall hardly grow to great riches;
and he that puts all upon adventures doth oftentimes break and come to
poverty: it is good therefore to guard adventures with certainties,
that may uphold losses. Monopolies, and co-emption of wares for
re-sale, where they are not restrained, are great means to enrich;
especially if the party have intelligence what things are like to come
into request, and so store himself beforehand. Riches gotten by
service, tho it be of the best rise, yet when they are gotten by
flattery, feeding humors, and other servile conditions, they may be
placed amongst the worst. As for fishing for testaments and
executorships (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, _testamenta et orbos
tamquam indagine capi_,[32]) it is yet worse; by how much men submit
themselves to meaner persons than in service. Believe not much them
that seem to despise riches; for they despise them that despair of
them; and none worse when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches
have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they
must be set flying to bring in more. Men leave their riches either to
their kindred, or to the public; and moderate portions prosper best in
both. A great estate left to an heir, is as a lure to all the birds of
prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the better established
in years and judgment. Likewise glorious gifts and foundations are
like sacrifices without salt; and but the painted sepulchers of alms,
which soon will putrefy and corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not
thine advancements by quantity, but frame them by measure: and defer
not charities till death; for, certainly, if a man weigh it rightly,
he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.
III
OF YOUTH AND AGE
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no
time. But that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first
cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in
thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men is
more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds
better, and as it were more divinely. Natures that have much heat and
great and violent desires and perturbations are not ripe for action
till they have passed the meridian of their years; as it was with
Julius Cæsar and Septimius Severus. Of the latter of whom it is said,
_Juventutem egit erroribus, imo furoribus, plenam_.[33] And yet he was
the ablest emperor, almost, of all the list. But reposed natures may
do well in youth. As it is seen in Augustus Cæsar, Cosmus Duke of
Florence, Gaston de Foix, and others. On the other side, heat and
vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business.
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution
than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled
business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the
compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The
errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged
men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than
they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without
consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles
which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which
draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and that
which doubleth all errors will not acknowledge or retract them; like
an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object
too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and
seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves
with a mediocrity.
Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be
good for the present, because the virtues of either age may correct
the defects of both; and good for succession, that young men may be
learners, while men in age are actors; and, lastly, good for extern
accidents, because authority followeth old men, and favor and
popularity youth. But for the moral part, perhaps youth will have the
preeminence, as age hath for the politic. A certain rabbin, upon the
text, _Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream
dreams_, inferreth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old,
because vision is a clearer revelation than a dream. And certainly,
the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth; and
age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding, than in the
virtues of the will and affections. There be some have an over-early
ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes. These are, first, such
as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned; such as was
Hermogenes[34] the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle; who
afterwards waxed stupid.
A second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions which
find better grace in youth than in age; such as is a fluent and
luxuriant speech; which becomes youth well, but not age: so Tully
saith of Hortensius,[35] _Idem manebat, neque idem decebat_. The
third is of such as take too high a strain at the first, and are
magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold. As was Scipio
Africanus, of whom Livy saith[36] in effect, _Ultima primis cedebant_.
IV
OF REVENGE
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs
to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it
doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law
out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with
his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a
prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, _It is the
glory of a man to pass by an offense._ That which is past is gone, and
irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do with things present and to
come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past
matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake; but
thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the
like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself
better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of
ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or brier, which prick
and scratch, because they can do no other.
The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is
no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as
there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and
it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the
party should know whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the
delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the
party repent. But base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that
flieth in the dark. Cosmus,[37] Duke of Florence, had a desperate
saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs
were unpardonable: _You shall read_ (saith he) _that we are commanded
to forgive our enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to
forgive our friends._ But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune:
_Shall we_ (saith he) _take good at God's hands, and not be content to
take evil also?_ And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain,
that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which
otherwise would heal and do well. Public revenges are for the most
part fortunate; as that for the death of Cæsar; for the death of
Pertinax;[38] for the death of Henry the Third of France;[39] and many
more. But in private revenges it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive
persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end
they infortunate.
V
OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for
they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or
mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the
public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both
in affection and means have married and endowed the public. Yet it
were great reason that those that have children should have greatest
care of future times; unto which they know they must transmit their
dearest pledges. Some there are, who tho they lead a single life, yet
their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times
impertinences. Nay, there are some other that account wife and
children but as bills of charges. Nay more, there are some foolish
rich covetous men, that take a pride in having no children, because
they may be thought so much the richer. For perhaps they have heard
some talk, _Such an one is a great rich, man_, and another except to
it, _Yea, but he hath a great charge of children_; as if it were an
abatement to his riches.
But the most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in
certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of
every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and
garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best
masters, best servants; but not always best subjects; for they are
light to run away; and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A
single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water
the ground where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for
judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall
have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the
generals commonly in their hortatives put men in mind of their wives
and children; and I think the despising of marriage among the Turks
maketh the vulgar soldier more base.
Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and
single men, tho they may be many times more charitable, because their
means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel
and hard-hearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their
tenderness is not so oft called upon.
Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly
loving husbands, as was said of Ulysses,[40] _vetulam suam prætulit
immortalitati_. Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming
upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds both of
chastity and obedience in the wife, if she think her husband wise;
which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives are young men's
mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses. So as a
man may have a quarrel to marry when he will. But yet he was reputed
one of the wise men, that made answer to the question, when a man
should marry--_A young man not yet, an elder man not at all._ It is
often seen that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that
it raiseth the price of their husband's kindness when it comes; or
that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails,
if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends'
consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.
VI
OF ENVY
There be none of the affections which have been noted to fascinate or
bewitch, but love and envy. They both have vehement wishes; they frame
themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions; and they come
easily into the eye, especially upon the presence of the objects;
which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such thing
there be. We see likewise the Scripture calleth envy an evil eye; and
the astrologers call the evil influences of the stars evil aspects; so
that still there seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, an
ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Nay some have been so curious
as to note that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envious
eye doth most hurt are when the party envied is beheld in glory or
triumph; for that sets an edge upon envy: and besides, at such times
the spirits of the person envied do come forth most into the outward
parts, and so meet the blow.
But leaving these curiosities (tho not unworthy to be thought on in
fit place), we will handle, what persons are apt to envy others; what
persons are most subject to be envied themselves; and what is the
difference between public and private envy.
A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others.
For men's minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others'
evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is
out of hope to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even
hand by depressing another's fortune.
A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious. For to know
much of other men's matters cannot be because all that ado may concern
his own estate; therefore it must needs be that he taketh a kind of
play-pleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others. Neither can he
that mindeth but his own business find much matter for envy. For envy
is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep home:
_Non est curiosus, guin idem sit malevolus._[41]
Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new men when they
rise. For the distance is altered; and it is like a deceit of the eye,
that when others come on they think themselves go back.
Deformed persons, and eunuchs, and old men, and bastards, are envious.
For he that can not possibly mend his own case will do what he can to
impair another's; except these defects light upon a very brave and
heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his
honor; in that it should be said, that an eunuch, or a lame man, did
such great matters; affecting the honor of a miracle; as it was in
Narses[42] the eunuch, and Agesilaus[43] and Tamberlanes,[44] that
were lame men.
The same is the case of men that rise after calamities and
misfortunes. For they are as men fallen out with the times; and think
other men's harms a redemption of their own sufferings.
They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity and
vainglory, are ever envious. For they can not want work; it being
impossible but many in some one of those things should surpass them.
