Vol. i., No. 27. y^^scrv^Ciorr ■ 
 
 July 31, 1886. 
 
 , CASSELLS 
 * NATIONAL 
 | LIBRARY! 
 
 j EDITED BY 
 L PROFESSOR 
 mHENRYMORLEW 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The Cassell Publishing Co., 
 
 31 E. 17th St. (Union Square)* 
 
 = Entered at t£e Post < ’ffioe^ew Yoric, IS. Y.. as second-clasq n7n" tor. = 
 
 Copyright 1886, by O, M. Dunham, 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
ENGLISH WRITERS. 
 
 AN ATTEMPT HOWARD A HISTORY OF 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY MORLEY, LL. D., 
 
 Prof essor of English Literature at University College , London* 
 
 Large 1 2mo, extra cloth, gilt top, price per vol» 
 time,' $1.50. 
 
 Volumes already issued: 
 
 Vol. I. — From the Earliest Times to Beowulf. 
 
 Vol. II. — From Caedmon to the Conquest. 
 
 Vol. III. — From the Conquest to Chaucer, 
 
 Vol. IV. — Literature of the Fourteenth Century,, 
 Book I. 
 
 Vol. V. — Literature of the Fourteenth Century* 
 Book II. 
 
 Vol. VI. — From Chaucer to Caxton. 
 
 Vol. VII. — From Caxton to Coverdale. 
 
 Vol. VIII. — From Surrey to Spenser. 
 
 Vol. IX. — Spenser and his Time. 
 
 Vol. X. — Shakespeare and his Time. 
 
 Other Volumes to Follow . 
 
 “ Prof. Morley is doing a great work, which, when completed, will 
 be a mine of priceless value to the student of English Literature.”— 
 The Independent. 
 
 “ The best of all histories of English Literature.”— Cleveland 
 Leader. 
 
 ** A monument of patient research.” — The Churchman . 
 
 44 Indispensable to those who wish to study literature, not only in 
 sts original documents, but with a proper understanding of their en- 
 vironment.” — Boston Herald. 
 
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 eery.”— Book Buyer . 
 
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 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
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CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY. 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 31 East 17TH St. (Union Square) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ~ Abraham Cowley was the son of Thomas Cowley, 
 ^ stationer, and citizen of London in the parish of St. 
 Michael le Queme, Cheapside. Thomas Cowley signed 
 his will on the 24th of July, 1618, and it was proved 
 on the 11th of the next month by his widow, Thomasine. 
 He left six children, Peter, Audrey, John, William, 
 Katherine, and Thomas, with a child unborn for whom 
 the will made equal provision with the rest. The 
 seventh child, born before the end of the same year, 
 was named Abraham, and lived to take high place 
 among the English Poets. 
 
 The calm spirit of Cowley’s “ Essays ” was in all his 
 life. As he tells us in his Essay “ On Myself,” even 
 when he was a very young boy at school, instead of 
 u running about on holidays and playing with his fellows, 
 he was wont to steal from them and walk into the 
 fields, either alone with a book or with some one 
 companion, if he could find any of the same temper. 
 He wrote verse when very young, and says, “ I believe 
 , I can tell the particular little chance that filled my 
 . head first with such chimes of verse as have never since 
 left ringing there ; for I remember when I began to 
 read and 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.” The delight in Spenser wakened 
 
6 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all the music in him, and in 1628, in his tenth year, he 
 wrote a “ Tragical Historie of Pyramus and Thisbe.” 
 
 In his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also 
 in sixteen stanzas, with songs interspersed, which was 
 placed first in the little volume of Poetical Blossoms , 
 by A. 0., published in 1633. It was a little quarto 
 of thirty- two leaves, with a portrait of the author, taken 
 at the age of thirteen. This pamphlet, dedicated to 
 the Dean of Westminster, and with introductory verses 
 by Cowley and two of his schoolfellows, contained 
 44 Constantia and Philetus,” with the 44 Pyramus and 
 Thisbe,” written earlier, and three pieces written later, 
 namely, two Elegies and 44 A Dream of Elysium.” The 
 inscription round the portrait describes Cowley as a 
 King’s Scholar of Westminster School; and 44 Pyramus 
 and Thisbe” has a special dedication to the Head 
 Master, Lambert Osbalston. As schoolboy, Cowley 
 tells us that he read the Latin authors, but could not 
 be made to learn grammar rules by rote. He was a 
 candidate at his school in 1636 for a scholarship at 
 Cambridge, but was not elected. In that year, how- 
 ever, he went to Cambridge and obtained a scholarship 
 at Trinity. 
 
 Cowley carried to Cambridge and extended there his 
 reputation as boy poet. In 1636 the 44 Poetical Blos- 
 soms ” were re-issued with an appendix of sixteen 
 more pieces under the head of 44 Sylva.” A third 
 edition of the 44 Poetical Blossoms ” was printed in 
 1637 — the year of Milton’s “Lycidas” and of Ben 
 Johnson’s death. Cowley had written a five -act 
 pastoral comedy, 44 Love’s Biddle,” while yet at 
 school, and this was published in 1638. In the same 
 year, 1638, when Cowley’s age was twenty, a Latin 
 comedy of his, “Kaufragium Joeulare,” was acted by 
 men of his College, and in the same year printed, with 
 a dedication to Dr. Comber, Dean of Carlisle, who was 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 Master of Trinity. Tlie poet Richard Crashaw, who 
 was about two years older than Cowley, and, having 
 entered Pembroke Hall in 1632, became a Fellow of 
 Peterhouse in 1637, sent Cowley a June present of two 
 unripe apricots with pleasant verses of compliment on 
 his own early ripeness, on his April- Autumn : — 
 
 “Take them, and me, in them acknowledging 
 How much my Summer waits upon thy Spring.” 
 
 Cowley was able afterwards to help Crashaw materially, 
 and wrote some lines upon his early death. 
 
 In 1639 Cowley took the degree of B.A. In 1640 
 he was chosen a Minor Fellow, and in 1642 a Major 
 Fellow, of Trinity, and he proceeded to his M.A. in 
 due course. In March, 1641, when Prince Charles 
 visited Cambridge, a comedy called “ The Guardian,” 
 hastily written by Cowley, was acted at Trinity College 
 for the Prince’s entertainment. Cowley is said also 
 to have written during three years at Cambridge the 
 greater part of his heroic poem on the history of David, 
 the “ Davideis.” One of the occasional poems written 
 at this time by Cowley was on the early and sudden 
 death of his most intimate friend at the University, 
 William Hervey, to whom he was dearer than all but 
 his brothers and sisters, and, says Cowley : 
 
 “ Even in that we did agree, 
 
 For much above myself I loved them too.” 
 
 Hervey and Cowley had walked daily together, and 
 had spent nights in joint study of philosophy and 
 poetry. Hervey “had all the light of youth, of the 
 tire none.” 
 
 “With as much zeal, devotion, piety, 
 
 He always lived as other saints do die. 
 
8 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 Still with his soul severe account he kept, 
 
 Weeping all debts out ere he slept ; 
 
 Then down in peace and innocence he lay. 
 
 Like the sun’s laborious light, 
 
 Which still in water sets at night, 
 
 Unsullied with the journey of the day.” 
 
 Cowley’s friendship with this family affected the 
 course of his life. He received many kindnesses from 
 his friend’s brother John Hervey, including introduc- 
 tion to Henry Jermyn, one of the most trusted friends 
 of Queen Henrietta Maria, the friend who was created 
 by her wish Baron Jermyn of St. Edmondsbury, who 
 was addressed by Charles I. as “ Harry,” and was 
 created by Charles II., in April, 1660, Earl of St. 
 Albans. He was described in Queen Henrietta’s time 
 by a political scandal-monger, as “ something too ugly 
 for a lady’s favourite, yet that is nothing to some.” 
 In 1643 Cowley was driven from Cambridge, and went 
 to St. John’s College, Oxford. To Oxford at the end 
 of that year the king summoned a Parliament, which 
 met on the 22nd of J anuary, 1644. This brought to 
 Oxford many peers and Hoyalists, who deserted the 
 Parliament at Westminster for the king’s Parliament 
 at Oxford. It continued to sit until the 16th of April, 
 by which time the king had found even his own Parlia- 
 ment to be in many respects too independent. In 1644 
 the queen, about to become a mother, withdrew to 
 Exeter from Oxford, against which an army was ad- 
 vancing ; and the pai ting at Oxford proved to be the 
 last between her and her husband. A daughter was 
 born at Exeter on the 16th of June. Within two weeks 
 afterwards the advance of an army towards Exeter 
 caused the queen to rise from her bed in a dangerous 
 state of health, and, leaving her child in good keeping, 
 escape to Plymouth, where she reached Pend«snnis 
 Castle on the 29th of June. On the 2nd of July the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 9 
 
 ting’s forces were defeated at Marston Moor. On the 
 14th of July the queen escaped from Falmouth to Brest. 
 After some rest at the baths of Bourbon, she went on to 
 Paris, where she was lodged in the Louvre, and well 
 cared for. Jermyn was still her treasurer, her minister, 
 and the friend for whose counsel she cared most. 
 
 It was into the service of this Lord J ermyn that Cowley 
 had been introduced through his friendship with the 
 Herveys. He went to Paris as Lord Jermyn’s secre- 
 tary, had charge of the queen’s political correspondence, 
 ciphered and deciphered letters between Queen Hen- 
 rietta and King Charles, and was thus employed so 
 actively under Lord Jermyn that his work filled all 
 his days, and many of his nights. He was sent also 
 on journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or 
 wherever else the king’s troubles required his attend- 
 ance. In 1647 Cowley published his volume of forty- 
 four love poems, called “The Mistress.” He was him- 
 self no gallant, neither paid court to ladies, nor married. 
 His love poetry was hypothetical; and of his life at 
 this time he says : “ Though I was in a crowd of as good 
 company as could be found anywhere ; though I was 
 in business of great and honourable trust ; though 1 
 ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best convenience 
 for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a 
 man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, 
 yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school- 
 boy’s wish in a copy of verses to the same effect : — 
 
 “ ‘ Well, then, I now do plainly see 
 
 This busy world and I shall nVer agree,’ &c., 
 
 and I never then proposed to myself any other advan- 
 tage from his Majesty’s happy restoration, but the 
 getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the 
 country, which I thought, in that case, I might easily 
 have compassed, as well as some others who, with no 
 
10 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to 
 extraordinary fortunes.” 
 
 In 1654 Queen Henrietta, under influence of a new 
 confessor, had left the Louvre, and, with the little 
 daughter born at Exeter, taken up her quarters in a 
 foundation of her own, at Chaillot, for nuns of the 
 visitation of St. Mary. Lord Jermyn having little 
 use left for a secretary in Paris, Cowley in 1656, after 
 twelve years’ service in France, was sent to England 
 that he might there live in the retirement he preferred, 
 and with the understanding that he would be able to 
 send information upon the course of home affairs. In 
 England he was presently seized by mistake for another 
 man, and, when his name and position were known, he 
 was imprisoned, until a friendly physician, Sir Charles 
 Scarborough, undertook to be security in a thousand 
 pounds for his good conduct. In this year, 1656, 
 Cowley published the first folio volume of his Poems, 
 prepared in prison, and suggested, he said, by his 
 finding, when he returned to England, a book called 
 “The Iron Age,” which had been published as his, 
 and caused him to wonder that any one foolish enough 
 to write such bad verses should yet be so wise as to 
 publish them under another man’s name. Cowley 
 thought then that he had taken leave of verse, which 
 needed less troubled times for its reading, and a mind 
 less troubled in the writer. He left out of his book, 
 he said, the pieces written during the Civil War, in- 
 cluding three books of the Civil War itself, reaching 
 as far as the first battle of Newbury. These he had 
 burnt, for, he said, “ I would have it accounted no less 
 unlawful to rip up old wounds than to give new ones.” 
 “ When the event of battle and the unaccountable 
 Will of God has determined the controversy, and that 
 we have submitted to the will of the conqueror, we 
 must lay down our pens as well as arms.” The first 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 11 
 
 part of this folio contained early poems ; the second 
 part “ The Mistress ; ” the third part “Pindaric Odes ; ” 
 and the fourth and last his “ Davideis.” 
 
 In September of the following year, 1657, Cowley 
 acted as best man to George Villiers, Duke of Buck- 
 ingham, on his marriage at Bolton Percy, to Fairfax’s 
 daughter ; Cowley wrote also a sonnet for the bride. 
 In December he obtained, by influence of friends, the 
 degree of M.D. from the University of Oxford, and 
 retired into Kent to study botany. Such study caused 
 him then to write a Latin poem upon Plants, in six 
 books : the first two on Herbs, in elegiac verse ; the next 
 two on Flowers, in various measures ; and the last two 
 on Trees, in heroic numbers : — “ Plantarum, Libri VIP 
 
 After the death of Cromwell, Cowley returned to 
 France, but he came back to England in 1660, when he 
 published an “ Ode on His Majesty’s Restoration and 
 Return,” and “A Discourse by way of Vision con- 
 cerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.” He 
 was admitted, as Dr. Cowley, among the first members 
 of the Royal Society then founded; but he was ex- 
 cluded from the favour of the king. He had written 
 an “ Ode to Brutus,” for which, said his Majesty, it 
 was enough. for Mr. Cowley to be forgiven. A noble 
 lord replied to Cowley’s Ode, in praise of Brutus, with 
 an Ode against that Rebel. Cowley’s old friend, 
 Lord Jermyn, now made Earl of St. Alban’s, joined, 
 however, with George Yilliers, Duke of Buckingham, 
 in providing for the poet all that was required to secure 
 to him the quiet life that he desired. Provision to 
 such end had been promised him both by Charles I. 
 and Charles II., in the definite form of the office of 
 Master of the Savoy, but the post was given by 
 Charles II. to a brother of one of his mistresses. 
 
 Cowley recast his old comedy of “The Guardian,” 
 and produced it in December, 1661, as “ Cutter of 
 
12 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Coleman Street.” It was played for a week to a full 
 audience, though some condemned it on the supposition 
 it was a satire upon the king’s party. Cowley cer- 
 tainly was too pure and thoughtful to he a fit associate 
 for Charles II. and many of his friends. The help 
 that came from the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke 
 of Buckingham, was in the form of such a lease of the 
 Queen’s lands as gave the poet a sufficient income. 
 Others who had served little were enriched; but he was 
 set at ease, and sought no more. He then made his 
 home by the Thames, first at Barn Elms, and after- 
 wards at Chertsey, at which latter place he lived for 
 about a year in the Porch House, that yet stands. 
 Cowley was living at Chertsey when a July evening 
 in damp meadows gave him a cold, of which he died 
 within a fortnight. That was in the year 1667, year 
 also of the death of J eremy Taylor, and of the birth of 
 J onathan Swift. 
 
 Abraham Cowley is at his truest in these Essays, 
 written during the last seven years of his life. Their 
 style is simple, and their thoughts are pure. They 
 have, for their keynote, the happiness of one who loves 
 true liberty in quiet possession of himself. When 
 he turns to the Latins, his translations are all from 
 those lines which would have dwelt most pleasantly 
 upon a mind that to the last held by the devout wish 
 expressed by himself in a poem of his early youth — (A 
 Vote , in “ Sylva ”) : 
 
 “ Books should, not business, entertain the light, 
 
 And sleep, as undisturbed 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, should pleasures yield, 
 Horace might envy in his Sabine field.” 
 
 H. M, 
 
Cowley’s Essays 
 
 OF LIBEETY. 
 
 The liberty of a people consists in being governed 
 by laws which they have made themselves, under 
 
 whatsoever form it be of government ; the liberty 
 of a private man in being master of his own time 
 and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of 
 God and of his country. Of this latter only we 
 are here to discourse, and to inquire what estate of 
 life does best suit us in the possession of it. This 
 liberty of our own actions is such a fundamental 
 privilege of human nature, that God Himself, not- 
 withstanding all His infinite power and right over 
 us, permits us to enjoy it, and that, too, after a 
 forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He 
 takes so much care for the entire preservation of it 
 
14 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 to us, that He suffers neither His providence nor 
 eternal decree to break or infringe it. Now for 
 our time, the same God, to whom we are but 
 tenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the 
 seventh part to be paid to Him at as a small quit- 
 rent, in acknowledgment of His title. It is man 
 only that has the impudence to demand our whole 
 time, though he neither gave it, nor can restore it, 
 nor is able to pay any considerable value for the 
 least part of it. This birthright of mankind above 
 all other creatures some are forced by hunger to 
 sell, like Esau, for bread and broth ; but the 
 greatest part of men make such a bargain for the 
 delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with 
 Judah; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions 
 for human life, they are contented to do it for 
 rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this 
 world may be divided into the ambitious, the 
 covetous, and the voluptuous ; and that all these 
 men sell themselves to be slaves — though to*’ the 
 vulgar it may seem a Stoical paradox — will appear 
 to the wise so plain and obvious that they will 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 15 
 
 scarce think it deserves the labour of argu menta- 
 tion. Let us first consider the ambitious ; and 
 those, both in their progress to greatness, and after 
 the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than 
 what Sallust says : “ Dominationis in alios servitium 
 suum mercedem dant ” : They are content to pay 
 so great a price as their own servitude to purchase 
 the domination over others. The first thing they 
 must resolve to sacrifice is their whole time ; they 
 must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they 
 are in the race of glory ; no, not like Atalanta 
 for golden apples; “ Neither indeed can a man 
 stop himself if he would, when he is in this 
 career. Fertur equis auriga neque audit currus 
 habenas. 
 
 Pray let us but consider a little what mean,, 
 servile things men do for this imaginary food. Wo 
 cannot fetch a greater example of it than from the 
 chief men of that nation which boasted most of 
 liberty. To what pitiful baseness did the noblest 
 Romans submit themselves for the obtaining of a 
 prsetorship, or the consular dignity ? They put on 
 
16 
 
 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 the habit of suppliants, and ran about, on foot and 
 in dirt, through all the tribes to beg voices ; they 
 flattered the poorest artisans, and carried a nomen- 
 clator with them, to whisper in their ear every 
 man’s name, lest they should mistake it in their 
 salutations ; they shook the hand, and kissed the 
 cheek of every popular tradesman ; they stood all 
 day at every market in the public places, to show 
 and ingratiate themselves to the rout ; they em- 
 ployed all their friends to solicit for them ; they 
 kept open tables in every street ; they distributed 
 wine, and bread, and money, even to the vilest of 
 the people. En Romanos , rerum Dominos ! Behold 
 the masters of the world beginning from door to 
 door. This particular humble way to greatness 
 is now out of fashion, but yet every ambitious 
 person is still in some sort a Koman candidate. 
 He must feast and bribe, and attend and flatter, 
 and adore many beasts, though not the beast with 
 many heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he 
 could not content himself with a less power than 
 Sylla’s, was yet so humble for the attaining of it, 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 17 
 
 as to make himself the most contemptible of all 
 servants, to be a public bawd for all the young 
 gentlemen of Rome whose hot lusts, and courages, 
 and heads, he thought he might make use of. And 
 since I happen here to propose Catiline for my 
 instance, though there be thousand of examples for 
 the same thing, give me leave to transcribe the cha- 
 racter which Cicero gives of this noble slave, because 
 it is a general description of all ambitious men, and 
 which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the 
 rule of their life and actions. u This man,” says 
 he, as most of you may well remember, “ had many 
 artificial touches and strokes that looked like the 
 beauty of great virtues ; his intimate conversation 
 was with the worst of men, and yet he seemed to 
 be an admirer and lover of the best ; he was fur- 
 nished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet 
 wanted not the arms of labour and industry : 
 neither do I believe that there was ever any 
 monster in nature, composed out of so many dif- 
 ferent and disagreeing parts. Who more accept- 
 able, sometimes, to the most honourable persons! 
 
18 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 who more a favourite to the most infamous ? who, 
 sometimes, appeared a braver champion ? who, at 
 other times, a bolder enemy to his country h who 
 more dissolute in his pleasures % who more patient 
 in his toils 1 who more rapacious in robbing 1 who 
 more profuse in giving ? Above all things, this 
 was remarkable and admirable in him. The arts 
 he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness 
 of all sorts of men, to retain it with great corn 
 plaisance, to communicate all things to them, to 
 watch and serve all the occasions of their fortune,, 
 both with his money and his interest, and his 
 industry, and if need were, not by sticking at any 
 wickedness whatsoever that might be useful to 
 them, to bend and turn about bis own nature and 
 laveer with every wind, to live severely with the 
 melancholy, merrily with the pleasant, gravely 
 with the aged, wantonly with the young, des- 
 perately with the bold, and debauchedly with the 
 luxurious. With this variety and multiplicity of 
 his nature, as he had made a collection of friend- 
 ships with all the most wicked and reckless of all 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 19 
 
 nations, so, by the artificial simulation of some 
 virtues, he made a shift to ensnare some honest and 
 eminent persons into his familiarity ; neither could 
 so vast a design as the destruction of this empire 
 have been undertaken by him, if the immanity 
 of so many vices had not been covered and dis- 
 guised by the appearances of some excellent 
 qualities.” 
 
