{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3549/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3549","id":"gutenberg_3549","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3549","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Essays","Philosophy","Poetry"],"text":"Transcribed from 1893 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email\nccx074@pglaf.org\n\n                        CASSELL\u2019S NATIONAL LIBRARY\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n\n\n\n\n                                  ESSAYS\n\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                                    BY\n                              ABRAHAM COWLEY\n\n                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]\n\n                        CASSELL & COMPANY Limited\n                       _LONDON  PARIS  & MELBOURNE_\n                                   1893\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nABRAHAM COWLEY was the son of Thomas Cowley, stationer, and citizen of\nLondon in the parish of St. Michael le Querne, Cheapside.  Thomas Cowley\nsigned his will on the 24th of July, 1618, and it was proved on the 11th\nof the next month by his widow, Thomasine.  He left six children, Peter,\nAudrey, John, William, Katherine, and Thomas, with a child unborn for\nwhom the will made equal provision with the rest.  The seventh child,\nborn before the end of the same year, was named Abraham, and lived to\ntake high place among the English Poets.\n\nThe calm spirit of Cowley\u2019s \u201cEssays\u201d was in all his life.  As he tells us\nin his Essay \u201cOn Myself,\u201d even when he was a very young boy at school,\ninstead of running about on holidays and playing with his fellows, he was\nwont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a\nbook or with some one companion, if he could find any of the same temper.\nHe wrote verse when very young, and says, \u201cI believe I can tell the\nparticular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of\nverse as have never since left ringing there; for I remember when I began\nto read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my\nmother\u2019s parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in\nher life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie\nSpenser\u2019s works.\u201d  The delight in Spenser wakened all the music in him,\nand in 1628, in his tenth year, he wrote a \u201cTragical Historie of Pyramus\nand Thisbe.\u201d\n\nIn his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also in sixteen stanzas,\nwith songs interspersed, which was placed first in the little volume of\n_Poetical Blossoms_, _by A_. _C._, published in 1633.  It was a little\nquarto of thirty-two leaves, with a portrait of the author, taken at the\nage of thirteen.  This pamphlet, dedicated to the Dean of Westminster,\nand with introductory verses by Cowley and two of his schoolfellows,\ncontained \u201cConstantia and Philetus,\u201d with the \u201cPyramus and Thisbe,\u201d\nwritten earlier, and three pieces written later, namely, two Elegies and\n\u201cA Dream of Elysium.\u201d  The inscription round the portrait describes\nCowley as a King\u2019s Scholar of Westminster School; and \u201cPyramus and\nThisbe\u201d has a special dedication to the Head Master, Lambert Osbalston.\nAs schoolboy, Cowley tells us that he read the Latin authors, but could\nnot be made to learn grammar rules by rote.  He was a candidate at his\nschool in 1636 for a scholarship at Cambridge, but was not elected.  In\nthat year, however, he went to Cambridge and obtained a scholarship at\nTrinity.\n\nCowley carried to Cambridge and extended there his reputation as boy\npoet.  In 1636 the \u201cPoetical Blossoms\u201d were re-issued with an appendix of\nsixteen more pieces under the head of \u201cSylva.\u201d  A third edition of the\n\u201cPoetical Blossoms\u201d was printed in 1637\u2014the year of Milton\u2019s \u201cLycidas\u201d\nand of Ben Johnson\u2019s death.  Cowley had written a five-act pastoral\ncomedy, \u201cLove\u2019s Riddle,\u201d while yet at school, and this was published in\n1638.  In the same year, 1638, when Cowley\u2019s age was twenty, a Latin\ncomedy of his, \u201cNaufragium Joculare,\u201d was acted by men of his College,\nand in the same year printed, with a dedication to Dr. Comber, Dean of\nCarlisle, who was Master of Trinity.  The poet Richard Crashaw, who was\nabout two years older than Cowley, and, having entered Pembroke Hall in\n1632, became a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1637, sent Cowley a June present\nof two unripe apricots with pleasant verses of compliment on his own\nearly ripeness, on his April\u2013Autumn:\u2014\n\n    \u201cTake them, and me, in them acknowledging\n    How much my Summer waits upon thy Spring.\u201d\n\nCowley was able afterwards to help Crashaw materially, and wrote some\nlines upon his early death.\n\nIn 1639 Cowley took the degree of B.A.  In 1640 he was chosen a Minor\nFellow, and in 1642 a Major Fellow, of Trinity, and he proceeded to his\nM.A. in due course.  In March, 1641, when Prince Charles visited\nCambridge, a comedy called \u201cThe Guardian,\u201d hastily written by Cowley, was\nacted at Trinity College for the Prince\u2019s entertainment.  Cowley is said\nalso to have written during three years at Cambridge the greater part of\nhis heroic poem on the history of David, the \u201cDavideis.\u201d  One of the\noccasional poems written at this time by Cowley was on the early and\nsudden death of his most intimate friend at the University, William\nHervey, to whom he was dearer than all but his brothers and sisters, and,\nsays Cowley:\n\n       \u201cEven in that we did agree,\n    For much above myself I loved them too.\u201d\n\nHervey and Cowley had walked daily together, and had spent nights in\njoint study of philosophy and poetry.  Hervey \u201chad all the light of\nyouth, of the fire none.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWith as much zeal, devotion, piety,\n    He always lived as other saints do die.\n    Still with his soul severe account he kept,\n    Weeping all debts out ere he slept;\n    Then down in peace and innocence he lay,\n       Like the sun\u2019s laborious light,\n       Which still in water sets at night,\n    Unsullied with the journey of the day.\u201d\n\nCowley\u2019s friendship with this family affected the course of his life.  He\nreceived many kindnesses from his friend\u2019s brother John Hervey, including\nintroduction to Henry Jermyn, one of the most trusted friends of Queen\nHenrietta Maria, the friend who was created by her wish Baron Jermyn of\nSt. Edmondsbury, who was addressed by Charles I. as \u201cHarry,\u201d and was\ncreated by Charles II., in April, 1660, Earl of St. Albans.  He was\ndescribed in Queen Henrietta\u2019s time by a political scandal-monger, as\n\u201csomething too ugly for a lady\u2019s favourite, yet that is nothing to some.\u201d\nIn 1643 Cowley was driven from Cambridge, and went to St. John\u2019s College,\nOxford.  To Oxford at the end of that year the king summoned a\nParliament, which met on the 22nd of January, 1644.  This brought to\nOxford many peers and Royalists, who deserted the Parliament at\nWestminster for the king\u2019s Parliament at Oxford.  It continued to sit\nuntil the 16th of April, by which time the king had found even his own\nParliament to be in many respects too independent.  In 1644 the queen,\nabout to become a mother, withdrew to Exeter from Oxford, against which\nan army was advancing; and the parting at Oxford proved to be the last\nbetween her and her husband.  A daughter was born at Exeter on the 16th\nof June.  Within two weeks afterwards the advance of an army towards\nExeter caused the queen to rise from her bed in a dangerous state of\nhealth, and, leaving her child in good keeping, escape to Plymouth, where\nshe reached Pendennis Castle on the 29th of June.  On the 2nd of July the\nking\u2019s forces were defeated at Marston Moor.  On the 14th of July the\nqueen escaped from Falmouth to Brest.  After some rest at the baths of\nBourbon, she went on to Paris, where she was lodged in the Louvre, and\nwell cared for.  Jermyn was still her treasurer, her minister, and the\nfriend for whose counsel she cared most.\n\nIt was into the service of this Lord Jermyn that Cowley had been\nintroduced through his friendship with the Herveys.  He went to Paris as\nLord Jermyn\u2019s secretary, had charge of the queen\u2019s political\ncorrespondence, ciphered and deciphered letters between Queen Henrietta\nand King Charles, and was thus employed so actively under Lord Jermyn\nthat his work filled all his days, and many of his nights.  He was sent\nalso on journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or wherever else\nthe king\u2019s troubles required his attendance.  In 1647 Cowley published\nhis volume of forty-four love poems, called \u201cThe Mistress.\u201d  He was\nhimself no gallant, neither paid court to ladies, nor married.  His love\npoetry was hypothetical; and of his life at this time he says: \u201cThough I\nwas in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere; though I\nwas in business of great and honourable trust; though I ate at the best\ntable, and enjoyed the best convenience for present subsistence that\nought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public\ndistresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy\u2019s wish\nin a copy of verses to the same effect:\u2014\n\n    \u201c\u2018Well, then, I now do plainly see\n    This busy world and I shall ne\u2019er agree,\u2019 &c.,\n\nand I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his\nMajesty\u2019s happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately\nconvenient retreat in the country, which I thought, in that case, I might\neasily have compassed, as well as some others who, with no greater\nprobabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes.\u201d\n\nIn 1654 Queen Henrietta, under influence of a new confessor, had left the\nLouvre, and, with the little daughter born at Exeter, taken up her\nquarters in a foundation of her own, at Chaillot, for nuns of the\nvisitation of St. Mary.  Lord Jermyn having little use left for a\nsecretary in Paris, Cowley in 1656, after twelve years\u2019 service in\nFrance, was sent to England that he might there live in the retirement he\npreferred, and with the understanding that he would be able to send\ninformation upon the course of home affairs.  In England he was presently\nseized by mistake for another man, and, when his name and position were\nknown, he was imprisoned, until a friendly physician, Sir Charles\nScarborough, undertook to be security in a thousand pounds for his good\nconduct.  In this year, 1656, Cowley published the first folio volume of\nhis Poems, prepared in prison, and suggested, he said, by his finding,\nwhen he returned to England, a book called \u201cThe Iron Age,\u201d which had been\npublished as his, and caused him to wonder that any one foolish enough to\nwrite such bad verses should yet be so wise as to publish them under\nanother man\u2019s name.  Cowley thought then that he had taken leave of\nverse, which needed less troubled times for its reading, and a mind less\ntroubled in the writer.  He left out of his book, he said, the pieces\nwritten during the Civil War, including three books of the Civil War\nitself, reaching as far as the first battle of Newbury.  These he had\nburnt, for, he said, \u201cI would have it accounted no less unlawful to rip\nup old wounds than to give new ones.\u201d  \u201cWhen the event of battle and the\nunaccountable Will of God has determined the controversy, and that we\nhave submitted to the will of the conqueror, we must lay down our pens as\nwell as arms.\u201d  The first part of this folio contained early poems; the\nsecond part \u201cThe Mistress;\u201d the third part \u201cPindaric Odes;\u201d and the\nfourth and last his \u201cDavideis.\u201d\n\nIn September of the following year, 1657, Cowley acted as best man to\nGeorge Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, on his marriage at Bolton Percy, to\nFairfax\u2019s daughter; Cowley wrote also a sonnet for the bride.  In\nDecember he obtained, by influence of friends, the degree of M.D. from\nthe University of Oxford, and retired into Kent to study botany.  Such\nstudy caused him then to write a Latin poem upon Plants, in six books:\nthe first two on Herbs, in elegiac verse; the next two on Flowers, in\nvarious measures; and the last two on Trees, in heroic\nnumbers:\u2014\u201c_Plantarum_, _Libri VI_.\u201d\n\nAfter the death of Cromwell, Cowley returned to France, but he came back\nto England in 1660, when he published an \u201cOde on His Majesty\u2019s\nRestoration and Return,\u201d and \u201cA Discourse by way of Vision concerning the\nGovernment of Oliver Cromwell.\u201d  He was admitted, as Dr. Cowley, among\nthe first members of the Royal Society then founded; but he was excluded\nfrom the favour of the king.  He had written an \u201cOde to Brutus,\u201d for\nwhich, said his Majesty, it was enough for Mr. Cowley to be forgiven.  A\nnoble lord replied to Cowley\u2019s Ode, in praise of Brutus, with an Ode\nagainst that Rebel.  Cowley\u2019s old friend, Lord Jermyn, now made Earl of\nSt. Alban\u2019s, joined, however, with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,\nin providing for the poet all that was required to secure to him the\nquiet life that he desired.  Provision to such end had been promised him\nboth by Charles I. and Charles II., in the definite form of the office of\nMaster of the Savoy, but the post was given by Charles II. to a brother\nof one of his mistresses.\n\nCowley recast his old comedy of \u201cThe Guardian,\u201d and produced it in\nDecember, 1661, as \u201cCutter of Coleman Street.\u201d  It was played for a week\nto a full audience, though some condemned it on the supposition it was a\nsatire upon the king\u2019s party.  Cowley certainly was too pure and\nthoughtful to be a fit associate for Charles II. and many of his friends.\nThe help that came from the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of\nBuckingham, was in the form of such a lease of the Queen\u2019s lands as gave\nthe poet a sufficient income.  Others who had served little were\nenriched; but he was set at ease, and sought no more.  He then made his\nhome by the Thames, first at Barn Elms, and afterwards at Chertsey, at\nwhich latter place he lived for about a year in the Porch House, that yet\nstands.  Cowley was living at Chertsey when a July evening in damp\nmeadows gave him a cold, of which he died within a fortnight.  That was\nin the year 1667, year also of the death of Jeremy Taylor, and of the\nbirth of Jonathan Swift.\n\nAbraham Cowley is at his truest in these ESSAYS, written during the last\nseven years of his life.  Their style is simple, and their thoughts are\npure.  They have, for their keynote, the happiness of one who loves true\nliberty in quiet possession of himself.  When he turns to the Latins, his\ntranslations are all from those lines which would have dwelt most\npleasantly upon a mind that to the last held by the devout wish expressed\nby himself in a poem of his early youth\u2014(_A Vote_, in \u201cSylva\u201d):\n\n    \u201cBooks should, not business, entertain the light,\n    And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.\n       My house a cottage more\n    Than palace, and should fitting be\n    For all my use, no luxury.\n       My garden, painted o\u2019er\n    With Nature\u2019s hand, not Art\u2019s, should pleasures yield,\n    Horace might envy in his Sabine field.\u201d\n\n                                                                     H. M.\n\n\n\n\nOF LIBERTY.\n\n\nTHE liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they\nhave made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the\nliberty of a private man in being master of his own time and actions, as\nfar as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.  Of this\nlatter only we are here to discourse, and to inquire what estate of life\ndoes best suit us in the possession of it.  This liberty of our own\nactions is such a fundamental privilege of human nature, that God\nHimself, notwithstanding all His infinite power and right over us,\npermits us to enjoy it, and that, too, after a forfeiture made by the\nrebellion of Adam.  He takes so much care for the entire preservation of\nit to us, that He suffers neither His providence nor eternal decree to\nbreak or infringe it.  Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but\ntenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid\nto Him at as a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of His title.  It is\nman only that has the impudence to demand our whole time, though he\nneither gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable\nvalue for the least part of it.  This birthright of mankind above all\nother creatures some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread\nand broth; but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the\ndelivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid,\nthe necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for\nrings and bracelets.  The great dealers in this world may be divided into\nthe ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men\nsell themselves to be slaves\u2014though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical\nparadox\u2014will appear to the wise so plain and obvious that they will\nscarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation.  Let us first\nconsider the ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness,\nand after the attaining of it.  There is nothing truer than what Sallust\nsays: \u201c_Dominationis in alios servitium suum_, _mercedem dant_\u201d: They are\ncontent to pay so great a price as their own servitude to purchase the\ndomination over others.  The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice\nis their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst\nthey are in the race of glory; no, not like Atalanta for golden apples;\n\u201cNeither indeed can a man stop himself, if he would, when he is in this,\ncareer.  _Fertur equis auriga neque audit currus habenas_.\u201d\n\nPray let us but consider a little what mean, servile things men do for\nthis imaginary food.  We cannot fetch a greater example of it than from\nthe chief men of that nation which boasted most of liberty.  To what\npitiful baseness did the noblest Romans submit themselves for the\nobtaining of a pr\u00e6torship, or the consular dignity?  They put on the\nhabit of suppliants, and ran about, on foot and in dirt, through all the\ntribes to beg voices; they flattered the poorest artisans, and carried a\nnomenclator with them, to whisper in their ear every man\u2019s name, lest\nthey should mistake it in their salutations; they shook the hand, and\nkissed the cheek of every popular tradesman; they stood all day at every\nmarket in the public places, to show and ingratiate themselves to the\nrout; they employed all their friends to solicit for them; they kept open\ntables in every street; they distributed wine, and bread, and money, even\nto the vilest of the people.  _En Romanos_, _rerum Dorninos_!  Behold the\nmasters of the world beginning from door to door.  This particular humble\nway to greatness is now out of fashion, but yet every ambitious person is\nstill in some sort a Roman candidate.  He must feast and bribe, and\nattend and flatter, and adore many beasts, though not the beast with many\nheads.  Catiline, who was so proud that he could not content himself with\na less power than Sylla\u2019s, was yet so humble for the attaining of it, as\nto make himself the most contemptible of all servants, to be a public\nbawd for all the young gentlemen of Rome whose hot lusts, and courages,\nand heads, he thought he might make use of.  And since I happen here to\npropose Catiline for my instance, though there be thousand of examples\nfor the same thing, give me leave to transcribe the character which\nCicero gives of this noble slave, because it is a general description of\nall ambitious men, and which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the\nrule of their life and actions.  \u201cThis man,\u201d says he, as most of you may\nwell remember, \u201chad many artificial touches and strokes that looked like\nthe beauty of great virtues; his intimate conversation was with the worst\nof men, and yet he seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best; he was\nfurnished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the\narms of labour and industry: neither do I believe that there was ever any\nmonster in nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing\nparts.  Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable persons?\nwho more a favourite to the most infamous? who, sometimes, appeared a\nbraver champion? who, at other times, a bolder enemy to his country? who\nmore dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient in his toils? who more\nrapacious in robbing? who more profuse in giving?  Above all things, this\nwas remarkable and admirable in him.  The arts he had to acquire the good\nopinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to retain it with great\ncomplaisance, to communicate all things to them, to watch and serve all\nthe occasions of their fortune, both with his money and his interest, and\nhis industry, and if need were, not by sticking at any wickedness\nwhatsoever that might be useful to them, to bend and turn about his own\nnature and laveer with every wind, to live severely with the melancholy,\nmerrily with the pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with the\nyoung, desperately with the bold, and debauchedly with the luxurious.\nWith this variety and multiplicity of his nature, as he had made a\ncollection of friendships with all the most wicked and reckless of all\nnations, so, by the artificial simulation of some virtues, he made a\nshift to ensnare some honest and eminent persons into his familiarity;\nneither could so vast a design as the destruction of this empire have\nbeen undertaken by him, if the immanity of so many vices had not been\ncovered and disguised by the appearances of some excellent qualities.\u201d\n\nI see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, who became all things to\nall men, that he might destroy all; who only wanted the assistance of\nfortune to have been as great as his friend C\u00e6sar was, a little after\nhim.  And the ways of C\u00e6sar to compass the same ends\u2014I mean till the\ncivil war, which was but another manner of setting his country on\nfire\u2014were not unlike these, though he used afterward his unjust dominion\nwith more moderation than I think the other would have done.  Sallust,\ntherefore, who was well acquainted with them both and with many such-like\ngentlemen of his time, says, \u201cThat it is the nature of ambition\u201d\n(_Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri coegit_, _etc._) \u201cto make men\nliars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like\njugglers, another thing in their mouths; to cut all friendships and\nenmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good\ncountenance without the help of good will.\u201d  And can there be freedom\nwith this perpetual constraint?  What is it but a kind of rack that\nforces men to say what they have no mind to?  I have wondered at the\nextravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises\nwhich I find of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the\nseven grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before\nhis country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips, cut\noff his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he might,\nunder pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius, be received\ninto Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get into the command of\nit by the recommendation of so cruel a sufferance, and their hopes of his\nendeavouring to revenge it.  It is a great pity the Babylonians suspected\nnot his falsehood, that they might have cut off his hands too, and\nwhipped him back again.  But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city,\nand was made governor of it.  What brutish master ever punished his\noffending slave with so little mercy as ambition did this Zopirus? and\nyet how many are there in all nations who imitate him in some degree for\na less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a\nsmall preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to\ncommit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly\nstigmatised?  