Which was the character of Adrian[45] the Emperor; that mortally
envied poets and painters and artificers, in works wherein he had a
vein to excel.
Lastly, near kinsfolks, and fellows in office, and those that have
been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when they are
raised. For it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, and pointeth
at them, and cometh oftener into their remembrance, and incurreth
likewise more into the note of others; and envy ever redoubleth from
speech and fame. Cain's envy was the more vile and malignant towards
his brother Abel, because when his sacrifice was better accepted there
was no body to look on. Thus much for those that are apt to envy.
Concerning those that are more or less subject to envy: First, persons
of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are less envied. For their
fortune seemeth but due unto them; and no man envieth the payment of a
debt, but rewards and liberality rather. Again, envy is ever joined
with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison,
no envy; and therefore kings are not envied but by kings. Nevertheless
it is to be noted that unworthy persons are most envied at their first
coming in, and afterwards overcome it better; whereas contrariwise,
persons of worth and merit are most envied when their fortune
continueth long. For by that time, tho their virtue be the same, yet
it hath not the same luster; for fresh men grow up that darken it.
Persons of noble blood are less envied in their rising. For it seemeth
but right done to their birth. Besides, there seemeth not much added
to their fortune; and envy is as the sunbeams, that beat hotter upon a
bank or steep rising ground, than up a flat. And for the same reason
those that are advanced by degrees are less envied than those that are
advanced suddenly and _per saltum_ [at a bound].
Those that have joined with their honor great travels, cares, or
perils, are less subject to envy. For men think that they earn their
honors hardly, and pity them sometimes; and pity ever healeth envy.
Wherefore you shall observe that the more deep and sober sort of
politic persons, in their greatness, are ever bemoaning themselves,
what a life they lead; chanting a _quanta patimur_. Not that they feel
it so, but only to abate the edge of envy. But this is to be
understood of business that is laid upon men, and not such as they
call unto themselves. For nothing increaseth envy more than an
unnecessary and ambitious engrossing of business. And nothing doth
extinguish envy more than for a great person to preserve all other
inferior officers in their full rights and preeminences of their
places. For by that means there be so many screens between him and
envy.
Above all, those are most subject to envy, which carry the greatness
of their fortunes in an insolent and proud manner; being never well
but while they are showing how great they are, either by outward pomp,
or by triumphing over all opposition or competition; whereas wise men
will rather do sacrifice to envy, in suffering themselves sometimes of
purpose to be crossed and overborne in things that do not much concern
them. Notwithstanding, so much is true, that the carriage of greatness
in a plain and open manner (so it be without arrogancy and vain glory)
doth draw less envy than if it be in a more crafty and cunning
fashion. For in that course a man doth but disavow fortune; and
seemeth to be conscious of his own want in worth; and doth but teach
others to envy him.
Lastly, to conclude this part; as we said in the beginning that the
act of envy had somewhat in it of witchcraft, so there is no other
cure of envy but the cure of witchcraft; and that is, to remove the
_lot_ (as they call it) and to lay it upon another. For which
purpose, the wiser sort of great persons bring in ever upon the stage
somebody upon whom to derive the envy that would come upon themselves;
sometimes upon ministers and servants; sometimes upon colleagues and
associates; and the like; and for that turn there are never wanting
some persons of violent and undertaking nature, who, so they may have
power and business, will take it at any cost.
Now, to speak of public envy. There is yet some good in public envy,
whereas in private there is none. For public envy is as an ostracism,
that eclipseth men when they grow too great. And therefore it is a
bridle also to great ones, to keep them within bounds.
This envy, being in the Latin word _invidia_, goeth in the modern
languages by the name of _discontentment_; of which we shall speak in
handling sedition. It is a disease in a state like to infection. For
as infection spreadeth upon that which is sound, and tainteth it; so
when envy is gotten once into a state, it traduceth even the best
actions thereof, and turneth them into an ill odor. And therefore
there is little won by intermingling of plausible actions. For that
doth argue but a weakness and fear of envy, which hurteth so much the
more, as it is likewise usual in infections; which if you fear them,
you call them upon you.
This public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or
ministers, rather than upon kings and estates themselves. But this is
a sure rule, that if the envy upon the minister be great, when the
cause of it in him is small; or if the envy be general in a manner
upon all the ministers of an estate; then the envy (tho hidden) is
truly upon the state itself. And so much of public envy or
discontentment, and the difference thereof from private envy, which
was handled in the first place.
We will add this in general, touching the affection of envy; that of
all other affections it is the most importune and continual. For of
other affections there is occasion given but now and then; and
therefore it was well said, _Invidia festos dies non agit_:[46] a for
it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted that love
and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because
they are not so continual. It is also the vilest affection, and the
most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the
devil, who is called _the envious man, that soweth tares amongst the
wheat by night_; as it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh
subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things, such
as is the wheat.
VII
OF GOODNESS AND GOODNESS OF NATURE
I take goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which
is that the Grecians call _philanthropia_; and the word _humanity_ (as
it is used) is a little too light to express it. Goodness I call the
habit, and goodness of nature the inclination. This of all virtues and
dignities of the mind is the greatest; being the character of the
Deity: and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no
better than a kind of vermin. Goodness answers to the theological
virtue charity, and admits no excess, but error. The desire of power
in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess
caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can
angel or man come in danger by it. The inclination to goodness is
imprinted deeply in the nature of man; insomuch that if it issue not
towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen
in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts, and
give alms to dogs and birds; insomuch as Busbechius[47] reporteth, a
Christian boy in Constantinople had like to have been stoned for
gagging in a waggishness a long-billed fowl. Errors indeed in this
virtue of goodness or charity may be committed. The Italians have an
ungracious proverb, _Tanto buon che val niente_.[48] And one of the
doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel,[49] had the confidence to put in
writing, almost in plain terms, _That the Christian faith had given up
good men in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust_. Which he
spake, because indeed there was never law or sect or opinion did so
much, magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
Therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, it is good to
take knowledge of the errors of an habit so excellent. Seek the good
of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or fancies; for
that is but facility or softness; which taketh an honest mind
prisoner. Neither give thou Æsop's cock a gem, who would be better
pleased and happier if he had had a barley-corn. The example of God
teacheth the lesson truly: _He sendeth his rain and maketh his sun to
shine upon the just and unjust_; but He doth not rain wealth, nor
shine honor and virtues, upon men equally. Common benefits are to be
communicate with all; but peculiar benefits with choice. And beware
how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern. For divinity
maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbors
but the portraiture. _Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, and
follow me_: but sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow
me; that is, except thou have a vocation wherein thou mayest do as
much good with little means as with great; for otherwise in feeding
the streams thou driest the fountain.
Neither is there only a habit of goodness, directed by right reason;
but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition towards it; as
on the other side there is a natural malignity. For there be that in
their nature do not affect the good of others. The lighter sort of
malignity turneth but to a crossness, or frowardness, or aptness to
oppose, or difficilness, or the like; but the deeper sort to envy and
mere mischief. Such men in other men's calamities are, as it were, in
season, and are ever on the loading part: not so good as the dogs that
licked Lazarus' sores; but like flies that are still buzzing upon
anything that is raw; _misanthropi_ [haters of men], that make it
their practise to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree
for the purpose in their gardens, as Timon[50] had. Such dispositions
are the very errors of human nature; and yet they are the fittest
timber to make great politics of; like to knee timber, that is good
for ships, that are ordained to be tossed; but not for building
houses, that shall stand firm. The parts and signs of goodness are
many. If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is
a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from
other lands, but a continent that joins to them. If he be
compassionate towards the afflictions of others, it shows that his
heart is like the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the
balm. If he easily pardons and remits offenses, it shows that his mind
is planted above injuries; so that he cannot be shot. If he be
thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs men's minds, and
not their trash. But above all, if he have St. Paul's perfection, that
he would wish to be an _anathema_ from Christ for the salvation of his
brethren, it shows much of a divine nature, and a kind of conformity
with Christ Himself.