 I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, 
 who became all things to all men, that he might 
 destroy all ; who only wanted the assistance of 
 fortune to have been as great as his friend Csesar 
 was, a little after him. And the ways of Csesar to 
 compass the same ends — I mean till the civil war r 
 which was but another manner of setting his 
 country on fire — were not unlike these, though he 
 used afterward his unjust dominion with more 
 moderation than I think the other would have 
 done. Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted 
 with them both, and with many such-like gentle- 
 men of his time, says, “That it is the nature of 
 ambition” ( Ambitio multos mortales fatsos fieri 
 
20 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 coegit , etc.) u to make men liars and clieaters ; to 
 hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like 
 jugglers, another thing in their mouths ; to cut all 
 friendships and enmities to the measure of their 
 own interest, and to make a good countenance 
 without the help of good will.” And can there be 
 freedom with this perpetual constraint ? What is 
 it but a kind of rack that forces men to say what 
 they have no mind to ? I have wondered at the 
 extravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, 
 and more at the praises which I find of so deformed 
 an action ; who, though he was one of the seven 
 grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who 
 had freed before his country from an ignoble servi- 
 tude, slit his own nose and lips, cut off his own 
 ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that 
 he might, under pretence of having been mangled 
 so inhumanly by Darius, be received into Babylon 
 (then besieged by the Persians) and get into the 
 command of it by the recommendation of so cruel, 
 a sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring 
 to revenge it. It is a great pity the Babylonians 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 21 
 
 suspected not his falsehood, that they might have 
 cut off his hands too, and whipped him back again. 
 But the design succeeded ; he betrayed the city, and 
 was made governor of it. What brutish master 
 ever punished his offending slave with so little 
 mercy as ambition did this Zopirus ? and yet how 
 many are there in all nations who imitate him in 
 some degree for a less reward ; who, though they 
 endure not so much corporal pain for a small pre- 
 ferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick 
 not to commit actions, by which they are more 
 shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised h But 
 you may say, “Though these be the most ordin- 
 ary and open ways to greatness, yet there are 
 narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths, too* 
 through which some men find a passage by virtuous 
 industry.” I grant, sometimes they may ; but then 
 that industry must be such as cannot consist with 
 liberty, though it may with honesty. 
 
 Thou art careful, frugal, painful. We commend 
 a servant so, but not a friend. 
 
 Well, then, we must acknowledge the toil and 
 
122 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 drudgery which we are forced to endure in this 
 assent, but we are epicures and lords when once we 
 are gotten up into the high places. This is but a 
 short apprenticeship, after which we are made free 
 of a royal company. If we fall in love with any 
 beauteous woman, we must be content that they 
 should be our mistresses whilst we woo them. As 
 soon as we are wedded and enjoy, ’tis we shall be 
 the masters. 
 
 I am willing to stick to this similitude in the 
 •case of greatness : we enter into the bonds of it, 
 like those of matrimony ; we are bewitched with 
 the outward and painted beauty, and take it for 
 better or worse before we know its true nature and 
 interior inconveniences. “ A great fortune,” says 
 Seneca, “is a great servitude.” But many are of 
 that opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) 
 •even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero. 
 “We fear,” says he to Atticus, “death, and banish- 
 ment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, 
 I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils, 
 and if he have but some persons from whom he 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 23 
 
 can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who 
 will flatter and worship him, seems to be well 
 enough contented with an honourable servitude, 
 if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable 
 in so base and contumelious a condition. ” This 
 was spoken as became the bravest man who was 
 ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But 
 with us, generally, no condition passes for servitude 
 that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, 
 and with the service of many inferiors. This is 
 but a deception of the sight through a false 
 medium ; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his 
 chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a 
 prince, the groom, the gentleman, and the lord are 
 as much servants one as the other. The circum- 
 stantial difference of the one getting only his 
 bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the 
 third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to 
 this matter than the difference between a plain, a 
 rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who 
 sells his whole time and his own will for one 
 hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he 
 
24 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 who does it for one hundred pounds; hut I will 
 swear they are both merchants, and that he is 
 happier than both who can live contentedly without 
 selling that estate to which he was born. But 
 this dependence upon superiors is but one chain of 
 the lovers of power, Amatorem trecentce Pirithoum 
 cohib'ent catenae. Let us begin with him by break 
 of day, for by that time he is besieged by two or 
 three hundred suitors, and the hall and anti- 
 chambers (all the outworks) possessed by the 
 enemy ; as soon as his chamber opens, they are 
 ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards 
 for entrance. This is so essential a part of great- 
 ness, that whosoever is without it looks like a 
 fallen favourite, like a person disgraced, and 
 condemned to do what he please all the morning. 
 There are some who, rather than want this, are 
 contented to have their rooms filled up every day 
 with murmuring and cursing creditors, and to 
 charge bravely through a body of them to get to 
 their coach. Now I would fain know which is the 
 worst duty, that of any one particular person who 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 25 
 
 waits to speak with the great man, or the great 
 man’s, who waits every day to speak with all the 
 company. Aliena negotia centum Per caput et 
 circum saliunt latus : A hundred businesses of 
 other men (many unjust and most impertinent) fly 
 •continually about his head and ears, and strike 
 him in the face like dors. Let us contemplate 
 him a little at another special scene of glory, and 
 that is his table. Here he seems to be the lord of 
 all Nature. The earth affords him her best metals 
 for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for 
 his food ; the air and sea supply him with their 
 choicest birds and fishes ; and a great many men 
 who look like masters attend upon him ; and yet, 
 when all this is done, even all this is but Table 
 d’Hote. It is crowded with people for whom he 
 cares not — with many parasites, and some spies, 
 with the most burdensome sort of guests — the 
 endeavourers to be witty. 
 
 But everybody pays him great respect, everybody 
 commends his meat — that is, his money; every- 
 body admires the exquisite dressing and ordering 
 
26 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 of it — that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his 
 cook ; everybody loves his hospitality — that is, his 
 vanity. But I desire to know why the honest 
 innkeeper who provides a public table for his 
 profits should be but of a mean profession, and he 
 who does it for his honour a munificent prince. 
 You’ll say, because one sells and the other gives. 
 Nay, both sell, though for different things — the 
 one for plain money, the other for I know not 
 what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy. 
 If, then, his table be made a snare (as the 
 Scripture speaks) to his liberty, where can he hope 
 for freedom ? there is always and everywhere some 
 restraint upon him. He is guarded with crowds, 
 and shackled with formalities. The half hat, the 
 whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the 
 nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little 
 bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, 
 the superlative at the door ; and if the person be 
 Pan huper sebastos , there’s a Huper superlative 
 ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of 
 the stairs, or to the very gate : as if there were 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 27 
 
 such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the 
 sea, “ Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further. ’* 
 Perditur licec inter misero Lux . Thus wretchedly 
 the precious day is lost. 
 
 How many impertinent letters and visits must 
 he receive, and sometimes answer both too as im- 
 pertinently % He never sets his foot beyond his 
 threshold, unless, like a funeral, he hath a train to 
 follow him, as if, like the dead corpse, he could 
 not stir till the bearers were all ready. “My 
 life,” says Horace, speaking to one of these mag- 
 nificos , “is a great deal more easy and commodious 
 than thine, in that I can go into the market and 1 
 cheapen what I please without being wondered at * 
 and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum 
 without being missed.” It is an unpleasant con- 
 straint to be always under the sight and observa- 
 tion and censure of others ; as there may be 
 vanity in it, so, methinks, there should be vexation 
 too of spirit. And I wonder how princes can 
 endure to have two or three hundred men stand 
 gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner, and 
 
•28 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing 
 seems greater and more lordly than the multitude 
 of domestic servants, but, even this too, if weighed 
 seriously, is a piece of servitude ; unless you will 
 be a servant to them, as many men are, the trouble 
 and care of yours in the government of them all, 
 is much more than that of every one of them in 
 their observation of you. I take the profession of 
 a schoolmaster to be one of the most useful, and 
 which ought to be of the most honourable in a 
 commonwealth, yet certainly all his farces and 
 tyrannical authority over so many boys takes 
 away his own liberty more than theirs. 
 
 I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars 
 of the slavery of greatness ; I shake but a few of 
 their outward chains ; their anger, hatred, jealousy, 
 fear, envy, grief, and all the et cetera of their pas- 
 sions, which are the secret but constant tyrants 
 and torturers of their life. I omit here, because 
 though they be symptoms most frequent and violent 
 in this disease, yet they are common too in some 
 degree to the epidemical disease of life itself. But 
 
OF LIBERTY, 
 
 29 
 
 the ambitious man, though he be so many ways a 
 slave ( 0 toties servus /), yet he bears it bravely and 
 heroically ; he struts and looks big upon the stage, 
 he thinks himself a real prince in his masking 
 habit, and deceives too all the foolish part of his 
 spectators. He’s a slave in Saturnalibus. The 
 covetous man is a downright servant, a draught 
 horse without bells or feathers ; ad metalla dam - 
 natus , a man condemned to work in mines, which 
 is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude ; 
 and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he 
 knows not whom. He heapeth up riches and 
 knows not who shall enjoy them ; ’tis only that he 
 himself neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an 
 indigent needy slave, he will hardly allow himself 
 clothes and board wages ; Unciatim vix demenso de 
 suo suum defraudans Genium comparsit miser . 
 He defrauds not only other men, but his own 
 genius. He cheats himself for money. But the 
 servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so 
 apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man’s 
 sight, as well as judgment. It seems a more 
 
COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 30 
 
 difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man 
 too is but a servant. What can be more the life 
 of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentle- 
 man, than to follow nothing but his own pleasures ? 
 Why, I’ll tell you who is that true freeman and 
 that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows 
 all his pleasures (the very name of follower is 
 servile), but he who rationally guides them, and is 
 not hindered by outward impediments in the con- 
 duct and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or 
 force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though 
 I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the truth of 
 the matter I am at that time rather his man than 
 he my horse. The voluptuous men (whom we are 
 fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the 
 lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the 
 belly ; the other whom we spoke of before, the 
 ambitious and the covetous, were kuko. d^pia, evil 
 wild beasts ; these are rcurre'pes apyai, slow bellies, as 
 our translation renders it ; but the word s Apyai 
 (which is a fantastical word with two directly 
 opposite significations) will bear as well the trans- 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 31 
 
 lation of quick or diligent bellies, and both interpre- 
 tations may be applied to these men. Metrodorus 
 said, C( That he had learnt *A \rj0cvs yaarpl x a P L C €ar ^ a h 
 to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures.” 
 This by the calumniators of Epicurus his philosophy 
 was objected as one of the most scandalous of all 
 their sayings, which, according to my charitable 
 understanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, 
 which is, that he thanked his own belly for that 
 moderation in the customary appetites of it, which 
 can only give a man liberty and happiness in this 
 world. Let this suffice at present to be spoken of 
 those great triumviri of the world ; the covetous 
 man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus; the 
 ambitious, who is a brave one, like Octavius ; 
 and the voluptuous, who is a loose and debauched 
 one, like Mark Antony. Quisnam igitur Liber ? 
 Sapiens , sibi qui Imperiosus. Not Oenomaus, who 
 commits himself wholly to a charioteer that may 
 break his neck, but the man 
 
 Who governs his own course with steady hand, 
 
 Who does himself with sovereign power command ; 
 
32 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 Whom neither death nor poverty does fright, 
 
 Who stands not awkwardly in his own light 
 Against the truth : who can, when pleasures knock 
 Loud at his door, keep firm the bolt and lock. 
 
 Who can, though honour at his gate should stay 
 In all her masking clothes, send her away, 
 
 And cry, Begone, I have no mind to play. 
 
 This I confess is a freeman ; but it may be said 
 that many persons are so shackled by their fortune 
 that they are hindered from enjoyment of that 
 manumission which they have obtained from virtue. 
 I do both understand, and in part feel the weight 
 of this objection. All I can answer to it is, “That 
 we must get as much liberty as we can ; we must 
 use our utmost endeavours, and when all that is 
 done, be contented with the length of that line 
 which is allowed us.” If you ask me in what 
 condition of life I think the most allowed, I should 
 pitch upon that sort of people whom King James 
 was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the 
 men placed in the country by their fortune above 
 an high constable, and yet beneath the trouble of a 
 justice of the peace, in a moderate plenty, without 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 33 
 
 any just argument for the desire of increasing it 
 by the care of many relations, and with so much 
 knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that 
 is, of the study of God’s laws and of his creatures) 
 as may afford him matter enough never to be idle 
 though without business, and never to be melan- 
 choly though without sin or vanity. 
 
 I shall conclude this tedious discourse with a 
 prayer of mine in a copy of Latin verses, of which 
 I remember no other part, and ( 'pour faire bonne 
 bouche ) with some other verses upon the same 
 subject. 
 
 Magne Deus\ quod ad has vitce brevis attinet boras , 
 Da mihi , da Panem Libert at emque , nec ultra 
 Sollicitas effundo preces , si quid datur ultrk 
 Accipiam gratus ; si non , contentus abibo. 
 
 For the few hours of life allotted me, 
 
 G-ive me, great G-od, but Bread and Liberty, 
 
 I’ll beg no more ; if more thou’rt pleased to give, 
 
 I’ll thankfully that overplus receive. 
 
 If beyond this no more be freely sent, 
 
 I’ll thank for this, and go away content. 
 
 b — 28 
 
34 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Martial. Lib. 2. 
 
 Vota tui breviter , etc. 
 
 Well then, sir, you shall know how far extend, 
 The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend. 
 
 He does not palaces nor manors crave, 
 
 W ould be no lord, but less a lord would have. 
 The ground he holds, if he his own can call, 
 
 He quarrels not with Heaven because ’tis small 
 Let gay and toilsome greatness others please, 
 
 He loves of homely littleness the ease. 
 
 Can any man in gilded rooms attend, 
 
 And his dear hours in humble visits spend, 
 When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may 
 With various healthful pleasures fill the day ? 
 
 If there be man, ye gods, I ought to hate, 
 Dependence and attendance be his fate. 
 
 Still let him busy be, and in a crowd, 
 
 And very much a slave, and very proud : 
 
 Thus he, perhaps, powerful and rich may grow ; 
 No matter, O ye gods ! that I’ll allow. 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 35 
 
 But let him peace and freedom never see ; 
 Let him not love this life, who loves not me. 
 
 Martial. Lib. 2. 
 
 Vis fieri Liber , etc . 
 
 Would you be free 1 ’Tis your chief wish, you 
 say, 
 
 Come on ; I’ll show thee, friend, the certain way. 
 
 If to no feasts abroad thou lov’st to go, 
 
 Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow ; 
 If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize 
 By thine own use, and not by others’ eyes ; 
 
 If, only safe from weathers, thou canst dwell 
 In a small house, but a convenient shell : 
 
 If thou without a sigh, or golden wish, 
 
 Canst look upon thy beechen bowl and dish ; 
 
 If in thy mind such power and greatness be — 
 
 The Persian King ’s a slave compared with thee. 
 
36 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Martial. L. 2. 
 
 Quod te nomine ? etc. 
 
 That I do you with humble bows no more. 
 And danger of my naked head, adore ; 
 
 That I, who lord and master cried erewhile. 
 Salute you in a new and different style, 
 
 By your own name, a scandal to you now ; 
 Think not that I forget myself or you : 
 
 By loss of all things by all others sought 
 This freedom, and the freeman’s hat, is bought, 
 A lord and master no man wants but he 
 Who o’er himself has no authority, 
 
 Who does for honours and for riches strive, 
 And follies without which lords cannot live. 
 
 If thou from fortune dost no servant crave, 
 Believe it, thou no master need’st to have. 
 
OF LIBERTY, 
 
 37 
 
 Ode 
 
 UPON LIBERTY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Freedom with virtue takes her seat ; 
 
 Her proper place, her only scene, 
 
 Is in the golden mean, 
 
 She lives not with the poor, nor with the great : 
 The wings of those, Necessity has clipped, 
 
 And they’re in Fortune’s Bridewell whipped, 
 To the laborious task of bread ; 
 
 These are by various tyrants captive led. 
 
 Now wild Ambition with imperious force 
 Rides, reins, and spurs them like th’ unruly horse ; 
 And servile Avarice yokes them now 
 Like toilsome oxen to the plough ; 
 
 And sometimes Lust, like the misguiding light, 
 Draws them through all the labyrinths of night. 
 
 If any few among the great there be 
 From the insulting passions free, 
 
38 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Yet we even those too fettered see 
 By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency , 
 And wheresoe’er they stay, and wheresoe’er they go, 
 Impertinences round them flow. 
 
 These are the small uneasy things 
 Which about greatness still are found, 
 
 And rather it molest than wound 
 Like gnats which too much heat of summer brings ; 
 But cares do swarm there too, and those have 
 stings : 
 
 As when the honey does too open lie, 
 
 A thousand wasps about it fly 
 Nor will the master even to share admit ; 
 
 The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it. 
 
 ii. 
 
 ’Tis morning, well, I fain would yet sleep on ; 
 
 You cannot now ; you must be gone 
 To Court, or to the noisy hall : 
 
 Besides, the rooms without are crowded all ; 
 
 The steam of business does begin, 
 
 And a springtide of clients is come in. 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Ah, cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep, 
 Will they not suffer him to sleep ! 
 
 Make an escape ; out at the postern flee, 
 
 And get some blessed hours of liberty. 
 
 With a few friends, and a few dishes dine, 
 
 And much of mirth and moderate wine ; 
 To thy bent mind some relaxation give, 
 
 And steal one day out of thy life to live. 
 
 Oh happy man, he cries, to whom kind Heaven 
 Has such a freedom always given ! 
 
 Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee 
 From being every day as free h 
 
 hi. 
 
 In all the freeborn nations of the air, 
 
 Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear 
 As to exchange his native liberty 
 Of soaring boldly up into the sky, 
 
 His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly 
 When, and wherever he thought good, 
 
 And all his innocent pleasures of the wood, 
 
 For a more plentiful or constant food. 
 
40 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 N or ever did ambitious rage 
 Make him into a painted cage 
 Or the false forest of a well-hung room 
 For honour and preferment come. 
 
 Now, blessings on ye all, ye heroic race, 
 
 Who keep their primitive powers and rights so 
 well 
 
 Though men and angels fell. 
 
 Of all material lives the highest place 
 To you is justly given, 
 
 And ways and walks the nearest Heaven ; 
 Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think 
 fit 
 
 To boast that we look up to it. 
 
 Even to the universal tyrant Love 
 
 You homage pay but once a year ; 
 
 None so degenerous and unbirdly prove, 
 
 As his perpetual yoke to bear. 
 
 None but a few unhappy household fowl, 
 
 Whom human lordship does control ; 
 
 Who from their birth corrupted were 
 By bondage, and by man’s example here. 
 
OF LIBERTY. 
 
 41 
 
 IV. 
 
 He’s no small prince who every day 
 Thus to himself can say, 
 
 Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk, 
 
 Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance 
 talk ; 
 
 This I will do, here I will stay, 
 
 Or, if my fancy call me away, 
 
 My man and I will presently go ride 
 (For we before have nothing to provide, 
 
 Nor after are to render an account) 
 
 To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish Mount. 
 
 If thou but a short journey take, 
 
 As if thy last thou wert to make, 
 
 Business must be despatched ere thou canst 
 part. 
 
 Nor canst thou stir unless there be 
 A hundred horse and men to wait on thee, 
 And many a mule, and many a cart : 
 
 What an unwieldy man thou art ! 
 
 The Bhodian Colossus so 
 A journey too might go. 
 
42 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 v. 
 
 Where honour or where conscience does not 
 bind, 
 
 No other law shall shackle me 1 
 Slave to myself I will not be, 
 
 Nor shall my future actions be confined 
 By my own present mind. 
 
 Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand 
 For days that yet belong to fate, 
 
 Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate 
 Before it falls into his hand ; 
 
 The bondman of the cloister so 
 All that he does receive does always owe. 
 
