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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter, by Ben
+Jonson, Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter
+       and Some Poems
+
+
+Author: Ben Jonson
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: August 14, 2014  [eBook #5134]
+[This file was first posted on May 10, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND
+MATTER***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+                               DISCOVERIES
+                        _MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER_
+                                   AND
+                                SOME POEMS
+
+
+                                    BY
+                               BEN JOHNSON.
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+                      _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
+                                  1892.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+BEN JONSON’S “Discoveries” are, as he says in the few Latin words
+prefixed to them, “A wood—Sylva—of things and thoughts, in Greek ‘ὕλη’”
+[which has for its first meaning material, but is also applied peculiarly
+to kinds of wood, and to a wood], “from the multiplicity and variety of
+the material contained in it.  For, as we are commonly used to call the
+infinite mixed multitude of growing trees a wood, so the ancients gave
+the name of Sylvæ—Timber Trees—to books of theirs in which small works of
+various and diverse matter were promiscuously brought together.”
+
+In this little book we have some of the best thoughts of one of the most
+vigorous minds that ever added to the strength of English literature.
+The songs added are a part of what Ben Jonson called his “Underwoods.”
+
+Ben Jonson was of a north-country family from the Annan district that
+produced Thomas Carlyle.  His father was ruined by religious persecution
+in the reign of Mary, became a preacher in Elizabeth’s reign, and died a
+month before the poet’s birth in 1573.  Ben Jonson, therefore, was about
+nine years younger than Shakespeare, and he survived Shakespeare about
+twenty-one years, dying in August, 1637.  Next to Shakespeare Ben Jonson
+was, in his own different way, the man of most mark in the story of the
+English drama.  His mother, left poor, married again.  Her second husband
+was a bricklayer, or small builder, and they lived for a time near
+Charing Cross in Hartshorn Lane.  Ben Jonson was taught at the parish
+school of St. Martin’s till he was discovered by William Camden, the
+historian.  Camden was then second master in Westminster School.  He
+procured for young Ben an admission into his school, and there laid firm
+foundations for that scholarship which the poet extended afterwards by
+private study until his learning grew to be sworn-brother to his wit.
+
+Ben Jonson began the world poor.  He worked for a very short time in his
+step-father’s business.  He volunteered to the wars in the Low Countries.
+He came home again, and joined the players.  Before the end of
+Elizabeth’s reign he had written three or four plays, in which he showed
+a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with
+that high sense of the poet’s calling which put lasting force into his
+work.  He poured contempt on those who frittered life away.  He urged on
+the poetasters and the mincing courtiers, who set their hearts on
+top-knots and affected movements of their lips and legs:—
+
+   “That these vain joys in which their wills consume
+   Such powers of wit and soul as are of force
+   To raise their beings to eternity,
+   May be converted on works fitting men;
+   And for the practice of a forcéd look,
+   An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase,
+   Study the native frame of a true heart,
+   An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge,
+   And spirit that may conform them actually
+   To God’s high figures, which they have in power.”
+
+Ben Jonson’s genius was producing its best work in the earlier years of
+the reign of James I.  His _Volpone_, the _Silent Woman_, and the
+_Alchemist_ first appeared side by side with some of the ripest works of
+Shakespeare in the years from 1605 to 1610.  In the latter part of
+James’s reign he produced masques for the Court, and turned with distaste
+from the public stage.  When Charles I. became king, Ben Jonson was
+weakened in health by a paralytic stroke.  He returned to the stage for a
+short time through necessity, but found his best friends in the best of
+the young poets of the day.  These looked up to him as their father and
+their guide.  Their own best efforts seemed best to them when they had
+won Ben Jonson’s praise.  They valued above all passing honours man could
+give the words, “My son,” in the old poet’s greeting, which, as they
+said, “sealed them of the tribe of Ben.”
+
+                                                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+
+SYLVA
+
+
+_Rerum et sententiarum quasi Ὕλη dicta a multiplici materia et varietate
+in iis contentá_.  _Quemadmodùm enim vulgò solemus infinitam arborum
+nascentium indiscriminatim multitudinem Sylvam dicere: ità etiam libros
+suos in quibus variæ et diversæ materiæ opuscula temere congesta erant_,
+Sylvas _appellabant antiqui_: Timber-trees.
+
+
+
+
+TIMBER;
+OR,
+DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER,
+AS THEY HAVE FLOWED OUT OF HIS DAILY READINGS,
+OR HAD THEIR REFLUX TO HIS PECULIAR
+NOTION OF THE TIMES.
+
+
+         _Tecum habita_, _ut nôris quam sit tibi curta supellex_ {11}
+
+                                                             PERS. Sat. 4.
+
+_Fortuna_.—Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived
+not.  I therefore have counselled my friends never to trust to her fairer
+side, though she seemed to make peace with them; but to place all things
+she gave them, so as she might ask them again without their trouble, she
+might take them from them, not pull them: to keep always a distance
+between her and themselves.  He knows not his own strength that hath not
+met adversity.  Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can
+happen to a good man.  Contraries are not mixed.  Yet that which happens
+to any man may to every man.  But it is in his reason, what he accounts
+it and will make it.
+
+_Casus_.—Change into extremity is very frequent and easy.  As when a
+beggar suddenly grows rich, he commonly becomes a prodigal; for, to
+obscure his former obscurity, he puts on riot and excess.
+
+_Consilia_.—No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel
+sometimes; and no man is so wise but may easily err, if he will take no
+others’ counsel but his own.  But very few men are wise by their own
+counsel, or learned by their own teaching.  For he that was only taught
+by himself {12} had a fool to his master.
+
+_Fama_.—A Fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by
+another’s apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well
+themselves.  Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and his
+evil deeds oppress him.  He is not easily emergent.
+
+_Negotia_.—In great affairs it is a work of difficulty to please all.
+And ofttimes we lose the occasions of carrying a business well and
+thoroughly by our too much haste.  For passions are spiritual rebels, and
+raise sedition against the understanding.
+
+_Amor patriæ_.—There is a necessity all men should love their country: he
+that professeth the contrary may be delighted with his words, but his
+heart is there.
+
+_Ingenia_.—Natures that are hardened to evil you shall sooner break than
+make straight; they are like poles that are crooked and dry, there is no
+attempting them.
+
+_Applausus_.—We praise the things we hear with much more willingness than
+those we see, because we envy the present and reverence the past;
+thinking ourselves instructed by the one, and overlaid by the other.
+
+_Opinio_.—Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled
+in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to
+obtain the tincture of reason.  We labour with it more than truth.  There
+is much more holds us than presseth us.  An ill fact is one thing, an ill
+fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of
+our thinking.
+
+_Impostura_.—Many men believe not themselves what they would persuade
+others; and less do the things which they would impose on others; but
+least of all know what they themselves most confidently boast.  Only they
+set the sign of the cross over their outer doors, and sacrifice to their
+gut and their groin in their inner closets.
+
+_Jactura vitæ_.—What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the
+better part of life in! in scattering compliments, tendering visits,
+gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little
+winter-love in a dark corner.
+
+Hypocrita.—_Puritanus Hypocrita est Hæreticus_, _quem opinio propriæ
+perspicaciæ_, _quâ sibi videtur_, _cum paucis in Ecclesiâ dogmatibus
+errores quosdam animadvertisse_, _de statu mentis deturbavit: unde sacro
+furore percitus_, _phrenetice pugnat contra magistratus_, _sic ratus
+obedientiam præstare Deo_. {14}
+
+_Mutua auxilia_.—Learning needs rest: sovereignty gives it.  Sovereignty
+needs counsel: learning affords it.  There is such a consociation of
+offices between the prince and whom his favour breeds, that they may help
+to sustain his power as he their knowledge.  It is the greatest part of
+his liberality, his favour; and from whom doth he hear discipline more
+willingly, or the arts discoursed more gladly, than from those whom his
+own bounty and benefits have made able and faithful?
+
+_Cognit. univers_.—In being able to counsel others, a man must be
+furnished with a universal store in himself, to the knowledge of all
+nature—that is, the matter and seed-plot: there are the seats of all
+argument and invention.  But especially you must be cunning in the nature
+of man: there is the variety of things which are as the elements and
+letters, which his art and wisdom must rank and order to the present
+occasion.  For we see not all letters in single words, nor all places in
+particular discourses.  That cause seldom happens wherein a man will use
+all arguments.
+
+_Consiliarii adjunct_.  _Probitas_, _Sapientia_.—The two chief things
+that give a man reputation in counsel are the opinion of his honesty and
+the opinion of his wisdom: the authority of those two will persuade when
+the same counsels uttered by other persons less qualified are of no
+efficacy or working.
+
+_Vita recta_.—Wisdom without honesty is mere craft and cozenage.  And
+therefore the reputation of honesty must first be gotten, which cannot be
+but by living well.  A good life is a main argument.
+
+_Obsequentia_.—_Humanitas_.—_Solicitudo_.—Next a good life, to beget love
+in the persons we counsel, by dissembling our knowledge of ability in
+ourselves, and avoiding all suspicion of arrogance, ascribing all to
+their instruction, as an ambassador to his master, or a subject to his
+sovereign; seasoning all with humanity and sweetness, only expressing
+care and solicitude.  And not to counsel rashly, or on the sudden, but
+with advice and meditation.  (_Dat nox consilium_. {17a})  For many
+foolish things fall from wise men, if they speak in haste or be
+extemporal.  It therefore behoves the giver of counsel to be circumspect;
+especially to beware of those with whom he is not thoroughly acquainted,
+lest any spice of rashness, folly, or self-love appear, which will be
+marked by new persons and men of experience in affairs.
+
+_Modestia_.—_Parrhesia_.—And to the prince, or his superior, to behave
+himself modestly and with respect.  Yet free from flattery or empire.
+Not with insolence or precept; but as the prince were already furnished
+with the parts he should have, especially in affairs of state.  For in
+other things they will more easily suffer themselves to be taught or
+reprehended: they will not willingly contend, but hear, with Alexander,
+the answer the musician gave him: _Absit_, _o rex_, _ut tu meliùs hæc
+scias_, _quàm ego_. {17b}
+
+_Perspicuitas_.—_Elegantia_.—A man should so deliver himself to the
+nature of the subject whereof he speaks, that his hearer may take
+knowledge of his discipline with some delight; and so apparel fair and
+good matter, that the studious of elegancy be not defrauded; redeem arts
+from their rough and braky seats, where they lay hid and overgrown with
+thorns, to a pure, open, and flowery light, where they may take the eye
+and be taken by the hand.
+
+_Natura non effæta_.—I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that
+she can bring forth nothing worth her former years.  She is always the
+same, like herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still.
+Men are decayed, and studies: she is not.
+
+_Non nimiùm credendum antiquitati_.—I know nothing can conduce more to
+letters than to examine the writings of the ancients, and not to rest in
+their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them, provided the
+plagues of judging and pronouncing against them be away; such as are
+envy, bitterness, precipitation, impudence, and scurrilous scoffing.  For
+to all the observations of the ancients we have our own experience, which
+if we will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce.  It is true
+they opened the gates, and made the way that went before us, but as
+guides, not commanders: _Non domini nostri_, _sed duces fuêre_. {19a}
+Truth lies open to all; it is no man’s several.  _Patet omnibus veritas_;
+_nondum est occupata_.  _Multum ex illâ_, _etiam futuris relicta est_.
+{19b}
+
+_Dissentire licet_, _sed cum ratione_.—If in some things I dissent from
+others, whose wit, industry, diligence, and judgment, I look up at and
+admire, let me not therefore hear presently of ingratitude and rashness.
+For I thank those that have taught me, and will ever; but yet dare not
+think the scope of their labour and inquiry was to envy their posterity
+what they also could add and find out.
+
+_Non mihi credendum sed veritati_.—If I err, pardon me: _Nulla ars simul
+et inventa est et absoluta_. {19c}  I do not desire to be equal to those
+that went before; but to have my reason examined with theirs, and so much
+faith to be given them, or me, as those shall evict.  I am neither author
+nor fautor of any sect.  I will have no man addict himself to me; but if
+I have anything right, defend it as Truth’s, not mine, save as it
+conduceth to a common good.  It profits not me to have any man fence or
+fight for me, to flourish, or take my side.  Stand for truth, and ’tis
+enough.
+
+_Scientiæ liberales_.—Arts that respect the mind were ever reputed nobler
+than those that serve the body, though we less can be without them, as
+tillage, spinning, weaving, building, &c., without which we could scarce
+sustain life a day.  But these were the works of every hand; the other of
+the brain only, and those the most generous and exalted wits and spirits,
+that cannot rest or acquiesce.  The mind of man is still fed with labour:
+_Opere pascitur_.
+
+_Non vulgi sunt_.—There is a more secret cause, and the power of liberal
+studies lies more hid than that it can be wrought out by profane wits.
+It is not every man’s way to hit.  There are men, I confess, that set the
+carat and value upon things as they love them; but science is not every
+man’s mistress.  It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place,
+and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.
+
+_Honesta ambitio_.—If divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways, so
+both be honest, neither is to be blamed; but they that seek immortality
+are not only worthy of love, but of praise.
+
+_Maritus improbus_.—He hath a delicate wife, a fair fortune, a family to
+go to and be welcome; yet he had rather be drunk with mine host and the
+fiddlers of such a town, than go home.
+
+_Afflictio pia magistra_.—Affliction teacheth a wicked person some time
+to pray: prosperity never.
+
+_Deploratis facilis descensus Averni_.—_The devil take all_.—Many might
+go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they would venture
+their industry the right way; but “The devil take all!” quoth he that was
+choked in the mill-dam, with his four last words in his mouth.
+
+_Ægidius cursu superat_.—A cripple in the way out-travels a footman or a
+post out of the way.
+
+_Prodigo nummi nauci_.—Bags of money to a prodigal person are the same
+that cherry-stones are with some boys, and so thrown away.
+
+_Munda et sordida_.—A woman, the more curious she is about her face is
+commonly the more careless about her house.
+
+_Debitum deploratum_.—Of this spilt water there is a little to be
+gathered up: it is a desperate debt.
+
+_Latro sesquipedalis_.—The thief {22} that had a longing at the gallows
+to commit one robbery more before he was hanged.
+
+And like the German lord, when he went out of Newgate into the cart, took
+order to have his arms set up in his last herborough: said was he taken
+and committed upon suspicion of treason, no witness appearing against
+him; but the judges entertained him most civilly, discoursed with him,
+offered him the courtesy of the rack; but he confessed, &c.
+
+_Calumniæ fructus_.—I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so
+endeavoured and taken pains to belie me.  It shall make me set a surer
+guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.
+
+_Impertinens_.—A tedious person is one a man would leap a steeple from,
+gallop down any steep lull to avoid him; forsake his meat, sleep, nature
+itself, with all her benefits, to shun him.  A mere impertinent; one that
+touched neither heaven nor earth in his discourse.  He opened an entry
+into a fair room, but shut it again presently.  I spoke to him of garlic,
+he answered asparagus; consulted him of marriage, he tells me of hanging,
+as if they went by one and the same destiny.
+
+_Bellum scribentium_.—What a sight it is to see writers committed
+together by the ears for ceremonies, syllables, points, colons, commas,
+hyphens, and the like, fighting as for their fires and their altars; and
+angry that none are frighted at their noises and loud brayings under
+their asses’ skins.
+
+There is hope of getting a fortune without digging in these quarries.
+_Sed meliore (in omne) ingenio animoque quàm fortunâ_, _sum usus_. {23}
+
+“Pingue solum lassat; sed juvat ipse labor.” {24a}
+
+_Differentia inter doctos et sciolos_.—Wits made out their several
+expeditions then for the discovery of truth, to find out great and
+profitable knowledges; had their several instruments for the disquisition
+of arts.  Now there are certain scioli or smatterers that are busy in the
+skirts and outsides of learning, and have scarce anything of solid
+literature to commend them.  They may have some edging or trimming of a
+scholar, a welt or so; but it is no more.
+
+_Impostorum fucus_.—Imposture is a specious thing, yet never worse than
+when it feigns to be best, and to none discovered sooner than the
+simplest.  For truth and goodness are plain and open; but imposture is
+ever ashamed of the light.
+
+_Icunculorum motio_.—A puppet-play must be shadowed and seen in the dark;
+for draw the curtain, _et sordet gesticulatio_. {24b}
+
+_Principes et administri_.—There is a great difference in the
+understanding of some princes, as in the quality of their ministers about
+them.  Some would dress their masters in gold, pearl, and all true jewels
+of majesty; others furnish them with feathers, bells, and ribands, and
+are therefore esteemed the fitter servants.  But they are ever good men
+that must make good the times; if the men be naught, the times will be
+such.  _Finis exspectandus est in unoquoque hominum_; _animali ad
+mutationem promptissmo_. {25a}
+
+_Scitum Hispanicum_.—It is a quick saying with the Spaniards, _Artes
+inter hæredes non dividi_. {25b}  Yet these have inherited their fathers’
+lying, and they brag of it.  He is a narrow-minded man that affects a
+triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie
+themselves have forged, is frontless.  Folly often goes beyond her
+bounds; but Impudence knows none.
+
+_Non nova res livor_.—Envy is no new thing, nor was it born only in our
+times.  The ages past have brought it forth, and the coming ages will.
+So long as there are men fit for it, _quorum odium virtute relictâ
+placet_, it will never be wanting.  It is a barbarous envy, to take from
+those men’s virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou
+impotently despairest to imitate.  Is it a crime in me that I know that
+which others had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of
+many things which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught
+them?  It is new but a foolish way you have found out, that whom you
+cannot equal or come near in doing, you would destroy or ruin with evil
+speaking; as if you had bound both your wits and natures ’prentices to
+slander, and then came forth the best artificers when you could form the
+foulest calumnies.
+
+_Nil gratius protervo lib_.—Indeed nothing is of more credit or request
+now than a petulant paper, or scoffing verses; and it is but convenient
+to the times and manners we live with, to have then the worst writings
+and studies flourish when the best begin to be despised.  Ill arts begin
+where good end.
+
+_Jam literæ sordent_.—_Pastus hodiern. ingen_.—The time was when men
+would learn and study good things, not envy those that had them.  Then
+men were had in price for learning; now letters only make men vile.  He
+is upbraidingly called a poet, as if it were a contemptible nick-name:
+but the professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap—railing and
+tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read, as being
+taken with the scurrility and petulancy of such wits.  He shall not have
+a reader now unless he jeer and lie.  It is the food of men’s natures;
+the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else.  The writer must lie
+and the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works
+misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life
+traduced: and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of
+slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter?  Hence comes
+the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the
+writings, whom the virulency of the calumnies hath not staved off from
+reading?
+
+_Sed seculi morbus_.—Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an
+unlooked-for subject.  And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of
+an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying?  But
+it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old,
+begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease.  It is long since the
+sick world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still!
+but her dotage is now broke forth into a madness, and become a mere
+frenzy.
+
+_Alastoris malitia_.—This Alastor, who hath left nothing unsearched or
+unassailed by his impudent and licentious lying in his aguish writings
+(for he was in his cold quaking fit all the while), what hath he done
+more than a troublesome base cur? barked and made a noise afar off; had a
+fool or two to spit in his mouth, and cherish him with a musty bone?  But
+they are rather enemies of my fame than me, these barkers.
+
+_Mali Choragi fuere_.—It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel
+a lie well, to give it a good dressing; that though the nakedness would
+show deformed and odious, the suiting of it might draw their readers.
+Some love any strumpet, be she never so shop-like or meretricious, in
+good clothes.  But these, nature could not have formed them better to
+destroy their own testimony and overthrow their calumny.
+
+_Hear-say news_.—That an elephant, in 1630, came hither ambassador from
+the Great Mogul, who could both write and read, and was every day allowed
+twelve cast of bread, twenty quarts of Canary sack, besides nuts and
+almonds the citizens’ wives sent him.  That he had a Spanish boy to his
+interpreter, and his chief negociation was to confer or practise with
+Archy, the principal fool of state, about stealing hence Windsor Castle
+and carrying it away on his back if he can.
+
+_Lingua sapientis_, _potius quâm loquentis_.—A wise tongue should not be
+licentious and wandering; but moved and, as it were, governed with
+certain reins from the heart and bottom of the breast: and it was
+excellently said of that philosopher, that there was a wall or parapet of
+teeth set in our mouth, to restrain the petulancy of our words; that the
+rashness of talking should not only be retarded by the guard and watch of
+our heart, but be fenced in and defended by certain strengths placed in
+the mouth itself, and within the lips.  But you shall see some so abound
+with words, without any seasoning or taste of matter, in so profound a
+security, as while they are speaking, for the most part they confess to
+speak they know not what.
