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though the angel's goodness keeps them, doubtless, from beholding them with contempt, yet, we may well think, they look upon them with such a kind of pity, as that wherewith great wits and courtiers look upon the mistakes and imperfections of what they did and writ when they were but schoolboys; and as that wherewith, when we shall be admitted to the society of the angels, we shall look back upon our former selves. No, Pyrocles, to praise God is a debt which, though we should ever be paying, we must always owe, not only because the renewed obligations will last as long as we, but because, though the entire sum were possible to be paid, we have no coin of the value that would be requisite to make a payment of that nature. It is true, indeed, that some men say much more than others upon a subject on which none can say enough, and which even the spirits of just men made perfect can but imperfectly celebrate. It may be, too, that the praises we pay to God procure us some from men, and perhaps even from orators and encomiasts; and though I hope no man can so flatter himself as to think he can flatter what he can never do right to; yet the zealousness of our endeavours, and the applause that others entertain them with, may perhaps tempt us to think that because in our expressions we have surpassed ourselves, we have almost equalled our theme: as if to make our praises too great for any other subject were sufficient to make them great enough for God. But alas, how widely must we be mistaken! since our expressions, if we speak sense, can at best but fully represent our conceptions, and those being but the notions of a finite creature, must needs fall extremely short of perfections, which were not what they are, if they were not infinite. No, when we have employed the loftiest hyperboles, and exhausted all the celebrating topics and figures of rhetoric; when we have dressed metaphysical abstractions in poetic raptures; when we have ransacked whatever things are most excellent among the creatures, and having defecated them, and piled them up together, have made that heap but a rise to take our soaring flight from; when we have summed up, and left beneath our expressions all that we are here wont to acknowledge above them; nay, when instructed as well as inflamed and transported by that inaccessible light that is inhabited by what we adore, we seem raised and elevated above all that is mortal, and above ourselves, and say things that nothing else could either inspire or merit; even then, I say, those expressions, which any otherwise applied would be hyperboles, do but express our devotion, not the divine object of it, and declare how much we honour Him, rather than what He is. And, indeed, none but the possessor of an infinite intellect can be able to say what the possessor of other infinite perfections deserves to have said of Him. And whatever zealous skill we praise God with, we do far less honour Him than injure Him, if we think our aspiringst praises can arrive so far, as I say not to reach, but so much as to approach their subject.

But let not this inevitable impotence, Pyrocles, trouble or discourage us; those blessed souls that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes, do (as we are taught in the Apocalypse) make it their business, and find it their happiness, to spend a great part of their eternity in extolling Him, by whom they are placed in a condition where they can have no employment but what is holy and noble. And even here below, the praising of God is a work, wherein we imitate though we do not equal the angels, and are busied in the same employment though not with the same skill. Nay, heaven itself exempts not its residents from an impotence which belongs to creatures, not as they are imperfect ones, but as they are creatures. Even the members of the Church Triumphant do not triumph over this necessary impotence; their praises may need pardon, even in a place where they can sin no more; and they can

expect but from God's goodness, the acceptance of those praises that are improved as well as occasioned even by their being made partakers of His glory. Nay, even in the Prophet Isaiah's ecstatic vision, the seraphims themselves that are introduced as answering one another's glad acclamations to God are likewise represented as covering (out of respect) their faces with their wings. But, Pyrocles, as I was saying, this unavoidable disability to say things worthy of God, need not at all trouble us; since we pay our homages to One, whose goodness our expressions can as little equal, as they can His other attributes. He that created us will not impute it to us that we act but as creatures and since He has declared that where there is a willing mind a man is accepted according to what he has, and not according to what he has not, the impotence I have been speaking of, ought to bring us rather joy than trouble, since the infinite distance betwixt us, without lessening His favourable acceptance of our praises, supposes the boundless perfections of Him whom those praises (through His goodness) help to give us an interest in; and no son would repine at his Royal Father's greatness, how immense soever, being sure that greatness would not lessen his kindness. For it is less desirable to be able to describe the power and excellencies of him we have an interest in, than to have an interest in one whose power and goodness exceeds whatever we can say or fancy of them.