But you may say, \u201cThough these be the most ordinary and\nopen ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden\npaths, too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry.\u201d\nI grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such as\ncannot consist with liberty, though it may with honesty.\n\nThou art careful, frugal, painful.  We commend a servant so, but not a\nfriend.\n\nWell, then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced\nto endure in this assent, but we are epicures and lords when once we are\ngotten up into the high places.  This is but a short apprenticeship,\nafter which we are made free of a royal company.  If we fall in love with\nany beauteous woman, we must be content that they should be our\nmistresses whilst we woo them.  As soon as we are wedded and enjoy, \u2019tis\nwe shall be the masters.\n\nI am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness: we\nenter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony; we are bewitched\nwith the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse\nbefore we know its true nature and interior inconveniences.  \u201cA great\nfortune,\u201d says Seneca, \u201cis a great servitude.\u201d  But many are of that\nopinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) even to that patron of\nliberty, his friend Cicero.  \u201cWe fear,\u201d says he to Atticus, \u201cdeath, and\nbanishment, and poverty, a great deal too much.  Cicero, I am afraid,\nthinks these to be the worst of evils, and if he have but some persons\nfrom whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will\nflatter and worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an\nhonourable servitude, if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable\nin so base and contumelious a condition.\u201d  This was spoken as became the\nbravest man who was ever born in the bravest commonwealth.  But with us,\ngenerally, no condition passes for servitude that is accompanied with\ngreat riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors.  This\nis but a deception the sight through a false medium; for if a groom serve\na gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a\nprince, the groom, the gentleman, and the lord are as much servants one\nas the other.  The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his\nbread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous\nestate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between\na plain, a rich and gaudy livery.  I do not say that he who sells his\nwhole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser\nmerchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear\nthey are both merchants, and that he is happier than both who can live\ncontentedly without selling that estate to which he was born.  But this\ndependence upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power,\n_Amatorem trecent\u00e6 Pirithoum cohibent caten\u00e6_.  Let us begin with him by\nbreak of day, for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred\nsuitors, and the hall and anti-chambers (all the outworks) possessed by\nthe enemy; as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into\nthat, or to corrupt the guards for entrance.  This is so essential a part\nof greatness, that whosoever is without it looks like a fallen favourite,\nlike a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he please all the\nmorning.  There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to\nhave their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing\ncreditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their\ncoach.  Now I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of any one\nparticular person who waits to speak with the great man, or the great\nman\u2019s, who waits every day to speak with all the company.  _Aliena\nnegotia centum Per caput et circum saliunt latus_: A hundred businesses\nof other men (many unjust and most impertinent) fly continually about his\nhead and ears, and strike him in the face like dors.  Let us contemplate\nhim a little at another special scene of glory, and that is his table.\nHere he seems to be the lord of all Nature.  The earth affords him her\nbest metals for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his food;\nthe air and sea supply him with their choicest birds and fishes; and a\ngreat many men who look like masters attend upon him; and yet, when all\nthis is done, even all this is but Table d\u2019H\u00f4te.  It is crowded with\npeople for whom he cares not\u2014with many parasites, and some spies, with\nthe most burdensome sort of guests\u2014the endeavourers to be witty.\n\nBut everybody pays him great respect, everybody commends his meat\u2014that\nis, his money; everybody admires the exquisite dressing and ordering of\nit\u2014that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook; everybody loves his\nhospitality\u2014that is, his vanity.  But I desire to know why the honest\ninnkeeper who provides a public table for his profits should be but of a\nmean profession, and he who does it for his honour a munificent prince.\nYou\u2019ll say, because one sells and the other gives.  Nay, both sell,\nthough for different things\u2014the one for plain money, the other for I know\nnot what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy.  If, then, his\ntable be made a snare (as the Scripture speaks) to his liberty, where can\nhe hope for freedom? there is always and everywhere some restraint upon\nhim.  He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities.  The half\nhat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the\nembrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the\nmiddle of the room, the superlative at the door; and if the person be\n_Pan huper sebastos_, there\u2019s a _Huper superlative_ ceremony then of\nconducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if\nthere were such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the sea,\n\u201cHitherto shalt thou go, and no further.\u201d  _Perditur h\u00e6c inter misero\nLux_.  Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.\n\nHow many impertinent letters and visits must he receive, and sometimes\nanswer both too as impertinently?  He never sets his foot beyond his\nthreshold, unless, like a funeral, he hath a train to follow him, as if,\nlike the dead corpse, he could not stir till the bearers were all ready.\n\u201cMy life,\u201d says Horace, speaking to one of these _magnificos_, \u201cis a\ngreat deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the\nmarket and cheapen what I please without being wondered at; and take my\nhorse and ride as far as Tarentum without being missed.\u201d  It is an\nunpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation and\ncensure of others; as there may be vanity in it, so, methinks, there\nshould be vexation too of spirit.  And I wonder how princes can endure to\nhave two or three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at\ndinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat.  Nothing seems greater\nand more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants, but, even this\ntoo, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will be a\nservant to them, as many men are, the trouble and care of yours in the\ngovernment of them all, is much more than that of every one of them in\ntheir observation of you.  I take the profession of a schoolmaster to be\none of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a\ncommonwealth, yet certainly all his farces and tyrannical authority over\nso many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs.\n\nI do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of\ngreatness; I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger,\nhatred, jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the _et cetera_ of their\npassions, which are the secret but constant tyrants and torturers of\ntheir life.  I omit here, because though they be symptoms most frequent\nand violent in this disease, yet they are common too in some degree to\nthe epidemical disease of life itself.  But the ambitious man, though he\nbe so many ways a slave (_O toties servus_!), yet he bears it bravely and\nheroically; he struts and looks big upon the stage, he thinks himself a\nreal prince in his masking habit, and deceives too all the foolish part\nof his spectators.  He\u2019s a slave in _Saturnalibus_.  The covetous man is\na downright servant, a draught horse without bells or feathers; _ad\nmetalla damnatus_, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest\nand hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker\nthere for he knows not whom.  He heapeth up riches and knows not who\nshall enjoy them; \u2019tis only that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy\nthem.  He is an indigent needy slave, he will hardly allow himself\nclothes and board wages; _Unciatim vix demenso de suo suum defraudans\nGenium comparsit niser_.  He defrauds not only other men, but his own\ngenius.  He cheats himself for money.  But the servile and miserable\ncondition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to\nevery man\u2019s sight, as well as judgment.  It seems a more difficult work\nto prove that the voluptuous man too is but a servant.  What can be more\nthe life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to\nfollow nothing but his own pleasures?  Why, I\u2019ll tell you who is that\ntrue freeman and that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows all his\npleasures (the very name of follower is servile), but he who rationally\nguides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the conduct\nand enjoyment of them.  If I want skill or force to restrain the beast\nthat I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the\ntruth of the matter I am at that time rather his man than he my horse.\nThe voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think,\ninto the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly; the\nother whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u1f70\n\u03b8\u03b7\u03c1\u03af\u03b1, evil wild beasts; these are \u0393\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b5\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b3\u03b1\u03af, slow bellies, as our\ntranslation renders it; but the word \u1f08\u03c1\u03b3\u03b1\u03af (which is a fantastical word\nwith two directly opposite significations) will bear as well the\ntranslation of quick or diligent bellies, and both interpretations may be\napplied to these men.  Metrodorus said, \u201cThat he had learnt \u1f08\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03c9\u03c2 \u03b3\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03c1\u1f76\n\u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03af\u03b6\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9, to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures.\u201d  This\nby the calumniators of Epicurus his philosophy was objected as one of the\nmost scandalous of all their sayings, which, according to my charitable\nunderstanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, which is, that he thanked\nhis own belly for that moderation in the customary appetites of it, which\ncan only give a man liberty and happiness in this world.  Let this\nsuffice at present to be spoken of those great trinmviri of the world;\nthe covetous man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus; the ambitious, who\nis a brave one, like Octavius; and the voluptuous, who is a loose and\ndebauched one, like Mark Antony.  _Quisnam igitur Liber_?  _Sapiens_,\n_sibi qui Imperiosus_.  Not Oenomaus, who commits himself wholly to a\ncharioteer that may break his neck, but the man\n\n   Who governs his own course with steady hand,\n   Who does himself with sovereign power command;\n   Whom neither death nor poverty does fright,\n   Who stands not awkwardly in his own light\n   Against the truth: who can, when pleasures knock\n   Loud at his door, keep firm the bolt and lock.\n   Who can, though honour at his gate should stay\n   In all her masking clothes, send her away,\n   And cry, Begone, I have no mind to play.\n\nThis I confess is a freeman; but it may be said that many persons are so\nshackled by their fortune that they are hindered from enjoyment of that\nmanumission which they have obtained from virtue.  I do both understand,\nand in part feel the weight of this objection.  All I can answer to it\nis, \u201cThat we must get as much liberty as we can; we must use our utmost\nendeavours, and when all that is done, be contented with the length of\nthat line which is allowed us.\u201d  If you ask me in what condition of life\nI think the most allowed, I should pitch upon that sort of people whom\nKing James was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the men placed in\nthe country by their fortune above an high constable, and yet beneath the\ntrouble of a justice of the peace, in a moderate plenty, without any just\nargument for the desire of increasing it by the care of many relations,\nand with so much knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that is, of\nthe study of God\u2019s laws and of his creatures) as may afford him matter\nenough never to be idle though without business, and never to be\nmelancholy though without sin or vanity.\n\nI shall conclude this tedious discourse with a prayer of mine in a copy\nof Latin verses, of which I remember no other part, and (_pour faire\nbonne bouche_) with some other verses upon the same subject.\n\n    _Magne Deus_, _quod ad has vit\u00e6 brevis attinet boras_,\n    _Da mihi_, _da Pancin Libertatemque_, _nec ultr\u00e0_\n    _Sollicitas effundo preces_, _si quid datur ultr\u00e0_\n    _Accipiam gratus_; _si non_, _contentus abibo_.\n\n   For the few hours of life allotted me,\n   Give me, great God, but Bread and Liberty,\n   I\u2019ll beg no more; if more thou\u2019rt pleased to give,\n   I\u2019ll thankfully that overplus receive.\n   If beyond this no more be freely sent,\n   I\u2019ll thank for this, and go away content.\n\n\n\nMARTIAL.  LIB. 2.\n_Vota tui breviter_, _etc._\n\n\n    WELL then, sir, you shall know how far extend,\n    The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend.\n    He does not palaces nor manors crave,\n    Would be no lord, but less a lord would have.\n    The ground he holds, if he his own can call,\n    He quarrels not with Heaven because \u2019tis small:\n    Let gay and toilsome greatness others please,\n    He loves of homely littleness the ease.\n    Can any man in gilded rooms attend,\n    And his dear hours in humble visits spend,\n    When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may\n    With various healthful pleasures fill the day?\n    If there be man, ye gods, I ought to hate,\n    Dependence and attendance be his fate.\n    Still let him busy be, and in a crowd,\n    And very much a slave, and very proud:\n    Thus he, perhaps, powerful and rich may grow;\n    No matter, O ye gods! that I\u2019ll allow.\n    But let him peace and freedom never see;\n    Let him not love this life, who loves not me.\n\n\n\nMARTIAL.  LIB. 2.\n_Vis fieri Liber_, _etc._\n\n\n    WOULD you be free?  \u2019Tis your chief wish, you say,\n    Come on; I\u2019ll show thee, friend, the certain way.\n    If to no feasts abroad thou lov\u2019st to go,\n    Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow;\n    If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize\n    By thine own use, and not by others\u2019 eyes;\n    If, only safe from weathers, thou canst dwell\n    In a small house, but a convenient shell;\n    If thou without a sigh, or golden wish,\n    Canst look upon thy beechen bowl and dish;\n    If in thy mind such power and greatness be\u2014\n    The Persian King\u2019s a slave compared with thee.\n\n\n\nMARTIAL.  L. 2.\n_Quod to nomine_? _etc._\n\n\n    THAT I do you with humble bows no more,\n    And danger of my naked head, adore;\n    That I, who lord and master cried erewhile,\n    Salute you in a new and different style,\n    By your own name, a scandal to you now;\n    Think not that I forget myself or you:\n    By loss of all things by all others sought\n    This freedom, and the freeman\u2019s hat, is bought.\n    A lord and master no man wants but he\n    Who o\u2019er himself has no authority,\n    Who does for honours and for riches strive,\n    And follies without which lords cannot live.\n    If thou from fortune dost no servant crave,\n    Believe it, thou no master need\u2019st to have.\n\n\n\nODE\nUPON LIBERTY.\n\n\n                                     I.\n\n   FREEDOM with virtue takes her seat;\n   Her proper place, her only scene,\n      Is in the golden mean,\n   She lives not with the poor, nor with the great:\n   The wings of those, Necessity has clipped,\n      And they\u2019re in Fortune\u2019s Bridewell whipped,\n      To the laborious task of bread;\n   These are by various tyrants captive led.\n   Now wild Ambition with imperious force\n   Rides, reins, and spurs them like th\u2019 unruly horse;\n      And servile Avarice yokes them now\n      Like toilsome oxen to the plough;\n   And sometimes Lust, like the misguiding light,\n   Draws them through all the labyrinths of night.\n   If any few among the great there be\n      From the insulting passions free,\n      Yet we even those too fettered see\n   By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency;\n   And wheresoe\u2019er they stay, and wheresoe\u2019er they go,\n      Impertinences round them flow.\n      These are the small uneasy things\n      Which about greatness still are found,\n      And rather it molest than wound\n   Like gnats which too much heat of summer brings;\n   But cares do swarm there too, and those have stings:\n   As when the honey does too open lie,\n      A thousand wasps about it fly\n   Nor will the master even to share admit;\n   The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it.\n\n                                     II.\n\n   \u2019Tis morning, well, I fain would yet sleep on;\n      You cannot now; you must be gone\n      To Court, or to the noisy hail\n   Besides, the rooms without are crowded all;\n      The steam of business does begin,\n   And a springtide of clients is come in.\n   Ah, cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep,\n      Will they not suffer him to sleep!\n   Make an escape; out at the postern flee,\n   And get some blessed hours of liberty.\n   With a few friends, and a few dishes dine,\n      And much of mirth and moderate wine;\n   To thy bent mind some relaxation give,\n   And steal one day out of thy life to live.\n   Oh happy man, he cries, to whom kind Heaven\n      Has such a freedom always given\n   Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee\n   From being every day as free?\n\n                                    III.\n\n   In all the freeborn nations of the air,\n   Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear\n   As to exchange his native liberty\n   Of soaring boldly up into the sky,\n   His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly\n   When, and wherever he thought good,\n   And all his innocent pleasures of the wood,\n   For a more plentiful or constant food.\n      Nor ever did ambitious rage\n      Make him into a painted cage\n   Or the false forest of a well-hung room\n      For honour and preferment come.\n   Now, blessings on ye all, ye heroic race,\n   Who keep their primitive powers and rights so well\n      Though men and angels fell.\n   Of all material lives the highest place\n      To you is justly given,\n      And ways and walks the nearest Heaven;\n   Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think fit\n      To boast that we look up to it.\n   Even to the universal tyrant Love\n      You homage pay but once a year;\n   None so degenerous and unbirdly prove,\n      As his perpetual yoke to bear.\n   None but a few unhappy household fowl,\n      Whom human lordship does control;\n      Who from their birth corrupted were\n   By bondage, and by man\u2019s example here.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   He\u2019s no small prince who every day\n      Thus to himself can say,\n   Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk,\n   Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance talk;\n   This I will do, here I will stay,\n   Or, if my fancy call me away,\n   My man and I will presently go ride\n   (For we before have nothing to provide,\n   Nor after are to render an account)\n   To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish Mount.\n      If thou but a short journey take,\n      As if thy last thou wert to make,\n   Business must be despatched ere thou canst part.\n      Nor canst thou stir unless there be\n      A hundred horse and men to wait on thee,\n      And many a mule, and many a cart:\n      What an unwieldy man thou art!\n      The Rhodian Colossus so\n      A journey too might go.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   Where honour or where conscience does not bind,\n      No other law shall shackle me?\n      Slave to myself I will not be,\n   Nor shall my future actions be confined\n      By my own present mind.\n   Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand\n      For days that yet belong to fate,\n   Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate\n      Before it falls into his hand;\n      The bondman of the cloister so\n   All that he does receive does always owe.\n   And still as time come in it goes away,\n      Not to enjoy, but debts to pay.\n   Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell\n   Which his hour\u2019s work, as well as hour\u2019s does tell!\n   Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.\n\n                                     VI.\n\n   If Life should a well-ordered poem be\n      (In which he only hits the white\n   Who joins true profit with the best delight),\n   The more heroic strain let others take,\n      Mine the Pindaric way I\u2019ll make,\n   The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and free.\n   It shall not keep one settled pace of time,\n   In the same tune it shall not always chime,\n   Nor shall each day just to his neighbour rhyme.\n   A thousand liberties it shall dispense,\n   And yet shall manage all without offence\n   Or to the sweetness of the sound, or greatness of the sense;\n   Nor shall it never from one subject start,\n      Nor seek transitions to depart,\n   Nor its set way o\u2019er stiles and bridges make,\n      Nor thorough lanes a compass take\n   As if it feared some trespass to commit,\n      When the wide air\u2019s a road for it.\n   So time imperial eagle does not stay\n      Till the whole carcase he devour\n      That\u2019s fallen into its power;\n   As if his generous hunger understood\n   That he can never want plenty of food,\n      He only sucks the tasteful blood,\n   And to fresh game flies cheerfully away;\n   To kites and meaner birds he leaves the mangled prey.\n\n\n\n\nOF SOLITUDE.\n\n\n\u201c_Nunquam minus solus_, _quam cum solis_,\u201d is now become a very vulgar\nsaying.  Every man and almost every boy for these seventeen hundred years\nhas had it in his mouth.  But it was at first spoken by the excellent\nScipio, who was without question a most worthy, most happy, and the\ngreatest of all mankind.  His meaning no doubt was this: that he found\nmore satisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it by solitude\nthan by company; and to show that he spoke not this loosely or out of\nvanity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost the whole world, he\nretired himself from it by a voluntary exile, and at a private house in\nthe middle of a wood near Linternum passed the remainder of his glorious\nlife no less gloriously.  This house Seneca went to see so long after\nwith great veneration, and, among other things, describes his bath to\nhave been of so mean a structure, that now, says he, the basest of the\npeople would despise them, and cry out, \u201cPoor Scipio understood not how\nto live.\u201d  What an authority is here for the credit of retreat! and happy\nhad it been for Hannibal if adversity could have taught him as much\nwisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest prosperities.  This would\nbe no wonder if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said by\nMonsieur de Montaigne, that ambition itself might teach us to love\nsolitude: there is nothing does so much hate to have companions.  