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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.

ing of frequent academies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations, sweetened with eloquent and graceful enticements to the love and practice of justice, temperance, and fortitude; instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities, that the call of wisdom and virtue may be heard everywhere, as Solomon saith: 'She crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets, in the top of high places, in the chief concourse, and in the openings of the gates.' Whether this may be not only in pulpits, but after another persuasive method, at set and solemn paneguries, in theatres, porches, or what other place or way may win most upon the people, to receive at once both And that which casts our proficiency therein so recreation and instruction, let them in authority con- much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle sult. The thing which I had to say, and those inten- vacancies given both to schools and universities; tions which have lived within me ever since I could partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty conceive myself anything worth to my country, I re- wits of children to compose themes, verses, and oraturn to crave excuse, that urgent reason hath plucked tions, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the from me, by an abortive and fore-dated discovery. And final work of a head filled by long reading and observthe accomplishment of them lies not but in a power ing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. above man's to promise; but that none hath by more These are not matters to be wrung from poor stripstudious ways endeavoured, and with more unweariedlings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of my- untimely fruit; besides the ill habit which they get self, as far as life and free leisure will extend; and of wretched barbarising against the Latin and Greek that the land had once enfranchised herself from this idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be impertinent yoke of prelacy, under whose inquisito-read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued rious and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, can flourish. Neither do I think it shame to covenant which they scarce taste; whereas, if after some prewith any knowing reader, that for some few years yet paratory grounds of speech by their certain forms got I may go on trust with him toward the payment of into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; they might then forthwith proceed to learn the sublike that which flows at waste from the pen of some stance of good things and arts in due order, which vulgar amorist, or the trencher-fury of a rhyming would bring the whole language quickly into their parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of power. This I take to be the most rational and most dame memory and her syren daughters; but by de- profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we vout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with may best hope to give account to God of our youth all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his sera- spent herein. phim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be it to be an old error of universities, not yet well readded industrious and select reading, steady observa- covered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous tion, insight into all seemly arts and affairs; tillages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy which in some measure be compassed, at mine own (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense), peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation they present their young unmatriculated novices at from as many as are not loath to hazard so much cre- first coming with the most intellective abstractions of dulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. logic and metaphysics, so that they having but newly Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus left those grammatic flats and shallows where they much beforehand, but that I trust hereby to make it stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentmanifest with what small willingness I endure to in- able construction, and now on the sudden transported terrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheer- with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet ful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into sea of noises and hoarse disputes; from beholding the hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air all this while with ragged notions and babblements, of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and till poverty or youthful years call them importunately there be fain to club quotations with men whose learn- their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway ing and belief lies in marginal stuffings; who when of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary, or they have, like good sumpters, laid you down their ignorantly zealous divinity; some allured to the horse-load of citations and fathers at your door, with a trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the rhapsody of who and who were bishops here or there, prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and you may take off their pack-saddles, their day's work equity, which was never taught them, but on the prois done, and episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindi-mising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat cated. Let any gentle apprehension that can distin-contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to guish learned pains from unlearned drudgery, imagine what pleasure or profoundness can be in this, or what honour to deal against such adversaries.

[Education.]

And seeing every nation 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 though

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 mispending 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 not do, but straight conduct you to a hill-side, where 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 hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age.

I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.

[Liberty of the Press.]

I deny not but that it is of the 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 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 dragons' 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 labours of public men, how spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a kind of martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and soft essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life.

tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice, with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true war-faring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness: which was the reason why our sage and serious poet, Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas), describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his Palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?