 And still as time come in it goes away, 
 
 Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. 
 
 Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell 
 
 Which his hour’s work, as well as hour’s does tell ! 
 
 Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell. 
 
 VI. 
 
 If Life should a well-ordered poem be 
 (In which he only hits the white 
 
OP LIBERTY. 
 
 43 
 
 Who joins true profit with the best delight), 
 
 The more heroic strain let others take, 
 
 Mine the Pindaric way I’ll make, 
 
 The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and 
 free. 
 
 It shall not keep one settled pace of time, 
 
 In the same tune it shall not always chime, 
 
 Nor shall each day just to his neighbour rhyme. 
 
 A thousand liberties it shall dispense, 
 
 And yet shall manage all without offence 
 Or to the sweetness of the sound, or greatness of 
 the sense; 
 
 Nor shall it never from one subject start, 
 
 Nor seek transitions to depart, 
 
 Nor its set way o’er stiles and bridges make, 
 
 Nor thorough lanes a compass take 
 As if it feared some trespass to commit, 
 
 When the wide air ’s a road for it. 
 
 So the imperial eagle does not stay 
 Till the whole carcase he devour 
 That’s fallen into its power ; 
 
 As if his generous hunger understood 
 
44 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 That he can never want plenty of food, 
 
 He only sucks the tasteful blood, 
 
 And to fresh game flies cheerfully away ; 
 
 To kites and meaner birds he leaves the mangled 
 
 prey. 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 <c Nunquam minus solus , quam cum solus” is now 
 become a very vulgar saying. Every man and 
 almost every boy for these seventeen hundred years 
 has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken 
 by the excellent Scipio, who was without question 
 a most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all 
 mankind. His meaning no doubt was this : that 
 he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more 
 improvement of it by solitude than by company ; 
 and to show that he spoke not this loosely or out 
 of vanity, after he had made Borne mistress of 
 almost the whole world, he retired himself from it 
 by a voluntary exile, and at a private house in the 
 middle of a wood near Linternum passed the re- 
 mainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. 
 This house Seneca went to see so long after with 
 great veneration, and, among other things, describe* 
 
46 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 his bath to have been of so mean a structure, that 
 now, says he, the basest of the people would de- 
 spise them, and cry out, “ Poor Scipio understood 
 not how to live.” What an authority is here for 
 the credit of retreat ! and happy had it been for 
 Hannibal if adversity could have taught him as 
 much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the 
 highest prosperities. This would be no wonder if 
 it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said 
 by Monsieur de Montaigne, that ambition itself 
 might teach us to love solitude : there is nothing 
 does so much hate to have companions. It is true, 
 it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have 
 company on either side, but it delights above all 
 things in a train’ behind, aye, and ushers, too, be- 
 fore it. But the greater part of men are so far from 
 the opinion of that noble Homan, that if they 
 chance at any time to be without company they 
 are like a becalmed ship ; they never move but 
 by the wind of other men’s breath, and have 
 no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very 
 fantastical and contradictory in human nature,. 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 47 
 
 that men should love themselves above all the rest 
 of the world, and yet never endure to be with 
 themselves. When they are in love with a 'mis- 
 tress, all other persons are importunate and burden- 
 some to them. “ Tecum vivere amem , tecum obeam 
 lubens” They would live and die with her alone. 
 
 Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere silvis 
 Qua nulla humano sit via trita pede , 
 
 Tu mihi cur arum requies , tu node vel atrA 
 Lumen , et in solis tu mihi turba locis . 
 
 With thee for ever I in woods could rest, 
 
 Where never human foot the ground has pressed ; 
 Thou from all shades the darkness canst exclude, 
 And from a desert banish solitude. 
 
 And yet our dear self is so wearisome to us that 
 we can scarcely support its conversation for an 
 hour together. This is such an odd temper of 
 mind as Catullus expresses towards one of his 
 mistresses, whom we may suppose to have been of 
 a very unsociable humour. 
 
48 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 Odi et Amo , qua navi id faciam ratione requiris ? 
 
 Nescio , sed fieri sentio , et excrucior. 
 
 I hate, and yet I love thee too ; 
 
 How can that be ? I know not how ; 
 
 Only that so it is I know, 
 
 And feel with torment that ’tis so. 
 
 It is a deplorable condition this, and drives a 
 man sometimes to pitiful shifts in seeking how to 
 avoid himself. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that neither he who 
 is a fop in the world is a fit man to be alone, nor 
 he who has set his heart much upon the world, 
 though he has ever so much understanding; so 
 that solitude can be well fitted and set right but 
 upon a very few persons. They must have enough 
 knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and 
 enough virtue to despise all vanity ; if the mind 
 be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had 
 better be in a fair than in a wood alone. They 
 may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick 
 our pockets in the midst of company, but like 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 49 
 
 robbers, they use to strip and bind, or murder us 
 when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat 
 from men, and fall into the hands of devils. It 
 is like the punishment of parricides among the 
 Homans, to be sewed into a bag with an ape, a 
 dog, and a serpent. The first work, therefore, that 
 a man must do to make himself capable of the 
 good of solitude is the very eradication of all lusts, 
 for how is it possible for a man to enjoy himself 
 while his affections are tied to things without him- 
 self? In the second place, he must learn the art 
 and get the habit of thinking ; for this too, no less 
 than well speaking, depends upon much practice ; 
 and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the 
 solitude of a god from a wild beast. Now because 
 the soul of man is not by its own nature or obser- 
 vation furnished with sufficient materials to work 
 upon ; it is necessary for it to have continual 
 resource to learning and books for fresh sup- 
 plies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, 
 and be ready to starve without them ; but if 
 once we be thoroughly engaged in the love of 
 
50 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 letters, instead of being wearied with the length 
 of any day, we shall only complain of the short- 
 ness of our whole life. 
 
 0 vita, stulto longa , sapienti brevis ! 
 
 0 life, long to the fool, short to the wise ! 
 
 The First Minister of State has not so much 
 business in public as a wise man has in private ; if 
 the one have little leisure to be alone, the other 
 has less leisure to be in company ; the one has but 
 part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the 
 works of God and nature under his consideration. 
 There is no saying shocks me so much as that 
 which I hear very often, “ That a man does not 
 know how to pass his time.” It would have been 
 but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred 
 and sixty-ninth year of his life, so far it is from us, 
 who have not time enough to attain to the utmost 
 perfection of any part of any science, to have cause 
 to complain that we are forced to be idle for want 
 of work. But this you will say is work only for 
 the learned, others are not capable either of the 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 51 
 
 employments or the divertisements that arise from 
 letters. I know they are not, and therefore can- 
 not much recommend solitude to a man totally 
 illiterate. But if any man be so unlearned as to 
 want entertainment of the little intervals of acci- 
 dental solitude, which frequently occur in almost 
 all conditions (except the very meanest of the 
 people, who have business enough in the necessary 
 provisions for life), it is truly a great shame both 
 to his parents and himself ; for a very small portion 
 of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of 
 our time, either music, or painting, or designing, 
 or chemistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty 
 other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly ; 
 and if he happen to set his affections upon poetry 
 (which I do not advise him too immoderately) that 
 will overdo it ; no wood will be thick enough to 
 hide him from the importunities of company or 
 business, which would abstract him from his 
 beloved. 
 
 0 quis vie gelidis sub montibus Hcemi 
 
 Sistat , et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrd ? 
 
 0. OF 4tL. Ub' 
 
52 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 r. 
 
 Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good ! 
 Hail, ye plebeian underwood ! 
 
 Where the poetic birds rejoice, 
 
 And for their quiet nests and plenteous food 
 Pay with their grateful voice. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Hail, the poor Muses’ richest manor seat ! 
 
 Ye country houses and retreat 
 Which all the happy gods so love, 
 
 That for you oft they quit their bright and great 
 Metropolis above. 
 
 in. 
 
 Here Nature does a house for me erect, 
 
 Nature the wisest architect, 
 
 Who those fond artists does despise 
 That can the fair and living trees neglect, 
 
 Yet the dead timber prize. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Here let me, careless .and unthoughtful lying, 
 Hear the soft winds, above me flying, 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 53 
 
 With all their wanton boughs dispute, 
 
 And the more tuneful birds to both replying, 
 Nor be myself too mute. 
 
 v. 
 
 A sil ver stream shall roll his waters near, 
 Gilt with the sunbeams here and there, 
 
 On whose enamelled bank 111 walk, 
 
 And see how prettily they smile, and hear 
 How prettily they talk. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Ah wretched, and too solitary he 
 Who loves not his own company ! 
 
 Hell feel the weight oft many a day. 
 Unless he call in sin or vanity 
 To help to bear! away. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Oh solitude, first state of human-kind ! 
 Which blest remained till man did find 
 Even his own helper’s company. 
 
 As soon as two, alas, together joined. 
 
 The serpent made up three. 
 
54 
 
 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Though God himself, through countless ages, thee 
 His sole companion chose to be, 
 
 Thee, sacred Solitude alone ; 
 
 Before the branchy head of numbers Three 
 Sprang from the trunk of One. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Thou (though men think thine an unactive part) 
 Dost break and tame th’ unruly heart, 
 
 Which else would know no settled pace, 
 
 Making it move, well managed by thy art, 
 
 With swiftness and with grace. 
 
 x. 
 
 Thou the faint beams of Reason’s scattered light 
 Dost like a burning glass unite ; 
 
 Dost multiply the feeble heat, 
 
 And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright 
 And noble fires beget. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks, I see 
 The monster London laugh at me ; 
 
OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 55 
 
 I should at thee too, foolish city, 
 
 If it were fit to laugh at misery. 
 
 But thy estate, I pity. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, 
 And the fools that crowd thee so, — 
 Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, 
 A village less than Islington wilt grow, 
 
 A solitude almost. 
 
56 
 
 OF OBSCURITY. 
 
 Nam neque divitibus continguni gaudia soils , 
 
 Nec vixit male , qui natus moriensque fefellit . 
 
 God made not pleasures only for tlie ricli, 
 
 Nor liave those men without their share too lived,. 
 
 Who both in life and death the world deceived. 
 
 This seems a strange sentence thus literally trans- 
 lated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the 
 men of business (for who else can deceive the 
 world 1 ?) whereas it is in commendation of those 
 who live and die so obscurely, that the world takes 
 no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving 
 the world, and in another place uses the same 
 phrase. 
 
 Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitce. 
 
 The secret tracks of the deceiving life. 
 
 It is very elegant in Latin, but our English 
 
OF OBSCURITY. 
 
 57 
 
 word will hardly bear up to that sense, and there- 
 fore Mr. Broome translates it very well : 
 
 Or from a life, led as it. were by stealth. 
 
 Yet we say in our language, a thing deceives our 
 sight, when it passes before us un perceived, and 
 we may say well enough out of the same author : 
 
 Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine we strive 
 
 The cares of life and troubles to deceive. 
 
 But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive 
 ourselves, as Quintilian says, Vitam fallere , To 
 draw on still, and amuse, and deceive our life, 
 till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, 
 and fall into that pit which Nature hath prepared 
 for it. The meaning of all this is no more than 
 that most vulgar saying, Bene qui latuit , bene vixit , 
 He has lived well, who has lain well hidden. 
 Which, if it be a truth, the world, I’ll swear, is 
 sufficiently deceived. For my part, I think it is, 
 and that the pleasantest condition of life, is in 
 incognito. What a brave privilege is it to be free 
 
58 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 from all contentions, from all envying or being 
 envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of 
 ceremonies ] It is in my mind a very delightful 
 pastime, for two good and agreeable friends to 
 travel up and down together in places where they 
 are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It 
 was the case of ^Eneas and his Achates, when 
 they walked invisibly about the fields and streets 
 of Carthage, Yenus herself 
 
 A veil of thickened air around them cast, 
 
 That none might know, or see them as they passed. 
 
 The common story of Demosthenes’s confession 
 that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a 
 Tanker-woman say as he passed, “This is that 
 Demosthenes,” is wonderful ridiculous from so 
 solid an orator. I myself have often met with 
 that temptation to vanity (if it were any), but am 
 so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only 
 makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it 
 were, out of sight shot. Democritus relates, and 
 in such a manner, as if he gloried in the good 
 
OF OBSCURITY. 
 
 59 
 
 fortune and commodity of it, that when he came 
 to Athens, nobody there did so much as take 
 notice of him ; and Epicurus lived there very well, 
 that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so 
 famous since that time, with his friend Metro- 
 dorus : after whose death, making in one of his 
 letters a kind commemoration of the happiness 
 which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at 
 last, that he thought it no disparagement to those 
 great felicities of their life, that in the midst of 
 the most talked of and talking country in 
 the world, they had lived so long, not only with- 
 out fame, but almost without being heard of. 
 And yet within a very few years afterward, there 
 were no two names of men more known or more 
 generally celebrated. If we engage into a large 
 acquaintance and various familiarities, we set 
 open our gates to the invaders of most of our 
 time : we expose our life to a Quotidian Ague of 
 frigid impertinences, which would make a wise 
 man tremble to think of. Now, as for being 
 known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot 
 
dO 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 comprehend the honour that lies in that. What- 
 soever it be, every mountebank has it more than 
 the best doctor, and the hangman more than the 
 Lord Chief Justice of a city. Every creature has 
 it both of nature and art if it be any ways extra- 
 ordinary. It was as often said, “ This is that 
 Bucephalus/’ or, “ This is that Incitatus,” when 
 they were led prancing through the streets, as 
 u This is that Alexander,” or, “ This is that 
 Domitian ” ; and truly for the latter, I take 
 Incitatus to have been a much more honourable 
 beast than his master, and more deserving the 
 consulship than he the empire. I love and 
 commend a true good fame, because it is the 
 shadow of virtue ; not that it doth any good to the 
 body which it accompanies, but ’tis an efficacious 
 shadow, and like that of St. Peter cures the 
 diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no 
 doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such 
 as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was 
 harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to 
 any man whilst he lives ; what it is to him after 
 
OF OBSCURITY. 
 
 61 
 
 his death, I cannot say, because I love not 
 philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and 
 no man who has made the experiment has been 
 so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon 
 the whole matter, I account a person who has a 
 moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the con- 
 versation of two or three agreeable friends, with 
 little commerce in the world besides ; who is 
 esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that 
 know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody ; 
 and so after a healthful quiet life, before the great 
 inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out 
 of it than he came in (for I would not have him 
 so much as cry in the exit) ; this innocent 
 deceiver of the word, as Horace calls him, this 
 Muta Persona, I take to have been more happy in' 
 his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage 
 with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus 
 himself, who asked with his last breath, whether 
 he had not played his farce very well. 
 
62 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 Seneca , ex Thyeste , 
 
 £. Chor. 
 
 Stet quicunque volet , potens , 
 culmin # lubrico , 
 
 Upon the slippery tops of human state, 
 
 The gilded pinnacles of fate, 
 
 Let others proudly stand, and for a while, 
 The giddy danger to beguile, 
 
 With joy and with disdain look down on all, 
 Till their heads turn, and down they fall. 
 Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near 
 That I no fall to earth may fear, 
 
 And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat 
 From the long ruins of the great ! 
 
 Here wrapped in the arms of quiet let me lie, 
 Quiet, companion of obscurity. 
 
 Here let my life, with as much silence slide, 
 As time that measures it does glide. 
 
 Nor let the breath of infamy or fame, 
 
 From town to town echo about my name ; 
 Nor let my homely death embroidered be 
 With scutcheon or with elegy. 
 
OF OBSCURITY. 
 
 63 
 
 An old plebeian let me die, 
 
 Alas, all then are such, as well as I. 
 
 To him, alas, to him, I fear, 
 
 The face of death will terrible appear ; 
 
 Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride 
 By being known to all the world beside, 
 Does not himself, when he is dying, know ; 
 Nor what he is, nor whither he’s to go. 
 
0E AGEICULTUEE. 
 
 The first wish of Virgil (as you will find anon by 
 his verses), was to be a good philosopher; the 
 second, a good husbandman; and God (whom he 
 seemed to understand better than most of the most 
 learned heathens) dealt with him just as he did 
 with Solomon : because he prayed for wisdom in 
 the first place, he added all things else which were 
 subordinately to be desired. He made him one of 
 the best philosophers, and best husbandmen, and 
 to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the 
 best poet. He made him, besides all this, a rich 
 man, and a man who desired to be no richer, 0 
 fortunatus nimium et bona qui sua novit. To 
 be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city ; 
 to be a philosopher, from the world ; or rather, a 
 retreat from the world, as it is Man’s — into the 
 world, as it is God’s. But since Nature denies to 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 65 
 
 most men the capacity or appetite, and Fortune 
 allows but to a very few the opportunities or 
 possibility, of applying themselves wholly to philo- 
 sophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we 
 can make are the employments of a country life. 
 It is, as Columella calls it, Res sine dubitatione 
 proximo, et quasi consanguinea sapientice , the 
 nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred to 
 Philosophy. Yarro says the principles of it are 
 the same which Ennius made to be the principles 
 of all nature ; earth, water, air, and the sun. It 
 does certainly comprehend more parts of philo- 
 sophy than any one profession, art, or science in 
 the world besides ; and, therefore, Cicero says, the 
 pleasures of a husbandman, Mihi ad sapientis vitam 
 proxime videntur accedere , come very nigh to those 
 of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life 
 that affords so many branches of praise to a 
 panegyrist : The utility of it to a man’s self ; the 
 usefulness, or, rather, necessity of it to all the rest 
 of mankind ; the innocence, the pleasure, the an- 
 tiquity, the dignity. The utility (I mean plainly 
 c— 28 
 
66 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 the lucre of it) is not so great now in our nation as 
 arises from merchandise and the trading of the 
 city, from whence many of the best estates and 
 chief honours of the kingdom are derived ; we 
 have no men now fetched from the plough to be 
 made lords, as they were in Home to be made 
 consuls and dictators, the reason of which I con- 
 ceive to be from an evil custom now grown as 
 strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that 
 no men put their children to be bred up appren- 
 tices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such 
 who are so poor, that when they come to be men 
 they have not wherewithal to set up in it, and so 
 can only farm some small parcel of ground, the 
 rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence 
 of the tenant ; whilst they who are proprietors of 
 the land are either too proud or, for want of that 
 kind of education, too ignorant to improve their 
 estates, though the means of doing it be as easy 
 and certain in this as in any other track of com- 
 merce. If there were always two or three thou- 
 sand youths, for seven or eight years bound to this 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 67 
 
 profession, that they might learn the whole art of it, 
 and afterwards be enabled to be masters in it, by a 
 moderate stock, I cannot doubt but that we should 
 see as many aldermen’s estates made in the coun- 
 try as now we do out of all kind of merchandising 
 in the city. There are as many ways to be rich ; and, 
 which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, 
 without such negligence as can neither have excuse 
 nor pity ; for a little ground will, without question, 
 feed a little family, and the superfluities of life 
 (which are now in some cases by custom made 
 almost necessary) must be supplied out of the 
 superabundance of art and industry, or contemned 
 by as great a degree of philosophy. As for the 
 necessity of this art, it is evident enough, since 
 this can live without all others, and no one other 
 without this. This is like speech, without which 
 the society of men cannot be preserved ; the others 
 like figures and tropes of speech which serve only 
 to adorn it. Many nations have lived, and some 
 do still, without any art but this ; not so elegantly, 
 I confess, but still they live; and almost all the 
 
68 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 other arts which are here practised are beholding 
 to them for most of their materials. The inno- 
 cence of this life is in the next thing for which I 
 commend it, and if husbandmen preserve not that, 
 they are much to blame, for no men are so free 
 from the temptations of iniquity. They live by 
 what they can get by industry from the earth, and 
 others by what they can catch by craft from men. 
 They live upon an estate given them by their 
 mother, and others upon an estate cheated from 
 their brethren. They live like sheep and kine, by 
 the allowances of Nature, and others like wolves and 
 foxes by the acquisitions of rapine ; and, I hope, I 
 may affirm (without any offence to the great) that 
 sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves 
 and foxes are pernicious creatures. They are, 
 without dispute, of all men the most quiet and 
 least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the 
 commonwealth ; their manner of life inclines 
 them, and interest binds them, to love peace. In 
 our late mad and miserable civil wars, alj other 
 trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 69 
 
 and raised up some great commanders, who became 
 famous and mighty for the mischiefs they had 
 done. But I do not remember the name of any 
 one husbandman who had so considerable a share 
 in the twenty years’ ruin of his country, as to de- 
 serve the curses of his countrymen ; and if great 
 delights be joined with so much innocence, I think 
 it is ill done of men not to take them here where 
 they are so tame and ready at hand, rather than 
 hunt for them in courts and cities, where they 
 are so wild and the chase so troublesome and 
 dangerous. 
 