It is\ntrue, it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have company on\neither side, but it delights above all things in a train behind, aye, and\nushers, too, before it.  But the greater part of men are so far from the\nopinion of that noble Roman, that if they chance at any time to be\nwithout company they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the\nwind of other men\u2019s breath, and have no oars of their own to steer\nwithal.  It is very fantastical and contradictory in human nature, that\nmen should love themselves above all the rest of the world, and yet never\nendure to be with themselves.  When they are in love with a mistress, all\nother persons are importunate and burdensome to them.  \u201c_Tecum vivere\namem_, _tecum obeam lubens_,\u201d They would live and die with her alone.\n\n   _Sic ego secretis possum ben\u00e8 vevere silvis_\n      _Qu\u00e0 nulla humauo sit via trita pede_,\n   _Tu mihi curarum requies_, _tu nocte vel atr\u00e2_\n      _Lumen_, _et in solis tu mihi terba locis_.\n\n   With thee for ever I in woods could rest,\n   Where never human foot the ground has pressed;\n   Thou from all shades the darkness canst exclude,\n   And from a desert banish solitude.\n\nAnd yet our dear self is so wearisome to us that we can scarcely support\nits conversation for an hour together.  This is such an odd temper of\nmind as Catullus expresses towards one of his mistresses, whom we may\nsuppose to have been of a very unsociable humour.\n\n   _Odi et Amo_, _qua nam id faciam ratione requiris_?\n         _Nescio_, _sed fieri sentio_, _et excrucior_.\n\n   I hate, and yet I love thee too;\n   How can that be?  I know not how;\n   Only that so it is I know,\n   And feel with torment that \u2019tis so.\n\nIt is a deplorable condition this, and drives a man sometimes to pitiful\nshifts in seeking how to avoid himself.\n\nThe truth of the matter is, that neither he who is a fop in the world is\na fit man to be alone, nor he who has set his heart much upon the world,\nthough he has ever so much understanding; so that solitude can be well\nfitted and set right but upon a very few persons.  They must have enough\nknowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and enough virtue to\ndespise all vanity; if the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, a\nman had better be in a fair than in a wood alone.  They may, like petty\nthieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick our pockets in the midst of company,\nbut like robbers, they use to strip and bind, or murder us when they\ncatch us alone.  This is but to retreat from men, and fall into the hands\nof devils.  It is like the punishment of parricides among the Romans, to\nbe sewed into a bag with an ape, a dog, and a serpent.  The first work,\ntherefore, that a man must do to make himself capable of the good of\nsolitude is the very eradication of all lusts, for how is it possible for\na man to enjoy himself while his affections are tied to things without\nhimself?  In the second place, he must learn the art and get the habit of\nthinking; for this too, no less than well speaking, depends upon much\npractice; and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the solitude of\na god from a wild beast.  Now because the soul of man is not by its own\nnature or observation furnished with sufficient materials to work upon;\nit is necessary for it to have continual resource to learning and books\nfor fresh supplies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, and be\nready to starve without them; but if once we be thoroughly engaged in the\nlove of letters, instead of being wearied with the length of any day, we\nshall only complain of the shortness of our whole life.\n\n      _O vita_, _stulto longa_, _sapienti brevis_!\n\n   O life, long to the fool, short to the wise!\n\nThe First Minister of State has not so much business in public as a wise\nman has in private; if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other\nhas less leisure to be in company; the one has but part of the affairs of\none nation, the other all the works of God and nature under his\nconsideration.  There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear\nvery often, \u201cThat a man does not know how to pass his time.\u201d  It would\nhave been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred and\nsixty-ninth year of his life, so far it is from us, who have not time\nenough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to\nhave cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work.\nBut this you will say is work only for the learned, others are not\ncapable either of the employments or the divertisements that arise from\nletters.  I know they are not, and therefore cannot much recommend\nsolitude to a man totally illiterate.  But if any man be so unlearned as\nto want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude,\nwhich frequently occur in almost all conditions (except the very meanest\nof the people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for\nlife), it is truly a great shame both to his parents and himself; for a\nvery small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of\nour time, either music, or painting, or designing, or chemistry, or\nhistory, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it usefully and\npleasantly; and if he happen to set his affections upon poetry (which I\ndo not advise him too immoderately) that will overdo it; no wood will be\nthick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or business,\nwhich would abstract him from his beloved.\n\n   \u2014_O quis me geldis sub montibus H\u00e6mi_\n   _Sistat_, _et ingenti ramorum protegat umbr\u00e2_?\n\n                                     I.\n\n   Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good!\n      Hail, ye plebeian underwood!\n      Where the poetic birds rejoice,\n   And for their quiet nests and plenteous food\n      Pay with their grateful voice.\n\n                                     II.\n\n   Hail, the poor Muses\u2019 richest manor seat!\n      Ye country houses and retreat\n      Which all the happy gods so love,\n   That for you oft they quit their bright and great\n      Metropolis above.\n\n                                    III.\n\n   Here Nature does a house for me erect,\n      Nature the wisest architect,\n      Who those fond artists does despise\n   That can the fair and living trees neglect,\n      Yet the dead timber prize.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,\n      Hear the soft winds, above me flying,\n      With all their wanton boughs dispute,\n   And the more tuneful birds to both replying,\n      Nor be myself too mute.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   A silver stream shall roll his waters near,\n      Gilt with the sunbeams here and there,\n      On whose enamelled bank I\u2019ll walk,\n   And see how prettily they smile, and hear\n      How prettily they talk.\n\n                                     VI.\n\n   Ah wretched, and too solitary he\n      Who loves not his own company!\n      He\u2019ll feel the weight of\u2019t many a day,\n   Unless he call in sin or vanity\n      To help to bear\u2019t away.\n\n                                    VII.\n\n   Oh solitude, first state of human-kind!\n      Which blest remained till man did find\n      Even his own helper\u2019s company.\n   As soon as two, alas, together joined,\n      The serpent made up three.\n\n                                    VIII.\n\n   Though God himself, through countless ages, thee\n      His sole companion chose to be,\n      Thee, sacred Solitude alone;\n   Before the branchy head of numbers Three\n      Sprang from the trunk of One.\n\n                                     IX.\n\n   Thou (though men think thine an unactive part)\n      Dost break and tame th\u2019 unruly heart,\n      Which else would know no settled pace,\n   Making it move, well managed by thy art\n      With swiftness and with grace.\n\n                                     X.\n\n   Thou the faint beams of Reason\u2019s scattered light\n      Dost like a burning glass unite;\n      Dost multiply the feeble heat,\n   And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright\n      And noble fires beget.\n\n                                     XI.\n\n   Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks, I see\n      The monster London laugh at me;\n      I should at thee too, foolish city,\n   If it were fit to laugh at misery.\n      But thy estate, I pity.\n\n                                    XII.\n\n   Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,\n      And the fools that crowd thee so,\u2014\n      Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,\n   A village less than Islington wilt grow,\n      A solitude almost.\n\n\n\n\nOF OBSCURITY.\n\n\n   _Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis_,\n   _Nec vixit male_, _qui natus moriensque fefellit_.\n\n   God made not pleasures only for the rich,\n   Nor have those men without their share too lived,\n   Who both in life and death the world deceived.\n\nTHIS seems a strange sentence thus literally translated, and looks as if\nit were in vindication of the men of business (for who else can deceive\nthe world?) whereas it is in commendation of those who live and die so\nobscurely, that the world takes no notice of them.  This Horace calls\ndeceiving the world, and in another place uses the same phrase.\n\n   _Secretum iter et fallentis semita vit\u00e6_.\n\n   The secret tracks of the deceiving life.\n\nIt is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear up to\nthat sense, and therefore Mr. Broome translates it very well:\n\n    Or from a life, led as it were by stealth.\n\nYet we say in our language, a thing deceives our sight, when it passes\nbefore us unperceived, and we may say well enough out of the same author:\n\n    Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine we strive\n    The cares of life and troubles to deceive.\n\nBut that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as\nQuintilian says, _Vitam fallere_, To draw on still, and amuse, and\ndeceive our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, and\nfall into that pit which Nature hath prepared for it.  The meaning of all\nthis is no more than that most vulgar saying, _Bene qui latuit_, _bene\nvixit_, He has lived well, who has lain well hidden.  Which, if it be a\ntruth, the world, I\u2019ll swear, is sufficiently deceived.  For my part, I\nthink it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life, is in\n_incognito_.  What a brave privilege is it to be free from all\ncontentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from\npaying all kind of ceremonies?  It is in my mind a very delightful\npastime, for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down\ntogether in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody.  It\nwas the case of \u00c6neas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about\nthe fields and streets of Carthage, Venus herself\n\n    A veil of thickened air around them cast,\n    That none might know, or see them as they passed.\n\nThe common story of Demosthenes\u2019s confession that he had taken great\npleasure in hearing of a Tanker-woman say as he passed, \u201cThis is that\nDemosthenes,\u201d is wonderful ridiculous from so solid an orator.  I myself\nhave often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am so\nfar from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from\nthe place, till I get, as it were, out of sight shot.  Democritus\nrelates, and in such a manner, as if he gloried in the good fortune and\ncommodity of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as\ntake notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid\nmany years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend\nMetrodorus: after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind\ncommemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he\nadds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great\nfelicities of their life, that in the midst of the most talked of and\ntalking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without\nfame, but almost without being heard of.  And yet within a very few years\nafterward, there were no two names of men more known or more generally\ncelebrated.  If we engage into a large acquaintance and various\nfamiliarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time:\nwe expose our life to a Quotidian Ague of frigid impertinences, which\nwould make a wise man tremble to think of.  Now, as for being known much\nby sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in\nthat.  Whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best\ndoctor, and the hangman more than the Lord Chief Justice of a city.\nEvery creature has it both of nature and art if it be any ways\nextraordinary.  It was as often said, \u201cThis is that Bucephalus,\u201d or,\n\u201cThis is that Incitatus,\u201d when they were led prancing through the\nstreets, as \u201cThis is that Alexander,\u201d or, \u201cThis is that Domitian\u201d; and\ntruly for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more\nhonourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than\nhe the empire.  I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the\nshadow of virtue; not that it doth any good to the body which it\naccompanies, but \u2019tis an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter\ncures the diseases of others.  The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that\nwhich is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and\nAristides, but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to\nany man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say,\nbecause I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man\nwho has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform\nus.  Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind\nand fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable\nfriends, with little commerce in the world besides; who is esteemed well\nenough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable\nby anybody; and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great\ninconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in\n(for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit); this innocent\ndeceiver of the word, as Horace calls him, this Muta Persona, I take to\nhave been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the\nstage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked\nwith his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.\n\n   _Seneca_, _ex Thyeste_,\n                  _Act 2_. _ Chor._\n   _Stet quicunque volet_, _potens_,\n   _Aul\u00e6 culmine lubrico_; _etc._\n\n   Upon the slippery tops of human state,\n      The gilded pinnacles of fate,\n   Let others proudly stand, and for a while,\n      The giddy danger to beguile,\n   With joy and with disdain look down on all,\n      Till their heads turn, and down they fall.\n   Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near\n      That I no fall to earth may fear,\n   And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat\n      From the long ruins of the great!\n   Here wrapped in the arms of quiet let me lie,\n   Quiet, companion of obscurity.\n   Here let my life, with as much silence slide,\n      As time that measures it does glide.\n   Nor let the breath of infamy or fame,\n   From town to town echo about my name;\n   Nor let my homely death embroidered be\n      With scutcheon or with elegy.\n      An old plebeian let me die,\n   Alas, all then are such, as well as I.\n      To him, alas, to him, I fear,\n   The face of death will terrible appear;\n   Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride\n   By being known to all the world beside,\n   Does not himself, when he is dying, know;\n   Nor what he is, nor whither he\u2019s to go.\n\n\n\n\nOF AGRICULTURE.\n\n\nTHE first wish of Virgil (as you will find anon by his verses), was to be\na good philosopher; the second, a good husbandman; and God (whom he\nseemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt\nwith him just as he did with Solomon: because he prayed for wisdom in the\nfirst place, he added all things else which were subordinately to be\ndesired.  He made him one of the best philosophers, and best husbandmen,\nand to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the best poet.  He\nmade him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who desired to be no\nricher, _O fortunatas nimium et bona qui sua novit_.  To be a husbandman,\nis but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or\nrather, a retreat from the world, as it is Man\u2019s\u2014into the world, as it is\nGod\u2019s.  But since Nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and\nFortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility, of\napplying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human\naffairs that we can make are the employments of a country life.  It is,\nas Columella calls it, _Res sine dubitatione proxima et quasi\nconsanguinea sapienti\u00e6_, the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred\nto Philosophy.  Varro says the principles of it are the same which Ennius\nmade to be the principles of all nature; earth, water, air, and the sun.\nIt does certainly comprehend more parts of philosophy than any one\nprofession, art, or science in the world besides; and, therefore, Cicero\nsays, the pleasures of a husbandman, _Mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime\nvidentur accedere_, come very nigh to those of a philosopher.  There is\nno other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a\npanegyrist: The utility of it to a man\u2019s self; the usefulness, or,\nrather, necessity of it to all the rest of mankind; the innocence, the\npleasure, the antiquity, the dignity.  The utility (I mean plainly the\nlucre of it) is not so great now in our nation as arises from merchandise\nand the trading of the city, from whence many of the best estates and\nchief honours of the kingdom are derived; we have no men now fetched from\nthe plough to be made lords, as they were in Rome to be made consuls and\ndictators, the reason of which I conceive to be from an evil custom now\ngrown as strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put\ntheir children to be bred up apprentices in agriculture, as in other\ntrades, but such who are so poor, that when they come to be men they have\nnot wherewithal to set up in it, and so can only farm some small parcel\nof ground, the rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence of the\ntenant; whilst they who are proprietors of the land are either too proud\nor, for want of that kind of education, too ignorant to improve their\nestates, though the means of doing it be as easy and certain in this as\nin any other track of commerce.  If there were always two or three\nthousand youths, for seven or eight years bound to this profession, that\nthey might learn the whole art of it, and afterwards be enabled to be\nmasters in it, by a moderate stock, I cannot doubt but that we should see\nas many aldermen\u2019s estates made in the country as now we do out of all\nkind of merchandising in the city.  There are as many ways to be rich;\nand, which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, without such\nnegligence as can neither have excuse nor pity; for a little ground will,\nwithout question, feed a little family, and the superfluities of life\n(which are now in some cases by custom made almost necessary) must be\nsupplied out of the superabundance of art and industry, or contemned by\nas great a degree of philosophy.  As for the necessity of this art, it is\nevident enough, since this can live without all others, and no one other\nwithout this.  This is like speech, without which the society of men\ncannot be preserved; the others like figures and tropes of speech which\nserve only to adorn it.  Many nations have lived, and some do still,\nwithout any art but this; not so elegantly, I confess, but still they\nhave; and almost all the other arts which are here practised are\nbeholding to them for most of their materials.  The innocence of this\nlife is in the next thing for which I commend it, and if husbandmen\npreserve not that, they are much to blame, for no men are so free from\nthe temptations of iniquity.  They live by what they can get by industry\nfrom the earth, and others by what they can catch by craft from men.\nThey live upon an estate given them by their mother, and others upon an\nestate cheated from their brethren.  They live like sheep and kine, by\nthe allowances of Nature, and others like wolves and foxes by the\nacquisitions of rapine; and, I hope, I may affirm (without any offence to\nthe great) that sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves and foxes\nare pernicious creatures.  They are, without dispute, of all men the most\nquiet and least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the\ncommonwealth; their manner of life inclines them, and interest binds\nthem, to love peace.  In our late mad and miserable civil wars, all other\ntrades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, and raised up some\ngreat commanders, who became famous and mighty for the mischiefs they had\ndone.  But I do not remember the name of any one husbandman who had so\nconsiderable a share in the twenty years\u2019 ruin of his country, as to\ndeserve the curses of his countrymen; and if great delights be joined\nwith so much innocence, I think it is ill done of men not to take them\nhere where they are so tame and ready at hand, rather than hunt for them\nin courts and cities, where they are so wild and the chase so troublesome\nand dangerous.\n\nWe are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature; we are there among\nthe pitiful shifts of policy.  We walk here in the light and open ways of\nthe divine bounty; we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of\nhuman malice.  Our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine\ntaste of their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the\nmost part overwhelmed with their contraries.  Here Pleasure looks,\nmethinks, like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an\nimpudent, fickle, and painted harlot.  Here is harmless and cheap plenty,\nthere guilty and expenseful luxury.\n\nI shall only instance in one delight more, the most natural and best\nnatured of all others, a perpetual companion of the husbandman: and that\nis, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but\nthe effects and improvements of his own art and diligence; to be always\ngathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others\nripening, and others budding; to see all his fields and gardens covered\nwith the beauteous creatures of his own industry; and to see, like God,\nthat all his works are good.\n\n   _Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades_; _ipsi_\n   _Agricol\u00e6 tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus_.\n\n   On his heart-strings a secret joy does strike.\n\nThe antiquity of his art is certainly not to be contested by any other.\nThe three first men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a\ngrazier; and if any man object that the second of these was a murderer, I\ndesire he would consider, that as soon as he was so, he quitted our\nprofession and turned builder.  It is for this reason, I suppose, that\nEcclesiasticus forbids us to hate husbandry; because, says he, the Most\nHigh has created it.  We were all born to this art, and taught by nature\nto nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which they were made, and\nto which they must return and pay at last for their sustenance.\n\nBehold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons who\nare too proud now not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon\nit.  We may talk what we please of lilies and lions rampant, and spread\neagles in fields d\u2019or or d\u2019argent; but if heraldry were guided by reason,\na plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.