+
+Of the two (if either were to be wished) I would rather have a plain
+downright wisdom, than a foolish and affected eloquence.  For what is so
+furious and Bedlam like as a vain sound of chosen and excellent words,
+without any subject of sentence or science mixed?
+
+_Optanda_.—_Thersites Homeri_.—Whom the disease of talking still once
+possesseth, he can never hold his peace.  Nay, rather than he will not
+discourse he will hire men to hear him.  And so heard, not hearkened
+unto, he comes off most times like a mountebank, that when he hath
+praised his medicines, finds none will take them, or trust him.  He is
+like Homer’s _Thersites_.
+
+Άμετροεπης, ακριτόμυθος; speaking without judgement or measure.
+
+   “Loquax magis, quàm facundus,
+   Satis loquentiæ, sapientiæ parum.{31a}
+   Γλωσσης τοι θησαυρος εν ανθρωποισιν αριστος
+   φειδωλης, πλειστη δε χαρις κατα μετρον ιουσης. {31b}
+   Optimus est homini linguæ thesaurus, et ingens
+   Gratia, quæ parcis mensurat singula verbis.”
+
+_Homeri Ulysses_.—_Demacatus Plutarchi_.—Ulysses, in Homer, is made a
+long-thinking man before he speaks; and Epaminondas is celebrated by
+Pindar to be a man that, though he knew much, yet he spoke but little.
+Demacatus, when on the bench he was long silent and said nothing, one
+asking him if it were folly in him, or want of language, he answered, “A
+fool could never hold his peace.” {31c}  For too much talking is ever the
+index of a fool.
+
+   “Dum tacet indoctus, poterit cordatus haberi;
+   Is morbos animi namque tacendo tegit.” {32a}
+
+Nor is that worthy speech of Zeno the philosopher to be passed over with
+the note of ignorance; who being invited to a feast in Athens, where a
+great prince’s ambassadors were entertained, and was the only person that
+said nothing at the table; one of them with courtesy asked him, “What
+shall we return from thee, Zeno, to the prince our master, if he asks us
+of thee?”  “Nothing,” he replied, “more but that you found an old man in
+Athens that knew to be silent amongst his cups.”  It was near a miracle
+to see an old man silent, since talking is the disease of age; but
+amongst cups makes it fully a wonder.
+
+_Argute dictum_.—It was wittily said upon one that was taken for a great
+and grave man so long as he held his peace, “This man might have been a
+counsellor of state, till he spoke; but having spoken, not the beadle of
+the ward.”  Εχεμυθια. {32b}  Pytag. quàm laudabilis!  γλωσσης προ των
+αλλων κρατει, θεοις επομενος.  Linguam cohibe, præ aliis omnibus, ad
+deorum exemplum. {33a}  Digito compesce labellum. {33b}
+
+_Acutius cernuntur vitia quam virtutes_.—There is almost no man but he
+sees clearlier and sharper the vices in a speaker, than the virtues.  And
+there are many, that with more ease will find fault with what is spoken
+foolishly than can give allowance to that wherein you are wise silently.
+The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic
+poet; {33c} and it appears not in anything more than in that nation,
+whereof one, when he had got the inheritance of an unlucky old grange,
+would needs sell it; {33d} and to draw buyers proclaimed the virtues of
+it.  Nothing ever thrived on it, saith he.  No owner of it ever died in
+his bed; some hung, some drowned themselves; some were banished, some
+starved; the trees were all blasted; the swine died of the measles, the
+cattle of the murrain, the sheep of the rot; they that stood were ragged,
+bare, and bald as your hand; nothing was ever reared there, not a
+duckling, or a goose.  _Hospitium fuerat calamitatis_. {34a}  Was not
+this man like to sell it?
+
+_Vulgi expectatio_.—Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn and held with
+newness than goodness; we see it in fencers, in players, in poets, in
+preachers, in all where fame promiseth anything; so it be new, though
+never so naught and depraved, they run to it, and are taken.  Which
+shews, that the only decay or hurt of the best men’s reputation with the
+people is, their wits have out-lived the people’s palates.  They have
+been too much or too long a feast.
+
+_Claritas patriæ_.—Greatness of name in the father oft-times helps not
+forth, but overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another.  The
+shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more
+and oftener to be heir of the first, than doth the second: he dies
+between; the possession is the third’s.
+
+_Eloquentia_.—Eloquence is a great and diverse thing: nor did she yet
+ever favour any man so much as to become wholly his.  He is happy that
+can arrive to any degree of her grace.  Yet there are who prove
+themselves masters of her, and absolute lords; but I believe they may
+mistake their evidence: for it is one thing to be eloquent in the
+schools, or in the hall; another at the bar, or in the pulpit.  There is
+a difference between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting.
+To make arguments in my study, and confute them, is easy; where I answer
+myself, not an adversary.  So I can see whole volumes dispatched by the
+umbratical doctors on all sides: but draw these forth into the just
+lists: let them appear _sub dio_, and they are changed with the place,
+like bodies bred in the shade; they cannot suffer the sun or a shower,
+nor bear the open air; they scarce can find themselves, that they were
+wont to domineer so among their auditors: but indeed I would no more
+choose a rhetorician for reigning in a school, than I would a pilot for
+rowing in a pond.
+
+_Amor et odium_.—Love that is ignorant, and hatred, have almost the same
+ends: many foolish lovers wish the same to their friends, which their
+enemies would: as to wish a friend banished, that they might accompany
+him in exile; or some great want, that they might relieve him; or a
+disease, that they might sit by him.  They make a causeway to their
+country by injury, as if it were not honester to do nothing than to seek
+a way to do good by a mischief.
+
+_Injuria_.—Injuries do not extinguish courtesies: they only suffer them
+not to appear fair.  For a man that doth me an injury after a courtesy,
+takes not away that courtesy, but defaces it: as he that writes other
+verses upon my verses, takes not away the first letters, but hides them.
+
+_Beneficia_.—Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that
+friendly and lovingly.  We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our
+boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats,
+that they be nourishing.  For these are what they are necessarily.
+Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not.  It is true, some
+men may receive a courtesy and not know it; but never any man received it
+from him that knew it not.  Many men have been cured of diseases by
+accidents; but they were not remedies.  I myself have known one helped of
+an ague by falling into a water; another whipped out of a fever; but no
+man would ever use these for medicines.  It is the mind, and not the
+event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong.  My adversary may
+offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win my cause;
+but he meant it not to me as a courtesy.  I scaped pirates by being
+shipwrecked; was the wreck a benefit therefore?  No; the doing of
+courtesies aright is the mixing of the respects for his own sake and for
+mine.  He that doeth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds
+his cattle to sell them; he hath his horse well dressed for Smithfield.
+
+_Valor rerum_.—The price of many things is far above what they are bought
+and sold for.  Life and health, which are both inestimable, we have of
+the physician; as learning and knowledge, the true tillage of the mind,
+from our schoolmasters.  But the fees of the one or the salary of the
+other never answer the value of what we received, but served to gratify
+their labours.
+
+_Memoria_.—Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate
+and frail; it is the first of our faculties that age invades.  Seneca,
+the father, the rhetorician, confesseth of himself he had a miraculous
+one, not only to receive but to hold.  I myself could, in my youth, have
+repeated all that ever I had made, and so continued till I was past
+forty; since, it is much decayed in me.  Yet I can repeat whole books
+that I have read, and poems of some selected friends which I have liked
+to charge my memory with.  It was wont to be faithful to me; but shaken
+with age now, and sloth, which weakens the strongest abilities, it may
+perform somewhat, but cannot promise much.  By exercise it is to be made
+better and serviceable.  Whatsoever I pawned with it while I was young
+and a boy, it offers me readily, and without stops; but what I trust to
+it now, or have done of later years, it lays up more negligently, and
+oftentimes loses; so that I receive mine own (though frequently called
+for) as if it were new and borrowed.  Nor do I always find presently from
+it what I seek; but while I am doing another thing, that I laboured for
+will come; and what I sought with trouble will offer itself when I am
+quiet.  Now, in some men I have found it as happy as Nature, who,
+whatsoever they read or pen, they can say without book presently, as if
+they did then write in their mind.  And it is more a wonder in such as
+have a swift style, for their memories are commonly slowest; such as
+torture their writings, and go into council for every word, must needs
+fix somewhat, and make it their own at last, though but through their own
+vexation.
+
+_Comit. suffragia_.—Suffrages in Parliament are numbered, not weighed;
+nor can it be otherwise in those public councils where nothing is so
+unequal as the equality; for there, how odd soever men’s brains or
+wisdoms are, their power is always even and the same.
+
+_Stare à partibus_.—Some actions, be they never so beautiful and
+generous, are often obscured by base and vile misconstructions, either
+out of envy or ill-nature, that judgeth of others as of itself.  Nay, the
+times are so wholly grown to be either partial or malicious, that if he
+be a friend all sits well about him, his very vices shall be virtues; if
+an enemy, or of the contrary faction, nothing is good or tolerable in
+him; insomuch that we care not to discredit and shame our judgments to
+soothe our passions.
+
+_Deus in creaturis_.—Man is read in his face; God in His creatures; not
+as the philosopher, the creature of glory, reads him; but as the divine,
+the servant of humility; yet even he must take care not to be too
+curious.  For to utter truth of God but as he thinks only, may be
+dangerous, who is best known by our not knowing.  Some things of Him, so
+much as He hath revealed or commanded, it is not only lawful but
+necessary for us to know; for therein our ignorance was the first cause
+of our wickedness.
+
+_Veritas proprium hominis_.—Truth is man’s proper good, and the only
+immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.  No good Christian or
+ethnic, if he be honest, can miss it; no statesman or patriot should.
+For without truth all the actions of mankind are craft, malice, or what
+you will, rather than wisdom.  Homer says he hates him worse than
+hell-mouth that utters one thing with his tongue and keeps another in his
+breast.  Which high expression was grounded on divine reason; for a lying
+mouth is a stinking pit, and murders with the contagion it venteth.
+Beside, nothing is lasting that is feigned; it will have another face
+than it had, ere long. {41}  As Euripides saith, “No lie ever grows old.”
+
+_Nullum vitium sine patrocinio_.—It is strange there should be no vice
+without its patronage, that when we have no other excuse we will say, we
+love it, we cannot forsake it.  As if that made it not more a fault.  We
+cannot, because we think we cannot, and we love it because we will defend
+it.  We will rather excuse it than be rid of it.  That we cannot is
+pretended; but that we will not is the true reason.  How many have I
+known that would not have their vices hid? nay, and, to be noted, live
+like Antipodes to others in the same city? never see the sun rise or set
+in so many years, but be as they were watching a corpse by torch-light;
+would not sin the common way, but held that a kind of rusticity; they
+would do it new, or contrary, for the infamy; they were ambitious of
+living backward; and at last arrived at that, as they would love nothing
+but the vices, not the vicious customs.  It was impossible to reform
+these natures; they were dried and hardened in their ill.  They may say
+they desired to leave it, but do not trust them; and they may think they
+desire it, but they may lie for all that; they are a little angry with
+their follies now and then; marry, they come into grace with them again
+quickly.  They will confess they are offended with their manner of living
+like enough; who is not?  When they can put me in security that they are
+more than offended, that they hate it, then I will hearken to them, and
+perhaps believe them; but many now-a-days love and hate their ill
+together.
+
+_De vere argutis_.—I do hear them say often some men are not witty,
+because they are not everywhere witty; than which nothing is more
+foolish.  If an eye or a nose be an excellent part in the face, therefore
+be all eye or nose!  I think the eyebrow, the forehead, the cheek, chin,
+lip, or any part else are as necessary and natural in the place.  But now
+nothing is good that is natural; right and natural language seems to have
+least of the wit in it; that which is writhed and tortured is counted the
+more exquisite.  Cloth of bodkin or tissue must be embroidered; as if no
+face were fair that were not powdered or painted! no beauty to be had but
+in wresting and writhing our own tongue!  Nothing is fashionable till it
+be deformed; and this is to write like a gentleman.  All must be affected
+and preposterous as our gallants’ clothes, sweet-bags, and
+night-dressings, in which you would think our men lay in, like ladies, it
+is so curious.
+
+_Censura de poetis_.—Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more
+preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we
+shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings
+which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he
+would never light his tobacco with them.  And those men almost named for
+miracles, who yet are so vile that if a man should go about to examine
+and correct them, he must make all they have done but one blot.  Their
+good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the
+other’s death with it.  A sponge dipped in ink will do all:—
+
+   “—Comitetur Punica librum
+   Spongia.—” {44a}
+
+Et paulò post,
+
+   “Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
+   . . . una litura potest.”
+
+_Cestius_—_Cicero_—_Heath_—_Taylor_—_Spenser_.—Yet their vices have not
+hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved
+for nothing else.  And this false opinion grows strong against the best
+men, if once it take root with the ignorant.  Cestius, in his time, was
+preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst.  They learned him
+without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine
+that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at
+least a reader or spectator.  The puppets are seen now in despite of the
+players; Heath’s epigrams and the Sculler’s poems have their applause.
+There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst
+pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or
+speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; _Non illi pejus
+dicunt_, _sed hi corruptius judicant_.  Nay, if it were put to the
+question of the water-rhymer’s works, against Spenser’s, I doubt not but
+they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out
+of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments and like that
+which is naught.
+
+Poetry, in this latter age, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as
+have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her
+family.  They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then
+tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of
+their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could
+have hoped or done for themselves without her favour.  Wherein she doth
+emulate the judicious but preposterous bounty of the time’s grandees, who
+accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their
+friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place
+to write and starve.
+
+Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers,
+who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence
+are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness
+is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives
+all that boisterous force the foil.  But in these things the unskilful
+are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things
+greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor
+think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort
+of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes,
+not in judgment or understanding.
+
+_De Shakspeare nostrat_.—_Augustus in Hat_.—I remember the players have
+often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing
+(whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.  My answer hath been,
+“Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent
+speech.  I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose
+that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and
+to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his
+memory on this side idolatry as much as any.  He was, indeed, honest, and
+of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and
+gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes
+it was necessary he should be stopped.  “_Sufflaminandus erat_,” {47a} as
+Augustus said of Haterius.  His wit was in his own power; would the rule
+of it had been so, too.  Many times he fell into those things, could not
+escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to
+him, “Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.”  He replied, “Cæsar did never wrong but
+with just cause;” and such like, which were ridiculous.  But he redeemed
+his vices with his virtues.  There was ever more in him to be praised
+than to be pardoned.
+
+_Ingeniorum discrimina_.—_Not._ 1.—In the difference of wits I have
+observed there are many notes; and it is a little maistry to know them,
+to discern what every nature, every disposition will bear; for before we
+sow our land we should plough it.  There are no fewer forms of minds than
+of bodies amongst us.  The variety is incredible, and therefore we must
+search.  Some are fit to make divines, some poets, some lawyers, some
+physicians; some to be sent to the plough, and trades.
+
+There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.  Some wits are
+swelling and high; others low and still; some hot and fiery; others cold
+and dull; one must have a bridle, the other a spur.
+
+_Not._ 2.—There be some that are forward and bold; and these will do
+every little thing easily.  I mean that is hard by and next them, which
+they will utter unretarded without any shamefastness.  These never
+perform much, but quickly.  They are what they are on the sudden; they
+show presently, like grain that, scattered on the top of the ground,
+shoots up, but takes no root; has a yellow blade, but the ear empty.
+They are wits of good promise at first, but there is an _ingenistitium_;
+{49a} they stand still at sixteen, they get no higher.
+
+_Not._ 3.—You have others that labour only to ostentation; and are ever
+more busy about the colours and surface of a work than in the matter and
+foundation, for that is hid, the other is seen.
+
+_Not._ 4.—Others that in composition are nothing but what is rough and
+broken.  _Quæ per salebras_, _altaque saxa cadunt_. {49b}  And if it
+would come gently, they trouble it of purpose.  They would not have it
+run without rubs, as if that style were more strong and manly that struck
+the ear with a kind of unevenness.  These men err not by chance, but
+knowingly and willingly; they are like men that affect a fashion by
+themselves; have some singularity in a ruff cloak, or hat-band; or their
+beards specially cut to provoke beholders, and set a mark upon
+themselves.  They would be reprehended while they are looked on.  And
+this vice, one that is authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to
+them to be imitated; so that ofttimes the faults which be fell into the
+others seek for.  This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent.
+
+_Not._ 5.—Others there are that have no composition at all; but a kind of
+tuning and rhyming fall in what they write.  It runs and slides, and only
+makes a sound.  Women’s poets they are called, as you have women’s
+tailors.
+
+   “They write a verse as smooth, as soft as cream,
+   In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream.”
+
+You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle
+finger.  They are cream-bowl or but puddle-deep.
+
+_Not._ 6.—Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in all
+papers; that write out of what they presently find or meet, without
+choice.  By which means it happens that what they have discredited and
+impugned in one week, they have before or after extolled the same in
+another.  Such are all the essayists, even their master Montaigne.
+These, in all they write, confess still what books they have read last,
+and therein their own folly so much, that they bring it to the stake raw
+and undigested; not that the place did need it neither, but that they
+thought themselves furnished and would vent it.
+
+_Not._ 7.—Some, again who, after they have got authority, or, which is
+less, opinion, by their writings, to have read much, dare presently to
+feign whole books and authors, and lie safely.  For what never was, will
+not easily be found, not by the most curious.
+
+_Not._ 8.—And some, by a cunning protestation against all reading, and
+false venditation of their own naturals, think to divert the sagacity of
+their readers from themselves, and cool the scent of their own fox-like
+thefts; when yet they are so rank, as a man may find whole pages together
+usurped from one author; their necessities compelling them to read for
+present use, which could not be in many books; and so come forth more
+ridiculously and palpably guilty than those who, because they cannot
+trace, they yet would slander their industry.
+
+_Not._ 9.—But the wretcheder are the obstinate contemners of all helps
+and arts; such as presuming on their own naturals (which, perhaps, are
+excellent), dare deride all diligence, and seem to mock at the terms when
+they understand not the things; thinking that way to get off wittily with
+their ignorance.  These are imitated often by such as are their peers in
+negligence, though they cannot be in nature; and they utter all they can
+think with a kind of violence and indisposition, unexamined, without
+relation either to person, place, or any fitness else; and the more
+wilful and stubborn they are in it the more learned they are esteemed of
+the multitude, through their excellent vice of judgment, who think those
+things the stronger that have no art; as if to break were better than to
+open, or to rend asunder gentler than to loose.
+
+_Not._ 10.—It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to
+do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and
+great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest
+of their ill.  For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and
+ambitiously seek for) stick out, and are more eminent, because all is
+sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick
+darkness than a faint shadow.  Now, because they speak all they can
+(however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where the
+learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they
+intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body.  The true
+artificer will not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her, or
+depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of
+his hearers.  And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it
+shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-chains of
+the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and
+furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers.  He knows it
+is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it.  In
+the meantime, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or
+by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who,
+without labour, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or
+preferred before him.  He gratulates them and their fortune.  Another
+age, or juster men, will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his
+wisdom in dividing, his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth
+inspire his readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing,
+what sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in
+men’s affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their
+minds like the thing he writes.  Then in his elocution to behold what
+word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully
+translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show
+the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene,
+sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only praised
+of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for that it is
+naught.
+
+_Ignorantia animæ_.—I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, not of
+the arts and sciences, but of itself; yet relating to those it is a
+pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason,
+and common confounder of truth, with which a man goes groping in the
+dark, no otherwise than if he were blind.  Great understandings are most
+racked and troubled with it; nay, sometimes they will rather choose to
+die than not to know the things they study for.  Think, then, what an
+evil it is, and what good the contrary.
+
+_Scientia_.—Knowledge is the action of the soul and is perfect without
+the senses, as having the seeds of all science and virtue in itself; but
+not without the service of the senses; by these organs the soul works:
+she is a perpetual agent, prompt and subtle; but often flexible and
+erring, entangling herself like a silkworm, but her reason is a weapon
+with two edges, and cuts through.  In her indagations oft-times new
+scents put her by, and she takes in errors into her by the same conduits
+she doth truths.
+
+_Otium Studiorum_.—Ease and relaxation are profitable to all studies.