 We are here among the vast and noble scenes of 
 Nature ; we are there among the pitiful shifts of 
 policy. We walk here in the light and open ways 
 of the divine bounty ; we grope there in the dark 
 and confused labyrinths of human malice. Our 
 senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine 
 taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated 
 there, and for the most part overwhelmed with 
 their contraries. Here Pleasure looks, methinks, 
 like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife ; it is 
 
70 
 
 COWLEY’S ES?A.YS. 
 
 there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot. 
 Here is harmless and cheap plenty, there guilty 
 and expenseful luxury. 
 
 I shall only instance in one delight more, the 
 most natural and best natured of all others, a per- 
 petual companion of the husbandman : and that is, 
 the satisfaction of looking round about him, and 
 seeing nothing but the effects and improvements 
 of his own art and diligence ; to be always gather- 
 ing of some fruits of it, and at the same time to 
 behold others ripening, and others . budding ; to 
 see all his fields and gardens covered with the 
 beauteous creatures of his own industry ; and to 
 see, like God, that all his works are good. 
 
 Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades ; ipsi 
 
 Agricolce taciturn pertentant gaudia pectus* 
 
 On his heart-strings a secret joy does strike. 
 
 The antiquity of his art is certainly not to be 
 contested by any other. The three first men in the 
 world were a gardener, a plough /nan, and a grazier ; 
 and if any man object that the second of these was 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 71 
 
 a murderer, I desire he would consider, that as soon 
 as he was so, he quitted our profession and turned 
 builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Eecle- 
 siasticus forbids us to hate husbandry; because, 
 says he, the Most High has created it. We were 
 all born to this art, and taught by nature to 
 nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which 
 they were made, and to which they must return 
 and pay at last for their sustenance. 
 
 Behold the original and primitive nobility of all 
 those great persons who are too proud now not 
 only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon 
 it. We may talk what we please of lilies and lions 
 rampant, and spread eagles in fields d’or or 
 d argent ; but if heraldry were guided by reason, 
 a plough in a field arable would be the most noble 
 and ancient arms. 
 
 All these considerations make me fall into the 
 wonder and complaint of Columella, how it should 
 come to pass that all arts or sciences (for the dis- 
 pute, which is an art and which is a science, does 
 not belong to the curiosity of us husbandmen), 
 
72 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 metaphvsic, physic, morality, mathematics, logic, 
 rhetoric, etc., which are all, I grant, good and useful 
 faculties, except only metaphysic, which I do not 
 know whether it be anything or no, but even 
 vaulting, fencing, dancing, attiring, cookery, carv- 
 ing, and such like vanities, should all have public 
 schools and masters ; and yet that we should never 
 see or hear of any man who took upon him the 
 profession of teaching this so pleasant, so vir- 
 tuous, so profitable, so honourable, so necessary 
 art. 
 
 A man would think, when he’s in serious humour, 
 that it were but a vain, irrational, and ridicu- 
 lous thing for a great company of men and women 
 to run up and down in a room together, in a hun- 
 dred several postures and figures, to no purpose, 
 and with no design ; and therefore dancing was 
 invented first, and only practised anciently, in the 
 ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted 
 all in mummery and madness ; the latter being the 
 chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine 
 inspiration. This, I say, a severe man would think. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 73 
 
 though I dare not determine so far against so cus- 
 tomary a part now of good breeding. And yet, 
 who is there among our gentry that does not enter- 
 tain a dancing master for his children as soon as 
 they are able to walk h But did ever any father 
 provide a tutor for Iris son to instruct him betimes 
 in the nature and improvements of that land which 
 he intended to leave him ] That is at least a super- 
 fluity, and this a defect in our manner of educa- 
 tion ; and therefore I could wish, but cannot in 
 these times much hope to see it, that one college in 
 each university were erected, and appropriated to 
 this study, as well as there are to medicine and the 
 civil law. There would be no need of making a 
 body of scholars and fellows, with certain endow- 
 ments, as in other colleges ; it would suffice if, after 
 the manner of Halls in Oxford, there were only four 
 professors constituted (for it would be too much 
 work for only one master, or Principal, as they call 
 him there) to teach these four parts of it. First, 
 aration, and all things relating to it. Secondly, 
 pasturage; thirdly, gardens, orchards, vineyards, 
 
74 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 and woods ; fourthly, all parts of rural economy, 
 which would contain the government of bees, swine, 
 poultry, decoys, ponds, etc., and all that which Yarro 
 culls Villaticas Pastiones, together with the sports 
 of the field, which ought not to be looked upon 
 only as pleasures, but as parts of housekeeping, and 
 the domestical conservation and uses of all that is 
 brought in by industry abroad. The business of 
 these professors should not be, as is commonly 
 practised in other arts, only to read pompous and 
 superficial lectures out of Yirgil’s Georgies, Pliny, 
 Yarro, or Columella, but to instruct their pupils in 
 the whole method and course of this study, which 
 might be run through perhaps with diligence in a 
 year or two ; and the continual succession of scholars 
 upon a moderate taxation for their diet, lodging, 
 and learning, would be a sufficient constant revenue 
 for maintenance of the house and the professors, 
 who should be men not chosen for the ostentation 
 of critical literature, but for solid and experimental 
 knowledge of the things they teach such men ; so 
 industrious and public spirited as I conceive Mr. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 75 
 
 Hartlib to be, if the gentleman be yet alive. But 
 it is needless to speak further of my thoughts of 
 this design, unless the present disposition of the 
 age allowed more probability of bringing it into 
 execution. What I have further to say of the 
 country life shall be borrowed from the poets, who 
 were always the most faithful and affectionate 
 friends to it. Poetry was born among the shep- 
 herds. 
 
 Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine musas 
 Bucit , et immemores non sinit esse sui. 
 
 The Muses still love their own native place, 
 
 ’T has secret charms which nothing can deface. 
 
 The truth is, no other place is proper for their 
 * work. One might as well undertake to dance in a 
 crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise 
 and tumult. 
 
 As well might corn as verse in cities grow ; 
 
 In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow, 
 Against th’ unnatural soil in vain we strive, 
 
 ’Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive. 
 
76 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 It will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of 
 satire, which grow most naturally in the worst 
 earth ; and therefore almost all poets, except those 
 who were not able to eat bread without the bounty 
 of great men, that is, without what they could get 
 by flattering of them, have not only withdrawn 
 themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand 
 world ( pariter vitiisque jocisque altius humanis 
 exeruere caput ) into the innocent happiness of a 
 retired life ; but have commended and adorned 
 nothing so much by their ever-living poems. Hesiod 
 was the first or second poet in the world that 
 remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, pre- 
 ceded him, but I rather believe they were contem- 
 poraries), and he is the first writer, too, of the art 
 of husbandry. He has contributed, says Columella, 
 not a little to our profession ; I suppose he means 
 not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions 
 is not very important. His great antiquity is visible 
 through the gravity and simplicity of his style. 
 The most acute of all his sayings concerns our 
 purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 77 
 
 obscurity of an oracle. nAeW rmu<rv ttclvtos. The half is 
 more than the whole. The occasion of the speech 
 is this : his brother Perses had by corrupting some 
 great men (Ba<ri\rjas a upocpayovs, great bribe-eaters 
 he calls them) gotten from him the half of his estate. 
 It is no matter, says he, they have not done me 
 so much prejudice as they imagine. 
 
 N^pnot, ov 8’ 'iaaCLV oacp ir\€Oi / r)/uu(Tv it aurds, 
 
 OvS ’ ocrov iu fia\dxy Te teal aatyofttXcp fAsy' oveias, 
 
 K pvxpaures yap exovan deol ^iov avOpcoTroio'i. 
 
 Unhappy they to whom G-od has not revealed 
 By a strong light which must their sense control, 
 That half a great estate’s more than the whole. 
 Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lie 
 Of roots and herbs the wholesome luxury. 
 
 This I conceive to have been honest Hesiod’s 
 meaning. From Homer we must not expect much 
 -concerning our affairs. He was blind, and could 
 neither work in the country nor enjoy the pleasures 
 of it ; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sus- 
 tained in the richest places, he was to delight the 
 Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures 
 
78 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 of their ancestors ; his subject removed him from 
 all commerce with us, and yet, me thinks, he made 
 a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though 
 he could do us no honour in the person of his hero 
 Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole 
 time was consumed in wars and voyages, yet he 
 makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, 
 and seeking his consolation for the absence of his 
 son in the pleasure of planting and even dunging 
 his own grounds. Yet, see, he did not contemn us 
 peasants; nay, so far was he from that insolence, 
 that he always styles Eumseus, who kept the hogs 
 with wonderful respect, ATor v<\>opfrov, the divine 
 swine-herd ; he could have done no more for Mene- 
 laus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very an- 
 cient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he 
 wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet 
 to a husbandman E/miSero Albs aypcorrjs . The divine 
 husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but A ?os 
 himself. These were civil Greeks, and who under- 
 stood the dignity of our calling. Among the 
 Romans, we have in the first place our truly divine 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 79 
 
 Virgil, wlio, though by the favour of Msecenas and 
 Augustus he might have been one of the chief men 
 of Home, yet chose rather to employ much of his 
 time in the exercise, and much of his immortal 
 wit in the praise and instructions of a rustic life ; 
 who, though he had written before whole books of 
 Pastorals and Georgies, could not abstain in his 
 great and imperial poem from describing Evander, 
 one of his best princes, as living just after the 
 homely manner of an ordinary countryman. He 
 seats him in a throne of maple, and lays him but 
 upon a bear’s skin, the kine and oxen are lowing 
 in his courtyard, the birds under the eaves of his 
 window call him up in the morning ; and when he 
 goes abroad only two dogs go along with him for 
 his guard. At last, when he brings ^Eneas into 
 his royal cottage, he makes him say this memo- 
 rable compliment, greater than ever yet was 
 spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our White* 
 hall. 
 
 Hcec, inquit , limina victor 
 Alcides subiit , Ticec ilium Regia cejgit , 
 
80 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Aude, Hospes contemnere ope 9 , et te quoque dignum 
 Finge Deo ) rebusque xeni non asper egenis. 
 
 This humble roof, this rustic court, said he, 
 
 Received Alcides crowned with victory. 
 
 Scorn not, great guest, the steps where he has trod, 
 
 But contemn wealth, and imitate a god. 
 
 The next man whom we are much obliged to, 
 both for his doctrine and example, is the next best 
 poet in the world to Virgil : his dear friend Horace, 
 who, when Augustus had desired Mecsenas to per- 
 suade him to come and live domestically and at 
 the same table with him, and to be Secretary of 
 State of the whole world under him, or rather 
 jointly with him (for he says, “ ut nos in Epistolis 
 scribendis adjuvet ,”) could not be tempted to forsake 
 his Sabine or Tiburtine Manor, for so rich and so 
 glorious a trouble. There was never, I think, such 
 an example as this in the world, that he should 
 have so much moderation and courage as to refuse 
 an offer of such greatness, and the Emperor so 
 much generosity and good nature as not to be at 
 all offended with his refusal, but to retain still the 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 81 
 
 Same kindness, and express it often to him in most 
 friendly and familiar letters, part of which are still 
 extant. If I should produce all the passages of 
 this excellent author upon the several subjects 
 which I treat of in this book, I must be obliged to 
 translate half his works ; of which I may say more 
 truly than, in my opinion, he did of Homer, “ Qui 
 quid sit pulchrum, quid iurpe , quid utile , quid 
 non , plenius , et melius Chrysippo , et Crantore 
 dicit.” I shall content myself upon this particular 
 theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the 
 other out of his Satires, the third out of his 
 Epistles, and shall forbear to collect the suffrages 
 of all other poets, which may be found scattered up 
 and down through all their writings, and especially 
 in Martial’s. But I must not omit to make some 
 excuse for the bold undertaking of my own un- 
 skilful pencil upon the beauties of a face that has 
 been drawn before by so many great masters, 
 especially that I should dare to do it in Latin 
 verses (though of another kind) and have the con- 
 fidence to translate them. I can only say that I 
 
82 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 love the matter, and that ought to cover many 
 faults ; and that I run not to contend with those 
 before me. but follow to applaud them. 
 
 Virg. Georg. 
 
 0 fortunatus nimium , etc. 
 
 A TRANSLATION OUT OF VIRGIL. 
 
 Oh happy (if his happiness he knows) 
 
 The country swain, on whom kind Heaven bestows 
 At home all riches that wise Nature needs; 
 
 Whom the just earth with easy plenty feeds 
 J Tis true, no morning tide of clients comes, 
 
 And fills the painted channels of his rooms, 
 Adoring the rich figures, as they pass, 
 
 In tapestry wrought, or cut in living brass ; 
 
 Nor is his wool superfluously dyed 
 With the dear poison of Assyrian pride : 
 
 Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoil 
 The native use and sweetness of his oil. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 83 
 
 Instead of these, his calm and harmless life, 
 
 Free from tlT alarms of fear, and storms of strife, 
 Does with substantial blessedness abound, 
 
 And the soft wings of peace cover him round : 
 Through artless grots the murmuring waters glide ; 
 Thick trees both against heat and cold provide, 
 From whence the birds salute him ; and his ground 
 With lowing herds, and bleating sheep does sound; 
 And all the rivers, and the forests nigh, 
 
 Both food and game and exercise supply. 
 
 Here a well-hardened, active youth we see, 
 
 Taught the great art of cheerful poverty. 
 
 Here, in this place alone, there still do shine 
 Some streaks of love, both human and divine ; 
 From hence Astraea took her flight, and here 
 Still her last footsteps upon earth appear. 
 
 Tis true, the first desire which does control 
 All the inferior wheels that move my soul, 
 
 Is, that the Muse me her high priest would make ; 
 Into her holiest scenes of mystery take, 
 
 And open there to my mind’s purged eye 
 Those wonders which to sense the gods deny; 
 
cowley’s essays. 
 
 84 
 
 How in the moon such chance of shapes is found : 
 The moon, the changing world’s eternal bound. 
 What shakes the solid earth, what strong disease 
 Dares trouble the firm centre’s ancient ease ; 
 
 What makes the sea retreat, and what advance : 
 Varieties too regular for chance. 
 
 What drives the chariot on of winter’s light, 
 
 And stops the lazy waggon of the night. 
 
 But if my dull and frozen blood deny 
 To send forth spirits that raise a soul so high ; 
 
 In the next place, let woods and rivers be 
 My quiet, though unglorious, destiny. 
 
 In life’s cool vale let my low scene be laid ; 
 
 Cover me, gods, with Tempe’s thickest shade. 
 Happy the man, I grant, thrice happy he 
 Who can through gross effects their causes see : 
 Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs, 
 Kor vainly fears inevitable things ; 
 
 But does his walk of virtue calmly go, 
 
 Through all th’ alarms of death and hell below. 
 Happy ! but next such conquerors, happy they, 
 Whose humble life lies not in fortune’s way. 
 
OP AGRICULTURE. 
 
 85 
 
 They -unconcerned from their safe distant seat 
 Behold the rods and sceptres of the great. 
 
 The quarrels of the mighty, without fear, 
 
 And the descent of foreign troops they hear. 
 
 Nor can even Borne their steady course misguide, 
 With all the lustre of her perishing pride. 
 
 Them never yet did strife or avarice draw 
 Into the noisy markets of the law, 
 
 The camps of gowned war, nor do they live 
 By rules or forms that many mad men give, 
 
 Duty for nature’s bounty they repay, 
 
 And her sole laws religiously obey. 
 
 Some with bold labour plough the faithless main ; 
 Some rougher storms in princes’ courts sustain. 
 Some swell up their slight sails with popular fame, 
 Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name. 
 Some their vain wealth to earth again commit ; 
 With endless cares some brooding o’er it sit. 
 Country and friends are by some wretches sold. 
 
 To lie on Tyrian beds and drink in gold ; 
 
 No price too high for profit can be shown ; 
 
 Not brother’s blood, nor hazards of their own. 
 
86 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 Around the world in search of it they roam ; 
 
 It makes e’en their Antipodes their home. 
 Meanwhile, the prudent husbandman is found 
 In mutual duties striving with his ground ; 
 
 And half the year he care of that does take 
 That half the year grateful returns does make. 
 Each fertile month does some new gifts present, 
 And with new work his industry content : 
 
 This the young lamb, that the soft fleece doth yield, 
 This loads with hay, and that with corn the field : 
 All sorts of fruit crown the rich autumn’s pride : 
 And on a swelling hill’s warm stony side, 
 
 The powerful princely purple of the vine, 
 
 Twice dyed with the redoubled sun, does shine. 
 
 In th’ evening to a fair ensuing day, 
 
 With joy he sees his flocks and kids to play, 
 
 And loaded kine about his cottage stand, 
 
 Inviting with known sound the milker’s hand ; 
 
 And when from wholesome labour he doth come, 
 With wishes to be there, and wished for home, 
 
 He meets at door the softest human blisses, 
 
 His chaste wife’s welcome, and dear children’s kisses. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 87 
 
 When any rural holydays invite 
 His genius forth to innocent delight, 
 
 On earth’s fair bed beneath some sacred shade, 
 Amidst his equal friends carelessly laid, 
 
 He sings thee, Bacchus, patron of the vine, 
 
 The beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine, 
 
 Not to the loss of reason or of strength. 
 
 To active games and manly sport at length 
 Their mirth ascends, and with filled veins they 
 see, 
 
 Who can the best at better trials be. 
 
 Such was the life the prudent Sabine chose, 
 
 From such the old Etrurian virtue rose. 
 
 Such, Bemus and the god his brother led, 
 
 From such firm footing Rome grew the world’s 
 head. 
 
 Such was the life that even till now does raise 
 The honour of poor Saturn’s golden days : 
 
 Before men born of earth and buried there, 
 
 Let in the sea their mortal fate to share, 
 
 Before new ways of perishing were sought, 
 
 Before unskilful death on anvils wrought. 
 
COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 Before those beasts which human life sustain, 
 By men, unless to the gods’ use, were slain. 
 
 Horat. Epodon. 
 
 Beatus ille qui procul, etc. 
 
 Happy the man whom bounteous gods allow 
 With his own hand paternal grounds to plough l 
 Like the first golden mortals, happy he, 
 
 From business and the cares of money free ! 
 
 No human storms break off at land his sleep, 
 
 No loud alarms of nature on the deep. 
 
 From all the cheats of law he lives secure, 
 
 Nor does th’ affronts of palaces endure. 
 Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine 
 He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join ; 
 Sometimes he lops the barren trees around, 
 
 And grafts new life into the fruitful wound ; 
 Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he 
 Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. 
 
 He sees his lowing herds walk o’er the plain, 
 Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 89 
 
 And when the season, rich as well as gay, 
 
 All her autumnal bounty does display, 
 
 How is he pleas’d th’ increasing use to see 
 Of his well trusted labours bend the tree ; 
 
 Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days, 
 He gives to friends, and to the gods repays. 
 With how much joy does he, beneath some shade 
 By aged trees, reverend embraces made, 
 
 His careless head on the fresh green recline, 
 
 His head uncharged with fear or with design. 
 
 By him a river constantly complains, 
 
 The birds above rejoice with various strains, 
 
 And in the solemn scene their orgies keep 
 Like dreams mixed with the gravity of sleep, 
 Sleep which does always there for entrance wait, 
 And nought within against it shuts the gate. 
 
 Nor does the roughest season of the sky, 
 
 Or sullen Jove, all sports to him deny. 
 
 He runs the mazes of the nimble hare, 
 
 His well-mouthed dogs’ glad concert rends the air, 
 Or with game bolder, and rewarded more, 
 
 Hfe drives into a toil the foaming boar ; 
 
90 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Here flies the hawk to assault, and there the net 
 To intercept the travelling fowl is set ; 
 
 And all his malice, all his craft is shown 
 In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone. 
 
 This is the life from all misfortune free, 
 
 From thee, the great one, tyrant love, from thee ; 
 And if a chaste and clean though homely wife, 
 Be added to the blessings of this life, — 
 
 Such as the ancient sun-burnt Sabines were, 
 Such as Apulia, frugal still, does bear, — 
 
 Who makes her children and the house her care. 
 And joyfully the work of life does share ; 
 
 Nor thinks herself too noble or too fine 
 To pin the sheepfold or to milk the kine ; 
 
 Who waits at door against her husband come 
 From rural duties, late, and wearied home, 
 Where she receives him with a kind embrace, 
 
 A cheerful fire, and a more cheerful face : 
 
 And fills the bowl up to her homely lord, 
 
 And with domestic plenty loads the board. 
 