\n\nAll these considerations make me fall into the wonder and complaint of\nColumella, how it should come to pass that all arts or Sciences (for the\ndispute, which is an art and which is a science, does not belong to the\ncuriosity of us husbandmen), metaphysic, physic, morality, mathematics,\nlogic, rhetoric, etc., which are all, I grant, good and useful faculties,\nexcept only metaphysic, which I do not know whether it be anything or no,\nbut even vaulting, fencing, dancing, attiring, cookery, carving, and such\nlike vanities, should all have public schools and masters; and yet that\nwe should never see or hear of any man who took upon him the profession\nof teaching this so pleasant, so virtuous, so profitable, so honourable,\nso necessary art.\n\nA man would think, when he\u2019s in serious humour, that it were but a vain,\nirrational, and ridiculous thing for a great company of men and women to\nrun up and down in a room together, in a hundred several postures and\nfigures, to no purpose, and with no design; and therefore dancing was\ninvented first, and only practised anciently, in the ceremonies of the\nheathen religion, which consisted all in mummery and madness; the latter\nbeing the chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine inspiration.\nThis, I say, a severe man would think, though I dare not determine so far\nagainst so customary a part now of good breeding.  And yet, who is there\namong our gentry that does not entertain a dancing master for his\nchildren as soon as they are able to walk?  But did ever any father\nprovide a tutor for his son to instruct him betimes in the nature and\nimprovements of that land which he intended to leave him?  That is at\nleast a superfluity, and this a defect in our manner of education; and\ntherefore I could wish, but cannot in these times much hope to see it,\nthat one college in each university were erected, and appropriated to\nthis study, as well as there are to medicine and the civil law.  There\nwould be no need of making a body of scholars and fellows, with certain\nendowments, as in other colleges; it would suffice if, after the manner\nof Halls in Oxford, there were only four professors constituted (for it\nwould be too much work for only one master, or Principal, as they call\nhim there) to teach these four parts of it.  First, aration, and all\nthings relating to it.  Secondly, pasturage; thirdly, gardens, orchards,\nvineyards, and woods; fourthly, all parts of rural economy, which would\ncontain the government of bees, swine, poultry, decoys, ponds, etc., and\nall that which Varro calls Villaticas Pastiones, together with the sports\nof the field, which ought not to be looked upon only as pleasures, but as\nparts of housekeeping, and the domestical conservation and uses of all\nthat is brought in by industry abroad.  The business of these professors\nshould not be, as is commonly practised in other arts, only to read\npompous and superficial lectures out of Virgil\u2019s Georgics, Pliny, Varro,\nor Columella, but to instruct their pupils in the whole method and course\nof this study, which might be run through perhaps with diligence in a\nyear or two; and the continual succession of scholars upon a moderate\ntaxation for their diet, lodging, and learning, would be a sufficient\nconstant revenue for maintenance of the house and the professors, who\nshould be men not chosen for the ostentation of critical literature, but\nfor solid and experimental knowledge of the things they teach such men;\nso industrious and public spirited as I conceive Mr. Hartlib to be, if\nthe gentleman be yet alive.  But it is needless to speak further of my\nthoughts of this design, unless the present disposition of the age\nallowed more probability of bringing it into execution.  What I have\nfurther to say of the country life shall be borrowed from the poets, who\nwere always the most faithful and affectionate friends to it.  Poetry was\nborn among the shepherds.\n\n   _Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine musas_\n   _Ducit_, _et immemores non sinit esse sui_.\n\n   The Muses still love their own native place,\n   \u2019T has secret charms which nothing can deface.\n\nThe truth is, no other place is proper for their work.  One might as well\nundertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of\nnoise and tumult.\n\n   As well might corn as verse in cities grow;\n   In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow,\n   Against th\u2019 unnatural soil in vain we strive,\n   \u2019Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.\n\nIt will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of satire, which grow most\nnaturally in the worst earth; and therefore almost all poets, except\nthose who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of great men,\nthat is, without what they could get by flattering of them, have not only\nwithdrawn themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand world\n(_pariter vitiisque jocisque altius humanis exeruere caput_) into the\ninnocent happiness of a retired life; but have commended and adorned\nnothing so much by their ever-living poems.  Hesiod was the first or\nsecond poet in the world that remains yet extant (if Homer, as some\nthink, preceded him, but I rather believe they were contemporaries), and\nhe is the first writer, too, of the art of husbandry.  He has\ncontributed, says Columella, not a little to our profession; I suppose he\nmeans not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very\nimportant.  His great antiquity is visible through the gravity and\nsimplicity of his style.  The most acute of all his sayings concerns our\npurpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity of an oracle.\n\u03a0\u03bb\u03ad\u03bd \u1f25\u03bc\u03b9\u03c3\u03c5 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2.  The half is more than the whole.  The occasion of the\nspeech is this: his brother Perses had by corrupting some great men\n(\u0392\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u1fc6\u03b1\u03c2 \u0394\u03c9\u03c1\u03bf\u03c6\u03ac\u03b3\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2, great bribe-eaters he calls them) gotten from him\nthe half of his estate.  It is no matter, says he, they have not done me\nso much prejudice as they imagine.\n\n   \u039d\u03ae\u03c0\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9, \u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u2019 \u1f34\u03c3\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u1f45\u03c3\u1ff3 \u03c0\u03bb\u03ad\u03bf\u03bd \u1f95\u03bc\u03b9\u03c3\u03c5 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2\n   \u039f\u1f50\u03b4\u2019 \u1f45\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd \u03bc\u03b1\u03bb\u03ac\u03c7\u03b7 \u03c4\u03b5 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03c3\u03c6\u03bf\u03b4\u03ad\u03bb\u1ff3 \u03bc\u03b5\u03b3\u2019 \u1f54\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1\u03c2,\n   \u039a\u03c1\u03cd\u03c8\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u1f14\u03c7\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1f76 \u0392\u03af\u03bf\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9.\n\n   Unhappy they to whom God has not revealed\n   By a strong light which must their sense control,\n   That half a great estate\u2019s more than the whole.\n   Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lie\n   Of roots and herbs the wholesome luxury.\n\nThis I conceive to have been honest Hesiod\u2019s meaning.  From Homer we must\nnot expect much concerning our affairs.  He was blind, and could neither\nwork in the country nor enjoy the pleasures of it; his helpless poverty\nwas likeliest to be sustained in the richest places, he was to delight\nthe Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of their\nancestors; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet,\nmethinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little.  For though he\ncould do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of\nAchilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages, yet\nhe makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his\nconsolation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting and\neven dunging his own grounds.  Yet, see, he did not contemn us peasants;\nnay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eum\u00e6us, who\nkept the hogs with wonderful respect, \u0394\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd \u1f54\u03c6\u03c5\u03c1\u03b2\u03c5\u03bd, the divine\nswine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon.  And\nTheocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he\nwrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to a husbandman\n\u0395\u03bc\u03ad\u03b9\u03b2\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf \u0394\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03b3\u03c1\u03ce\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2.  The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who\nwas but \u0394\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 himself.  These were civil Greeks, and who understood the\ndignity of our calling.  Among the Romans, we have in the first place our\ntruly divine Virgil, who, though by the favour of M\u00e6cenas and Augustus he\nmight have been one of the chief men of Rome, yet chose rather to employ\nmuch of his time in the exercise, and much of his immortal wit in the\npraise and instructions of a rustic life; who, though he had written\nbefore whole books of Pastorals and Georgics, could not abstain in his\ngreat and imperial poem from describing Evander, one of his best princes,\nas living just after the homely manner of an ordinary countryman.  He\nseats him in a throne of maple, and lays him but upon a bear\u2019s skin, the\nkine and oxen are lowing in his courtyard, the birds\u2019 under the eaves of\nhis window call him up in the morning; and when he goes abroad only two\ndogs go along, with him for his guard.  At last, when he brings \u00c6neas\ninto his royal cottage, he makes him say this memorable compliment,\ngreater than ever yet was spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our\nWhitehall.\n\n            _H\u00e6c_, _inquit_, _limina victor_\n   _Alcides subiit_, _h\u00e6c illum Regia cepit_,\n   _Aude_, _Hospes_, _contemnere opes_, _et te quoque dignum_\n   _Finge Deo_, _rebusque veni non asper egenis_.\n\n   This humble roof, this rustic court, said he,\n   Received Alcides crowned with victory.\n   Scorn not, great guest, the steps where he has trod,\n   But contemn wealth, and imitate a god.\n\nThe next man whom we are much obliged to, both for his doctrine and\nexample, is the next best poet in the world to Virgil: his dear friend\nHorace, who, when Augustus had desired Mec\u00e6nas to persuade him to come\nand live domestically and at the same table with him, and to be Secretary\nof State of the whole world under him, or rather jointly with him (for he\nsays, \u201c_ut nos in Epistolis scribendis adjuvet_,\u201d) could not be tempted\nto forsake his Sabine or Tiburtine Manor, for so rich and so glorious a\ntrouble.  There was never, I think, such an example as this in the world,\nthat he should have so much moderation and courage as to refuse an offer\nof such greatness, and the Emperor so much generosity and good nature as\nnot to be at all offended with his refusal, but to retain still the same\nkindness, and express it often to him in most friendly and familiar\nletters, part of which are still extant.  If I should produce all the\npassages of this excellent author upon the several subjects which I treat\nof in this book, I must be obliged to translate half his works; of which\nI may say more truly than, in my opinion, he did of Homer, \u201c_Qui quid sit\npulchrum_, _quid turpe_, _quid utile_, _quid non_, _plenius_, _et melius\nChrysippo_, _et Crantore dicit_.\u201d  I shall content myself upon this\nparticular theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the other out of\nhis Satires, the third out of his Epistles, and shall forbear to collect\nthe suffrages of all other poets, which may be found scattered up and\ndown through all their writings, and especially in Martial\u2019s.  But I must\nnot omit to make some excuse for the bold undertaking of my own unskilful\npencil upon the beauties of a face that has been drawn before by so many\ngreat masters, especially that I should dare to do it in Latin verses\n(though of another kind) and have the confidence to translate them.  I\ncan only say that I love the matter, and that ought to cover, many\nfaults; and that I run not to contend with those before me, but follow to\napplaud them.\n\n\n\nVIRG. GEORG.\n\n\n                        _O fortunatus nimium_, _etc._\n\n                       A TRANSLATION OUT OF VIRGIL.\n\n   OH happy (if his happiness he knows)\n   The country swain, on whom kind Heaven bestows\n   At home all riches that wise Nature needs;\n   Whom the just earth with easy plenty feeds.\n   \u2019Tis true, no morning tide of clients comes,\n   And fills the painted channels of his rooms,\n   Adoring the rich figures, as they pass,\n   In tapestry wrought, or cut in living brass;\n   Nor is his wool superfluously dyed\n   With the dear poison of Assyrian pride:\n   Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoil\n   The native use and sweetness of his oil.\n   Instead of these, his calm and harmless life,\n   Free from th\u2019 alarms of fear, and storms of strife,\n   Does with substantial blessedness abound,\n   And the soft wings of peace cover him round:\n   Through artless grots the murmuring waters glide;\n   Thick trees both against heat and cold provide,\n   From whence the birds salute him; and his ground\n   With lowing herds, and bleating sheep does sound;\n   And all the rivers, and the forests nigh,\n   Both food and game and exercise supply.\n   Here a well-hardened, active youth we see,\n   Taught the great art of cheerful poverty.\n   Here, in this place alone, there still do shine\n   Some streaks of love, both human and divine;\n   From hence Astr\u00e6a took her flight, and here\n   Still her last footsteps upon earth appear.\n   \u2019Tis true, the first desire which does control\n   All the inferior wheels that move my soul,\n   Is, that the Muse me her high priest would make;\n   Into her holiest scenes of mystery take,\n   And open there to my mind\u2019s purg\u00e8d eye\n   Those wonders which to sense the gods deny;\n   How in the moon such chance of shapes is found\n   The moon, the changing world\u2019s eternal bound.\n   What shakes the solid earth, what strong disease\n   Dares trouble the firm centre\u2019s ancient ease;\n   What makes the sea retreat, and what advance:\n   Varieties too regular for chance.\n   What drives the chariot on of winter\u2019s light,\n   And stops the lazy waggon of the night.\n   But if my dull and frozen blood deny\n   To send forth spirits that raise a soul so high;\n   In the next place, let woods and rivers be\n   My quiet, though unglorious, destiny.\n   In life\u2019s cool vale let my low scene be laid;\n   Cover me, gods, with Tempe\u2019s thickest shade\n   Happy the man, I grant, thrice happy he\n   Who can through gross effects their causes see:\n   Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs.\n   Nor vainly fears inevitable things;\n   But does his walk of virtue calmly go,\n   Through all th\u2019 alarms of death and hell below.\n   Happy! but next such conquerors, happy they,\n   Whose humble life lies not in fortune\u2019s way.\n   They unconcerned from their safe distant seat\n   Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.\n   The quarrels of the mighty, without fear,\n   And the descent of foreign troops they hear.\n   Nor can even Rome their steady course misguide,\n   With all the lustre of her perishing pride.\n   Them never yet did strife or avarice draw\n   Into the noisy markets of the law,\n   The camps of gown\u00e9d war, nor do they live\n   By rules or forms that many mad men give,\n   Duty for nature\u2019s bounty they repay,\n   And her sole laws religiously obey.\n      Some with bold labour plough the faithless main;\n   Some rougher storms in princes\u2019 courts sustain.\n   Some swell up their slight sails with popular fame,\n   Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name.\n   Some their vain wealth to earth again commit;\n   With endless cares some brooding o\u2019er it sit.\n   Country and friends are by some wretches sold,\n   To lie on Tyrian beds and drink in gold;\n   No price too high for profit can be shown;\n   Not brother\u2019s blood, nor hazards of their own.\n   Around the world in search of it they roam;\n   It makes e\u2019en their Antipodes their home.\n   Meanwhile, the prudent husbandman is found\n   In mutual duties striving with his ground;\n   And half the year he care of that does take\n   That half the year grateful returns does make\n   Each fertile month does some new gifts present,\n   And with new work his industry content:\n   This the young lamb, that the soft fleece doth yield,\n   This loads with hay, and that with corn the field:\n   All sorts of fruit crown the rich autumn\u2019s pride:\n   And on a swelling hill\u2019s warm stony side,\n   The powerful princely purple of the vine,\n   Twice dyed with the redoubled sun, does shine.\n   In th\u2019 evening to a fair ensuing day,\n   With joy he sees his flocks and kids to play,\n   And loaded kine about his cottage stand,\n   Inviting with known sound the milker\u2019s hand;\n   And when from wholesome labour he doth come,\n   With wishes to be there, and wished for home,\n   He meets at door the softest human blisses,\n   His chaste wife\u2019s welcome, and dear children\u2019s kisses.\n   When any rural holydays invite\n   His genius forth to innocent delight,\n   On earth\u2019s fair bed beneath some sacred shade,\n   Amidst his equal friends carelessly laid,\n   He sings thee, Bacchus, patron of the vine,\n   The beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine,\n   Not to the loss of reason or of strength.\n   To active games and manly sport at length\n   Their mirth ascends, and with filled veins they see,\n   Who can the best at better trials be.\n   Such was the life the prudent Sabine chose,\n   From such the old Etrurian virtue rose.\n   Such, Remus and the god his brother led,\n   From such firm footing Rome grew the world\u2019s head.\n   Such was the life that even till now does raise\n   The honour of poor Saturn\u2019s golden days:\n   Before men born of earth and buried there,\n   Let in the sea their mortal fate to share,\n   Before new ways of perishing were sought,\n   Before unskilful death on anvils wrought.\n   Before those beasts which human life sustain,\n   By men, unless to the gods\u2019 use, were slain.\n\n\n\nHORAT.  EPODON.\n\n\n                     _Beatus ille qui procul_, _etc._\n\n   HAPPY time man whom bounteous gods allow\n   With his own hand paternal grounds to plough!\n   Like the first golden mortals, happy he,\n   From business and the cares of money free!\n   No human storms break off at land his sleep,\n   No loud alarms of nature on the deep.\n   From all the cheats of law he lives secure,\n   Nor does th\u2019 affronts of palaces endure.\n   Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine\n   He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join;\n   Sometimes he lops the barren trees around,\n   And grafts new life into the fruitful wound;\n   Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he\n   Stores up the golden treasures of the bee.\n   He sees his lowing herds walk o\u2019er the plain,\n   Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again.\n   And when the season, rich as well as gay,\n   All her autumnal bounty does display,\n   How is he pleas\u2019d th\u2019 increasing use to see\n   Of his well trusted labours bend the tree;\n   Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days,\n   He gives to friends, and to the gods repays.\n   With how much joy does he, beneath some shade\n   By aged trees, reverend embraces made,\n   His careless head on the fresh green recline,\n   His head uncharged with fear or with design.\n   By him a river constantly complains,\n   The birds above rejoice with various strains,\n   And in the solemn scene their orgies keep\n   Like dreams mixed with the gravity of sleep,\n   Sleep which does always there for entrance wait,\n   And nought within against it shuts the gate.\n      Nor does the roughest season of the sky,\n   Or sullen Jove, all sports to him deny.\n   He runs the mazes of the nimble hare,\n   His well-mouthed dogs\u2019 glad concert rends the air,\n   Or with game bolder, and rewarded more,\n   He drives into a toil the foaming boar;\n   Here flies the hawk to assault, and there the net\n   To intercept the travelling fowl is set;\n   And all his malice, all his craft is shown\n   In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone.\n   This is the life from all misfortune free,\n   From thee, the great one, tyrant love, from thee;\n   And if a chaste and clean though homely wife,\n   Be added to the blessings of this life,\u2014\n   Such as the ancient sun-burnt Sabines were,\n   Such as Apulia, frugal still, does bear,\u2014\n   Who makes her children and the house her care\n   And joyfully the work of life does share;\n   Nor thinks herself too noble or too fine\n   To pin the sheepfold or to milk the kine;\n   Who waits at door against her husband come\n   From rural duties, late, and wearied home,\n   Where she receives him with a kind embrace,\n   A cheerful fire, and a more cheerful face:\n   And fills the bowl up to her homely lord,\n   And with domestic plenty load the board.\n   Not all the lustful shell-fish of the sea,\n   Dressed by the wanton hand of luxury,\n   Nor ortolans nor godwits nor the rest\n   Of costly names that glorify a feast,\n   Are at the princely tables better cheer\n   Than lamb and kid, lettuce and olives, here.\n\n\n\nTHE COUNTRY MOUSE.\n\n\n           _A Paraphrase upon Horace_, II _Book_, _Satire_ vi.\n\n   AT the large foot of a fair hollow tree,\n   Close to ploughed ground, seated commodiously,\n   His ancient and hereditary house,\n   There dwelt a good substantial country mouse:\n   Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main,\n   Yet one who once did nobly entertain\n   A city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay,\n   A mouse of high degree, which lost his way,\n   Wantonly walking forth to take the air,\n   And arrived early, and alighted there,\n   For a day\u2019s lodging.  The good hearty host\n   (The ancient plenty of his hall to boast)\n   Did all the stores produce that might excite,\n   With various tastes, the courtier\u2019s appetite.\n   Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat,\n   And a large chestnut, the delicious meat\n   Which Jove himself, were he a mouse, would eat.\n   And for a haut goust there was mixed with these\n   The swerd of bacon, and the coat of cheese,\n   The precious relics, which at harvest he\n   Had gathered from the reapers\u2019 luxury.\n   \u201cFreely,\u201d said he, \u201cfall on, and never spare,\n   The bounteous gods will for to-morrow care.\u201d\n   And thus at ease on beds of straw they lay,\n   And to their genius sacrificed the day.\n   Yet the nice guest\u2019s epicurean mind\n   (Though breeding made him civil seem, and kind)\n   Despised this country feast, and still his thought\n   Upon the cakes and pies of London wrought.\n   \u201cYour bounty and civility,\u201d said he,\n   \u201cWhich I\u2019m surprised in these rude parts to see,\n   Show that the gods have given you a mind\n   Too noble for the fate which here you find.\n   Why should a soul, so virtuous and so great,\n   Lose itself thus in an obscure retreat?\n   Let savage beasts lodge in a country den,\n   You should see towns, and manners know, and men;\n   And taste the generous luxury of the court,\n   Where all the mice of quality resort;\n   Where thousand beauteous shes about you move,\n   And by high fare are pliant made to love.\n   We all ere long must render up our breath,\n   No cave or hole can shelter us from death.\n   Since life is so uncertain and so short,\n   Let\u2019s spend it all in feasting and in sport.\n   Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake\n   All the great things that mortals happy make.\u201d\n      Alas, what virtue hath sufficient arms\n   To oppose bright honour and soft pleasure\u2019s charms?\n   What wisdom can their magic force repel?\n   It draws the reverend hermit from his cell.\n   It was the time, when witty poets tell,\n   That Phoebus into Thetis\u2019 bosom fell:\n   She blushed at first, and then put out the light,\n   And drew the modest curtains of the night.\n   Plainly the truth to tell, the sun was set,\n   When to the town our wearied travellers get.