+The mind is like a bow, the stronger by being unbent.  But the temper in
+spirits is all, when to command a man’s wit, when to favour it.  I have
+known a man vehement on both sides, that knew no mean, either to intermit
+his studies or call upon them again.  When he hath set himself to writing
+he would join night to day, press upon himself without release, not
+minding it, till he fainted; and when he left off, resolve himself into
+all sports and looseness again, that it was almost a despair to draw him
+to his book; but once got to it, he grew stronger and more earnest by the
+ease.  His whole powers were renewed; he would work out of himself what
+he desired, but with such excess as his study could not be ruled; he knew
+not how to dispose his own abilities, or husband them; he was of that
+immoderate power against himself.  Nor was he only a strong, but an
+absolute speaker and writer; but his subtlety did not show itself; his
+judgment thought that a vice; for the ambush hurts more that is hid.  He
+never forced his language, nor went out of the highway of speaking but
+for some great necessity or apparent profit; for he denied figures to be
+invented for ornament, but for aid; and still thought it an extreme
+madness to bind or wrest that which ought to be right.
+
+_Stili eminentia_.—_Virgil_.—_Tully_.—_Sallust_.—It is no wonder men’s
+eminence appears but in their own way.  Virgil’s felicity left him in
+prose, as Tully’s forsook him in verse.  Sallust’s orations are read in
+the honour of story, yet the most eloquent.  Plato’s speech, which he
+made for Socrates, is neither worthy of the patron nor the person
+defended.  Nay, in the same kind of oratory, and where the matter is one,
+you shall have him that reasons strongly, open negligently; another that
+prepares well, not fit so well.  And this happens not only to brains, but
+to bodies.  One can wrestle well, another run well, a third leap or throw
+the bar, a fourth lift or stop a cart going; each hath his way of
+strength.  So in other creatures—some dogs are for the deer, some for the
+wild boar, some are fox-hounds, some otter-hounds.  Nor are all horses
+for the coach or saddle, some are for the cart and paniers.
+
+_De Claris Oratoribus_.—I have known many excellent men that would speak
+suddenly to the admiration of their hearers, who upon study and
+premeditation have been forsaken by their own wits, and no way answered
+their fame; their eloquence was greater than their reading, and the
+things they uttered better than those they knew; their fortune deserved
+better of them than their care.  For men of present spirits, and of
+greater wits than study, do please more in the things they invent than in
+those they bring.  And I have heard some of them compelled to speak, out
+of necessity, that have so infinitely exceeded themselves, as it was
+better both for them and their auditory that they were so surprised, not
+prepared.  Nor was it safe then to cross them, for their adversary, their
+anger made them more eloquent.  Yet these men I could not but love and
+admire, that they returned to their studies.  They left not diligence (as
+many do) when their rashness prospered; for diligence is a great aid,
+even to an indifferent wit; when we are not contented with the examples
+of our own age, but would know the face of the former.  Indeed, the more
+we confer with the more we profit by, if the persons be chosen.
+
+_Dominus Verulamius_.—One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not
+to be imitated alone; for no imitator ever grew up to his author;
+likeness is always on this side truth.  Yet there happened in my time one
+noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language
+(where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious.  No man
+ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less
+emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.  No member of his speech
+but consisted of his own graces.  His hearers could not cough, or look
+aside from him, without loss.  He commanded where he spoke, and had his
+judges angry and pleased at his devotion.  No man had their affections
+more in his power.  The fear of every man that heard him was lest he
+should make an end.
+
+_Scriptorum catalogus_. {59a}  Cicero is said to be the only wit that the
+people of Rome had equalled to their empire.  _Ingenium par imperio_.  We
+have had many, and in their several ages (to take in but the former
+_seculum_) Sir Thomas More, the elder Wiat, Henry Earl of Surrey,
+Chaloner, Smith, Eliot, B. Gardiner, were for their times admirable; and
+the more, because they began eloquence with us.  Sir Nicolas Bacon was
+singular, and almost alone, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time.
+Sir Philip Sidney and Mr. Hooker (in different matter) grew great masters
+of wit and language, and in whom all vigour of invention and strength of
+judgment met.  The Earl of Essex, noble and high; and Sir Walter Raleigh,
+not to be contemned, either for judgment or style.  Sir Henry Savile,
+grave, and truly lettered; Sir Edwin Sandys, excellent in both; Lord
+Egerton, the Chancellor, a grave and great orator, and best when he was
+provoked; but his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor is he
+who hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which
+may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.
+In short, within his view, and about his times, were all the wits born
+that could honour a language or help study.  Now things daily fall, wits
+grow downward, and eloquence grows backward; so that he may be named and
+stand as the mark and ακμη of our language.
+
+_De augmentis scientiarum_.—_Julius Cæsar_.—_Lord St. Alban_.—I have ever
+observed it to have been the office of a wise patriot, among the greatest
+affairs of the State, to take care of the commonwealth of learning.  For
+schools, they are the seminaries of State; and nothing is worthier the
+study of a statesman than that part of the republic which we call the
+advancement of letters.  Witness the care of Julius Cæsar, who, in the
+heat of the civil war, writ his books of Analogy, and dedicated them to
+Tully.  This made the late Lord St. Alban entitle his work _Novum
+Organum_; which, though by the most of superficial men, who cannot get
+beyond the title of nominals, it is not penetrated nor understood, it
+really openeth all defects of learning whatsoever, and is a book
+
+   “Qui longum note scriptori proroget ævum.” {62a}
+
+My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or
+honours; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only
+proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the
+greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages.
+In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for
+greatness he could not want.  Neither could I condole in a word or
+syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but
+rather help to make it manifest.
+
+_De corruptela morum_.—There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of
+the wit.  If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that
+vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered.  Do we not see, if the mind
+languish, the members are dull?  Look upon an effeminate person, his very
+gait confesseth him.  If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it
+is troubled and violent.  So that we may conclude wheresoever manners and
+fashions are corrupted, language is.  It imitates the public riot.  The
+excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the
+wantonness of language of a sick mind.
+
+_De rebus mundanis_.—If we would consider what our affairs are indeed,
+not what they are called, we should find more evils belonging to us than
+happen to us.  How often doth that which was called a calamity prove the
+beginning and cause of a man’s happiness? and, on the contrary, that
+which happened or came to another with great gratulation and applause,
+how it hath lifted him but a step higher to his ruin? as if he stood
+before where he might fall safely.
+
+_Vulgi mores_.—_Morbus comitialis_.—The vulgar are commonly ill-natured,
+and always grudging against their governors: which makes that a prince
+has more business and trouble with them than ever Hercules had with the
+bull or any other beast; by how much they have more heads than will be
+reined with one bridle.  There was not that variety of beasts in the ark,
+as is of beastly natures in the multitude; especially when they come to
+that iniquity to censure their sovereign’s actions.  Then all the
+counsels are made good or bad by the events; and it falleth out that the
+same facts receive from them the names, now of diligence, now of vanity,
+now of majesty, now of fury; where they ought wholly to hang on his
+mouth, as he to consist of himself, and not others’ counsels.
+
+_Princeps_.—After God, nothing is to be loved of man like the prince; he
+violates Nature that doth it not with his whole heart.  For when he hath
+put on the care of the public good and common safety, I am a wretch, and
+put off man, if I do not reverence and honour him, in whose charge all
+things divine and human are placed.  Do but ask of Nature why all living
+creatures are less delighted with meat and drink that sustains them than
+with venery that wastes them? and she will tell thee, the first respects
+but a private, the other a common good, propagation.
+
+_De eodem_.—_Orpheus’ Hymn_.—He is the arbiter of life and death: when he
+finds no other subject for his mercy, he should spare himself.  All his
+punishments are rather to correct than to destroy.  Why are prayers with
+Orpheus said to be the daughters of Jupiter, but that princes are thereby
+admonished that the petitions of the wretched ought to have more weight
+with them than the laws themselves.
+
+_De opt. Rege Jacobo_.—It was a great accumulation to His Majesty’s
+deserved praise that men might openly visit and pity those whom his
+greatest prisons had at any time received or his laws condemned.
+
+_De Princ. adjunctis_.—_Sed verè prudens haud concipi possit Princeps_,
+_nisi simul et bonus_.—_Lycurgus_.—_Sylla_.—_Lysander_.—_Cyrus_.—Wise is
+rather the attribute of a prince than learned or good.  The learned man
+profits others rather than himself; the good man rather himself than
+others; but the prince commands others, and doth himself.
+
+The wise Lycurgus gave no law but what himself kept.  Sylla and Lysander
+did not so; the one living extremely dissolute himself, enforced
+frugality by the laws; the other permitted those licenses to others which
+himself abstained from.  But the prince’s prudence is his chief art and
+safety.  In his counsels and deliberations he foresees the future times:
+in the equity of his judgment he hath remembrance of the past, and
+knowledge of what is to be done or avoided for the present.  Hence the
+Persians gave out their Cyrus to have been nursed by a bitch, a creature
+to encounter it, as of sagacity to seek out good; showing that wisdom may
+accompany fortitude, or it leaves to be, and puts on the name of
+rashness.
+
+_De malign. studentium_.—There be some men are born only to suck out the
+poison of books: _Habent venenum pro victu_; _imô_, _pro deliciis_. {66a}
+And such are they that only relish the obscene and foul things in poets,
+which makes the profession taxed.  But by whom?  Men that watch for it;
+and, had they not had this hint, are so unjust valuers of letters as they
+think no learning good but what brings in gain.  It shows they themselves
+would never have been of the professions they are but for the profits and
+fees.  But if another learning, well used, can instruct to good life,
+inform manners, no less persuade and lead men than they threaten and
+compel, and have no reward, is it therefore the worst study?  I could
+never think the study of wisdom confined only to the philosopher, or of
+piety to the divine, or of state to the politic; but that he which can
+feign a commonwealth (which is the poet) can govern it with counsels,
+strengthen it with laws, correct it with judgments, inform it with
+religion and morals, is all these.  We do not require in him mere
+elocution, or an excellent faculty in verse, but the exact knowledge of
+all virtues and their contraries, with ability to render the one loved,
+the other hated, by his proper embattling them.  The philosophers did
+insolently, to challenge only to themselves that which the greatest
+generals and gravest counsellors never durst.  For such had rather do
+than promise the best things.
+
+_Controvers. scriptores_.—_More Andabatarum qui clausis oculis
+pugnant_.—Some controverters in divinity are like swaggerers in a tavern
+that catch that which stands next them, the candlestick or pots; turn
+everything into a weapon: ofttimes they fight blindfold, and both beat
+the air.  The one milks a he-goat, the other holds under a sieve.  Their
+arguments are as fluxive as liquor spilt upon a table, which with your
+finger you may drain as you will.  Such controversies or disputations
+(carried with more labour than profit) are odious; where most times the
+truth is lost in the midst or left untouched.  And the fruit of their
+fight is, that they spit one upon another, and are both defiled.  These
+fencers in religion I like not.
+
+_Morbi_.—The body hath certain diseases that are with less evil tolerated
+than removed.  As if to cure a leprosy a man should bathe himself with
+the warm blood of a murdered child, so in the Church some errors may be
+dissimuled with less inconvenience than they can be discovered.
+
+_Jactantia intempestiva_.—Men that talk of their own benefits are not
+believed to talk of them because they have done them; but to have done
+them because they might talk of them.  That which had been great, if
+another had reported it of them, vanisheth, and is nothing, if he that
+did it speak of it.  For men, when they cannot destroy the deed, will yet
+be glad to take advantage of the boasting, and lessen it.
+
+_Adulatio_.—I have seen that poverty makes me do unfit things; but honest
+men should not do them; they should gain otherwise.  Though a man be
+hungry, he should not play the parasite.  That hour wherein I would
+repent me to be honest, there were ways enough open for me to be rich.
+But flattery is a fine pick-lock of tender ears; especially of those whom
+fortune hath borne high upon their wings, that submit their dignity and
+authority to it, by a soothing of themselves.  For, indeed, men could
+never be taken in that abundance with the springes of others’ flattery,
+if they began not there; if they did but remember how much more
+profitable the bitterness of truth were, than all the honey distilling
+from a whorish voice, which is not praise, but poison.  But now it is
+come to that extreme folly, or rather madness, with some, that he that
+flatters them modestly or sparingly is thought to malign them.  If their
+friend consent not to their vices, though he do not contradict them, he
+is nevertheless an enemy.  When they do all things the worst way, even
+then they look for praise.  Nay, they will hire fellows to flatter them
+with suits and suppers, and to prostitute their judgments.  They have
+livery-friends, friends of the dish, and of the spit, that wait their
+turns, as my lord has his feasts and guests.
+
+_De vitâ humanâ_.—I have considered our whole life is like a play:
+wherein every man forgetful of himself, is in travail with expression of
+another.  Nay, we so insist in imitating others, as we cannot when it is
+necessary return to ourselves; like children, that imitate the vices of
+stammerers so long, till at last they become such; and make the habit to
+another nature, as it is never forgotten.
+
+_De piis et probis_.—Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages
+wherein they live and illustrate the times.  God did never let them be
+wanting to the world: as Abel, for an example of innocency, Enoch of
+purity, Noah of trust in God’s mercies, Abraham of faith, and so of the
+rest.  These, sensual men thought mad because they would not be partakers
+or practisers of their madness.  But they, placed high on the top of all
+virtue, looked down on the stage of the world and contemned the play of
+fortune.  For though the most be players, some must be spectators.
+
+_Mores aulici_.—I have discovered that a feigned familiarity in great
+ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less.  For great and popular
+men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to
+them.  So the fisher provides bait for the trout, roach, dace, &c., that
+they may be food to him.
+
+_Impiorum querela_.—_Augusties_.—_Varus_.—_Tiberius_.—The complaint of
+Caligula was most wicked of the condition of his times, when he said they
+were not famous for any public calamity, as the reign of Augustus was, by
+the defeat of Varus and the legions; and that of Tiberius, by the falling
+of the theatre at Fidenæ; whilst his oblivion was eminent through the
+prosperity of his affairs.  As that other voice of his was worthier a
+headsman than a head when he wished the people of Rome had but one neck.
+But he found when he fell they had many hands.  A tyrant, how great and
+mighty soever he may seem to cowards and sluggards, is but one creature,
+one animal.
+
+_Nobilium ingenia_.—I have marked among the nobility some are so addicted
+to the service of the prince and commonwealth, as they look not for
+spoil; such are to be honoured and loved.  There are others which no
+obligation will fasten on; and they are of two sorts.  The first are such
+as love their own ease; or, out of vice, of nature, or self-direction,
+avoid business and care.  Yet these the prince may use with safety.  The
+other remove themselves upon craft and design, as the architects say,
+with a premeditated thought, to their own rather than their prince’s
+profit.  Such let the prince take heed of, and not doubt to reckon in the
+list of his open enemies.
+
+_Principum. varia_.—_Firmissima verò omnium basis jus hæreditarium
+Principis_.—There is a great variation between him that is raised to the
+sovereignty by the favour of his peers and him that comes to it by the
+suffrage of the people.  The first holds with more difficulty, because he
+hath to do with many that think themselves his equals, and raised him for
+their own greatness and oppression of the rest.  The latter hath no
+upbraiders, but was raised by them that sought to be defended from
+oppression: whose end is both easier and the honester to satisfy.
+Beside, while he hath the people to friend, who are a multitude, he hath
+the less fear of the nobility, who are but few.  Nor let the common
+proverb (of he that builds on the people builds on the dirt) discredit my
+opinion: for that hath only place where an ambitious and private person,
+for some popular end, trusts in them against the public justice and
+magistrate.  There they will leave him.  But when a prince governs them,
+so as they have still need of his administrations (for that is his art),
+he shall ever make and hold them faithful.
+
+_Clementia_.—_Machiavell_.—A prince should exercise his cruelty not by
+himself but by his ministers; so he may save himself and his dignity with
+his people by sacrificing those when he list, saith the great doctor of
+state, Machiavell.  But I say he puts off man and goes into a beast, that
+is cruel.  No virtue is a prince’s own, or becomes him more, than this
+clemency: and no glory is greater than to be able to save with his power.
+Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a
+prince, as many funerals a physician.  The state of things is secured by
+clemency; severity represseth a few, but irritates more. {74a}  The
+lopping of trees makes the boughs shoot out thicker; and the taking away
+of some kind of enemies increaseth the number.  It is then most gracious
+in a prince to pardon when many about him would make him cruel; to think
+then how much he can save when others tell him how much he can destroy;
+not to consider what the impotence of others hath demolished, but what
+his own greatness can sustain.  These are a prince’s virtues: and they
+that give him other counsels are but the hangman’s factors.
+
+_Clementia tutela optima_.—He that is cruel to halves (saith the said St.
+Nicholas {74b}) loseth no less the opportunity of his cruelty than of his
+benefits: for then to use his cruelty is too late; and to use his favours
+will be interpreted fear and necessity, and so he loseth the thanks.
+Still the counsel is cruelty.  But princes, by hearkening to cruel
+counsels, become in time obnoxious to the authors, their flatterers, and
+ministers; and are brought to that, that when they would, they dare not
+change them; they must go on and defend cruelty with cruelty; they cannot
+alter the habit.  It is then grown necessary, they must be as ill as
+those have made them: and in the end they will grow more hateful to
+themselves than to their subjects.  Whereas, on the contrary, the
+merciful prince is safe in love, not in fear.  He needs no emissaries,
+spies, intelligencers to entrap true subjects.  He fears no libels, no
+treasons.  His people speak what they think, and talk openly what they do
+in secret.  They have nothing in their breasts that they need a cypher
+for.  He is guarded with his own benefits.
+
+_Religio_.  _Palladium Homeri_.—_Euripides_.—The strength of empire is in
+religion.  What else is the Palladium (with Homer) that kept Troy so long
+from sacking?  Nothing more commends the Sovereign to the subject than
+it.  For he that is religious must be merciful and just necessarily: and
+they are two strong ties upon mankind.  Justice the virtue that innocence
+rejoiceth in.  Yet even that is not always so safe, but it may love to
+stand in the sight of mercy.  For sometimes misfortune is made a crime,
+and then innocence is succoured no less than virtue.  Nay, oftentimes
+virtue is made capital; and through the condition of the times it may
+happen that that may be punished with our praise.  Let no man therefore
+murmur at the actions of the prince, who is placed so far above him.  If
+he offend, he hath his discoverer.  God hath a height beyond him.  But
+where the prince is good, Euripides saith, “God is a guest in a human
+body.”
+
+_Tyranni_.—_Sejanus_.—There is nothing with some princes sacred above
+their majesty, or profane, but what violates their sceptres.  But a
+prince, with such a council, is like the god Terminus, of stone, his own
+landmark, or (as it is in the fable) a crowned lion.  It is dangerous
+offending such a one, who, being angry, knows not how to forgive; that
+cares not to do anything for maintaining or enlarging of empire; kills
+not men or subjects, but destroyeth whole countries, armies, mankind,
+male and female, guilty or not guilty, holy or profane; yea, some that
+have not seen the light.  All is under the law of their spoil and
+licence.  But princes that neglect their proper office thus their fortune
+is oftentimes to draw a Sejanus to be near about them, who at last affect
+to get above them, and put them in a worthy fear of rooting both them out
+and their family.  For no men hate an evil prince more than they that
+helped to make him such.  And none more boastingly weep his ruin than
+they that procured and practised it.  The same path leads to ruin which
+did to rule when men profess a licence in government.  A good king is a
+public servant.
+
+_Illiteratus princeps_.—A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes.
+All his government is groping.  In sovereignty it is a most happy thing
+not to be compelled; but so it is the most miserable not to be
+counselled.  And how can he be counselled that cannot see to read the
+best counsellors (which are books), for they neither flatter us nor hide
+from us?  He may hear, you will say; but how shall he always be sure to
+hear truth, or be counselled the best things, not the sweetest?  They say
+princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship.  The reason is
+the brave beast is no flatterer.  He will throw a prince as soon as his
+groom.  Which is an argument that the good counsellors to princes are the
+best instruments of a good age.  For though the prince himself be of a
+most prompt inclination to all virtue, yet the best pilots have needs of
+mariners besides sails, anchor, and other tackle.
+
+_Character principis_.—_Alexander magnus_.—If men did know what shining
+fetters, gilded miseries, and painted happiness thrones and sceptres were
+there would not be so frequent strife about the getting or holding of
+them; there would be more principalities than princes; for a prince is
+the pastor of the people.  He ought to shear, not to flay his sheep; to
+take their fleeces, not their the soul of the commonwealth, and ought to
+cherish it as his own body.  Alexander the Great was wont to say, “He
+hated that gardener that plucked his herbs or flowers up by the roots.”
