Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	abbey_n	abbot_n	founder_n	21	3	10.8213	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A78009	Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English. Now collected into one volume, with a methodicall table of all the letters. 1. 2. 3. and 4th parts. By Sr Richard Baker Knight, and others.; Correspondence. English	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1595-1654.	1654 (1654)	Wing B614; Thomason E1444_1; ESTC R209109	450,799	529

never want Panegyricks and Sonnets that the Court will never be without Sharks and Cheaters that virtue will ever be the most beautifull the most unprofitable thing in the World And what can you write in the general of affairs that hath not relation to one of these points And for my own particular what can I hear but that either some book is written against me or that my Pension is like to be ill paid or that I shall not be made an Abbot unless I be my self the Founder of the Abby such news would be terrible to a man more interressed than my self but to me they are in a manner indifferent and trouble me no more than if you should tell me it will be foul weather all this Moon or that the water is grown shallow in our River or that a Tree in my Wood hath been overturned with Tempest I have had heretofore some pretentions to Church preferments but now they are all reduced to this one preferment of being a good Christian and so long as they cast not upon Balzac the term of an Apostata for the rest I am well content with my present condition and certainly desires so moderate cannot chuse but be succesfull and I will never believe that ill fortune any more than good will seek after me so far as this or that it is possible for him to fall that stands so low yet if any Devil enemy of my advancement should envy my retiring and if any promoter should lay to my charge that to get out off I would corrupt I make my self this promise Sir that you will stand strongly in defence of your innocent friend and that in so just a protection you will embark also that excellent personage of whom you speak in your Letter I am as you know unhappy enough not to know her but seeing the honest men of Greece have used to adore upon adventure and built Altars to unknown Deities it may as well be lawfull for me to use devotion to this Saint upon the credit of the people of Rome who have now these three years looked upon her as upon one of the true Originals whereof they revere the Statues they all agree in this that since the Porciaes and the Corneliaes there never was any thing seen comparable to this and that those divine women which were the domestical Senate of their husbands and the rivals of their virtue have no other advantage over this French Lady but that they died in an age of funeral Orations You send me word that you finde her in the same estate you left her and that she is now as fresh and amiable as ever she was and I easily believe it this long continued state of youth is no doubt the recompence of her extraordinary virtue the calm within sweetens and clears the Air without and from the obedient passions of her minde there riseth neither winde nor cloud to taint the pureness of her complexion As there are certain temperate Climates which bring forth Roses all the year long and where it is counted for a wonder that such a day it was cold or snowed so are there likewise certain faces priviledged preserved to the end of old age in the happy estate of their infancy and never lose the first blossoming of their beauty But it is not for a man buried in the darkness of a Desart to talk of the most illustrious matter that is in the World it befits me rather to read that over again which you have written than to add any thing to it and for fear least any word should scape from me that is not Courtly and which may marre all I have said already without further discourse I assure you that I am Sir Your c. From Balzac the 8. of August 1633. To Mounsieur de la Nauue Counsellour to the King in his great Chamber LETTER XIV SIR I Take great joy to hear you harken after me and that you need no remembrancer to put you in minde to be mindefull of me This thought of yours is so much the more dear unto me because it comes from a heart that hath none vain or casual but makes choise of the Objects it beholds and of the Images it receives to be thought of by you is to be worthy of being thought of This ought to be the ambition of men that are worth ought and a virtue that is not approved of you shews there is something in that is defective If then I have this mark I have the seal and confirmation of the true good I have both the good fortunes that of virtue and that of your favour and herein at least I have some resemblance of an honest man There are some whom blinde chance hath lifted up above you of whom I cannot speak in this manner one may set their blame and their praise in equal degree of indifferency and there is no Obligation to follow them in their opinions but when they get it by constraint or else by purchase All their greatness is in their Titles there scarce appears upon them one little beam of it in dayes of Ceremony and if they will have us to respect them they must be fain to send a Herauld to put us in minde For you Sir it is not onely upon the Bench that the World reveres you but your authority follows you wheresoever you are she accompanies you even in your ordinary conversation you cannot so disguise your self but that I shall alwayes take you for my Judge and this gravity of your countenance which changes every word you speak into a Decree and gives a dignity to your very silence may serve to verifie that Paradox of the Stoikes That a wise man can never be a private person and that Nature her self makes him a Magistrate Mounsieur Coeffeteat and my self have often had long discourses about this point and it is not as we would have it and as we wish that a man should be left at the bottom of the stairs whose merit we see ascended to the top but this is the destiny of the best things either they are wholly neglected or at most but half known and I have seen in the same place a Munkey set upon the top of a Piramis and a Master piece of Phydias suffered to stand upon a very mean Base but the satisfaction of your conscience and the testimony of your good report ought to be your comfort for all such events There are illustrious lives of divers fashions but those like yours which cast a sweet and pleasing light please me much better than those that thunder and lighten It is not the noise and the flashes that make the fair dayes it is a calm and clear air and a life led in tranquility and judgement which is the work of reason is preferrable before one half or the great success the World admires which are but the extravagancies of fortune See here the decree of a Countrey Philosopher and matter of

