shattered disfigured they adored as their Mistresse Behold the condition of a poor Scholar in the midst of many rich Ignorants they have although many times they know not that they have it an Envie of the internal riches of which they are wholly wanting and do look on that poor man as rich Ullanè autem tam ingentium opum tam magnae Potentiae voluptas quam spectare homines veteres senes totius orbis gratia subnixos in summa omnium rerum abundantia confitentes id quod optimum sit se non habere Now if the rich be trees with a great grove of branches dispersed in every part comely and leaâ—ie a poor learned man is a leafless trunk and half naked but what then Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro Eximias veteres populi sacratá is gestans Dona ducum nec jam vallidis radicibus haerens Pondere fixo suo est nudósque per aëra ramos Effundens trunco non frondibus efficit umbram Sed quamvis primo nutet casura sub Euro Tot circum sylvae firmo se robore tollant Sola tamen colitur The Wise Exile THose Ancient Sages Masters of Sapience which alive had Greece dead had all the World for Auditors left us for an infallible maxime to the end the mind learn to Phylosophate and not erre it 's needful the feet go wandring through many Lands We may attein to the riches of Sapience but no other way but by going to the Sages in many places and begging it Truth said they a Native of Heaven is a Pilgrim on Earth and is found no way but by Peregrination He that seeks it doth as the rivers which encrease the more the further they go so that they which at their fountains were scarce little brooks in dilating themselves become little lesse than Seas The vapours of the earth would they ever assume the form of starres if leaving the country where they were all dirt they should not run after the Sun and make themselves much more happy in being Pilgrims in heaven than if they were Citizens on earth Men are not as Planets which have the greatest virtue then when they are in their own houses yea it happens many times that ones own country proveth a step-mother and a forraign land the mother in fashion of certain plants which from their Native Soil where they were nourished with venomous humours transported to a strange climate in the remove they lose their power of hurting and find together with a harmlesse relish the virtue of wholesome aliment A mans own country ought to be to a wise man as the Horizon to the stars for birth not for Sepulchre to take thence the first light and as the Aurora of Sapience after to climb to other places even to find the most high and splendid noon-tide which it makes on earth Thus those Sages understood it and according to their knowledge practising seemed just of the nature of the Heavens which have rest in motion whence with tedious voyages they ran where in some new Academy of the learned they might discover the gain of Wisdome Their life was as Sinesius speaks a perpetual going a hunting sometimes in Greece sometimes in Aegypt sometimes in Persia sometimes in the Indies where the hope of the best prey inviting drew them Thus Pythagoras Socrates Plato Democritus Diogeâ—es Anaxagoras and a hundred others came through un-frequented climates and gathered the quintessence of every one like to certain fortunate fountains which in the peregrination they make through the bowels of the earth passe through the middle of precious veins some of gold or silver some of Emeralds or Saphyres imbibe and carry away the best of their wholesome qualities And see how the relish of Learning rendereth absence from ones country not only sufferable but beyond measure sweet whence to him who wisheth it when banishment cometh Exile hath no other pain then the name To him who hath not to him who knows not other goods then those which the ignorant vulgar call gifts of Fortune leaving his country I deny not is to him as to a scarce imfeathered fowl to be thrown from his nest whose going out is his fall and his fall his ruine but he that hath strong feathers and expert wings changeth a nest of straw in which he lived buried for the ample spaces and open ayr of all the heavens which is so much his as is the liberty of flight which brought him thither Who took thee from thy country saith a Shepherd to Tytirus Who made thee turn Pilgrim and live a stranger in forreign parts Et quae tanta fuit Roman tibi causa videndi Wearinesse of servitude replied Tytirus thrust me out of my native nest love of liberty brought me to live in strange places Libertas quae sera tamen respexit inertem Candidior post quam tondenti barba cadebat Ille Petrach sagely replyeth in Sermone Pastorio ut libertatem inveniret Patriam se reliquisse gloriatur tu Phylosophos defles Let the Moors of Spain weep whilst they are thrust from thence to their Africa a Land fit for such monsters let them go not as such as change places but as such who are thrown down from heaven and turning their eyes behind them at every step let them weeping behold Granada and swear that Paradise stands perpendicular over that Kingdome This is the language either of Sibarites which love their country as a stable because they lead the lives of animals or of fools like to that simple Athenian which said the Moon of Athens was fuller then that of Corinth Whereas it was not that the Moon was more full but his head more empty Et hoc idem I shall say with Plutarch accidit nobis cum extra Patriam constituti mare aërem coelum dubii consideramus quasi aliquid eis desit eorum quibus in Patria fruebamur Ruine the country of Stilpone in common tears he alone is merry and in a universall losse secure And going thence alone and naked carrieth with him all that 's his because he carrieth himself but himself wise and learned Sapie autem saith Antisthenes etiam si omnia desint solus sufficit sibi Let the Clasomeneans as we said above banish the great Anaxagoras and as unworthy of the name of Citizen forbid him the City He grieves not as if his departure were from his country but his prison and excluded from a corner of the earth which was too narrow for his great soul he pointed at heaven for his country and the stars for his Fellow-Citizens Where ever he goeth he is covered with the same roof of heaven so that he seems not to have lost his house but to have only changed rooms Quid enim reâ—ert quam diversa parte consistat Valles quidem lacus flumina colles alios videt Coelum unum est Illuc aninum exigit eo cogitationes suas ex omni mundi
of Delos Diety If it were not as Philo advertiseth that God reserving for us to a better time so sweet a gust of Musick had with a particular Providence in such manner by it deafned and dislocated our audible faculties otherwise suspended extacis'd and ravished out of our selves by the harmony of those most Regular Bodies we should not only grow carelesse of cultivating the earth and remisse in the affairs of civil life but in the end forget our selves Coelum saith he perpetuo conâ—entu suorum motuum reddit harmoniam suavissimam quae si posset ad nostras aures pervenire in nobis exitaret in sanos sui amores desideria quibus stimulati rerum ad victum necessariarum oblivisceremur non pasti cibo potuque sed velut immortalitatis candidati But to say the truth to comprehend in the Heavens the melody of a ravishing harmony and to enjoy therewith above a delight able to make one almost Angelical it is not necessary to desire that the Musick of those harmonical Spheres Spheres they are called by them who will not grant that they be as notwithstanding they are all one sole and liquid Heaven do approach the ears Neverthelesse our mind may be thereby blessed following with the flight of its thoughts not as some do Poetry a lying inventor of fables which leading us through the vasts of Heaven saith to us here Phaetoâ— more bold then cautions Ausus aeternos agitare currus Immemor meta juâ—e is paternae Quos polo spaâ—sit furiosus ignos Ipse recepit Here fell Vulcan and the measuring with one irregular step all the voyage from heaven to earth by great chance cost him no more then the wrenching of a foot This slippery part of Heaven is the great breach which the Giants of Flâ—gra did make in the battery they gave to the stars when the earth of thunder-stricken became thunder-striker Here is Hercules here Prometheus here Bellerophon and I know not who But that part of the more Noble Sciences which is the true Interpreter of mysteries and Secretary of the most hidden things of the heavens which doth unvail the eyes and make them see how they be in a masse so vast and yet so light in motion in influences so discordant and yet in the maintenance of nature so united in the revolutions they make some so slow and others so swift and yet all to the time and almost in one and the same dance accord in obedience to the first mover so strict and in the liberty of their proper motions so free so splendid and so profound so uniform and so various so majestick and so amiable Violent with so many Laws busied with so much quietnesse in the measure of times in the succession of daies in the changes of seasons so consortial He who hath eyes to see so much he it is that knows how to make a Ladder to climb to the sight of much more He who by the long chain of these coelestial natures of which the last link is fastned to the foot of the Throne of Jove can climb even to the Archetype forms and to the Idea's of the first mind from whose invariable design are took the weights numbers and measures as instruments of the work of this great order of Nature He which knows how to understand the high Wisdom of him who in such variety of mutations keeps stedfast the course of an immutable Providence while he knew how to give an occult order to the manifest disorder of so many effects concatinating them with indissoluble knots to his intended ends So that those which seem casual events of chance are executions of a most regular Providence he that hath a sight for objects of so high a cognition is he not with it alone more blessed then others in all their sensual enjoyments That great Platonick Philo Alexandrinus gave credit to it when he said for proof of it Vagata meus circa stellarum turn sixarum tum erraticarum cursus choreas juxta Musicae praecepta absolutissimas trahitur amore sapientiae se deducentis atque ita emergens super omnem sensibilem essentiam demum intelligibilis desiderio corripitur Illic conspicata exemplaria ideas que rerum quas vidit sensibilium ad eximiâ—s illas pulchritudines aebrietate quadam sobria capta tanquam Corybantes lymphatur alio plena amore longe meliore quo ad summum fastigium ad ducta rerum intelligibilium ad ipsum Magnum Regem tendere videtur To whom these shall seem rather flourishes of art then real verity and being un-experienced should be so much the lesse credible I know not how to give a better answer then that which was merited from Nicostratus by a man little knowing and lesse credulous of the beauty of a picture Zeuxis that Son of Painters which did not give so much light to the picture illustrating it as shadow to the picturers his emulators obscuring them drew in a thin vail the face of an Helen with so noble workmanship that the exemplar was out-done by the copy and true Helen seemed to yeild to her self painted for if the real one drew a Paris from Troy to ravish her the counterfeit drew all Greece to admire her Nicostratus meeting with this picture he himself also being a Painter of no mean rank at the first look as if he had beheld not the head of Helen but of Medusa was metamorphiz'd into a stone and with mutual deceit Helen seemed to be as much alive in her picture as Nicostratus seemed dead in his amazement insomuch as a simple clown a blunt dolt a man wanting eyes looking upon Nicostratus which ingraven in an act of astonishment seemed a Statue looking on a picture accosted him and almost shaking him out of his dumps asked him Quid tantum in Helena illa stuperet He asked too many questions in one word But as he had not good eyes to see Helen so he had no docile ears to hear Nicostratus Therefore the Painter turning himself and between compassionating it and disdaining him looking on him This saith he Is not a picture for Owls Pluck out those ignorant eyes you have and I will lend you mine and if now you be an Owl without eyes you will then desire to be an Argus all eyes Non in terrogares me si meos oculos haberes Behold the very same falls out to him who wondereth how in beholding that goodly face of Nature the Heavens in which God as much as the matter was capable did design copying them from himself lineaments of so rare beauties we can find matter of such delight as to swallow our wits extacise our thoughts and blesse our minds All behold Heaven but all understand it not and between him that understandeth it and him that doth not there is the same difference that is between two of which one in a writing in Arabick ruled with gold and written with azure sees nothing but the workmanship of