\n   To a lord\u2019s house, as lordly as can be,\n   Made for the use of pride and luxury,\n   They some; the gentle courtier at the door\n   Stops, and will hardly enter in before;\u2014\n   But \u2019tis, sir, your command, and being so,\n   I\u2019m sworn t\u2019 obedience\u2014and so in they go.\n   Behind a hanging in a spacious room\n   (The richest work of Mortlake\u2019s noble loom)\n   They wait awhile their wearied limbs to rest,\n   Till silence should invite them to their feast,\n   About the hour that Cynthia\u2019s silver light\n   Had touched the pale meridies of the night,\n   At last, the various supper being done,\n   It happened that the company was gone\n   Into a room remote, servants and all,\n   To please their noble fancies with a ball.\n   Our host leads forth his stranger, and does find\n   All fitted to the bounties of his mind.\n   Still on the table half-filled dishes stood,\n   And with delicious bits the floor was strewed;\n   The courteous mouse presents him with the best,\n   And both with fat varieties are blest.\n   The industrious peasant everywhere does range,\n   And thanks the gods for his life\u2019s happy change.\n   Lo, in the midst of a well-freighted pie\n   They both at last glutted and wanton lie,\n   When see the sad reverse of prosperous fate,\n   And what fierce storms on mortal glories wait!\n   With hideous noise, down the rude servants come,\n   Six dogs before run barking into th\u2019 room;\n   The wretched gluttons fly with wild affright,\n   And hate the fulness which retards their flight.\n   Our trembling peasant wishes now in vain.\n   That rocks and mountains covered him again.\n   Oh, how the change of his poor life, he cursed!\n   \u201cThis, of all lives,\u201d said he, \u201cis sure the worst.\n   Give me again, ye gods, my cave and wood;\n   With peace, let tares and acorns be my food.\u201d\n\n\n\nHORACE TO FUSCUS ARISTIUS.\n\n\n  _A Paraphrase upon the Eightieth Epistle of the First Book of Horace_.\n\n   HEALTH, from the lover of the country, me,\n   Health, to the lover of the city, thee,\n   A difference in our souls, this only proves,\n   In all things else, we agree like married doves.\n   But the warm nest and crowded dove house thou\n   Dost like; I loosely fly from bough to bough;\n   And rivers drink, and all the shining day,\n   Upon fair trees or mossy rocks I play;\n   In fine, I live and reign when I retire\n   From all that you equal with heaven admire.\n   Like one at last from the priest\u2019s service fled,\n   Loathing the honied cakes, I long for bread.\n   Would I a house for happiness erect,\n   Nature alone should be the architect.\n   She\u2019d build it more convenient than great,\n   And doubtless in the country choose her seat.\n   Is there a place doth better helps supply\n   Against the wounds of winter\u2019s cruelty?\n   Is there an air that gentler does assuage\n   The mad celestial dog\u2019s or lion\u2019s rage?\n   Is it not there that sleep (and only there)\n   Nor noise without, nor cares within does fear?\n   Does art through pipes a purer water bring\n   Than that which nature strains into a spring?\n   Can all your tapestries, or your pictures, show\n   More beauties than in herbs and flowers do grow?\n   Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please,\n   Even in the midst of gilded palaces.\n   And in your towns that prospect gives delight\n   Which opens round the country to our sight.\n   Men to the good, from which they rashly fly,\n   Return at last, and their wild luxury\n   Does but in vain with those true joys contend\n   Which nature did to mankind recommend.\n   The man who changes gold for burnished brass,\n   Or small right gems for larger ones of glass,\n   Is not, at length, more certain to be made\n   Ridiculous and wretched by the trade,\n   Than he who sells a solid good to buy\n   The painted goods of pride and vanity.\n   If thou be wise, no glorious fortune choose,\n   Which \u2019t is but pain to keep, yet grief to lose.\n   For when we place even trifles in the heart,\n   With trifles too unwillingly we part.\n   An humble roof, plain bed, and homely board,\n   More clear, untainted pleasures do afford\n   Than all the tumult of vain greatness brings\n   To kings, or to the favourites of kings.\n   The horn\u00e9d deer, by nature armed so well,\n   Did with the horse in common pasture dwell;\n   And when they fought, the field it always won,\n   Till the ambitious horse begged help of man,\n   And took the bridle, and thenceforth did reign\n   Bravely alone, as lord of all the plain:\n   But never after could the rider get\n   From off his back, or from his mouth the bit.\n   So they, who poverty too much do fear,\n   To avoid that weight, a greater burden bear;\n   That they might power above their equals have,\n   To cruel masters they themselves enslave.\n   For gold, their liberty exchanged we see,\n   That fairest flower which crowns humanity.\n   And all this mischief does upon them light,\n   Only because they know not how aright\n   That great, but secret, happiness to prize,\n   That\u2019s laid up in a little, for the wise:\n   That is the best and easiest estate\n   Which to a man sits close, but not too strait.\n   \u2019Tis like a shoe: it pinches, and it burns,\n   Too narrow; and too large it overturns.\n   My dearest friend, stop thy desires at last,\n   And cheerfully enjoy the wealth thou hast.\n   And, if me still seeking for more you see,\n   Chide and reproach, despise and laugh at me.\n   Money was made, not to command our will,\n   But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil.\n   Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey;\n   The horse doth with the horseman run away.\n\n\n\nTHE COUNTRY LIFE.\n\n\n                         _Libr._ 4, _Plantarum_.\n\n   BLEST be the man (and blest he is) whom e\u2019er\n   (Placed far out of the roads of hope or fear)\n   A little field and little garden feeds;\n   The field gives all that frugal nature needs,\n   The wealthy garden liberally bestows\n   All she can ask, when she luxurious grows.\n   The specious inconveniences, that wait\n   Upon a life of business and of state,\n   He sees (nor does the sight disturb his rest)\n   By fools desired, by wicked men possessed.\n   Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil\u2019s praise)\n   The old Corycian yeoman passed his days,\n   Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent:\n   The ambassadors which the great emperor sent\n   To offer him a crown, with wonder found\n   The reverend gardener hoeing of his ground;\n   Unwillingly and slow, and discontent,\n   From his loved cottage to a throne he went.\n   And oft he stopped in his triumphant way,\n   And oft looked back, and oft was heard to say,\n   Not without sighs, \u201cAlas!  I there forsake\n   A happier kingdom than I go to take.\u201d\n   Thus Agla\u00fcs (a man unknown to men,\n   But the gods knew, and therefore loved him then)\n   Thus lived obscurely then without a name,\n   Agla\u00fcs, now consigned to eternal fame.\n   For Gyges, the rich king, wicked and great,\n   Presumed at wise Apollo\u2019s Delphic seat,\n   Presumed to ask, \u201cO thou, the whole world\u2019s eye,\n   Seest thou a man that happier is than I?\u201d\n   The god, who scorned to flatter man, replied,\n   \u201cAgla\u00fcs happier is.\u201d  But Gyges cried,\n   In a proud rage, \u201cWho can that Agla\u00fcs be?\n   We have heard as yet of no such king as he.\u201d\n   And true it was, through the whole earth around\n   No king of such a name was to be found.\n   \u201cIs some old hero of that name alive,\n   Who his high race does from the gods derive?\n   Is it some mighty general that has done\n   Wonders in fight, and god-like honours won?\n   Is it some man of endless wealth?\u201d said he;\n   \u201cNone, none of these: who can this Agla\u00fcs be?\u201d\n   After long search, and vain inquiries passed,\n   In an obscure Arcadian vale at last\n   (The Arcadian life has always shady been)\n   Near Sopho\u2019s town (which he but once had seen)\n   This Agla\u00fcs, who monarchs\u2019 envy drew,\n   Whose happiness the gods stood witness to,\n   This mighty Agla\u00fcs was labouring found,\n   With his own hands, in his own little ground.\n      So, gracious God (if it may lawful be,\n   Among those foolish gods to mention Thee),\n   So let me act, on such a private stage,\n   The last dull scenes of my declining age;\n   After long toils and voyages in vain,\n   This quiet port let my tossed vessel gain;\n   Of heavenly rest this earnest to me lend,\n   Let my life sleep, and learn to love her end.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GARDEN\n\n\n                       _To J_. _Evelyn_, _Esquire_.\n\nI NEVER had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as\nthat one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a\nsmall house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to\nthem, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of\nthem and the study of nature.\n\n   And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and entire to lie,\n   In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.\n\nOr, as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might there\n_studiis florere ignobilis otii_, though I could wish that he had rather\nsaid _Nobilis otii_ when he spoke of his own.  But several accidents of\nmy ill fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that\nfelicity; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by\nabandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from\nthe noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in the\ninn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish, and without\nthat pleasantest work of human industry\u2014the improvement of something\nwhich we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own.  I am gone\nout from Sodom, but I am not arrived at my little Zoar.  \u201cOh, let me\nescape thither (is it not a little one!), and my soul shall live.\u201d  I do\nnot look back yet; but I have been forced to stop and make too many\nhalts.  You may wonder, sir (for this seems a little too extravagant and\nPindarical for prose) what I mean by all this preface.  It is to let you\nknow, that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I\naccount my afflictions and endeavours well rewarded by something that I\nhave met with by-the-by, which is, that they have produced to me some\npart in your kindness and esteem; and thereby the honour of having my\nname so advantageously recommended to posterity by the epistle you are\npleased to prefix to the most useful book that has been written in that\nkind, and which is to last as long as months and years.\n\nAmong many other arts and excellencies which you enjoy, I am glad to find\nthis favourite of mine the most predominant, that you choose this for\nyour wife, though you have hundreds of other arts for your concubines;\nthough you know them, and beget sons upon them all (to which you are rich\nenough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of this seems to be\ndesigned by you to the main of the estate; you have taken most pleasure\nin it, and bestowed most charges upon its education, and I doubt not to\nsee that book which you are pleased to promise to the world, and of which\nyou have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as accomplished as\nanything can be expected from an extraordinary wit and no ordinary\nexpenses and a long experience.  I know nobody that possesses more\nprivate happiness than you do in your garden, and yet no man who makes\nhis happiness more public by a free communication of the art and\nknowledge of it to others.  All that I myself am able yet to do is only\nto recommend to mankind the search of that felicity which you instruct\nthem how to find and to enjoy.\n\n                                     I.\n\n      Happy art thou whom God does bless\n   With the full choice of thine own happiness;\n      And happier yet, because thou\u2019rt blessed\n      With prudence how to choose the best.\n   In books and gardens thou hast placed aright,\u2014\n      Things which thou well dost understand,\n   And both dost make with thy laborious hand\u2014\n      Thy noble, innocent delight,\n   And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet\n      Both pleasures more refined and sweet:\n      The fairest garden in her looks,\n      And in her mind the wisest books.\n   Oh! who would change these soft, yet solid joys,\n      For empty shows and senseless noise,\n      And all which rank ambition breeds,\n   Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such poisonous weeds!\n\n                                     II.\n\n   When God did man to his own likeness make,\n   As much as clay, though of the purest kind\n      By the Great Potter\u2019s art refined,\n      Could the Divine impression take,\n      He thought it fit to place him where\n      A kind of heaven, too, did appear,\n   As far as earth could such a likeness bear.\n      That Man no happiness might want,\n   Which earth to her first master could afford,\n      He did a garden for him plant\n   By the quick hand of his omnipotent word,\n   As the chief help and joy of human life,\n   He gave him the first gift; first, even, before a wife.\n\n                                    III.\n\n   For God, the universal architect,\n      \u2019T had been as easy to erect\n   A Louvre, or Escurial, or a tower\n   That might with heaven communication hold,\n   As Babel vainly thought to do of old.\n         He wanted not the skill or power,\n         In the world\u2019s fabric those were shown,\n   And the materials were all his own.\n   But well he knew what place would best agree\n   With innocence and with felicity;\n   And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain.\n   If any part of either yet remain,\n   If any part of either we expect,\n   This may our judgment in the search direct;\n   God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   Oh, bless\u00e8d shades!  Oh, gentle, cool retreat\n      From all the immoderate heat,\n   In which the frantic world does burn and sweat!\n   This does the lion-star, Ambition\u2019s rage;\n   This Avarice, the dog-star\u2019s thirst assuage;\n   Everywhere else their fatal power we see,\n   They make and rule man\u2019s wretched destiny;\n         They neither set nor disappear,\n         But tyrannise o\u2019er all the year;\n   Whilst we ne\u2019er feel their flame or influence here.\n      The birds that dance from bough to bough,\n      And sing above in every tree,\n      Are not from fears and cares more free,\n   Than we who lie, or sit, or walk below,\n      And should by right be singers too.\n   What prince\u2019s choir of music can excel\n      That which within this shade does dwell,\n      To which we nothing pay or give\u2014\n      They, like all other poets, live\n   Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains.\n      \u2019Tis well if they become not prey.\n   The whistling winds add their less artful strains,\n   And a grave base the murmuring fountains play.\n   Nature does all this harmony bestow;\n      But to our plants, art\u2019s music too,\n   The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe;\n   The lute itself, which once was green and mute,\n      When Orpheus struck the inspir\u00e8d lute,\n      The trees danced round, and understood\n      By sympathy the voice of wood.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   These are the spells that to kind sleep invite,\n   And nothing does within resistance make;\n      Which yet we moderately take;\n      Who would not choose to be awake,\n   While he\u2019s encompassed round with such delight;\n   To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight?\n   When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep\n   A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep,\n   She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread,\n      As the most soft and sweetest bed;\n   Not her own lap would more have charmed his head.\n   Who that has reason and his smell\n   Would not among roses and jasmine dwell,\n   Rather than all his spirits choke,\n   With exhalations of dirt and smoke,\n   And all the uncleanness which does drown\n   In pestilential clouds a populous town?\n   The earth itself breathes better perfumes here,\n   Than all the female men or women there,\n   Not without cause, about them bear.\n\n                                     VI.\n\n   When Epicurus to the world had taught\n      That pleasure was the chiefest good,\n   (And was perhaps i\u2019 th\u2019 right, if rightly understood)\n      His life he to his doctrine brought,\n   And in a garden\u2019s shade that sovereign pleasure sought.\n   Whoever a true epicure would be,\n   May there find cheap and virtuous luxury.\n   Vitellius his table, which did hold\n   As many creatures as the Ark of old,\n   That fiscal table, to which every day\n   All countries did a constant tribute pay,\n   Could nothing more delicious afford\n      Than Nature\u2019s liberality,\n   Helped with a little art and industry,\n   Allows the meanest gardener\u2019s board.\n   The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose\n   For which the grape or melon she would lose,\n   Though all the inhabitants of sea and air\n   Be listed in the glutton\u2019s bill of fare;\n      Yet still the fruits of earth we see\n   Placed the third storey high in all her luxury.\n\n                                    VII.\n\n   But with no sense the garden does comply,\n   None courts or flatters, as it does the eye;\n   When the great Hebrew king did almost strain\n   The wondrous treasures of his wealth and brain\n   His royal southern guest to entertain,\n      Though, she on silver floors did tread,\n   With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread\n         To hide the metal\u2019s poverty;\n      Though she looked up to roofs of gold,\n      And nought around her could behold\n         But silk and rich embroidery,\n         And Babylonian tapestry,\n      And wealthy Hiram\u2019s princely dye:\n   Though Ophir\u2019s starry stones met everywhere her eye;\n   Though she herself and her gay host were dressed\n   With all the shining glories of the East;\n   When lavish art her costly work had done;\n      The honour and the prize of bravery\n   Was by the Garden from the Palace won;\n   And every rose and lily there did stand\n      Better attired by Nature\u2019s hand:\n   The case thus judged against the king we see,\n   By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far than he.\n\n                                    VIII.\n\n   Nor does this happy place only dispense\n      Such various pleasures to the sense:\n         Here health itself does live,\n   That salt of life, which does to all a relish give,\n   Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth,\n   The body\u2019s virtue, and the soul\u2019s good fortune, health.\n   The tree life, when it in Eden stood,\n   Did its immortal head to heaven rear;\n   It lasted a tall cedar till the flood;\n   Now a small thorny shrub it does appear;\n      Nor will it thrive too everywhere:\n      It always here is freshest seen,\n      \u2019Tis only here an evergreen.\n      If through the strong and beauteous fence\n      Of temperance and innocence,\n   And wholesome labours and a quiet mind,\n      Any diseases passage find,\n      They must not think here to assail\n      A land unarm\u00e8d, or without a guard;\n   They must fight for it, and dispute it hard,\n      Before they can prevail.\n      Scarce any plant is growing here\n   Which against death some weapon does not bear,\n      Let cities boast that they provide\n      For life the ornaments of pride;\n      But \u2019tis the country and the field\n      That furnish it with staff and shield.\n\n                                     IX.\n\n   Where does the wisdom and the power divine\n   In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?\n   Where do we finer strokes and colours see\n   Of the Creator\u2019s real poetry,\n      Than when we with attention look\n   Upon the third day\u2019s volume of the book?\n   If we could open and intend our eye,\n      We all like Moses should espy\n   Even in a bush the radiant Deity.\n   But we despise these his inferior ways\n   Though no less full of miracle and praise;\n      Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze,\n   The stars of earth no wonder in us raise,\n      Though these perhaps do more than they\n         The life of mankind sway.\n   Although no part of mighty Nature be\n   More stored with beauty, power, and mystery,\n   Yet to encourage human industry,\n   God has so ordered that no other part\n   Such space and such dominion leaves for art.\n\n                                     X.\n\n   We nowhere art do so triumphant see,\n      As when it grafts or buds the tree;\n   In other things we count it to excel,\n   If it a docile scholar can appear\n   To Nature, and but imitate her well:\n   It over-rules, and is her master here.\n   It imitates her Maker\u2019s power divine,\n   And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine:\n   It does, like grace, the fallen-tree restore\n   To its blest state of Paradise before:\n   Who would not joy to see his conquering hand\n   O\u2019er all the vegetable world command,\n   And the wild giants of the wood receive\n      What laws he\u2019s pleased to give?\n   He bids the ill-natured crab produce\n   The gentler apple\u2019s winy juice,\n      The golden fruit that worthy is,\n      Of Galatea\u2019s purple kiss;\n      He does the savage hawthorn teach\n      To bear the medlar and the pear;\n      He bids the rustic plum to rear\n      A noble trunk, and be a peach.\n      Even Daphne\u2019s coyness he does mock,\n      And weds the cherry to her stock,\n      Though she refused Apollo\u2019s suit,\n      Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,\n      Now wonders at herself to see\n   That she\u2019s a mother made, and blushes in her fruit.\n\n                                     XI.\n\n   Methinks I see great Diocletian walk\n   In the Salonian garden\u2019s noble shade,\n   Which by his own imperial hands was made:\n   I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk\n   With the ambassadors, who come in vain,\n      To entice him to a throne again.\n   \u201cIf I, my friends,\u201d said he, \u201cshould to you show\n   All the delights which in these gardens grow;\n   \u2019Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,\n   Than \u2019tis that you should carry me away;\n   And trust me not, my friends, if every day\n      I walk not here with more delight,\n   Than ever, after the most happy fight,\n   In triumph to the Capitol I rode,\n   To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nOF GREATNESS.\n\n\nSINCE we cannot attain to greatness, says the Sieur de Montaigne, let us\nhave our revenge by railing at it; this he spoke but in jest.  I believe\nhe desired it no more than I do, and had less reason, for he enjoyed so\nplentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as\nallowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from\nthe incommodities.  If I were but in his condition, I should think it\nhard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be sequestered\nfrom it and made one of the principal officers of state.  But the reader\nmay think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was,\nnor ever shall be, put to the trial; I can therefore only make my\nprotestation.\n\n   If ever I more riches did desire\n   Than cleanliness and quiet do require;\n   If e\u2019er ambition did my fancy cheat,\n   With any wish so mean as to be great,\n   Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove\n   The humble blessings of that life I love.\n\nI know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as\na poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for\nbeing so.  _Dii bene fecerunt inopis me_, _quodque pusilli finxerunt\nanimi_.  I confess I love littleness almost in all things.  A little\nconvenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very\nlittle feast; and if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great\npassion, and therefore I hope I have done with it) it would be, I think,\nwith prettiness rather than with majestical beauty.  I would neither wish\nthat my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer\nused to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the\nstateliness and largeness of her person, but, as Lucretius says,\n\u201c_Parvula_, _pumilio_, \u03a7\u03b1\u03c1\u03af\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03bc\u03af\u03b1, _tota merum sal_.