+A man may milk a beast till the blood come; churn milk and it yieldeth
+butter, but wring the nose and the blood followeth.  He is an ill prince
+that so pulls his subjects’ feathers as he would not have them grow
+again; that makes his exchequer a receipt for the spoils of those he
+governs.  No, let him keep his own, not affect his subjects’; strive
+rather to be called just than powerful.  Not, like the Roman tyrants,
+affect the surnames that grow by human slaughters; neither to seek war in
+peace, nor peace in war, but to observe faith given, though to an enemy.
+Study piety toward the subject; show care to defend him.  Be slow to
+punish in divers cases, but be a sharp and severe revenger of open
+crimes.  Break no decrees or dissolve no orders to slacken the strength
+of laws.  Choose neither magistrates, civil or ecclesiastical, by favour
+or price; but with long disquisition and report of their worth by all
+suffrages.  Sell no honours, nor give them hastily, but bestow them with
+counsel and for reward; if he do, acknowledge it (though late), and mend
+it.  For princes are easy to be deceived; and what wisdom can escape
+where so many court-arts are studied?  But, above all, the prince is to
+remember that when the great day of account comes, which neither
+magistrate nor prince can shun, there will be required of him a reckoning
+for those whom he hath trusted, as for himself, which he must provide.
+And if piety be wanting in the priests, equity in the judges, or the
+magistrates be found rated at a price, what justice or religion is to be
+expected? which are the only two attributes make kings akin to God, and
+is the Delphic sword, both to kill sacrifices and to chastise offenders.
+
+_De gratiosis_.—When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his
+friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.  Nay, his
+honours are a great part of the honour of the times; when by this means
+he is grown to active men an example, to the slothful a spur, to the
+envious a punishment.
+
+_Divites_.—_Heredes ex asse_.  He which is sole heir to many rich men,
+having (besides his father’s and uncle’s) the estates of divers his
+kindred come to him by accession, must needs be richer than father or
+grandfather; so they which are left heirs _ex asse_ of all their
+ancestors’ vices, and by their good husbandry improve the old and daily
+purchase new, must needs be wealthier in vice, and have a greater revenue
+or stock of ill to spend on.
+
+_Fures publici_.—The great thieves of a state are lightly the officers of
+the crown; they hang the less still, play the pikes in the pond, eat whom
+they list.  The net was never spread for the hawk or buzzard that hurt
+us, but the harmless birds; they are good meat:—
+
+   “Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.” {81a}
+   “Non rete accipitri tenditur, neque milvio.” {81b}
+
+_Lewis XI_.—But they are not always safe though, especially when they
+meet with wise masters.  They can take down all the huff and swelling of
+their looks, and like dexterous auditors place the counter where he shall
+value nothing.  Let them but remember Lewis XI., who to a Clerk of the
+Exchequer that came to be Lord Treasurer, and had (for his device)
+represented himself sitting on fortune’s wheel, told him he might do well
+to fasten it with a good strong nail, lest, turning about, it might bring
+him where he was again.  As indeed it did.
+
+_De bonis et malis_.—_De innocentiâ_.—A good man will avoid the spot of
+any sin.  The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way
+in his life as he would in his journey.  The ill man rides through all
+confidently; he is coated and booted for it.  The oftener he offends, the
+more openly, and the fouler, the fitter in fashion.  His modesty, like a
+riding-coat, the more it is worn is the less cared for.  It is good
+enough for the dirt still, and the ways he travels in.  An innocent man
+needs no eloquence, his innocence is instead of it, else I had never come
+off so many times from these precipices, whither men’s malice hath
+pursued me.  It is true I have been accused to the lords, to the king,
+and by great ones, but it happened my accusers had not thought of the
+accusation with themselves, and so were driven, for want of crimes, to
+use invention, which was found slander, or too late (being entered so
+fair) to seek starting-holes for their rashness, which were not given
+them.  And then they may think what accusation that was like to prove,
+when they that were the engineers feared to be the authors.  Nor were
+they content to feign things against me, but to urge things, feigned by
+the ignorant, against my profession, which though, from their hired and
+mercenary impudence, I might have passed by as granted to a nation of
+barkers that let out their tongues to lick others’ sores; yet I durst not
+leave myself undefended, having a pair of ears unskilful to hear lies, or
+have those things said of me which I could truly prove of them.  They
+objected making of verses to me, when I could object to most of them,
+their not being able to read them, but as worthy of scorn.  Nay, they
+would offer to urge mine own writings against me, but by pieces (which
+was an excellent way of malice), as if any man’s context might not seem
+dangerous and offensive, if that which was knit to what went before were
+defrauded of his beginning; or that things by themselves uttered might
+not seem subject to calumny, which read entire would appear most free.
+At last they upbraided my poverty: I confess she is my domestic; sober of
+diet, simple of habit, frugal, painful, a good counseller to me, that
+keeps me from cruelty, pride, or other more delicate impertinences, which
+are the nurse-children of riches.  But let them look over all the great
+and monstrous wickednesses, they shall never find those in poor families.
+They are the issue of the wealthy giants and the mighty hunters, whereas
+no great work, or worthy of praise or memory, but came out of poor
+cradles.  It was the ancient poverty that founded commonweals, built
+cities, invented arts, made wholesome laws, armed men against vices,
+rewarded them with their own virtues, and preserved the honour and state
+of nations, till they betrayed themselves to riches.
+
+_Amor nummi_.—Money never made any man rich, but his mind.  He that can
+order himself to the law of Nature is not only without the sense but the
+fear of poverty.  O! but to strike blind the people with our wealth and
+pomp is the thing!  What a wretchedness is this, to thrust all our riches
+outward, and be beggars within; to contemplate nothing but the little,
+vile, and sordid things of the world; not the great, noble, and precious!
+We serve our avarice, and, not content with the good of the earth that is
+offered us, we search and dig for the evil that is hidden.  God offered
+us those things, and placed them at hand, and near us, that He knew were
+profitable for us, but the hurtful He laid deep and hid.  Yet do we seek
+only the things whereby we may perish, and bring them forth, when God and
+Nature hath buried them.  We covet superfluous things, when it were more
+honour for us if we would contemn necessary.  What need hath Nature of
+silver dishes, multitudes of waiters, delicate pages, perfumed napkins?
+She requires meat only, and hunger is not ambitious.  Can we think no
+wealth enough but such a state for which a man may be brought into a
+premunire, begged, proscribed, or poisoned?  O! if a man could restrain
+the fury of his gullet and groin, and think how many fires, how many
+kitchens, cooks, pastures, and ploughed lands; what orchards, stews,
+ponds and parks, coops and garners, he could spare; what velvets,
+tissues, embroideries, laces, he could lack; and then how short and
+uncertain his life is; he were in a better way to happiness than to live
+the emperor of these delights, and be the dictator of fashions; but we
+make ourselves slaves to our pleasures, and we serve fame and ambition,
+which is an equal slavery.  Have not I seen the pomp of a whole kingdom,
+and what a foreign king could bring hither?  Also to make himself gazed
+and wondered at—laid forth, as it were, to the show—and vanish all away
+in a day?  And shall that which could not fill the expectation of few
+hours, entertain and take up our whole lives, when even it appeared as
+superfluous to the possessors as to me that was a spectator?  The bravery
+was shown, it was not possessed; while it boasted itself it perished.  It
+is vile, and a poor thing to place our happiness on these desires.  Say
+we wanted them all.  Famine ends famine.
+
+_De mollibus et effœminatis_.—There is nothing valiant or solid to be
+hoped for from such as are always kempt and perfumed, and every day smell
+of the tailor; the exceedingly curious that are wholly in mending such an
+imperfection in the face, in taking away the morphew in the neck, or
+bleaching their hands at midnight, gumming and bridling their beards, or
+making the waist small, binding it with hoops, while the mind runs at
+waste; too much pickedness is not manly.  Not from those that will jest
+at their own outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers within, their
+pride, lust, envy, ill-nature, with all the art and authority they can.
+These persons are in danger, for whilst they think to justify their
+ignorance by impudence, and their persons by clothes and outward
+ornaments, they use but a commission to deceive themselves: where, if we
+will look with our understanding, and not our senses, we may behold
+virtue and beauty (though covered with rags) in their brightness; and
+vice and deformity so much the fouler, in having all the splendour of
+riches to gild them, or the false light of honour and power to help them.
+Yet this is that wherewith the world is taken, and runs mad to gaze
+on—clothes and titles, the birdlime of fools.
+
+_De stultitiâ_.—What petty things they are we wonder at, like children
+that esteem every trifle, and prefer a fairing before their fathers!
+What difference is between us and them but that we are dearer fools,
+coxcombs at a higher rate?  They are pleased with cockleshells, whistles,
+hobby-horses, and such like; we with statues, marble pillars, pictures,
+gilded roofs, where underneath is lath and lime, perhaps loam.  Yet we
+take pleasure in the lie, and are glad we can cozen ourselves.  Nor is it
+only in our walls and ceilings, but all that we call happiness is mere
+painting and gilt, and all for money.  What a thin membrane of honour
+that is! and how hath all true reputation fallen, since money began to
+have any!  Yet the great herd, the multitude, that in all other things
+are divided, in this alone conspire and agree—to love money.  They wish
+for it, they embrace it, they adore it, while yet it is possessed with
+greater stir and torment than it is gotten.
+
+_De sibi molestis_.—Some men what losses soever they have they make them
+greater, and if they have none, even all that is not gotten is a loss.
+Can there be creatures of more wretched condition than these, that
+continually labour under their own misery and others’ envy?  A man should
+study other things, not to covet, not to fear, not to repent him; to make
+his base such as no tempest shall shake him; to be secure of all opinion,
+and pleasing to himself, even for that wherein he displeaseth others; for
+the worst opinion gotten for doing well, should delight us.  Wouldst not
+thou be just but for fame, thou oughtest to be it with infamy; he that
+would have his virtue published is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
+
+_Periculosa melancholia_.—It is a dangerous thing when men’s minds come
+to sojourn with their affections, and their diseases eat into their
+strength; that when too much desire and greediness of vice hath made the
+body unfit, or unprofitable, it is yet gladded with the sight and
+spectacle of it in others; and for want of ability to be an actor, is
+content to be a witness.  It enjoys the pleasure of sinning in beholding
+others sin, as in dining, drinking, drabbing, &c.  Nay, when it cannot do
+all these, it is offended with his own narrowness, that excludes it from
+the universal delights of mankind, and oftentimes dies of a melancholy,
+that it cannot be vicious enough.
+
+_Falsæ species fugiendæ_.—I am glad when I see any man avoid the infamy
+of a vice; but to shun the vice itself were better.  Till he do that he
+is but like the ’pientice, who, being loth to be spied by his master
+coming forth of Black Lucy’s, went in again; to whom his master cried,
+“The more thou runnest that way to hide thyself, the more thou art in the
+place.”  So are those that keep a tavern all day, that they may not be
+seen at night.  I have known lawyers, divines—yea, great ones—of this
+heresy.
+
+_Decipimur specie_.—There is a greater reverence had of things remote or
+strange to us than of much better if they be nearer and fall under our
+sense.  Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have their reputation by
+distance.  Rivers, the farther they run, and more from their spring, the
+broader they are, and greater.  And where our original is known, we are
+less the confident; among strangers we trust fortune.  Yet a man may live
+as renowned at home, in his own country, or a private village, as in the
+whole world.  For it is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a
+man everywhere.  It is only that can naturalise him.  A native, if he be
+vicious, deserves to be a stranger, and cast out of the commonwealth as
+an alien.
+
+_Dejectio Aulic_.—A dejected countenance and mean clothes beget often a
+contempt, but it is with the shallowest creatures; courtiers commonly:
+look up even with them in a new suit, you get above them straight.
+Nothing is more short-lived than pride; it is but while their clothes
+last: stay but while these are worn out, you cannot wish the thing more
+wretched or dejected.
+
+_Poesis_, _et pictura_.—_Plutarch_.  Poetry and picture are arts of a
+like nature, and both are busy about imitation.  It was excellently said
+of Plutarch, poetry was a speaking picture, and picture a mute poesy.
+For they both invent, feign and devise many things, and accommodate all
+they invent to the use and service of Nature.  Yet of the two, the pen is
+more noble than the pencil; for that can speak to the understanding, the
+other but to the sense.  They both behold pleasure and profit as their
+common object; but should abstain from all base pleasures, lest they
+should err from their end, and, while they seek to better men’s minds,
+destroy their manners.  They both are born artificers, not made.  Nature
+is more powerful in them than study.
+
+_De pictura_.—Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth and all
+the wisdom of poetry.  Picture is the invention of heaven, the most
+ancient and most akin to Nature.  It is itself a silent work, and always
+of one and the same habit; yet it doth so enter and penetrate the inmost
+affection (being done by an excellent artificer) as sometimes it
+overcomes the power of speech and oratory.  There are divers graces in
+it, so are there in the artificers.  One excels in care, another in
+reason, a third in easiness, a fourth in nature and grace.  Some have
+diligence and comeliness, but they want majesty.  They can express a
+human form in all the graces, sweetness, and elegancy, but, they miss the
+authority.  They can hit nothing but smooth cheeks; they cannot express
+roughness or gravity.  Others aspire to truth so much as they are rather
+lovers of likeness than beauty.  Zeuxis and Parrhasius are said to be
+contemporaries; the first found out the reason of lights and shadows in
+picture, the other more subtlely examined the line.
+
+_De stylo_.—_Pliny_.—In picture light is required no less than shadow; so
+in style, height as well as humbleness.  But beware they be not too
+humble, as Pliny pronounced of Regulus’s writings.  You would think them
+written, not on a child, but by a child.  Many, out of their own obscene
+apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words—as occupy, Nature, and the
+like; so the curious industry in some, of having all alike good, hath
+come nearer a vice than a virtue.
+
+_De progres. picturæ_. {93}  Picture took her feigning from poetry; from
+geometry her rule, compass, lines, proportion, and the whole symmetry.
+Parrhasius was the first won reputation by adding symmetry to picture; he
+added subtlety to the countenance, elegancy to the hair, love-lines to
+the face, and by the public voice of all artificers, deserved honour in
+the outer lines.  Eupompus gave it splendour by numbers and other
+elegancies.  From the optics it drew reasons, by which it considered how
+things placed at distance and afar off should appear less; how above or
+beneath the head should deceive the eye, &c.  So from thence it took
+shadows, recessor, light, and heightnings.  From moral philosophy it took
+the soul, the expression of senses, perturbations, manners, when they
+would paint an angry person, a proud, an inconstant, an ambitious, a
+brave, a magnanimous, a just, a merciful, a compassionate, an humble, a
+dejected, a base, and the like; they made all heightnings bright, all
+shadows dark, all swellings from a plane, all solids from breaking.  See
+where he complains of their painting Chimæras {94} (by the vulgar unaptly
+called grotesque) saying that men who were born truly to study and
+emulate Nature did nothing but make monsters against Nature, which Horace
+so laughed at. {95} The art plastic was moulding in clay, or potter’s
+earth anciently.  This is the parent of statuary, sculpture, graving, and
+picture; cutting in brass and marble, all serve under her.  Socrates
+taught Parrhasius and Clito (two noble statuaries) first to express
+manners by their looks in imagery.  Polygnotus and Aglaophon were
+ancienter.  After them Zeuxis, who was the lawgiver to all painters;
+after, Parrhasius.  They were contemporaries, and lived both about
+Philip’s time, the father of Alexander the Great.  There lived in this
+latter age six famous painters in Italy, who were excellent and emulous
+of the ancients—Raphael de Urbino, Michael Angelo Buonarotti, Titian,
+Antony of Correggio, Sebastian of Venice, Julio Romano, and Andrea
+Sartorio.
+
+_Parasiti ad mensam_.—These are flatterers for their bread, that praise
+all my oraculous lord does or says, be it true or false; invent tales
+that shall please; make baits for his lordship’s ears; and if they be not
+received in what they offer at, they shift a point of the compass, and
+turn their tale, presently tack about, deny what they confessed, and
+confess what they denied; fit their discourse to the persons and
+occasions.  What they snatch up and devour at one table, utter at
+another; and grow suspected of the master, hated of the servants, while
+they inquire, and reprehend, and compound, and dilate business of the
+house they have nothing to do with.  They praise my lord’s wine and the
+sauce he likes; observe the cook and bottle-man; while they stand in my
+lord’s favour, speak for a pension for them, but pound them to dust upon
+my lord’s least distaste, or change of his palate.
+
+How much better is it to be silent, or at least to speak sparingly! for
+it is not enough to speak good, but timely things.  If a man be asked a
+question, to answer; but to repeat the question before he answer is well,
+that he be sure to understand it, to avoid absurdity; for it is less
+dishonour to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly.  The ears are
+excused, the understanding is not.  And in things unknown to a man, not
+to give his opinion, lest by the affectation of knowing too much he lose
+the credit he hath, by speaking or knowing the wrong way what he utters.
+Nor seek to get his patron’s favour by embarking himself in the factions
+of the family, to inquire after domestic simulties, their sports or
+affections.  They are an odious and vile kind of creatures, that fly
+about the house all day, and picking up the filth of the house like pies
+or swallows, carry it to their nest (the lord’s ears), and oftentimes
+report the lies they have feigned for what they have seen and heard.
+
+_Imò serviles_.—These are called instruments of grace and power with
+great persons, but they are indeed the organs of their impotency, and
+marks of weakness.  For sufficient lords are able to make these
+discoveries themselves.  Neither will an honourable person inquire who
+eats and drinks together, what that man plays, whom this man loves, with
+whom such a one walks, what discourse they hold, who sleeps with whom.
+They are base and servile natures that busy themselves about these
+disquisitions.  How often have I seen (and worthily) these censors of the
+family undertaken by some honest rustic and cudgelled thriftily!  These
+are commonly the off-scouring and dregs of men that do these things, or
+calumniate others; yet I know not truly which is worse—he that maligns
+all, or that praises all.  There is as a vice in praising, and as
+frequent, as in detracting.
+
+It pleased your lordship of late to ask my opinion touching the education
+of your sons, and especially to the advancement of their studies.  To
+which, though I returned somewhat for the present, which rather
+manifested a will in me than gave any just resolution to the thing
+propounded, I have upon better cogitation called those aids about me,
+both of mind and memory, which shall venture my thoughts clearer, if not
+fuller, to your lordship’s demand.  I confess, my lord, they will seem
+but petty and minute things I shall offer to you, being writ for
+children, and of them.  But studies have their infancy as well as
+creatures.  We see in men even the strongest compositions had their
+beginnings from milk and the cradle; and the wisest tarried sometimes
+about apting their mouths to letters and syllables.  In their education,
+therefore, the care must be the greater had of their beginnings, to know,
+examine, and weigh their natures; which, though they be proner in some
+children to some disciplines, yet are they naturally prompt to taste all
+by degrees, and with change.  For change is a kind of refreshing in
+studies, and infuseth knowledge by way of recreation.  Thence the school
+itself is called a play or game, and all letters are so best taught to
+scholars.  They should not be affrighted or deterred in their entry, but
+drawn on with exercise and emulation.  A youth should not be made to hate
+study before he know the causes to love it, or taste the bitterness
+before the sweet; but called on and allured, entreated and praised—yea,
+when he deserves it not.  For which cause I wish them sent to the best
+school, and a public, which I think the best.  Your lordship, I fear,
+hardly hears of that, as willing to breed them in your eye and at home,
+and doubting their manners may be corrupted abroad.  They are in more
+danger in your own family, among ill servants (allowing they be safe in
+their schoolmaster), than amongst a thousand boys, however immodest.
+Would we did not spoil our own children, and overthrow their manners
+ourselves by too much indulgence!  To breed them at home is to breed them
+in a shade, whereas in a school they have the light and heat of the sun.
+They are used and accustomed to things and men.  When they come forth
+into the common-wealth, they find nothing new, or to seek.  They have
+made their friendships and aids, some to last their age.  They hear what
+is commanded to others as well as themselves; much approved, much
+corrected; all which they bring to their own store and use, and learn as
+much as they hear.  Eloquence would be but a poor thing if we should only
+converse with singulars, speak but man and man together.  Therefore I
+like no private breeding.  I would send them where their industry should
+be daily increased by praise, and that kindled by emulation.  It is a
+good thing to inflame the mind; and though ambition itself be a vice, it
+is often the cause of great virtue.  Give me that wit whom praise
+excites, glory puts on, or disgrace grieves; he is to be nourished with
+ambition, pricked forward with honour, checked with reprehension, and
+never to be suspected of sloth.  Though he be given to play, it is a sign
+of spirit and liveliness, so there be a mean had of their sports and
+relaxations.  And from the rod or ferule I would have them free, as from
+the menace of them; for it is both deformed and servile.