well-composed characters the other moreover doth read the periods and understand the sense so that the least of the pleasure that he enjoyes is that of the eyes But although the gust of the understanding is as the sweetnesse of honey which to perswade the endeavours of a long discourse are not so efficacious as the simple proof of tasting one drop neverthelesse I think good to make you hear most moral Seneca where he declareth what was the content which he found in contemplating the Heavens whilst he conceiveth there above spirits contemners of the world spirits more than humane Hear him Imagine saith he that you were ascended to the highest sphere of the Heavens so that you saw Saturn Jupiter and Mars turn themselves in their several Revolutions and under them each of the other Planets to run their periods There you behold the immensurable masse of bodies the unparallel'd velocity of their course the numberlesse number of the stars which here scarce seems sparks to you and there are worlds of light and no lesse then so many Suns Thence with eyes sated with the greatnesse of those spaces and of the mass of those vast bodies look down to this center of the World and seek about it for the earth If you were able to see it it would appear so little to one that looks upon it from the stars that it would be necessary that you sharpen your quickest eye and you would desire that some Syderial Nuntio would help your sight What from hence below seemed the smallest of the starres so that the dubious eye knew not if he saw it or thought he saw it such from thence above the earth appeareth to you so that at such a sight you would say That then below which I scarce perceive which I scarce discern with my eye is that the earth Is that that point divided into so many Provinces subdivided into so many Kingdomes for which we rob one another for to get which are invented in so great abundance both Arts and Arms to kill one another sieges assaults conflagrations batteries pitcht fields subversions of whole Nations made in a little time which so oft hath made Widow'd Nature weep infecting the ayr with the stench of the putrified carkasses and sometimes damming up rivers sometimes vermiliating the Sea with great numbers of dead men with great abundance of humane bloud Hear ye the incredible wonders of humane madnesse Our vastest desires are lost in a point What said I in a point in the least particle of a point What would the Ants do more if they had reason Would not also they sub-divide a handful of earth into many Provinces Would they not set their obstinate bounds so that they would not yield in the least to thundring Jupiter himself Would they not found in a spot of ground a Kingdome in a little field a great Monarchy a little rivolet of water would be to them a Nile a ditch they would call an Ocean a stone as big as ones hand they would stile a great rock a Farm would be no lesse than a World They would also raise Bulwarks and Curtains to secure their States they would leavy Armies in hopes of new conquests and we should see in the space of two foot of ground squadrons march in order with colours display'd against the black Ants as enemies charging them with boldnesse justling them routing them and some to return the day being won victorious others either to surrender upon articles or flying hide themselves or dying bide the fury of their inraged enemies and become booty Such a war between twenty or more thousands of Ants undertaken to dispute the pretentions to a handful of earth only to think of it would make us laugh and we what other do we do sub-dividing a point into so many Kingdomes and destroying one another to inlarge them Let the Ister be the confines of â—acia Strimon of Thracia the Rhene of Germany the Parthians let them be bounded by Euphrates the Sarmatians by Daâ—ubius let the Pirrenean Mountains divide France and Spain the Alps Italy Formicarum isle discursus est in angusto laborantium You chalk out Kingdomes and assign them bounds And measures by the marks of bloud and wounds And yet herein you greatest â—olly show In that by griping much you let all go The whole worlds ev'ry mans and who so cares T' appropriate any part divides and shares What all was his All men one houshold be All 's but one house from th' Center to the Sky And in this house w'have all propriety Come and see from hence above your earth look out for your Kingdomes and measure how much that is from whence you take the titles of Grandees See you your small particle of a point if a point may admit of being seen And is this that which makes you go so stately Come up to the starres not to see only but to possesse if you will a Kingdome equal to your desire of raigning Nor shall you have any to strive with about bounds possessing all nor shall you need to fear that any will thrust you out of it since that being possest by many yet it can be taken from none Thus Juvat inter sydera vagantem divitum pavimenta ridere totum cum auro suo terram What greater enjoyment then to gain so generous spirits and so noble intelligences Alexander accustomed to the great victories of Asia when he received advice from Greece of some Martial act or conquest which was at most of a Castle or of some petty City he was wont to say That he thought he heard the news of the military successes between the frogs and the mice of Homer O how much lesse do things appear that are beheld from a high place How do they abate which here below seem so great if they be beheld from the starres And how much do we enjoy perceiving the thoughts to inlarge and the mind encrease even to make us contemn that which others like slaves adore That which the good Seneca teacheth us to do the great Anaxagoras had done long before who desiring only to see the heavens for the contemplation of which he was said to be born left his country as a Sepulchre of living men and because the earth should not take away the sight of the heavens he lived in the fields poor and without covert What said he Poor and Harbourlesse He enjoyed more in seeing over his head the beautiful Canopy of the serene Azures of heaven in seeing himself crowned with a world of starres which did revolve about him and in that the Sun gilded with his light the raggednesse of his poor garments and in that the heavens sent him advice of all news than if he had been clad in purple and his head crowned and he attended with the vassalage of all the earth And therefore Hic coetus astrorum quibus immensi corporis pulchritudo distinguitur populum non convocat his Clasomeneans scorned him as
Romances Poems of Love reformations of Ancient Heads more often deform'd than reform'd corrections fantastical conjectures imaginations and I know not what Quare appenditis argentum non in panibus saith Esay and St. Jerome understands it of the unprofitable Sciences of the age how much more may it be understood of your wholly unprofitable fooleries Is that Tyberius still alive that enjoyns you to tell him Whose daughter was Hecuba What name Achilles took when he lay concealed among the Virgins of Licomedes What the Syrenes are wont to sing of wheâ— they enchant passengers on which hand Venus was wounded by Diomedes on which foot Philip halted Is Domitian yet living that teacheth you to spend many hours every day in the unprofitable hunting of these flyes Heliogabulus to give an argument to the World of the greatnesse of Rome like a fool made all the Cob-webs that hung in the houses thereof to be gathered together upon one heap and that he esteemed a sufficient foundation for a conceit equal to the grandure of a City that was Queen of the World There is no Wise man but smiles at this Fool. But is not this the same with the fooly of those which for to give a publick proof of their wit rake together a masse rather of Cob-webs than of Papers in a Book writing vain and unprofitable matters Utinam taceretis videremini sapientis Let the applauses of foolish friends make you never so great these are never more than what Diogenes called the wonders done at the Spectacles of Bacchus Magna miracula stultorum But amongst the unprofitable labours of the Wit however the interessed resent things I shall only hint that the first place ought to be given to that which St. Basil aptly calleth Negotiosissimam prorsus vanitatem Astrologie I know not whether I should say Indiciary or extrajudicial worthy rather of the disrespect than of the Aspects of the Stars from whence Shee taketh lies to vend them the dearer in regard they be coelestial Merchandize Her Art is to erect twelve Houses in Heaven by the help of men that many times have not a cottage on Earth and by their hands to dispence to some riches and dignities to others misfortunes and praecipices who themselves beg bread to keep them alive You must not ask her as Diogenes demanded of him that talked so freely of Heaven Quando nam de Coelo venisti For she pretends to know how to read every ones fortune written with characters of Stars and Cyphers of Aspects To know how to trace out in the periods of those Spheres the courses of every ones life To be able to confine the Stars and Planets in Trines Quadrates and Sextiles as in so many Magical figures and to force them to tell future eveniencies both publick and private To conclude to be a prophetesse of truth And all this by virtue of similary observations which as yet never had similary figures in Heaven By dependance on one legitimate point of the Nativity the weight of which it examineth in the Ballance of Hermes By virtue of Coelestial Figures imagined by the Capriccio of others observed by them as mysteries By help of things which have nothing of subsistance or reality such as are the Dragons-head and Tail and the Part of Fortune in sine in despight of the Truth not found out but stumbled upon not by meanes of Art but only by chance in one prediction of a thousand they are emboldened to maske a falshood as if it were a thing credible and to perswade a thing credible as it were true What doth this Profession merit whose office it is to deceive men on Earth and to defame the Stars in Heaven You may give it the Caucasus and Vulture of Promotheus if you think it be a far greater crime to make Heaven a lyar the Planets deceivers and the Stars malevolent than to take from the Wheel of the Suns Chariot a spark of fire a beam of light therewith to infuse light into the dead Statues of Epimetheus and to transfuse Soul and Sense into their breasts But for my part because I will not passe judgment to others prejudice I would remit them to the Tribunal of that brave Emperor Alexander Severus who punished Turinus his Favorite for selling the Favors of his Master with Falacious Promises Condemning him to be stifled to death with Smoak the Trumpets all the while proclaining aloud Fumo puniter qui vendidit fumum AVARICE That he is guilty of the Ignorance of many who might benefit many by the Presse and neglects it THere are not any men for whose maintenance the World more unwillingly Labours and Nature takes pains than those who regardlesse of others would live only to themselves These are Pilgrims even in their own Country and Solitary in the midst of Society These have the countenance of men but are Beasts amongst Men that deserve no more to have been born by others then they care to live for any but themselves Amongst these none will scruple to enumerate certain Avaritious Wits which would bury the Golden Talents of Sciences and Arts with which they are endowed in their Sepulchers rather than become beneficial to posterity by the Presss When if there was no other inducement moving him thereto then the great reward of that honoured Memory with which after death he lives immortally An erit qui velle recuset Os opuli meruisse cedro digna locutus Inquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec thus But there is not only this allurement which can there is stronger reason which should perswade him to do it and it is the publick interest which may not be neglected under pretence that he is carelesse of his own So much the more in regard that Wisedom is not received from Heaven as a Gift which may be lost with our selves but as a Lone to be transmitted to our successors so that the doing it is not in some sense so much Liberality aâ— Justice It is to be received as the Air receives the Light from the Sun to transmit it to the Earth and not to retein it concealed from others and with little profit to our selves Therefore our solitary pale shriveled Ancestors have in the course of so many ages spent the Vigils of slow-pac't Nights and consumed not so much the hours of the Day as the dayes of their Lives to fetch with the blows of hard Studie from the rich Mines of their Wits golden Veâ—â—s of truth and new discoveries in knowledge and expounding them freely have made their private patrimony a publick inheritance wherefore then do we ingrateful to our Predecessors and envious to our Successors avariciously bury both theirs and our own He that puts himself between our Ancestors and those that are to come after us and beholds the Example of the one and the Necessity of the other I see not how he can have a heart to deny either imitation to
ridiculous and rejected him as savage but he opposed the honours of the heavens to the derisions of the vulgar he cared not so much to be seen in the earth by men as he did rejoyce to see the staâ—res in heaven and to be interchangeably seen by them with that courteous eye with which Sinesius said of himself Me stellae etiam ipse benigne identidem de spectare videntur quem in vastissima regione solum cum scientia sui inspectorem intuentur That which I have hitherto spoke of the contemplation of heaven an object of a part of the Natural Sciences to prove that Understanding is a certain be atitude of so excellent a tast that it inchanteth the senses and takes away what ever desires are of an order inferiour to the mind I would have to be understood of the other so numerous so noble and so vast subjects of most pleasant cognitions of which the ingenuity of the learned is capable brought into the world saith Pythagoras recited by Sinesius as Spectators in a Theater of alwayes new and wholly noble wonders Ita Pathagoras Samius Sapientem nihil aliud esse ait quà m eorum quae sunt siâ—ntque spectatorem Proinde enim in Mundum ac in sacrum quoddam certamen introductum esse ut iis quae ibidem fiunt spectator intersit But if from the gust of speculation the use of learning be called back to the practice of living Scholars would be much more severe and grave and I confesse as all the wise are of opinion to tearm that learned man wise whose mind a long and right understanding hath refined and whose reason it hath purged from the filth of those sensual basenesses and terrene vilenesses of those affections which in us savour of bruitish so that prosperous or adverse that occurrences be he weigheth them in the balance of reason for what they are it would be no hard matter for me leading you through some of the more dreaded miseries to make you see such a man superiour to them then to shew the loftiest starres to be as far from eclipses as they are distant from the shadows of the earth Sapience happy although in misery The Wise poor man POverty is a single name but not a single misery and one that 's understanding in cyphers in this only word knows how to read a whole Iliad of evils The Poet with the title of Turpis Egestus placed it together with other monsters at the gate of hell nor did he any injury to it forasmuch as it brings with it sufficient matter for a whole hell of misery to those houses of which it keepeth the door Famine within earts the bowels alive Nakednesse without ignominiously discovers the flesh Shame suffers it not to appear in publique Necessity permits it not to keep in secret if bashfulnesse makes it silent it endureth a thousand hardships if it beg an almes as vile it finds no credit The evils it suffereth are so much the greater by how much the lesse others commiserate them But of as many griefs as this complicated misery is pregnant with there is not a worse specially to a man of sublime wit or noble extraction than the becoming Subjects of scorn and derision Nil habet infoelix paupertas durius in se Quam quod ridiculos homines facit This is the blackest shadow that follows it this is the heaviest chain it drags after it