To conclude, Pyrocles, since on the one side God is most truly said in the Scripture to be so glorious, that He is exalted above all blessing and praise, and consequently, though I could (to use St. Paul's phrase) speak with the tongues of men and angels, yet the highest things I could say of the Divine perfections must needs be, therefore, far below them, because a creature were able to say them. And, since on the other side, it is of us men that God vouchsafes to say, 66 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me;" and His transcendent excellency is so far from being inconsistent with resembling graciousness, that such a benignity is one of the most conspicuous parts of it; I will not forbear to pay my praises unto One, whose deserving infinitely more than I can offer, keeps Him not from accepting as much less than He deserves. But then I must not presume to fill my mouth with His praises, without sensibly acknowledging that there is not any subject whereon my expressions can want more eloquence, than on this subject; even eloquence itself would want expressions.

From another of Robert Boyle's little books I add

AN OBSERVATION UPON VITIATED SIGHT. Some may think that a man has rather an excellent than a vitiated sight who can see objects with a far less degree of light than other men have need of to discern them. But though an extraordinary tenderness may be a kind of perfection in the eyes of bats and owls, whose usual food may be more easily purchased1 by twilight: yet as to man, the main part of whose actions is to be performed by the light of the day, or some other almost equivalent, it may argue the provident goodness of the Author of Nature, to have given him eyes constituted as those of men generally are: since, that a very great tenderness of the retina, or principal part of the organ of sight, would be, if not an imperfection, at least a great inconvenience, may appear by the memorable story I am going to relate:

In the army of the late king of happy memory (Charles I.), there was a gentleman of great courage and good parts, that

1 Purchased, obtained by chasing; from Fr. " pour" and " chasser."

was major to one of the regiments; who, being afterwards by the prevailing usurpers forced to seek his fortune abroad, ventured to do his king a piece of service at Madrid, which was of an extraordinary nature and consequence, and there judged very irregular. Upon this he was committed to an uncommon prison, which, though otherwise tolerable enough, had no window at all belonging to it but a hole in the thickness of the wall, at which the keeper once or twice a day put in liberal provision of victuals and wine, and presently closed the window, if it may be so called, on the outside, but not perhaps very solicitously. For some weeks this poor gentleman continued in the dark, very disconsolate. But afterwards he began to think he saw some little glimmering of light, which from time to time increased; insomuch, that he could not only discover the parts of his bed, and other such large objects, but at length came to discover things so minute that he could perceive the mice that frequented his chamber, to eat the crumbs of bread that fell upon the ground, and discern their motions very well. Several other effects of his sight in that dark place he related. And that which confirms that this proceeded mainly from the great tenderness the visive organ had acquired by so long a stay in so obscure a place, was, that when after some months, the face of affairs abroad being somewhat changed, his liberty was restored him, he durst not leave his prison abruptly, for fear of losing his sight by the dazzling light of the day; and therefore was fain to accustom his eyes by slow degrees to the light. This strange, as well as once famous story, I the less scruple to set down in this place, because I had the curiosity to learn it from the gentleman's own mouth, who acquainted me with other particulars about it, that, for want of the notes I then took, I shall not now venture to speak of.