+
+_De stylo_, _et optimo scribendi genere_.—For a man to write well, there
+are required three necessaries—to read the best authors, observe the best
+speakers, and much exercise of his own style; in style to consider what
+ought to be written, and after what manner.  He must first think and
+excogitate his matter, then choose his words, and examine the weight of
+either.  Then take care, in placing and ranking both matter and words,
+that the composition be comely; and to do this with diligence and often.
+No matter how slow the style be at first, so it be laboured and accurate;
+seek the best, and be not glad of the froward conceits, or first words,
+that offer themselves to us; but judge of what we invent, and order what
+we approve.  Repeat often what we have formerly written; which beside
+that it helps the consequence, and makes the juncture better, it quickens
+the heat of imagination, that often cools in the time of setting down,
+and gives it new strength, as if it grew lustier by the going back; as we
+see in the contention of leaping, they jump farthest that fetch their
+race largest; or, as in throwing a dart or javelin, we force back our
+arms to make our loose the stronger.  Yet, if we have a fair gale of
+wind, I forbid not the steering out of our sail, so the favour of the
+gale deceive us not.  For all that we invent doth please us in conception
+of birth, else we would never set it down.  But the safest is to return
+to our judgment, and handle over again those things the easiness of which
+might make them justly suspected.  So did the best writers in their
+beginnings; they imposed upon themselves care and industry; they did
+nothing rashly: they obtained first to write well, and then custom made
+it easy and a habit.  By little and little their matter showed itself to
+them more plentifully; their words answered, their composition followed;
+and all, as in a well-ordered family, presented itself in the place.  So
+that the sum of all is, ready writing makes not good writing, but good
+writing brings on ready writing yet, when we think we have got the
+faculty, it is even then good to resist it, as to give a horse a check
+sometimes with a bit, which doth not so much stop his course as stir his
+mettle.  Again, whether a man’s genius is best able to reach thither, it
+should more and more contend, lift and dilate itself, as men of low
+stature raise themselves on their toes, and so ofttimes get even, if not
+eminent.  Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to stand of
+themselves, and work with their own strength, to trust and endeavour by
+their own faculties, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study
+others and the best.  For the mind and memory are more sharply exercised
+in comprehending another man’s things than our own; and such as accustom
+themselves and are familiar with the best authors shall ever and anon
+find somewhat of them in themselves, and in the expression of their
+minds, even when they feel it not, be able to utter something like
+theirs, which hath an authority above their own.  Nay, sometimes it is
+the reward of a man’s study, the praise of quoting another man fitly; and
+though a man be more prone and able for one kind of writing than another,
+yet he must exercise all.  For as in an instrument, so in style, there
+must be a harmony and consent of parts.
+
+_Præcipiendi modi_.—I take this labour in teaching others, that they
+should not be always to be taught, and I would bring my precepts into
+practice, for rules are ever of less force and value than experiments;
+yet with this purpose, rather to show the right way to those that come
+after, than to detect any that have slipped before by error, and I hope
+it will be more profitable.  For men do more willingly listen, and with
+more favour, to precept, than reprehension.  Among divers opinions of an
+art, and most of them contrary in themselves, it is hard to make
+election; and, therefore, though a man cannot invent new things after so
+many, he may do a welcome work yet to help posterity to judge rightly of
+the old.  But arts and precepts avail nothing, except Nature be
+beneficial and aiding.  And therefore these things are no more written to
+a dull disposition, than rules of husbandry to a soil.  No precepts will
+profit a fool, no more than beauty will the blind, or music the deaf.  As
+we should take care that our style in writing be neither dry nor empty,
+we should look again it be not winding, or wanton with far-fetched
+descriptions; either is a vice.  But that is worse which proceeds out of
+want, than that which riots out of plenty.  The remedy of fruitfulness is
+easy, but no labour will help the contrary; I will like and praise some
+things in a young writer which yet, if he continue in, I cannot but
+justly hate him for the same.  There is a time to be given all things for
+maturity, and that even your country husband-man can teach, who to a
+young plant will not put the pruning-knife, because it seems to fear the
+iron, as not able to admit the scar.  No more would I tell a green writer
+all his faults, lest I should make him grieve and faint, and at last
+despair; for nothing doth more hurt than to make him so afraid of all
+things as he can endeavour nothing.  Therefore youth ought to be
+instructed betimes, and in the best things; for we hold those longest we
+take soonest, as the first scent of a vessel lasts, and the tint the wool
+first receives; therefore a master should temper his own powers, and
+descend to the other’s infirmity.  If you pour a glut of water upon a
+bottle, it receives little of it; but with a funnel, and by degrees, you
+shall fill many of them, and spill little of your own; to their capacity
+they will all receive and be full.  And as it is fit to read the best
+authors to youth first, so let them be of the openest and clearest.
+{106a}  As Livy before Sallust, Sidney before Donne; and beware of
+letting them taste Gower or Chaucer at first, lest, falling too much in
+love with antiquity, and not apprehending the weight, they grow rough and
+barren in language only.  When their judgments are firm, and out of
+danger, let them read both the old and the new; but no less take heed
+that their new flowers and sweetness do not as much corrupt as the
+others’ dryness and squalor, if they choose not carefully.  Spenser, in
+affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I would have him read for
+his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius.  The reading of Homer and Virgil
+is counselled by Quintilian as the best way of informing youth and
+confirming man.  For, besides that the mind is raised with the height and
+sublimity of such a verse, it takes spirit from the greatness of the
+matter, and is tinctured with the best things.  Tragic and lyric poetry
+is good, too, and comic with the best, if the manners of the reader be
+once in safety.  In the Greek poets, as also in Plautus, we shall see the
+economy and disposition of poems better observed than in Terence; and the
+latter, who thought the sole grace and virtue of their fable the sticking
+in of sentences, as ours do the forcing in of jests.
+
+_Fals. querel. fugiend. Platonis peregrinatio in Italiam_.—We should not
+protect our sloth with the patronage of difficulty.  It is a false
+quarrel against Nature, that she helps understanding but in a few, when
+the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, if they would take
+the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c., which if they
+lose, it is through their own sluggishness, and by that means become her
+prodigies, not her children.  I confess, Nature in children is more
+patient of labour in study than in age; for the sense of the pain, the
+judgment of the labour is absent; they do not measure what they have
+done.  And it is the thought and consideration that affects us more than
+the weariness itself.  Plato was not content with the learning that
+Athens could give him, but sailed into Italy, for Pythagoras’ knowledge:
+and yet not thinking himself sufficiently informed, went into Egypt, to
+the priests, and learned their mysteries.  He laboured, so must we.  Many
+things may be learned together, and performed in one point of time; as
+musicians exercise their memory, their voice, their fingers, and
+sometimes their head and feet at once.  And so a preacher, in the
+invention of matter, election of words, composition of gesture, look,
+pronunciation, motion, useth all these faculties at once: and if we can
+express this variety together, why should not divers studies, at divers
+hours, delight, when the variety is able alone to refresh and repair us?
+As, when a man is weary of writing, to read; and then again of reading,
+to write.  Wherein, howsoever we do many things, yet are we (in a sort)
+still fresh to what we begin; we are recreated with change, as the
+stomach is with meats.  But some will say this variety breeds confusion,
+and makes, that either we lose all, or hold no more than the last.  Why
+do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help
+it with marl, lime, and compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to
+bee-hives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once?  It is easier to do
+many things and continue, than to do one thing long.
+
+_Præcept. element_.—It is not the passing through these learnings that
+hurts us, but the dwelling and sticking about them.  To descend to those
+extreme anxieties and foolish cavils of grammarians, is able to break a
+wit in pieces, being a work of manifold misery and vainness, to be
+_elementarii senes_.  Yet even letters are, as it were, the bank of
+words, and restore themselves to an author as the pawns of language: but
+talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are
+two things.  A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks; and out of the
+observation, knowledge, and the use of things, many writers perplex their
+readers and hearers with mere nonsense.  Their writings need sunshine.
+Pure and neat language I love, yet plain and customary.  A barbarous
+phrase has often made me out of love with a good sense, and doubtful
+writing hath wracked me beyond my patience.  The reason why a poet is
+said that he ought to have all knowledges is, that he should not be
+ignorant of the most, especially of those he will handle.  And indeed,
+when the attaining of them is possible, it were a sluggish and base thing
+to despair; for frequent imitation of anything becomes a habit quickly.
+If a man should prosecute as much as could be said of everything, his
+work would find no end.
+
+_De orationis dignitate_.  ’Εγκυκλοπαιδεία.—_Metaphora_.  Speech is the
+only benefit man hath to express his excellency of mind above other
+creatures.  It is the instrument of society; therefore Mercury, who is
+the president of language, is called _deorum hominumque interpres_.
+{110a}  In all speech, words and sense are as the body and the soul.  The
+sense is as the life and soul of language, without which all words are
+dead.  Sense is wrought out of experience, the knowledge of human life
+and actions, or of the liberal arts, which the Greeks called
+’Εγκυκλοπαιδείαν.  Words are the people’s, yet there is a choice of them
+to be made; for _verborum delectus origo est eloquentiæ_. {111a}  They
+are to be chosen according to the persons we make speak, or the things we
+speak of.  Some are of the camp, some of the council-board, some of the
+shop, some of the sheepcote, some of the pulpit, some of the Bar, &c.
+And herein is seen their elegance and propriety, when we use them fitly
+and draw them forth to their just strength and nature by way of
+translation or metaphor.  But in this translation we must only serve
+necessity (_nam temerè nihil transfertur à prudenti_) {111b} or
+commodity, which is a kind of necessity: that is, when we either
+absolutely want a word to express by, and that is necessity; or when we
+have not so fit a word, and that is commodity; as when we avoid loss by
+it, and escape obsceneness, and gain in the grace and property which
+helps significance.  Metaphors far-fetched hinder to be understood; and
+affected, lose their grace.  Or when the person fetcheth his translations
+from a wrong place as if a privy councillor should at the table take his
+metaphor from a dicing-house, or ordinary, or a vintner’s vault; or a
+justice of peace draw his similitudes from the mathematics, or a divine
+from a bawdy house, or taverns; or a gentleman of Northamptonshire,
+Warwickshire, or the Midland, should fetch all the illustrations to his
+country neighbours from shipping, and tell them of the main-sheet and the
+bowline.  Metaphors are thus many times deformed, as in him that said,
+_Castratam morte Africani rempublicam_; and another, _Stercus curiæ
+Glauciam_, and _Canâ nive conspuit Alpes_.  All attempts that are new in
+this kind, are dangerous, and somewhat hard, before they be softened with
+use.  A man coins not a new word without some peril and less fruit; for
+if it happen to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the
+scorn is assured.  Yet we must adventure; for things at first hard and
+rough are by use made tender and gentle.  It is an honest error that is
+committed, following great chiefs.
+
+_Consuetudo_.—_Perspicuitas_,
+_Venustas_.—_Authoritas_.—_Virgil_.—_Lucretius_.—_Chaucerism_.—
+_Paronomasia_.—Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the
+public stamp makes the current money.  But we must not be too frequent
+with the mint, every day coining, nor fetch words from the extreme and
+utmost ages; since the chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and
+nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter.  Words borrowed of
+antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their
+delight sometimes; for they have the authority of years, and out of their
+intermission do win themselves a kind of grace like newness.  But the
+eldest of the present, and newness of the past language, is the best.
+For what was the ancient language, which some men so dote upon, but the
+ancient custom?  Yet when I name custom, I understand not the vulgar
+custom; for that were a precept no less dangerous to language than life,
+if we should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar: but that I
+call custom of speech, which is the consent of the learned; as custom of
+life, which is the consent of the good.  Virgil was most loving of
+antiquity; yet how rarely doth he insert _aquai_ and _pictai_!  Lucretius
+is scabrous and rough in these; he seeks them: as some do Chaucerisms
+with us, which were better expunged and banished.  Some words are to be
+culled out for ornament and colour, as we gather flowers to strew houses
+or make garlands; but they are better when they grow to our style; as in
+a meadow, where, though the mere grass and greenness delight, yet the
+variety of flowers doth heighten and beautify.  Marry, we must not play
+or riot too much with them, as in Paronomasies; nor use too swelling or
+ill-sounding words!  _Quæ per salebras_, _altaque saxa cadunt_. {114a}
+It is true, there is no sound but shall find some lovers, as the
+bitterest confections are grateful to some palates.  Our composition must
+be more accurate in the beginning and end than in the midst, and in the
+end more than in the beginning; for through the midst the stream bears
+us.  And this is attained by custom, more than care of diligence.  We
+must express readily and fully, not profusely.  There is difference
+between a liberal and prodigal hand.  As it is a great point of art, when
+our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it
+in and contract it, is of no less praise, when the argument doth ask it.
+Either of them hath their fitness in the place.  A good man always
+profits by his endeavour, by his help, yea, when he is absent; nay, when
+he is dead, by his example and memory.  So good authors in their style: a
+strict and succinct style is that where you can take away nothing without
+loss, and that loss to be manifest.
+
+_De Stylo_.—_Tracitus_.—_The Laconic_.—_Suetonius_.—_Seneca and
+Fabianus_.—The brief style is that which expresseth much in little; the
+concise style, which expresseth not enough, but leaves somewhat to be
+understood; the abrupt style, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem
+to end, but fall.  The congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a
+sentence hath almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection;
+as in stones well squared, which will rise strong a great way without
+mortar.
+
+_Periodi_.—_Obscuritas offundit tenebras_.—_Superlatio_.—Periods are
+beautiful when they are not too long; for so they have their strength
+too, as in a pike or javelin.  As we must take the care that our words
+and sense be clear, so if the obscurity happen through the hearer’s or
+reader’s want of understanding, I am not to answer for them, no more than
+for their not listening or marking; I must neither find them ears nor
+mind.  But a man cannot put a word so in sense but something about it
+will illustrate it, if the writer understand himself; for order helps
+much to perspicuity, as confusion hurts.  (_Rectitudo lucem adfert_;
+_obliquitas et circumductio offuscat_. {116a})  We should therefore speak
+what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait, not leap; for too
+short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long not kept in.
+Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the
+obscurity is marked, but not the value.  That perisheth, and is passed
+by, like the pearl in the fable.  Our style should be like a skein of
+silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and
+perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap.  There are words that do as much
+raise a style as others can depress it.  Superlation and over-muchness
+amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean.  It was
+ridiculous in Cestius, when he said of Alexander:
+
+   “Fremit oceanus, quasi indignetur, quòd terras relinquas.” {117a}
+
+But propitiously from Virgil:
+
+   “Credas innare revulsas
+   Cycladas.” {117b}
+
+He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so.  Although it be somewhat
+incredible, that is excused before it be spoken.  But there are
+hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit
+another.  As _Eos esse_ P. R. _exercitus_, _qui cælum possint
+perrumpere_, {118a} who would say with us, but a madman?  Therefore we
+must consider in every tongue what is used, what received.  Quintilian
+warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we
+make a turn from what we began; as if we fetch the original of our
+metaphor from sea and billows, we end not in flames and ashes: it is a
+most foul inconsequence.  Neither must we draw out our allegory too long,
+lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is
+childish.  But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways
+of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it
+fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered
+plainly would offend the hearers.  Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes
+for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn
+either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of
+the fields.  And all this is called εσχηματισμενη or figured language.
+
+_Oratio imago animi_.—Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see
+thee.  It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is
+the image of the parent of it, the mind.  No glass renders a man’s form
+or likeness so true as his speech.  Nay, it is likened to a man; and as
+we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in
+the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.
+
+_Structura et statura_, _sublimis_, _humilis_, _pumila_.—Some men are
+tall and big, so some language is high and great.  Then the words are
+chosen, their sound ample, the composition full, the absolution
+plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, and strong.  Some are
+little and dwarfs; so of speech, it is humble and low, the words poor and
+flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting or number.
+
+_Mediocris plana et placida_.—The middle are of a just stature.  There
+the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without
+swelling: all well-turned, composed, elegant, and accurate.
+
+_Vitiosa oratio_, _vasta_—_tumens_—_enormis_—_affectata_—_abjecta_.—The
+vicious language is vast and gaping, swelling and irregular: when it
+contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointedness; as it
+affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps, full of bogs and holes.  And
+according to their subject these styles vary, and lose their names: for
+that which is high and lofty, declaring excellent matter, becomes vast
+and tumorous, speaking of petty and inferior things; so that which was
+even and apt in a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and
+humble in a high argument.  Would you not laugh to meet a great
+councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse
+cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet
+gown, furred with sables?  There is a certain latitude in these things,
+by which we find the degrees.
+
+_Figura_.—The next thing to the stature, is the figure and feature in
+language—that is, whether it be round and straight, which consists of
+short and succinct periods, numerous and polished; or square and firm,
+which is to have equal and strong parts everywhere answerable, and
+weighed.
+
+_Cutis sive cortex_.  _Compositio_.—The third is the skin and coat, which
+rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of words; whenas
+it is smooth, gentle, and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your
+finger without rubs, and your nail cannot find a joint; not horrid,
+rough, wrinkled, gaping, or chapped: after these, the flesh, blood, and
+bones come in question.
+
+_Carnosa_—_adipata_—_redundans_.—We say it is a fleshy style, when there
+is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than
+enough, it grows fat and corpulent: _arvina orationis_, full of suet and
+tallow.  It hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their
+sound sweet, and the phrase neat and picked—_oratio uncta_, _et benè
+pasta_.  But where there is redundancy, both the blood and juice are
+faulty and vicious:—_Redundat sanguine_, _quia multo plus dicit_, _quam
+necesse est_.  Juice in language is somewhat less than blood; for if the
+words be but becoming and signifying, and the sense gentle, there is
+juice; but where that wanteth, the language is thin, flagging, poor,
+starved, scarce covering the bone, and shows like stones in a sack.
+
+_Jejuna_, _macilenta_, _strigosa_.—_Ossea_, _et nervosa_.—Some men, to
+avoid redundancy, run into that; and while they strive to have no ill
+blood or juice, they lose their good.  There be some styles, again, that
+have not less blood, but less flesh and corpulence.  These are bony and
+sinewy; _Ossa habent_, _et nervos_.
+
+_Notæ domini Sti. Albani de doctrin.
+intemper_.—_Dictator_.—_Aristoteles_.—It was well noted by the late Lord
+St. Albans, that the study of words is the first distemper of learning;
+vain matter the second; and a third distemper is deceit, or the likeness
+of truth: imposture held up by credulity.  All these are the cobwebs of
+learning, and to let them grow in us is either sluttish or foolish.
+Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the
+schools have done Aristotle.  The damage is infinite knowledge receives
+by it; for to many things a man should owe but a temporary belief, and
+suspension of his own judgment, not an absolute resignation of himself,
+or a perpetual captivity.  Let Aristotle and others have their dues; but
+if we can make farther discoveries of truth and fitness than they, why
+are we envied?  Let us beware, while we strive to add, we do not diminish
+or deface; we may improve, but not augment.  By discrediting falsehood,
+truth grows in request.  We must not go about, like men anguished and
+perplexed, for vicious affectation of praise, but calmly study the
+separation of opinions, find the errors have intervened, awake antiquity,
+call former times into question; but make no parties with the present,
+nor follow any fierce undertakers, mingle no matter of doubtful credit
+with the simplicity of truth, but gently stir the mould about the root of
+the question, and avoid all digladiations, facility of credit, or
+superstitious simplicity, seek the consonancy and concatenation of truth;
+stoop only to point of necessity, and what leads to convenience.  Then
+make exact animadversion where style hath degenerated, where flourished
+and thrived in choiceness of phrase, round and clean composition of
+sentence, sweet falling of the clause, varying an illustration by tropes
+and figures, weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument,
+life of invention, and depth of judgment.  This is _monte potiri_, to get
+the hill; for no perfect discovery can be made upon a flat or a level.