And how many which appeared as trees without leaves un-beseemingly naked have made choice of obscurity judging death lesse insufferable than ignominy Now this tormenting and deformed Hangman that might there be so many Furies in hell would make the fourth who would believe it when it s joyned with Learning and Sapience like a dissonant Diatesseron which united to the Diapence rendereth the sweetest of all harmonies becomes lovely and pleasing beyond measure Poverty with Sapience saith the Stoick Philosophying is a divine composition which hath all and hath nothing yea can only give that without which nothing is possest therefore alone is all things I mean Sapience And is not this the condition of the gods Respice enim mundum Nudos videtis Deos Omnia dantes nihil habentes What can he desire more in the world who phylosophying better than possessing hath made the world his patrimony The things which are so much ours as Fortune and chance left them us are more others than our own more lent than possest and make us no more happy than the image of a man makes the Statue To know the world saith Manilius this is to possesse it in such sort that to every Demetrius which shall ask us Quid capta Patria superfuerit nobis We may with the same Megarensis answer Nullum vidi qui res meas anferret To Pilgrims not only a little sufficeth but much is troublesome To a man whose thoughts are not confined between his own walls as the center is included in the circumference but alwayes with the Wings of the Mind displayed and addressed thither where the desire of knowing new things calls him whereby he becomes a stranger not only to his home but also to himself and is rather where he is not than where he dwells Can it be a dishonour or prejudice to him to want that which as a Pilgrim would be as well of impediment as of weight From whence Seneca formeth the Aphorism Si vis vacare animo aut pauper sis oportet aut pauperi similis But behold an Eloquent Platonick who whether by way of reproof or derision I know not was opposed with a publique accusation how that Poverty was either dishonourable or culpable If thou answered he to the Accuser wert as much a Phylosopher as thou art a rich man thou wouldest understand that I being poor am the rich man and thou being rich art the poor man Namque is plurimum habet qui minimum desiderat habet enim qâ— antum vult qui vult minimum idcirco divitiae non melius in suâ—do in â—oenore quà m in ipso hominis aesâ—imantur animo In the Sea of this life the tempests and billows contrast not those that are full fraight to keep them from their Port but them that sail unladen This simple coat that covers me or this plain staff I lean on render they me contemptible Tell me what more had Hercules son of Jove Conquerour of the World and a Demi-god Ipse Hercules illustrator Orbis purgator â—erarâ—m gentium domitâ—r is idquam Deus cum terras peragraret paulò prius quam in Coelum ob virtutes adscitus est ne que una pelle uestitior fuit neque uno baculo comitatior Yea even the Supreme Gods themselves what have they in their Kingdome with which they are rich Large veins of mettals from which they extract gold and silver Oceans in which they fish for pearls Couchyla's out of which they presse purple Kingdomes vassals and liege people from whom they
extract tribute Or else without having other than themselves but being in themselves alone blessed do they not seem poor because they have nothing and are rich forasmuch as they have need of nothing Igitur ex nobis cui quam minimis opus sit is erit Deo similior Let therefore Socrates the poor but Socrates the Learned go through all the Marts and Ports of the World beholding particularly the immense abundance of those goods of which riches and honours make vaunt blessed with that which he knoweth not careful for what he hath not and let him say and all his Compeers repeat it with him Quam multo ipse non egeo Alexander lamented with brinish tears when he heard the Phylosopher Anaxagoras assert that Nature either as avaritious would not or as sterril could not produce more then one VVorld it having neither measure to its power nor 〈…〉 to its will so that in the spaces of its immensity it hath not produced the numbers of infinite and equalled its being to its utmost power and answered to the â—dea's of immensurable VVorlds with the workmanship of each of them Alexander possest not one alone of so many 〈…〉 was and therefore exclaimed 〈…〉 Immanium ferarum modo quae 〈…〉 git fames mordent Yet 〈…〉 Grecia Persia of the India's 〈…〉 Regnum multa Regna conjecit but 〈…〉 his poverty by his want and so much he wanted as he did desire Quid euim interest quot cripuerit Regna quot dederit Quantum terrarum tributo premat Tantum illi deâ—st quantum cupit Alexander therefore is poor and in the riches of half the World hath nothing because half the World is nothing in comparison of the infinite Worlds which he desired But in the mean-time Crates a learned man which had no more but himself and a tattered Phylosophical mantle with which he covered himself more to conceal his nakednesse then to reveal himself to be a Phylosopher lived in the earth like a Jupiter in heaven more rich with the much he had not then Alexander with that all which he possest Flet Alexander propter insinitos mundos ab Anaxagoras auditos cum Crates pera palliolo instructus vitam ta quam festivitatem quandam per jocum risum ageret Would you know justly how to describe that famous Diogenes which drew to him not so much to visit as to admire him Alexander by whom he was sought to and for whom he did not care Supra enim eminere visus est infra quem omnia jacebant You shall take from Claudian a symbolical image but which more livelily will defigure him then if Apelles himself had drawn him Lapis est cognomine Magnes Discolor obscurtis vilis Non ille reperam Caesariem regum non candida virginis ornat Colla nec insigni splendet per ciâ—gula morsu Sed nova si nigri videas miracula Saxi Tunc superat pulchros cultus quidquid Eois Indus littoribus rubra scrutatur arena His hispid beard uncombed hair his deformed visage his ragged cloaths his rude and clownish manners his extreme poverty did they not make him seem like a naked black heavy ill-shapt piece of stone More over a Tub was his house yea was to him as if he had all the world because of all the world he would have no more then that He turned it at his pleasure scoffing at the celestial Spâ—eres and Fortunes wheel became neither these with their periods nor this with its praecipices could oppose the revolutions oâ— his Tub nor either the heavens give any good to him that covers nothing or fortune take it from him that being naked can be spoiled of nothing But in a man so ill accoutred and so ill lodged whence such virtue and one so potent I will say magnetisme that he obscure and beâ—garly couâ—d draw to him the most illuâ—trious and most wealthy Monarch of the World thanks Phylosophy that in Diogenes as a Sun covered with a cloud or a Venus clothed like a Satyre shined â—orth so as to be able to allure such a King and wrap him into admiration and obsequâ—e of a ragged beggar What though 〈◊〉 be a beggar Let his riches be put in balance to counter poise that of the richest Alexander Diogenes of all that the Macedon offered him accepted nothing because he needed nothing Alexander who wanted even that which he had because he wanted what he would desired to be transformed into and to become Diogenes Therefore Diogenes Multo potentior multo lucupletior fuit omniae tunc possidente Alexandro Plus enim erat quod hic noâ—et accipere quam quod hic posset dare Therefore Learning and contented poverty in whom they do unite compose that happy temper of the Golden Age when free from all fear of losse every one lived pleased with that which was his namely content with himself and so far rich as he needed nothing namely desired not riches Thus Palemon and Crates two friends two Phylosophers two beggars were by Archesilaus for their honour called Reliques of the Golden Age. And between others riches and their own poverty they lived like that friend of Seneca Non tanquam contempsissent omnia sed tanquam aliis habenda permisissent The rich are not so blinded with the splendor of their gold that they see not at least in part the worth of these goods A poor learned man appeareth among rich ideots as rags among silks frieze amongst purple the meagernesse of a face consumed by study and made pale with looks amongst plump and ruddy faces Those look on themselves as sheep covered with golden wooll and the other as a great god among the ancients graven in a homely stone or imprinted in clay but therefore no lesse honourable than if they were cast in gold and in-laid with pearl That adventurous Ship which first of all past the large Straights of Megallanes which steered it environed all the earth whence it was called Victory returning into Europe and drawn into the Port was beheld by all as the second Argo of the World Those ribs which had been of proof against the batteries of storms of till-then-unseen Oceans those faithful sails at the encounter of strange winds that rudder that mast those sail-yards in fine all its parts were judged worthy of the noblest stars in heaven since she had overcome the elements and made conquest not of a fleece but world of gold Nor did her being in part defaced with weakned mast dislocated yards disarmed sides tattered sails faln poup render her lesse valuable and beautiful The other ships well rigg'd beheld her with a certain envy and those impressions which the tempests and the long voyage had made in her as scars in a Martial Captain they esteemed more honourable then that beauty with which they were adorned To her they struck sail vailed yards bowed Ancients they full of merchandise and rich with gold the Victory empty
parte transmittit nec aliud quam sub tecti unius amplexu ex alio in alium thalamum transivisse cogitat Let the Athenians mock Antisthenes because he hath never a house in the World but all the World is his Inne and he shall laugh at them Quia quasi cochleae sine domibus nunquam sunt He shall live in the champain as the Semi-gods in the Elizium fields in which Nulli certa domus Let Diogenes be thrust out of Sinope he will be as thankful to his banishers as Theseus to Hercules his Deliverer when he fetcht him by force from that unhappy stone on which his punishment was ingraven Sedet aeternumque Sedebit And from that loathsome idlenesse which alone sufficed to him for a great Hell instating him in his Primitive Liberty Let the scoffers jeer his Exile he will answer My Citizens have condemned me to go out of Sinope and I have condemned them to stay there The Wise man knew that they were more Exiles because banished from all the rest of the World they were confined to one City then he which excluded from one City had all the World for his country Being far from Sinope he beheld it as he that cast away in a sudden tempest at Sea and driven by the waves to a rock sees from those cliffs others shipwracks and caling his misfortunes felicities desireth not the Ocean which tosseth them but abhorreth it nor doth he envie such who perish in it but pittieth them Would you see a picture or rather only a rough draught of the hand of the worthiest Seneca which sets out to the life the state the imployments the ordinary pastimes of the greatest part of men in their Cities Behold a world of people which though they be continually busied yet doing nothing and that are lesse idle while they sleep then while they labour Horum si aliquem exeuntem domo interrogaveris Quò tu Quid cogitas Respondebit tibi Non inâ—ae Herculè scio Si aliquos videbo aliquid agum Sine proposito agantur quaerentes negotia nec quae destina verunt agunt sed in quae incurrerunt Did you never observe a long rabble of Ants one after another busily clime up a stump till they got to the top as if they would have toucht the very heavens and saluted the stars and then dismount themselves by the other part and so return to the earth His plerumque similem vitam agunt quorum non immeritò quis inquietum inertiam dixerit Hi deinde dâ—mum tum supervacua redeuntes Lassitudine jurant nescisse se ipsos quare exierint ubi fuerint postero dic erraturi per eadem illa vestigia And can it be matter of grief or sorrow to one who hath eyes of Sapience in his head just esteemers of truth to be excluded from such a placeâ— And would not he rather say to those that stay there behind that which Stratonicus lodging in Zerif said to his Host who asking what crimes they punished with banishment and understanding that false dealers were punished with exile And why said he doe not you all turn Cheats to be delivered from hence But when afterwards in leaving ones a mattock his rams into plows horses into oxen trenches into fences ditches into furrows the ranging of squadrons to martialling of trees to routing of armies to rooting up of thorns in fine combats into labours and victory into harvest Yet he made not the fences about his farme so thick but that the troubles of Rome might penetrate them Nor did his rusticity so diâ—guise him that publicke cares knew him not to torment him The voluntary banishment which he took against his will from his ingrateful Country going thence that he might not be thrust from thence so reteined against them in-kindled in his heart ever after a disdain that it extinguisht not with the expiration of his life but the flame perpetualliz'd it self in his ashes buried far from his ingrateful Country Behold here the advantage of a great mind above a great heart A man of high knowledg and of as hardy a wit as Scipio was of his hands abandoned and bereft of Rome would have said as Socrates when turned out of Athens Mihi omnis terra eadem mater omne coelum idem tectum totus mundus est patria He would have cheerfully left the City of Romulus and entered as Musonius said that of Jove not environed with a circle of wals but inclosed with the vast convex of the Heavens so ample that there all Languages are spoken because it comprehends all the Nations of every Climate and so noble that its Senators are the gods of Heaven and its people are even the Senators of the Earth He would have got out of Rome as the little Rivolets which from the narrow banks between whose confines they ran miserably straightned through the earth in their falling into the Sea were they lose not themselves as the Vulgars believe of rillets that they were before scarce having one small stream of water they themselves become Seas and distending as far as it inlargeth may be said to touch the ends of the one and the other World But vertue will have us possess a great Mind that should eface the sordidness of loving more the servitude of one corner of the earth than the libertie of thoughts and affects which makes it Mistriss of tho World He that is separated from his Country let him imitate the Moon which the farther it is from the Sun the fuller it is of light and seeing the increasements and acquist's of new knowledg which he makes in the Domestick use of Men greater than himself he can doe no lesse than say as Alcibiades cast out his Country and received by a forreign King with the offer of three great Cities at his first reception Perieramus nisi periissemus Oh how much is Wisedom obliged to voluntary and compulsive exilements Pallas with this hath made other manner of acquist's than when she sailed in the Argonautick ship to the conquest of the Golden Fleece Before the Art of Navigation was in use the World was half unknown half un-cultivated all barbarous Sua quisque piger littora norat Patrióque Senex factus in arvo Parvo dives nisi quas tulerat Natale solum non norat opes Who then had or knew what it was to have all the World The Sea was idle the Winds unprofitable Heaven few were there that did behold it none that made use of it Nondum quisquam sydera norat StellÃsque quibus pingiter aether Non erat usus Now all the World is made one only Kingdome whereas before every Kingdom seemed a World Each place is neither deprived of others nor covetous of her own whilst that each transporteth into another that wherein it self abounds making all the earth but one body where one part readily succoureth the necessities of an other Now the whole heaven is but one Roofe and