nourish my self with the spirit of Fruits and with a meat called jelly My Lord these are all the services I yield you in this place and all the functions of my residence near his holiness and I hold my self particularly obliged now the second time to thank you for this favour for by your means I injoy two things seldom suiting together a Master and Liberty and the great rest you allow me is not the least present you please out of your Nobleness to affoord me Your Graces most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome 15. of July 1621. To the Lord Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC LETTER V. My Lord WIthin the Deserts of Arabia nor in the Seas intrails was there ever so furious a Monster found as is the Sciatica And if Tyrants whose memories are hatefull unto us had been stored with such instruments for effecting their cruelties surely I think it had been the Sciatica the Martyres had indured for Religion and not the fire and biting of wilde beasts At every sting it carries a poor sick person even to the borders of the other World and causeth him sensible to touch the extremities of life And surely to support it long a greater remedy than Patience is no less than requisite and other forces than those of man In the end GOD hath sent me some ease after the receit of an infinite of remedies some whereof sharpned my grief and the rest asswaged it not But the violence of my pain being now past I begin to injoy such rest as weariness and weakness affoordeth to over-tired bodies And though I be in a state of health far less perfect than those who are found yet measuring it by the proximity of the misery I have indured and the comparison of those pains I have suffered I am right glad of my present Fortune nor am I so hardy to dare as yet complain of my great weakness remaining To speak truth I have no better legs than will serve to make a shew and should I undertake to walk the length of my Chamber my trouble would be no less than if I were to pass the Mountains and cross all Rivers I encounter But to the end to change Discourse and to let you see things in their fair shape you are to understand that in this plight wherein I stand being sufficient to cause you to pitty me four hundred leagues off I am on the one side become so valiant as not to fly though I were pursued by a whole Army and on the other so stately that if the Pope should come to visite me I would not conduct him so far as the Gates This is the advantage I draw from my bad legs and the remedies arising in my bed wherewith I indeavour to comfort my self without the help of Physicks You will I fear say I might well have forborn to entertain you with these impertinencies nor am I ignorant that perfect felicities such as yours desire not to be disquieted either by the complaints of the distressed or by the consideration of distastefull things But it is likewise true that the first loss we indure in pain falls upon our judgement and the body hath such a proximity with the Soul that the miseries of the one do easily slide into the other But what reason soever I have to defend my evil humour yet must it necessarily give way to your contentment and of the two passions wherewith I am assaulted obey the stronger I will therefore be no longer sad but for others and will hold it fit I make you laugh upon the subject of XXXXX to whom you lately addressed your Letters You may please to remember one of their names to be A. the other B yet it is not sufficient onely to know so much but I must likewise inform you somewhat of their shape and stature The first I speak of is so gross as I verily think he will instantly die of an Apoplexie and the other so little as I would swear that since he came into the World he never grew but at the hairs end afore any indifferent Judges an Ape would sooner pass for a man than this Pigmy nor will I believe he was made after the image of God left therein I should wrong so excellent a Nature Besides it were an easier task to raise the dead than to make this mans teeth white he hath a Nose at enmity with all others and against which there is no possible defence but Spanish Gloves What can I say more there is no part of his body that is not shamefull or wherein Nature hath not been defective Yet notwithstanding one of the fairest Princesses of Italie is by a solemn contract condemned to lodge night by night with this Monster When you chance to see this man together with the other great bellied beast who stuffs a whole Carroach you will presently suppose God never made them to be Princes and that it is not onely as much as to abuse the obedience of free persons but even to wrong the meanest Grooms to give them Masters of this stamp Now though the party you wot of do in some sort represent the latter person yet is there still some small difference between his actions and the others The great VVV is newly parted from this Court where he hath not received from his Holiness his expected contentment His design was to break the Marriage his Brother hath contracted upon some slight appearance of Sorcery wherewith he deemed to dazle the Worlds eye and ground the nullity of an action which was by so much the more free in that the parties who perform'd it sought not the consent of any to approve it In conclusion after the loss of much time and many words he is gone without obtaining any thing save onely the Popes benediction and as for me I remain much satisfied to see Justice so exact at Rome that they will not condemn the Devil himself wrongfully I have heard how in some places half hour Marriages are made the conditions whereof are neither digested into writing nor any memorie thereof reserved but of these secret mysteries there are no other witnesses save onely the Night and Silence And though the Court of Rome approveth them not yet doth she shut her eys fearing to see them I am resolved not to be long in the description of K.K.K. whom you know much better than my self Yet thus much I will say that since Neroes death there never appeared in Italie a Comedian of more honourable extraction And surely to make the Company at this present in France compleat his personage were sufficient He makes Verses he hath read Aristotle and understands Musick and in a word he hath all the excellent qualities unnecessary in a Prince I know here a German called S. to whom he giveth an annual pension of a thousand Crowns assigned unto him upon an Abbey during life this he hath done not that he intendeth to use his service in his counsel

