acutest, and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it 5 has, not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but tion to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our seventy Elders, but all the Lord's people, 23 are become prophets. No marvel then though some men, and some good men too, perhaps, but young in 10 casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corrupgoodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weakness are in agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits the hour; when they have branched them- 15 in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing selves out, saith he, small enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will beware until he see our small divided maniples24 20 cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects, and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over-timorous 25 in their envious gabble would prognosticate a of them that vex in this belief, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to persuade me. herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing 26 her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and year of sects and schisms. What should ye do then, should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city, should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to First, when a City shall be as it were besieged 30 and blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up even to her walls, and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other 35 such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye suptimes, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity, and admiration, things not before discoursed or 40 and free, and humane government; it is the written of, argues first a singular goodwill, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight, and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives itself to a press yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarified and enlightened gallant bravery and well grounded contempt 45 our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that of their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us, as his was, 25 who when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself 50 encamped his own regiment. Next it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the 55 which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and 23 Numb. xi., 29. 24 Small companies of soldiers. The Roman manipulus was a subdivision of the cohort. 23 The story is told in Livy's Rome, xxvi, 11. The name of the confident purchaser is not given. tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encourage5 ments, to learn without book the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercises out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may despatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others? not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct," and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace 10 as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. Abraham Cowley 1618-1667 OF MYSELF (Essays in Verse and Prose, 1668) myself) may appear by the latter end of an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but 15 of this part, which I here set down, if a very little were corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. IX This only grant me, that my means may lie It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's 25 ears to hear anything of praise for him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment 30 that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier 35 thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation of most people. Not on the number, but the choice of friends. X 5 Books should, not business, entertain the light, My garden painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field. XI Thus would I double my life's fading space; These unbought sports, this happy state, 15 20 As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or busi- 40 ness of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and inscrutable to man's under- 45 standing. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy- You may see by it I was even then acquainted days and playing with my fellows, I was wont with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out to steal from them and walk into the fields, of Horace), and perhaps it was the immature either alone with a book, or with some one 50 and immoderate love of them which stamped Not he who takes up arms on account of (i. e. against) illegal taxation, imposed to pay for the clothing (coat) and transport (conduct) of the king's troops, and not he who refuses to give his four nobles of a ship-money tax. The proceeds of the tax imposed to meet the cost of clothing and transporting new levies was known as coat and conduct money. The ship-money tax (which John 55 Hampden and others refused to pay), was called Danegelt, because the king and his party relied on the old Danegelt (originally money given to the Danes to refrain from attacking England) as a precedent. 1 The essay Of Myself is the last of a series entitled Several Discourses by Way of Essays in Prose and Verse. 3 first, or rather engraved, these characters in me. They were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe, I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there. 2 Excused me alone. Od. III, xxix, 41 et. seq. I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in 5 banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect: For I remember, when I began to read, and to Well then; I now do plainly see, And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from His Majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which 15 I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it: Thou, neither great at court nor in the war Content thyself with the small barren praise, With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university, but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storms which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every 20 plant, even from the princely cedars to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best 25 princesses of the world. Now though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and 30 triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French Courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly 35 all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty, which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was adulterate. I met with 40 tum. 10 Nothing shall separate me from a misseveral great persons, whom I liked very well; but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid 45 safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it A corps perdu," without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, "Take thy ease:" I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacramen tress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her: Nec vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos Musa, libertas, otia, libri, Hortique sylvaque, animâ remanente relinquam. Nor by me e'er shall you, You of all names the sweetest, and the best, VI. DRYDEN TO THE DEATH OF JOHNSON THE AGE OF DRYDEN Samuel Butler 1612-1680 c. 1660-1784 THE MERITS OF SIR HUDIBRAS1 (From Hudibras, Part I, Canto I, 1663) When civil dudgeon first grew high, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, A wight he was, whose very sight would 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Complains she thought him but an ass, As men their best apparel do. Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak: That Latin was no more difficile, Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle: To many, that had not one word. . . . He was in logic a great critic, 58 65 Profoundly skill'd in Analytic; A hair 'twixt south and south-west side; Confute, change hands, and still confute; A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, And rocks, Committee-men or Trustees. He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination. All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure, he would do. For Rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happen'd to break off Teach nothing but to name his tools. But, when he pleas'd to shew't, his speech Which learned pedants much affect; It had an odd promiscuous tone, A figure of rhetoric, i. e. he could not speak without using ornate language. 10 Sleeves or hose made of coarse fustian were often cut into holes in order to show the satin underneath. Which made some think, when he did gabble, As if his stock would ne'er be spent; 105 110 He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice. 164 To match his learning and his wit: "Twas Presbyterian true blue, 190 For he was of that stubborn crew 115 To be the true Church Militant: Than Tycho Brahe,14 or Erra Pater;15 For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; 120 125 130 135 145 Of errant saints, whom all men grant Such as do build their faith upon And prove their doctrine Orthodox to. Still so perverse and opposite, 195 200 205 210 215 mind 220 In them, in other men all sin. Like words congeal'd in Northern air. Rather than fail, they will defy 225 He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly. That which they love most tenderly; 150 Quarrel with minc'd-pies, and disparage In school-divinity as able As he that hight Irrefragable;18 Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge; Fat pig and goose itself oppose, A second Thomas, 19 or at once To name them all, another Duns.20 And blaspheme custard thro' the nose. 230 11 According to Hesiod, Cerberus had fifty heads. 12 Referring to the testing of precious metals by the use of the touchstone. 13 Demosthenes. 14 A famous Danish astronomer, 1546-1601. 15 An old astrologer, whose name is here given to William Lilly, a famous astrologer of the time. 16 A philosophical term for things that exist, as opposed to those things that are only potential. 17 The real essences of things. 18 Alexander of Hales, d. 1245, was called doctor irrefragable. 19 Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, a famous scholar. 20 The followers of Duns Scotus (d. 1308), by their opposition to the New Learning, came to be looked upon as Stupid obstructionists: hence our word dunce Dunsinan. 21 Nominal vs. real. The reference is to two philosophical doctrines advocated by the Nominalists and the Realists respectively. 22 A member or Doctor of the College of the Sorbonne in Paris, founded by Robert de Sorbon in 1257. 23 The old belief that insanity was due to the influence of the moon is reflected in our words lunatic, lunacy, from Latin luna, moon. 24 The ass, according to the Koran, was the beast which Gabriel brought to carry Mahomet to the presence of God. The pigeon (wigeon) Mahomet taught to eat out of his ear, that it might be thought to be his means o communication with God. |