live till they had finished their Dispute Seneca did not he once as himself relateth run from the ague that sought him flying in the hour of its accession to hide himself in the most secret speculations of Phylosophy Angelical St. Thomas was not moved with the smart of a burn which he had received casually in that he prudently reflected with profound study upon his wonted lucubrations Your body is confined to a bed let your mind preserve its liberty and you shall be the less present to your sufferings by how much by this you are absent Illud est quod imperitos in vexatione corporis male habet Non assueverunt animo esse contenti Multum illis cum corpore fuit Ideò vir magnus ac prudens animum deducit à cor pore multum cum meliore ac divina parte versatur cum hac querula ac fragili quantum necesse est He would say and he speaketh there of the Wise Infirm that he is as a Compass which if it hath one of his feet immoveably fixed it with the other moves about describing greater or lesser Circles according as it is more or less distant from the Center But behold in one only man the precepts of all these In the beholding of Possidonius a Wise sick-man you will find what I have said to be authenticke that Learning and Wisedom bear up the sick-bed in an inundation of infirmities as the Crocodiles their nests upon that of Nilus This was a Phylosopher a long time un-healthy and laden with more diseases than members for in every part of the body he had many ails and had he been sub-divided into many men he could have made a compleat Hospital of all Diseases whereas being all summ'd up in him alone they hardly made one sick man Thanks to the fortitude of his mind which supplied the imbecility of his body and the anguish of his crazy limbs did no more penetrate his heart than the dart transfixeth the bowels of an Eliphant which is repulsed by his skin so that Tot jaculis unam non explent vulnera mortem Viscera tuta latent penitùs That grand proof of Roman valour which Mutius Scevola gave to King Porsenna when more resenting the errour he had committed than the burning of his hand beheld it un-dauntedly to burn in the fire when as he could not endure without impatience to erre in his body to the so great astonishment of the king his enemy that he was constrained not only to commend his murtherer in the middest of his repentance for not having slain him but to be also his champion against himself taking the fire from under that hand which merited light and was more worthy of a palm for his error than he would have been for his blow This I say was one only act upon one only hand for a short time in a man worthy of death in a man bitterly offended with himself Posidonius so many years in his bed as Anaxarchus in a morter tormented in one part after another and consumed by his dolours surviveth the continual death which he endured only to be the longer dying and beheld himself and his miseries with not only dry but cheerful eyes and took those very pains as subjects to Phylosophate upon methamorphosing his Chamber into a Schoole and his Bed into a Chair In a word he did as the Moon which though it be in eclips lose his light yet it loseth not the course of its revolution but prosecuteth its motion although shee be not so full of light as before Men flockt from all parts about Rhodes to hear and see a man which from his own wounds took Balsome for others and more admirers had he lying upon a bed than that famous Colossus of brass erected upon the entrance of the Port for the glory of Rhodes and miracle of the World Pompey the Great passed into Greece and drawn by the Fame of Posidonius desired to see him and he came just at the instant when he was more than ever under the anxions pangs of his dolours He came he saw and he was overcome Pompey seemed the patient compassionating the torments of Posidonius Posidonius seemed the healthful man discoursing amply with Pompey and proving the verity of this argument Nihil bonum est nisi quod honestum sit and with such cheerfulness of face and constancy of mind did he doe it that lacerated with torments instead of groning he smiled and when others would have plaid the beast he said Nihil agis dolor quamvis sis molestus nunquam te esse confitebor malum Thus Sapience which is the quintescence of the noblest learning can better than the Stygian Lake did Achilles render the mind impenetrable to the wounds of the body and hold it so far alienated from all sense of its sufferings by how much it knows how to employ the thoughts about more pleasing objects So that be the Wiseman poor be he in prison be he banished be he sick behold in two words the remedy for each of these diseases Pauper siā inter plures ero Exul fiam Ibi me natum putabo quò mittar Aligabor Quid enim Nunc solutus sum ad hoc me natura grave corporis mei pondus abstrinxit Moriar Hoec dicis Desinam aegrotare posse desinam alligari posse desinam mori posse Thus have I glanced at the happiness of a Learned man by what may be taken from himself but because this little light which I have been able to give to so illustrious a matter may appeare yet cleerer I will draw its shadow neer it and if I have made you see Wisdom to be happy though in misery now I will prove Ignorance to be miserable though in felicity Ignorance miserable although in Felicity Ignorance and Sanctity SAnctity is a pearl of so great a value of so inestimable a price that then when it is not set in Gold when it shines not among the lights of the understanding among the rayes of the Sciences it diminisheth not at all in worth nor is it lesse esteemed by that great Merchant which gave all he had for it In Gods ballance is weighed not the goodliness of the understanding but the goodness of the Will nor is he taken with acute fancies but with ardent affections Wretched Lucifer knows this who having the flames and splendor of Wit but wanting the ardor of Love ambitious to become the Sun of Paradise became the Prince of infernal darkness and praecipitating with the other Stars which fell from Heaven manifested how far deeds excel knowledge whilst the ignorant men of the earth climbe thither from whence the learned Angels from Heaven fell God never desired any mans head yet he desires every mans heart nor doth he dictating to the pen of the great Chronóloger Moses the Creation of the world take care to teach how many are the number of the Stars how great is the masse of the Heavens what
the vertue of their aspects and whether they derive their light from the Sun or have the fountain of it in themselves By what wayes the Planets move whence come the spots of the Moon and the causes of Eclipses If the Heavens be solid if the Sun be hot how the Rainbow is painted how the winds run through the air Who moveth the Sea with fluxes and re-fluxes who makes the earth to quake Quae nihil ad nos saith St. Ambrose quasi nihil profutura praeteriit He said only so much as sufficed to infuse into the judgment the fundamentals of Faith he dictated onely so much as was necessary to be known for the accomplishment of his Law the rest he omitted as if Marcescentis sapientiae vanitates And the Wisdom of the Father his living Word the great exemplar of all the Idea's came he in the School of a stable upon the chair of a Manger in the assembly of Oxen and Asses to teach in the silence of mid-night with the voice of his groanes the occult verities of humane Phylosophy Liv'd he in the Licëum a Professor of Learning a Maintainer of Disputes a Writer of Sciences Or yet did he discover the least letter that may be pronounced did he in this as said St. Augustin very finely make so much as Jotaunum which is the least letter yea or Unus apex that is lesse than the least of all the Letters He came its true to convince the Phylosophy of the Academi's and Licëum's of Ignorance and to make the Wisdom of the World to appear foolishness but he used not therefore sublimness of stile nor quaintnesse of pelligrine discourses With the simple word of his mouth Fecit latum de sputo using parables and a manner of speech not only vulgar but rude and with this restored sight to our but dim-sighted eyes And for Apostles the Legislators of the World the Oracles of true answers who did he elect who did he call The rude and ignorant taught with no other voices than of hoist the sailes weigh anchor make to shoare learnt them in the Mariners school Yet saith Theodoret with the Solecismes of these illitrates he confounded the Syllogismes of the Phylosophers Thus God honoured Sanctity without Learning by how much the purer by so much the fairer By how much the lesse exhal'd by speculations so much the more plentiful and abundant in affections He knows much yea knows all that knows no other than onely God He that knows not this howbeit he knows every thing else knows nothing whereupon according to Origen that bad Politician and worse Priest Caiphas spoke the truth to the Hebrew Senators sworn enemies of Christ Vos nescitis quidquam Verè enim nihil noverant qui Jesum veritatem ignorabant Lord give me the merits of so great a glory as that wherewith St. Gregory honoureth that good Monk Steven of whom he saith Erat hujus lingua rustica sed docta vita Lord teach me and discover to me thy self I desire to know no other and I will leave with the Samaritan the Well of humane Wisdom that springs from the earth and also the pitcher of desire of ever any more thirsting for it Hitherto I have spoken in others language not with my own and said that not which is absolutely true but which some preach as true some I say qui ad inscitiae praetextum faith Nazienzen in alleding themselves to be the disciples of Fishermen condemn the Sciences in others which they desire not or indeed rather know not how to have in themselves An Ecclesiastick that could read no other Books understand no other Phylosophy then that of his revenue and defended himself with this shield of the Apostle which saith Learning is a venom and pâ—st litter a enim occidit thus he interpreted that text moved Sir Thom as Moore either in derision or for his correction to write upon him this Epigram but in him alone to how many doth he speak Magna Pater clamas Occidit littera In ore Hoc unum Occidit littera semper habes Cavisti benè tu ne te ulla occidere poss it Littera Non ulla est littera nota tibi That Sancâ—ity without Learning is very precious and excellent there is none will deny That its better to be a holy man than a wise man who doubts but that it s not better to be a Saint and a Scholar than a Saint alone I know no man that can with reason question it To be as Christ said of the great Baptist Lucerna ardens lucens in whom the light is united with the fire and the heat with the splendor which is that very Perfectum of S. Bernard in whom both parts concurre Lucere ardere To have as the Holy Animals of Ezekiel Manus sub pennis namely the works of the hands and the desires of the mind To carry in the mouth as the Spouse the Hony combes cultivated by Heaven and of the Earth with the Honey of eternal life for himself and with the Wax tapers of Sciences Illuminators of others To unite as in the Ark the Law and the Manna as in Paradise the Tree of Life with that of Wisedom finally to Love and to Know is not this upon earth the type of the Beatitudes of Heaven is it not worthy to be the Throne of that great Monarch and God which sits upon the Cherubims and rides upon the Wings of the Wind One of the most signal honours God doth bestow upon his favourites is the gift of the Sciences For if by giving to Abraham one letter of his name he did him so extraordinary a favours Ut quemadmodum reges saith Chrysostome praefectis suis tabellas aureas tr adunt signum videlicet principatus sic Deus justo illi in honor is argumentum unam literam deder it What shall we say of him to whom Gods adds not onely a letter to the name but great Sciences to the mind making him the liker to himself the perfecter he is in understanding The Spouse craved nothing before this beginning the Canticles with demanding a kiss which was in effect to require that her Husband would be her Master and with his Love to give also Learning that in the union of the lips this in the impressions of the speech Petit osculum saith the Interpreter St. Bernard id est Spiritum Sanctum invocat per quem accipiat simul scientiae gustum gratiae condimentum Et benè scientiae quae in osculo datur cum amore recipitur quia amoris indicium osculum est Those that are thus priviledged are the â—ilii Lucis called as Beda interpreteth it by the illustrious name of Day in that place where the Prophet saith Dies Dei eructat verbum per diem enim accipimus limpidissimum lucidissimum ingenium ad divina contemplanda habentes And as according to the saying of St. Ambrose Ipse est Dies filius cui