or with purpose to imploy him in any important negotiation for the good of his affairs his onely ambition is to have him make a book whereby it might appear how those of M M M. are lineally descended from Julius Caesar I should be glad he would yet aim at some higher or more eminent race and that he would purchase a second fable at the like rate he payed for the first I would willingly give him his choice of the Medes Persians Greeks or Troians which of these he would have of his Kindred and without the relying upon the Authority of tradition or testimonie of Stories I would draw his descent from Hector or Achilles which he best liked There are certain Princes who are necessarily to be deceived if you mean to do them acceptable service being far better pleased to be entertained with a plausible lie than to be advertised of an important truth I hold my self right happy you are not of this humour for whatsoever I say I suppose it would be very hard for me to be of a fools minde though he were a Monarch I intend not to steal your favours but to purchase them legally and having ever believed flattery to be as mischievous a means to gain affection as charms and sorcery I cannot speak against my conscience and were not this true I tell you I would not assure you that I am Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome this 10. of December 1622. To the Lord Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC Letter VI. My Lord HOw great soever the subject of my sorrows be yet do I finde in your Letters sufficient to make me happy in my hard fortune The last I received hath so much obliged me that but for the displeasing news coming unto me which tempered my joy my reason had not been of sufficient force to moderate it But at this time the death of my poor Brother being incessantly before mine eys taketh from me the taste of all good tidings and the prosperity even of the Kings affairs seem displeasing unto me finding my self to bear upon me the mournings of his Victorie Yet since in this fatal agitation of Europe it is not I alone who bewail some loss and since your self have not been able to preserve all that was dear unto you I should seem very uncivil if I presumed to prefer my private interest before yours or reflect upon my particular affliction having one common with yours It is long since I have not measured either the felicities or fatalities of this World but by your contentments or discomforts and that I behold you as the whole workmanship God hath made Wherefore my Lord I willl lay aside whatsoever concerns my self to enter into your resentments and to tell you since you cannot make unworthy elections it must needs be that in death of your Friends you can suffer no small losses Notwithstanding as you transcend sublunary things and in that all men draw examples out of the meanest actions of your life I assure my self they have acknowledged upon this occasion that there is not any accident to surmount against which you have use of all your virtue Afflictions are the gifts of God though they be not of those we desire in our prayers and supposing you should not approve this proposition yet have you at all times so little regarded death as I cannot believe you will bewail any for being in a condition your self esteems not miserable My Lord it sufficeth you conserve the memory of those you have loved in consequence of the protestation you pleased to make unto me by your Letter And truly if the dead be any thing as none can doubt they cannot grieve for ought in this World wherein they still injoy your favours In the mean time I take this to my self and am most happy in having conferred my dutifull affections upon a man who setteth so high a value upon those things he hath lost For any thing my Lord I perceive there is small difference between good works and the services we offer you they having their rewards both in this life and the other your goodness being illimitable as is the desire I have to tell you I am Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome the 29. of Decemb. 1621. To the Lord Bishop of Valette from BALZAC LETTER VII MY LORD THough I be not in state either to perform any great exploit upon the person of any man nor have any great force to defend my self yet cannot I touch upon the Count Mansfield without taking it to heart and joyning my good affections to the Kings forces If this were the first time the Germans had exceeded their limits and sent their Armies to be overthrown in France the novelty of these Barbarous faces and of those great lubberly swat-rutters might easily have affrighted us But upon the matter we have to do with known enemies and who will suffer us to take so sufficient advantages over them besides those we naturally injoy as without being forced to make use of Arms we may defeat them onely by their own evil conduct I do not wonder there are men who willingly forsake Frost and Snow to seek their living under a more pleasing and temperate climate than their own and who quit bad Countreys as being well assured the place of their banishment shall be more blissefull unto them than that of their birth Onely herein it vexeth me in the behalf of the Kings honour to see him constrained to finish the remainder of the Emperours victories upon a sort of beaten Souldiers and who rather fly the fury of Marques Spinola than follow us These great Bulwarks whose neighbour I am seeming rather the Fabricks of Gyants than the fortifications of a Garrison-Town will not ever be looked upon with amazement one day I hope there will appear nothing in their places but Cabbins for poor Fishermen or if it be requisite the works of Rebellion should still remain and the memory of these troublesome people indure yet longer we shall in the upshot see them remove Mountains and dive into the Earths foundations to provide themselves a Prison at their own charge But withall my Lord I beseech you let there be no further speech made of occasions or expeditions and let a Peace be concluded which may continue till the Worlds end let us leave the War to the Turk and King of Persia and cause I beseech you that we may lose the memorie of these miserable times wherein Fathers succeed their Children and wherein France is more the Countrey of Lans ●●ghts and Swisses than ours Though Peace did not turn the very Desarrs into profitable dwellings as it doth or caused not the quarries or flints to become fruitfull though it came unaccompanied without being seconded with security and plenty yet were it necessary onely to refresh our forces thereby to enable us the longer to endure War As I was ending this last word I heard