FRANCIS QUARLES

(A. D. 1592-1644.)

FRANCIS QUARLES, religious poet and moralist, was born at Rumford, in the English county of Essex, in 1592, and died in 1644. He was educated at Cambridge, and studied law at Lincoln's Inn. For a time he filled the post of cupbearer to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (the unfortunate daughter of King James I., of England). Later, he was secretary to Archbishop Ussher, and afterwards chronologer to the city of London. He espoused the cause of Charles I., and was so harassed by the opposite party, who injured his property and plundered him of his books and rare manuscripts, that his death was attributed to the affliction and illhealth caused by these disasters. The favorite works of Quarles, in his own day and since, were the "Divine Emblems," published in 1635, and the "Enchiridion," which appeared in 1641. Mr. Sidney Lee, who writes of Quarles in the "Dictionary of National Biography," says: "In his own day he found very few admirers among persons of literary cultivation, and critics of a later age treated his literary pretensions with contempt. Anthony à Wood sneered at him as an old puritanical poet, the sometimes darling of our plebeian judgment." Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), wrote that his verses 'have been ever, and still are, in wonderful veneration among the vulgar.' who criticised his Emblems' in detail in a letter to Atterbury, denounces the book in the Dunciad' (bk. i., 11, 139-40) as one

'Where the pictures for the page atone,

And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.'

Pope,

Horace Walpole wrote that Milton was forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles.' But Quarles is not quite so contemptible as his seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century critics assumed. Most of his verse is diffuse and dull;

he abounds in fantastic, tortuous, and irrational conceits, and he often sinks into ludicrous bathos; but there is no volume of his verse which is not illumined by occasional flashes of poetic fire. Charles Lamb was undecided whether to prefer him to Wither, and finally reached the conclusion that Quarles was the wittier writer, although Witherlays more hold of the heart' (Letters,' ed. Ainger, i. 95). Pope deemed Wither a better poet but a less honest man. Quarles's most distinguished admirer of the present century was the American writer, H. D. Thoreau, who asserted, not unjustly, that he uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare' ('Letters,' 1865).'

SELECTIONS FROM QUARLES'S "ENCHIRIDION."

If thou desire not to be too poore, desire not to be too rich he is rich, not that possesses much, but he that covets no more: and he is poore, not that enjoyes little, but he that wants too much the contented minde wants nothing which it hath not: the covetous mind wants not onely what it hath not, but likewise what it hath.

If thou hast any businesse of consequence in agitation, let thy care be reasonable, and seasonable: continuall standing bent weakens the bow: too hasty drawing breaks it. Put off thy cares with thy cloathes: so shall thy rest strengthen thy labour; and so shall thy labour sweeten thy rest.

With three sorts of men enter no serious friendship: the ingratefull man; the multiloquious man; the coward: the first cannot prize thy favours; the second cannot keep thy counsell; the third dare not vindicate thy honour.

If thou desire the time should not passe too fast, use not too much pastime: thy life in jollity blazes like a tapour in the wind: the blast of honour wastes it, the heat of pleasure melts it; if thou labour in a painful calling, thou shalt be lesse sensible of the flux of time, and sweetlier satisfied at the time of death.

Reade not bookes alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thy selfe: if thou find any thing questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend, rather than the glosse of a sweetlipt flatterer: there is more profit in a distastefull truth, than deceitfull sweetnesse.

If thou desire to take the best advantage of thy selfe (especially in matters where the fancy is most imployed) keep temperate diet, use moderate exercise, observe seasonable and set houres for rest; let the end of thy first sleep raise thee from thy repose: then hath thy body the best temper; then hath thy soule the least incumberance.

If thou art rich, strive to command thy mony, lest she command thee if thou know how to use her, she is thy servant: if not, thou art her slave.

So use prosperity, that adversity may not abuse thee: if in the one, security admits no feares; in the other, despaire will afford no hopes: he that in prosperity can foretell a danger, can in adversity foresee deliverance.

Be not too greedy in desiring riches, nor too eager in seeking them: nor too covetous in keeping them; nor too passionate in losing them.

In the commission of evill, feare no man so much as thy own selfe: another is but one witnesse against thee: thou art a thousand: another thou mayst avoid, but thy selfe thou canst not.

In thy apparell avoyd singularity, profusenesse and gaudinesse; be not too early in the fashion; nor too late : decency is the halfe way betweene affectation and neglect: the body is the shell of the soule; apparell is the huske of that shell; the huske often tels you what the kirnell is.

Let thy recreation be manly, moderate, seasonable, lawfull; if thy life be sedentary, more tending to the exercise of thy body; if active, more to the refreshing of thy mind; the use of recreation is to strengthen thy labour, and sweeten thy rest.

Bee not censorious, for thou know'st not whom thou judgest; it is a more dextrous errour to speak well of an evill man than ill of a good man.

Hath any wronged thee? be bravely reveng'd: sleight it, and the work's begun; forgive it, and 't is finisht: he is below himselfe that is not above an injury.

When thy hand hath done a good act, aske thy heart if it be well done: the matter of a good action is the deed done; the forme of a good action is the manner of the doing in the first, another hath the comfort, and thou the glory; in the other, thou hast the comfort, and God the glory that deed is ill done wherein God is no sharer.

:

Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burne thee if thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee: if thou lust after it, it destroyes thee; if vertue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soule's purgatory: it is the wise man's bonefire, and the foole's furnace.

If thou wouldst have a good servant, let thy servant find a wise master.

Use law and physicke only for necessity; they that use them otherwise, abuse themselves into weake bodies, and light purses: they are good remedies, bad businesses, and worse recreations.

Take no pleasure in the death of a creature; if it be harmlesse or uselesse, destroy it not: if usefull, or harmefull destroy it mercifully: he that mercifully made his creatures for thy sake, expects thy mercy upon them for his sake.

Give not thy tongue too great a liberty, lest it take thee prisoner: A word unspoken is, like the sword in thy scabberd, thine; if vented, thy sword is in another's hand: if thou desire to be held wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue.

Seest thou good dayes? prepare for evill times: No summer but hath his winter. He never reaped comfort in adversity, that sowed it not in prosperity.

Demeane thy selfe more warily in thy study, than in the street. If thy publique actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude lookes but upon thy actions: thy conscience lookes into them.

Of all vices take heed of drunkennesse. Other vices make their owne way; this makes way for all vices.

If thou seest any thing in thy selfe, which may make thee proud, look a little further, and thou shalt find enough to humble thee.

If thou be ignorant, endeavour to get knowledge, lest thou be beaten with stripes: if thou hast attained knowledge, put it in practice, lest thou be beaten with many stripes.

So behave thy selfe in thy course of life, as at a banquet. Take what is offer'd with modest thankfulnesse: and expect what is not as yet offer'd with hopefull patience; let not thy rude appetite presse thee.