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
Crows and Cypresses We have alotted us too short a life for so long a Lesson too short a Viaticum for so tedious a Voyage There is no such virtue now to be found in steel to strengthen those Elixir vitae that inbalmed Men alive so that seeing themselves to aproach their thousanth year they resolved to leave the World more out of satiety with so long a life than out of any necessity of death We like Flowers that yesterday sprung up to day are old and to morrow dead have so short life as if we were born only to die That which in the Ancients was but their Child-hood is in us old Age their tythes are our excessive riches their overpluss's our treasures so that of horinesse and gray-hairs the Alexandrian Tertullian saith with as much Truth as Learning hec est aeternitas nostra If our knowing in this manner the shortnesse of our life could but perswade us to spend it according to its brevity that would be a favour which we think a punishment Is an unreasonable thing to accuse Heaven as niggardly of time to us and we like prodigals profusely to wast it using our life as if we were to measure it with the long pace of many Ages not with the short palm of a few years Who is there that with the Prince of Physicians câ—yes not out Ars longa vita brevis but in the meantime who is there that is solicitous to get quickly to the mark which the most diligent reach to but too late Ad sapientâ—am quis accedit Quis dignam judicat nisi quam in transitu noverit Quis phylosophiam aut ullum liberale respicit studium nisi cum ludi intercalantur cum aliquis pluvius intervenit dies quem perdere licet Nature with good advice hath placed Man in the middle of the World as in the Center of an immense Theater Procerum â—uimal saith Cassiodorus in essigiem pulcherrimae speculationis erectum to be there not as an otious Inhabitor but a curious Spectator of this her incomparable work in so much union so various in so much variety sounited with more miracles that adorn it than parts which compose it Howbeit to those that rightly behold it it is not the design of nature to put us in the VVorld so much in a Theater that we should admire as in a School that we should learn Therefore she hath enkindled in our hearts an inextinguishable desire of knowledge and setting open before our eyes as many Volumnes as the Heavens and Elements contein natures with shewing us in them manifest effects inviteth us to trace out their hidden causes What strengh what force of intelligence of the assistant or rather intrinsick form is that which revolves the great masse of the Elements with indefatigable motion Are the Spheres of the Planets many Heavens that contracted in the concave of each others lap interchangeably surround one another or serves only Heaven to all that great family of Stars for Mansion Of what substance composed Corruptible or incorruptible Liquid as Air or consollidate and firm as a Diamond Whence proceed the Maculae and whence the Faculae about the Sun VVhence the obscurity in the face of the Moon Of what matter are the new Stars and Comets composed and with what fire enkindled that appear unexpectedly Are they Forreigners or Citizens of Heaven Natives of that Countrey or Aspirers from here below The irregular errours of the Planets how may they be reduced to regularity without errour How may we know how may we fore-see Eclipses How great is the profoundity of the Heavens How great the number of the Stars How great the velocity of their motions How great the moles of their bodies The Winds whence take they their wings to slie the spaces of their course the force of their blasts the qualities of their operation and the set measure of time for their rising duration departure Who holdeth so many ponderous Clouds suspended in the Air How drop by drop do they squeeze out Rain How from their pregnant watery wombs are Thunders begotten which be fire Who congeals them into Snow Who hardeneth them into Hail With what Ultamarine is the Rain-bow depainted with alwayes one order of Colours and one proportionate measure of Diameter Whence again comes the source of Springs on the highest tops of Mountains Whence comes it that there should be in Hils of one the same Earth Marbles of so various mixtures Mettals of so different tempers Who assigns the Sea its periods of flux and reflux Who replenisheth the Rivers with waters so that their Channels are alwayes full though they be alwayes emptying The imbroidery of Flowers and Herbs the working of so various bodies in Beasts in Birds in Fishes the temper of the mixt the harmony of the common and occult qualities In fine what ever is what ever is made what being hath it and how is it produced To know all this in comparison of what might be known is to know nothing And yet who is there that knoweth this Nothing Is there then so much to be known and have we so little time of life to learn it and do we think that the onely surplussages and shreds of time sufficeth us for study Hear now what I have told you expressed in the conclusion of that precious little Treatise of Seneca De otio Sapientis Curiosum nobis Natura ingenium dedit artis sibi ac pulchritudinis suae conscia spectatores nos tantis rerum spectaculis genuit perditura fructum sui si tam magna tam clara tam subtiliter ducta tam nitida non uno genere formosa solitudini ostenderet Vt scias illam spectari voluisse non tantum aspici vide quem nobis locum dedit Ad haec quaerenda natus aestima