Ev'n so in the same land, [stand; Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers, together Alas! Death mows down all with an impartial hand.

And all ye men, whom greatness does so please,
Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles:
If ye your eyes could upwards move
(But ye, I fear, think nothing is above)
Ye would perceive by what a little thread
The sword still hangs over your head:
No tide of wine would drown your cares;
No mirth or music over-noise your fears':
The fear of Death would you so watchful keep,
As not t' admit the image of it, Sleep.

Sleep, is a god too proud to wait in palaces,
And yet so humble too, as not to scorn

The meanest country cottages:
"His poppy grows among the corn."
The halcyon Sleep will never build his nest
In any stormy breast.

'Tis not enough that he does find Clouds and darkness in their mind; Darkness but half his work will do: 'Tis not enough; he must find quiet too.

The man, who in all wishes he does make,
Does only Nature's counsel take,
That wise and happy man will never fear
The evil aspects of the year;

Nor tremble, though two comets should appear;
He does not look in almanacs, to see

Whether he fortunate shall be;

Let Mars and Saturn in the heavens conjoin, And what they please against the world design, So Jupiter within him shine.

VII.

OF AVARICE.

second is like the foolish chough, which loves to The first does steal money only to hide it. much harm to mankind; and a little good too, to some few: the second does good to none; no, not to himself. The first can make no excuse to God, or angels, or rational men, for his actions: the second can give no reason or colour, not to the Devil himself, for what he does; he is a slave to Mammon without wages. The first makes a shift to be beloved; ay, and envied too by some people; the second is the universal object of hatred and contempt. There is no vice has been so pelted with good sentences, and especially by the poets, who have pursued it with stories, and fables, and allegories, and allusions; and moved, as we say, every stone to fling at it: among all which I do not remember a more fine and gentleman-like correction, than that which was given it by one line of Ovid:

Desunt luxuriæ multa, avaritiæ omnia.

Much is wanting to luxury, all to avarice.

To which saying, I have a mind to add one member, and tender it thus,

Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things.

Somebody says 8 of a virtuous and wise man, "that having nothing, he has all :" this is just his antipode, who, having all things, yet has nothing. He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold: divi eos amatores esse maximos, sed nil potesse. They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to enjoy.

And, oh, what man's condition can be worse
Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings

curse;

The beggars but a common fate deplore, The rich poor man's emphatically poor.

I wonder how it comes to pass, that there has never been any law made against him: against him do I say? I mean, for him: as there are public provisions made for all other madmen: it is very reasonable that the king should appoint some persons (and I think the courtiers would not be against this proposition) to manage his estate during his life (for his heirs commonly need not that care): and out of it to make it their business to see, that he should not want alimony befitting his condition, which he could never get out of his own cruel fingers. We rebut have no care at all of these really poor men, lieve idle vagrants, and counterfeit beggars; who are, methinks, to be respectfully treated, in I might be endless regard of their quality. against them, but I am almost choaked with the super-abundance of the matter; too much plen

The author, well acquainted with the taste of his readers, would not disgust their delicacy by letting them know that this "somebody" was St. Paul, [2 Cor. vi. 10.]-though the sense and expression would have done honour to Plato. HU RD.

ty impoverishes me, as it does them. I will | conclude this odious subject with part of Horace's first satire, which take in his own familiar style:

I admire, Mæcenas, how it comes to pass, That no man ever yet contented was, Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state In which his own choice plants him, or his fate. Happy the merchant, the old soldier cries: The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies, Happy the soldier! one half-hour to thee Gives speedy death, or glorious victory : The lawyer, knockt up early from his rest By restless clients, calls the peasant blest: The peasant, when his labours ill succeed, Envies the mouth, which only talk does feed. "Tis not (I think you'll say) that I want store Of instances, if here I add no more; They are enough to reach, at least a mile, Beyond long orator Fabíus's style. But hold, ye, whom no fortune e'er endears, Gentlemen, malecontents, and mutineers, Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call, Behold, Jove's now resolv'd to please you all. Thou soldier, be a merchant: merchant, thou A soldier be and lawyer, to the plough. Change all your stations straight: why do they stay? The devil a man will change, now when he may. Were I in general Jove's abused case, By Jove I'd cudgel this rebellious race: But he 's too good; be all, then, as ye were ; However, make the best of what ye are, And in that state be cheerful and rejoice, Which either was your fate, or was your choice. No, they must labour yet, and sweat, and toil, And very miserable be awhile;

But 'tis with a design only to gain

What may their age with plenteous ease maintain.