VIII
OF STUDIES
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief
use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament is in
discourse; and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of
business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of
particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and
marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend
too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament,
is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor
of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience:
for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning,[51]
by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at
large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn
studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach
not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them,
won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe
and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and
consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read
only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to
be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may
be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would
be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books;
else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an
exact man.
And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory;
if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read
little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth
not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile;
natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to
contend. _Abeunt studia in mores._[52] Nay, there is no stond or
impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as
diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good
for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle
walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a
man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in
demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must
begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences,
let him study the Schoolmen; for they are _cymini sectores_ [splitters
of hairs]. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one
thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers'
cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.
IX
OF REGIMENT OF HEALTH
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own
observation, what he finds good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the
best physic to preserve health. But it is a safer conclusion to say,
_This agreeth not well with me, therefore I will not continue it_;
than this, _I find no offense of this, therefore I may use it._ For
strength of nature in youth passeth over many excesses, which are
owing a man till his age. Discern of the coming on of years, and think
not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied. Beware of
sudden change in any great point of diet, and if necessity inforce it,
fit the rest to it. For it is a secret in nature and state, that it is
safer to change many things than one. Examine thy customs of diet,
sleep, exercise, apparel, and the like; and try, in any thing thou
shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it by little and little; but so,
as if thou dost find any inconvenience by the change, thou come back
to it again: for it is hard to distinguish that which is generally
held good and wholesome, from that which is good particularly, and fit
for thine own body.
To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and of
sleep and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting. As
for the passions and studies of the mind; avoid envy; anxious fears,
anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and
exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes;
mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of
them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that
fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories,
fables, and contemplations of nature. If you fly physic in health
altogether, it will be too strange for your body when you shall need
it. If you make it too familiar, it will work no extraordinary effect
when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons,
than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom. For
those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less.
Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it. In
sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action. For those
that put their bodies to endure in health, may in most sicknesses,
which are not very sharp, be cured only with diet and tendering.
Celsus[53] could never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been
a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of
health and lasting, that a man do vary and interchange contraries, but
with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full
eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep;
sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall
nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries. Physicians are some of
them so pleasing and conformable to the humor of the patient, as they
press not the true cure of the disease; and some other are so regular
in proceeding according to art for the disease, as they respect not
sufficiently the condition of the patient. Take one of a middle
temper; or if it may not be found in one man, combine two of either
sort; and forget not to call as well the best acquainted with your
body, as the best reputed of for his faculty.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: The selections here given from Bacon are all from the
"Essays"]
[Footnote 28: Cicero's meaning is that Rabirius was not prompted by
avarice so much as by a desire to obtain the means whereby he could do
good.]
[Footnote 29: This has commonly been translated as "He that maketh
haste to become rich shall not remain innocent."]
[Footnote 30: The meaning is in the sweat of another man's brow rather
than one's own.]
[Footnote 31: Sugar is one of the chief products of the Canary
Islands. These islands are supposed to be identical with those known
to the ancients as the Fortunate Islands.]
[Footnote 32: The remark of Tacitus means that Seneca took profitable
places of trust in such numbers that it was as if he had gathered them
in with a net.]
[Footnote 33: The meaning is that Severus passed his youth, not only
in errors, but that his youth was so full of them as to have been
almost one of madness.]
[Footnote 34: Hermogenes, a native of Tarsus, lived in the second
century A.D.]
[Footnote 35: Hortensius was a Roman orator of Cicero's time and an
early rival of his. The remark here quoted from Tully (Cicero) means
that Hortensius continued a line of action until it was not becoming.]
[Footnote 36: Livy's remark means that Scipio in old age was not equal
to himself in his youth in the things he performed.]
[Footnote 37: Now written Cosmo, or Cosimo. He became duke in 1537.]
[Footnote 38: Pertinax, the Roman emperor, was murdered by the
Pretorian Guards in 193 A.D. The guards were put to death by order of
Septimius Severus, his successor.]
[Footnote 39: Henry was murdered by a monk named Clement, who was put
to death for the crime.]
[Footnote 40: This refers to the refusal of Ulysses to wed a goddess,
preferring his own wife, who was no longer young.]
[Footnote 41: The meaning is that no man is possest by curiosity
unless some malevolence inspires him.]
[Footnote 42: Narses was the associate of Belisarius in command of the
Roman army in Italy in 538-539, and greatly distinguished himself as
the sole commander in later years.]
[Footnote 43: Agesilaus was a famous king of Sparta.]
[Footnote 44: Now commonly written Tamerlane, which stands for Timour
the Lame, Timour being his real name.]
[Footnote 45: Adrian, now commonly called Hadrian, emperor of Rome,
was born in 76, and died in 138.]
[Footnote 46: This saying has been translated "Envy keeps no
holidays."]
[Footnote 47: Busbechius, scholar and diplomat of Flanders, was born
in 1522 and died in 1592.]
[Footnote 48: The meaning is that one may be so good as to be good for
nothing.]
[Footnote 49: Machiavelli, the famous author of "The Prince."]
[Footnote 50: The reference is to Timon of Athens, a real person, who
is the subject of one of Shakespeare's plays.]
[Footnote 51: An early form of the word pruning, which once had a
wider meaning than now.]
[Footnote 52: The meaning is that manners are deeply influenced by
one's studies.]
[Footnote 53: Aulus Celsus, a Roman writer on medicine, who lived in
the first half of the first century A.D.]
SHAKESPEARE
Born in 1564; died in 1616; married Anne Hathaway in 1582;
went to London and became an actor in 1587; began to revise,
or write, plays in 1589; bought "New Place" at Stratford in
1597; retired from the theater in 1610; his plays first
collected in the Folio of 1623.
I
BRUTUS TO HIS COUNTRYMEN[54]
_Brutus._ Be patient till the last.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent,
that you may hear; believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine
honor, that you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awake your
senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this
assembly, any dear friend of Cæsar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love
to Cæsar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus
rose against Cæsar, this is my answer: Not that I lov'd Cæsar less,
but that I lov'd Rome more. Had you rather Cæsar were living and die
all slaves, than that Cæsar were dead, to live all freemen? As Cæsar
lov'd me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he
was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There
is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor; and
death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman?
If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would
not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so
vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I
offended. I pause for reply.
_All._ None, Brutus, none.
_Brutus._ Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Cæsar than
you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enroll'd in the
Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his
offenses enforc'd, for which he suffered death.
--_Enter Antony (and others), with Cæsar's body._
Here comes his body, mourn'd by Mark Antony; who, tho he had no hand
in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the
commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart, that, as
I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for
myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.
II
SHYLOCK IN DEFENSE OF HIS RACE[55]
_Shylock._ There I have another bad match. A bankrupt, a prodigal, who
dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was us'd to
come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond. He was wont to
call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money
for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.
_Salarino._ Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his
flesh. What's that good for?
_Shylock._ To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will
feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hind'red me half a million;
laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted
my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his
reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the
same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do
we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us,
shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble
you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will
execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
III
HAMLET TO THE PLAYERS[56]
_Hamlet._ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the
air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you
must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to see a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipp'd
for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.