quam non multum acceperis temporis etiam si illud totum tibi vindices Licet nihil facilitate eripi nihil negligentia patiatur excidere Tamen homo ad immortalium cognitionem nimis mortalis est Those Sages Masters of the World some whereof have left their Memories and others the productions of their Wit eternized to us knowing this as we esteem little Diamonds so they held precious the least minute of that time of which alone it is commendable to be covetous It was a miracle to see them in Publick and they resembled as in the love of VVisdom so also in this the Planet Mercury which is placed very neer the Sun and which by that means very hardly is discerned as if he cared not for terrene eyes who alwayes was in the eye of the Sun and beheld by him not with an unprofitable look but with a large communication of light In perpetuity of study they were like those Falcons neer the North-Pole which when the dayes are shorrest when the Sun approacheth Capricorn are so much more solicitous in seeking so much the more rapid in following so much the more couragious in
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
fateri And doubtlesse we may say with him in Minutius Quid invidemus si veritas nostri temporis aetate maturuit Is elegance and inventive ingenuity so intailed upon th'Ancients that it may never be renew'd Although that which Arnobius writes of Religion concerning the truths which every day with new acquist's discover themselves is true Non quod sequimur novum est sed nos serò didicimus quod nos sequi oportet Who then will prescribe bounds and limits to the free flight of the ingenions confining them within the straights of the things already found as if there could not be any new Discoveries If this Law had been known to Antiquity we should at this day have known nothing Nusquam enim invenietur si contenti fuerimus inventis Propterea qui alium sequitur nihil sequitur nihil invenit imò nec quaerit And of these in my opinion we may say as Dante very finely of the fearful Sheep that follow their Leader As silly sheep when two or three more bold And venturous than others leave the fold The rest affraid dejecting eyes and head Without inquiry follow those that led And if one stay the rest in heaps bestride Him not knowing why and simply there abide Quare to add to Dante Lactantius cum sapere id est veritatem quaerere omnibus sit innatum Sapientiam sibi adimunt qui sine ullo judicio inventa Majorum probant ab aliis Pecudum more ducuntur And most apt is that answer that the Eccho of Erasmus gave to that wretched Ciceronian who crying Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone Heard this reply One which was as much as to say that desiring to become an Ape of Cicero he was become an Asse by poring on Cicero But the courage to undertake and the felicity to succeed in the discovery of new and necessary things I do grant is not for every one to expect for such as undertake this enterprise do ordinarily find feares in themselves which affright them and perswasions from others that retard them The fixed Stars that move not of themselves but are carried by the Heavens and born away by the Common Course have not any that accuse them of irregularity or condemn them of error On the contrary the Planets which so generously make a revolution by themselves because a simple and most regular motion with an appearance of ascension and declination of velocity and slownesse doth variously contemperate them are called by the vulgar irregular in their motions confused in their revolutions and believed not to be errant but erroneous not to make Circles but Labyrinths Alexander that had so great a Heart and so capacious that he could conceive within it the desire of a World of Worlds being come to the Eastern Ocean confessed himself to little for this one little one and doubting to find the fortune of the Sea different from that at land struck sail to his desires that carried him to seek on the other side of that Ocean new places to conquer He shewed himself prudent in his fear and to authorize his retreat with others counsel he made a shew of complyance to the reasons of his Counsellours who to disswade him said Great Monarch Little more than Greece sufficed to make Hercules a Demi-god and will not all the Earth suffice to make you a Hercules Lose not this World whilst you are in quest of an other If there were more land on the other side the Ocean your enemies would have fled thither who to hide themselves from your Arms and you are gone to bury themselves in Hell Content your self that the Confines of your Kingdom are those of Nature herself This Shore will conserve the print of your victorious Feet eternally imprest and in erecting the ultimate limits of Humane Generosity You shall be a Hercules in the East as Hercules was an Alexander in the West With that Alexander Constitit magno se vinci passus ab orbe est If that Generous Columbus that involv'd in an Ocean as in a Deluge of water discovered new Lands and new Worlds had nor done more than this when in despight of two Republiques and one King following the advice of the Winds that blew to the West and Whispered in his Eare See yonder ample lands whence the exhalations rise in such great abundance he weighed Anchor and set sail with a Frigot and two Carvals and launched into the bosome of that vast Ocean without ever ceasing his course or tacking about in this Voyage in a Sea never before used or believed unnavigable in the lenght of a course