Parva sed apta mihi sed nulli obnoxia sed non Sordida parva Meo sed tamen aere domus That we ought not to assume anothers argument but rather to invent new of our own IF the desire to become immortal to posterity by the Presse did but as much whet the wit unto invention of matter of ones own as it sharpneth ones tallons to prey upon that of another many who as convicted for Plagiaries have lost their time been confiscated of their reputation would have eternalized the one and the other And oh how much more would Learning flourish and in how many better imployments might we spend our time our Studies and our wits if leaving this sordid work of changing Quadrata rotundis and putting that in the margent which others insert in the body of their works all the bent of our thoughts should be set upon enriching the Arts and Sciences with some new Discoveries which being unknown to the Ancients may be beneficial to succeedings ages One only such a Leafe would suffice to merit that honour to which many times monstrous Volumes but vainly pretend Yea the only inquisition after novel inventions although we succeed not to investigate them is not without its applause as not being without benefit Plurimum enim ad inveniendum contulit qui speravit posse reperire And one that is agitated by generous thoughts had rather by himself trace on t a way to Heaven than to tread in others tracks on earth so that he may say with the Poet. Libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps Non aliena meo pressi pede But in short although its easier for him to fall who attempteth to sore into Heaven than for him that contents himself to pore on the Earth yet that Magnis tamen excidit ausis hath so much of glory as that the honour of having ascended out weighs by far the disgrace of being precipitated And even to these our dayes the generous andacity of young Icarus that flying even touch'd the Stars hath more admirers of his mounting than scorners of his fall Stivaeque innixus arator Vidit obstupuit quippe aethera carpere possit Credidit esse Deum And for my part considering that without either fall or trip its hard going in the high way since that in many things our judgment consists more in believing than knowing more in not seeing the errors which we have than in not having them I have the same resentment in Learning which that freind of Seneca had in another sense Si cadendum est mihi coelo cecidisse velim I would have our wits doe to our thoughts as the Eagle doth with her Chickens which before that as yet they have distended their plumes and fixed their wings for flight throwes them from their nest to shift for themselves as if she should say Ye are now well feathered Eagles and sit ye here idle hovering over your nest Ye have tallons and beaks and are ye not ashamed to be still fed like so many young Swallows Go for shame and dig your livings out of others bowels for now you are armed for now you are Eagles Every thought that had not atendency to the invention of new experiments in Learning Hyppocrates esteemed besides the mark to which the Learned ought to direct all the lines of their Studies He alloweth not that we should piece together the reliques of dead Authors quasi bona naufragantium but that we should set sail to the acquist of new Merchandises whereby we may inrich the World and gain glory to our selves Mihi verò invenire aliquid eorum quae nondum inventa sunt quod ipsum notum quam occultum esse praestat scientiae votum opus esse videtur Oh how many seeking things not before found have found things not before sought The only desire of converting some baser Metal into Gold how hath it sharpned the conceit and refined the wit insomuch that thereby those rare miracles of Nature are found which the Art of Chymistry knows how to produce And what mines of fundamental experiments of a true natural Phylosophy are there that discover not themselves in them till in times to come there be some who know how to work them discoursing from the experiences of the effects to the first originals of their causes And it falls out in this saith a brave Man as to those recited by Aesop that seeking Gold which their Father dying said he had buried in a field all fell of diging it whereby the field of sterile that it was before became fruitful not yeilding them Gold but instead thereof a very plentiful crop equivalent to much Gold Truth is not now barren although she was so prodigal in teaching our Ancestors Etiam quicunque sunt habiti mortalium sapientissimi multa scisse dicuntur non omnia They studying have not fish'd all the pearls speculating have not discovered all the tracts of truth Worthy and famous they were its true but not like Hercules so as that they have found or prescribed bounds to nature beyond which as pillars it is not lawful for men to passe Patet omnibus veritas saith the Moralist nondum est occupata multum ex illa etiam futuris relictum est And as the Spartans said that neither Rivers nor Mountains assigned bounds to their Kingdom but that it extended it self as far as one could throw a dart in like manner the Arts and Sciences distend themselves as far as the acutenesse of our wits can enlarge them It is not here as in the Ocean In which Alexander the Sixth drew from Pole to Pole a line crosse one of the Isles of Capo Verde and assigned bounds to the Navigations of the Castillians thence to the West and of the Portugals thence to the East Patet omnibus veritas Some of the Ancients would have drawn this line between the Greek and Latine Poesie whereupon Horace that would pass it interweaving to himself in a Crown the Lawrels of Athens with those of Rome in that he made the Greek Lyrick Poetry to be heard upon the Latine Gittern was by the more part of the Ancients reprehended and his compositions rejected as children of a Bastard Muse and Hermophroditical Monsters This necessitated that Poet to commend his own style in the defence of his Muse and under the pretence of his own vindication to publish the crimes of others envy and malice saying That the opposition of his composures proceeded not so much from the love of others ancient eligancy as from the envy of his modern grace That they in his knowledg condemned their own ignorance being ashamed to learn from him a youngman that which they being old were notable to find out That this was the original of all his emulators malice Vel quia nil rectum nisi quod placuit sibi ducunt Vel quia turpe putant parere minoribus quae Imberbes didicere senes perdenda
the tempests of the Seas which it before all other ships did navigate came to take port in Heaven where now it s inriched with as many Stars as before it did carry Heroes Mari quod prima cucurrit Emeritum magnis mundum tenet acta procellis Servando Dea facta Deos. Thus after a thousand others in this last age Gallileus an Academick truly Lincean both for the eye of his wit and for that of his Perspective Tube with which he hath rendered the Commerce of Earth with the Heavens so familiar that the Stars which were before hid no longer disdain to appear and suffer themselves to be seen and those which were before seen discover to us not only their beauties but also their defects At the foot of the Sepulchre of this most acute Linx might be ingraven in lamentation that which the Poet in derision said of Argus Arge jaces quodque in tot lumina lumen habebas Extinctum est centumque oculos nox occupat una Thus Christopher Scheiner which from the motions of the Faculae and the Maculae of the Sun hath found by Astronomy and Phylosophy Coelestial Lights of so noble rare and authentick verity as are the double motion of the Sun that in the fashion of a Top firmly revolves in it self and on the Poles of his Axis that moving at the same instant in two Circles ordinately curve it whence ariseth the variety of appearances that the Spots therein make Moreover and besides the rational conjectures which are drawn from the conception birth increase return sometimes and decrease of the spots to define what is the substance and nature of the Sun it self VVherewith he hath so inrich't the VVorld with sublime experiments that if every age should afford the like few ages would suffice to make Astronomy as absolutely Mistris of the Heavens as at this day Geography is of almost all the Earth Macti ingenio este coeli Interpretes rerumque naturae capaces argumenti repertores quo Deos Hominesque vicistis VVorthies to whom as to that Ancient Meton that left as a legacy to posterity graven in a Column with lines of exact proportion the various course of the Sun should be erected as reward of eternal honour Statues with tongues gilded and underneath this inscription Ob divinas praedictiones VVorthies to whom Heaven should be given not as heretofore the Emperour Carolus Quintus gave only in picture the Stars of the Crosier a Constellation so called to Oviedus the Historian of the American affaires but it self for a reward and her Stars for a Crown And well do they deserve them Admovere oculis distantia sydera nostris Aethereaque Ingenio supposuere suo I have instanced only in these two that so I might not overpass all since I could not speak of all Only to us that succeed these ought that of Seneca to be inculcated that Agamus bonum patrem familiae Faciamus ampliora quae accipimus Major ista haereditas à me ad Posteros transeat Multum ad huc restat operis Multumque restabit nec ulli nato post mille secula praecluditur occasio aliquid adhuc adjiciendi I shall only add thus much that to become Inventors of new things we must not make our selves Masters of Novelties wandring without reason especially in things that are meerly Natural from those wayes which beaten already so many ages by the best wits of the VVorld have upon their Confines for such as passe them Temerity and Error Nor do as Diogenes going contrary to the current of all men as if we alone were the Sages we alone dived to the bottom of Heraclitus VVell to fetch up Truth Should we esteem of the Sun of the VVits of the VVorld not by the light of their greater knowledge of the truth but by our opposition to the course of all the World and could we say in a vaunt what Apollo spake by way of advice to his Son Phaēton Nitor in adversum neque me qui caetera vincit Impetus rapido contrarius evehor orbi we ought also from him to hear that without peril of precipitation we cannot deviate from those direct paths which trodden by the Chariot of the Light are made no lesse obvious than clear Hac sit iter manifesta rotae vestigia cernes That the Earth with an annual period revolves under the Ecliptick and with a daily motion turns from VVest to East That the Moon yea all the Planets no other but voluble Earth have inhabitants people of different nature That the World consists of infinite Masses or Chaoses and in its immense Vasts comprehendes innumerable VVorlds c. These are Opinions that some Moderns have fondly raised from their Graves calling them back the first from the Sepulchres of Cleanthes and Phylolaus the second of Pythagoras and of Heraclitus the third of Democritus and Methrodorus with whose death they had been so many ages buried in Silence and Oblivion This is not to inrich the World with new cognitions but with old errors nor to make ones self Master of those that follow us but Disciple of those that precede us with this remuneration that those very dreams of theirs which were not blindly received by the World shall in like manner sleep with us in our Sepulchres How we may honestly and commendably steal from others Writings BUt I find I have enterprized too difficult a task whilst I pretend to divert our thoughts from the taking feloniously from others with proposing to them both the obligation of enriching Learning with new inventions and the guerdon that in so doing we acquire Much better it were that I should teach That we may borrow with a good Conscience and not only without necessity of Restitution but also with the Merit of Commendation All the thefts of light made upon the wheels of Apollo's Chariot which are if I do not ill augurate the Books of the most celebrious Wits upon which Truth shines triumphs that condemn not the offender to the Rocks of Caucasus and the Eagle of Prometheus There is an impunity of taking provided we take not as the Moon from the Sun which when it most approches it and most replenisheth it self with his light in perfect Novi-lunii ingratefully eclipseth it but as he that in a Mirrour of pure Christal receiveth a Sun beam and with that doth not only not diminished it of light but rather renders it with the reflexion the more splendid and glorious Thus the Bee equally ingenious and discreet Candida circum Lilia funduntur But so innocent is their Rapine that without diminishing the odour without violating the beauty without breaking the pods of the Flowers they abundantly gather Wax and Hony for themselves and others The first way to Borrow with applause is to Imitate with Judgment He that is not a Giant of high stature let him climbe to the top of a great turret and thence inform himself of the