 Not all the lustful shell-fish of the sea, 
 
 Dressed by the wanton hand of luxury, * 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 91 
 
 Nor ortolans nor god wits nor the rest 
 Of costly names that glorify a feast, 
 
 Are at the princely tables better cheer 
 Than lamb and kid, lettuce and olives, here. 
 
 THE COUNTRY MOUSE. 
 
 A Paraphrase upon Horace , n Book , Satire vi. 
 
 At the large foot of a fair hollow tree, 
 
 Close to ploughed ground, seated commodiously, 
 His ancient and hereditary house, 
 
 There dwelt a good substantial country mouse : 
 Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main, 
 
 Yet one who once did nobly entertain 
 A city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay, 
 
 A mouse of high degree, which lost his way. 
 Wantonly walking forth to take the air, 
 
 And arrived early, and alighted there, 
 
 For a day’s lodging. The good hearty host 
 
COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 m 
 
 (The ancient plenty of his hall to boast) 
 
 Did all the stores produce that might excite, 
 With various tastes, the courtier’s appetite. 
 Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat, 
 And a large chestnut, the delicious meat 
 Which Jove himself, were he a mouse, would eat. 
 And for a haut goust there was mixed with those 
 The swerd of bacon, and the coat of cheese, 
 
 The precious relics, which at harvest he 
 Had gathered from the reapers’ luxury. 
 u Freely,” said he, “ fall on, and never spare, 
 
 The bounteous gods will for to-morrow care.” 
 And thus at ease on beds of straw they lay, 
 
 And to their genius sacrificed the day. 
 
 Yet the nice guest’s epicurean mind 
 (Though breeding made him civil seem, and kind) 
 Despised this country feast, and still his thought 
 Upon the cakes and pies of London wrought. 
 u Your bounty and civility,” said he, 
 u Which I’m surprised in these rude parts to see, 
 Show that the gods have given you a mind 
 Too noble for the fate which here you find. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 Why should a soul, so virtuous and so groat, 
 Lose itself thus in an obscure retreat ? 
 
 Let savage beasts lodge in a country den, 
 
 You should see towns, and manners know, and men; 
 And taste the generous luxury of the court, 
 Where all the mice of quality resort ; 
 
 Where thousand beauteous shes about you move, 
 And by high fare are pliant made to love. 
 
 We all ere long must render up our breath, 
 
 No cave or hole can shelter us from death. 
 
 Since life is so uncertain and so short, 
 
 Let’s spend it all in feasting and in sport. 
 
 Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake 
 All the great things that mortals happy make.” 
 
 Alas, what virtue hath sufficient arms 
 To oppose bright honour and soft pleasure’s charms? 
 What wisdom can their magic force repel ? 
 
 It draws the reverend hermit from his cell. 
 
 It was the time, when witty poets tell, 
 
 That Phoebus into Thetis’ bosom fell : 
 
 She blushed at first, and then put out the light, 
 And drew the modest curtains of the night. 
 
94 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Plainly the truth to tell, the sun was set, 
 
 When to the town our wearied travellers get. 
 
 To a lord’s house, as lordly as can be, 
 
 Made for the use of pride and luxury, 
 
 They come ; the gentle courtier at the door 
 Stops, and will hardly enter in before ; — 
 
 But ’tis, sir, your command, and being so, 
 
 I’m sworn t’ obedience — and so in they go. 
 Behind a hanging in a spacious room 
 (The richest work of Mortlake’s noble loom) 
 They wait awhile their wearied limbs to rest, 
 Till silence should invite them to their feast, 
 About the hour that Cynthia’s silver light 
 Had touched the pale meridies of the night, 
 
 At last, the various supper being done. 
 
 It happened that the company was gone 
 Into a room remote, servants and all, 
 
 To please their noble fancies with a ball. 
 
 Our host leads forth his stranger, and does find 
 All fitted to the bounties of his mind. 
 
 Still on the table half-filled dishes stood, 
 
 And with delicious bits the floor was strewed : 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 95 
 
 The courteous mouse presents him with the best, 
 And both with fat varieties are blest. 
 
 The industrious peasant everywhere does range, 
 And thanks the gods for his life’s happy change. 
 Lo, in the midst of a well-freighted pie 
 They both at last glutted and wanton lie, 
 
 When see the sad reverse of prosperous fate, 
 And what fierce storms on mortal glories wait ! 
 With hideous noise, down the rude servants come, 
 Six dogs before run barking into th’ room ; 
 
 The wretched gluttons fly with wild affright, * 
 And hate the fulness which retards their flight. 
 Our trembling peasant wishes now in vain 
 That rocks and mountains covered him again. 
 Oh, how the change of his poor life he cursed ! 
 
 “ This, of all lives,” said he, “ is sure the worst. 
 Give me again, ye gods, my cave and wood ; 
 
 W ith peace, let tares and acorns be my food.” 
 
96 
 
 COWLEY’fe ESSAYS. 
 
 A Paraphrase upon the Eightieth Epistle of the First 
 Book of Horace, 
 
 HORACE TO FUSCUS ARISTIUS. 
 
 Health, from the lover of the country, me, 
 Health, to the lover of the city, thee, 
 
 A difference in our souls, this only proves, 
 
 In all things else, we agree like married doves. 
 But the warm nest and crowded dove house thou 
 Dost like ; I loosely fly from bough to bough, 
 And rivers drink, and all the shining day, 
 
 Upon fair trees or mossy rocks I play ; 
 
 In fine, I live and reign when I retire 
 From all that you equal with heaven admire. 
 Like one at last from the priest’s service fled. 
 Loathing the honied cakes, I long for bread. 
 Would I a house for happiness erect, 
 
 Nature alone should be the architect. 
 
 She’d build it more convenient than great, 
 
 And doubtless in the country choose her seat* 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 97 
 
 Is there a place doth better helps supply 
 Against the wounds of winter’s cruelty ] 
 
 Is there an air that gentler does assuage 
 The mad celestial dog’s or lion’s rage ? 
 
 Is it not there that sleep (and only there) 
 
 Nor noise without, nor cares within does fear *1 
 Does art through pipes a purer water bring 
 Than that which nature strains into a spring 1 ? 
 
 Can all your tapestries, or your pictures, show 
 More beauties than in herbs and flowers do grow ) 
 Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please, 
 Even in the midst of gilded palaces. 
 
 And in your towns that prospect gives delight 
 Which opens round the country to our sight. 
 
 Men to the good, from which they rashly fly, 
 Return at last, and their wild luxury 
 Does but in vain with those true joys contend 
 Which nature did to mankind recommend. 
 
 The man who changes gold for burnished brass, 
 
 Or small right gems for larger ones of glass, 
 
 Is not, at length, more certain to be made 
 Ridiculous and wretched by the trade, 
 d— 28 
 
98 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Than he who sells a solid good to buy 
 The painted goods of pride and vanity. 
 
 If thou be wise, no glorious fortune choose, 
 Which ’t is but pain to keep, yet grief to lose. 
 For when we place even trifles in the heart, 
 With trifles too unwillingly we part. 
 
 An humble roof, plain bed, and homely board, 
 More clear, untainted pleasures do afford 
 Than all the tumult of vain greatness brings 
 To kings, or to the favourites of kings. 
 
 The horned deer, by nature armed so well, 
 
 Did with the horse in common pasture dwell ; 
 And when they fought, the field it always won, 
 Till the ambitious horse begged help of man, 
 And took the bridle, and thenceforth did reign 
 Bravely alone, as lord of all the plain : 
 
 But never after could the rider get 
 
 From off his back, or from his mouth the bit. 
 
 So they, who poverty too much do fear, 
 
 To avoid that weight, a greater burden bear ; 
 That they might power above their equals have, 
 To cruel masters they themselves enslave. 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 99 
 
 For gold, their liberty exchanged we see, 
 
 That fairest flower which crowns humanity. 
 And all this mischief does upon them light, 
 Only because they know not how aright 
 That great, but secret, happiness to prize, 
 That’s laid up in a little, for the wise : 
 
 That is the best and easiest estate 
 
 Which to a man sits close, but not too strait. 
 
 ’Tis like a shoe : it pinches, and it burns, 
 
 Too narrow; and too large it overturns. 
 
 My dearest friend, stop thy desires at last, 
 And cheerfully enjoy the wealth thou hast. 
 And, if me still seeking for more you see, 
 Ohide and reproach, despise and laugh at me. 
 Money was made, not to command our will, 
 But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil. 
 
 Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey ; 
 The horse doth with the horseman run away. 
 
100 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE. 
 
 Libr. 4, Plantarum. 
 
 Blest be the man (and blest he is) whom e’< 
 (Placed far out of the roads of hope or fear) 
 
 A little field and little garden feeds ; 
 
 The field gives all that frugal nature needs, 
 
 The wealthy garden liberally bestows 
 All she can ask, when she luxurious grows. 
 
 The specious inconveniences, that wait 
 Upon a life of business and of state, 
 
 He sees (nor does the sight disturb his rest) 
 
 By fools desired, by wicked men possessed. 
 
 Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil’s praise)* 
 The old Corycian yeoman passed his days, 
 
 Thus his wise life A bdolonymus spent : 
 
 The ambassadors which the great emperor sent 
 To offer him a crown, with wonder found 
 The reverend gardener hoeing of his ground ; 
 Unwillingly and slow, and discontent, 
 
 
 
 
 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 101 
 
 From his loved cottage to a throne he went. 
 
 And oft he stopped in his triumphant way, 
 
 And oft looked back, and oft was heard to say, 
 Not without sighs, “ Alas ! I there forsake 
 A happier kingdom than I go to take.” 
 
 Thus Aglaiis (a man unknown to men, 
 
 But the gods knew, and therefore loved him then) 
 Thus lived obscurely then without a name, 
 
 Aglaiis, now consigned to eternal fame. 
 
 For Gyges, the rich king, wicked and great, 
 Presumed at wise Apollo’s Delphic seat, 
 
 Presumed to ask, “ O thou, the whole world’s eye, 
 Seest thou a man that happier is than II” 
 
 The god, who scorned to flatter man, replied, 
 
 “ Aglaiis happier is.” But Gyges cried, 
 
 In a proud rage, u Who can that Aglaiis be ? 
 
 We have heard as yet of no such king as he.” 
 
 And true it was, through the whole earth around 
 No king of such a name was to be found. 
 u Is some old hero of that name alive, 
 
 Who his high race does from the gods derive 
 Is it some mighty general that has done 
 
102 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 Wonders in fight, and god-like honours won? 
 
 Is it some man of endless wealth ? ” said he ; 
 
 “ None, none of these : who can this Aglaiis be ?* 
 After long search, and vain inquiries passed, 
 
 In an obscure Arcadian vale at last 
 (The Arcadian life has always shady been) 
 
 Near Sopho’s town (which he but once had seen) 
 This Aglaiis, who monarchs’ envy drew, 
 
 Whose happiness the gods stood witness to, 
 
 This mighty Aglaiis was labouring found, 
 
 With his own hands, in his own little ground. 
 
 So, gracious God (if it may lawful be, 
 
 Among those foolish gods to mention Thee), 
 
 So let me act, on such a private stage, 
 
 The last dull scenes of my declining age ; 
 
 After long toils and voyages in vain, 
 
 This quiet port let my tossed vessel gain; 
 
 Of heavenly rest this earnest to me lend, 
 
 Let my life sleep, and learn to love her end. 
 
103 
 
 THE GARDEN. 
 
 To J. Evelyn , Esquire. 
 
 I never had any other desire so strong, and so like 
 to covetousness, as that one which I have had 
 always, that I might be master at last of a small 
 house and large garden, with very moderate con- 
 veniences joined to them, and there dedicate the 
 remainder of my life only to the culture of them 
 and the study of nature. 
 
 And there (with, no design beyond my wall) whole 
 and entire to lie, 
 
 In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty. 
 
 Or, as Yirgil has said, shorter and better for 
 me, that I might there studiis Jlorere ignobilis 
 otii, though I could wish that he had rather said 
 Nobilis otii when he spoke of his own. But 
 several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed 
 
104 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity; for 
 though I have made the first and hardest step 
 to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in 
 this world, and by retiring from the noise of all 
 business and almost company, yet I stick still in 
 the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds 
 and rubbish, and without that pleasantest work of 
 human industry — the improvement of something 
 which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) 
 our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am 
 not arrived at my little Zoar. “ Oh, let me escape 
 thither (is it not a little one?), and my soul 
 shall live.” I do not look back yet ; but I have 
 been forced to stop and make too many halts. 
 You may wonder, sir (for this seems a little too 
 extravagant and Pindarical for prose) what I mean 
 by all this preface. It is to let you know, that 
 though I have missed, like a chemist, my great 
 end, yet I account my affections and endeavours 
 well rewarded by something that I have met with 
 by-the-by, which is. ihat they have produced to me 
 some part in ycur kindness and esteem; and 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 105 
 
 thereby the honour of having my name so 
 advantageously recommenied to posterity by the 
 epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful 
 book that has been written in that kind, and 
 which is to last as long as months and years. 
 
 Among many other arts and excellencies which 
 you enjoy, I am glad to find this favourite of mine 
 the most predominant, that you choose this for 
 your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts 
 for your concubines ; though you know them, and 
 beget sons upon them all (to which you are rich 
 enough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of 
 this seems to be designed by you to the main of 
 the estate ; you have taken most pleasure in it, 
 and bestowed most charges upon its education, and 
 I doubt not to see that book which you are 
 pleased to promise to the world, and of which you 
 have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as 
 accomplished as anything can be expected from an 
 extraordinary wit and no ordinary expenses and 
 a long experience. I know T nobody that possesses 
 more private happiness than you do in your 
 
106 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 garden, and yet no man who makes his happiness 
 more public by a free communication of the art 
 and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself 
 am able yet to do is only to recommend to mankind 
 the search of that felicity which you instruct them 
 how to find and to enjoy. 
 
 I. 
 
 Happy art thou whom God does bless 
 With the full choice of thine own happiness ; 
 
 And happier yet, because thou’rt blessed 
 With prudence how to choose the best. 
 
 In books and gardens thou hast placed aright, — 
 Things which thou well dost understand, 
 
 And both dost make with thy laborious hand — 
 Thy noble, innocent delight, 
 
 And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost 
 meet 
 
 Both pleasures more refined and sweet : 
 
 The fairest garden in her looks, 
 
 And in her mind the wisest books. 
 
 Oh ! who would change these soft, yet solid joys, 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 107 
 
 For empty shows and senseless noise, 
 
 And all which rank ambition breeds, 
 
 Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such 
 poisonous weeds ! 
 
 ii. 
 
 When God did man to his own likeness make, 
 
 As much as clay, though of the purest kind 
 By the Great Potter’s art refined, 
 
 Could the Divine impression take, 
 
 He thought it tit to place him where 
 A kind of heaven, too, did appear, 
 
 As far as earth could such a likeness bear. 
 
 That Man no happiness might want, 
 
 Which earth to her first master could afford, 
 
 He did a garden for him plant 
 By the quick hand of his omnipotent word, 
 
 As the chief help and joy of human life, 
 
 He gave him the first gift; first, even, before a 
 wife. 
 
108 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 hi. 
 
 For God, the universal architect, 
 
 ’T had been as easy to erect 
 A Louvre, or Escurial, or a tower 
 That might with heaven communication hold. 
 
 As Babel vainly thought to do of old. 
 
 He wanted not the skill or power, 
 
 In the world’s fabric those were shown. 
 And the materials were all his own. 
 
 But well he knew what place would best agreo 
 
 With innocence and with felicity 
 
 And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain. 
 
 If any part of either yet remain, 
 
 If any part of either we expect, 
 
 This may our judgment in the search direct; 
 
 God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Oh, blessM shades ! Oh, gentle, cool retreat 
 From all the immoderate heat, 
 
 In which the frantic world does burn and sweat l 
 This does the lion-star, Ambition’s rage ; 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 109 
 
 This Avarice, the dog-star’s thirst assuage ; 
 Everywhere else their fatal power we see, 
 
 They make and rule man’s wretched destiny ; 
 
 They neither set nor disappear, 
 
 But tyrannise o’er all the year ; 
 
 Whilst we ne’er feel their flame or influence here. 
 The birds that dance from bough to bough, 
 
 And sirig above in every tree, 
 
 Are not from fears and cares more free, 
 
 Than we who lie, or sit, or walk bejow, 
 
 And should by right be singers too. 
 
 What prince’s choir of music can excel 
 That which within this shade does dwell, 
 
 To which we nothing pay or give — 
 
 They, like all other poets, live 
 Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains. 
 
 ’Tis well if they become not prey. 
 
 The whistling winds add their less artful strains, 
 And a grave base the murmuring fountains play. 
 Nature does all this harmony bestow; 
 
 But to our plants, art’s music too, 
 
 The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe ; 
 
110 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 The lute itself, which once was green and mute,, 
 When Orpheus struck the inspired lute, 
 
 The trees danced round, and understood 
 By sympathy the voice of wood. 
 
 y. 
 
 These are the spells that to kind sleep invite, 
 
 And nothing does within resistance make ; 
 
 Which yet we moderately take ; 
 
 Who would not choose to be awake, 
 
 While he’s encompassed round with such delight ; 
 To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight ? 
 When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep 
 A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, 
 
 She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread. 
 As the most soft and sweetest bed ; 
 
 Not her own lap would more have charmed his 
 head. 
 
 Who that has reason and his smell 
 Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, 
 
 Bather than all his spirits choke, 
 
 With exhalations of dirt and smoke, 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 Ill 
 
 And all the uncleanness which does drown 
 In pestilential clouds a populous town ? 
 
 The earth itself breathes better perfumes here, 
 Than all the female men or women there, 
 
 Not without cause, about them bear. 
 
 VI. 
 
 When Epicurus to the world had taught 
 That pleasure was the chiefest good, 
 
 (And was perhaps i’ th’ right, if rightly understood) 
 His life he to his doctrine brought, 
 
 And in a garden’s shade that sovereign pleasure 
 sought. 
 
 Whoever a true epicure would be, 
 
 May there find cheap and virtuous luxury. 
 
 Vitellius his table, which did hold 
 As many creatures as the Ark of old, 
 
 That fiscal table, to which every day 
 All countries did a constant tribute pay, 
 
 Could nothing more delicious afford 
 Than Nature’s liberality, 
 
 Helped with a little art and industry, 
 
112 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Allows the meanest gardener’s board. 
 
 The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose 
 For which the grape or melon she would lose, 
 Though all the inhabitants of sea and air 
 Be listed in the glutton’s bill of fare ; 
 
 Yet still the fruits of earth we see 
 Placed the third storey high in all her luxury. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But with no sense the garden does comply, 
 None courts or flatters, as it does the eye ; 
 When the great Hebrew king did almost strain 
 The wondrous treasures of his wealth and brain 
 His royal southern guest to entertain, 
 
 Though she on silver floors did tread, 
 
 With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread 
 To hide the metal’s poverty ; 
 
 Though she looked up to roofs of gold, 
 
 And nought around her could behold 
 But silk and rich embroidery, 
 
 And Babylonian tapestry, 
 
 And wealthy Hiram’s princely dye : 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 113 
 
 Though Ophir’s starry stones met everywhere her 
 eye; 
 
 Though she herself and her gay host were, dressed 
 With all the shining glories of the East ; 
 
 When lavish art her costly w^ork had done ; 
 
 The honour and the prize of bravery 
 Was by the Garden from the Palace won ; 
 
 And every rose and lily there did stand 
 Better attired by Nature’s hand : 
 
 The case thus judged against the king we see, 
 
 By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far 
 than he. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Nor does this happy place only dispense 
 Such various pleasures to the sense : 
 
 Here health itself does live, 
 
 That salt of life, which does to all a relish give, 
 
 Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth, 
 
 The body’s virtue, and the soul’s good fortune, 
 health. 
 
 The tree of life, when it in Eden stood, 
 
114 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Did its immortal head to heaven rear ; 
 
 It lasted a tall cedar till the flood ; 
 
 Now a small thorny shrub it does appear ; 
 
 Nor will it thrive too everywhere : 
 
 It always here is freshest seen, 
 
 Tis only here an evergreen. 
 