Abraham Cowley joined the poet's love of nature with that of the man of science. He had actively served Charles I. and his queen, and had suffered for his loyalty; but at the Restoration he found no favour at court, and sought none. He had praised Brutus in an ode, for which Charles II. thought it enough that Mr. Cowley was forgiven. In his

COWLEY'S HOUSE AT CHERTSEY.

earlier manhood a studious and thoughtful nature had been drawn into the stream of politics, and shown its worth and its fidelity; but it was no disappointment to Cowley that after the Restoration the last seven years of his life-from 1660 to his death in 1667 were spent in a seclusion that could give him wholly to himself. His narrow income

was enlarged by the kindness of two patrons, Lord St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, and he sought a quiet home on the banks of the Thames, seldom visiting the city or the court. His first home by the Thames was at Barn Elms, where he suffered much from fever. He then went to Chertsey, where he lived at the Porch House, and there died in 1667 of a severe cold, caught in a hot summer-time, when staying too long among his labourers in the meadows. Cowley finished in these days of retirement his Latin poem in six books upon Plants. He also wrote the charming series of essays, in prose intermixed with verse, which dwell on the happiness of quiet life among the works of God, with leisure to make right use of one's mind. He looks from his Chertsey hermitage with compassion upon the man who is driven "sometimes to pitiful shifts in seeking how to avoid himself." Thus Cowley writes

OF GREATNESS.

"Since we cannot attain to greatness," says the Sieur de Montagn, "let's have our revenge by railing at it." This he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired it no more than I do, and had less reason, for he enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as allowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from the incommodities. If I were but in his condition I should think it hard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be sequestered from it, and made one of the principal officers of state. But the reader may think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was nor ever shall be put to the trial; I can therefore only make my protestation

If ever I more riches did desire

Than cleanliness and quiet do require,
If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat
With any wish so mean as to be great,
Continue, Heav'n, still from me to remove
The humble blessings of that life I love.

I know very many men will despise, and some pity me for this humour, as a poor spirited fellow; but I'm content, and like Horace, thank God for being so. "Dii bene fecerunt, inopis me quodque pusilli Finxerunt animi." I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it) it would be, I think, with prettiness rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress nor my fortune should be a Bona Roba, nor as Homer uses to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her person, but as Lucretius says,

"Parvula pumilio, Xapírwv uía, tota merum sal."

Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous affectation of

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1 Horace, Sat. I. iv. 17. It is well that the gods made me poor, because they shaped me with a little mind.

De Rerum Natura, IV., 1155. "The tiny dwarf is one of the graces, all pure essence." From a description of the language of lovers, who find charm in all:

"The black seem brown, the nasty negligent,
Owl-eyed, like Pallas, and my heart's content:
The little dwarf is pretty, grace all o'er;
The vast surprising; and we must adore

The stammering lips;" &c.-Creech's Translation.

grandeur, Seneca the elder describes to this effect.1 Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town. He would have no servants, but huge massy fellows; no plate or household stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion. You may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shoes each of which was not big enough for both his feet. He would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears. He kept a concubine that was a very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his cognomentum.3 When he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedemonians, who alone opposed Xerxes' army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his arms, and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out in a very loud voice, "I rejoice! I rejoice!" We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. "Xerxes," says he, "is all mine own! He who took away the sight of the sea with the canvas vails of so many ships"

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-and then he goes on so as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly way of nonsense.

This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are few men who are not in some things and to some degrees Grandios. Is anything more common than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in without one to lead them? and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up? I may safely say, that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a train of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this but a spice of Grandio? how tedious would this be if we were always bound to it? I do believe there is no king who would not rather be deposed than endure every day of his reign all the ceremonies of his coronation. The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from these majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparagement to them) as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements and meanest recreations of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of the most powerful and fortunate princes of the world of late could find out no delight so satisfactory as the keeping of little singing birds, and hearing of them, and whistling to them. What did the emperors of the whole world? If ever any men had the free and full enjoyment of all human greatness (nay, that would not suffice, for they would be gods too) they certainly possessed it; and yet one of them, who styled himself Lord and God of the Earth, could not tell how to pass his whole day pleasantly, without spending constantly two or three hours in catching of flies and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime more agreeable than to run about the streets all night in a

1 Reference is to the second of the "Suasoria" of Marcus Annæus Seneca. His son Lucius has Epist. ci. on the sudden death of another Senecio, who had heaped up riches and understood the art of keeping them.