of uncertain bounds discouraged neither by the encounter of Monsters not the mutiny of his men nor the want of victuals in a place destitute of all accommodation for strangers nor the frequent tempests that drove him upon strange Climates nor the long and excessive calmes that took him upon the Confines of the Torrid Zone where the Heavens for the excessive heat seem a Hell would Europe at this day have had those aromatick Spices and Minerals or so much as the knowledge of that half World America Would Columbus himself have gained I say not only that priviledge from the Kings of Castile of quartering the Arms of his House with the addition of the new World that he discovered and with the Motto over bead Por Castilla y por Leon Nuevo Mondo hallò Colon but those immortal merits whereby all ages come to acknowledg themselves debitors to him and by him to Genoa and all Italy for the intire value of a World No otherwise such who in Learning essay to make the first way to the discovery of new places which is nothing inferiour to the sailing of un-navigable Oceans is the necessary that amongst the annoyances and toils of the long Voyage of an un-practised study amongst the familiar and frequent conspiracies of desperation he conquer himself a thousand times attending as those Glorious Heroes Conquerours of the Golden Fleece more to the glory of the end than to the trouble of the means Tu sola animos mentemque peruris Gloriae te viridem videt immunemque senectae Phasidos in ripa stantem juvenesqve vocantem Thus Homer the first Poet Heroical and first Hero of Poets is doubly great in that he had not any before him that he might imitate nor after him that hath imitated him In the first greater than his Predecessors in the second greater than his Successors which is the great Panegyrick that in two words hath been comprehended by Velleius instead of all that which others have been scarce able to expresse with many Neque ante illum quem imitaretur neque post illum qui eum imitari posset inventus est These as long as Learning shall continue in the World and that will be as long as the World lasts shall splendidly shine in the praise of the Learned as that adventurous Argo that from
straightest wayes and securest paths He that hath not in his head a Theater of proper Idea's and Idea's of good designe let him take according to the ancient Custome of the first and rude painting the Circles of the shadows of regular bodies and compile his work upon those models Phrine whilest she lived Phrine the Athenian Venus since she was no lesse unchast than fair was the Samplar of Painters from whom they took the design and features of the face to draw if they could more beautiful and withal more divine the Venus's that they painted The only sight of her was instruction serving not so much for a pattern to the copies which they drew as for a form of perfection to the Idea's which they comprehended in their minds of a most absolute proportion of parts temper of colours and vivacity of Spirit Such to the fancy are the Composures of the brave Masters of Learning which beheld with intensenesse imprint in the mind by little and little a noble Idea of the like style and we find by experience in him that is accustomed to read with attention works of noble sentiments and lofty style that as if drunk with the same spirits it seems impossible for him to expresse himself in any other manner than nobly Thus it even'd to the Nightingales that made their Nests upon the Sepulcher of Orpheus that as if from the ashes of that great Musician and Poet they had also took his Spirit they were incomparably more ingenious and skilful Songsters than the others so that the others seemed salvage Quirristers these coelestial Sirenes And from this of reading intensely others Learned Labours to imprint an image in the mind conformable to them may seem to arise those occult miracles of the imaginative power which hath made us sometimes see rustick mothers of deformed faces and plebean proportion to bring forth children of visage and features Angelical like lovely Narcissus's growing upon ill-favoured and sordid Leeks thanks to the form which the mothers frequent beholding of beautiful faces and exquisite pictures gave to the tender Babes in their conception Nor because the Authors are excellent and we stupid of wit doth it follow that the reading them is of no avail to make us with imitation to resemble them The Eagle before that she thrusts her little Chicks from the Nest with great circulations and turnings soares and wheeles over and about them striking them sometimes with her wings and provoking them to flie whereby the Eaglets although they are not a jot incouraged to follow their mother even above the Clouds whither at one distention of the wing she is transported yet neverthelesse it prompts them to abandon their Nest put themselves on their flight and to try also themselves upon the wing Therefore it naturally comes to passe that we follow that which pleaseth especially if the Genius of the Nature accord with the Election of the Will and the toiles therein undergone either are not tedious or else the bitternesse of the trouble losing it else in the dulcity of the operation they are not felt toilsome Seeing before us therefore the sublime flights of an happy Wit let us not only rouse and provoke our desires to imitate them but le ts us add vigour to our thoughts and courage to our mindes that so we may find our selves able to do more than