\u201d\n\nWhere there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of\nSenecio\u2019s mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder\ndescribes to this effect.  Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused\nwit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences,\ntill this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather\ndisease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants\nbut huge massy fellows, no plate or household stuff but thrice as big as\nthe fashion; you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his\nextravagancy came at last into such a madness that he would not put on a\npair of shoes each of which was not big enough for both his feet; he\nwould eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums\nand pound-pears.  He kept a concubine that was a very giantess, and made\nher walk, too, always in a chiopins, till at last he got the surname of\nSenecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his\ncognomentum.  When he declaimed for the three hundred Laced\u00e6monians, who\nalso opposed Xerxes\u2019 army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched\nout his arms and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and\ncried out in a very loud voice, \u201cI rejoice, I rejoice!\u201d  We wondered, I\nremember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence.  \u201cXerxes,\u201d\nsays he, \u201cis all mine own.  He who took away the sight of the sea with\nthe canvas veils of so many ships . . . \u201d and then he goes on so, as I\nknow not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the\nedition, or the orator\u2019s own burly way of nonsense.\n\nThis is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we\nstand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not, in some\nthings, and to some degree, grandios.  Is anything more common than to\nsee our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in\nwithout one to lead them? and a gown as long again as their body, so that\nthey cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up?  I\nmay safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a\ntrain, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious.\nWhat is all this but spice of _grandio_?  How tedious would this be if we\nwere always bound to it?  I do believe there is no king who would not\nrather be deposed than endure every day of his reign all the ceremonies\nof his coronation.  The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from\nthese majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparagement to\nthem), as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements and\nmeanest recreations of the vulgar, nay, even of children.  One of the\nmost powerful and fortunate princes of the world of late, could find out\nno delight so satisfactory as the keeping of little singing birds, and\nhearing of them and whistling to them.  What did the emperors of the\nwhole world?  If ever any men had the free and full enjoyment of all\nhuman greatness (nay, that would not suffice, for they would be gods too)\nthey certainly possessed it; and yet one of them, who styled himself\n\u201cLord and God of the Earth,\u201d could not tell how to pass his whole day\npleasantly, without spending constant two or three hours in catching of\nflies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been\nBeelzebub.  One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor\nmet with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime\nmore agreeable than to run about the streets all night in a disguise, and\nabuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat\nthem, and sometimes to be beaten by them.  This was one of his imperial\nnocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a\nfiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage; he was prouder\nof the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it\nthen) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were of their\ntriumphs over nations.  He did not at his death complain that so mighty\nan emperor, and the last of all the C\u00e6sarian race of deities, should be\nbrought to so shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, \u201cAlas!\nwhat pity it is that so excellent a musician should perish in this\nmanner!\u201d  His uncle Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; that\nwas the main fruit of his sovereignty.  I omit the madnesses of\nCaligula\u2019s delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of Tiberius.\nWould one think that Augustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of\nmankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of nature, should\nbe so hard put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to be found\nplaying at nuts and bounding-stones with little Syrian and Moorish boys,\nwhose company he took delight in, for their prating and their wantonness?\n\n   Was it for this, that Rome\u2019s best blood he spilt,\n   With so much falsehood, so much guilt?\n   Was it for this that his ambition strove\n   To equal C\u00e6sar first, and after Jove?\n   Greatness is barren sure of solid joys;\n   Her merchandise, I fear, is all in toys;\n   She could not else sure so uncivil be,\n   To treat his universal majesty,\n   His new created Deity,\n   With nuts and bounding-stones and boys.\n\nBut we must excuse her for this meagre entertainment; she has not really\nwherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be\ncontented sometimes with but slender cates, and with the same cold meats\nserved over and over again, even till they become nauseous.  When you\nhave pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does\nthere remain which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year? not so\nmany servants or horses, but a few good ones, which will do all the\nbusiness as well; not so many choice dishes at every meal; but at several\nmeals all of them, which makes them both the more healthy and dine more\npleasant; not so rich garments nor so frequent changes, but as warm and\nas comely, and so frequent change, too, as is every jot as good for the\nmaster, though not for the tailor or valet-de-chambre; not such a stately\npalace, nor gilt rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a\nconvenient brick house, with decent wainscot and pretty forest-work\nhangings.  Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with\nthat which I love most in both conditions), not whole woods cut in walks,\nnor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens, but herb and flower and\nfruit gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear\nand wholesome as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph or the\nurn of a river-god.  If for all this you like better the substance of\nthat former estate of life, do but consider the inseparable accidents of\nboth: servitude, disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, inherent in\nthe one; in the other, liberty, tranquillity, security, and innocence:\nand when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth\nwhich appeared to you before but a ridiculous paradox, that a low fortune\nis better guarded and attended than a high one.  If indeed, we look only\nupon the flourishing head of the tree, it appears a most beautiful\nobject.\n\n   \u2014_Sed quantum vertice ad auras_\n   _\u00c6therias_, _tantum radice ad Tartara tendit_.\n\n   As far up towards heaven the branches grow,\n   So far the root sinks down to hell below.\n\nAnother horrible disgrace to greatness is, that it is for the most part\nin pitiful want and distress.  What a wonderful thing is this, unless it\ndegenerate into avarice, and so cease to be greatness.  It falls\nperpetually into such necessities as drive it into all the meanest and\nmost sordid ways of borrowing, cozenage, and robbery, _Mancipiis\nlocopules_, _eget aris Cappadocum Rex_.  This is the case of almost all\ngreat men, as well as of the poor King of Cappadocia.  They abound with\nslaves, but are indigent of money.  The ancient Roman emperors, who had\nthe riches of the whole world for their revenue, had wherewithal to live,\none would have thought, pretty well at ease, and to have been exempt from\nthe pressures of extreme poverty.  But yet with most of them it was much\notherwise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable penury, that\nthey were forced to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants,\nto cheat with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their\nprovinces.  This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior\nand subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour.  They must\nbe cheated of a third part of their estates, two other thirds they must\nexpend in vanity, so that they remain debtors for all the necessary\nprovisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts but out of the\nsuccours and supplies of rapine; \u201cas riches increase,\u201d says Solomon, \u201cso\ndo the mouths that devour it.\u201d  The master mouth has no more than before;\nthe owner, methinks, is like Genus in the fable, who is perpetually\nwinding a rope of hay and an ass at the end perpetually eating it.  Out\nof these inconveniences arises naturally one more, which is, that no\ngreatness can be satisfied or contented with itself: still, if it could\nmount up a little higher, it would be happy; if it could but gain that\npoint, it would obtain all its desires; but yet at last, when it is got\nup to the very top of the peak of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger\nof breaking its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascending\nupwards into the seat of tranquillity above the moon.  The first\nambitious men in the world, the old giants, are said to have made an\nheroical attempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and they cast\nOssa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, two or three mountains more they\nthought would have done their business, but the thunder spoiled all the\nwork when they were come up to the third storey;\n\n   And what a noble plot was crossed,\n   And what a brave design was lost.\n\nA famous person of their offspring, the late giant of our nation, when,\nfrom the condition of a very inconsiderable captain, he had made himself\nlieutenant-general of an army of little Titans, which was his first\nmountain; and afterwards general, which was his second; and after that\nabsolute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the third, and almost\ntouched the heaven which he affected; is believed to have died with grief\nand discontent because he could not attain to the honest name of a king,\nand the old formality of a crown, though he had before exceeded the power\nby a wicked usurpation.  If he could have compassed that, he would\nperhaps have wanted something else that is necessary to felicity, and\npined away for the want of the title of an emperor or a god.  The reason\nof this is, that greatness has no reality in nature, but is a creature of\nthe fancy\u2014a notion that consists only in relation and comparison.  It is\nindeed an idol; but St. Paul teaches us that an idol is nothing in the\nworld.  There is in truth no rising or meridian of the sun, but only in\nrespect to several places: there is no right or left, no upper hand in\nnature; everything is little and everything is great according as it is\ndiversely compared.  There may be perhaps some villages in Scotland or\nIreland where I might be a great man; and in that case I should be like\nC\u00e6sar\u2014you would wonder how C\u00e6sar and I should be like one another in\nanything\u2014and choose rather to be the first man of the village than second\nat Rome.  Our Country is called Great Britain, in regard only of a lesser\nof the same name; it would be but a ridiculous epithet for it when we\nconsider it together with the kingdom of China.  That, too, is but a\npitiful rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth besides; and this\nwhole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but one\npoint or atom in relation to those numberless worlds that are scattered\nup and down in the infinite space of the sky which we behold.  The other\nmany inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of dispersedly in several\nchapters, and shall end this with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied\nbut rudely imitated.\n\n\n\nHORACE.  LIB. 3.  ODE 1.\n\n\n                      _Odi profanum vulgus_, _etc._\n\n                                     I.\n\n   HENCE, ye profane; I hate ye all;\n   Both the great vulgar, and the small.\n   To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness hold,\n   Not yet discoloured with the love of gold\n         (That jaundice of the soul,\n   Which makes it look so gilded and so foul),\n   To you, ye very few, these truths I tell;\n   The muse inspires my song, hark, and observe it well.\n\n                                     II.\n\n   We look on men, and wonder at such odds\n      \u2019Twixt things that were the same by birth;\n   We look on kings as giants of the earth,\n   These giants are but pigmies to the gods.\n      The humblest bush and proudest oak\n   Are but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke.\n   Beauty and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power\n      Have their short flourishing hour,\n      And love to see themselves, and smile,\n   And joy in their pre-eminence a while;\n      Even so in the same land,\n   Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand;\n   Alas, death mows down all with an impartial hand.\n\n                                    III.\n\n   And all you men, whom greatness does so please,\n      Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles.\n      If you your eyes could upwards move,\n   (But you, I fear, think nothing is above)\n   You would perceive by what a little thread\n      The sword still hangs over your head.\n   No tide of wine would drown your cares,\n   No mirth or music over-noise your fears;\n   The fear of death would you so watchful keep,\n   As not to admit the image of it, sleep.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces;\n   And yet so humble, too, as not to scorn\n      The meanest country cottages;\n      His poppy grows among the corn.\n   The halcyon sleep will never build his nest\n      In any stormy breast.\n      \u2019Tis not enough that he does find\n      Clouds and darkness in their mind;\n      Darkness but half his work will do,\n   \u2019Tis not enough; he must find quiet too.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   The man who, in all wishes he does make,\n      Does only Nature\u2019s counsel take,\n   That wise and happy man will never fear\n      The evil aspects of the year,\n   Nor tremble, though two comets should appear.\n   He does not look in almanacks to see,\n      Whether he fortunate shall be;\n   Let Mars and Saturn in the heavens conjoin,\n   And what they please against the world design,\n      So Jupiter within him shine.\n\n                                    VII.\n\n   If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;\n   God to their cares and fears will set no bound.\n      What would content you?  Who can tell?\n   Ye fear so much to lose what you have got\n      As if ye liked it well.\n   Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.\n      Go, level hills, and fill up seas,\n   Spare nought that may your wanton fancy please;\n      But trust me, when you have done all this,\n   Much will be missing still, and much will be amiss.\n\n\n\n\nOF AVARICE.\n\n\nTHERE are two sorts of avarice; the one is but of a bastard kind; and\nthat is, the rapacious appetite of gain, not for its own sake, but for\nthe pleasure of refunding it immediately through all the channels of\npride and luxury.  The other is the true kind, and properly so called;\nwhich is a restless and unsatiable desire of riches, not for any further\nend of use, but only to hoard, and preserve, and perpetually increase\nthem.  The covetous man of the first kind is like a greedy ostrich, which\ndevours any metal, but it is with an intent to feed upon it, and in\neffect it makes a shift to digest and excern it.  The second is like the\nfoolish chough, which loves to steal money only to hide it.  The first\ndoes much harm to mankind, and a little good too, to some few.  The\nsecond does good to none; no, not to himself.  The first can make no\nexcuse to God, or angels, or rational men for his actions.  The second\ncan give no reason or colour, not to the devil himself, for what he does:\nhe is a slave to Mammon without wages.  The first makes a shift to be\nbeloved; aye, and envied, too, by some people.  The second is the\nuniversal object of hatred and contempt.  There is no vice has been so\npelted with good sentences, and especially by the poets, who have pursued\nit with stories and fables, and allegories and allusions; and moved, as\nwe say, every stone to fling at it, among all which, I do not remember a\nmore fine and gentlemen-like correction than that which was given it by\none line of Ovid\u2019s.\n\n   _Desunt luxuri\u00e6 malta_, _avariti\u00e6 omnia_.\n\n   Much is wanting to luxury; all to avarice\n\nTo which saying I have a mind to add one member and render it thus:\u2014\n\n   Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things.\n\nSomebody says of a virtuous and wise man, that having nothing, he has\nall.  This is just his antipode, who, having all things, yet has nothing.\nHe is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold: _Audivi eos amatores esse\nmaximos sed nil potesse_.  They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to\nenjoy.\n\n   And, oh, what man\u2019s condition can be worse\n   Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings curse?\n   The beggars but a common fate deplore,\n   The rich poor man\u2019s emphatically poor.\n\nI wonder how it comes to pass that there has never been any law made\nagainst him.  Against him, do I say?  I mean for him, as there is a\npublic provision made for all other madmen.  It is very reasonable that\nthe king should appoint some persons (and I think the courtiers would not\nbe against this proposition) to manage his estate during his life (for\nhis heirs commonly need not that care), and out of it to make it their\nbusiness to see that he should not want alimony befitting his condition,\nwhich he could never get out of his own cruel fingers.  We relieve idle\nvagrants and counterfeit beggars, but have no care at all of these really\npoor men, who are, methinks, to be respectfully treated in regard of\ntheir quality.  I might be endless against them, but I am almost choked\nwith the superabundance of the matter.  Too much plenty impoverishes me\nas it does them.  I will conclude this odious subject with part of\nHorace\u2019s first Satire, which take in his own familiar style:\u2014\n\n   I admire, M\u00e6cenas, how it comes to pass,\n   That no man ever yet contented was,\n   Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state\n   In which his own choice plants him, or his fate.\n   Happy the merchant! the old soldier cries.\n   The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies\n   Happy the soldier! one half-hour to thee\n   Gives speedy death or glorious victory.\n   The lawyer, knocked up early from his rest\n   By restless clients, calls the peasant blest.\n   The peasant, when his labours ill succeed,\n   Envies the mouth which only talk does feed.\n   \u2019Tis not, I think you\u2019ll say, that I want store\n   Of instances, if here I add no more,\n   They are enough to reach at least a mile\n   Beyond long Orator Fabius his style.\n   But hold, you whom no fortune e\u2019er endears,\n   Gentlemen, malcontents, and mutineers,\n   Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call,\n   Behold, Jove\u2019s now resolved to please you all.\n   Thou, soldier, be a merchant; merchant, thou\n   A soldier be; and lawyer to the plough.\n   Change all your stations straight.  Why do they stay?\n   The devil a man will change now when he may.\n   Were I in General Jove\u2019s abus\u00e8d case,\n   By Jove, I\u2019d cudgel this rebellious race;\n   But he\u2019s too good; be all, then, as you were;\n   However, make the best of what you are,\n   And in that state be cheerful and rejoice,\n   Which either was your fate or was your choice.\n   No; they must labour yet, and sweat and toil,\n   And very miserable be awhile.\n   But \u2019tis with a design only to gain\n   What may their age with plenteous ease maintain;\n   The prudent pismire does this lesson teach,\n   And industry to lazy mankind preach.\n   The little drudge does trot about and sweat,\n   Nor does he straight devour all he can get,\n   But in his temperate mouth carries it home,\n   A stock for winter which he knows must come.\n   And when the rolling world to creatures here\n   Turns up the deformed wrong side of the year,\n   And shuts him in with storms and cold and wet,\n   He cheerfully does his past labours eat.\n   Oh, does he so? your wise example, the ant\n   Does not at all times rest, and plenty want.\n   But, weighing justly a mortal ant\u2019s condition,\n   Divides his life \u2019twixt labour and fruition.\n   Thee neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold\n   From thy unnatural diligence can withhold,\n   To the Indies thou wouldst run rather than see\n   Another, though a friend, richer than thee.\n   Fond man! what good or beauty can be found\n   In heaps of treasure buried under ground?\n   Which, rather than diminished e\u2019er to see,\n   Thou wouldst thyself, too, buried with them be\n   And what\u2019s the difference is\u2019t not quite as bad\n   Never to use, as never to have had?\n   In thy vast barns millions of quarters store,\n   Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more\n   Than mine does.  Every baker makes much bread,\n   What then?  He\u2019s with no more than others fed.\n   Do you within the bounds of Nature live,\n   And to augment your own you need not strive;\n   One hundred acres will no less for you\n   Your life\u2019s whole business than ten thousand do.\n   But pleasant \u2019tis to take from a great store;\n   What, man? though you\u2019re resolved to take no more\n   Than I do from a small one; if your will\n   Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill,\n   To some great river for it must you go,\n   When a clear spring just at your feet does flow?\n   Give me the spring which does to human use,\n   Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce;\n   He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile,\n   Must run the danger of the crocodile;\n   And of the rapid stream itself which may,\n   At unawares bear him perhaps away.\n   In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin\n   Washed o\u2019er in vain, for ever dry within;\n   He catches at the stream with greedy lips,\n   From his touched mouth the wanton torment slips.\n   You laugh now, and expand your careful brow:\n   \u2019Tis finely said, but what\u2019s all this to you?\n   Change but the name, this fable is thy story,\n   Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory,\n   Which thou canst only touch, but never taste;\n   The abundance still, and still the want does last.\n   The treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare,\n   But when they\u2019re made thine own, they sacred are,\n   And must be kept with reverence; as if thou\n   No other use of precious gold didst know\n   But that of curious pictures to delight\n   With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight.\n   The only true and genuine use is this,\n   To buy the things which nature cannot miss\n   Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread.\n   And wine by which the life of life is fed,\n   And all those few things else by which we live\n   All that remains is given for thee to give.\n   If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear,\n   The bitter fruits be which fair riches bear,\n   If a new poverty grow out of store,\n   The old plain way, ye gods! let me be poor.\n\n\n\nA PARAPHRASE ON AN ODE IN HORACE\u2019S THIRD BOOK, BEGINNING THUS:\u2014\n\n\n                    \u201c_Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea_.\u201d\n\n                                     I.