2 Chiopins, high light frames covered with leather and worn under the shoe, to give height to the wearer. Ital. "scappino," sock; Old Fr. "escapin." Cowley adds the chiopins.

3 Cognomentum, augmentative from cognomen. This suggestion of Messala is in the original; from which, indeed, the whole account of Senecio is a rather close translation.

disguise, and abuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures. His chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a fiddle in the habit of a minstrel upon the public stage. He was prouder of the garlands that were given to his Divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes than all his forefathers were of their triumphs over nations. He did not at his death complain that so mighty an emperor, and the last of all the Cæsarian race of deities, should be brought to so shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, "Alas, what pity it is that so excellent a musician should perish in this marner!" His uncle, Claudius, spent half his time in playing at dice that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the madness of Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of Tiberius. Would one think that Augustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of Nature, should be so hard put to it sometimes for want of recreation, as to be found playing at nuts and bounding stones with little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he took delight in, for their prating and their wantonness?

Was it for this that Rome's best blood he spilt,
With so much falsehood, so much guilt?
Was it for this that his ambition strove,
To equal Cæsar first and after Jove?
Greatness is barren sure of solid joys;
Her merchandise (I fear) is all in toys,
She could not else sure so uncivil be,
To treat His universal Majesty-

His new-created Deity

With nuts and bounding-stones and boys. But we must excuse her for this meagre entertainment, she has not really wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with the same cold meats served over and over again, even till they became nauseous. When you have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does there remain which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year? Not so many servants or horses, but a few good ones which will do all the business as well; not so many choice dishes at every meal, but at several meals all of them, which makes them both the more healthy and the more pleasant; not so rich garments, nor so frequent changes, but as warm and as comely, and so frequent change too as is every jot as good for the master, though not for the tailor or valet de chambre; not such a stately palace, nor gilt rooms, or the costliest sorts of tapestry, but a convenient brick house, with decent wainscot and pretty forest-work hangings. Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with that which I love most in both conditions), not whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain, or cascade-gardens; but herb, and flower, and fruit-gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear and wholesome as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph, or the urn of a river god. If for all this you like better the substance of that former estate of life, do but consider the inseparable accidents of both-servitude, disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, inherent in the one; in the other, liberty, tranquillity, security, and innocence, and when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth which appeared to you before but a ridiculous paradox-that a low fortune is better guarded and attended than a high one. If indeed we look only upon the flourishing head of the tree, it appears a more beautiful object

"Sed quantum vertice ad auras

Etherias tantum radice ad Tartara tendit."

Virgil, Georgics II. 291.

As far as up t'wards Heav'n the branches grow,
So far the root sinks down to hell below.

Another horrible disgrace to greatness is, that it is for the most part in pitiful want and distress. What a wonderful thing is this! Unless it degenerate into avarice, and so cease to be greatness, it falls perpetually into such necessities as drive it into all the meanest and most sordid ways of borrowing, cousenage, and robbery, "Mancipiis locuples eget æris Cappadocum Rex." This is the case of almost all great men, as well as of the poor King of Cappadocia ; they abound with slaves, but are indigent of money. The ancient Roman emperors, who had the riches of the whole world for their revenue, had wherewithal to live (one would have thought) pretty well at ease, and to have been exempt from the pressures of extreme poverty; but yet with most of them it was much otherwise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable penury that they were forced to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants, to cheat with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be cheated of a third part of their estates, two other thirds they must expend in vanity, so that they remain debtors for all the necessary provisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts, but out of the succours and supplies of rapine: as riches increases, says Solomon, so do the mouths that devour it. The master's mouth has no more than before. The owner, methinks, is like Ocnus in the fable,2 who is perpetually winding a rope of hay, and an ass at the end perpetually eating it. Out of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, which is that no greatness can be satisfied or contented with itself. Still if it could mount up a little higher it would be happy; if it could gain but that point it would obtain all its desires. But yet at last, when it is got up to the very top of the Peak of Tenarif, it is in very great danger of breaking its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascending upwards into the seat of tranquillity above the moon. The first ambitious men in the world, the old giants, are said to have made an heroical attempt of scaling heaven in despite of the gods, and they cast Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa; two or three mountains more they thought would have done their business, but the thunder spoiled all the work when they were come up to the third story.