 If through the strong and beauteous fence 
 Of temperance and innocence, 
 
 And wholesome labours and a quiet mind, 
 
 Any diseases passage find, 
 
 They must not think here to assail 
 A land unarmed, or without a guard ; 
 
 They must fight for it, and dispute it hard, 
 
 Before they can prevail. 
 
 Scarce any plant is growing here 
 Which against death some weapon does not 
 bear, 
 
 Let cities boast that they provide 
 For life the ornaments of pride ; 
 
 But ’tis the country and the field 
 That furnish it with staff and shield. 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 115 
 
 l 
 
 IX. 
 
 Where does the wisdom and the power divine 
 In a more bright and sweet reflection shine ? 
 Where do we finer strokes and colours see 
 Of the Creator’s real poetry, 
 
 Than when we with attention look 
 Upon the third day’s volume of the book? 
 
 If we could open and intend our eye, 
 
 We all like Moses should espy 
 Even in a bush the radiant Deity. 
 
 But we despise these his inferior ways 
 Though no less full of miracle and praise ; 
 
 Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze, 
 
 The stars of earth no wonder in us raise, 
 Though these perhaps do more than they 
 The life of mankind sway. 
 
 Although no part of mighty Nature be 
 More stored with beauty, power, and mystery. 
 Yet to encourage human industry, 
 
 God has so ordered that no other part 
 Such space and such dominion leaves for art. 
 
116 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 x. 
 
 We nowhere art do so triumphant see, 
 
 As when it grafts or buds the tree ; 
 
 In other things we count it to excel, 
 
 If it a docile scholar can appear 
 To Nature, and but imitate her well : 
 
 It over-rules, and is her master here. 
 
 It imitates her Maker’s power divine, 
 
 And -changes her sometimes, and sometimes does 
 refine : 
 
 It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore 
 To its blest state of Paradise before : 
 
 Who would not joy to see his conquering hand 
 O’er all the vegetable world command, 
 
 And the wild giants of the wood receive 
 What laws he’s pleased to give h 
 He bids the ill-natured crab produce 
 The gentler apple’s winy juice, 
 
 The golden fruit that worthy is, 
 
 Of Galatea’s purple kiss ; 
 
 He does the savage hawthorn teach 
 
THE GARDEN. 
 
 117 
 
 To bear the medlar and the pear ; 
 
 He bids the rustic plum to rear 
 A noble trunk, and be a peach. 
 
 Even Daphne’s coyness he does mock, 
 
 And weds the cherry to her stock, 
 
 Though she refused Apollo’s suit, 
 
 Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, 
 
 Now wonders at herself to see 
 That she’s a mother made, and blushes in her fruit* 
 
 XI. 
 
 Methinks I see great Diocletian walk 
 In the Salonian garden’s noble shade, 
 
 Which by his own imperial hands was made : 
 
 I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk 
 With the ambassadors, who come in vain, 
 
 To entice him to a throne again. 
 
 “If I, my friends,” said he, “ should to you 
 show 
 
 All the delights which in these gardens grow ; 
 
 ’Tis likelier much that you should with me stay. 
 Than ’tis that you should carry me away ; 
 
118 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 And trust me not, my friends, if every day 
 I walk not here with more delight, 
 
 Than ever, after the most happy fight, 
 
 In triumph to the Capitol I rode, 
 
 To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost 
 
119 
 
 OF GE^ATNESS. 
 
 Since we cannot attain to greatness, says the Sieur 
 de Montaigne, let us have our revenge by railing at 
 it ; this he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired 
 it no more than I do, and had less reason, for he 
 enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a 
 most excellent country, as allowed him all the real 
 conveniences of it, separated and purged from the 
 incommodities. If I were but in his condition, I 
 should think it hard measure, without being con- 
 vinced of any crime, to be sequestered from it and 
 made one of the principal officers of state. But 
 the reader may think that what I now say is of 
 small authority, because I never was, nor ever 
 shall be, put to the trial ; I can therefore only 
 make my protestation. 
 
 If ever I more riches did desire 
 
 Than cleanliness and quiet do require ; 
 
120 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 If e’er ambition did my fancy cheat, 
 
 With any wish so mean as to be great, 
 
 Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove 
 The humble blessings of that life I love. 
 
 I know very many men will despise, and some 
 pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow ; 
 but I am content, and, like Horace, thank "God for 
 being so. Dii bene fecerunt inopis me , quodque 
 pusilli finxerunt animi. I confess I love littleness 
 almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a 
 little cheerful house, a little company, and a very 
 little feast ; and if I were ever to fall in love again 
 (which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I 
 have done with it) it would be, I think, with 
 prettiness rather than with majestical beauty. I 
 would neither wish that my mistress, nor my for- 
 tune, should be a bona roba, nor, as Homer used to 
 describe his beauties, like a daughter of great 
 Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her 
 person, but, as Lucretius says, “ Parvula , pumilio , 
 Xapi'rccu /ula, tota merum sal.” 
 
 Where there is one man of this, I believe there 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 121 
 
 are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous 
 affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder describes 
 to this effect. Senecio was a man of a turbid and. 
 confused wit, who could not endure to speak any 
 but mighty words and sentences, till this humour 
 grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather 
 disease, as became the sport of the whole town : 
 he would have no servants but huge massy fellows, 
 no plate or household stuff but thrice as big as the 
 fashion ; you may believe nie, for I speak it with- 
 out raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such 
 a madness that he would not put on a pair of 
 shoes each of which was not big enough for both 
 his feet; he would eat nothing but what was 
 great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and 
 pound-pears. He kept a concubine that was a very 
 giantess, and made her walk, too, always in 
 chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio 
 Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cog- 
 nomen, but his cognomentum. When he declaimed 
 for the three hundred Lacedaemonians, who also 
 opposed Xerxes’ army of above three hundred 
 
122 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 thousand, he stretched out his arms and stood on 
 tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried 
 out in a very loud voice, “ I rejoice, I rejoice ! ’, 
 We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune 
 had befallen his eminence. “ Xerxes,” says he, 
 “ is all mine own. He who took away the sight of 
 the sea with the canvas veils of so many ships. . 
 and then he goes on so, as I know not what to 
 make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the 
 edition, or the orator’s own burly way of nonsense. 
 
 This is the character that Seneca gives of this 
 hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and 
 yet there are very few men who are not, in some 
 things, and to some degree, grandios. Is anything 
 more common than to see our ladies of quality 
 wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in with- 
 out one to lead them ? and a gown as long again 
 as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next 
 room without a page or two to hold it up ? I may 
 safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is 
 just like a train, of no use in the world, but, 
 horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 123 
 
 all this but spice of grandio ? How tedious would 
 this be if we were always bound to it? I do- 
 believe there is no king who would not rather be 
 deposed than endure every day of his reign all 
 the ceremonies of his coronation. The mightiest 
 princes are glad to fly often from these majestic 
 pleasures (which is, methinks, no small disparage- 
 ment to them), as it were for refuge, to the most 
 contemptible divertisements and meanest recrea- 
 tions of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of 
 the most powerful and fortunate princes of the 
 world of late, could find out no delight so satis- 
 factory as the keeping of little singing birds, and 
 hearing of them and whistling to them. What did 
 the emperors of the whole world ? If ever any 
 men had the free and full enjoyment of all human 
 greatness (nay, that would not suffice, for they 
 would be gods too) they certainly possessed it ; and 
 yet one of them, who styled himself “Lord and 
 God of the Earth,” could not tell how to pass his 
 whole day pleasantly, without spending constant 
 two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing 
 
124 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been 
 Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who 
 never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to 
 his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime 
 more agreeable than to run about the streets all 
 night in a disguise, and abuse the women and 
 affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to 
 beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by 
 them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal 
 pleasures ; his chief est in the day was to 
 sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a 
 minstrel, upon the public stage ; he was prouder of 
 the garlands that were given to his divine voice 
 (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, 
 than all his forefathers were of their triumphs 
 over nations. He did not at his death complain 
 that so mighty an emperor, and the last of all the 
 Caesarian race of deities, should be brought to so 
 shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, 
 u Alas ! what pity it is that so excellent a musician 
 should perish in this manner ! ” His uncle 
 Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 125 
 
 that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit 
 the madnesses of Caligula’s delights, and the exe- 
 crable sordidness of those of Tiberius. Would one 
 think that Augustus himself, the highest and most 
 fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with 
 many excellent parts of nature, should be so hard 
 put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to 
 be found playing at nuts and bounding-stones with 
 little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he 
 took delight in, for their prating and their wanton- 
 ness ? 
 
 Was it for this, that Home’s best blood he spilt, 
 
 With so much falsehood, so much guilt ? 
 
 Was it for this that his ambition strove 
 To equal Caesar first, and after Jove? 
 
 Greatness is barren sure of solid joys ; 
 
 Her merchandise, I fear, is all in toys ; 
 
 She could not else sure so uncivil be, 
 
 To treat his universal majesty, 
 
 His new created Deity, 
 
 With nuts and bounding-stones and boys. 
 
 But we must excuse her for this meagre enter- 
 tainment ; she has not really wherewithal to make 
 such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be 
 
126 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with 
 the same cold meats served over and over again, 
 even till they become nauseous. When you have 
 pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural 
 contentment does there remain which may not be 
 had with five hundred pounds a year ? not so many 
 servants or horses, but a few good ones, which will 
 do all the business as well ; not so many choice 
 dishes at every meal, but at several meals all of 
 them, which makes them both the more healthy 
 and the more pleasant ; not so rich garments nor 
 so frequent changes, but as warm and as comely, 
 and so frequent change, too, as is every jot as good 
 for the master, though not for the tailor or valet- 
 de-chambre; not such a stately palace, nor gilt 
 rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a con- 
 venient brick house, with decent wainscot and 
 pretty forest-work hangings. Lastly (for I omit 
 all other particulars, and will end with that which 
 I love most in both conditions), not whole woods 
 cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cas- 
 cade gardens, but herb and flower and fruit 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 127 
 
 gardens, which are more useful, and the water 
 every whit as clear and wholesome as if it darted 
 from the breasts of a marble nymph or the urn of 
 a river-god. If for all this you like better the 
 substance of that former estate of life, do but con- 
 sider the inseparable accidents of both : servitude, 
 disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, in- 
 herent in the one ; in the other, liberty, tranquillity, 
 security, and innocence : and when you have 
 thought upon this, you will confess that to be a 
 truth which appeared to you before but a ridicu- 
 lous paradox, that a low fortune is better guarded 
 and attended than a high one. If, indeed, we 
 look only upon the flourishing head of the tree, it 
 appears a most beautiful object. 
 
 Sed quantum vertice ad auras 
 
 JEtherias, tantum radice ad Tartara tendit. 
 
 As far up towards heaven the branches grow, 
 
 So far the root sinks down to hell below. 
 
 Another horrible disgrace to greatness is, that it 
 is for the most part in pitiful want and distress. 
 
128 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 What a wonderful thing is this, unless it degenerate 
 into avarice, and so cease to be greatness. It falls- 
 perpetually into such necessities as drive it into all 
 the meanest and most sordid ways of borrowing, 
 cozenage, and robbery, Mancipiis locopules , eget 
 aris Cappadocum Rex . This is the case of almost 
 all great men, as well as of the poor King of 
 Cappadocia. They abound with slaves, but are 
 indigent of money. The ancient Roman emperors, 
 who had the riches of the whole world for their 
 revenue, had wherewithal to live, one would have 
 thought, pretty well at ease, and to have been 
 exempt from the pressures of extreme poverty. 
 But yet with most of them it was much other- 
 wise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable 
 penury, that they were forced to devour or squeeze 
 most of their friends and servants, to cheat with 
 infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their 
 provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur 
 is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of 
 it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be 
 cheated of a third part of their estates, two other 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 129 
 
 thirds they must expend in vanity, so that they 
 remain debtors for all the necessary provisions 
 of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts 
 but out of the succours and supplies of rapine ; “ as 
 riches increase,” says Solomon, “so do the mouths 
 that devour it.” The master mouth has no more 
 than before ; the owner, methinks, is like Oenus in 
 the fable, who is perpetually winding a rope of hay 
 and an ass at the end perpetually eating it. Out 
 of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, 
 which is, that no greatness can be satisfied or con- 
 tented with itself : still, if it could mount up a little 
 higher, it would be happy ; if it could but gain that 
 point, it would obtain all its desires ; but yet at 
 last, when it is got up to the very top of the peak 
 of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger of breaking 
 its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascend- 
 ing upwards into the seat of tranquillity above the 
 moon. The first ambitious men in the world, the 
 old giants, are said to have made an heroical at- 
 tempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and 
 they cast Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, 
 e— 28 
 
130 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 two or three mountains more they thought would 
 have done their business, but the thunder spoiled 
 all the work when they were come up to the third 
 storey ; 
 
 And what a noble plot was crossed, 
 
 And what a brave design was lost. 
 
 A famous person of their offspring, the late 
 giant of our nation, when, from the condition of a 
 very inconsiderable captain, he had made himself 
 lieutenant-general of an army of little Titans, 
 which was his first mountain ; and afterwards 
 general, which was his second ; and after that ab- 
 solute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the 
 third, and almost touched the heaven which he 
 affected ; is believed to have died with grief and dis- 
 content because he could not attain to the honest 
 name of a king, and the old formality of a crown, 
 though he had before exceeded the power by a 
 wicked usurpation. If he could have compassed 
 that, he would perhaps have wanted something 
 else that is necessary to felicity, and pined away 
 for the want of the title of an emperor or a god. 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 131 
 
 The reason of this is, that greatness has no reality 
 in nature, but is a creature of the fancy — a notion 
 that consists only in relation and comparison. It 
 is indeed an idol ; but St. Paul teaches us that an 
 idol is nothing in the world. There is in truth no 
 rising or meridian of the sun, but only in respect 
 to several places : there is no right or left, no upper 
 hand in nature ; everything is little and everything 
 is great according as it is diversely compared. 
 There may be perhaps some villages in Scotland or 
 Ireland where I might be a great man ; and in that 
 case I should be like Csesar — you would wonder 
 how Csesar and I should be like one another in 
 anything — and choose rather to be the first man of 
 the village than second at Pome. Our country is 
 called Great Britain, in regard only of a lesser of 
 the same name ; it would be but a ridiculous 
 epithet for it when we consider it together with 
 the kingdom of China. That, too, is but a pitiful 
 rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth 
 besides ; and this whole globe of earth, which we 
 account so immense a body, is but one point or 
 
132 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 atom in relation to those numberless worlds that 
 are scattered up and down in the infinite space 
 of the sky which we behold. The other many 
 inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of 
 dispersedly in several chapters, and shall end this 
 with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied but 
 rudely imitated. 
 
 Horace. Lib. 3. Ode 1. 
 
 Odi profanum vulgus, etc. 
 
 I. 
 
 Hence, ye profane ; I hate ye all ; 
 
 Both the great vulgar, and the small. 
 
 To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness 
 hold, 
 
 JSTot yet discoloured with the love of gold 
 (That jaundice of the soul, 
 
 Which makes it look so gilded and so foul), 
 
 To you, ye very few, these truths I tell ; 
 
 The muse inspires my song, hark, and observe it 
 well. 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 133 
 
 II. 
 
 We look on men, and wonder at such odds 
 
 ’Twixt things that were the same by birth ; 
 We look on kings as giants of the earth, 
 
 These giants are but pigmies to the gods. 
 
 The humblest bush and proudest oak 
 Are but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke. 
 Beauty and strength, and wit, and wealth, and 
 power 
 
 Have their short flourishing hour, 
 
 And love to see themselves, and smile, 
 
 And joy in their pre-eminence a while ; 
 
 Even so in the same land, 
 
 Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand ; 
 Alas, death mows down all with an impartial hand. 
 
 in. 
 
 And all you men, whom greatness does so please, 
 Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles. 
 
 If you your eyes could upwards move, 
 
 {But you, I fear, think nothing is above) 
 
 You would perceive by what a little thread 
 
134 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 The sword still hangs over your head. 
 
 No tide of wine would drown your cares, 
 
 No mirth or music over-noise your fears ; 
 
 The fear of death would you so watchful keep. 
 As not to admit the image of it, sleep. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces ; 
 And yet so humble, too, as not to scorn 
 The meanest country cottages ; 
 
 His poppy grows among the corn. 
 
 The halcyon sleep will never build his nest 
 In any stormy breast. 
 
 ’ Tis not enough that he does find 
 Clouds and darkness in their mind ; 
 Darkness but half his work will do, 
 
 ’Tis not enough; he must find quiet too. 
 
 V. 
 
 The man who, in all wishes he does make. 
 Does only Nature’s counsel take, 
 
 That wise and happy man will never fear 
 
OF GREATNESS. 
 
 135 
 
 The evil aspects of the year, 
 
 Nor tremble, though two comets should appear. 
 He does not look in almanacks to see, 
 
 Whether he fortunate shall be ; 
 
 Let Mars and Saturn in the heavens conjoin, 
 And what they please against the world design, 
 So Jupiter within him shine. 
 
 VI. 
 
 If of their pleasures and desires no end be found ; 
 God to their cares and fears will set no bound. 
 
 What would content you h Who can tell ? 
 
 Ye fear so much to lose what you have got 
 As if ye liked it well. 
 
 Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not. 
 
 Go, level hills, and fill up seas, 
 
 Spare nought that may your wanton fancy please ; 
 
 But trust me, when you have done all this, 
 Much will be missing still, and much will be 
 
 amiss. 
 
136 
 
 OF AYAEICE. 
 
 There are two sorts of avarice ; the one is but of 
 a bastard kind ; and that is, the rapacious appetite 
 of gain, not for its own sake, but for the pleasure 
 of refunding it immediately through all the chan- 
 nels of pride and luxury. The other is the true 
 kind, and properly so called; which is a restless 
 and unsatiable desire of riches, not for any further 
 end of use, but only to hoard, and preserve, and 
 perpetually increase them. The covetous man of 
 the first kind is like a greedy ostrich, which de- 
 vours any metal, but it is with an intent to feed 
 upon it, and in effect it makes a shift to digest and 
 excern it. The second is like the foolish chough, 
 which loves to steal money only to hide it. The 
 first does much harm to mankind, and a little good 
 too, to some few. The second does good to none ; 
 no, not to himself. The first can make no excuse 
 
OF AVARICE. 
 
 137 
 
 to God, or angels, or rational men for his actions. 
 The second can give no reason or colour, not to the 
 devil himself, for what he does : he is a slave to 
 Mammon without wages. The first makes a shift 
 to be beloved ; aye, and envied, too, by some people. 
 The second is the universal object of hatred and 
 contempt. There is no vice has been so pelted 
 with good sentences, and especially by the poets, 
 who have pursued it with stories and fables, and 
 allegories and allusions ; and moved, as we say, 
 every stone to fling at it, among all which, I do not 
 remember a more fine and gentleman-like correc- 
 tion than that which was given it by one line of 
 Ovid’s. 
 
 Desnnt luxurice multa , avaritice omnia. 
 
 Much is wanting to luxury ; all to avarice. 
 
 To which saying I have a mind to add one member 
 and render it thus : — 
 
 Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all 
 things. 
 
 Somebody says of a virtuous and wise man, that 
 
138 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 having nothing, he has all. This is just his anti- 
 pode, who, having all things, yet has nothing. 
 He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold : 
 Audivi eos amatores esse maximos sed nil potesse. 
 They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to 
 enjoy. 
 
 And, oh, what man’s condition can be worse 
 
 Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings curse ? 
 
 The beggars but a common fate deplore. 
 
 The rich poor man ’s emphatically poor. 
 
 I wonder how it comes to pass that there has 
 never been any law made against him. Against 
 him, do I say ? I mean for him, as there is a public 
 provision made for all other madmen. It is very 
 reasonable that the king should appoint some per- 
 sons (and I think the courtiers would not be 
 against this proposition) to manage his estate dur- 
 ing his life (for his heirs commonly need not that 
 care), and out of it to make it their business to see 
 that he should not want alimony befitting his 
 condition, which he could never get out of his own 
 
OF AVARICE. 
 
 139 
 
 cruel fingers. We relieve idle vagrants and coun- 
 terfeit beggars, but have no care at all of these 
 really poor men, who are, methinks, to be respect- 
 fully treated in regard of their quality. I might 
 be endless against them, but I am almost choked 
 with the superabundance of the matter. Too 
 much plenty impoverishes me as it does them. 
 I will conclude this odious subject with part of 
 Horace’s first Satire, which take in his own fami- 
 liar style : — 
 
 I admire, Maecenas, how it comes to pass, 
 
 That no man ever yet contented was, 
 
 Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state 
 In which his own choice plants him, or his fate. 
 Happy the merchant ! the old soldier cries. 
 