+
+_De optimo scriptore_.—_Cicero_.—Now that I have informed you in the
+knowing of these things, let me lead you by the hand a little farther, in
+the direction of the use, and make you an able writer by practice.  The
+conceits of the mind are pictures of things, and the tongue is the
+interpreter of those pictures.  The order of God’s creatures in
+themselves is not only admirable and glorious, but eloquent: then he who
+could apprehend the consequence of things in their truth, and utter his
+apprehensions as truly, were the best writer or speaker.  Therefore
+Cicero said much, when he said, _Dicere recte nemo potest_, _nisi qui
+prudenter intelligit_. {124a}  The shame of speaking unskilfully were
+small if the tongue only thereby were disgraced; but as the image of a
+king in his seal ill-represented is not so much a blemish to the wax, or
+the signet that sealed it, as to the prince it representeth, so
+disordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth,
+as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so
+negligently expressed.  Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune,
+whose words do jar; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is
+preposterous; nor his elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks
+itself into fragments and uncertainties.  Were it not a dishonour to a
+mighty prince, to have the majesty of his embassage spoiled by a careless
+ambassador? and is it not as great an indignity, that an excellent
+conceit and capacity, by the indiligence of an idle tongue, should be
+disgraced?  Negligent speech doth not only discredit the person of the
+speaker, but it discrediteth the opinion of his reason and judgment; it
+discrediteth the force and uniformity of the matter and substance.  If it
+be so then in words, which fly and escape censure, and where one good
+phrase begs pardon for many incongruities and faults, how shall he then
+be thought wise whose penning is thin and shallow? how shall you look for
+wit from him whose leisure and head, assisted with the examination of his
+eyes, yield you no life or sharpness in his writing?
+
+_De stylo epistolari_.—_Inventio_.—In writing there is to be regarded the
+invention and the fashion.  For the invention, that ariseth upon your
+business, whereof there can be no rules of more certainty, or precepts of
+better direction given, than conjecture can lay down from the several
+occasions of men’s particular lives and vocations: but sometimes men make
+baseness of kindness: As “I could not satisfy myself till I had
+discharged my remembrance, and charged my letters with commendation to
+you;” or, “My business is no other than to testify my love to you, and to
+put you in mind of my willingness to do you all kind offices;” or, “Sir,
+have you leisure to descend to the remembering of that assurance you have
+long possessed in your servant, and upon your next opportunity make him
+happy with some commands from you?” or the like; that go a-begging for
+some meaning, and labour to be delivered of the great burden of nothing.
+When you have invented, and that your business be matter, and not bare
+form, or mere ceremony, but some earnest, then are you to proceed to the
+ordering of it, and digesting the parts, which is had out of two
+circumstances.  One is the understanding of the persons to whom you are
+to write; the other is the coherence of your sentence; for men’s capacity
+to weigh what will be apprehended with greatest attention or leisure;
+what next regarded and longed for especially, and what last will leave
+satisfaction, and (as it were) the sweetest memorial and belief of all
+that is passed in his understanding whom you write to.  For the
+consequence of sentences, you must be sure that every clause do give the
+cue one to the other, and be bespoken ere it come.  So much for invention
+and order.
+
+_Modus_.—1.  _Brevitas_.—Now for fashion: it consists in four things,
+which are qualities of your style.  The first is brevity; for they must
+not be treatises or discourses (your letters) except it be to learned
+men.  And even among them there is a kind of thrift and saving of words.
+Therefore you are to examine the clearest passages of your understanding,
+and through them to convey the sweetest and most significant words you
+can devise, that you may the easier teach them the readiest way to
+another man’s apprehension, and open their meaning fully, roundly, and
+distinctly, so as the reader may not think a second view cast away upon
+your letter.  And though respect be a part following this, yet now here,
+and still I must remember it, if you write to a man, whose estate and
+sense, as senses, you are familiar with, you may the bolder (to set a
+task to his brain) venture on a knot.  But if to your superior, you are
+bound to measure him in three farther points: first, with interest in
+him; secondly, his capacity in your letters; thirdly, his leisure to
+peruse them.  For your interest or favour with him, you are to be the
+shorter or longer, more familiar or submiss, as he will afford you time.
+For his capacity, you are to be quicker and fuller of those reaches and
+glances of wit or learning, as he is able to entertain them.  For his
+leisure, you are commanded to the greater briefness, as his place is of
+greater discharges and cares.  But with your betters, you are not to put
+riddles of wit, by being too scarce of words; not to cause the trouble of
+making breviates by writing too riotous and wastingly.  Brevity is
+attained in matter by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations,
+parentheses, superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the
+composition, by omitting conjunctions [_not only_, _but also_; _both the
+one and the other_, _whereby it cometh to pass_] and such like idle
+particles, that have no great business in a serious letter but breaking
+of sentences, as oftentimes a short journey is made long by unnessary
+baits.
+
+_Quintilian_.—But, as Quintilian saith, there is a briefness of the parts
+sometimes that makes the whole long: “As I came to the stairs, I took a
+pair of oars, they launched out, rowed apace, I landed at the court gate,
+I paid my fare, went up to the presence, asked for my lord, I was
+admitted.”  All this is but, “I went to the court and spake with my
+lord.”  This is the fault of some Latin writers within these last hundred
+years of my reading, and perhaps Seneca may be appeached of it; I accuse
+him not.
+
+2.  _Perspicuitas_.—The next property of epistolary style is perspicuity,
+and is oftentimes by affectation of some wit ill angled for, or
+ostentation of some hidden terms of art.  Few words they darken speech,
+and so do too many; as well too much light hurteth the eyes, as too
+little; and a long bill of chancery confounds the understanding as much
+as the shortest note; therefore, let not your letters be penned like
+English statutes, and this is obtained.  These vices are eschewed by
+pondering your business well and distinctly concerning yourself, which is
+much furthered by uttering your thoughts, and letting them as well come
+forth to the light and judgment of your own outward senses as to the
+censure of other men’s ears; for that is the reason why many good
+scholars speak but fumblingly; like a rich man, that for want of
+particular note and difference can bring you no certain ware readily out
+of his shop.  Hence it is that talkative shallow men do often content the
+hearers more than the wise.  But this may find a speedier redress in
+writing, where all comes under the last examination of the eyes.  First,
+mind it well, then pen it, then examine it, then amend it, and you may be
+in the better hope of doing reasonably well.  Under this virtue may come
+plainness, which is not to be curious in the order as to answer a letter,
+as if you were to answer to interrogatories.  As to the first, first; and
+to the second, secondly, &c. but both in method to use (as ladies do in
+their attire) a diligent kind of negligence, and their sportive freedom;
+though with some men you are not to jest, or practise tricks; yet the
+delivery of the most important things may be carried with such a grace,
+as that it may yield a pleasure to the conceit of the reader.  There must
+be store, though no excess of terms; as if you are to name store,
+sometimes you may call it choice, sometimes plenty, sometimes
+copiousness, or variety; but ever so, that the word which comes in lieu
+have not such difference of meaning as that it may put the sense of the
+first in hazard to be mistaken.  You are not to cast a ring for the
+perfumed terms of the time, as _accommodation_, _complement_, _spirit_
+&c., but use them properly in their place, as others.
+
+3.  _Vigor_—There followeth life and quickness, which is the strength and
+sinews, as it were, of your penning by pretty sayings, similitudes, and
+conceits; allusions from known history, or other common-place, such as
+are in the _Courtier_, and the second book of Cicero _De Oratore_.
+
+4.  _Discretio_.—The last is, respect to discern what fits yourself, him
+to whom you write, and that which you handle, which is a quality fit to
+conclude the rest, because it doth include all.  And that must proceed
+from ripeness of judgment, which, as one truly saith, is gotten by four
+means, God, nature, diligence, and conversation.  Serve the first well,
+and the rest will serve you.
+
+_De Poetica_.—We have spoken sufficiently of oratory, let us now make a
+diversion to poetry.  Poetry, in the primogeniture, had many peccant
+humours, and is made to have more now, through the levity and inconstancy
+of men’s judgments.  Whereas, indeed, it is the most prevailing
+eloquence, and of the most exalted caract.  Now the discredits and
+disgraces are many it hath received through men’s study of depravation or
+calumny; their practice being to give it diminution of credit, by
+lessening the professor’s estimation, and making the age afraid of their
+liberty; and the age is grown so tender of her fame, as she calls all
+writings aspersions.
+
+That is the state word, the phrase of court (placentia college), which
+some call Parasites place, the Inn of Ignorance.
+
+_D. Hieronymus_.—Whilst I name no persons, but deride follies, why should
+any man confess or betray himself why doth not that of S. Hierome come
+into their mind, _Ubi generalis est de vitiis disputatio_, _ibi nullius
+esse personæ injuriam_? {133a}  Is it such an inexpiable crime in poets
+to tax vices generally, and no offence in them, who, by their exception
+confess they have committed them particularly?  Are we fallen into those
+times that we must not—
+
+   “Auriculas teneras mordaci rodere vero.” {133b}
+
+_Remedii votum semper verius erat_, _quam spes_. {133c}—_Sexus fæmin_.—If
+men may by no means write freely, or speak truth, but when it offends
+not, why do physicians cure with sharp medicines, or corrosives? is not
+the same equally lawful in the cure of the mind that is in the cure of
+the body?  Some vices, you will say, are so foul that it is better they
+should be done than spoken.  But they that take offence where no name,
+character, or signature doth blazon them seem to me like affected as
+women, who if they hear anything ill spoken of the ill of their sex, are
+presently moved, as if the contumely respected their particular; and on
+the contrary, when they hear good of good women, conclude that it belongs
+to them all.  If I see anything that toucheth me, shall I come forth a
+betrayer of myself presently?  No, if I be wise, I’ll dissemble it; if
+honest, I’ll avoid it, lest I publish that on my own forehead which I saw
+there noted without a title.  A man that is on the mending hand will
+either ingenuously confess or wisely dissemble his disease.  And the wise
+and virtuous will never think anything belongs to themselves that is
+written, but rejoice that the good are warned not to be such; and the ill
+to leave to be such.  The person offended hath no reason to be offended
+with the writer, but with himself; and so to declare that properly to
+belong to him which was so spoken of all men, as it could be no man’s
+several, but his that would wilfully and desperately claim it.  It
+sufficeth I know what kind of persons I displease, men bred in the
+declining and decay of virtue, betrothed to their own vices; that have
+abandoned or prostituted their good names; hungry and ambitious of
+infamy, invested in all deformity, enthralled to ignorance and malice, of
+a hidden and concealed malignity, and that hold a concomitancy with all
+evil.
+
+
+
+_What is a Poet_?
+
+
+_Poeta_.—A poet is that which by the Greeks is called κατ εξοχην, ο
+ποιητής, a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art of imitation or feigning;
+expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony,
+according to Aristotle; from the word ποιειν, which signifies to make or
+feign.  Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only,
+but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth.
+For the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any
+poetical work or poem.
+
+
+
+_What mean_, _you by a Poem_?
+
+
+_Poema_.—A poem is not alone any work or composition of the poet’s in
+many or few verses; but even one verse alone sometimes makes a perfect
+poem.  As when Æneas hangs up and consecrates the arms of Abas with this
+inscription:—
+
+    “Æneas hæc de Danais victoribus arma.” {136a}
+
+And calls it a poem or carmen.  Such are those in Martial:—
+
+    “Omnia, Castor, emis: sic fiet, ut omnia vendas.” {136b}
+
+And—
+
+    “Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper.” {136c}
+
+_Horatius_.—_Lucretius_.—So were Horace’s odes called Carmina, his lyric
+songs.  And Lucretius designs a whole book in his sixth:—
+
+    “Quod in primo quoque carmine claret.” {136d}
+
+_Epicum_.—_Dramaticum_.—_Lyricum_.—_Elegiacum_.—_Epigrammat_.—And
+anciently all the oracles were called Carmina; or whatever sentence was
+expressed, were it much or little, it was called an Epic, Dramatic,
+Lyric, Elegiac, or Epigrammatic poem.
+
+
+
+_But how differs a Poem from what we call Poesy_?
+
+
+_Poesis_.—_Artium regina_.—_Poet.
+differentiæ_.—_Grammatic_.—_Logic_.—_Rhetoric_.—_Ethica_.—A poem, as I
+have told you, is the work of the poet; the end and fruit of his labour
+and study.  Poesy is his skill or craft of making; the very fiction
+itself, the reason or form of the work.  And these three voices differ,
+as the thing done, the doing, and the doer; the thing feigned, the
+feigning, and the feigner; so the poem, the poesy, and the poet.  Now the
+poesy is the habit or the art; nay, rather the queen of arts, which had
+her original from heaven, received thence from the Hebrews, and had in
+prime estimation with the Greeks transmitted to the Latins and all
+nations that professed civility.  The study of it (if we will trust
+Aristotle) offers to mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well
+and happily, disposing us to all civil offices of society.  If we will
+believe Tully, it nourisheth and instructeth our youth, delights our age,
+adorns our prosperity, comforts our adversity, entertains us at home,
+keeps us company abroad, travels with us, watches, divides the times of
+our earnest and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations;
+insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute
+mistress of manners and nearest of kin to virtue.  And whereas they
+entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the
+contrary, styled poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and
+guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible
+sweetness.  But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their special
+differences, or make court to the art itself, as a mistress, I would lead
+you to the knowledge of our poet by a perfect information what he is or
+should be by nature, by exercise, by imitation, by study, and so bring
+him down through the disciplines of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and the
+ethics, adding somewhat out of all, peculiar to himself, and worthy of
+your admittance or reception.
+
+1.
+_Ingenium_.—_Seneca_.—_Plato_.—_Aristotle_.—_Helicon_.—_Pegasus_.—
+_Parnassus_.—_Ovid_.—First, we require in our poet or maker (for that
+title our language affords him elegantly with the Greek) a goodness of
+natural wit.  For whereas all other arts consist of doctrine and
+precepts, the poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the
+treasure of his mind, and as Seneca saith, _Aliquando secundum
+Anacreontem insanire jucundum esse_; by which he understands the poetical
+rapture.  And according to that of Plato, _Frustrà poeticas fores sui
+compos pulsavit_.  And of Aristotle, _Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixturâ
+dementiæ fuit_.  _Nec potest grande aliquid_, _et supra cæteros loqui_,
+_nisi mota mens_.  Then it riseth higher, as by a divine instinct, when
+it contemns common and known conceptions.  It utters somewhat above a
+mortal mouth.  Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whither
+before it was doubtful to ascend.  This the poets understood by their
+Helicon, Pegasus, or Parnassus; and this made Ovid to boast,
+
+    “Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo
+    Sedibus æthereis spiritus ille venit.” {139a}
+
+_Lipsius_.—_Petron. in. Fragm_.—And Lipsius to affirm, _Scio_, _poetam
+neminem præstantem fuisse_, _sine parte quadam uberiore divinæ auræ_.
+And hence it is that the coming up of good poets (for I mind not
+mediocres or imos) is so thin and rare among us.  Every beggarly
+corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but _Solus
+rex_, _aut poeta_, _non quotannis nascitur_.  To this perfection of
+nature in our poet we require exercise of those parts, and frequent.
+
+2.  _Exercitatio_.—_Virgil_.—_Scaliger_.—_Valer.
+Maximus_.—_Euripides_.—_Alcestis_.—If his wit will not arrive suddenly at
+the dignity of the ancients, let him not yet fall out with it, quarrel,
+or be over hastily angry; offer to turn it away from study in a humour,
+but come to it again upon better cogitation; try another time with
+labour.  If then it succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor
+scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge
+and file again; torn it anew.  There is no statute law of the kingdom
+bids you be a poet against your will or the first quarter; if it comes in
+a year or two, it is well.  The common rhymers pour forth verses, such as
+they are, _ex tempore_; but there never comes from them one sense worth
+the life of a day.  A rhymer and a poet are two things.  It is said of
+the incomparable Virgil that he brought forth his verses like a bear, and
+after formed them with licking.  Scaliger the father writes it of him,
+that he made a quantity of verses in the morning, which afore night he
+reduced to a less number.  But that which Valerius Maximus hath left
+recorded of Euripides, the tragic poet, his answer to Alcestis, another
+poet, is as memorable as modest; who, when it was told to Alcestis that
+Euripides had in three days brought forth but three verses, and those
+with some difficulty and throes, Alcestis, glorying he could with ease
+have sent forth a hundred in the space, Euripides roundly replied, “Like
+enough; but here is the difference: thy verses will not last these three
+days, mine will to all time.”  Which was as much as to tell him he could
+not write a verse.  I have met many of these rattles that made a noise
+and buzzed.  They had their hum, and no more.  Indeed, things wrote with
+labour deserve to be so read, and will last their age.
+
+3.
+_Imitatio_.—_Horatius_.—_Virgil_.—_Statius_.—_Homer_.—_Horat_.—_Archil_.—
+_Alcæus_, &c.—The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, to
+be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own
+use.  To make choice of one excellent man above the rest, and so to
+follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as the copy may be
+mistaken for the principal.  Not as a creature that swallows what it
+takes in crude, raw, or undigested, but that feeds with an appetite, and
+hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and turn all into nourishment.  Not to
+imitate servilely, as Horace saith, and catch at vices for virtue, but to
+draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn
+all into honey, work it into one relish and savour; make our imitation
+sweet; observe how the best writers have imitated, and follow them.  How
+Virgil and Statius have imitated Homer; how Horace, Archilochus; how
+Alcæus, and the other lyrics; and so of the rest.
+
+4.  _Lectio_.—_Parnassus_.—_Helicon_.—_Arscoron_.—_M. T.
+Cicero_.—_Simylus_.—_Stob_.—_Horat_.—_Aristot_.—But that which we
+especially require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity of
+reading, which maketh a full man, not alone enabling him to know the
+history or argument of a poem and to report it, but so to master the
+matter and style, as to show he knows how to handle, place, or dispose of
+either with elegancy when need shall be.  And not think he can leap forth
+suddenly a poet by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus, or having washed
+his lips, as they say, in Helicon.  There goes more to his making than
+so; for to nature, exercise, imitation, and study art must be added to
+make all these perfect.  And though these challenge to themselves much in
+the making up of our maker, it is Art only can lead him to perfection,
+and leave him there in possession, as planted by her hand.  It is the
+assertion of Tully, if to an excellent nature there happen an accession
+or conformation of learning and discipline, there will then remain
+somewhat noble and singular.  For, as Simylus saith in Stobæus, Ουτε
+φύσις ίκανη yινεται τεχνης ατερ, ουτε παν τέχνη μη φυσιν κεκτημένη,
+without art nature can never be perfect; and without nature art can claim
+no being.  But our poet must beware that his study be not only to learn
+of himself; for he that shall affect to do that confesseth his ever
+having a fool to his master.  He must read many, but ever the best and
+choicest; those that can teach him anything he must ever account his
+masters, and reverence.  Among whom Horace and (he that taught him)
+Aristotle deserved to be the first in estimation.  Aristotle was the
+first accurate critic and truest judge—nay, the greatest philosopher the
+world ever had—for he noted the vices of all knowledges in all creatures,
+and out of many men’s perfections in a science he formed still one art.
+So he taught us two offices together, how we ought to judge rightly of
+others, and what we ought to imitate specially in ourselves.  But all
+this in vain without a natural wit and a poetical nature in chief.  For
+no man, so soon as he knows this or reads it, shall be able to write the
+better; but as he is adapted to it by nature, he shall grow the perfecter
+writer.  He must have civil prudence and eloquence, and that whole; not
+taken up by snatches or pieces in sentences or remnants when he will
+handle business or carry counsels, as if he came then out of the
+declaimer’s gallery, or shadow furnished but out of the body of the
+State, which commonly is the school of men.
+
+_Virorum schola respub_.—_Lysippus_.—_Apelles_.—_Nævius_.—The poet is the
+nearest borderer upon the orator, and expresseth all his virtues, though
+he be tied more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and above him in
+his strengths.  And (of the kind) the comic comes nearest; because in
+moving the minds of men, and stirring of affections (in which oratory
+shows, and especially approves her eminence), he chiefly excels.  What
+figure of a body was Lysippus ever able to form with his graver, or
+Apelles to paint with his pencil, as the comedy to life expresseth so
+many and various affections of the mind?  There shall the spectator see
+some insulting with joy, others fretting with melancholy, raging with
+anger, mad with love, boiling with avarice, undone with riot, tortured
+with expectation, consumed with fear; no perturbation in common life but
+the orator finds an example of it in the scene.  And then for the
+elegancy of language, read but this inscription on the grave of a comic
+poet:
+
+    “Immortales mortales si fas esset fiere,
+    Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam;
+    Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
+    Obliti sunt Romæ linguâ loqui Latinâ.” {146a}
+
+_L. Ælius Stilo_.—_Plautus_.—_M. Varro_.—Or that modester testimony given
+by Lucius Ælius Stilo upon Plautus, who affirmed, “_Musas_, _si Latinè
+loqui voluissent_, _Plautino sermone fuisse loquuturas_.”  And that
+illustrious judgment by the most learned M. Varro of him, who pronounced
+him the prince of letters and elegancy in the Roman language.