The prudent pismire does this lesson teach,
And industry to lazy mankind preach:
The little drudge does trot about and sweat,
Nor does he straight devour all he can get;
But in his temperate mouth carries it home
A stock for winter, which he knows must come.
And, when the rolling world to creatures here
Turns up the deform'd wrong-side of the year,
And shuts him in, with storms, and cold, and
wet,

He cheerfully does his past labours eat:
O, does he so? your wise example, th' ant,
Does not, at all times, rest and plenty want;
But, weighing justly a mortal ant's condition,
Divides his life 'twixt labour and fruition.
Thee, neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold,
From thy unnatural diligence can withhold:
To th' Indies thou would'st run, rather than see
Another, though a friend, richer than thee.
Fond man! what good or beauty can be found
In heaps of treasure, buried under ground?
Which rather than diminish'd e'er to see,
Thou would'st thyself, too, buried with them be:
And what's the difference is 't not quite as bad
Never to use, as never to have had?

In thy vast barns millions of quarters store;
Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more
Than mine does. Every baker makes much bread:
What then? He's with no more, than others,
fed.

Do you within the bounds of nature live,
And to augment your own you need not strive;
One hundred acres will no less for you
Your life's whole business, than ten thousand, do.
But pleasant 'tis to take from a great store.
What, man! though you 're resolv'd to take në

more

Than I do from a small one? If your will
Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill,

To some great river for it must you go,
When a clear spring just at your feet does flow?
Give me the spring, which does to human use
Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce;
He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile,
Must run the danger of the crocodile,
And of the rapid stream itself, which may,
At unawares, bear him perhaps away.
In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin
Wash'd o'er in vain, for ever dry within:
He catches at the stream with greedy lips,
From his toucht mouth the wanton torrent slips:
You laugh now, and expand your careful brow;
'Tis finely said, but what's all this to you?
Change but the name, this fable is thy story,
Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory,
Which thou canst only touch, but never taste;
Th' abundance still, and still the want, does last.
The treasures of the gods thou would'st not spare:
But when they're made thine own, they sacred

are,

And must be kept with reverence; as if thou
No other use of precious gold didst know,
But that of curious pictures, to delight,
With the fair stamp, thy virtuoso sight.
The only true and genuine use is this,
To buy the things, which nature cannot miss
Without discomfort; oil and vital bread,
And wine, by which the life of life is fed,
And all those few things else by which we live:
All that remains, is giv'n for thee to give.
If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear,
The bitter fruits be, which fair riches bear;
If a new poverty grow out of store;
The old plain way, ye gods! let me be poor.

Paraphrase on HORACE, B. III. Od. xvi.

A TOWER of brass, one would have said, And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, And guards, as strict as in the heat of wars, Might have preserv'd one innocent maidenhead, The jealous father thought he well might spare

All further jealous care;

And, as he walk'd, t' himself alone he smil'd,
To think how Venus' arts he had beguil'd;

And, when he slept, his rest was deep:
But Venus laugh'd to see and hear him sleep.
She taught the amorous Jove

A magical receipt in love,

Which arm'd him stronger, and which help'd him

more,

Than all his thunder did, and his almighty-ship before.

She taught him love's elixir, by which art
His godhead into gold he did convert:

No guards did then his passage stay,
He pass'd with ease; gold was the word;

Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce,
Gold through doors and walls did pierce.
The prudent Macedonian king,
To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring,
He broke through gates with his petar;
'Tis the great art of peace, the engine 'tis of war;
And fleets and armies follow it afar :
The ensign 'tis at land, and 'tis the seaman's star.

Let all the world slave to this tyrant be,
Creature to this disguised deity,

Yet it shall never conquer me.