\n\n   A TOWER of brass, one would have said,\n   And locks, and bolts, and iron bars,\n   And guards as strict as in the heat of wars\n   Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood.\n   The jealous father thought he well might spare\n         All further jealous care;\n   And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled\n      To think how Venus\u2019 arts he had beguiled;\n      And when he slept his rest was deep,\n   But Venus laughed to see and hear him sleep.\n      She taught the amorous Jove\n      A magical receipt in love,\n   Which armed him stronger and which helped him more\n   Than all his thunder did and his almightyship before.\n\n                                     II.\n\n   She taught him love\u2019s elixir, by which art\n   His godhead into gold he did convert;\n         No guards did then his passage stay,\n         He passed with ease, gold was the word;\n   Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce,\n      Gold through doors and walls did pierce;\n   And as that works sometimes upon the sword,\n      Melted the maiden dread away,\n   Even in the secret scabbard where it lay.\n      The prudent Macedonian king,\n   To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring;\n      He broke through gates with this petar,\n   \u2019Tis the great art of peace, the engine \u2019tis of war,\n      And fleets and armies follow it afar;\n   The ensign \u2019tis at land, and \u2019tis the seaman\u2019s scar.\n\n                                    III.\n\n   Let all the world slave to this tyrant be,\n   Creature to this disguis\u00e8d deity,\n      Yet it shall never conquer me.\n   A guard of virtues will not let it pass,\n   And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass.\n   The muses\u2019 laurel, round my temples spread,\n   Does from this lightning\u2019s force secure my head,\n      Nor will I lift it up so high,\n      As in the violent meteor\u2019s way to lie.\n   Wealth for its power do we honour and adore?\n   The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   From towns and courts, camps of the rich and great,\n   The vast Xerxean army, I retreat,\n   And to the small Laconic forces fly\n      Which hold the straits of poverty.\n   Cellars and granaries in vain we fill\n      With all the bounteous summer\u2019s store:\n   If the mind thirst and hunger still,\n      The poor rich man\u2019s emphatically poor.\n      Slaves to the things we too much prize,\n   We masters grow of all that we despise.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,\n      Is all the wealth by nature understood.\n   The monarch on whom fertile Nile bestows\n      All which that grateful earth can bear,\n         Deceives himself, if he suppose\n      That more than this falls to his share.\n   Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,\n         Is not a rent paid to the Lord;\n   But is a tax illegal and unjust,\n   Exacted from it by the tyrant lust.\n         Much will always wanting be,\n         To him who much desires.  Thrice happy he\n   To whom the wise indulgency of Heaven,\n      With sparing hand but just enough has given.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN IN MUCH COMPANY.\n\n\nIF twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults\nof but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I see little possibility for one\nhonest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves, who are all\nfurnished _cap-\u00e0-pie_ with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and\nthe offensive, too, of craft and malice.  He will find no less odds than\nthis against him if he have much to do in human affairs.  The only\nadvice, therefore, which I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his\nperson any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself,\nto stop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numerous an\nenemy.  The truth of it is, that a man in much business must either make\nhimself a knave, or else the world will make him a fool: and if the\ninjury went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise man would\ncontent himself with the revenge of retaliation: but the case is much\nworse, for these civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only\ndance about such a taken stranger, but at last devour him.  A sober man\ncannot get too soon out of drunken company; though they be never so kind\nand merry among themselves, it is not unpleasant only, but dangerous to\nhim.  Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love to be alone?  It is\nhard for him to be otherwise; he is so, when he is among ten thousand;\nneither is the solitude so uncomfortable to be alone without any other\ncreature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts.  Man is to\nman all kind of beasts\u2014a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a\nrobbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a\nrapacious vulture.  The civilest, methinks, of all nations, are those\nwhom we account the most barbarous; there is some moderation and good\nnature in the Toupinambaltians who eat no men but their enemies, whilst\nwe learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and\nsharks, prey upon everything that we can swallow.  It is the great boast\nof eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed,\nunited them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of\ncities.  I wish they could unravel all they had woven; that we might have\nour woods and our innocence again instead of our castles and our\npolicies.  They have assembled many thousands of scattered people into\none body: it is true, they have done so, they have brought them together\ninto cities to cozen, and into armies to murder one another; they found\nthem hunters and fishers of wild creatures, they have made them hunters\nand fishers of their brethren; they boast to have reduced them to a state\nof peace, when the truth is they have only taught them an art of war;\nthey have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of\nvice, but they raised first that devil which now they conjure and cannot\nbind; though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there\nwas less committed because there were no rewards for it.  But the men who\npraise philosophy from this topic are much deceived; let oratory answer\nfor itself, the tinkling, perhaps, of that may unite a swarm: it never\nwas the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only,\nand govern them when they were assembled, to make the best of an evil,\nand bring them, as much as is possible, to unity again.  Avarice and\nambition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire;\nthey said, \u201cGo to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach\nunto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon\nthe face of the earth.\u201d  What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis\nof all the world? what was it but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary\nof criminals? it was justly named by the augury of no less than twelve\nvultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood of his\nbrother.\n\nNot unlike to this was the beginning even of the first town, too, in the\nworld, and such is the original sin of most cities: their actual increase\ndaily with their age and growth; the more people, the more wicked all of\nthem.  Every one brings in his part to inflame the contagion, which\nbecomes at last so universal and so strong, that no precepts can be\nsufficient preservatives, nor anything secure our safety, but flight from\namong the infected.  We ought, in the choice of a situation, to regard\nabove all things the healthfulness of the place, and the healthfulness of\nit for the mind rather than for the body.  But suppose (which is hardly\nto be supposed) we had antidote enough against this poison; nay, suppose,\nfurther, we were always and at all places armed and provided both against\nthe assaults of hostility and the mines of treachery, it will yet be but\nan uncomfortable life to be ever in alarms; though we were compassed\nround with fire to defend ourselves from wild beasts, the lodging would\nbe unpleasant, because we must always be obliged to watch that fire, and\nto fear no less the defects of our guard than the diligences of our\nenemy.  The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is in danger to be trod\nupon and destroyed in the crowd of his contraries; nay, which is worse,\nto be changed and corrupted by them, and that it is impossible to escape\nboth these inconveniences without so much caution as will take away the\nwhole quiet, that is, the happiness of his life.  Ye see, then, what he\nmay lose; but, I pray, what can he get there?  _Quid Rom\u00e6 faciam_?\n_Mentiri nescio_.  What should a man of truth and honesty do at Rome? he\ncan neither understand, nor speak the language of the place; a naked man\nmay swim in the sea, but it is not the way to catch fish there; they are\nlikelier to devour him than he them, if he bring no nets and use no\ndeceits.  I think, therefore, it was wise and friendly advice which\nMartial gave to Fabian when he met him newly arrived at Rome.\n\n   Honest and poor, faithful in word and thought;\n   What has thee, Fabian, to the city brought?\n   Thou neither the buffoon nor bawd canst play,\n   Nor with false whispers the innocent betray:\n   Nor corrupt wives, nor from rich beldams get\n   A living by thy industry and sweat:\n   Nor with vain promises and projects cheat,\n   Nor bribe or flatter any of the great.\n      But you\u2019re a man of learning, prudent, just:\n   A man of courage, firm, and fit for trust.\n      Why, you may stay, and live unenvied here;\n   But, \u2019faith! go back, and keep you where you were.\n\nNay, if nothing of all this were in the case, yet the very sight of\nuncleanness is loathsome to the cleanly; the sight of folly and impiety\nvexatious to the wise and pious.\n\nLucretius, by his favour, though a good poet, was but an ill-natured man,\nwhen he said, \u201cIt was delightful to see other men in a great storm.\u201d  And\nno less ill-natured should I think Democritus, who laughed at all the\nworld, but that he retired himself so much out of it that we may perceive\nhe took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth.  I have been drawn twice\nor thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much\ndelighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses,\nwhich upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned not\nonly melancholy, but even sick with the sight.  My compassion there was\nperhaps too tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, without any\nperturbation, though, to weigh the matter justly, the total loss of\nreason is less deplorable than the total depravation of it.  An exact\njudge of human blessings, of riches, honours, beauty, even of wit itself,\nshould pity the abuse of them more than the want.\n\nBriefly, though a wise man could pass never so securely through the great\nroads of human life, yet he will meet perpetually with so many objects\nand occasions of compassion, grief, shame, anger, hatred, indignation,\nand all passions but envy (for he will find nothing to deserve that) that\nhe had better strike into some private path; nay, go so far, if he could,\nout of the common way, _ut nec facta audiat Pelopidarum_; that he might\nnot so much as hear of the actions of the sons of Adam.  But, whither\nshall we fly, then? into the deserts, like the ancient hermits?\n\n   _Qua terra patet fera regnat Erynnis_.\n         _In facinus jurasse putes_.\n\nOne would think that all mankind had bound themselves by an oath to do\nall the wickedness they can; that they had all, as the Scripture speaks,\nsold themselves to sin: the difference only is, that some are a little\nmore crafty (and but a little, God knows) in making of the bargain.  I\nthought, when I went first to dwell in the country, that without doubt I\nshould have met there with the simplicity of the old poetical golden age:\nI thought to have found no inhabitants there, but such as the shepherds\nof Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d\u2019Urf\u00e9 upon the banks of\nLignon; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend no\nless to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men of Chertsey: but\nto confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations,\nthat I was still in old England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest; that\nif I could not content myself with anything less than exact fidelity in\nhuman conversation, I had almost as good go back and seek for it in the\nCourt, or the Exchange, or Westminster Hall.  I ask again, then, whither\nshall we fly, or what shall we do?  The world may so come in a man\u2019s way\nthat he cannot choose but salute it; he must take heed, though, not to go\na whoring after it.  If by any lawful vocation or just necessity men\nhappen to be married to it, I can only give them St. Paul\u2019s advice:\n\u201cBrethren, the time is short; it remains that they that have wives be as\nthough they had none.  But I would that all men were even as I myself.\u201d\n\nIn all cases they must be sure that they do _mundum ducere_, and not\n_mundo nubere_.  They must retain the superiority and headship over it:\nhappy are they who can get out of the sight of this deceitful beauty,\nthat they may not be led so much as into temptation; who have not only\nquitted the metropolis, but can abstain from ever seeing the next market\ntown of their country.\n\n\n\nCLAUDIAN\u2019S OLD MAN OF VERONA.\n\n\n   HAPPY the man who his whole time doth bound\n   Within the enclosure of his little ground.\n   Happy the man whom the same humble place\n   (The hereditary cottage of his race)\n   From his first rising infancy has known,\n   And by degrees sees gently bending down,\n   With natural propension to that earth\n   Which both preserved his life, and gave him birth.\n   Him no false distant lights by fortune set,\n   Could ever into foolish wanderings get.\n   He never dangers either saw, or feared,\n   The dreadful storms at sea he never heard.\n   He never heard the shrill alarms of war,\n   Or the worse noises of the lawyers\u2019 bar.\n   No change of consuls marks to him the year,\n   The change of seasons is his calendar.\n   The cold and heat winter and summer shows,\n   Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers he knows.\n   He measures time by landmarks, and has found\n   For the whole day the dial of his ground.\n   A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees,\n   And loves his old contemporary trees.\n   Has only heard of near Verona\u2019s name,\n   And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame.\n   Does with a like concernment notice take\n   Of the Red Sea, and of Benacus lake.\n   Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys,\n   And sees a long posterity of boys.\n   About the spacious world let other roam,\n   The voyage Life is longest made at home.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHORTNESS OF LIFE AND UNCERTAINTY OF RICHES.\n\n\nIF you should see a man who were to cross from Dover to Calais, run about\nvery busy and solicitous, and trouble himself many weeks before in making\nprovisions for the voyage, would you commend him for a cautious and\ndiscreet person, or laugh at him for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb?\nA man who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the\ngreatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all\nconveniences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less\nridiculous; he does as little consider the shortness of his passage that\nhe might proportion his cares accordingly.  It is, alas, so narrow a\nstrait betwixt the womb and the grave, that it might be called the _Pas\nde Vie_, as well as the _Pas de Calais_.  We are all \u1f10\u03c6\u03ae\u03bc\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9 as\n_Pindar_ calls us, creatures of a day, and therefore our Saviour bounds\nour desires to that little space; as if it were very probable that every\nday should be our last, we are taught to demand even bread for no longer\na time.  The sun ought not to set upon our covetousness; no more than\nupon our anger; but as to God Almighty a thousand years are as one day,\nso, in direct opposition, one day to the covetous man is as a thousand\nyears, _tam brevi fortis jaculatur \u00e6vo multa_, so far he shoots beyond\nhis butt.  One would think he were of the opinion of the _Millenaries_,\nand hoped for so long a reign upon earth.  The patriarchs before the\nflood, who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, less stores for\nthe maintaining of it; they who lived nine hundred years scarcely\nprovided for a few days; we who live but a few days, provide at least for\nnine hundred years.  What a strange alteration is this of human life and\nmanners! and yet we see an imitation of it in every man\u2019s particular\nexperience, for we begin not the cares of life till it be half spent, and\nstill increase them as that decreases.  What is there among the actions\nof beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason?  When they do anything\nwhich seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we disdain to\nallow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a natural instinct.\nIf we could but learn to number our days (as we are taught to pray that\nwe might) we should adjust much better our other accounts, but whilst we\nnever consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be\nwithout end too.  Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good\nwords, _spatio brevi spem longam reseces_; from a short life cut off all\nhopes that grow too long.  They must be pruned away like suckers that\nchoke the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit.  And in another\nplace to the same sense, _Vit\u00e6 summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare\nlongam_, which Seneca does not mend when he says, _Oh quanta dementia est\nspes longas inchoantium_! but he gives an example there of an\nacquaintance of his named Senecio, who from a very mean beginning by\ngreat industry in turning about of money through all ways of gain, had\nattained to extraordinary riches, but died on a sudden after having\nsupped merrily, _In ipso actu ben\u00e9 cedentium rerum_, _in ipso\nprocurrentis fortun\u00e6 impetu_; in the full course of his good fortune,\nwhen she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all her sails on; upon\nwhich occasion he cries, out of Virgil:\n\n   _Insere nunc Melib\u00e6e pyros_, _pone ordine vites_:\n\n   Go to, Melib\u00e6us, now,\n   Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant;\n   Behold the fruit!\n\nFor this Senecio I have no compassion, because he was taken, as we say,\nin _ipso facto_, still labouring in the work of avarice; but the poor\nrich man in St. Luke (whose case was not like this) I could pity,\nmethinks, if the Scripture would permit me, for he seems to have been\nsatisfied at last; he confesses he had enough for many years; he bids his\nsoul take its ease; and yet for all that, God says to him, \u201cThou fool,\nthis night thy soul shall be required of thee, and the things thou hast\nlaid up, whom shall they belong to?\u201d  Where shall we find the causes of\nthis bitter reproach and terrible judgment; we may find, I think, two,\nand God perhaps saw more.  First, that he did not intend true rest to the\nsoul, but only to change the employments of it from avarice to luxury;\nhis design is to eat and to drink, and to be merry.  Secondly, that he\nwent on too long before he thought of resting; the fulness of his old\nbarns had not sufficed him, he would stay till he was forced to build new\nones, and God meted out to him in the same measure; since he would have\nmore riches than his life could contain, God destroyed his life and gave\nthe fruits of it to another.\n\nThus God takes away sometimes the man from his riches, and no less\nfrequently riches from the man: what hope can there be of such a marriage\nwhere both parties are so fickle and uncertain; by what bonds can such a\ncouple be kept long together?\n\n                                     I.\n\n   Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,\n      Or, what is worse, be left by it?\n   Why dost thou load thyself, when thou\u2019rt to fly,\n      O man ordained to die?\n\n                                     II.\n\n   Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,\n      Thou who art underground to lie?\n   Thou sow\u2019st and plantest, but no fruit must see;\n      For death, alas? is sowing thee.\n\n                                    III.\n\n   Suppose, thou fortune couldst to tameness bring,\n      And clip or pinion her wine;\n   Suppose thou couldst on fate so far prevail\n      As not to cut off thy entail.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n   Yet death at all that subtlety will laugh,\n      Death will that foolish gardener mock\n   Who does a slight and annual plant engraff,\n      Upon a lasting stock.\n\n                                     V.\n\n   Thou dost thyself wise and industrious deem;\n      A mighty husband thou wouldst seem;\n   Fond man! like a bought slave, thou, all the while\n      Dost but for others sweat and toil.\n\n                                     VI.\n\n   Officious fool! that needs must meddling be\n      In business that concerns not thee!\n   For when to future years thou extend\u2019st thy cares,\n      Thou deal\u2019st in other men\u2019s affairs.\n\n                                    VII.\n\n   Even aged men, as if they truly were\n      Children again, for age prepare,\n   Pro visions for long travail they design\n      In the last point of their short line.\n\n                                    VIII.\n\n   Wisely the ant against poor winter hoards\n      The stock which summer\u2019s wealth affords,\n   In grasshoppers, that must at autumn die,\n      How vain were such an industry.\n\n                                     IX.\n\n   Of power and honour the deceitful light\n      Might half excuse our cheated sight,\n   If it of life the whole small time would stay,\n      And be our sunshine all the day.\n\n                                     X.\n\n   Like lightning that, begot but in a cloud,\n      Though shining bright, and speaking loud,\n   Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race,\n      And where it gilds, it wounds the place.\n\n                                     XI.\n\n   Oh, scene of fortune, which dost fair appear\n      Only to men that stand not near.\n   Proud poverty, that tinsel bravery wears,\n      And like a rainbow, painted tears.\n\n                                    XII.\n\n   Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep,\n      In a weak boat trust not the deep.\n   Placed beneath envy, above envying rise;\n      Pity great men, great things despise.\n\n                                    XIII.\n\n   The wise example of the heavenly lark.\n      Thy fellow poet, Cowley, mark,\n   Above the clouds let thy proud music sound,\n      Thy humble nest build on the ground.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION.\n\n\n                       _A letter to Mr_. _S_. _L._\n\nI AM glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself\nfrom all tumult and business of the world and consecrating the little\nrest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined\nme, and from which fortune like a step-mother has so long detained me.\nBut nevertheless, you say\u2014which But is \u00e6rugo mera, a rust which spoils\nthe good metal it grows upon.  But, you say, you would advise me not to\nprecipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and\ncomplaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me,\naccording to the saying of that person whom you and I love very much, and\nwould believe as soon as another man, _cum dignitate otium_.  This were\nexcellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too.  But there\u2019s\nno fooling with life when it is once turned beyond forty.  The seeking\nfor a fortune then is but a desperate after game, it is a hundred to one\nif a man fling two sixes and recover all; especially if his hand be no\nluckier than mine.  There is some help for all the defects of fortune,\nfor if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his\nremedy by cutting of them shorter.  