the World with other Lights but that they must shine among the Stars Did it not suffice that they were published to all the Earth in Marble in Brasse in Pictures in publick Scenes unlesse also moreover they had given them the Heavens for a Theater the Stars for Representors and the World for Auditors And afterwards to tell you that Jupiter from Heaven sent his Thunder-bolts against the Earth guilty of those vices of which Heaven was the Master An Adulterous Calista hath the Stars of the Pole and makes a double guide because in directs by Sea and shipwracks by Land whilest shining from thence above it seemes to teach the Chast to be happily Lascivious there being a Jupiter sound that remunerates Adultery with Stars Sic Ariadnaeus stellis Coelestibus ignis Additur Hoc pretium noctis persolvit Honore Liber ut aethereum meretrix illuminet axem From such Constellations of obscenity what other influences then Lascivious can redound to the Earth Architas desiring to speak in publick a word none of the modestest in calling it to his lips it appeareth so unworthy to be ingraven by the tongue of a Man that not to defile himself with it he took for tongue a Cole as more agreeable to the matter worthy of fire and with it not so much writing as blotting upon the surface of a wall either exprest or hinted it Oh! the golden Tongues of the Stars whilest the night charms all the World to silence the better to attend of what speak they and what teach they They publish those misdeeds with the language of light in Heaven which for shame would conceal themselves with darknesse on Earth But I wish that only the Ancient Poetry of Gentilisme was guilty of this and not exceeded by the modern of Christians that not in depainting the Stars with imaginary figures of dishonest memorials but in expressing in paper and which is worse imprinting in the mind the Acts themselves so happily or rather unhappily busieth it self There wants not to the Poetry of these times its Ovids that subjecting Parnassus to Ida the Lawrels to the Mirtles the the Swans to the Doves and Apollo to Cupid make the Virgin Muses publick strumpets So to these Ovids there should not want Augustus's for Mecaenas's and for a refrigeration of their too burning Loves the Snows of Scythia and the Ice of Pontus And herein now a-dayes the evil is so epidemical that from the antecedent of being a Poet this consequence seemes to follow of being Lascivious as Antisthenes from the profession of Ismenia took that consequence Si bonus Tibicen est ergo malus homo est Who would not have sworn that Poetry coming from the Gentiles to Christians should have done as the Spartan Venus which passing the Eurotas said to them that if they would have her company they must break their Looking-glasses deface their Bracelets divest the Whores and not only clothed herself with modesty but armed herself with bravery and seemed rather a Warlick Pallas than a Lascivious Venus Yet that which is yet worse to that liberty of Lascivious writing to which heretofore was given banishment for a punishment honours are now conferr'd for a reward We advance as high as Heaven and amongst the Stars adore those Lyres of the modern Orpheusses that have opened Hell not to draw thence a condemned Euridice but to couduct thither a world of innocents Their Books go through all the Earth spread through every Climate become Citizens of every place and are with great diligence translated that they may speak in all Languages as if for fear the Virgin VVorld should want Ravishers they wonld disperse through every Climate incentives of Lust They bear in their Frontispices the titles of the Grandees to whose name they were by the Authors dedicated and by that means passe so much the more freely by how much the more they are defended Thus many times those come to be the Protectors of Impurity that should be its Judges prostrating their names and authorities to unworthy Uses as the Barbarians of Scythia that whilst they are Lasciviously imployed in their Carts Suspendunt de jugo pharaetras indices ne quis intercedat Ita nec armis erubescunt VVere Hyppocrates now living that complained of the Publick Laws which assigning no punishment to Ignorant Physicians permitted them to be Homicides Discunt enim said that other periculis nostris experimenta per mortes agunt Medicoque tantùm hominum occidisse impunitas summa est VVhat would he say where the being a publick compounder of poison so much the more dangerous by how much the more pleasant makes him not to forfeit his head but to merit a Crown But if in like manner as Lucian made the infamous tongue of the Pseudologist recount with anger and regret the sordid offices in which he was basely imployed we might hear the murtherous Pens of so many Lascivious VVriters to relate one by one the obscenities by committing of which they were insentives in the hearts of such who with too great an intensenesse read their venemous writings would there be a man that would inrich them with costly rewards that would honor them with these applauds fit only for a super-humane excellence Lesse criminal was that libidinous Hostius that using his Mirrours in abominable speculations ea sibi ostenâ—abat quibus abscondendis nulla satis alta nox est But to conclude Sibi ostenâ—abat The Dragons that being poisonous keep themselves secluded in their subteranean Dens are not judged so faulty that we should therefore go hunt them out and slay them VVhen they come abroad to infest the Air with their breath there is none that being able to slay them will suffer them to live To publish to the eyes of all the VVorld Ea quibus abscondendis nulla satis alta nox est and that so much the worse by how much the more exquisite is the Pen that delineates it and the art seems of greater perfection whilest according to the Ancient painting of the Greeks it is wrought Nihil velando and to â—ind a reward of that to which there cannot be found a chastisement grievous enough is not this a miracle of humane I know not which to call the least evil folly or with more reason malignity It is still infamous for a man to assume the habit and face of a woman and to transform a mans self not into the habit but into the profession of an over-grown Hagge Bawde to all the most closely contrived obscenities is this honorable is this a life worthy of Statues and Lawrels The weak excuses of obscene Poets BUt let us hear the Apologies that these make in defence of their impure Books they print that pretend their Fury from the Torch of Cupid shewing themselves more Fooles than Poets Hear their first Apology That facetious and merry Poems thus apud eos tota impuritas vocatur Urbanitas howbeit they only entertain their Readers
of Jappoan to prove the temper of their Scymitars the strength of their armes upon the Carcasses of the condemned How much worse is it under pretence of a sportive skirmish to thrust in ones breast a Daggar no lesse mortal to the reputation of him that receives it than the wound of a Sword would be to his life which as saith Vegetius Duas uncias adactae mortales sunt Yet you must know that the Satyres Fathers and Masters of Satyre are more ugly for being Semi-beasts than beautiful for being Demi-gods and in your mordant taunts that which is ingenious doth not so much please but that which is malicious doth more displease Be these the sublime uses the divine imployments for which Wit was given you To make it of a King that it is a Tyrant and of a Conservator of Civil life a Homicide and Hangman You appropriate that to your selves which an Ancient writ against the cruel Perillus justly complaining that he had debased the innocent Art of forming in brasse the Images of gods and Heroâ—s unto the making of a Murthering Bull to be the Executor or Instrument of the mercilesse sentences of Phalaris In hoc a simulachris Deorum hominumque deâ—ocaverat humanissimam artem Ideo tot conditores ejus elaboraverant ut ex ea tormenta sierent Itaque una de causa servantur opera ejus ut quisquis illa videat oderit manus The ordinary punishment of these is to be beloved by none shunned by many hated by all To bring upon themselves the infamous title of a Satyrist a Detractor a Buffoon who might bear in their fore-heads that ancient Distich extracted from a Greek Epigram Si meus ad Solem statuatur Nasus hianti Ores benâ— ostendet dentibns hora quota est Diogenes the Band-dog of Cynick Phylosophers had his palace rather kennel in a Tub. This was the Heaven which he revolved An Intelligence really worthy of such a Sphere This the Cave from which he delivered his Oracles that smelt more of Wine than Truth This the Chair where teaching he undertook to correct others uncomely customes with a miracle if he had succeeded so that a Butt should reduce others to themselves that is wont to make them run besides themselves Whatsoever was the doctrine that he taught which yet was such that Plato called him alterum Socratem sed insanam nevertheless because in that nasty and filthy Butt he mingled the Wine of syncere Phylosophy with the sharp Vineger of a continual malediction he had more Scoffers than Scholars and all Athens lookt upon him as a Dog and shunn'd him as a mad Man And who is there that will hug a Porcupine since he cannot touch it so warily but that it will prick him who would keep company with one to whom as to the Scorpion Semper cauda inictu est VVo would make a friend of a Lion which then when it neither useth paws nor teeth hath so sharp a tongue that even when it licketh it fetcheth blood Better is it to honour them that they may not become enemies sacrificing to them as the Romans did to the Goddesse Febris for then they obliege you when they come not neer you and when they only so far remember you as never to think of you But it would be so slight a punishment for Detractors to be onely shunned and avoided if also they were not persecuted For although sometimes they are subtle in the interests of their lives as to know how much it behoves them not to irritate those that can answer to the Pen with the Sword and to words with deeds but that in the affairs of such they ought to be dumbe if not blind taking thereof an example from certain Northern Cranes that being to passe Mount Taurus take a stone in their mouthes to the end they may not with their chattering wake the Eagles there nested yet it s seldom seen that they are so cunning but that one time or other they do that unawares which they continually do either out of a habit or nature whereby either they make to themselvesâ— as the Silk-worms a prison with their own mouthes or provoke them in whose power it is to crush the Scorpion upon the sore it made bringing to mind by their example the truth of that which Pollio said of Augustus That we ought not Scribere in eum qui potest proscriberâ— They will not alwayes meet with such as will give them money to hold their peace nor such as following the advice of Alphonsus King of Aragon will throw to the Cur medicatis frugibus offam to keep him from barking or at least from biting It was the singular fortune of that Advocate in Martial Quòd clamas semper quòd agentibus obstrepis Helâ— Non facis hoc gratis accipis ut taceas Many times accipiunt ut taceant but they receive something but what I know not upon which they cease to snarle so that they are never heard to speake more which was the reward of that notorious Zoilus who whether he were burnt alive or stoned or crucified in one of these sorts of coyn he was paid the wages of his aspersions against the Prince of Poets He that hath erred in Writing should not refute his confutation And he that is ignorant himself should not undertake to correct or condemn others THere is not a man upon Earth of so clear and Chrystaline a Wit that in receiving the light of Sapience doth not cast some shadow some more some lesse opacious and muddy with Ignorance Our souls said a VVise Ancient fires of themselves all light and clarity being that they are conjoyned to this grosse matter of our bodies which they enliven besides the sloth that attends them are also obfuscated with foggy vapours whereupon like flame confused and intermingled with smoak they lose in great measure the vivacity of their motion and the clarity of their light And from hence is the difficulty in seeking and incertainty of discerning the Truth Therefore hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim of sometimes not hitting the Center without being therefore expulsed the Circle of the Learned like as the Moon although that it be sometimes Eclipsed and darkened yet she is not for this banished from Heaven And to say the truth they are not to be tolerated that either vend their own writings or defend others as Oracles of infallible Truth as Gold of the twenty-fourth Caract without mixture of errour without alloy of falcity As for their own let them hear St. Ambrose that very aptly resembles them to Children to which the love that is born blinds the judgment whereupon the better Fathers they are to them the worse Judges they use to be of them Vnumquemque fallunt sua scripta Authorem praetereunt Atque ut filâ—i etiam deformes delectant parentes sic etiam Scriptores indecoros quoque sermones palpant For those of others let them besides
made a Sun nor would he be any other way depainted or called and it was a crime to behold him without a certain suffering of the eyes as when they are fixed on the Sun Yet that Title would better have fitted him which Tyberius used to give to Appion a Grammarian as himself and no lesse a Bragadocchio then he being empty of understanding and full of Wind and therefore aptly called Cymbalum mundi What think you of that other Remnius rather Pallon than Pollemon that went up and down bewailing the misfortune of the VVorld that should remain after him as it had done before him ignorant in regard learning that was born with him with him also should die And upon the matter it seemed true for he being dead there was not one letter left to make his Epitaph But the proud conceit that the tenth Alphonsus King of Castile had of his Wit and Knowledg surpast the bounds of common yea rather of humane opinionativenesse a man by profession an Astronomer of whom now a dayes those Tables of his called Alphonsine take their denomination not yet of so sublime intelligence nor of such knowledg in this Art that Atlas might have trusted Heaven to his shoulders without endangering a ruine but of so high esteem of his own brain that he used to say That had he been permitted Gods ear when he composed the Heavens and assigned the periods to the Stars he would have contrived this work with more order and with rules of more exact proportion Now God interrogated Job as of a thing transcending the capacity of our wits Numquid nosti ordinem Coeli pones rationem ejus in terra If God would go to School to Alphonsus he offereth himself to be his Master in Astronomy And if he would bring him the Volumne of his eternal Idea's he would blot out he would adjust the Model of the Heavens and the Pattern of the World to a more methodical contrivance Only madnesse could defend this blasphemy from the fulminations of the Heavens where posuit ossuum and indeed God imputed it to his folly using him with more compassion than anger and by letting him blood as a frantick person in the vein in the middle of his fore-head took away his Crown He would give him to understand that he would not have known how to adjust the Revolutions of Heaven to a better form and therefore sent him a Revolution in his Kingdom which he with all the Canons and Rules of his Calculations never knew how to adjust whereupon he came to be deposed by his Son and died an exile in a forreign Countrey Men distracted as Alexarchus as Remnius although perhaps lesse known I doubt not but as in all times so also such there are now a-dayes in the World He that would pourtray them to the life may depaint a great Smoak that advanceth it self even to the Clouds and the more it exalts the more do those its great Volumnes swell and dilate thereto affixing the Motto of Augustine Quantò grandior tantò vanior Hearing them some times speak in their own praise and in under-valuing of others we may know how justly they merit the salute that Philip of Macedon returned to his proud Physician that writ to him Menecrates Jupiter Philippo salutem The answer was Philippus Menecrati sanitatem which was to make himself the Doctor of his Doctor and to send him for the health of his brain a dose of Helibor in a salute You may