_First Player._ I warrant your honor.
_Hamlet._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this
overdone, or come tardy off, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in
your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that
highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted
and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made
men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
_First Player._ I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us,
sir.
_Hamlet._ O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that
will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to
laugh too tho in the mean time some necessary question of the play be
then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful
ambition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
[_Exeunt Players._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 54: From "Julius Cæsar," Act III, Sc. ii.]
[Footnote 55: From "The Merchant of Venice." Act III, Sc. ii.]
[Footnote 56: From "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," Act III, Sc. ii.]
BEN JONSON
Born in 1573; died in 1637; became a player in 1597; his
first play, "Everyman in His Humor," performed at the Globe
Theater in 1598, Shakespeare taking one of the parts; went
to France in 1613 as tutor to a son of Raleigh; visited
Drummond of Hawthornden in 1618; his library, one of the
finest in England, burned about 1621; his works first
collected in 1616; buried in Poet's Corner, Westminster,
Abbey.
OF SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER WITS[57]
I remember the players that have often mentioned it as an honor to
Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never
blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a
thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told
posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine
own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side
idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and
free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle
expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it
was necessary he should be stopt. _Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus
said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it
had been so too. Many times he fell into those things which could not
escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking
to him, "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Cæsar did never
wrong but with just cause"; and such like, which were ridiculous. But
he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to
be praised than to be pardoned.
In the difference of wits I have observed there are many notes; and it
is a little maistry to know them, to discern what every nature, every
disposition will bear; for before we sow our land we should plough it.
There are no fewer forms of minds than of bodies amongst us. The
variety is incredible, and therefore we must search. Some are fit to
make divines, some poets, some lawyers, some physicians, some to be
sent to the plow, and trades.
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting. Some wits
are swelling and high; others low and still; some hot and fiery;
others cold and dull; one must have a bridle, the other a spur. There
be some that are forward and bold; and these will do every little
thing easily. I mean that is hard by and next them, which they will
utter unretarded without any shame-facedness. These never perform
much, but quickly. They are what they are on the sudden; they show
presently like grain that, scattered on the top the ground, shoots up,
but takes no root; has a yellow blade, but the ear empty. They are
wits of good promise at first, but there is an _ingenistitium_; they
stand still at sixteen, they get no higher. You have others that labor
only to ostentation; and are ever more busy about the colors and
surface of a work than in the matter and foundation, for that is hid,
the other is seen.
Others that in composition are nothing but what is rough and broken.
_Quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt._ And if it would come gently,
they trouble it of purpose. They would not have it run without rubs,
as if that style were more strong and manly that struck the ear with a
kind of unevenness. These men err not by chance, but knowingly and
willingly; they are like men that affect a fashion by themselves; have
some singularity in a ruff, cloak, or hatband; or their beards
specially cut to provoke beholders, and set a mark upon themselves.
They would be reprehended while they are looked on. And this vice, one
that is authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to them to be
imitated; so that ofttimes the faults which he fell into, the others
seek for. This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent.
Others there are that have no composition at all; but a kind of tuning
and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes
a sound. Women's poets they are called, as you have women's tailors.
"They write a verse as smooth, as soft as cream,
In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream."
You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle
finger. They are cream-bowl, or but puddle-deep.
Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in all
papers; that write out of what they presently find or meet, without
choice. By which means it happens that what they have discredited and
impugned in one week, they have before or after extolled the same in
another. Such are all the essayists, even their master Montaigne.
These, in all they write, confess still what books they have read
last, and therein their own folly so much that they bring it to the
stake raw and undigested; not that the place did need it neither, but
that they thought themselves furnished and would vent it....
It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more
than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great;
but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of
their ill. For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and
ambitiously seek for) stick out and are more eminent because all is
sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick
darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can
(however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where
the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they
intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body. The
true artificer will not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her,
or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the
capacity of his hearers. And tho his language differ from the vulgar
somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and
Tamer-chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the
scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the
ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it as none
but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called
barren, dull, lean, a poor writer or by what contumelious word can
come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labor, judgment,
knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He
gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men, will
acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his
subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his readers,
with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in
jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men's affections;
how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the
thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper,
which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated,
where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the
composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene,
sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only
praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for
that it is naught.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 57: From "Timber; or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter."]
IZAAK WALTON
Born in 1593, died in 1683; an ironmonger in London in 1618;
his home in Fleet Street in 1624, and from 1628 to 1644 in
Chancery Lane, where he had Dr. John Donne, whose life he
wrote, for friend and neighbor; living at Clerkenwell in
1653, when he published "The Compleat Angler"; after the
Restoration lived at Winchester and Salisbury; wrote lives
of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.
I
THE ANTIQUITY OF ANGLING[58]
_Piscator_--O sir, doubt not that angling is an art: is it not an art
to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout that is more
sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and
timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to
catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast. Doubt not,
therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your
learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning
it? for angling is somewhat like poetry--men are to be born so: I
mean, with inclinations to it, tho both may be heightened by discourse
and practise; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only
bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a
large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the
art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but
angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like
virtue, a reward to itself.
_Venator_--Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long
much to have you proceed, and in the order you propose.
_Piscator_--Then first, for the antiquity of angling, of which I shall
not say much, but only this: some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's
flood,[59] others, that Belus,[60] who was the first inventor of godly
and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling; and some
others say--for former times have had their disquisitions about the
antiquity of it--that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his
sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity; others say that he
left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to
preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that
precious knowledge and those useful arts, which by God's appointment
or allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from
perishing in Noah's flood.
These, sir, have been the opinions of several men that have possibly
endeavored to make angling more ancient than is needful, or may well
be warranted; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you
that angling is much more ancient than the Incarnation of our Savior:
for in the prophet Amos, mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the
book of Job, which was long before the days of Amos--for that book is
said to be writ by Moses--mention is made also of fish-hooks, which
must imply anglers in those times.
But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman by
being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and
communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches; or, wanting
those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors (and yet I
grant that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in
any man, it is a double dignification of that person);--so if this
antiquity of angling, which for my part I have not forced, shall, like
an ancient family, be either an honor or an ornament to this virtuous
art which I profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that
I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it, of which I shall
say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I think it
deserves.
And for that, I shall tell you that in ancient times a debate hath
arisen, and it remains yet unresolved: whether the happiness of man in
this world doth consist more in contemplation or action?
Concerning which, some have endeavored to maintain their opinion of
the first, by saying that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of
imitation, the more happy we are. And they say that God enjoys himself
only by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and
goodness, and the like. And upon this ground, many cloisteral men of
great learning and devotion prefer contemplation before action. And
many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in
their commentaries upon the words of our Savior to Martha (Luke x: 41,
42).
And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit,
that prefer action to be the more excellent; as namely, experiments in
physic, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation
of man's life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to
others, either to serve his country or do good to particular persons.
And they say also that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and
virtue, and is a maintainer of human society; and for these, and other
like reasons, to be preferred before contemplation.
Concerning which two opinions, I shall forbear to add a third by
declaring my own; and rest myself contented in telling you, my very
worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly
belong to the most honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless art of
angling.
And first I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found
it to be a real truth--that the very sitting by the river's side is
not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will
invite an angler to it; and this seems to be maintained by the learned
Peter Du Moulin, who in his discourse on the fulfilling of prophecies,
observes that when God intended to reveal any future events or high
notions to His prophets, He then carried them either to the deserts or
the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of
people and business, and the cares of the world, He might settle their
mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation.