 The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies, 
 Happy the soldier ! one half-hour to thee 
 Gives speedy death or glorious victory. 
 
 The lawyer, knocked up early from his rest 
 By restless clients, calls the peasant blest. 
 
 The peasant, when his labours ill succeed, 
 
140 
 
 cowley’s essays* 
 
 Envies the mouth which only talk does feed. 
 
 ’Tis not, I think you’ll say, that I want store 
 Of instances, if here I add no more, 
 
 They are enough to reach at least a mile 
 Beyond long Orator Fabius his style. 
 
 But hold, you whom no fortune e’er endears, 
 Gentlemen, malcontents, and mutineers, 
 
 Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call, 
 
 Behold, Jove’s now resolved to please you all. 
 Thou, soldier, be a merchant ; merchant, thou 
 A soldier be ; . and lawyer to the plough. 
 
 Change all your stations straight. Why do they 
 stay 
 
 The devil a man will change now when he may. 
 Were I in General Jove’s abused case, 
 
 By Jove, I’d cudgel this rebellious race ; 
 
 But he’s too good ; be all, then, as you were ; 
 However, make the best of what you are, 
 
 And in that state be cheerful and rejoice, 
 
 Which either was your fate or was your choice. 
 
 Ho ; they must labour yet, and sweat and toil, 
 
 And very miserable be awhile. 
 
OF AVARICE. 
 
 141 
 
 But ’tis with a design only to gain 
 What may their age with plenteous ease main- 
 tain ; 
 
 The prudent pismire does this lesson teach, 
 
 And industry to lazy mankind preach. 
 
 The little drudge does trot about and sweat, 
 
 Nor does he straight devour all he can get, 
 
 But in his temperate mouth carries it home, 
 
 A stock for winter which he knows must come. 
 And when the rolling world to creatures here 
 Turns up the deformed wrong side of the year, 
 And shuts him in with storms and cold and 
 wet, 
 
 He cheerfully does his past labours eat. 
 
 Oh, does he so ] your wise example, the ant 
 Does not at all times rest, and plenty want. 
 
 But, weighing justly a mortal ant’s condition, 
 Divides his life ’twixt labour and fruition. 
 
 Thee neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold 
 From thy unnatural diligence can withhold,’ 
 
 To the Indies thou wouldst run rather than see 
 Another, though a friend, richer than thee. 
 
142 
 
 cowley’s essays 
 
 Fond man ! what good or beauty can be found 
 In heaps of treasure buried under ground ] 
 
 Which, rather than diminished e’er to see, 
 
 Thou wouldst thyself, too, buried with them be : 
 And what’s the difference ] is’t not quite as bad 
 Never to use, as never to have had ] 
 
 In thy vast barns millions of quarters store, 
 
 Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more 
 Than mine does. Every baker makes much bread, 
 What then] He’s with no more than others 
 fed. 
 
 Do you within the bounds of Nature live, 
 
 And to augment your own you need not strive , 
 One hundred acres will no less for you 
 Your life’s whole business than ten thousand do. 
 But pleasant ’tis to take from a great store ; 
 
 What, man] though you’re resolved to take nc 
 more 
 
 Than I do from a small one ; if your will 
 Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill, 
 
 To some great river for it must you go, 
 
 When a clear spring just at your feet does flow t 
 
OF AVARICE 
 
 143 
 
 Give me the spring which does to human use, 
 
 Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce ; 
 
 He who scorns these, and needs will drink at 
 Nile, 
 
 Must run the danger of the crocodile ; 
 
 And of the rapid stream itself which may, 
 
 At unawares bear him perhaps away. 
 
 In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin 
 Washed o’er in vain, for ever dry within ; 
 
 He catches at the stream with greedy lips, 
 
 From his touched mouth the wanton torment slips. 
 You laugh now, and expand your careful brow : 
 ’Tis finely said, but what’s all this to you ? 
 
 Change but the name, this fable is thy story, 
 
 Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory, 
 
 Which thou canst only touch, but never taste ; 
 
 The abundance still, and still the want does last. 
 The treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare, 
 But when they’re made thine own, they sacred 
 are, 
 
 And must be kept with reverence, as if thou 
 No other use of precious gold didst know 
 
144 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 But that of curious pictures to delight 
 With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight. 
 
 The only true and genuine use is this, 
 
 To buy the things which nature cannot miss 
 Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread, 
 
 And wine by which the life of life is fed, 
 
 And all those few things else by which we live ; 
 All that remains is given for thee to give. 
 
 If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear, 
 
 The bitter fruits be which fair riches bear, 
 
 If a new poverty grow out of store, 
 
 The old plain way, ye gods ! let me be poor. 
 
 A Paraphrase on an Ode in Horace’s Third 
 Book, beginning thus : — 
 
 “ Inclusam Danaen turris aliened 
 
 A tower of brass, one would have said, 
 
 And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, 
 
 And guards as strict as in the heat of wars 
 
OF AVARICE. 
 
 145 
 
 Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood. 
 The jealous father thought he well might spare 
 All further jealous care ; 
 
 And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled 
 To think how Venus’ arts he had beguiled ; 
 And when he slept his rest was deep, 
 
 But Venus laughed to see and hear him sleep. 
 
 She taught the amorous Jove 
 A magical receipt in love, 
 
 Which armed him stronger and which helped him 
 more 
 
 Than all his thunder did and his almightyship 
 before. 
 
 il. 
 
 She taught him love’s elixir, by which art 
 His godhead into gold he did convert ; 
 
 No guards did then his passage stay, 
 
 He passed with ease, gold was the word ; 
 Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce. 
 Gold through doors and walls did pierce ; 
 
 And as that works sometimes upon the sword, 
 
146 
 
 cowley’s essays 
 
 Melted the maiden dread away, 
 
 Even in the secret scabbard where it lay. 
 
 The prudent Macedonian king, 
 
 To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring ; 
 
 He broke through gates with this petar, 
 
 ’Tis the great art of peace, the engine ’tis of 
 war, 
 
 And fleets and armies follow it afar; 
 
 The ensign ’tis at land, and ’tis the seaman’s star. 
 
 hi. 
 
 Let all the world slave to this tyrant be, 
 
 Creature to this disguised deity, 
 
 Yet it shall never conquer me. 
 
 A. guard of virtues will not let it pass, 
 
 And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass. 
 
 The muses’ laurel, round my temples spread, 
 
 Does from this lightning’s force secure my head, 
 
 N or will I lift it up so high, 
 
 As in the violent meteor’s way to lie. 
 
 Wealth for its power do we honour and adore? 
 
 The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more. 
 
OF AVARICE. 
 
 147 
 
 IV. 
 
 From towns and courts, camps of the rich and 
 great, 
 
 The vast Xerxean army, I retreat, 
 
 And to the small Laconic forces fly 
 Which hold the straits of poverty. 
 
 Cellars and granaries in vain we fill 
 
 With all the bounteous summer’s store : 
 
 If the mind thirst and hunger still, 
 
 The poor rich man J s emphatically poor. 
 
 Slaves to the things we too much prize, 
 
 We masters grow of all that we despise. 
 
 v. 
 
 A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood, 
 
 Is all the wealth by nature understood. 
 
 The monarch on whom fertile Nile bestows 
 All which that grateful earth can bear, 
 
 Deceives himself, if he suppose 
 That more than this falls to his share. 
 
 Whatever an estate does beyond this afford, 
 
 Is not a rent paid to the Lord ; 
 
148 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 But is a tax illegal and unjust, 
 
 Exacted from it by tbe tyrant lust. 
 
 Much will always wanting be, 
 
 To him who much desires. Thrice happy he 
 To whom the wise indulgency of Heaven, 
 
 With sparing hand but just enough has given. 
 
149 
 
 THE DANGERS OE AN HONEST 
 MAN IN MUCH COMPANY. 
 
 If twenty thousand naked Americans were not 
 able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed 
 Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest 
 man to defend himself against twenty thousand 
 knaves, who are all furnished cap-h-pie with the 
 defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offen- 
 sive, too, of craft and malice. He will find no less 
 odds than this against him if he have much to do 
 in human affairs. The only advice, therefore, which 
 I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his 
 person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat 
 and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues, and 
 draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy. 
 The truth of it is, that a man in much business 
 must either make himself a knave, or else the 
 world will make him a fool : and if the injury 
 
150 
 
 COWLEY S ESSAYS 
 
 went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise 
 man would content himself with the revenge of 
 retaliation : but the case is much worse, for these 
 civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not 
 only dance about such a taken stranger, but at last 
 devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out 
 of drunken company ; though they be never so kind 
 and merry among themselves, it is not unpleasant 
 only, but dangerous to him. Do ye wonder that a 
 virtuous man should love to be alone ? It is hard 
 for him to be otherwise ; he is so, when he is 
 among ten thousand ; neither is the solitude so 
 uncomfortable to be alone without any other 
 creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild 
 beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts — a 
 fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a 
 robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous 
 decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilest, me- 
 thinks, of all nations, are those whom we account 
 the most barbarous ; there is some moderation and 
 good nature in the Toupinambaltians who eat no 
 men but their enemies, whilst we learned and 
 
DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 151 
 
 polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes 
 and sharks, prey upon everything that we can 
 swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and 
 philosophy, that they first congregated men dis- 
 persed, united them into societies, and built up the 
 houses and the walls of cities. I wish they could 
 unravel all they had woven ; that we might have 
 our woods and our innocence again instead of our 
 castles and our policies. They have assembled 
 many thousands of scattered people into one body : 
 it is true, they have done so, they have brought them 
 together into cities to cozen, and into armies to 
 murder one another ; they found them hunters 
 and fishers of wild creatures, they have made them 
 hunters and fishers of their brethren ; they boast 
 to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the 
 truth is they have only taught them an art of 
 war ; they have framed, I must confess, wholesome 
 laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first 
 that devil which now they conjure and cannot 
 bind ; though there were before no punishments 
 for wickedness, yet there was less committed 
 
152 
 
 COWLEY'S ESSAJTS. 
 
 because there were no rewards for it. But the 
 men who praise philosophy from this topic are 
 much deceived ; let oratory answer for itself, the 
 tinkling, perhaps, of that may unite a swarm : it 
 never was the work of philosophy to assemble 
 multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them 
 when they were assembled, to make the best of an 
 evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity 
 again. Avarice and ambition only were the first, 
 builders of towns, and founders of empire ; they 
 said, “ Go to, let us build us a city and a tower 
 whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make 
 us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the 
 face of the earth.” What was the beginning of 
 Rome, the metropolis of all the world ] what was 
 it but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary 
 of criminals ? it was justly named by the augury 
 of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder 
 cemented his walls with the blood of his brother. 
 Not unlike to this was the beginning even of the 
 first town, too, in the world, and such is the 
 original sin of most cities : their actual increase 
 
DANGERS OP AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 153 
 
 daily with their age and growth ; the more people, 
 the more wicked all of them. Every one brings in 
 his part to inflame the contagion, which becomes at 
 last so universal and so strong, that no precepts 
 can be sufficient preservatives, nor anything secure 
 our safety, but flight from among the infected. 
 We ought, in the choice of a situation, to regard 
 above all things the healthfulness of the place, and 
 the healthfulness of it for the mind rather than 
 for the body. But suppose (which is hardly to be 
 supposed) we had antidote enough against this 
 poison ; nay, suppose, further, we were always and 
 at all places armed and provided both against the 
 assaults of hostility and the mines of treachery, 
 it will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in 
 alarms ; though we were compassed round with fire 
 to defend ourselves from wild beasts, the lodging 
 would be unpleasant, because we must always be 
 obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less the 
 defects of our guard than the diligences of our 
 enemy. The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is 
 in danger to be trod upon and destroyed in the 
 
154 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 crowd of his contraries ; nay, which is worse, to be 
 changed and corrupted by them, and that it is im- 
 possible to escape both these inconveniences with- 
 out so much caution as will take away the whole 
 quiet, that is, the happiness of his life. Ye see, 
 then, what he may lose ; but, I pray, what can he 
 get there % Quid Romce faciam ? Mentiri nescio . 
 What should a man of truth and honesty do at 
 Rome ? he can neither understand, nor speak the 
 language of the place ; a naked man may swim in 
 the sea, but it is not the way to catch fish there ; 
 they are likelier to devour him than he them, if he 
 bring no nets and use no deceits. I think, there- 
 fore, it was wise and friendly advice which Martial 
 gave to Fabian when he met him newly arrived 
 at Rome. 
 
 Honest and poor, faithful in word and thought ; 
 
 What has thee, Fabian, to the city brought ? 
 
 Thou neither the buffoon nor bawd canst play, 
 
 Nor with false whispers the innocent betray : 
 
 Nor corrupt wives, nor from rich beldams get 
 
 A living by thy industry and sweat : 
 
 Nor with vain promises and projects cheat, 
 
DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 155 
 
 Nor bribe or flatter any of tbe great. 
 
 But you’re a man of learning, prudent, just : 
 
 A man of courage, firm, and fit for trust. 
 
 Why, you may stay, and live unenvied here ; 
 
 But, ’faith ! go back, and keep you where you were. 
 
 Nay, if nothing of all this were in the case, yet 
 the very sight of uncleanness is loathsome to the 
 cleanly ; the sight of folly and impiety vexatious 
 to the wise and pious. 
 
 Lucretius, by his favour, though a good poet, 
 was but an ill-natured man, when he said, “ It was 
 delightful to see other men in a great storm.” 
 And no less ill-natured should I think Democritus, 
 who laughed at all the world, but that he retired 
 himself so much out of it that we may perceive 
 he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth, 
 I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to 
 go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much 
 delighted with the fantastical extravagancy 
 of so many various madnesses, which upon me 
 wrought so contrary an effect, that I always 
 returned not only melancholy, but even sick with 
 
156 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 the sight. My compassion there was perhaps too 
 tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, 
 without any perturbation, though, to weigh the 
 matter justly, the total loss of reason is* less de- 
 plorable than the total depravation of it. An 
 exact judge of human blessings, of riches, honours, 
 beauty, even of wit itself, should pity the abuse of 
 them more than the want. 
 
 Briefly, though a wise man could pass never 
 so securely through the great roads of human life, 
 yet he will meet perpetually with so many objects 
 and occasions of compassion, grief, shame, anger, 
 hatred, indignation, and all passions but envy (for 
 he will find nothing to deserve that) that he had 
 better strike into some private path ; nay, go so 
 far, if he could, out of the common way, ut nec 
 facta audiat Pelopidarum j that he might not so 
 much as hear of the actions of the sons of Adam. 
 But, whither shall we fly, then ? into the deserts, 
 like the ancient hermits h 
 
 Qua terra patet fera regnat Erynnis. 
 
 In f acinus jurasse putes. 
 
DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 157 
 
 One would think that all mankind had bound 
 themselves by an oath to do all the wickedness 
 they can ; that they had all, as the Scripture 
 speaks, sold themselves to sin : the difference only is, 
 that some are a little more crafty (and but a little, 
 God knows) in making of the bargain. I thought, 
 when I went first to dwell in the country, that 
 without doubt I should have met there with the 
 simplicity of the old poetical golden age : I thought 
 to have found no inhabitants there, but such as 
 the shepherds of Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or 
 of Monsieur d’Urfe upon the banks of Lignon ; 
 and began to consider with myself, which way I 
 might recommend no less to posterity the happi- 
 ness and innocence of the men of Chertsey : but to 
 confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by in- 
 fallible demonstrations, that I was still in old 
 England, and not in Arcadia, or La Eorrest ; that 
 if I could not content myself with anything less 
 than exact fidelity in human conversation, I had 
 almost as good go back and seek for it in the 
 Court, or the Exchange, or Westminster HalL I 
 
158 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 ask again, then, whither shall we fly, or what shall 
 we do i The world may so come in a man’s way 
 that he cannot choose but salute it ; he must take 
 heed, though, not to go a whoring after it. If by 
 any lawful vocation or just necessity men happen 
 to be married to it, I can only give them St. Paul’s 
 advice : “ Brethren, the time is short ; it remains 
 that they that have wives be as though they had 
 none. But I would that all men were even as 1 
 myself.” 
 
 In all cases they must be sure that they do 
 mundum ducere , and not mundo nubere . They 
 must retain the superiority and headship over it : 
 happy are they who can get out of the sight of 
 this deceitful beauty, that they may not be led so 
 much as into temptation ; who have not only 
 quitted the metropolis, but can abstain from ever 
 seeing the next market town of their country. 
 
DANGERS OP AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 159 
 
 CL AUDI AN’S OLD MAN OF YERONA. 
 
 Happy the man who his whole time doth bound 
 Within the enclosure of his little ground. 
 
 Happy the man whom the same humble place 
 (The hereditary cottage of his race) 
 
 From his first rising infancy has known, 
 
 And by degrees sees gently bending down, 
 
 With natural propension to that earth 
 
 Which both preserved his life, and gave him birth. 
 
 Him no false distant lights by fortune set, 
 
 Could ever into foolish wanderings get. 
 
 He never dangers either saw, or feared, 
 
 The dreadful storms at sea he never heard. 
 
 He never heard the shrill alarms of war, 
 
 Or the worse noises of the lawyers’ bar. 
 
 No change of consuls marks to him the year, 
 
 The change of seasons is his calendar. 
 
 The cold and heat winter and summer shows, 
 Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers he knows. 
 
160 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 He measures time by landmarks, and has found 
 For the whole day the dial of his ground. 
 
 A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees, 
 And loves his old contemporary trees. 
 
 Has only heard of near Yerona’s name, 
 
 And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame. 
 
 Does with a like concernment notice take 
 Of the Red Sea, and of Benacus lake. 
 
 Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys. 
 And sees a long posterity of boys. 
 
 About the spacious world let other roam, 
 
 The voyage Life is longest made at home. 
 
161 
 
 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE AND 
 UNCERTAINTY OF RICHES. 
 
 If you should see a man who were to cross from 
 Dover to Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, 
 and trouble himself many weeks before in making 
 provisions for the voyage, would you commend him 
 for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at him 
 for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb ? A man 
 who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who 
 consumes the greatest part of his time in furnish- 
 ing the remainder with all conveniences and even 
 superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridi- 
 culous ; he does as little consider the shortness of 
 his passage that he might proportion his cares ac- 
 cordingly. It is, alas, so narrow a strait betwixt 
 the womb and the grave, that it might be called the 
 Pas de Vie , as well as the Pas de Calais . We are 
 all i^fiepot as Pindar calls us, creatures of a day, 
 and therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that 
 
 f— 28 
 
162 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 little space ; as if it were very probable that every 
 day should be our last, we are taught to demand even 
 bread for no longer a time. The sun ought not to 
 set upon our covetousness, no more than upon our 
 anger ; but as to God Almighty a thousand years 
 are as one day, so, in direct opposition, one day to 
 the covetous man is as a thousand years, tam 
 brevi fortis jaculatur cevo multa , so far he shoots 
 beyond his butt. One would think he were of the 
 opinion of the Millenaries , and hoped for so long a 
 reign upon earth. The patriarchs before the flood, 
 who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, 
 less stores for the maintaining of it ; they who lived 
 nine hundred years scarcely provided for a few days; 
 we who live but a few days, provide at least for 
 nine hundred years. What a strange alteration is 
 this of human life and manners ! and yet we see 
 an imitation of it in every man’s particular ex- 
 perience, for we begin not the cares of life till it be 
 half spent, and still increase them as that decreases. 
 What is there among the actions of beasts so illo- 
 gical and repugnant to reason? When they do 
 
SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 163 
 
 anything which seems to proceed from that which 
 we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfec- 
 tion, and attribute it only to a natural instinct. If 
 we could but learn to number our days (as we are 
 taught to pray that we might) we should adjust 
 much better our other accounts, but whilst we never 
 consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares 
 for them be without end too. Horace advises very 
 wisely, and in excellent good words, spatio brevi 
 spem longam reseces ; from a short life cut off all 
 hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned 
 away like suckers that choke the mother-plant, and 
 hinder it from bearing fruit. And in another place 
 to the same sense, Vitce summa brevis spem nos 
 vetat inchocire longam , which Seneca does not mend 
 when he says, Oh quanta dementia est spes longas 
 inchoantium! but he gives an example there of 
 an acquaintance of his named Senecio, who from a 
 very mean beginning by great industry in turning 
 about of money through all ways of gain, had at- 
 tained to extraordinary riches, but died on a sudden 
 after having supped merrily, In ipso actu benb 
 
164 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 cedentium rerum , in ipso procurrentis fortunes 
 impetu\ in the full course of his good fortune, when 
 she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all her sails 
 on ; upon which occasion he cries, out of Yirgil : 
 
 Insere nunc Melibcee pyros, pone ordine vites : 
 
 Go to, Melibasus, now, 
 
 Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant ; 
 
 Behold the fruit ! 
 