+
+_Sophocles_.—I am not of that opinion to conclude a poet’s liberty within
+the narrow limits of laws which either the grammarians or philosophers
+prescribe.  For before they found out those laws there were many
+excellent poets that fulfilled them, amongst whom none more perfect than
+Sophocles, who lived a little before Aristotle.
+
+_Demosthenes_.—_Pericles_.—_Alcibiades_.—Which of the Greeklings durst
+ever give precepts to Demosthenes? or to Pericles, whom the age surnamed
+Heavenly, because he seemed to thunder and lighten with his language? or
+to Alcibiades, who had rather Nature for his guide than Art for his
+master?
+
+_Aristotle_.—But whatsoever nature at any time dictated to the most
+happy, or long exercise to the most laborious, that the wisdom and
+learning of Aristotle hath brought into an art, because he understood the
+causes of things; and what other men did by chance or custom he doth by
+reason; and not only found out the way not to err, but the short way we
+should take not to err.
+
+_Euripides_.—_Aristophanes_.—Many things in Euripides hath Aristophanes
+wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth.  For Euripides is
+sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect.  But judgment when it is
+greatest, if reason doth not accompany it, is not ever absolute.
+
+_Cens. Scal. in Lil. Germ_.—_Horace_.—To judge of poets is only the
+faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best.  _Nemo infeliciùs
+de poetis judicavit_, _quàm qui de poetis scripsit_. {148a}  But some
+will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more faults than they
+mend ordinarily.  See their diseases and those of grammarians.  It is
+true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the multitude
+of physicians hath destroyed many sound patients with their wrong
+practice.  But the office of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by
+a letter anywhere, or damn an innocent syllable, but lay the words
+together, and amend them; judge sincerely of the author and his matter,
+which is the sign of solid and perfect learning in a man.  Such was
+Horace, an author of much civility, and (if any one among the heathen can
+be) the best master both of virtue and wisdom; an excellent and true
+judge upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, but because he
+knew so out of use and experience.
+
+Cato, the grammarian, a defender of Lucilius. {149a}
+
+    “Cato grammaticus, Latina syren,
+    Qui solus legit, et facit poetas.”
+
+Quintilian of the same heresy, but rejected. {149b}
+
+Horace, his judgment of Chœrillus defended against Joseph Scaliger.
+{149c}  And of Laberius against Julius. {149d}
+
+But chiefly his opinion of Plautus {149e} vindicated against many that
+are offended, and say it is a hard censure upon the parent of all conceit
+and sharpness.  And they wish it had not fallen from so great a master
+and censor in the art, whose bondmen knew better how to judge of Plautus
+than any that dare patronise the family of learning in this age; who
+could not be ignorant of the judgment of the times in which he lived,
+when poetry and the Latin language were at the height; especially being a
+man so conversant and inwardly familiar with the censures of great men
+that did discourse of these things daily amongst themselves.  Again, a
+man so gracious and in high favour with the Emperor, as Augustus often
+called him his witty manling (for the littleness of his stature), and, if
+we may trust antiquity, had designed him for a secretary of estate, and
+invited him to the palace, which he modestly prayed off and refused.
+
+_Terence_.—_Menander_.  Horace did so highly esteem Terence’s comedies,
+as he ascribes the art in comedy to him alone among the Latins, and joins
+him with Menander.
+
+Now, let us see what may be said for either, to defend Horace’s judgment
+to posterity and not wholly to condemn Plautus.
+
+_The parts of a comedy and tragedy_.—The parts of a comedy are the same
+with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same, for they both delight and
+teach; the comics are called διδάσκαλοι, of the Greeks no less than the
+tragics.
+
+_Aristotle_.—_Plato_.—_Homer_.—Nor is the moving of laughter always the
+end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people’s delight, or
+their fooling.  For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is
+a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man’s
+nature without a disease.  As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or
+a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady’s habit and using
+her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the
+ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man.  And
+this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because
+he presented the gods sometimes laughing.  As also it is divinely said of
+Aristotle, that to seen ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, and foolish.
+
+_The wit of the old comedy_.—So that what either in the words or sense of
+an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry or depraved does
+strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to
+laughter.  And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene
+speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular persons,
+perverse and sinister sayings (and the rather unexpected) in the old
+comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any dishonesty,
+and scurrility came forth in the place of wit, which, who understands the
+nature and genius of laughter cannot but perfectly know.
+
+_Aristophanes_.—_Plautus_.—Of which Aristophanes affords an ample
+harvest, having not only outgone Plautus or any other in that kind, but
+expressed all the moods and figures of what is ridiculous oddly.  In
+short, as vinegar is not accounted good until the wine be corrupted, so
+jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast the
+multitude.  They love nothing that is right and proper.  The farther it
+runs from reason or possibility with them the better it is.
+
+_Socrates_.—_Theatrical wit_.—What could have made them laugh, like to
+see Socrates presented, that example of all good life, honesty, and
+virtue, to have him hoisted up with a pulley, and there play the
+philosopher in a basket; measure how many foot a flea could skip
+geometrically, by a just scale, and edify the people from the engine.
+This was theatrical wit, right stage jesting, and relishing a playhouse,
+invented for scorn and laughter; whereas, if it had savoured of equity,
+truth, perspicuity, and candour, to have tasten a wise or a learned
+palate,—spit it out presently! this is bitter and profitable: this
+instructs and would inform us: what need we know any thing, that are
+nobly born, more than a horse-race, or a hunting-match, our day to break
+with citizens, and such innate mysteries?
+
+_The cart_.—This is truly leaping from the stage to the tumbril again,
+reducing all wit to the original dung-cart.
+
+
+
+Of the magnitude and compass of any fable, epic or dramatic.
+
+
+_What the measure of a fable is_.—_The fable or plot of a poem
+defined_.—_The epic fable_, _differing from the dramatic_.—To the
+resolving of this question we must first agree in the definition of the
+fable.  The fable is called the imitation of one entire and perfect
+action, whose parts are so joined and knit together, as nothing in the
+structure can be changed, or taken away, without impairing or troubling
+the whole, of which there is a proportionable magnitude in the members.
+As for example: if a man would build a house, he would first appoint a
+place to build it in, which he would define within certain bounds; so in
+the constitution of a poem, the action is aimed at by the poet, which
+answers place in a building, and that action hath his largeness, compass,
+and proportion.  But as a court or king’s palace requires other
+dimensions than a private house, so the epic asks a magnitude from other
+poems, since what is place in the one is action in the other; the
+difference is an space.  So that by this definition we conclude the fable
+to be the imitation of one perfect and entire action, as one perfect and
+entire place is required to a building.  By perfect, we understand that
+to which nothing is wanting, as place to the building that is raised, and
+action to the fable that is formed.  It is perfect, perhaps not for a
+court or king’s palace, which requires a greater ground, but for the
+structure he would raise; so the space of the action may not prove large
+enough for the epic fable, yet be perfect for the dramatic, and whole.
+
+_What we understand by whole_.—Whole we call that, and perfect, which
+hath a beginning, a midst, and an end.  So the place of any building may
+be whole and entire for that work, though too little for a palace.  As to
+a tragedy or a comedy, the action may be convenient and perfect that
+would not fit an epic poem in magnitude.  So a lion is a perfect creature
+in himself, though it be less than that of a buffalo or a rhinocerote.
+They differ but in specie: either in the kind is absolute; both have
+their parts, and either the whole.  Therefore, as in every body so in
+every action, which is the subject of a just work, there is required a
+certain proportionable greatness, neither too vast nor too minute.  For
+that which happens to the eyes when we behold a body, the same happens to
+the memory when we contemplate an action.  I look upon a monstrous giant,
+as Tityus, whose body covered nine acres of land, and mine eye sticks
+upon every part; the whole that consists of those parts will never be
+taken in at one entire view.  So in a fable, if the action be too great,
+we can never comprehend the whole together in our imagination.  Again, if
+it be too little, there ariseth no pleasure out of the object; it affords
+the view no stay; it is beheld, and vanisheth at once.  As if we should
+look upon an ant or pismire, the parts fly the sight, and the whole
+considered is almost nothing.  The same happens in action, which is the
+object of memory, as the body is of sight.  Too vast oppresseth the eyes,
+and exceeds the memory; too little scarce admits either.
+
+_What is the utmost bounds of a fable_.—Now in every action it behoves
+the poet to know which is his utmost bound, how far with fitness and a
+necessary proportion he may produce and determine it; that is, till
+either good fortune change into the worse, or the worse into the better.
+For as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the
+action, either in comedy or tragedy, without his fit bounds: and every
+bound, for the nature of the subject, is esteemed the best that is
+largest, till it can increase no more; so it behoves the action in
+tragedy or comedy to be let grow till the necessity ask a conclusion;
+wherein two things are to be considered: first, that it exceed not the
+compass of one day; next, that there be place left for digression and
+art.  For the episodes and digressions in a fable are the same that
+household stuff and other furniture are in a house.  And so far from the
+measure and extent of a fable dramatic.
+
+_What by one and entire_.—Now that it should be one and entire.  One is
+considerable two ways; either as it is only separate, and by itself, or
+as being composed of many parts, it begins to be one as those parts grow
+or are wrought together.  That it should be one the first away alone, and
+by itself, no man that hath tasted letters ever would say, especially
+having required before a just magnitude and equal proportion of the parts
+in themselves.  Neither of which can possibly be, if the action be single
+and separate, not composed of parts, which laid together in themselves,
+with an equal and fitting proportion, tend to the same end; which thing
+out of antiquity itself hath deceived many, and more this day it doth
+deceive.
+
+_Hercules_.—_Theseus_.—_Achilles_.—_Ulysses_.—_Homer and
+Virgil_.—_Æneas_.—_Venus_.—So many there be of old that have thought the
+action of one man to be one, as of Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, Ulysses,
+and other heroes; which is both foolish and false, since by one and the
+same person many things may be severally done which cannot fitly be
+referred or joined to the same end: which not only the excellent tragic
+poets, but the best masters of the epic, Homer and Virgil, saw.  For
+though the argument of an epic poem be far more diffused and poured out
+than that of tragedy, yet Virgil, writing of Æneas, hath pretermitted
+many things.  He neither tells how he was born, how brought up, how he
+fought with Achilles, how he was snatched out of the battle by Venus; but
+that one thing, how he came into Italy, he prosecutes in twelve books.
+The rest of his journey, his error by sea, the sack of Troy, are put not
+as the argument of the work, but episodes of the argument.  So Homer laid
+by many things of Ulysses, and handled no more than he saw tended to one
+and the same end.
+
+_Theseus_.—_Hercules_.—_Juvenal_.—_Codrus_.—_Sophocles_.—_Ajax_.—
+_Ulysses_.—Contrary to which, and foolishly, those poets did, whom the
+philosopher taxeth, of whom one gathered all the actions of Theseus,
+another put all the labours of Hercules in one work.  So did he whom
+Juvenal mentions in the beginning, “hoarse Codrus,” that recited a volume
+compiled, which he called his Theseide, not yet finished, to the great
+trouble both of his hearers and himself; amongst which there were many
+parts had no coherence nor kindred one with another, so far they were
+from being one action, one fable.  For as a house, consisting of divers
+materials, becomes one structure and one dwelling, so an action, composed
+of divers parts, may become one fable, epic or dramatic.  For example, in
+a tragedy, look upon Sophocles, his Ajax: Ajax, deprived of Achilles’
+armour, which he hoped from the suffrage of the Greeks, disdains; and,
+growing impatient of the injury, rageth, and runs mad.  In that humour he
+doth many senseless things, and at last falls upon the Grecian flock and
+kills a great ram for Ulysses: returning to his senses, he grows ashamed
+of the scorn, and kills himself; and is by the chiefs of the Greeks
+forbidden burial.  These things agree and hang together, not as they were
+done, but as seeming to be done, which made the action whole, entire, and
+absolute.
+
+_The conclusion concerning the whole_, _and the parts_.—_Which are
+episodes_.—_Ajax and Hector_.—_Homer_.—For the whole, as it consisteth of
+parts, so without all the parts it is not the whole; and to make it
+absolute is required not only the parts, but such parts as are true.  For
+a part of the whole was true; which, if you take away, you either change
+the whole or it is not the whole.  For if it be such a part, as, being
+present or absent, nothing concerns the whole, it cannot be called a part
+of the whole; and such are the episodes, of which hereafter.  For the
+present here is one example: the single combat of Ajax with Hector, as it
+is at large described in Homer, nothing belongs to this Ajax of
+Sophocles.
+
+You admire no poems but such as run like a brewer’s cart upon the stones,
+hobbling:—
+
+    “Et, quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt,
+       Accius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt.
+    Attonitusque legis terraï, frugiferaï.” {160a}
+
+
+
+
+SOME POEMS.
+
+
+TO WILLIAM CAMDEN.
+
+
+   CAMDEN! most reverend head, to whom I owe
+   All that I am in arts, all that I know—
+   How nothing’s that! to whom my country owes
+   The great renown, and name wherewith she goes!
+   Than thee the age sees not that thing more grave,
+   More high, more holy, that she more would crave.
+   What name, what skill, what faith hast thou in things!
+   What sight in searching the most antique springs!
+   What weight, and what authority in thy speech!
+   Men scarce can make that doubt, but thou canst teach.
+   Pardon free truth, and let thy modesty,
+   Which conquers all, be once o’ercome by thee.
+   Many of thine, this better could, than I;
+   But for their powers, accept my piety.
+
+
+
+ON MY FIRST DAUGHTER.
+
+
+   HERE lies, to each her parents’ ruth,
+   Mary, the daughter of their youth;
+   Yet, all heaven’s gifts, being heaven’s due,
+   It makes the father less to rue.
+   At six months’ end, she parted hence,
+   With safety of her innocence;
+   Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears,
+   In comfort of her mother’s tears,
+   Hath placed amongst her virgin-train;
+   Where, while that severed doth remain,
+   This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
+   Which cover lightly, gentle earth!
+
+
+
+ON MY FIRST SON.
+
+
+   FAREWELL, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
+   My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
+   Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
+   Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
+   Oh! could I lose all father, now! for why,
+   Will man lament the state he should envy?
+   To have so soon ’scaped world’s, and flesh’s rage,
+   And, if no other misery, yet age!
+   Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
+   Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
+   For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
+   As what he loves may never like too much.
+
+
+
+TO FRANCIS BEAUMONT.
+
+
+   HOW I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse,
+   That unto me dost such religion use!
+   How I do fear myself, that am not worth
+   The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
+   At once thou mak’st me happy, and unmak’st;
+   And giving largely to me, more thou takest!
+   What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves?
+   What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?
+   When even there, where most thou praisest me,
+   For writing better, I must envy thee.
+
+
+
+OF LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+
+   THE ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
+   Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.
+   How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray,
+   And hath it in his powers to make his way!
+   This world death’s region is, the other life’s:
+   And here it should be one of our first strifes,
+   So to front death, as men might judge us past it:
+   For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
+
+
+
+INVITING A FRIEND TO SUPPER.
+
+
+   TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poor house and I
+   Do equally desire your company;
+   Not that we think us worthy such a guest,
+   But that your worth will dignify our feast,
+   With those that come; whose grace may make that seem
+   Something, which else could hope for no esteem.
+   It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates
+   The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
+   Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,
+   An olive, capers, or some bitter salad
+   Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
+   If we can get her, full of eggs, and then,
+   Lemons and wine for sauce: to these, a coney
+   Is not to be despaired of for our money;
+   And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
+   The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
+   I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come:
+   Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some
+   May yet be there; and godwit if we can;
+   Knat, rail, and ruff, too.  Howsoe’er, my man
+   Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
+   Livy, or of some better book to us,
+   Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat;
+   And I’ll profess no verses to repeat:
+   To this if aught appear, which I not know of,
+   That will the pastry, not my paper, show of.
+   Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be;
+   But that which most doth take my muse and me,
+   Is a pure cup of rich canary wine,
+   Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine:
+   Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted,
+   Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted.
+   Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring,
+   Are all but Luther’s beer, to this I sing.
+   Of this we will sup free, but moderately,
+   And we will have no Pooly’ or Parrot by;
+   Nor shall our cups make any guilty men;
+   But at our parting we will be as when
+   We innocently met.  No simple word
+   That shall be uttered at our mirthful board,
+   Shall make us sad next morning; or affright
+   The liberty that we’ll enjoy to-night.
+
+
+
+EPITAPH ON SALATHIEL PAVY,
+A CHILD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CHAPEL.
+
+
+   WEEP with me all you that read
+      This little story;
+   And know for whom a tear you shed,
+      Death’s self is sorry.
+   ’Twas a child that so did thrive
+      In grace and feature,
+   As heaven and nature seemed to strive
+      Which owned the creature.
+   Years he numbered scarce thirteen
+      When fates turned cruel;
+   Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
+      The stage’s jewel;
+   And did act, what now we moan,
+      Old men so duly;
+   As, sooth, the Parcæ thought him one
+      He played so truly.
+   So, by error to his fate
+      They all consented;
+   But viewing him since, alas, too late!
+      They have repented;
+   And have sought to give new birth,
+      In baths to steep him;
+   But, being so much too good for earth,
+      Heaven vows to keep him.
+
+
+
+EPITAPH ON ELIZABETH, L. H.
+
+
+   WOULDST thou hear what man can say
+   In a little?  Reader, stay.
+   Underneath this stone doth lie
+   As much beauty as could die
+   Which in life did harbour give
+   To more virtue than doth live.
+   If, at all, she had a fault
+   Leave it buried in this vault.
+   One name was Elizabeth,
+   The other let it sleep with death.
+   Fitter, where it died, to tell,
+   Than that it lived at all.  Farewell.
+
+
+
+EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.
+
+
+   UNDERNEATH this sable hearse
+   Lies the subject of all verse,
+   Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother:
+   Death! ere thou hast slain another,
+   Learned, and fair, and good as she,
+   Time shall throw a dart at thee.
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED MASTER WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, AND WHAT HE HATH
+LEFT US.
+
+
+   TO draw no envy, Shakspeare, on thy name,
+   Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
+   While I confess thy writings to be such,
+   As neither man, nor muse can praise too much.
+   ’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage.  But these ways
+   Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
+   For silliest ignorance on these may light,
+   Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
+   Or blind affection, which doth ne’er advance
+   The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
+   Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
+   And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
+   These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore,
+   Should praise a matron; what would hurt her more?
+   But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
+   Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
+   I, therefore, will begin: Soul of the age!
+   The applause! delight! and wonder of our stage!
+   My Shakspeare rise!  I will not lodge thee by
+   Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
+   A little further off, to make thee room:
+   Thou art a monument without a tomb,
+   And art alive still, while thy book doth live
+   And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
+   That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
+   I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
+   For if I thought my judgment were of years,
+   I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
+   And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine,
+   Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow’s mighty line.
+   And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
+   From thence to honour thee, I will not seek
+   For names: but call forth thundering Eschylus,
+   Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
+   Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordoua dead,
+   To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
+   And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
+   Leave thee alone for the comparison
+   Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome
+   Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
+   Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
+   To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
+   He was not of an age, but for all time!
+   And all the Muses still were in their prime,
+   When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
+   Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
+   Nature herself was proud of his designs,
+   And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
+   Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
+   As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
+   The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
+   Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
+   But antiquated and deserted lie,
+   As they were not of nature’s family.
+   Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
+   My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
+   For though the poet’s matter nature be,
+   His heart doth give the fashion: and, that he
+   Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
+   (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
+   Upon the Muse’s anvil; turn the same,
+   And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
+   Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
+   For a good poet’s made, as well as born.
+   And such wert thou!  Look how the father’s face
+   Lives in his issue, even so the race
+   Of Shakspeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
+   In his well-turnèd, and true filèd lines;
+   In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
+   As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
+   Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
+   To see thee in our water yet appear,
+   And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
+   That so did take Eliza, and our James!
+   But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
+   Advanced, and made a constellation there!
+   Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage,
+   Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage,
+   Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
+   And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
+
+
+
+TO CELIA.
+
+
+   DRINK to me only with thine eyes,
+      And I will pledge with mine;
+   Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
+      And I’ll not look for wine.
+   The thirst that from the soul doth rise
+      Doth ask a drink divine:
+   But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
+      I would not change for thine.
+
+   I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
+      Not so much honouring thee,
+   As giving it a hope that there
+      It could not withered be.