A guard of virtues will not let it pass.
And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass.
The Muses' laurel, round my temples spread,
Does from this lightning's force secure my head:
Nor will I lift it up so high,

As in the violent meteor's way to lie.

Wealth for its power do we honour and adore? The things we hate, ill-fate and death, have

more.

and draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy.

The truth of it is, that a man in much business must either make himself a knave, or else the world will make him a fool: and, if the injury went no farther than the being laught at, a wise man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation; but the case is much worse, for these civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about such a taken stranger, but at last devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out of drunken company, though they be never so kind and merry among themselves; it is not unpleasant only, but dangerous, to him.

Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwise; he is so, when he is among ten thousand neither is the solitude so uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a

great,

The vast Xerxean army, I retreat;
And to the small Laconic forces fly,

Which holds the straits of poverty.
Cellars and granaries in vain we fill,

With all the bounteous Summer's store, If the mind thirst and hunger still: The poor rich man's emphatically poor.

Slaves to the things we too much prize, We masters grow of all that we despise.

A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,
Is all the wealth by nature understood.
The monarch, on whom fertile Nile bestows
All which that grateful earth can bear,
Deceives himself, if he suppose

That more than this falls to his share.
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the lord:
But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Exacted from it by the tyrant Lust.

Much will always wanting be,

To him who much desires. Thrice happy he
To whom the wise indulgency of Heaven,
With sparing hand, but just enough has given.

VIII.

civilist, methinks, of all nations, are those whom we account the most barbarous; there is some moderation and good-nature in the Toupinambaltians, who eat no men but their enemies, whilst we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks, prey upon every thing that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed, united them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I wish they could unravel all they had woven; that we might have our woods and our innocence again, instead of our castles and our policies. They have assembled many thousands of scattered people into one body: it is true, they have done so; they have brought them together into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder, one another : they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures: they have made them hunters and fishers of their bretheren: they boast to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the truth is, they have only taught them an art of war: they have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first that devil, which now they conjure and cannot bind: though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there was less committed, because there were no rewards for it.

But the men, who praise philosophy from this topic, are much deceived: let oratory answer

IN MUCH COMPANY.

IF twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves who are all furnished cap à pé, with the defensive arms of worldy prudence, and the offenive too of craft and malice. He will find no less odds than this against him,if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice therefore which I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues,

VOL. VII.

a swarm; it never was the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them, when they were assembled; to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity again. Avarice and ambition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire; they said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto Heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth 9." What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world? What was it, but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary of crimi

nals? It was justly named by the augury of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood of his brother. Not unlike to this was the beginning even of the first town too in the world, and such is the original sin of most cities: their actual increase daily with their age and growth; the more people, the more wicked all of them; every one brings in his part to inflame the contagion: which becomes at last so universal and so strong, that no precepts can be sufficient preservatives, nor any thing secure our safety, but flight from among the infected.

We ought, in the choice of a situation, to regard above all things the healthfulness of the place, and the healthfulness of it for the mind, rather than for the body. But suppose (which is hardly to be supposed) we had antidote enough against this poison; nay, suppose further, we were always and at all points armed and provided, both against the assaults of hostility, and the mines of treachery, it will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in alarms; though we were compassed round with fire, to defend ourselves from wild beasts, the lodging would be unpleasant, because we must always be obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less the defects of our guard, than the diligences of our enemy. The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is in danger to be trod upon and destroyed in the crowd of his contraries, nay, which is worse, to be changed and corrupted by them; and that it is impossible to escape both these inconveniencies, without so much caution as will take away the whole quiet, that is the happiness, of his life.

Ye see then, what he may lose; but, I pray, what can he get there?

Quid Romæ faciam? Mentiri nescio 1.

the cleanly; the sight of folly and impiety, vexatious to the wise and pious.

Lucretius 2, by his favour, though a good poet, was but an ill-natured man, when he said, it was delightful to see other men in a great storm: and no less ill-natured should I think Democritus, who laughed at all the world, but that he retired himself so much out of it, that we may perceive he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much delighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses; which upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned, not only melancholy, but even sick with the sight. My compassion there was perhaps too tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, without any perturbation; tho', to weigh the matter justly, the total loss of reason is less deplorable than the total depravation of it. An exact judge of human blessings, of riches, honours, beauty, even of wit itself, should pity the abuse of them, more than the want.