without such a sight we could ever have effected Whereby if we come not to touch the Heavens and soar above the Stars at least we may raise our selves from the Earth and dis-nest If we attein not to expresse with equal periods the loftly circulations of the exemplar which we proposed to our imitation yet we may do as the Sun-flower which fixed in its root and moveable in its Flower by continual looking on the Sun learns to design in a little Gire that ample Circle which he describes from another Horizon But of the writings of others to profit our selves with only the imitation in the judgment of Quintilian which speaks at large of this matter is to too litle a benefit Let therefore the second manner of theft not only lawful but laudable be To take what we please of others but so to improve it with our own that it may not be mended by any In like manner as a Diamond receiving one single ray of light that penetrates to its center is so beautified that as if it was depainted w th a thousand varieties of colours the Sun it self is not so glorious the Stars eclips and in envy hide their heads there at Is it not in the stealing of knowledge as to take a little light foame of the Sea to mix it with the coelestial seed of his Wit so that that which was unprofitable and vile matter becomes no lesse than a Venus forming to himself a composure of more than ordinary beauty That famous Labour of Phydias Jupiter Olympus the miracle of Carving and of the World was of whitest Ivory But the Elephants could not therefore boast of that divine Master-piece as theirs nor charge the Graver of stealing that beautiful material which rendered his Labour so famous The exact proportion of the members the majestick features of the divine visage aud what else that made that Statue the best in the World for beauty and value all was the Art of the Carver not the merit of the Elephant Phydiae manus saith Tertullian Jovem Olympum ex ebore molitur adoratur Nec jam bestiae quidem insulsissiam dens est sed summum saeculi Numen Non quia Elephantus sed quia Phydias tantus He that takes in this manner rude and informed trunks to work them into Statues Sordid glasses to change them into Diamonds drops of simple Dew to make them Pearles is not a Thief but an Artist He is not indebted to others for the Matter but the Matter is oblieged to him for the honour of so noble a form But this is yet more lively illustrated by the Artifices of the famous Fountains of Rome of Tivoly of Frascati where the waters sport in their torments and in their ingenious obedience change themselves into more shapes then the Poets Proteus They are seen from the slime and gravel of vast niches so to distil drop by drop into small rain that the Clouds never did it more naturally upon the Earth To imitate as it were the Issuing of the winds out of the caverne of Aeölus the South with moist Aires Zephyrus with pleasing Gales Boreas with blustering and cold Blasts To diffuse themselves so subtlely and dilate themselves so equally that they seeme transparent vails displayed in the Aire To sub-divide themselves into little drops and form themselves as it were into a dewy Cloud which incountering with the Sun becomes a Rain-bow painted with perfect colours To revive with motion dead Statues and variously acting them in diverse shapes To start thievishly out of the ground and to mount and to suspend in
many other places of Augustine read his 111 Epistle where he saith His custome was not to adore the Authours but the Truth not their Sayings but Reason forsaking them where they forsook her Talis sum ego in scriptis aliorum concludes he the Epistle tales volo intellectores meorum On this ground the more Wise are perswaded before the publishing their writings to bring them to the rest and censure of a friend equally judicious and faithful that where they find them defective they may say to them as the Ancient Fencers to their scholars Repete but if only after their coming to publick light they be seen deficient they themselves may correct them retacting them as Painters which boast not their labours for works exactly perfect according to the rigour of Art but write underneath the Faciebat of Polycletus and Apelles Tanquam inchoata Arte perfecta ut contra judiciorum varietates superesset artisici regressus ad veniam velut emendaturo quidquid desideretur si non esset interceptus And of this the Great Hyppocrates gave an example who reputed it no shame to retract any thing which he had writ of the Sutures of the brain But for as much as either the Writer unlesse too late perceives not his errours of which unwittingly he makes himself Master printing them or is prevented by others in opportunely prescribing them an Antidote and giving them a reproof when that evenes he that is a prudent Judg and rational friend should not write to disgrace injure or irritate him for that is not his desire that as the Ancient Romans whilst they were wholly ignorant of the Mathemathicks regulated their publick actions by an irregular and lying Dial Non enim congruebant ad horas ejus liniae so his errours should be the rule of others understandings Nimis enim perversâ— seipsum amat said the Great Augustine qui alios vult errare ut error suus lateat Yea to be assisted in un-deceiving himself and which is more the World ought to be so much the dearer to every one by how much all are oblieged to love the Truth And hear in a few of his own words the sense that the same Augustine had of this A man