hear them brag That under their Caps and Gowns the most lofty most profound Sciences are touched as the Pearls are confined to the shels of the Pearl Cockle That their Dictions are the Charts of secure Navigation without which in the Sciences we incurre naufrage or peril That their Documents are at the ultimate extent of Truth as the Stars at their extremity of the Worlds confines so that Altiùs his nihil est haec confinia mundi Others are the Cisterns they the Ocean others Moles they Linxes others Farfalla's they Eagles others Flies they Hearns O Medici mediam contundite venam And if not so at least let them attempt to open the door to let out the wind with which the wretches have their heads so puft up and this may be done by bringing their eyes into the light of some perspicuous verities Such as these 1 Every one fancies his own things being little to be great Self-love is a concaveglasse that represents an Hair to be a Tree and a Gnat to be a Pegasus He that takes Love for a Judg esteemes his matters as that Clitus esteemed a Naval fight in which battering and sinking onely three Grecian Gallies as if he had either routed Xerxes or imposed fetters upon the Ocean from thence-forward he alwayes made himself to be called by the majestick title of Neptune Whence is it that the Moon being forty times lesse than the Earth seemeth to the judgment of the eye equal to the Sun which yet is greater than the Earth almost an hundred and forty times But only because the vicinity of the Moon to the Earth representeth it so much greater as the Sun appears lesser by being more remote But there is nothing so neer to any one as is his own composures thence it is that they seem to them immensurably great and more vast than those of other men which by being besides us and therefore remote from us are much diminished in their appearance 2 Compare a Grass-hopper to an Ant and who doubt but that it would seem a Giant He that measures what he knoweth though very little with what he knoweth who knoweth nothing believes himself to be absolutely when as he is only comparatively most Learned Those that went to study at Athens said Menedemus went thither Doctors continued there Scholars and came away Ignorants Not only because the more they understood that which they knew the more they came to know what they did not understand but also because they met in that most Celebrious Concourse of the Noblest Wits of the World with such to confront their understandings that compared to them they believed they knew nothing This was the Art by which most prudent Socrates corrected the presumption of his Alcibiades who being rich by paternal inheritance and by his acquist of much wealth became so stately as if he had been a Monarch of the World not a private Citizen of Athens He brought him to the knowledg of himself self by a Map of the World in which he found Europe and in it Greece and in Greece with much a-do Athens Now saith he shew me here thy House and thy Fields which having as thou seest no place in the World how comes it that thy head is filled with such contemptible thoughts of the World He that believeth himself to be in Ingenuity and Wit a Star of the first magnitude let him compare himself not with the lesser but with the Suns of
the World and in one and the same instant he shall see his ambition to wane and his light to vanish 3 That one where as he is great among others should desire to be greater than others where as he is one of the first he should desire to be alone is that which may not be suffered in any one more then heretofore it was tolerated in that proud Pompey Qui ut primùm Rempublicam aggressus est quemquam animo parem non tulit in quibus rebus primus esse debebat solus esse cupiebat For though you be excellent in every profession of literature yet are you not a Phoenix alone and singular in the World nor a Primum Mobile that without receiving impression or motion from a Superiour Heaven giveth the motion and revolution to the lesser Spheres Who is there that knows so much that â—thers before him knew nothing so that 〈◊〉 may assume the insolent words of Prince â—alphas Vos nescitis quidquam Nature was â—ot so sterile that you being made she had not the like Molds again to make others Nor so poor that to make you rich in knowledg she should leave others Beggars Wherefore then look you round about you and thinking you see none in the World that may stand in competition with you for knowledge say you foolishly to your selves as Deucalion said to his Companion Nos duo turba sumus Wherefore make you your wit a Procrustes and desire that every one equallize the stature of your Judgment as the Standard of Truth and therefore cut off the feet of those that surpasse you and wrack the feet of those that did not reach to your length But admit you were for ingenuity the first amongst the foremost is it a very inferiour and unworthy thing to be our own Panegyrist and a despiser of others Hear how the Brooks roare and accosting with stones how they rumble that they seem to carry not a Rivolet of water but a Sea yet many times though their channel be a mile their depth is not a palm On the other side the real Rivers no lesse deep than vast with how much I will say modesty do they go to the Sea There is not heard from them the least murmuration that might intimate the profoundity of their bottoms the amplitude of their shores the clarity of their streams or the impetuosity of their currents they move silently and quietly They that carry but a small depth in wit many times it is true but in the judgment alwayes are most intolerably clamorous with their own applauds and the villifyings of others deafen the world whereby before they are aware they make themselves the more contemptible by how much the more they extol themselves for according to the Aphorisin of Symoniacus In magnos animos non cadit affectaia jactatio But because it is the property of Opinionative Wits to use not only Pride on Earth but to exercise Curiosity in respect of Heaven in the first unjust to men to whom they would be undeservedly superiour in the second impious to God whose being whose actions they weigh by the weight and measure by the pole of their short understanding take therefore upon this occasion the subsequent consideration Two great evils of Misbelievers To serch matters of Faith with the curiosity of Phylosophy and to believe matters of Phylosophy with the certainty of Faith GEographers in their Protractions upon Maps or Globes of the Earth when they come to the confines of Countries hitherto discovered having no knowledg of the others that remain are accustomed to draw certain obscure lines at random and in the space that is left to write Terra Incognita Of this custome of Geographers Plutarch makes a very apt use in excuse of his Pen if undertaking to write the lines of certain ancient Hero's he could not one by one particularize the enterprizes with which they acquired the grandure of their names and the glory of Immortals because Antiquity and Oblivion its follower rendered many places unknown many parts of their lives hid and obscure That which Plutarch saith of the actions of those ancient Worthies is equally true of all the great masse of matters which may be comprehended by our capacities Much there is known much rests incognito rather not unknown only but unknowable till such time as we enter into that School where the Word being Master in the Lecture of a bare look teacheth with indeleble and most perspicuous proofs how vainly the Wits now a-dayes stretch and wrack their brains in tracing out new inventions I say the most abstruse Arcaniâ—â— of Faith which are certain if not obvious require an implicit subjection to believe them not an impertinent curiosity to examine them For a man that is of high ingenuity and of vast intellectuals measured with what he presumes to understand it is no more than a shallow ditch for to contein the Ocean For though the speculations and sublime thoughts with which the mind is elevated to the knowledge of the occult truths of Faith be very lofty yet they can bring us no nearer to them than the Giants of Phlegra were to Heaven when they climbed to the tops of Pelion Ossa and Olympus The eye of an Owl is not made to view the Sun on which the Eagle with her adamantine pupil can scarce immoveably fix her sight Fisher-boats with a piece of a sail and half a rudder are not able to furrow the Ocean and discover new Worlds What other are our Intellectuals tied to the clog of the senses but Ostriches of greater bodies than wings whereupon they cannot raise themselves a foot from the ground nor can they otherwise slie then by distending their wings in the Air resting their feet all the while on the Earth But were we better feathered we should reach the Clouds if not the Stars VVhat mind is there what Genius of that lofty knowledge that maketh not to God a Sacrifice of his thoughts upon that famous Altar of Athens dedicated Ignoto Deo and confessing himself unable to understand what God keeps hid of himself and his affairs as it were clipping the wings of his thoughts conformable to the laws of Sacrifice of Birds saith not with Augustine Melior est fidelis ignorantia quà m temeraria scientia The water of a Fountain riseth no higher than the head and spring from whence it flowes whereupon we use to say That water ascends no more than it descends Now our judgment doth it not begin from the Senses and these of what other are they capable than of matter within the bounds of sensible Nature And how do we expect hence Fontem aquae saltentis in vitam aeternam which we interpret of the knowledg of things supernatural and Divine But amongst those which we may call wickedly curious others there are who presume to make themselves Masters of that of which the World hitherto hath had none that have been Scholars and whetting
many objects and discerning their dependency without confounding them according as the humours and their qualities are variously tuned and harmoniz'd together whence more or lesse according to the predominancy of hot and cold dry and moist we have abilities more apt to one than to another Science according to the temper of the qualities that the instruments require for the better disposing them to operation And this ability of power well disposed towards such sorts of objects is the foundation of that which they call Genius Because that there being in every one by natural instinct an in-nate desire of knowing and Nature not erring but being conscious of that which she is to apply us to the desire of as our Good a thing which to obtein we have not power sufficient thence it is that she carrieth us to the desire of that to attein which we are sufficently disposed The proportion therefore of the power to the object and the desire which we have to know of which one applyeth the other determineth causeth that sympathy which we may call the Form of the Genius So that it is not the disposition figure colour nor masse of the members of the body that we should observe as immediate or true testimonies of the Wit in applying any to Learning But from the Acts the most natural testimonies of the Powers we may argue their internal Temper thereby to find to which of the Arts it hath most agreeable proportion Thus since the honey cannot be fetch from its Sourse which is the Stars as Pliny speaks at least let them strive to make it as pure as they can by working it out of those slowers which most resemble them in nature Ibi enim optimus semper ros mellis ubi optimorum doliolis florum conditur Since Science can be enjoyed no otherwise than as faln from Heaven into these terene Bodies at least-wise let them apply themselves to gather it of those which with tempers like to Heaven fiery and subtle but withal stable and regular most symbolize and agree with it AMBITION The folly of many who desirous to seem Learned doe publish themselves in Print to be Ignorant THat insatiate I will not say desire but madnesse which we have of publishing our selves to the World for men of Learning I could wish that it would whet the Wit as well as it sharpens the Pen that so the Sciences might increase in weight as Books increase in number Scarce have we got in the nest of a School the down of the first feathers upon the brain but we already think our selves not only Eagles but Mercuries with Wings on our heads Scarce is there enkindled in us a spark of Wit but presently we desire in Print to shine as Suns and make our selves with a strange Ambition Masters before we be compleatly Scholars Every thought that the mind conceives we think worthy of the light and although many times it is no more than Ridiculus Mus we by all means will call the Press to be Lucina and collect it and keep it not only alive but immortal The Gnats Moths and Flyes of our own brains seem to us worthy to be embalmed as that Bee in Electer and exposed to the sight and admiration of the World Thus Tenet insanibile multos Scribendi cacoethes agro in corde senescit Happy would Learning be if Books also should have their Winter and the leaves of the greatest part of them should fall as the leaves of trees fall every year after Autumn The World would be thereby so much the more wise by how much fewer the number would be of the Masters of Errours and Oracles of Lies How many Books come to hand which bear in their frontispices Inscriptiones propter quas vadimonium deseri possit In perusing the proud promises of their Titles you will ccall to mind either that Verse of Horace Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu or that scoffe with which Diogenes mocked at the great Gate of a little City saying Shut this gate or else the Town will run out at it and leave you without house or home The eye and the hand run with impatience this to turn over and that to read the leaves at cum intraveris Dii Deaeque quà m nihil in medio invenies Affrick which is incompassed with such delightful shoares is within most of it barren sands and naked deserts of gravel The first leaf like that famous Sheet of Parrhasius seems so painted as if it covered a Picture whereupon Zeuxis deceived flagitavit tandem remoto linteo ostendi picturam but in reality there was no other picture than the sheet deluder of the eyes with the lies of the pencil Thus in this is that saying of Seneca verified Speciosa magna contra visentibus cum ad pondus revocata sunt fallunt Books many times deceive as the Apples of Sodom that being fair to look upon have nothing but the hypocrisie of appearance for within they are ashes and smoak and in opening they vanish into nothing Si qua illic poma conantur saith Tertullian oculis tenus caeterum conacta cinerescunt A Learned Man doth indeed deserve great compassioÌ„ that setting himself earnestly to one of these Books which hath nothing but Perspective and appearance findeth that to be a painted Cloud which he believed to be a rich Juno and instead of extracting thence the treasures which he expected he sees that the Book costs him more in regard of the time he unprofitably spends in reading it than it stood him in by reason of the money he gave for it He sisheth therein day and night till that with a Nihil coepimus he casts it away He soares with a curious Wit to the apparance of some singular conceit of some Master-piece of Art but as the Birds that slew to the painted Grapes of Zeuxis if he came with appetite he departs hungry O! to how many Writers which more than once have made the Presse to groan may we repeat that Verse of Ausonius Utiliùs dormire â—uit quà m perdere somnum Atque oleum The wretches have watched many a night to compasse a Book which shall lay a sleep all that read it if their resentments of Choler against the Author keep them not awake To how many Books under the Title they bear in their Frontispiece may we write the name with which Zuazo a Spanish Doctor called a little Desert Isle to which approaching in his Indian Navigation he found neither herb nor any other sustenance therefore he gave it this name Nolite cogitare quid edatis And yet as Saint Ambrose ingeniously calls them Books are the Ports wherein the Soul not only recovereth rest from storms in Lucam but plenty from poverty But take three Reasons only amongst many whence it comes that so many unprofitable Books and devoid of all goodnesse are printed 1 Some think they do nothing if