II
OF THE TROUT[61]
The trout is a fish highly valued both in this and foreign nations; he
may be justly said, as the old poet said of wine, and we English say
of venison, to be a generous fish: a fish that is so like the buck
that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and
goes out of season with the stag and buck. Gesner says his name is of
German offspring, and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely,
in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may
justly contend with all fresh-water fish, as the mullet may with all
sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste, and that being in
right season, the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to him.
And before I go further in my discourse, let me tell you, that you are
to observe, that as there be some barren does that are good in summer,
so there be some barren trouts that are good in winter; but there are
not many that are so, for usually they be in their perfection in the
month of May, and decline with the buck. Now you are to take notice,
that in several countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared
to ours, fish differ much in their bigness and shape, and other ways,
and so do trouts: It is well known that in Lake Leman, the lake of
Geneva, there are trouts taken of three cubits long, as is affirmed by
Gesner, a writer of good credit; and Mercator says, the trouts that
are taken in the lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise of
that famous city. And you are further to know, that there be certain
waters, that breed trouts remarkable both for their number and
smallness. I know a little brook in Kent that breeds them to a number
incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none
greater than about the size of a gudgeon: there are also in divers
rivers, especially that relate to or be near to the sea, as
Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a little trout called samlet,
or skegger trout (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty
at a standing), that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows; these
be by some taken to be young salmon; but in those waters they never
grow to be bigger than a herring.
There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called there a
Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the name of the town where it is
usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them
near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their different color; and
in their best season they cut very white; and none of these have been
known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught
by Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he
hath told me, he thought _that_ trout bit not for hunger but
wantonness; and it is rather to be believed, because both he, then,
and many others before him, have been curious to search into their
bellies, what the food was by which they lived, and have found out
nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.
Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good
authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, but are
nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows
not how: and this may be believed, if we consider that when the raven
hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young
ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said, in the Psalms, "to
feed the young ravens that call upon Him." And they be kept alive and
fed by dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other ways
that we mortals know not; and this may be believed of the Fordidge
trout, which, as it is said of the stork (Jerem. viii: 7), that "he
knows his season," so he knows his times, I think almost his day of
coming into the river out of the sea, where he lives, and, it is like,
feeds nine months of the year, and fasts three in the river of
Fordidge. And you are to note that those townsmen are very punctual in
observing the time of beginning to fish for them, and boast much that
their river affords a trout that exceeds all others. And just so does
Sussex boast of several fish; as namely, a Shelsey cockle, a
Chichester lobster, an Arundel mullet, and an Amerly trout.
And now for some confirmation of the Fordidge trout: you are to know
that this trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh water; and it
may be better believed, because it is well known, that swallows and
bats and wagtails, which are called half-year birds, and not seen to
fly in England for six months in the year, but about Michaelmas leave
us for a better climate than this; yet some of them that have been
left behind their fellows, have been found many thousands at a time,
in hollow trees, or clay caves; where they have been observed to live
and sleep out the whole winter without meat; and so Albertus observes,
that there is one kind of frog that hath her mouth naturally shut up
about the end of August, and that she lives so all the winter; and tho
it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be
doubted.
And so much for these Fordidge trouts, which never afford an angler
sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh water by their
meat formerly got in the sea (not unlike the swallow or frog), or by
the virtue of the fresh water only; or, as the birds of Paradise and
the chameleon are said to live, by the sun and the air.
There is also in Northumberland a trout called a bull trout, of a much
greater length and bigness than any in the southern parts. And there
are, in many rivers that relate to the sea, salmon trouts, as much
different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see
sheep in some countries differ one from another in their shape and
bigness, and in the fineness of their wool. And certainly, as some
pastures breed larger sheep, so do some rivers, by reason of the
ground over which they run, breed larger trouts.
Now the next thing that I will commend to your consideration is, that
the trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish. Concerning
which, you are also to take notice, that he lives not so long as the
perch and divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed
in his "History of Life and Death."[62]
And now you are to take notice, that he is not like the crocodile,
which if he lives never so long, yet always thrives till his death.
And you are to know, that he will about, especially before, the time
of his spawning, get almost miraculously through weirs and flood-gates
against the streams; even through such high and swift places as is
almost incredible. Next, that the trout usually spawns about October
or November, but in some rivers a little sooner or later; which is the
more observable, because most other fish spawn in the spring or
summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth and the water, and
made it fit for generation. And you are to note, that he continues
many months out of season; for it may be observed of the trout, that
he is like the buck or the ox, that he will not be fat in many months,
tho he go in the very same pasture that horses do, which will be fat
in one month; and so you may observe, that most other fishes recover
strength, and grow sooner far and in season, than the trout doth.
And next you are to note, that till the sun gets to such a height as
to warm the earth and the water, the trout is sick and lean, and
lousy, and unwholesome; for you shall in winter find him to have a big
head, and then to be lank, and thin, and lean; at which time many of
them have sticking on them sugs, or trout-lice, which is a kind of
worm, in shape like a clove or pin, with a big head, and sticks close
to him and sucks his moisture; those I think the trout breeds himself,
and never thrives till he frees himself from them, which is when warm
weather comes; and then, as he grows stronger, he gets from the dead,
still water, into the sharp streams, and the gravel, and there tubs
off these worms or lice; and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him
into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any
fly or minnow that comes near to him; and he especially loves the
May-fly, which is bred of the cod-worm or caddis; and these make the
trout bold and lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the
end of that month (May) than at any time of the year.
III
THE DEATH OF GEORGE HERBERT[63]
At the time of Mr. Duncon's leaving Mr. Herbert--which was about three
weeks before his death--his old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from
London to Bemerton, and never left him till he had seen him draw his
last breath, and closed his eyes on his death-bed. In this time of his
decay, he was often visited and prayed for by all the clergy that
lived near to him, especially by his friends the Bishop and Prebends
of the Cathedral Church in Salisbury; but by none more devoutly than
his wife, his three nieces--then a part of his family--and Mr.
Woodnot, who were the sad witnesses of his daily decay; to whom he
would often speak to this purpose:
"I now look back upon the pleasures of my life past, and see the
content I have taken in beauty, in wit, in music, and pleasant
conversation, are now all past by me like a dream, or as a shadow that
returns not, and are now all become dead to me, or I to them; and I
see, that as my father and generation hath done before me, so I also
shall now suddenly (with Job) make my bed also in the dark; and I
praise God I am prepared for it; and I praise Him that I am not to
learn patience now I stand in such need of it; and that I have
practised mortification, and endeavored to die daily, that I might not
die eternally; and my hope is, that I shall shortly leave this valley
of tears, and be free from all fevers and pain; and, which will be a
more happy condition, I shall be free from sin, and all the
temptations and anxieties that attend it: and this being past, I shall
dwell in the New Jerusalem; dwell there with men made perfect; dwell
where these eyes shall see my Master and Savior Jesus; and with Him
see my dear mother, and all my relations and friends. But I must die,
or not come to that happy place. And this is my content, that I am
going daily towards it: and that every day which I have lived, hath
taken a part of my appointed time from me; and that I shall live the
less time, for having lived this and the day past."
These, and the like expressions, which he uttered often, may be said
to be his enjoyment of Heaven before he enjoyed it. The Sunday before
his death, he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of
his instruments, took it into his hand and said,
My God, my God,
My music shall find Thee,
And every string
Shall have His attribute to sing.
and having tuned it, he played and sung:
The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King:
On Sundays Heaven's door stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife,
More plentiful than hope.
Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems, as the angels, and he,
and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven. Thus he continued meditating, and
praying, and rejoicing, till the day of his death; and on that day
said to Mr. Woodnot, "My dear friend, I am sorry I have nothing to
present to my merciful God but sin and misery; but the first is
pardoned, and a few hours will now put a period to the latter; for I
shall suddenly go hence, and be no more seen." Upon which expression
Mr. Woodnot took occasion to remember him of the reedifying Layton
Church, and his many acts of mercy. To which he made answer, saying,
"They be good works, if they be sprinkled with the blood of Christ,
and not otherwise."
After this discourse he became more restless, and his soul seemed to
be weary of her earthly tabernacle; and this uneasiness became so
visible, that his wife, his three nieces, and Mr. Woodnot, stood
constantly about his bed, beholding him with sorrow, and an
unwillingness to lose the sight of him, whom they could not hope to
see much longer. As they stood thus beholding him, his wife observed
him breathe faintly, and with much trouble, and observed him to fall
into a sudden agony; which so surprized her, that she fell into a
sudden passion, and required of him to know how he did. To which his
answer was, "that he had passed a conflict with his last enemy, and
had overcome him by the merits of his Master Jesus." After which
answer, he looked up, and saw his wife and nieces weeping to an
extremity, and charged them, if they loved him to withdraw into the
next room, and there pray every one alone for him; for nothing but
their lamentations could make his death uncomfortable. To which
request their sighs and tears would not suffer them to make any reply;
but they yielded him a sad obedience, leaving only with him Mr.
Woodnot and Mr. Bostock.
Immediately after they had left him, he said to Mr. Bostock, "Pray,
Sir, open that door, then look into that cabinet, in which you may
easily find my last will, and give it into my hand"; which being done,
Mr. Herbert delivered it into the hand of Mr. Woodnot, and said, "My
old friend, I here deliver you my last will, in which you will find
that I have made you my sole executor for the good of my wife and
nieces; and I desire you to show kindness to them, as they shall need
it; I do not desire you to be just; for I know you will be so for your
own sake: but I charge you, by the religion of our friendship, to be
careful of them." And having obtained Mr. Woodnot's promise to be so,
he said, "I am now ready to die." After which words, he said, "Lord,
forsake me not now my strength faileth me: but grant me mercy for the
merits of my Jesus. And now, Lord--Lord, now receive my soul." And
with those words he breathed forth his divine soul, without any
apparent disturbance, Mr. Woodnot and Mr. Bostock attending his last
breath, and closing his eyes.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 58: From Part I, Chap. I of "The Compleat Angler."]
[Footnote 59: Deucalion was a legendary king of Phythia in Thessaly.
According to the legend, a deluge having been sent by Zeus, Deucalion,
by advice of his father, built a wooden chest in which he and his wife
were saved, landing after nine days on Mt. Parnassus. By them the
human race, destroyed in the deluge, was renewed.]
[Footnote 60: A mythological person, son of Poseidon.]
[Footnote 61: From Chapter IV of "The Compleat Angler."]
[Footnote 62: The "Historia Vitæ et Mortis," published in 1623.]
[Footnote 63: Author of "The Temple; Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations," published in 1633, the year of Herbert's death.]
JAMES HOWELL
Born in 1595, died in 1666; best known as author of the
"Letters" (1645-1655); edited a French and English
dictionary; and compiled a polyglot dictionary.
I
THE BUCENTAUR CEREMONY IN VENICE[64]
These wishes come to you from Venice, a place where there is nothing
wanting that heart can wish; renowned Venice, the admired'st city in
the world, a city that all Europe is bound unto, for she is her
greatest rampart against that huge eastern tyrant, the Turk, by sea;
else, I believe, he had overrun all Christendom by this time. Against
him this city hath performed notable exploits, and not only against
him, but divers others: she hath restored emperors to their thrones,
and popes to their chairs, and with her galleys often preserved St.
Peter's bark from sinking: for which, by way of reward, one of his
successors espoused her to the sea, which marriage is solemnly renewed
every year in solemn procession by the Doge and all the Clarissimos,
and a gold ring cast into the sea out of the great galeasse, called
the Bucentoro,[65] wherein the first ceremony was performed by the
pope himself, above three hundred years since, and they say it is the
self-same vessel still, tho often put upon the careen and trimmed.
This made me think of that famous ship at Athens; nay, I fell upon an
abstracted notion in philosophy, and a speculation touching the body
of men, which being in perpetual flux, and a kind of succession of
decays, and consequently requiring, ever and anon, a restoration of
what it loseth of the virtue of the former aliment, and what was
converted after the third concoction into a blood and fleshy
substance, which, as in all other sublunary bodies that have internal
principles of heat, useth to transpire, breathe out, and waste away
through invisible pores, by exercise, motion, and sleep, to make room
still for a supply of new nurriture: I fell, I say, to consider
whether our bodies may be said to be of like condition with this
Bucentoro, which, tho it be reputed still the same vessel, yet I
believe there's not a foot of that timber remaining which it had upon
the first dock, having been, as they tell me, so often planked and
ribbed, caulked and pieced.
In like manner, our bodies may be said to be daily repaired by new
sustenance, which begets new blood, and consequently new spirits, new
humors, and, I may say, new flesh; the old, by continual deperdition
and insensible perspirations, evaporating still out of us, and giving
way to fresh; so that I make a question whether, by reason of these
perpetual reparations and accretions, the body of man may be said to
be the same numerical body in his old age that he had in his manhood,
or the same in his manhood that he had in his youth, the same in his
youth that he carried about with him in his childhood, or the same in
his childhood which he wore first in the womb. I make a doubt whether
I had the same identical, individually numerical body, when I carried
a calf-leather satchel to school in Hereford, as when I wore a
lambskin hood in Oxford; or whether I have the same mass of blood in
my veins, and the same flesh, now in Venice, which I carried about me
three years since, up and down London streets, having, in lieu of beer
and ale, drunk wine all this while, and fed upon different viands.
Now, the stomach is like a crucible, for it hath a chemical kind of
virtue to transmute one body into another, to transsubstantiate fish
and fruits into flesh within and about us; but tho it be questionable
whether I wear the same flesh which is fluxible, I am sure my hair is
not the same, for you may remember I went flaxen-haired out of
England, but you shall find me returned with a very dark brown, which
I impute not only to the heat and air of those hot countries I have
eat my bread in, but to the quality and difference of food: you will
say that hair is but an excrementitious thing, and makes not to this
purpose; moreover, methinks I hear thee say that this may be true only
in the blood and spirits, or such fluid parts, not in the solid and
heterogeneal parts.
But I will press no further at this time this philosophical notion,
which the sight of Bucentoro infused into me, for it hath already made
me exceed the bounds of a letter, and, I fear me, to trespass too much
upon your patience; I leave the further disquisition of this point to
your own contemplations, who are a far riper philosopher than I, and
have waded deeper into and drunk more of Aristotle's well. But to
conclude, tho it be doubtful whether I carry about me the same body or
no in all points that I had in England, I am well assured I bear still
the same mind, and therein I verify the old verse:
"Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt."
"The air, but not the mind, they change,
Who in outlandish countries range."
For, what alterations soever happen in this microcosm, in this little
world, this small bulk and body of mine, you may be confident that
nothing shall alter my affections, specially towards you, but that I
will persevere still the same--the very same.