I know not whether of greater ingenuity or modesty Non pigebit mesic ubi haesito quaerere sic ubi erro discere Proinde quisquis hac legit ubi pariter certus est pergat mecum ubi pariter haesitat quaerat mecuâ—â— Ubi errorem suum cognoscit redeat ad me ubi meum revocet me And this of which I have hitherto writ is the part of the modesty of him that writes Nor should it be lesse that of him that readeth Not betaking themselves to a profession of running only to errors of Writers to condemn them as Vultures to putrid Carcasses or Ravens to Carrion to devour them doing it moreover with as much liberty as if there were no possibility of their erring in noting the errors of others and yet the Aphorisme of Ambrose is most true Saepe in judicando majus est peccatum judicit quâ—m peccati illius de quo fuerat judicatum This is the discourteous manner of many Qui obtrectatione alienae Scientiae famam sibi aucupantur Ferulasque tristes sceptra Paedagogorum they hold a Censorious brow still advanced over the Authours they read to lash them they delighting no lesse thus to use the rod than others to graspe the Scepter Thence are born the so many Contests Apologies not to say the Duels and Tragoedies of a thousand Authours though of no ordinary judgment which in this kind of impertinency have thrown away much time and much sweat but to what purpose Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos This seems to me a matter not to be wholly past over with a coniving eye Take therefore about it some few advertisements First That a man that hath no more but a belly and a tongue as Antipater said of Demades should undertake to make himself the Triâ—r of the Golden Writings of worthy Men finding how much of purity and how much of dross they contein condemning what they understand not rejecting what they like not gnawing what they cannot bite That a sordid Woman instead of her Spindle should take a Pen and write against the Divine Theophrastus taxing him of ignorance and simplicity renewing the Ancient Monsters of Fable That a proud Omphale should condemn Great Hercules from a Club to a Distaffe from killing of Monsters to spinning That a Demosthenes Cook to Valens the Emperour as if the Kitchin had been a School of Wisedom and the Dishes Books should villifie the Theology of Great Basil and reject it as viands without salt and Sapience without savour That one Mr. Johan Ludovicus should pretend to draw the most Learned Augustine out of ignorance and presume Sus Minervam to teach the true form of Logick to that Great Augustine all Soul to that Ingenious Archimedes which against the enemies of Truth and Faith knew how to make as many thunder-bolts as he made arguments deducing his propositions from most manifest principles as rayes from the Sun and directing them in a Logical form to the mark of infallible consequences Is not this the same as to see Mures de cavernis exeuntes tilt with a straw at the brest of a Lion To see water-Frogs not only to muddy the water for Diana but to desire to ingrosse it solely and wholly to themselves To see Beasts with the horrid yelling of their discordant throats to affright and put to flight the Giants In beholding these and others of the like stamp expound blot out and correct the writings of Learned Men it brings to mind and sets before my eyes that indiscreet Asse which with teeth accustomed to Roots Shrubs and pungent tops of Thistles durst attempt to tear and devour all the Illiades of the Poet Homer to the greater disgrace and disaster of Troy as a Poet speaks in as much as heretofore a Horse more honourably now an Asse more sordidly destroyed it The Grecian Aristides died a man of Martial valour proved at more than one encounter died of poison taken from the wound of a certain little Animal that had stung him Death grieved not the Valiant Man but dying so dishonourably namely not torn by a Lion not bruised by an Elephant not dismembered by a Tyger but stung by an unlucky Fly The like in my judgment may be the resentment of those great Masters of the World seeing themselves stung reprehendâ—d condemned not by man excellent for Wit and Learning but by a Cook by a Woman by a Pedant For iâ— the Stars saith Cassiodorus seeing upon a Dial the immense periods of their light imitated and as it were mocked by the little motion of a shadow would be offended and in disdain confound Heaven and the World and would commence other motions other revolutions Meatus
and leave credulous wretches to pore into their Oracles and to wrest them to senses which never came into the Authors thought Other times they expose their conceits as the Deities in a Theater wrapt in a knot of Clouds They shew a small Sentence of some well composed Discourse thereby to win credit to the rest which is lost in a croud of confused thoughts The Reader of their Books one would think was fishing for the Cuttle a most crafty Fish which maliciously frees it self from the eye and hand of others muddying the clearnesse of the water by disgorging up a Cloud of certain black humours of which it is full Thus they with their Pens like that Fish Naturam juvat ipsa dolis conscia sortis Utitur ingenio Oh! how oft is there just nothing found there where some beleive great mysteries to lye hid Since it is an ordinary custom with these to cover that with a veil as Tymanthes which they have neither Wit nor Art sufficient to expresse By which means they seem to be new Heraclitus's cui cognomen Scoti non fecit orationis obscuritas