Page images
PDF
EPUB

Tecta juvant, et fons vivus, et herba rudis. Sit mihi verna satur: sit non doctissima conjux : Sit nox cum somno: sit sinè lite dies."

Wonder not, Sir, (you who instruct the town
In the true wisdom of the sacred gown)
That I make haste to live, and cannot hold
Patiently out, till I grow rich and old.
Life for delays and doubts no time does give,
None ever yet made haste enough to live.
Let him defer it, whose preposterous care
Omits himself, and reaches to his heir.
Who does his father's bounded stores despise,
And whom his own too never can suffice:

My humble thoughts no glittering roofs require,
Or rooms, that shine with aught but constant fire.
I well content the avarice of my sight
With the fair gildings of reflected light:
Pleasures abroad, the sport of nature yields
Her living fountains, and her smiling fields;
And then at home, what pleasure is't to see
A little cleanly chearful family!

Which if a chaste wife crown, no less in her
Than fortune, I the golden mean prefer.
Too noble, nor too wise, she should not be,
No, nor too rich, too fair, too fond of me.
Thus let my life slide silently away,
With sleep all night, and quiet all the day.

him.

XI.

OF MYSELF.

T is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself;1 it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But, besides that, I shall here speak of myself, only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation, of most people.

As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing, what the

This is commonly said, but against all experience. A man of worth and name is never so sure to please, as when he writes of himself with good faith, and without affectation. Hence our delight in those parts of Horace's, Boileau's, and Pope's works, in which those eminent writers paint themselves; and hence the supreme charm of COWLEY'S ESSAYS, more especially of this essay.-BISHOP HURD.

world, or the glories or business of it, were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar; in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at, myself) may appear by the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish; but of this part, which I here set down (if a very little were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed.

9.

HIS only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,

Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better, than ill known:

[ocr errors]

Rumour can ope the grave.

Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.

10.

Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage more
Than palace; and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.

My garden painted o'er

With nature's hand, not art's; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabin field.

11.

Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he, that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,

These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish, my fate;

But boldly say each night,

To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or, in clouds hide them; I have liv'd, to-day.

2

You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); ? and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them, which stampt first, or rather engraved, these characters in me: they were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But, how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question: I believe, I can tell

[blocks in formation]

the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I remember, when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) but there was wont to lie Spenser's works: this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every where there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers; so that, I think, I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch.

With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storm, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet, I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses, of the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty, which I did not fall in love with, when, for aught I knew, it

« PreviousContinue »