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I lastly proceed, from the no good it can do, to the manifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and to learned men. It was a complaint and lamentation of prelates, upon every least breath of a motion to remove pluralities, and distribute more equally church revenues, that then all learning would be for ever dashed and discouraged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy; nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman who had a competency left him. If, therefore, ye be loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew and false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study and love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of man kind; then know, that so far to distrust the judg ment and honesty of one who hath but a common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not to Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a examiner, lest he should drop a schism, or something naughty mind are not unapplicable to occasions of of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity, evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment to a free and knowing spirit, that can be put upon in the healthiest concoction; but herein the differ- him. What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to ence is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judi- be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula cious reader serve in many respects to discover, to to come under the fescue of an imprimatur ?-if serious confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Good and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than and evil, we know, in the field of this world grow up the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporising good is so involved and interwoven with the know- and extemporising licenser? He who is not trusted with ledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant great argument to think himself reputed in the comlabour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more monwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he

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summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open consults and confers with his judicious friends; after encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest supall which is done, he takes himself to be informed in pressing. He who hears what praying there is for what he writes, as well as any that writ before him; light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us, if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and would think of other matters to be constituted beripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his yond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked abilities can bring him to that state of maturity, as already to our hands. Yet when the new light not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casewatchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty ments. What a collusion is this, whenas we are exview of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his horted by the wise man to use diligence, to seek for younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, per- wisdom as for hidden treasures,' early and late, that haps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in statute! When a man hath been labouring the print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dis- forth his reasons, as it were a battle ranged, scattered honour and derogation to the author, to the book, to and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his the privilege and dignity of learning. And adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of how can a man teach with authority, which is the life wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the of teaching; how can he be a doctor in his book, as matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, of licensing where the challenger should pass, though under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows humour which he calls his judgment? When every not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? acute reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic license, She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, will be ready with these like words to ding the book to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the a quoit's distance from him, I hate a pupil teacher, I defences that error uses against her power; give her endure not an instructor that comes to me under the but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps. wardship of an overseeing fist.

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And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Commons, that these arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your order are mere flourishes; and not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannises; when I have sat among their learned men (for that honour I had), and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet it was beyond my hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish.

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Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors; a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtile and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point that human capacity can soar to. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she

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This appeal of Milton was unsuccessful, and it was not till 1694 that England was set free from the censors of the press.

[The Reformation.]

When I recall to mind, at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation, by Divine power, strook through the black and settled night of ignorance and Anti-Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners, where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation, the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon.--Of Reformation in England.

[Truth.]

Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the god Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons ! nor ever shall do, till her master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt I and perfection.-Areopagitica.

[Expiration of the Roman Power in Britain.] Thus expired this great empire of the Romans; first in Britain, soon after in Italy itself; having borne chief sway in this island (though never thoroughly subdued, or all at once in subjection), if we reckon from the coming in of Julius to the taking of Rome by Alaric, in which year Honorius wrote those letters of discharge into Britain, the space of four hundred and sixty-two years. And with the empire fell also what before in this western world was chiefly Romanlearning, valour, eloquence, history, civility, and even language itself-all these together, as it were with equal pace, diminishing and decaying. Henceforth we are to steer by another sort of authors, near enough to the times they write, as in their own country, if that would serve, in time not much belated, some of equal age, in expression barbarous; and to say how judicious, I suspend awhile. This we must expect; in civil matters to find them dubious relators, and still to the best advantage of what they term Mother Church, meaning indeed themselves; in most other matters of religion blind, astonished, and strook with superstition as with a planet; in one word, monks. Yet these guides, where can be had no better, must be followed; in gross it may be true enough; in circumstance each man, as his judgment gives him, may reserve his faith or bestow it.*-Hist. of Britain.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

COWLEY holds a distinguished position among the prose writers of this age. Indeed he has been placed at the head of those who cultivated that clear, easy, and natural style which was subsequently employed and improved by Dryden, Tillotson, Sir William Temple, and Addison. Dr Johnson has, with reason, pointed out as remarkable the contrast between the simplicity of Cowley's prose, and the stiff formality and affectation of his poetry. No author,' says he, ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hardlaboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and

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* Milton's History,' says Warburton, in a letter to Dr Birch,

'is wrote with great simplicity, contrary to his custom in his prose works; and is the better for it. But he sometimes rises to a surprising grandeur in the sentiments and expression, as at the conclusion of the second book: "Henceforth we are to steer," &c. I never saw anything equal to this, but the conclusion of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.' This praise of the acute and critical prelate appears to us to be rather overstrained; but the reader has here the passage before him, and may decide for himself. The conclusion of Sir Walter Raleigh's history is as follows:

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By this which we have already set down, is seen the beginning and end of the three first monarchies of the world;

whereof the founders and erectors thought that they could

never have ended. That of Rome, which made the fourth, was also at this time almost at the highest. We have left it flourishing in the middle of the field, having rooted up or cut down all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But after some continuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had; the storms of Ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off, her

limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field,

and cut her down.