Epicurus writes a letter to\nIdomeneus, who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and it seems bountiful\nperson, to recommend to him, who had made so many men rich, one\nPythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired to be made a rich man too:\nBut I entreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have\ndone to many less deserving persons, but in the most gentlemanly manner\nof obliging him, which is not to add anything to his estate, but to take\nsomething from his desires.  The sum of this is, that for the uncertain\nhopes of some conveniences we ought not to defer the execution of a work\nthat is necessary, especially when the use of those things which we would\nstay for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered.\nNay, further yet, though we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind\nto, though we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game,\nyet when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so\nprecious, _Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_, the play is not worth the\nexpense of the candle.  After having been long tossed in a tempest, if\nour masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to\ncarry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and\ntopgallants; _utere velis totes pande sinus_.  A gentleman in our late\ncivil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken\nprisoner and lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on a band\nand adjust his periwig.  He would escape like a person of quality, or not\nat all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility.  I think\nyour counsel of _festina lente_ is as ill to a man who is flying from the\nworld, as it would have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentleman, who\nwas so cautious as not to fly undecently from his enemies, and therefore\nI prefer Horace\u2019s advice before yours.\n\n                   \u2014_Sapere ande_; _incipe_.\n\nBegin: the getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.\nVarro teaches us that Latin proverb, _Portam itineri longissimam esse_.\nBut to return to Horace,\n\n                   \u2014_Sapere aude_;\n    _Incipe_.  _Virendi qui recte prorogat horam_\n    _Rusticus expectat dum labitur amnis_; _at ille_\n    _Labitur_, _et labetur is omne volubilis \u00e6vum_.\n\n    Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise;\n    He who defers the work from day to day,\n    Does on a river\u2019s bank expecting stay,\n    Till the whole stream which stopped him should be gone,\n    That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.\n\nC\u00e6sar (the man of expedition above all others) was so far from this\nfolly, that whensoever in a journey he was to cross any river, he never\nwent one foot out of his way for a bridge, or a ford, or a ferry; but\nflung himself into it immediately, and swam over; and this is the course\nwe ought to imitate if we meet with any stops in our way to happiness.\nStay till the waters are low, stay till some boats come by to transport\nyou, stay till a bridge be built for you; you had even as good stay till\nthe river be quite past.  Persius (who, you used to say, you do not know\nwhether he be a good poet or no, because you cannot understand him, and\nwhom, therefore, I say, I know to be not a good poet) has an odd\nexpression of these procrastinations, which, methinks, is full of fancy.\n\n    _Jam cras hesterum consumpsimus_, _ecce aliud cras egerit hos annos_.\n\n    Our yesterday\u2019s to-morrow now is gone,\n    And still a new to-morrow does come on;\n    We by to-morrows draw up all our store,\n    Till the exhausted well can yield no more.\n\nAnd now, I think, I am even with you, for your _otium cum dignitate_ and\n_festina lente_, and three or four other more of your new Latin\nsentences: if I should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca and\nPlutarch upon this subject, I should overwhelm you, but I leave those as\n_triarii_ for your next charges.  I shall only give you now a light\nskirmish out of an epigrammatist, your special good friend, and so,\n_vale_.\n\n\n\nMART.  LIB. 5, EP. 59.\n\n\n    To-morrow you will live, you always cry;\n    In what far country does this morrow lie,\n    That \u2019tis so mighty long ere it arrive?\n    Beyond the Indies does this morrow live?\n    \u2019Tis so far-fetched, this morrow, that I fear\n    \u2019Twill be both very old and very dear.\n    To-morrow I will live, the fool does say;\n    To-day itself\u2019s too late, the wise lived yesterday.\n\n\n\nMART.  LIB. 2, EP. 90.\n\n\n    Wonder not, sir (you who instruct the town\n    In the true wisdom of the sacred gown),\n    That I make haste to live, and cannot hold\n    Patiently out, till I grow rich and old.\n    Life for delays and doubts no time does give,\n    None ever yet made haste enough to live.\n    Let him defer it, whose preposterous care\n    Omits himself, and reaches to his heir,\n    Who does his father\u2019s bounded stores despise,\n    And whom his own, too, never can suffice:\n    My humble thoughts no glittering roofs require,\n    Or rooms that shine with ought be constant fire.\n    We ill content the avarice of my sight\n    With the fair gildings of reflected light:\n    Pleasures abroad, the sport of Nature yields\n    Her living fountains, and her smiling fields:\n    And then at home, what pleasure is \u2019t to see\n    A little cleanly, cheerful family?\n    Which if a chaste wife crown, no less in her\n    Than fortune, I the golden mean prefer.\n    Too noble, nor too wise, she should not be,\n    No, nor too rich, too fair, too fond of me.\n    Thus let my life slide silently away,\n    With sleep all night, and quiet all the day.\n\n\n\n\nOF MYSELF.\n\n\nIT is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates\nhis own heart to say anything of disparagement and the reader\u2019s ears to\nhear anything of praise for him.  There is no danger from me of offending\nhim in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune allow me\nany materials for that vanity.  It is sufficient for my own contentment\nthat they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the\ndefective side.  But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in\nrelation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be\nlikelier thereby to fall into the contempt than rise up to the estimation\nof most people.  As far as my memory can return back into my past life,\nbefore I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or\nbusiness of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret\nbent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from\nothers, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and inscrutable to\nman\u2019s understanding.  Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead\nof running about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I was wont to\nsteal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or\nwith some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper.  I was\nthen, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could\nnever prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn\nwithout book the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me\nalone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercises out of\nmy own reading and observation.  That I was then of the same mind as I am\nnow (which I confess I wonder at myself) may appear by the latter end of\nan ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then\nprinted with many other verses.  The beginning of it is boyish, but of\nthis part which I here set down, if a very little were corrected, I\nshould hardly now be much ashamed.\n\n                                     IX.\n\n   This only grant me, that my means may lie\n   Too low for envy, for contempt too high.\n      Some honour I would have,\n   Not from great deeds, but good alone.\n   The unknown are better than ill known.\n      Rumour can ope the grave;\n   Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends\n   Not on the number, but the choice of friends.\n\n                                     X.\n\n   Books should, not business, entertain the light,\n   And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.\n      My house a cottage, more\n   Than palace, and should fitting be\n   For all my use, no luxury.\n      My garden painted o\u2019er\n   With Nature\u2019s hand, not Art\u2019s; and pleasures yield,\n   Horace might envy in his Sabine field.\n\n                                     XI.\n\n   Thus would I double my life\u2019s fading space,\n   For he that runs it well twice runs his race.\n      And in this true delight,\n   These unbought sports, this happy state,\n   I would not fear, nor wish my fate,\n      But boldly say each night,\n   To-morrow let my sun his beams display\n   Or in clouds hide them\u2014I have lived to-day.\n\nYou may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the\nconclusion is taken out of Horace), and perhaps it was the immature and\nimmoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved, these\ncharacters in me.  They were like letters cut into the bark of a young\ntree, which with the tree still grow proportionably.  But how this love\ncame to be produced in me so early is a hard question.  I believe I can\ntell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such\nchimes of verse as have never since left ringing there.  For I remember\nwhen I begun to read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to\nlie in my mother\u2019s parlour.  (I know not by what accident, for she\nherself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was\nwont to lie Spenser\u2019s works; this I happened to fall upon, and was\ninfinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and\nmonsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my\nunderstanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the\ntinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had\nread him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet\nas immediately as a child is made an eunuch.  With these affections of\nmind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university, but\nwas soon torn from thence by that violent public storm which would suffer\nnothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the\nprincely cedars to me, the hyssop.  Yet I had as good fortune as could\nhave befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family\nof one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best\nprincesses of the world.  Now though I was here engaged in ways most\ncontrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company,\nand no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant\nand triumphant, for that was the state then of the English and French\nCourts; yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only\nadded the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural\ninclination.  I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the\nnearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with\nwhen, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me\nwhen I saw that it was adulterate.  I met with several great persons,\nwhom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their\ngreatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or\ncontent to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and\nbravely in it.  A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with\nmy courage.  Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found\nanywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though\nI ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present\nsubsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in\nbanishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing\nmy old schoolboy\u2019s wish in a copy of verses to the same effect.\n\n   Well then; I now do plainly see,\n   This busy world and I shall ne\u2019er agree, etc.\n\nAnd I never then proposed to myself another advantage from His Majesty\u2019s\nhappy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient\nretreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have\ncompassed, as well as some others, with no greater probabilities or\npretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes.  But I had before\nwritten a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me\nin the truth, though not in the elegance of it.\n\n    Thou, neither great at court nor in the war,\n    Nor at th\u2019 exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar;\n    Content thyself with the small barren praise,\n    Which neglected verse does raise, etc.\n\nHowever, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not\nquit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it _A corps\nperdu_, without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune.  But\nGod laughs at a man who says to his soul, \u201cTake thy ease\u201d: I met\npresently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but\nwith so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the\nhappiness of an emperor as well as mine.  Yet I do neither repent nor\nalter my course.  _Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum_.  Nothing shall\nseparate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at\nlast married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived\nyet so quietly with me as I hoped from her.\n\n   \u2014_Nec vos_, _dulcissima mundi_\n   _Nomina_, _vos Mus\u00e6_, _libertas_, _otia_, _libri_,\n   _Hortique sylvesque anima remanente relinquam_.\n\n      Nor by me e\u2019er shall you,\n   You of all names the sweetest, and the best,\n   You Muses, books, and liberty, and rest;\n   You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,\n   As long as life itself forsakes not me.\n\nBut this is a very petty ejaculation.  Because I have concluded all the\nother chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the\nlast.\n\n\n\nMARTIAL, LIB. 10, EP. 47.\n\n\n                  _Vitam qu\u00e6 faciunt beatiorem_, _etc._\n\n    SINCE, dearest friend, \u2019tis your desire to see\n    A true receipt of happiness from me;\n    These are the chief ingredients, if not all:\n    Take an estate neither too great nor small,\n    Which _quantum sufficit_ the doctors call;\n    Let this estate from parents\u2019 care descend:\n    The getting it too much of life does spend.\n    Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be\n    A fair encouragement for industry.\n    Let constant fires the winter\u2019s fury tame,\n    And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame.\n    Thee to the town let never suit at law,\n    And rarely, very rarely, business draw.\n    Thy active mind in equal temper keep,\n    In undisturb\u00e8d peace, yet not in sleep.\n    Let exercise a vigorous health maintain,\n    Without which all the composition\u2019s vain.\n    In the same weight prudence and innocence take\n    _Ana_ of each does the just mixture make.\n    But a few friendships wear, and let them be\n    By Nature and by Fortune fit for thee.\n    Instead of art and luxury in food,\n    Let mirth and freedom make thy table good.\n    If any cares into thy daytime creep,\n    At night, without wines, opium, let them sleep.\n    Let rest, which Nature does to darkness wed,\n    And not lust, recommend to thee thy bed,\n    Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art;\n    Act cheerfully and well the allotted part.\n    Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past,\n    And neither fear, nor wish the approaches of the last.\n\n\n\nMARTIAL, LIB. 10. EP. 96.\n\n\n    ME, who have lived so long among the great,\n    You wonder to hear talk of a retreat:\n    And a retreat so distant, as may show\n    No thoughts of a return when once I go.\n    Give me a country, how remote so e\u2019er,\n    Where happiness a moderate rate does bear,\n    Where poverty itself in plenty flows\n    And all the solid use of riches knows.\n    The ground about the house maintains it there,\n    The house maintains the ground about it here.\n    Here even hunger\u2019s dear, and a full board\n    Devours the vital substance of the lord.\n    The land itself does there the feast bestow,\n    The land itself must here to market go.\n    Three or four suits one winter here does waste,\n    One suit does there three or four winters last.\n    Here every frugal man must oft be cold,\n    And little lukewarm fires are to you sold.\n    There fire\u2019s an element as cheap and free\n    Almost as any of the other three.\n    Stay you then here, and live among the great,\n    Attend their sports, and at their tables eat.\n    When all the bounties here of men you score:\n    The Place\u2019s bounty there, shall give me more.\n\n\n\nEPITAPHIUM VIVI AUCTOIRIS.\n\n\n    _Hic_, _O viator_, _sub Lare parvulo_\n    _Couleius hic est conditus_, _hic jacet_;\n       _Defunctus humani laboris_\n          _Sorte_, _supervacu\u00e2gue vil\u00e2_.\n\n    _Non_ indecora pauperie _nitens_,\n    _Et non_ inerti _nobilis_ otio,\n       _Vanoque dilectis popello_\n          _Divitiis_ animosus hostis.\n\n    _Possis ut illum dicere_ mortuum,\n    _En terra jam nunc_ quantula _sufficit_!\n       _Exempta sit curis_, viator;\n          _Terra sit illa levis_, _precare_.\n\n    _Hic sparge_ flores, _sparge breves_ rosas,\n    _Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus_,\n       _Herbisque odoratis corona_\n          _Vatis adhuc_ cinerem calentem.\n\n\n\nEPITAPH OF THE LIVING AUTHOR.\n\n\n                             [_Translation_.]\n\n   O WAYFARER, beneath his household shrine\n      Here Cowley lies, closed in a little den;\n   A life too empty and his lot combine\n      To give him rest from all the toils of men.\n\n    Not shining with unseemly shows of want,\n       Nor noble with the indolence of ease;\n    Fearless of spirit as a combatant\n       With mob-loved wealth and all its devotees.\n\n    That you may fairly speak of him as dead,\n       Behold how little earth contents him now!\n    Pray, wayfarer, that all his cares be fled,\n       And that the earth lie lightly on his brow.\n\n    Strew flowers here, strew roses soon to perish,\n       For the dead life joys in all flowers that blow;\n    Crown with sweet herbs, bank blossoms high, to cherish\n       The poet\u2019s ashes that are yet aglow.\n\n                                                             HENRY MORLEY.\n\n\n\n\nA FEW NOTES.\n\n\nPage 15.  _Fertur equis_, &c.  From the close of Virgil\u2019s first Georgic:\n\n    said of horses in a chariot race,\n    Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries they fear,\n    But force along the trembling charioteer.\n\n                                                   _Dryden\u2019s translation_.\n\nPage 16.  _En Romanos_, &c.  Virgil, \u00c6neid I., when Jove says,\n\n    The people Romans call, the city Rome,\n    To them no bounds of empire I assign,\n    Nor term of years to their immortal line.\n\n                                                        _Dryden\u2019s Virgil_.\n\nPage 18.  \u201cLaveer with every wind.\u201d  Laveer is an old sea term for\nworking the ship against the wind.  Lord Clarendon used its noun, \u201cthe\nschoolmen are the best laveerers in the world, and would have taught a\nship to catch the wind that it should have gained half and half, though\nit had been contrary.\u201d\n\nPage 24.  _Amatorem trecent\u00e6 Pirithoum cohibent caten\u00e6_.  Horace\u2019s Ode,\nBk. IV., end of ode 4.  Three hundred chains bind the lover, Pirithous:\n\n    Wrath waits on sin, three hundred chains\n    Pirithous bind in endless pains.\n\n                                                   _Creech\u2019s Translation_.\n\nPage 25.  _Aliena negotia_, &c.  From Horace\u2019s Satires, sixth of Book II.\n\nPage 25.  _Dors_, cockchafers.\n\nPage 26.  _Pan huper sebastos_.  Lord over All.\n\nPage 27.  _Perditur h\u00e6c inter misero Lux_.  Horace, Satires, II., 6.\nThis whole Satire is in harmony with the spirit of Cowley\u2019s Essays.\n\nPage 29.  _A slave in Saturnalibus_.  In the Saturnalia, when Roman\nslaves had licence to disport themselves.\n\nPage 29.  _Unciatim_, &c.  Terence\u2019s Phormio, Act I., scene 1, in the\nopening: \u201cAll that this poor fellow has, by starving himself, bit by bit,\nwith much ado, scraped together out of his pitiful allowance\u2014(must go at\none swoop, people never considering the price it cost him the getting).\u201d\n_Eachard\u2019s Terence_.\n\nPage 30.  _\u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u1f70 \u03b8\u03b7\u03c1\u03af\u03b1_, &c.  Paul to Titus, \u201cThe Cretans are always\nliars, _evil beasts_, _slow bellies_.\u201d\n\nPage 31.  _Quisnam igitur_, &c.  Horace\u2019s Satires, II., 7.  \u201cWho then is\nfree?  The wise man, who has absolute rule over himself.\u201d\n\nPage 31.  Oenomaus, father of Hippodameia, would give her only to the\nsuitor who could overcome him in a chariot race.  Suitors whom he could\novertake he killed.  He killed himself when outstripped by Pelops, whom a\ngod assisted, or, according to one version, a man who took the nails out\nof Oenomaus\u2019 chariot wheels, and brought him down with a crash.\n\nPage 41.  _Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus_.  Never less alone than\nwhen alone.\n\nPage 47.  _Sic ego_, &c.  From Tibullus, IV., 13.\n\nPage 51.  _O quis me gelidis_, &c.  From the Second Book of Virgil\u2019s\nGeorgics, in a passage expressing the poet\u2019s wish:\n\n    Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fired,\n    My soul is ravished and my brain inspired;\n    Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear,\n    Would you your poet\u2019s first petition hear:\n    Give me the ways of wandering stars to know;\n    The depths of Heaven above, and Earth below;\n    Teach me, &c. . . .\n    . . .\n    But if my heavy blood restrain the flight\n    Of my free soul aspiring to the height\n    Of Nature, and unclouded fields of light:\n    My next desire is, void of care and strife,\n    To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life.\n    A country cottage near a crystal flood,\n    A winding valley and a lofty wood;\n    Some god conduct me to the sacred shades\n    Where bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids,\n    Or lift me high to H\u00e6mus hilly crown,\n    Or in the vales of Temp\u00e8 lay me down,\n    Or lead me to some solitary place,\n    And cover my retreat from human race.\n\n                                                   _Dryden\u2019s translation_.\n\nPage 56.  _Nam neque divitibus_.  Horace\u2019s Epistles, I., 18.\n\nPage 58.  Tankerwoman, \u201cwater-bearer, one who carried water from the\nconduits.\u201d\n\nPage 60.  _Bucephalus_, the horse of Alexander.  Domitian is said to have\ngiven a consulship to his horse _Incitatus_.\n\nPage 60.  The glory of Cato and Aristides.  See the parallel lives in\nPlutarch.\n\nPage 64.  _O fortunatos nimium_, &c.  Men all too happy, and they knew\ntheir good.\n\nPage 70.  _Hinc atque hinc_.  From Virgil\u2019s \u00c6neid, Book I.\n\nPage 75.  Mr. Hartlib . . . _if the gentleman be yet alive_.  Samuel\nHartlib, a public-spirited man of a rich Polish family, came to England\nin 1640.  He interested himself in education and other subjects, as well\nas agriculture.  In 1645 he edited a treatise of Flemish Agriculture that\nadded greatly to the knowledge of English farmers, and thereby to the\nwealth of England.  He spent a large fortune among us for the public\ngood.  Cromwell recognised his services by a pension of \u00a3300 a year,\nwhich ceased at the Restoration, and Hartlib then fell into such\nobscurity that Cowley could not say whether he were alive or no.\n\nPage 75.  _Nescio qua_, &c.  Ovid.  Epistles from Pontus.\n\nPage 76.  _Pariter_, &c.  Ovid\u2019s Fasti, Book I.  Referring to the happy\nsouls who first looked up to the stars, Ovid suggests that in like manner\nthey must have lifted their heads above the vices and the jests of man.\nCowley has here turned \u201clocis\u201d into \u201cjocis.\u201d\n\nPage 80.  _Ut nos in Epistolis scribendis adjuvet_.  That he might help\nus in writing letters.\n\nPage 81.  _Qui quid sit pulchrum_, &c.  Who tells more fully than\nChrysippus or Crantor what is fair what is foul, what useful and what\nnot.\n\nPage 92.  _Swerd of bacon_, skin of bacon.  First English _sweard_.  So\ngreen sward is green surface covering.\n\nPage 100.  The Country Life is a translation from Cowley\u2019s own Latin Poem\non Plants.\n\nPage 105.  Evelyn had dedicated to Cowley his Kalendarium Hortense.","title":"Cowley's Essays","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":32329}