II
THE CITY OF ROME IN 1621[66]
I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country; she
is called _Communis Patria_, for every one that is within the compass
of the Latin Church finds himself here, as it were, at home, and in
his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the
cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this
city; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to
preferments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit,
which is more valued and sought after here than anywhere.
But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills, I
meet her rather spreading upon a flat, having humbled herself, since
she was made a Christian, and descended from those hills to Campus
Martius; with Trastevere and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet
in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast
circuit she had in Claudius his time; for Vopiscus[67] writes she was
then of fifty miles' circumference, and she had five hundred thousand
free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six
to every family in women, children, and servants, came to three
millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that
number.
The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the
state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length, and
two hundred miles in breadth; it contains Ferrara, Bologna, Romagnia,
the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of
Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are
above fifty bishoprics; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and
the exarchate of Ravenna; he hath the town of Benevento in the kingdom
of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He
hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but, rather than offend
his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule,
and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for
a heriot or homage, or what you will call it; he pretends also to be
Lord-paramount of Sicily, Urbia, Parma, and Masseran; of Norway,
Ireland, and England, since King John did prostrate our crown at
Pandulfo his legate's feet.[68]
The state of the apostolic see here in Italy lieth 'twixt two seas,
the Adriatic and the Tyrrhene, and it runs through the midst of Italy,
which makes the pope powerful to do good or harm, and more capable
than any other to be an umpire or an enemy. His authority being mixed
'twixt temporal and spiritual, disperseth itself into so many members,
that a young man may grow old here before he can well understand the
form of government.
The consistory of cardinals meet but once a week, and once a week they
solemnly wait all upon the pope. I am told there are now in
Christendom but sixty-eight cardinals, whereof there are six cardinal
bishops, fifty-one cardinal priests, and eleven cardinal deacons. The
cardinal bishops attend and sit near the pope, when he celebrates any
festival; the cardinal priests assist him at mass; and the cardinal
deacons attire him. A cardinal is bade by a short breve or writ from
the pope in these words: "_Creamus te socium regibus, superiorem
ducibus, et fratrem nostrum._"[69] If a cardinal bishop should be
questioned for any offense, there must be twenty-four witnesses
produced against him. The Bishop of Ostia hath most privilege of any
other, for he consecrates and installs the pope, and goes always next
to him. All these cardinals have the repute of princes, and besides
other incomes, they have the annats of benefices to support their
greatness.
For point of power, the pope is able to put 50,000 men in the field,
in case of necessity, besides his naval strength in galleys. We read
how Paul III sent Charles III twelve thousand foot and five hundred
horse. Pius V sent a greater aid to Charles IX; and for riches,
besides the temporal dominions he hath in all the countries before
named, the datany or dispatching of bulls, the triennial subsidies,
annats, and other ecclesiastical rights, mount to an unknown sum; and
it is a common saying here, that as long as the pope can finger a pen,
he can want no pence. Pius V, notwithstanding his expenses in
buildings, left four millions in the Castle of Saint Angelo in less
than five years; more, I believe, than this Gregory XV will, for he
hath many nephews; and better is it to be the pope's nephew, than to
be a favorite to any prince in Christendom.
Touching the temporal government of Rome, and oppidan affairs, there
is a pretor and some choice citizens, which sit in the Capitol. Among
other pieces of policy, there is a synagog of Jews permitted here--as
in other places of Italy--under the pope's nose, but they go with a
mark of distinction in their hats; they are tolerated for advantage of
commerce, wherein the Jews are wonderful dexterous--tho most of them
be only brokers and Lombardeers; and they are held to be here as the
cynic held women to be--_malum necessarium_....
Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of Rome past, when she
was in that flourish that St. Austin desired to see her in. She who
tamed the world, tamed herself at last, and falling under her own
weight, fell to be a prey to time; yet there is a providence seems to
have a care of her still; for tho her air be not so good, nor her
circumjacent soil so kindly as it was, yet she hath wherewith to keep
life and soul together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is
the sole cause of her peopling now; so that it may be said, when the
pope came to be her head, she was reduced to her first principles; for
as a shepherd was founder, so a shepherd is still governor and
preserver.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: From the "Familiar Letters," the date of this letter
being "Venice, 25th June, 1621."]
[Footnote 65: Now written Bucentaur, the state ship of the Venetian
republic. The ceremony of "espousing the sea" dates from the twelfth
century. The last of the Bucentaur ships of Venice was destroyed by
Napoleon in 1798. It was the third that had been built for Venice.]
[Footnote 66: From the "Familiar Letters."]
[Footnote 67: The historian who lived early in the fourth century
A.D.]
[Footnote 68: King John, in 1213, had made peace with the Pope (who
had deposed him) by consenting to hold his kingdom in fief for the
Pope and to pay to him an annual tribute of 1,000 marks.]
[Footnote 69: These words mean "We create thee companion to kings,
superior to dukes, and our brother."]
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Born in 1605, died in 1682; educated at Oxford, Padua and
Leyden; in 1633 made Doctor of Medicine; settled at Norwich
in 1637; knighted in 1671; his "Religio Medici" published in
1643; author of several other works.
I
OF CHARITY IN JUDGMENTS[70]
Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my
parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of
charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and
naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution
so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have
no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I
wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being
amongst them, make them my common viands, and I find they agree with
my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a
serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or
viper I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I
feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I
find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honor, love, and
embrace them in the same degree.
I was born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and
constellated unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a
garden; all places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in
England, everywhere, and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in
a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would
give me the lie if I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but
the devil; or so at least abhor anything but that we might come to
composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do
contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and
religion--the multitude: that numerous piece of monstrosity which,
taken asunder, seem men and the reasonable creatures of God, but
confused together, make but one great beast and a monstrosity more
prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of charity to call these fools;
it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by
Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe
so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include the base and
minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry, a
sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as
these; men in the same level with mechanics, tho their fortunes do
somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their
follies.
II
NOTHING STRICTLY IMMORTAL[71]
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember
our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short
smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us
or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our
delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.
A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a
transmigration of their souls--a good way to continue their memories,
while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but
act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the
fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their
last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night
of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one
particle of the public soul all things, which was no more than to
return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian
ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet
consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. But all was
vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which
Cambyses[72] or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is
become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for
balsams.
In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even
in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate
their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath
already varied the names contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in
Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in
the heavens, we find they are like the earth--durable in their main
bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new
stars, perspective begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander
about the sun, with Phaeton's favor, would make clear conviction.
There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
beginning, may be confident of no end--which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that can not destroy itself--and the highest strain
of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even
from power of itself; all others have a dependent being and within the
reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either states after
death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy
our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or
names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of
chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration;
and to hold long subsistences, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man
is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,
solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, nor omitting
ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of nature.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sum within us. A
small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus; but wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal
blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies,
wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner,
and an urn.
Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus.[73] The man of
God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by
angels, and adjudged to obscurity, tho not without some marks
directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or
burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of
perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being
still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this
stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all
die but be changed, according to received translation, the last day
will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate
lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened before they be quite
closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall
groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and
living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall
wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations
shall be courted.
While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined
them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not
acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaric seems most subtle, who had a
river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, that thought
himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and
stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes
innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid
to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among
the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.
Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory,
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon
pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that
infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their
diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their
fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand
Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and
ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome
anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the
earth is ashes unto them.
To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to
exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large
satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their
elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief.
To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope,
but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St.
Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything,
in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the
moles of Hadrianus.[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 70: From the "Religio Medici."]
[Footnote 71: From Chapter V of "Urn Burial; or, a Discourse of the
Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk."]
[Footnote 72: Cambyses III, king of Persia who conquered Egypt in 525
B.C.]
[Footnote 73: A Roman emperor whose epitaph was cut in Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, Egyptian and Arabic.]
[Footnote 74: Now the Castle of St. Angelo in Rome.]
JOHN MILTON
Born in 1608, died in 1674; visited Italy in 1638; began his
poetical writings in 1640; Latin Secretary to the
Commonwealth in 1649; became totally blind in 1652; spared
at the Restoration under the Indemnity Act; published
"Paradise Lost" in 1667.
I
ON HIS OWN LITERARY AMBITION[75]
After I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care
of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the tongues,
and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and
teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether
aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to
of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but
chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was
likely to live. But much latelier, in the private academies of Italy,
whither I was favored to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout--for the manner
is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading
there--met with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things
which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch
up among them, were received with written encomiums, which the
Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps, I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home;
and not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me,
that by labor and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this
life, joined to the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written, to after-times, as they should not willingly let
it die.
These thoughts at once possest me, and these other, that if I were
certain to write as men buy leases, for three lives and downward,
there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's glory, by the honor
and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that
I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins,
I applied myself to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the
persuasions of Bembo,[76] to fix all the industry and art I could
unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal
curiosities the end--that were a toilsome vanity; but to be an
interpreter, and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own
citizens throughout this island, in the mother dialect. That what the
greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those
Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this
over and above, of being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring
to be once named abroad, tho perhaps I could attain to that, but
content with these British islands as my world; whose fortune hath
hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small
deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had
her noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks
and mechanics.
Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse, to give any
certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of
her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, tho of highest hope
and hardest attempting. Whether that epic form, whereof the two poems
of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and
the book of Job a brief, model; or whether the rules of Aristotle
herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which in
them that know art, and use judgment, is no transgression, but an
enriching of art. And, lastly, what king or knight before the Conquest
might be chosen, in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And
as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice, whether he would
command him to write of Godfrey's[77] expedition against the infidels,
or Belisarius against the Goths, or Charlemagne against the Lombards;
if to the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may be
trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or the fate
of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an equal diligence
and inclination, to present the like offer in our own ancient
stories. Or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles
and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a
nation.
The Scripture also affords us a fine pastoral drama in the Song of
Solomon, consisting of two persons, and a double chorus, as Origen[78]
rightly judges; and the Apocalypse of St. John is the majestic image
of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermingling her
solemn scenes and acts with a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and
harping symphonies. And this my opinion, the grave authority of
Paræus, commenting that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if occasion
shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus
and Callimachus are in most things worthy, some others in their frame
judicious, in their matter most, and end faulty. But those frequent
songs throughout the law and prophets, beyond all these, not in their
divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition,
may be easily made appear, over all the kinds of lyric poesy, to be
incomparable.
These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of
God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some--tho most abuse--in every
nation: and are of power, besides of the office of a pulpit, to
inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public
civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the
affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the
throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he suffers to be
wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies
of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious
nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ;
to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice
and God's true worship.
Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid
and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe; teaching over the
whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of
example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious
temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself, unless they
see her elegantly drest, that whereas the paths of honesty and good
life appear now rugged and difficult, tho they be indeed easy and
pleasant, they would then appear to all men both easy and pleasant,
tho they were rugged and difficult indeed.
II
A COMPLETE EDUCATION DEFINED[79]
And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough
for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the
languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious
after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us
things useful to be known. And tho a linguist should pride himself to
have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have
not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any
yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence
appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so
unpleasing and so unsuccessful: first, we do amiss to spend seven or
eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and
Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one
year.
And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our
time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and
universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty
wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are
the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by
long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention.
These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood
out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit; besides the ill
habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and
Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet
not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing
among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste: whereas, if
after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got
into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short
book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to
learn the substance of good things and arts in due order, which would
bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be
the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and
whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent
herein.
And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old
error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic
grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most
easy--and those be such as are most obvious to the sense--they present
their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most
intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics, so that they
having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they
stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction,
and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed
and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet
deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and
contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged
notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful
knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately
their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either
to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some
allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes, not on the
prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was
never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of
litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them
to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true
generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts, and tyrannous
aphorisms, appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling
their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather
think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy
spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of
ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which,
indeed, is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they
were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and
these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at schools and
universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things
chiefly as were better unlearned.
I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we
should do, but straight conduct you to a hillside, while I will point
you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious,
indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of
goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of
Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado
to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the
infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and
drag our choicest and hopefulest wits to that asinine feast of sow
thistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the
food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age.
I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits
a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the
offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
III
ON READING IN HIS YOUTH[80]
He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in
laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless
he have in himself the experience and the practise of all that which
is praiseworthy. These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of
nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was,
or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that
modesty, whereof, tho not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused
to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of
their natural aid together kept me still above those low descents of
mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree
to salable and unlawful prostitutions.
Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither my
younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and
romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all
Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he
should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it
so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence
even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the
defense of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of
themselves, had sworn. And if I found in the story afterward, any of
them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault
of the poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written
indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every
free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,
nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his
shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arms, to secure
and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these
books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose
living, I can not think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to
me so many incitements, as you have heard to the love and stedfast
observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.
IV
IN DEFENSE OF BOOKS[81]
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as
well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest
justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead
things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as
that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a
vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that
bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as
those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be
used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man
kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good
book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the
eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life,
whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not
oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole
nations fare the worse.
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the
living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man,
preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may
be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the
whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not
in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and
fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality
rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing
license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so
much historical, as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient
and famous commonwealths against this disorder, till the very time
that this project of licensing crept out of the inquisition, was
catched up by our prelates and hath caught some of our presbyters.
In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than in any other
part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the
magistrate cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and
atheistical, or libelous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the
judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself banished the
territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know
"whether there were gods, or whether not." And against defaming, it
was agreed that none should be traduced by name, as was the manner of
Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how they censured libeling.
And this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the
desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of defaming, as the
event showed. Of other sects and opinions, tho tending to
voluptuousness, and the denying of Divine Providence, they took no
heed.
Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine
school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever
questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of
those old comedians were supprest tho the acting of them were forbid;
and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of
them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may
be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly studied so
much the same author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence
into the style of a rousing sermon.
That other leading city of Greece, Lacedemon, considering that
Lycurgus, their lawgiver, was so addicted to elegant learning, as to
have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of
Homer, and sent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the
Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant
among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and
unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed
no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own
laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out
of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own
soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his
broad verses, they were not therein so cautious, but were as dissolute
in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in
"Andromache," that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give
us light after what sort of books were prohibited among the Greeks.
The Romans also for many ages trained up only to a military roughness,
resembling most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but
what their twelve tables, and the Pontific College with their augurs
and flamens taught them in religion and law, so unacquainted with
other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoic
Diogenes, coming ambassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give
the city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected for seducers
by no less a man than Cato the Censor, who moved it in the Senate to
dismiss them speedily, and to banish all such Attic babblers out of
Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him and
his old Sabine austerity; honored and admired the men; and the censor
himself at last, in his old age, fell to the study of that whereof
before he was so scrupulous. And yet at the same time, Nævius and
Plautus, the first
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/21679