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could ad

vise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whem 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 all over with these two narrow words, Hic Jacet!'

familiar without grossness."* The prose works of Cowley extend but to sixty folio pages, and consist chiefly of his Essays, which treat of the following subjects:-Liberty, Solitude, Obscurity, Agriculture, The Garden, Greatness, Avarice, The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company, The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches, The Danger of Procrastination, Of Myself. In these essays, the author's craving for peace and retirement is a frequently recurring theme.

Of Myself.

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear anything of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters couragements, to learn, without book, the common could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or enrules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at myself), may appear at the latter end of an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish; were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed. This only grant me, that my means may lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high. Some honour I would have, Not from great deeds, but good alone; Th' unknown are better than ill-known.

Rumour can ope the grave:
Acquaintance I would have; but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage, more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.

My garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
unbought sports, that happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd to-day.
* Johnson's Life of Cowley.'

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You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved, the characters in me. They were like letters cut in the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, still grow proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question: I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion); but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that public violent storm, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars, to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into he court of one of the best princesses in the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life; that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and the French courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with, when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage; though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition, in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect:

Well, then, I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c. And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophesy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it:

Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,

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However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it a corpus perditum, without inaking capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at man, who says to his soul, Take thy ease: I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me), as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course; Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum. Nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her.

Nec vos, dulcissima mundi
Nomina, vos musa, libertas, otia, libri,
Hortique, sylvæque, animá remanente relinquam.
Nor by me e'er shall you,

You of all names the sweetest and the best,
You muses, books, and liberty, and rest;
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,
As long as life itself forsakes not me.

[Poetry and Poets.]

It is, I confess, but seldom seen that the poet dies before the man; for when we once fall in love with that bewitching art, we do not use to court it as a mistress, but marry it as a wife, and take it for better or worse as an inseparable companion of our whole life. But as the marriages of infants do but rarely prosper, so no man ought to wonder at the diminution or decay of my affection to poesy, to which I had contracted myself so much under age, and so much to my own prejudice, in regard of those more profitable matches which I might have made among the richer sciences. As for the portion which this brings of fame, it is an estate (if it be any, for men are not oftener deceived in their hopes of widows than in their opinion of exegi monumentum œre perennius) that hardly ever comes in whilst we are living to enjoy it, but is a fantastical kind of reversion to our own selves. Neither ought any man to envy poets this posthumous and imaginary happiness, since they find commonly so little in present, that it may be truly applied to them which St Paul speaks of the first Christians, if their reward be in this life, they are of all men the most miserable.'

And if in quiet and flourishing times they meet with so small encouragement, what are they to expect in rough and troubled ones? If wit be such a plant that it scarce receives heat enough to preserve it alive even in the summer of our cold climate, how can it choose but wither in a long and sharp winter? A warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but

worst to write in.

There is nothing that requires so much screnity and cheerfulness of spirit; it must not be either overwhelmed with the cares of life, or overcast with the clouds of melancholy and sorrow, or shaken and disturbed with the storms of injurious fortune: it must, like the halcyon, have fair weather to breed in. The soul must be filled with bright and delightful ideas, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is the main end of poesy. One may see through the style of Ovid de Trist. the humbled and dejected condition of spirit with which he wrote it; there scarce remains any footsteps of that genius Quem nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, &c. The cold of the country had stricken through all his faculties, and benumbed the

Nor at the Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; very feet of his verses.es.-Preface to his Miscellanies.

Content thyself with the small barren praise
Which thy neglected verse does raise, &c.

I have not falsely sworn.

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