Briefly, though a wise man could pass never so securely through the great roads of human life, yet he will meet perpetually with so many objects and occasions of compassion, grief, shame, anger, hatred, indignation, and all passions but envy (for he will find nothing to deserve that), that he had better strike into some private path; nay, go so far, if he could, out of the common way, ut nec facta audiat Pelopidarum; that he might not so much as hear of the actions of the sons of Adam. But, whither shall we fly then? into the deserts, like the ancient hermits?

-Quà terra patet, fera regnat Erinnys, In facinus jurâsse putes―3

were.

I Juv. Sat. iii. 41.

2 Lucr. lib. ii.

3 Ovid. Metam. i. 241.

necessity, men happen to be married to it, I can only give them St. Paul's advice: " Brethren, the time is short; it remains, that they, that have wives, be as though they had none.-But I would that all men were even as I myself4." In all cases, they must be sure, that they do mundum ducere, and not mundo nubere. They must retain the superiority and headship over it: happy are they, who can get out of the sight of this deceitful beauty, that they may not be led so much as into temptation; who have not only quitted the metropolis, but can abstain from ever seeking the next market-town in their country.

coxcomb? A man, who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the greatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all conveniences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridiculous; he does as little consider the shortness of his passage, that he might proportion his cares accordingly. It is, alas, so narrow a strait betwixt the womb and the grave, that it might be called the Pas de Vie, as well as that the Pas de Calais.

We are all iphuegos (as Pindar calls us), crea tures of a day, and therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that little space: as if it were very probable that every day should be our last, we are taught to demand even bread for no longer a time. The Sun ought not to set upon our cove

DE SENE VERONENSI, QUI SUBURBIUM NUNQUAM

EGRESSUS EST.

FELIX, qui patriis, &c.

to God Almighty a thousand years are as one day, so, in direct opposition, one day to the covetous man is as a thousand years; tam brevi fortis jaculatur ævo multa, so far he shoots beyond his butt: one would think, he were of the opinion of the Millenaries, and hoped for so long a reign

Within th' enclosure of his little ground.
Happy the man, whom the same humble place
(Th' hereditary cottage of his race)
From his first rising infancy has known,
And by degrees sees gently bending down,
With natural propension, to that earth
Which both preserv'd his life, and gave him birth.
Him no false distant lights, by fortune set,
Could ever into foolish wanderings get.
He never dangers either saw or fear'd:
The dreadful storms at sea he never heard,
He never heard the shrill alarms of war,
Or the worse noises of the lawyers' bar.
No change of consuls marks to him the year,
The change of seasons is his calendar.
The cold and heat, winter and summer shows;
Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers, he knows
He measures time by land-marks, and has found
For the whole day the dial of his ground.

A neighbouring wood, born with himself, he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees.
He 'as only heard of near Verona's name,
And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame.
Does with a like concernment notice take
Of the Red-sea, and of Benacus' lake.

Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys,
And sees a long posterity of boys.
About the spacious world let others roam,
The voyage, life, is longest made at home,

IX.

who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, less stores for the maintaining of it; they, who lived nine hundred years, scarcely provided for a few days; we, who live but a few days, provide at least for nine hundred years. What a strange alteration is this of human life and manners! and yet we see an imitation of it in every man's particular experience; for we begin not the cares of life, till it be half spent, and still increase them, as that decreases.

What is there among the actions of beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason? When they do any thing, which seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a natural instinct and are not we fools, too, by the same kind of instinct? If we could but learn to "nummight), we should adjust much better our other ber our days" (as we are taught to pray that we of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be accounts; but, whilst we never consider an end without end, too. Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words;

-Spatio brevi

Spem longum reseces-s

from a short life cut off all hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away like suckers, that choak the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit. And in another place, to the same sense,

CERTAINTY OF RICHES.

longam ;

very mean beginning, by great industry in turning about of money through all ways of gain, had attained to extraordinary riches, but died on a

$1 Carm. xi. 6.

Ibid. iv. 15.