of the life of him that professeth Learning be such as that of the Ancient Vestals of Rome which was divided into three equal parts In the first they learnt the Rites and Ceremonies as Scholars to the Eldest In the second they practised them as Companions of the midle sort In the last they taught them as Mistresses of the Younger Thus the leaves usher in the blossomes and the blossomes falling with a happy end do knit in fruit The incomparable felicity of Good Authors that appear in Print THe desire of living hath been the Inventeress of a hundred ways of not dying And because Physick hath neither the hearbs of Medea against Old-age nor the Ambrosia of Jupiter against Death but that it s too true as Sydonius saith that many Doctors assistentes dissidentes parùm docti satis seduli languidos mulios officiosissime occidunt we betake our selves to the Arts of Colouring Linnens Ingraving Marbles Founding Brasse erecting Arches Mausoleums and Theaters that so if we cannot long be men yet at least we may be the Superficies of men on Pedestals the images of men in the Inscriptions of Arches and Epitaphs of Sepulchers But there is nothing of our invention as I have above adverted so able to conserve us alive after death as the procreation of Children whereby Nature provideth for the maintenance of the common Species and private desire of every one Mortuus est pater saith Ecclesiasticus quasi non est mortuus simileni enim reliquit sibi post se But howbeit it be true that the Father transfuses himself into his Child that he begets whereby dying he doth not die whilst he liveth still in him yet neverthelesse the Child oft-times so degenerates not only from the looks but from the Genius Customes of the Father that very often it comes to passe As in the Egyptian god Apis that the Father is a Lightning and the Son an Ox. Caused in that the temper of the Issue follows not the will of the agent but the nature of the matter nor doe we make our Children such as we would but such as we may But Books are the Children of the mind Heirs of the better part lively Images of our selves these only are they in whom we have as much of life as we can enjoy after death Contingit saith Cassiodore dissimilem filium plerumque generari oratio dispar moribus vix unquam potest inveniri Est ergo ista valdè certior arbitrii proles They are immortal Sons that make our dying only a cessation from misery to commence in them a life of glory like even as Hercules leaving the earth was received from his Labours into Heaven and in the midst of it he began to shine with the Stars whose body consumed in the flames of the funeral pile seemed reduced to a handful of ashes What so strong support what so stable Basis hath the memory of the names and the glory of the merits of Great Souls comparable to the eternal duration of Books Observe the ruines that time makes in every thing precipitating some and gently gnawing others The Rocks do they not as it were decrepit and bending under the heavy burden of age incline towards the grave and mouldring bit by bit and scattering their divided members rather bones here and there do they not seem to beg a Tomb from their own Vallies Doth not even Iron it self worn away by the rust consume to dust by the Deaffile of Time Once-stately-Edifices now old Carkasses and naked Anatomies not of Fabricks but of ruines if with some fragments of broken walls more falling than standing they keep upon their feet do they not more manifest a Trophee of Time than a testimony of their former greatnesse Where once were the Temples of the Gods Courts of Kings Assemblies of Senators Accademies of Students there can now hardly an Owl nest her self but revenous Wolves have there their Coverts In the mean-time in the midst of the ruines of all the resisting durable things of the World how do the Trophees of great Wits abide In the death of all things even of the lifelesse how live Books or rather how live in Books their Fathers and Writers Let the most Sapient Roman Stoick say it Caetera quae per constructionem lapidum marmoreas moles aut terrenos tumulos in magnam eductos aeltitudinem constant non propagabunt longam diem quippe ipsa intereunt Immortalis est ingenii memoria Let the Poet Martial speak it Marmora Messalae findit caprificus audax Dimidios Crispi mulio ridet equos At chartis nec furta nocent nec secula praesunt Solaque non norunt haec monumenta mori Well may we call Metellus happy who was borne to his Sepulcher upon the shoulders of his four Sons of which two had been one was and the other was a while after to be Consul of Rome This was so superbose a funeral pomp that the Historian admiring it said Hoc est nimirum magis feliciter de vita migrare quà m mori but in fine it was De vita migrare and his Sons though with great pomp yet carried him to the Grave Books alone not four Children but as many as we multiply with the Presse their Father retiring to death and the Sepulcher bear him alive into every place where they come and put him not so much into the hand as into the eye of as many as read him into the mind of as many as understand him And oh how many times he who living in his native Country either un-known or un-regarded so that with much ado he drew to himself the eyes of some few that ook't upon him as a Man of VVit in his Books draws to himself the hearts of a VVorld Like as heretofore the famous Lyre of Orpheus that on Earth saith Manilius ravished the Trees Stones savagâ— Beasts in Heaven whether he was translated drew the Stars after him Tunc sylvas saxa trahens nunc sydera ducit VVitnesse that most pleasing desire that any one hath to know of what semblance were the faces and what the features of those who in paper have stamped so goodly portraitures of their VVits hence proceeds the care of delineating them yea of counterfeiting them when thorow the oblivion of many ages their faces are unknowable Non enim solum ex auro argentove aut etiam ex aere in bibliothecis dicantur illi quoâ—um immortales animae in iisdem locis loquuntur quin imò etiam quae non sunt singuntur pariuntque desideria non tra liti vultus sicut in Homero evenit Quo majus ut quidem arbitror nullum est felicitatis specimen quà m semper omnes scire cupere qualis â—uerit aliquis And not onâ—y so but as oft as the dubious mind knows not how to unknit the knoâ—s of intricate difficulties that wilder the thoughts so oft with desire it runs to covet
quam delectare Concinnas igitur sententias exquirit magis quà m probabiles à re saepâ— discedit intexit fabulas verba apertius transpâ—â—t eaque ita disponit ut pictores varietatem colorum Paria paribus refert adversa contrariis saepissimeque similiter extrema deâ—init c. But the Sublime all Majesty all Empire in that most grateful violence that it offereth to the minds of its Auditors transforming them in all their affects and ravishing them with their consent recollects as much of sublimity in the senses of strength in the reasons of Art in the order of weight in the sentences of ennergy in the words as can be possible It is Ample Eloquent Magnificent A Torrent but most clear a Lightning but regular With excellent variety of Figures with mutations of affections mixt without disorder And as it were a Cloud which in the same day gives out Fire and Water Lightning and Rain Of this Form of Speech I will take in Picture from the design of Quintilian Quae saxa devoluit pontem indignatur ripas sibi facit Multa ac torrens Judicem vel obnitentem contra ferens cogensque ire quà rapit Eâ— defunctos exitat Apud eam Patria clamat alloquitur aliquem Amplificat atque extollit orationem vi superlationum quoque erigit Deos ipsos in congressum quoque suum sermonesque deducit c. These are the Characters of the Forms of Speech in their pure being onely hinted not described The Masters of this Art which according to their profession do treat thereof will compleatly satisfie them that desire a more full information It sufficeth me to have said so much concerning it as was requisite to be known by way of Introduction to the ensuing advice And it is That the Style should be varied conformably to the variety of the Subjects treated of accommodating it to each as the Light to the Colours which into so various Forms so constantly transforms itself The same Scoene serves not to Tragoedies Comoedies and Pastorals This requires Fields and Woods that City-houses of resort The Tragick Princely Palaces and Temples The place ought to correspond to the Action Likewise Oration should adapt it self to the subject not treating of sublime matters with a Plebean Style nor of base Arguments with sublime Eloquence In fine we should have that subtlety in the use of Styles which some Ancient founders of Statues had that formed not every god every Mettal but according to their various natures in various tempers mixing them they expressed them to be either gentle or cruel horrid or handsome bright or duskish and in that most commendable was the judgment of Alcon that made a Hercules all of Iron Laborum Dei patientia inductus said Pliny Yea we ought not only universally to use Styles fitted to the nature of the entire subjects of which we speak but in every composition it behoves so many times to vary it as the things are divers which compose it And like as in Tragical Actions the Scoene changeth and alters it self to Rural to expresse some particularity either of the Ancient Satyre or of the Modern Pastoral thus where there occurs in one discourse matters proper to other Kinds than that which the set subject comprehends to expresse it decently it is requisite to change the Form of Speech using appositely opportunely as Seneca adviseth â—â—liquid Tragicè grandè aliquid Comicè exile Moreover the parts of one and the self same Discourse require various manners of Oration and so various as the Narration is different from Proof and Proof from perswasion Omnibus igitur dicendi formis utatur orator nec prâ—â— causa tantùm sed etiam pro partibus causae Thus he that well peruseth a Treatise of some bulk shall find no lesse variety than there is in the acting of a Scoene in which appeares many Persons of different State and Office and as in that Intererit multum Davus loquatur an Heros Maturus ne senex an adhuc florente inventa Fervidus An Matrona potens an sedula Nutrix Mercatorve vagus Cultorve virentis agelli Colchus an Assyrius Thebis nutritus an Argis and in the variety of these persons the variety of their affects should also be observed therefore Tristia moestum Vultum verba decent Iratum plena minarum Ludentem lascivia Severum seria dictu so proportionably in Prose should we according to the variety of things variously accommodate the Styâ—â— And he alone is the perfect and onely Orator saith Tully after the long quest he made of him Qui humilia subtiliter magna graviter mediocria temperatè potest dicere Of the Style called Modern Affected BUt I do predict that there will be some who will think that speaking of the better Idea's of Speech I have been unmindful of the best having hitherto said nothing of that which they call the Conceited or Witty Style used now a-dayes of many with no small applause of Wit This is say they that Style given onely to Wits enriched with high fancies for all is dissolved Pearls and beaten Gold the office of sublime Souls since that as the Indian Bird called the Bird of Paradise it never sets foot on Earth never abaseth it self but still towers a-loft in the purest Air and the serenest and sublimest Heaven It composeth the draughts of the things it representeth with a precious Mosaick of a thousand Ingenious Conceits emulating that great Pompey that Triumphantly albeit Verior luxuria quà m triumpho carried his Picture composed only of Diamonds Rubies Saphyres Carbuncles and Pearls with so goodly a contrast between the design and the colours that one knew not which to admire most the matter or workmanship That Venus Quam Graeci Charita vocant that Apelles said was injured by every Pencil but his own is wronged by every Pen but that of the Sprightly Style which will expresly and lively delineate her features according as vivacity is proper to her The World is not now what it was when men brought forth by trees did eat Acorns for Confects In the taste of Learning it hath now a-dayes so delicate a Palat that it will have not onely the liquours which it imbibeth by the ears which are the mouthes of the Soul to be precious but will have the cup to be no lesse precious in which it s put so that both the matter and the manner of pouring it out be worthy of it And this Ingenious Style is that only in which Turba gemmarum potamus Smaragdis teximus calices That Ancient Idle kind of Speech which in a discourse of many hours spreads a great Table seems to feed you thereby to hold you in suspence but leaves you in the end as hungry as in the beginning just as Tantalus In amne medio facibus siccis senex Sectatur undas Abluit mentum latex Fidemque cum in saepè decepto dedit Fugit