+   But thou thereon didst only breathe,
+      And sent’st it back to me:
+   Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
+      Not of itself, but thee.
+
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF CHARIS.
+
+
+      SEE the chariot at hand here of Love,
+         Wherein my lady rideth!
+      Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
+         And well the car Love guideth.
+      As she goes, all hearts do duty
+            Unto her beauty;
+      And, enamoured, do wish, so they might
+            But enjoy such a sight,
+      That they still were to run by her side,
+   Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
+
+      Do but look on her eyes, they do light
+         All that Love’s world compriseth!
+      Do but look on her hair, it is bright
+         As Love’s star when it riseth!
+      Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother
+            Than words that soothe her!
+      And from her arched brows, such a grace
+            Sheds itself through the face,
+      As alone there triumphs to the life
+   All the gain, all the good, of the elements’ strife.
+
+      Have you seen but a bright lily grow
+         Before rude hands have touched it?
+      Have you marked but the fall o’ the snow
+         Before the soil hath smutched it?
+      Have you felt the wool of beaver?
+            Or swan’s down ever?
+      Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the brier?
+            Or the nard in the fire?
+      Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
+   O so white!  O so soft!  O so sweet is she!
+
+
+
+IN THE PERSON OF WOMANKIND.
+A SONG APOLOGETIC.
+
+
+   MEN, if you love us, play no more
+      The fools or tyrants with your friends,
+   To make us still sing o’er and o’er
+      Our own false praises, for your ends:
+         We have both wits and fancies too,
+         And, if we must, let’s sing of you.
+
+   Nor do we doubt but that we can,
+      If we would search with care and pain,
+   Find some one good in some one man;
+      So going thorough all your strain,
+         We shall, at last, of parcels make
+         One good enough for a song’s sake.
+
+   And as a cunning painter takes,
+      In any curious piece you see,
+   More pleasure while the thing he makes,
+      Than when ’tis made—why so will we.
+         And having pleased our art, we’ll try
+         To make a new, and hang that by.
+
+
+
+ODE
+
+
+_To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair_, _Sir Lucius
+Cary and Sir Henry Morison_.
+
+
+I.
+
+THE TURN.
+
+
+      BRAVE infant of Saguntum, clear
+      Thy coming forth in that great year,
+   When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
+   His cage, with razing your immortal town.
+         Thou, looking then about,
+         Ere thou wert half got out,
+      Wise child, didst hastily return,
+      And mad’st thy mother’s womb thine urn.
+   How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind
+   Of deepest lore, could we the centre find!
+
+
+THE COUNTER-TURN.
+
+
+      Did wiser nature draw thee back,
+      From out the horror of that sack,
+   Where shame, faith, honour, and regard of right,
+   Lay trampled on? the deeds of death and night,
+         Urged, hurried forth, and hurled
+         Upon th’ affrighted world;
+      Sword, fire, and famine, with fell fury met,
+      And all on utmost ruin set;
+   As, could they but life’s miseries foresee,
+   No doubt all infants would return like thee.
+
+
+THE STAND.
+
+
+   For what is life, if measured by the space
+         Not by the act?
+   Or maskèd man, if valued by his face,
+         Above his fact?
+      Here’s one outlived his peers,
+      And told forth fourscore years;
+      He vexèd time, and busied the whole state;
+         Troubled both foes and friends;
+         But ever to no ends:
+      What did this stirrer but die late?
+   How well at twenty had he fallen or stood!
+   For three of his fourscore he did no good.
+
+
+II.
+
+THE TURN
+
+
+      He entered well, by virtuous parts,
+      Got up, and thrived with honest arts;
+   He purchased friends, and fame, and honours then,
+   And had his noble name advanced with men:
+         But weary of that flight,
+         He stooped in all men’s sight
+            To sordid flatteries, acts of strife,
+            And sunk in that dead sea of life,
+   So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup,
+   But that the cork of title buoyed him up.
+
+
+THE COUNTER-TURN
+
+
+      Alas! but Morison fell young:
+      He never fell,—thou fall’st, my tongue.
+   He stood a soldier to the last right end,
+   A perfect patriot, and a noble friend;
+         But most, a virtuous son.
+         All offices were done
+      By him, so ample, full, and round,
+      In weight, in measure, number, sound,
+   As, though his age imperfect might appear,
+   His life was of humanity the sphere.
+
+
+THE STAND
+
+
+   Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears,
+         And make them years;
+   Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage,
+         To swell thine age;
+      Repeat of things a throng,
+      To show thou hast been long,
+   Not lived: for life doth her great actions spell.
+      By what was done and wrought
+      In season, and so brought
+   To light: her measures are, how well
+   Each syllabe answered, and was formed, how fair;
+   These make the lines of life, and that’s her air!
+
+
+III.
+
+THE TURN
+
+
+      It is not growing like a tree
+      In bulk, doth make men better be;
+   Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
+   To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:
+         A lily of a day,
+         Is fairer far in May,
+      Although it fall and die that night;
+      It was the plant, and flower of light.
+   In small proportions we just beauties see;
+   And in short measures, life may perfect be.
+
+
+THE COUNTER-TURN
+
+
+      Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
+      And let thy looks with gladness shine:
+   Accept this garland, plant it on thy head
+   And think, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead
+         He leaped the present age,
+         Possessed with holy rage
+      To see that bright eternal day;
+      Of which we priests and poets say,
+   Such truths, as we expect for happy men:
+   And there he lives with memory and Ben.
+
+
+THE STAND
+
+
+   Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went,
+            Himself to rest,
+   Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
+            To have expressed,
+         In this bright Asterism!
+         Where it were friendship’s schism,
+      Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,
+         To separate these twi-
+         Lights, the Dioscouri;
+      And keep the one half from his Harry,
+   But fate doth so alternate the design
+   Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE TURN
+
+
+      And shine as you exalted are;
+      Two names of friendship, but one star:
+   Of hearts the union, and those not by chance
+   Made, or indenture, or leased out t’advance
+         The profits for a time.
+         No pleasures vain did chime,
+      Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts,
+      Orgies of drink, or feigned protests:
+   But simple love of greatness and of good,
+   That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.
+
+
+THE COUNTER-TURN
+
+
+      This made you first to know the why
+      You liked, then after, to apply
+   That liking; and approach so one the t’other,
+   Till either grew a portion of the other:
+         Each styled by his end,
+         The copy of his friend.
+      You lived to be the great sir-names,
+      And titles, by which all made claims
+   Unto the virtue; nothing perfect done,
+   But as a Cary, or a Morison.
+
+
+THE STAND
+
+
+   And such a force the fair example had,
+            As they that saw
+   The good, and durst not practise it, were glad
+            That such a law
+         Was left yet to mankind;
+         Where they might read and find
+      Friendship, indeed, was written not in words;
+         And with the heart, not pen,
+         Of two so early men,
+      Whose lines her rolls were, and records;
+   Who, ere the first down bloomed upon the chin,
+   Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.
+
+
+PRÆLUDIUM.
+
+
+   AND must I sing?  What subject shall I choose!
+   Or whose great name in poets’ heaven use,
+   For the more countenance to my active muse?
+
+   Hercules? alas, his bones are yet sore
+   With his old earthly labours t’ exact more
+   Of his dull godhead were sin.  I’ll implore
+
+   Phœbus.  No, tend thy cart still.  Envious day
+   Shall not give out that I have made thee stay,
+   And foundered thy hot team, to tune my lay.
+
+   Nor will I beg of thee, lord of the vine,
+   To raise my spirits with thy conjuring wine,
+   In the green circle of thy ivy twine.
+
+   Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid,
+   That at thy birth mad’st the poor smith afraid.
+   Who with his axe thy father’s midwife played.
+
+   Go, cramp dull Mars, light Venus, when he snorts,
+   Or with thy tribade trine invent new sports;
+   Thou, nor thy looseness with my making sorts.
+
+   Let the old boy, your son, ply his old task,
+   Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask;
+   His absence in my verse is all I ask.
+
+   Hermes, the cheater, shall not mix with us,
+   Though he would steal his sisters’ Pegasus,
+   And rifle him; or pawn his petasus.
+
+   Nor all the ladies of the Thespian lake,
+   Though they were crushed into one form, could make
+   A beauty of that merit, that should take
+
+   My muse up by commission; no, I bring
+   My own true fire: now my thought takes wing,
+   And now an epode to deep ears I sing.
+
+
+
+EPODE.
+
+
+   NOT to know vice at all, and keep true state,
+      Is virtue and not fate:
+   Next to that virtue, is to know vice well,
+      And her black spite expel.
+   Which to effect (since no breast is so sure,
+      Or safe, but she’ll procure
+   Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard
+      Of thoughts to watch and ward
+   At th’ eye and ear, the ports unto the mind,
+      That no strange, or unkind
+   Object arrive there, but the heart, our spy,
+      Give knowledge instantly
+   To wakeful reason, our affections’ king:
+      Who, in th’ examining,
+   Will quickly taste the treason, and commit
+      Close, the close cause of it.
+   ’Tis the securest policy we have,
+      To make our sense our slave.
+   But this true course is not embraced by many:
+      By many! scarce by any.
+   For either our affections do rebel,
+      Or else the sentinel,
+   That should ring ’larum to the heart, doth sleep:
+      Or some great thought doth keep
+   Back the intelligence, and falsely swears
+      They’re base and idle fears
+   Whereof the loyal conscience so complains.
+      Thus, by these subtle trains,
+   Do several passions invade the mind,
+      And strike our reason blind:
+   Of which usurping rank, some have thought love
+      The first: as prone to move
+   Most frequent tumults, horrors, and unrests,
+      In our inflamèd breasts:
+   But this doth from the cloud of error grow,
+      Which thus we over-blow.
+   The thing they here call love is blind desire,
+      Armed with bow, shafts, and fire;
+   Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born,
+      Rough, swelling, like a storm;
+   With whom who sails, rides on the surge of fear,
+      And boils as if he were
+   In a continual tempest.  Now, true love
+      No such effects doth prove;
+   That is an essence far more gentle, fine,
+      Pure, perfect, nay, divine;
+   It is a golden chain let down from heaven,
+      Whose links are bright and even;
+   That falls like sleep on lovers, and combines
+      The soft and sweetest minds
+   In equal knots: this bears no brands, nor darts,
+      To murder different hearts,
+   But, in a calm and god-like unity,
+      Preserves community.
+   O, who is he that, in this peace, enjoys
+      Th’ elixir of all joys?
+   A form more fresh than are the Eden bowers,
+      And lasting as her flowers;
+   Richer than Time and, as Times’s virtue, rare;
+      Sober as saddest care;
+   A fixèd thought, an eye untaught to glance;
+      Who, blest with such high chance,
+   Would, at suggestion of a steep desire,
+      Cast himself from the spire
+   Of all his happiness?  But soft: I hear
+      Some vicious fool draw near,
+   That cries, we dream, and swears there’s no such thing,
+      As this chaste love we sing.
+   Peace, Luxury! thou art like one of those
+      Who, being at sea, suppose,
+   Because they move, the continent doth so:
+      No, Vice, we let thee know
+   Though thy wild thoughts with sparrows’ wings do fly,
+      Turtles can chastely die;
+   And yet (in this t’ express ourselves more clear)
+      We do not number here
+   Such spirits as are only continent,
+      Because lust’s means are spent;
+   Or those who doubt the common mouth of fame,
+      And for their place and name,
+   Cannot so safely sin: their chastity
+      Is mere necessity;
+   Nor mean we those whom vows and conscience
+      Have filled with abstinence:
+   Though we acknowledge who can so abstain,
+      Makes a most blessèd gain;
+   He that for love of goodness hateth ill,
+      Is more crown-worthy still
+   Than he, which for sin’s penalty forbears:
+      His heart sins, though he fears.
+   But we propose a person like our Dove,
+      Graced with a Phœnix’ love;
+   A beauty of that clear and sparkling light,
+      Would make a day of night,
+   And turn the blackest sorrows to bright joys:
+      Whose odorous breath destroys
+   All taste of bitterness, and makes the air
+      As sweet as she is fair.
+   A body so harmoniously composed,
+      As if natùre disclosed
+   All her best symmetry in that one feature!
+      O, so divine a creature
+   Who could be false to? chiefly, when he knows
+      How only she bestows
+   The wealthy treasure of her love on him;
+      Making his fortunes swim
+   In the full flood of her admired perfection?
+      What savage, brute affection,
+   Would not be fearful to offend a dame
+      Of this excelling frame?
+   Much more a noble, and right generous mind,
+      To virtuous moods inclined,
+   That knows the weight of guilt: he will refrain
+      From thoughts of such a strain,
+   And to his sense object this sentence ever,
+      “Man may securely sin, but safely never.”
+
+
+
+AN ELEGY.
+
+
+   THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise,
+      And yours, of whom I sing, be such
+      As not the world can praise too much,
+   Yet is ’t your virtue now I raise.
+
+   A virtue, like allay, so gone
+      Throughout your form, as though that move,
+      And draw, and conquer all men’s love,
+   This subjects you to love of one,
+
+   Wherein you triumph yet: because
+      ’Tis of yourself, and that you use
+      The noblest freedom, not to choose
+   Against or faith, or honour’s laws.
+
+   But who could less expect from you,
+      In whom alone Love lives again?
+      By whom he is restored to men;
+   And kept, and bred, and brought up true?
+
+   His falling temples you have reared,
+      The withered garlands ta’en away;
+      His altars kept from the decay
+   That envy wished, and nature feared;
+
+   And on them burns so chaste a flame,
+      With so much loyalty’s expense,
+      As Love, t’ acquit such excellence,
+   Is gone himself into your name.
+
+   And you are he: the deity
+      To whom all lovers are designed,
+      That would their better objects find;
+   Among which faithful troop am I;
+
+   Who, as an offering at your shrine,
+      Have sung this hymn, and here entreat
+      One spark of your diviner heat
+   To light upon a love of mine;
+
+   Which, if it kindle not, but scant
+      Appear, and that to shortest view,
+      Yet give me leave t’ adore in you
+   What I, in her, am grieved to want.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{11}  “So live with yourself that you do not know how ill yow mind is
+furnished.”
+
+{12}  Αυτοδίδακτος
+
+{14}  “A Puritan is a Heretical Hypocrite, in whom the conceit of his own
+perspicacity, by which he seems to himself to have observed certain
+errors in a few Church dogmas, has disturbed the balance of his mind, so
+that, excited vehemently by a sacred fury, he fights frenzied against
+civil authority, in the belief that he so pays obedience to God.”
+
+{17a}  Night gives counsel.
+
+{17b}  Plutarch in Life of Alexander.  “Let it not be, O King, that you
+know these things better than I.”
+
+{19a}  “They were not our lords, but our leaders.”
+
+{19b}  “Much of it is left also for those who shall be hereafter.”
+
+{19c}  “No art is discovered at once and absolutely.”
+
+{22}  With a great belly.  Comes de Schortenhien.
+
+{23}  “In all things I have a better wit and courage than good fortune.”
+
+{24a}  “The rich soil exhausts; but labour itself is an aid.”
+
+{24b}  “And the gesticulation is vile.”
+
+{25a}  “An end is to be looked for in every man, an animal most prompt to
+change.”
+
+{25b}  Arts are not shared among heirs.
+
+{31a}  “More loquacious than eloquent; words enough, but little
+wisdom.”—_Sallust_.
+
+{31b}  Repeated in the following Latin.  “The best treasure is in that
+man’s tongue, and he has mighty thanks, who metes out each thing in a few
+words.”—_Hesiod_.
+
+{31c}  _Vid._ Zeuxidis pict. Serm. ad Megabizum.—_Plutarch_.
+
+{32a}  “While the unlearned is silent he may be accounted wise, for he
+has covered by his silence the diseases of his mind.”
+
+{32b}  Taciturnity.
+
+{33a}  “Hold your tongue above all things, after the example of the
+gods.”—_See_ Apuleius.
+
+{33b}  “Press down the lip with the finger.”—Juvenal.
+
+{33c}  Plautus.
+
+{33d}  Trinummus, Act 2, Scen. 4.
+
+{34a}  “It was the lodging of calamity.”—Mart. lib. 1, ep. 85.
+
+{41}  [“Ficta omnia celeriter tanquam flosculi decidunt, nec simulatum
+potest quidquam esse diuturnum.”—Cicero.]
+
+{44a}  Let a Punic sponge go with the book.—Mart. 1. iv. epig. 10.
+
+{47a}  He had to be repressed.
+
+{49a}  A wit-stand.
+
+{49b}  Martial. lib. xi. epig. 91.  That fall over the rough ways and
+high rocks.
+
+{59a}  Sir Thomas More.  Sir Thomas Wiat.  Henry Earl of Surrey.  Sir
+Thomas Chaloner.  Sir Thomas Smith.  Sir Thomas Eliot.  Bishop Gardiner.
+Sir Nicolas Bacon, L.K.  Sir Philip Sidney.  Master Richard Hooker.
+Robert Earl of Essex.  Sir Walter Raleigh.  Sir Henry Savile.  Sir Edwin
+Sandys.  Sir Thomas Egerton, L.C.  Sir Francis Bacon, L.C.
+
+{62a}  “Which will secure a long age for the known writer.”—Horat. _de
+Art. Poetica_.
+
+{66a}  They have poison for their food, even for their dainty.
+
+{74a}  Haud infima ars in principe, ubi lenitas, ubi severitas—plus
+polleat in commune bonum callere.
+
+{74b}  _i.e._, Machiavell.
+
+{81a}  “Censure pardons the crows and vexes the doves.”—Juvenal.
+
+{81b}  “Does not spread his net for the hawk or the kite.”—Plautus.
+
+{93}  Parrhasius.  Eupompus.  Socrates.  Parrhasius.  Clito.  Polygnotus.
+Aglaophon.  Zeuxis.  Parrhasius.  Raphael de Urbino.  Mich.  Angelo
+Buonarotti.  Titian.  Antony de Correg.  Sebast. de Venet.  Julio Romano.
+Andrea Sartorio.
+
+{94}  Plin. lib. 35. c. 2, 5, 6, and 7.  Vitruv. lib. 8 and 7.
+
+{95}  Horat. in “Arte Poet.”
+
+{106a}  Livy, Sallust, Sidney, Donne, Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Virgil,
+Ennius, Homer, Quintilian, Plautus, Terence.
+
+{110a}  The interpreter of gods and men.
+
+{111a}  Julius Cæsar.  Of words, _see_ Hor. “De Art. Poet.;” Quintil. 1.
+8, “Ludov. Vives,” pp. 6 and 7.
+
+{111b}  A prudent man conveys nothing rashly.
+
+{114a}  That jolt as they fall over the rough places and the rocks.
+
+{116a}  Directness enlightens, obliquity and circumlocution darken.
+
+{117a}  Ocean trembles as if indignant that you quit the land.
+
+{117b}  You might believe that the uprooted Cyclades were floating in.
+
+{118a}  Those armies of the people of Rome that might break through the
+heavens.—Cæsar.  Comment. circa fin.
+
+{124a}  No one can speak rightly unless he apprehends wisely.
+
+{133a}  “Where the discussion of faults is general, no one is injured.”
+
+{133b}  “Gnaw tender little ears with biting truth.”—_Per Sat._ 1.
+
+{133c}  “The wish for remedy is always truer than the hope.”—_Livius_.
+
+{136a}  “Æneas dedicates these arms concerning the conquering
+Greeks.”—_Virg. Æn._ lib. 3.
+
+{136b}  “You buy everything, Castor; the time will come when you will
+sell everything.”—_Martial_, lib. 8, epig. 19.
+
+{136c}  “Cinna wishes to seem poor, and is poor.”
+
+{136d}  “Which is evident in every first song.”
+
+{139a}  “There is a god within us, and when he is stirred we grow warm;
+that spirit comes from heavenly realms.”
+
+{146a}  “If it were allowable for immortals to weep for mortals, the
+Muses would weep for the poet Nævius; since he is handed to the chamber
+of Orcus, they have forgotten how to speak Latin at Rome.”
+
+{148a}  “No one has judged poets less happily than he who wrote about
+them.”—_Senec. de Brev. Vit_, cap. 13, et epist. 88.
+
+{149a}  Heins, de Sat. 265.
+
+{149b}  Pag. 267.
+
+{149c}  Pag. 270. 271.
+
+{149d}  Pag. 273, _et seq._
+
+{149e}  Pag. in comm. 153, _et seq._
+
+{160a}  “And which jolt as they fall over the rough uneven road and high
+rocks.”—_Martial_, lib. xi. epig. 91.
+
+
+
+
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