And what a noble plot was crossed,

And what a brave design was lost.

A famous person of their offspring, the late giant of our nation, when from the condition of a very inconsiderable captain he had made himself lieutenant-general of an army of little Titans, which was his first mountain, and afterwards general, which was the second, and after that absolute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the third, and almost touched the heaven which he affected, is believed to have died with grief and discontent because he could not attain to the honest name of a king and the old formality of a crown, though he had before exceeded the power by a wicked usurpation. If he could have compassed that he would perhaps have wanted something else that is necessary to felicity, and pined away for want of the title of an emperor or a god. The reason of this is that greatness has no reality in nature, but a creature of the fancy, a notion that consists

1 Horace, Epist. I. vi. 39. "The King of the Cappadocians, rich in slaves, wants money." Many of the inhabitants of Cappadocia were slaves of the lowest kind, and Cicero speaks of their sovereign as the poorest of kings.

2 Propertius, IV. iii. 21. The fable represented an industrious man with an extravagant wife.

only in relation and comparison. It is indeed an idol; but St. Paul teaches us, "That an idol is nothing in the world. There is in truth no rising or meridian of the sun, but only in respect to several places; there is no right or left, no upper hand in nature, everything is little and everything is great, according as it is diversely compared. There may be perhaps some village in Scotland or Ireland where I might be a great man; and in that case I should be like Cæsar (you would wonder how Cæsar and I should be like one another in anything), and choose rather to be the first man of the village than second at Rome. Our country is called Great Britany, in regard only of a lesser of the same name; it would be but a ridiculous epithet for it when we consider it together with the kingdom of China. That too is but a pitiful rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth besides; and this whole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but one point or atom in relation to those numberless worlds that are scattered up and down in the infinite space of the sky which we behold. The other many inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of disperstly in several chapters, and shall end this with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied, but rudely imitated.3

Among Cowley's Essays there is one especially interesting for the thoughtful glance it casts back over his own life as he nears its end. It is entitled

OF MYSELF.

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself. It grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear anything of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt than rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then too so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at myself) may appear at the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much ashamed

This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.

3 The Ode is the 38th of the first book, "Persicos odi, puer, appa ratus."

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You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved these characters in me. They were like letters cut in the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there. For I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's Works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this), and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses of the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life—that is, into much company and no small business, and into a daily fight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French Courts)—yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for ought I knew, it was real, was not likely to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was adulterate. met with several great persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which ride safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach if it did with my courage; though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in

I

business of great and honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect

Well then; I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c.

And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his Majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately-convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed as well as some others, who with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophesy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it

Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,

Nor at th' Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar;
Content thyself with the small barren praise
Which neglected verse does raise, &c.1

However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it à corps perdu, without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at man, who says to his soul, "Take thy ease." I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine; yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. "Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum: "3 nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her.

-Nec vos dulcissima mundi

Nomina, vos Muse, Libertas, Otia, Libri,
Hortique Sylvæque anima remanente relinquam."

Nor by me e'er shall you,

You of all names the sweetest and the best,
You muses, books, and liberty and rest;
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,
As long as life itself forsakes not me.

But this is a very pretty ejaculation; because I have concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last.

If we leave Chertsey for London, where the critics feed upon the wits and the wits feed on the follies of the day, there is John Dryden busy upon Heroic Plays, and about two years after the Duke of Buckingham's clever caricature of the nonsense of them in the "Rehearsal," Dryden, who, in prefaces and dedications to the printed copies of his plays, was proving himself one of the best critics of the day, wrote in 1674, before his transformation of "Paradise Lost" into an opera, "The State of Innocence"

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