if of them also we may say what Pythagoras saith of the writings of the other Opus ibi esse Delio natatore They contest with the Delphian Apollo in authority credit if like him Neque dicant neque abscondant sed indicent solùm But the other Obscurity more unfortunate than faulty is a defect of nature not a vice of the will And this in some is an effect of paucity and poverty of Wit in whom the formative virtue as in too narrow a womb cannot unite without confounding cannot place the parts without misplacing the whole In others it is occasioned by too fervid a mind in whose fiery thoughts as in sudden constagrations there is much more smoak than flame These are those VVits truly fiery active and prompt of understanding so that in one only cast of the eye sparkling with most velocious thoughts according to the nature of lightning they reflect upon a thousand things they make a thousand new discoveries It would be happy for them if they could infuse gravity into their flame and put a bridle of restraint upon their fire but as the â—leetest Beasts make the obscurest foot-steps so they being wholly bent on the things they see see nothing of the manner how to expresse that which the mind sometimes with most abstracted Species as it were in a moment understands And moreover being so much lesse able to methodize the more fruitful they are of invention they expose whether speaking or writing not a Birth but many seeds and they themselves being afterwards cooled again and quiet when the jugdment is more adapted to discern are not able to reform that for which the Wit is defective of both heat and light And these are in my judgment the two Vicious Obscurities the one the crime of the ambitious Genius the other the defect of the poor or muddy Wit There is a third sort which they call Obscurity and is truly so but it is an Obscurity of the Wit of him that doth not understand not of the Author who doth not write or speak so but that he may be easily understood by men of mean understandings If we discourse with certain principal universal Maxims from whence as from their true Principles we draw other Corolaries till that we descend to some particular matter which is the noblest and sublimest of all other kindes of grave discourse imitating the Falcons which with great windings circulations mount on hing froÌ„ whence to stoop to the quarry If we trace out Wisdom with feigned but apt inventions which like a garment we so dispose and put on as neither to discover what we ought to conceal not to hid what we would reveal a custome which Sinesius calleth Per antiquum atque Platonicum if we sometimes exempt the Pen from a particular touch upon each circumstance by it self and abreviate some so that all is seen in a small room If we write as Tymanthes painted In cujus omnibus operibus saith Pliny intelegitur semper plus quà m pingitur cum ars summa sit ingenium tamen ultra artem est These Pseudo Vitilitigators condemn us of Obscurity and say that to understand penetrate such things Non lucernae spiculo lumine sed totius Solis lancea opus est Never considering that our Writings want not light but their eyes need Eye-bright in as much as they are like that Dunce Arpastes in Seneca who being insensibly become blind not doubting but that he saw aswel as ever ajebat domum tenebrosum esse But because for the remedy of that Obscurity which is capable of cure there cannot be better advice prescribed then to observe Distinction and Order that are the Father and Mother of Perspicuity I have laid it down in the subsequent Sections howbeit perhaps with too frequent trips of the Pen in regard of what this matter requireth yet is it not besides the purpose or without profit I being to lay down some advertisements which from the Choice of the argument even unto the last Correction seemed to me conducible to the more orderly easily and succesfully Composing That the Argument ought to be elected adequate to the Wit of him that handleth it THe first and most of all others important trouble is the invention of the Argument about which observe the first Law of Horace where he adviseth That if you be a Pigmy you should not go to charge your shoulders with a World as if you were an Atlas Versate diu quid ferre recusent Quid valeant humeri If your VVit have a weak and ill tempered edge you must not attempt to work in Porphyre Flint or Marble that may be much too hard for your tools Proportion your Sails to the VVind and your Rudder to the VVaves aâ—d if you be but a small Pinnace strive not to imitate the great Ships A Lake should be your Ocean and an Island your India's distant some half a dayes sail Altum alii teneant VVhat would you doe is fishing for small fish you should see a great VVhale come into your Net and make himself your prisoner VVould it so inchant you with the greedinssse of the prey that it should make you forget the weaknesse of the Net Rather would you not fear to take that which otherwise you would be willing to have knowing that Nets knit with so small threed are no more able to catch a Fish so big than a Cob-web is to take a Hornet Oh! how many do like the Icarus in the Poets which neither was a good Bird in the Air nor good Fish in the VVater in regard that flying he praecipitated and swimming dâ—owned His unfortunate Father seeing him surpasse the bounds he prescribed him as he fastened his wings to his shoulders followed him a-far-off and cried Ah simple venturous Boy Farfaila fond Why dost thou rashly sore