The Project Gutenberg EBook of Discoveries, by Ben Jonson
(#7 in our series by Ben Jonson)

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.

Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****


Title: Discoveries and Some Poems

Author: Ben Jonson

Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5134]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 10, 2002]
[Most recently updated: May 10, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DISCOVERIES ***




Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
1892 Cassell & Company edition.




DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER
AND SOME POEMS




Contents:
   Introduction by Henry Morley
   Sylva
   Timber, or Discoveries ...
   Some Poems
      To William Camden
      On My First Daughter
      On My First Son
      To Francis Beaumont
      Of Life and Death
      Inviting a Friend to Supper
      Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy
      Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H.
      Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke
      To the Memory of my Beloved Master William Shakespeare
      To Celia
      The Triumph of Charis
      In the Person of Womankind
      Ode
      Praeludium
      Epode
      An Elegy



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
"[Greek text]" [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 Sylvae--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 forced 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 "[Greek text] dicta a multiplici materia et
varietate in iis contenta.  Quemadmodum enim vulgo solemus infinitam
arborum nascentium indiscriminatim multitudinem Sylvam dicere:  ita
etiam libros suos in quibus variae et diversae materiae 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 noris 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 patriae.--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 vitae.--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 Haereticus, quem opinio propriae
perspicaciae, qua sibi videtur, cum paucis in Ecclesia dogmatibus
errores quosdam animadvertisse, de statu mentis deturbavit:  unde
sacro furore percitus, phrenetice pugnat contra magistratus, sic
ratus obedientiam praestare 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 melius haec scias, quam 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 effaeta.--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 nimium 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 fuere. {19a}   Truth lies open to all;
it is no man's several.  Patet omnibus veritas; nondum est occupata.
Multum ex illa, 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.

Scientiae 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.

AEgidius 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.

Calumniae 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 quam fortuna, 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 haeredes 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
relicta 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 literae 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 quam 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.

[Greek text]; speaking without judgement or measure.


"Loquax magis, quam facundus,
Satis loquentiae, sapientiae parum.{31a}
[Greek verse]. {31b}
Optimus est homini linguae thesaurus, et ingens
Gratia, quae 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."  [Greek text]. {32b}  Pytag. quam
laudabilis!  [Greek text].  Linguam cohibe, prae 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 patriae.--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 a 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 paulo post,


"Non possunt . . . multae . . . liturae
. . . 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 Caesar,
one speaking to him, "Caesar, thou dost me wrong."  He replied,
"Caesar 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.  Quae 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 animae.--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
[Greek text] of our language.

De augmentis scientiarum.--Julius Caesar.--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 Caesar, 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 aevum." {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 vere 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; imo, 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 vita humana.--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 Fidenae; 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 vero omnium basis jus haereditarium
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 innocentia.--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 effoeminatis.--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 stultitia.--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.

Falsae species fugiendae.--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. picturae. {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 Chimaeras {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,

Imo 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.

Praecipiendi 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.

Praecept. 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.  [Greek text].--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 [Greek text].  Words are the people's, yet there is a choice
of them to be made; for verborum delectus origo est eloquentiae.
{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 temere nihil
transfertur a 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 curiae Glauciam, and Cana 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!  Quae 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, quod 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 caelum 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 [Greek text] 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 bene 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.

Notae 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 personae 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 faemin.--
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 [Greek text], 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 [Greek text], 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 AEneas hangs up and consecrates the arms of
Abas with this inscription:-


"AEneas haec 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. differentiae.--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, Frustra poeticas
fores sui compos pulsavit.  And of Aristotle, Nullum magnum ingenium
sine mixtura dementiae fuit.  Nec potest grande aliquid, et supra
caeteros 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 aethereis spiritus ille venit." {139a}


Lipsius.--Petron. in. Fragm.--And Lipsius to affirm, Scio, poetam
neminem praestantem fuisse, sine parte quadam uberiore divinae
aurae.  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.--Alcaeus, &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 Alcaeus,
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 Stobaeus, [Greek text],
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.--Naevius.--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 divae Camoenae Naevium poetam;
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae lingua loqui Latina." {146a}


L. AElius Stilo.--Plautus.--M. Varro.--Or that modester testimony
given by Lucius AElius Stilo upon Plautus, who affirmed, "Musas, si
Latine 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
infelicius de poetis judicavit, quam 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 Choerillus 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 [Greek text], 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.--
AEneas.--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 AEneas, 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, quae per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt,
   Accius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt.
Attonitusque legis terrai, frugiferai." {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 Parcae 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-turned, and true filed 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 masked man, if valued by his face,
      Above his fact?
   Here's one outlived his peers,
   And told forth fourscore years;
   He vexed 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.

PRAELUDIUM

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

Phoebus.  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 inflamed 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 fixed 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 blessed 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 Phoenix' 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 nature 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}  [Greek text]

{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 Caesar.  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.--Caesar.  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}  "AEneas dedicates these arms concerning the conquering
Greeks."--Virg. AEn. 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 Naevius; 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.




*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DISCOVERIES ***

This file should be named dscv10.txt or dscv10.zip
Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, dscv11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, dscv10a.txt

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at:
http://gutenberg.net or
http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04

Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

    1  1971 July
   10  1991 January
  100  1994 January
 1000  1997 August
 1500  1998 October
 2000  1999 December
 2500  2000 December
 3000  2001 November
 4000  2001 October/November
 6000  2002 December*
 9000  2003 November*
10000  2004 January*


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information online at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
they hardware or software or any other related product without
express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*