 For this Senecio I have no compassion, because he 
 was taken, as we say, in ipso facto , still labouring in the 
 work of avarice ; but the poor rich man in St. Luke 
 (whose case was not like this) I could pity, methinks, 
 if the Scripture would permit me, for he seems to 
 have been satisfied at last ; he confesses he had enough 
 for many years ; he bids his soul take its ease ; and 
 yet for all that, God says to him, “ Thou fool, this 
 night thy soul shall be required of thee, and the 
 things thou hast laid up, whom shall they belong 
 to V 9 Where shall we find the causes of this bitter 
 reproach and terrible judgment ; we may find, I 
 think, two, and God perhaps saw more. First, that 
 
SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 165 
 
 he did not intend true rest to the soul, but only to 
 change the employments of it from avarice to 
 luxury ; his design is to eat and to drink, and to be 
 merry. Secondly, that he went on too long before 
 he thought of resting ; the fulness of his old barns 
 had not sufficed him, he would stay till he was 
 forced to build new ones, and God meted out to 
 him in the same measure ; since he would have more 
 riches than his life could contain, God destroyed his 
 life and gave the fruits of it to another. 
 
 Thus God takes away sometimes the man from 
 his riches, and no less frequently riches from the 
 man : what hope can there be of such a marriage 
 where both parties are so fickle and uncertain ; by 
 what bonds can such a couple be kept long toge- 
 ther t 
 
 I. 
 
 Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must 
 quit, 
 
 Or, what is worse, be left by it ? 
 
 Why dost thou load thyself, when thou’rt to fly, 
 
 O man ordained to die ? 
 
166 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, 
 Thou who art underground to lie ? 
 
 Thou sow’st and plantest, but no fruit must see ; 
 For death, alas ! is sowing thee. 
 
 HI, 
 
 Suppose, thou fortune couldst to tameness bring, 
 And clip or pinion her wing ; 
 
 Suppose thou couldst on fate so far prevail 
 As not to cut off thy entail. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet death at all that subtlety will laugh, 
 
 Death will that foolish gardener mock 
 Who does a slight and annual plant engraff, 
 
 Upon a lasting stock. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Thou dost thyself wise and industrious deem ; 
 
 A mighty husband thou wouldst seem ; 
 
 Fond man ! like a bought slave, thou, all the while 
 Dost but for others sweat and toil. 
 
SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 167 
 
 VI. 
 
 Officious fool ! that needs must meddling be 
 In business that concerns not thee ! 
 
 For when to future years thou extend’st thy cares, 
 Thou deal’st in other men’s affairs. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Even aged men, as if they truly were 
 Children again, for age prepare, 
 
 Provisions for long travail they design 
 In the last point of their short line. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Wisely the ant against poor winter hoards 
 The stock which summer’s wealth affords, 
 
 in grasshoppers, that must at autumn die, 
 
 How vain were such an industry. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Of power and honour the deceitful light 
 Might half excuse our cheated sight, 
 
 If it of life the whole small time wotild stay. 
 
 And be our sunshine all the day. 
 
168 
 
 COWLEY’S ESSAYS. 
 
 X. 
 
 Like lightning that, begot but in a cloud, 
 Though shining bright, and speaking loud, 
 
 Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race, 
 And where it gilds, it wounds the place. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Oh, scene of fortune, which dost fair appear 
 Only to men that stand not near. 
 
 Proud poverty, that tinsel bravery wears, 
 And like a rainbow, painted tears. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep, 
 In a weak boat trust not the deep. 
 
 Placed beneath envy, above envying rise ; 
 Pity great men, great things despise. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The wise example of the heavenly lark, 
 
 Thy fellow poet, Cowley, mark, 
 
 Above the clouds let thy proud music sound, 
 Thy humble nest build on the ground. 
 
169 
 
 THE DANGER OF PROCRASTI- 
 NATION. 
 
 A letter to Mr . S. L. 
 
 I am glad that you approve and applaud my design 
 of withdrawing myself from all tumult and busi- 
 ness of the world and consecrating the little rest 
 of my time to those studies to which nature had 
 so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune 
 like a step-mother has so long detained me. But 
 nevertheless, you say — which But is serugo mera, a 
 rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. 
 But, you say, you would advise me not to precipitate 
 that resolution, but to stay a while longer with 
 patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such 
 an estate as might afford me, according to the saying 
 of that person whom you and I love very much, 
 and would believe as soon as another man, cum 
 dignitate otium. This were excellent advice to 
 
170 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there’s 
 no fooling with life when it is once turned beyond 
 forty. The seeking for a fortune then is but a 
 desperate after game, it is a hundred to one if a 
 man fling two sixes and recover all ; especially if 
 his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some 
 help for all the defects of fortune, for if a man 
 cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may 
 have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epi- 
 curus writes a letter to Idomeneus, who was then a 
 very powerful, wealthy, and it seems bountiful 
 person, to recommend to him, who had made so 
 many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, 
 whom he desired to be made a rich man too : 
 But I entreat you that you would not do it just 
 the same way as you have done to many less 
 deserving persons, but in the most gentlemanly 
 manner of obliging him, which is not to add any- 
 thing to his estate, but to take something from his 
 desires. The sum of this is, that for the uncertain 
 hopes of some conveniences we ought not to defer 
 the execution of a work that is necessary, especially 
 
171 
 
 DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 
 
 when the use of those things which we would stay 
 for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time 
 never recovered. Nay, further yet, though we were 
 sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though 
 we were sure of getting never so much by con- 
 tinuing the game, yet when the light of life is so 
 near going out, and ought to be so precious, Le jeu 
 ne vaut pas la chandelle , the play is not worth 
 the expense of the candle. After having been long 
 tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and 
 we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us 
 to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers 
 and topgallants ; utere velis , totos pande sinus . A 
 gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters 
 were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner and 
 lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on 
 a band and adjust his periwig. He would escape 
 like a person of quality, or not at all, and died 
 the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. I 
 think your counsel of festina lente is as ill to a 
 man who is flying from the world, as it would 
 have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentleman* 
 
172 
 
 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 who was so cautious as not to fly undecently 
 from his enemies, and therefore I prefer Horace’s 
 advice before yours. 
 
 Sapere aude ; incipe. , 
 
 Begin : the getting out of doors is the greatest 
 part of the journey. Yarro teaches us that Latin 
 proverb, Portam itineri longissimam esse . But t > 
 return to Horace, 
 
 Sapere aude ; 
 
 Incipe . Vivendi qui recte prorogat horam 
 Rusticus expectat dum labitur amnis ; at ille 
 Labitur , et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. 
 
 Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; 
 
 He wbo defers the work from day to day, 
 
 Does on a river’s bank expecting stay, 
 
 Till the whole stream which stopped him should be gone. 
 That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. 
 
 Caesar (the man of expedition above all others) 
 was so far from this folly, that whensoever in a 
 journey he was to cross any river, he never went 
 one foot out of his way for a bridge, or a ford, or a 
 
DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 
 
 173 
 
 ferry ; but flung himself into it immediately, and 
 swam over ; and this is the course we ought to 
 imitate if we meet with any stops in our way to 
 happiness. Stay till the waters are low, stay till 
 some boats come by to transport you, stay till a 
 bridge be built for you ; you had even as good stay 
 till the river be quite past. Persius (who, you 
 used to say, you do not know whether he be a good 
 poet or no, because you cannot understand him, 
 and whom, therefore, I say, I know to be not a 
 good poet) has an odd expression of these procras- 
 tinations, which, methinks, is full of fancy. 
 
 Jam eras hesternum consumjmmus , ecce aliud eras 
 egerit Kos annos . 
 
 Our yesterday’s to-morrow now is gone, 
 
 And still a new to-morrow does come on ; 
 
 We by to-morrows draw up all our store, 
 
 Till the exhausted well can yield no more. 
 
 And now, I think, I am even with you, for your 
 otium cum dignitate and festina lente , and three or 
 four other more of your new Latin sentences : if I. 
 
174 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca* 
 and Plutarch upon this subject, I should over- 
 whelm you, but I leave those as triarii for your 
 next charges. I shall only give you now a light 
 skirmish out of an epigrammatist, your special 
 good friend, and so, vale. 
 
 Mart. Lib. 5, Ep. 59. 
 
 To-morrow you will live, you always cry; 
 
 In what far country does this morrow lie, 
 
 That ’tis so mighty long ere it arrive ? 
 
 Beyond the Indies does this morrow live? 
 
 ’Tis so far-fetched, this morrow, that I fear 
 ’Twill be both very old and very dear. 
 To-morrow I will live, the fool does say ; 
 
 To-day itself’s too late, the wise lived yesterday* 
 
 Mart. Lib. 2, Ep. 90. 
 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 
 
DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 
 
 175 
 
 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 ought be constant fire. 
 We ill 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, cheerful family 1 
 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. 
 
176 
 
 OF MYSELF. 
 
 It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of 
 himself ; it grates his own heart to say anything of 
 disparagement and the reader’s ears to hear any- 
 thing of praise for him. There is no danger from 
 me of offending him in this kind ; neither my mind, 
 nor my body, nor my fortune allow me any 
 materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my 
 own contentment that they have preserved me 
 from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defec- 
 tive 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 esti- 
 mation of most people. As far as my memory can 
 return back into my past life, before I knew or 
 was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, 
 or business of it were, the natural affections of my 
 soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 177 
 
 as some plants are said to turn away from others, 
 by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and 
 inscrutable to man’s understanding. Even when I 
 was a very young boy at school, instead of running 
 about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I 
 was wont to steal from them and walk into the 
 fields, either alone with a book, or with some one 
 companion, if I could find any of the same temper. 
 I was then, too, so much an enemy to 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 exercises 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. 
 
178 
 
 COWLEY’S essays. 
 
 IX. 
 
 This 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. 
 
 Rumour can ope the grave ; 
 
 Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends 
 Not on the number, but the choice of friends. 
 
 x. 
 
 Books should, not business, entertain the light, 
 And sleep, as undisturbed 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 Sabine field. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Thus would I double my life’s fading space, 
 
 For he that runs it well twice runs his race. 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 179 
 
 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 lived to-day. 
 
 You may see by it I was even then acquainted 
 with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of 
 Horace), and perhaps it was the immature and 
 immoderate love of them which stamped first, or 
 rather engraved, these characters in me. They 
 were like letters cut 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 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 
 
180 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 any book but of devotion), but there was wont to 
 lie Spenser’s works ; this I happened to fall upon, 
 and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the 
 knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, 
 which I found everywhere there (though my under- 
 standing had little to do with all this) ; and by de- 
 grees 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 uni- 
 versity, 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 w^orld. 
 Now though I was here engaged in ways most con- 
 trary to the original design of my life, that is, into 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 181 
 
 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 was real, was not like 
 to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was 
 adulterate. I met with several great persons, 
 whom I liked very well, but could not perceive 
 that any part of their greatness was to be liked or 
 desired, no more than I would be glad or content 
 to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which 
 rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not 
 agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. 
 Though I was in a crowd of as good company as 
 could be found anywhere, though I was in business 
 of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the 
 best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for 
 
182 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 present subsistence that ought to be desired by a 
 man of my condition in banishment and public dis- 
 tresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my 
 old schoolboy’s wish in a copy of verses to the 
 same effect. 
 
 Well then ; I now do plainly see, 
 
 This busy world and I shall ne’er agree, etc. 
 
 And I never then proposed to myself any other 
 advantage from His Majesty’s happy restoration, 
 but the getting into some moderately convenient 
 retreat in the country, which I thought in that 
 case I might easily have compassed, as well as 
 some others, with no greater probabilities or pre- 
 tences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But 
 I had before written a shrewd prophecy against 
 myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the 
 truth, though not in the elegance of it. 
 
 Thou, neither great at court nor in the war, 
 
 Nor at th’ exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling 
 bar ; 
 
 Content thyself with the small barren praise, 
 
 Which neglected verse does raise, etc. 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 183 
 
 However, by the failing of the forces which 1 
 had expected, I did not quit the design which I 
 had resolved on ; I cast myself into it A corps perdu, 
 without making capitulations or taking counsel of 
 fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to 
 his soul, “ Take thy ease ” : I met presently not 
 only with many little encumbrances and impedi- 
 ment^, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune 
 to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an 
 emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent 
 nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacra - 
 mentum, Nothing shall separate me from a mistress 
 which I have loved so long, and have now at last 
 married, though she neither has brought me a rich 
 portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped 
 from her. 
 
 Nec vos , dulcissima mundi 
 
 JVomina, vos Musce , libertas , otia y libri , 
 
 Hortique sylvceque anima remanente relinquam . 
 
 Nor by me e’er shall you, 
 
 You of all names the sweetest, and the best, 
 
184 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 You Muses, books, and liberty, and rest ; 
 
 You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be, 
 
 As long as life itself forsakes not me. 
 
 But this is a very petty ejaculation. Because I 
 have concluded all the other chapters with a copy 
 of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last. 
 
 Martial, Lib. 10, Ep. 47. 
 
 Vitam quae faciunt beatiorem , etc. 
 
 Since, dearest friend, ’tis your desire to see 
 A true receipt of happiness from me ; 
 
 These are the chief ingredients, if not all : 
 
 Take an estate neither too great nor small, 
 
 Which quantum sufficit the doctors call; 
 
 Let this estate from parents’ care descend: 
 
 The getting it too much of life does spend. 
 
 Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be 
 A fair encouragement for industry. 
 
 Let constant fires the winter’s fury tame, 
 
 And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. 
 
 Thee to the town let never suit at law, 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 185 
 
 And rarely, very rarely, business draw. 
 
 Thy active mind in equal temper keep, 
 
 In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. 
 
 Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, 
 
 Without which all the composition’s vain. 
 
 In the same weight prudence and innocence take 
 Ana of each does the just mixture make. 
 
 But a few friendships wear, and let them be 
 By Nature and by Fortune fit for thee. 
 
 Instead of art and luxury in food, 
 
 Let mirth and freedom make thy table good. 
 
 If any cares into thy daytime creep, 
 
 At night, without wines, opium, let them sleep. 
 
 Let rest, which Nature does to darkness wed, 
 
 And not lust, recommend to thee thy bed, 
 
 Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art ; 
 
 Act cheerfully and well the allotted part. 
 
 Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, 
 And neither fear, nor wish the approaches of the 
 last. 
 
186 
 
 cowley’s essays. 
 
 Martial, Lib. 10. Ep. 96. 
 
 Me, who have lived so long among the great* 
 You wonder to hear talk of a retreat : i 
 And a retreat so distant, as may show 
 No thoughts of a return when once I go. 
 
 Give me a country, how remote so e’er, 
 
 Where happiness a moderate rate does bear, 
 Where poverty itself in plenty flows 
 And all the solid use of riches knows. 
 
 The ground about the house maintains it there, 
 The house maintains the ground about it here. 
 Here even hunger’s dear, and a full board 
 Devours the vital substance of the lord. 
 
 The land itself does there the feast bestow, 
 
 The land itself must here to market go. 
 
 Three or four suits one winter here does waste, 
 One suit does there three or four winters last. 
 Here every frugal man must oft be cold, 
 
 And little lukewarm fires are to you sold. 
 
OF MYSELF. 
 
 187 
 
 There fire’s an element as cheap and free 
 Almost as any of the other three. 
 
 Stay you then here, and live among the great, 
 Attend their sports, and at their tables eat. 
 When all the bounties here of men you score : 
 The Place’s bounty there, shall give me more. 
 
cowley’s essays. 
 
 EPITAPHIUM YIYI AUCTORIS. 
 
 Hie , 0 viator , sub Lare parvulo 
 Couleius hie est conditus , ; 
 
 Defunctus humani labor is 
 JSorte, supervacuaque vita . 
 
 Yon indecora pauperie nitens , 
 
 Et non inert! nobilis otio, 
 
 Vanoque dilectis popello 
 Divitiis animosus hostis. 
 
 Possis ut ilium dicer e mortuum, 
 
 En terra jam nunc quantula sufficOt l 
 Exempta sit cur is y viator ; 
 
 Terra sit ilia levis f precare. 
 
 Hie sparge flores, sparge breves rosas, 
 Nam vita gaudet mortua Jloribus , 
 Herbisque odoratis corona 
 
 Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem. 
 
EPITAPH OP THE LIVING AUTHOR. 
 
 189 
 
 [Translation!] 
 
 EPITAPH OP THE LIYING- AUTHOR. 
 
 O wayfarer, beneath his household shrine 
 Here Cowley lies, closed in a little den ; 
 
 A life too empty and his lot combine 
 
 To give him rest from all the toils of men. 
 
 Not shining with unseemly shows of want, 
 
 Nor noble with the indolence of ease; 
 
 Pearless of spirit as a combatant 
 
 With mob-loved wealth and all its devotees. 
 
 That you may fairly speak of him as dead, 
 
 Behold how little earth contents him now ! 
 
 Pray, wayfarer, that all his cares be fled, 
 
 And that the earth lie lightly on his brow. 
 
 Strew flowers here, strew roses soon to perish, 
 
 Por the dead life joys in all flowers that blow ; 
 
 Crown with sweet herbs, bank blossoms high, to cherish 
 The poet’s ashes that are yet aglow. 
 
 Henry Morley. 
 
cowley’s essay?. 
 
 190 
 
 A FEW NOTES. 
 
 Page 15. Fertur equis , &c. From the close of Virgil’s first Georgic : 
 said of horses in a chariot race, 
 
 Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries they fear, 
 But force along the trembling charioteer. 
 
 Dryden’s translation. 
 
 ,, 16. En Romanos , &c. Virgil, iEneid I., when Jove says, 
 
 The people Romans call, the city Rome, 
 
 To them no bounds of empire I assign. 
 
 Nor term of years to their immortal line. 
 
 Dryden’s Virgil. 
 
 w 18. “ Laveer with every wind." Laveer is an old sea term for 
 working the ship against the wind. Lord Clarendon used 
 its noun, “the schoolmen are the best laveerers in the 
 world, and would have taught a ship to catch the wind 
 that it should have gained half and half, though it had 
 been contrary.” 
 
 #f 24. Amatorem trecentce Pirithoum cohibent catence. Horace’s Ode, 
 Bk. IV., end of ode 4. Three hundred chains bind the 
 lover, Pirithous : 
 
 Wrath waits on sin, three hundred chains 
 Pirithous bind in endless pains. Creech’s Translation. 
 
 „ 25. Aliena negotia , &c. From Horace’s Satires, sixth of Book II. 
 
 „ 25. Dors, cockchafers. 
 
 „ 26. Pan huper sebastos Lord over All 
 
 ? , 27. Perditur hcec inter misero Lux. Horace, Satires, II., 6. This 
 whole Satire is in harmony with the spirit of Cowley’s 
 Essays. 
 
 „ 29. A slave in Saturnalibus. In the Saturnalia, when Roman 
 slaves had licence to disport themselves. 
 
 „ 29. Unciatim, &c. Terence’s Phornaio, Act I., scene 1, in the 
 opening : “All that this poor fellow has, by starving him- 
 self, bit by bit, with much ado, scraped together out of his 
 pitiful allowance— (must go at one swoop, people never 
 considering the price it cost him the getting).” Eachard’s 
 Terence. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 191 
 
 Page 30. 'KaicdOripCa, &c. Paul to Titus, “The Cretans are always 
 liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.” 
 
 ,, 31. Quisnam igitur, &c. Horace’s Satires, II., 7. “ Who then is 
 
 free? The wise man, who has absolute rule over himself.” 
 
 „ 81. Oenomaus, father of Hippodameia, would give her only to 
 the suitor who could overcome him in a chariot race. 
 Suitors whom he could overtake he killed. He killed him 
 self when outstripped by Pelops, whom a god assisted, or 
 according to one version, a man who took the nails out of 
 Oenomaus’ chariot wheels, and brought him down with a 
 crash. 
 
 # , 45. Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus. Never less alone than 
 when alone. 
 
 „ 47 . Sic ego, &c. ’ From Tibullus, IV., 13. 
 
 „ 51. 0 quis me gelidis , &c. From the Second Book of Virgil’s 
 Georgies, in a passage expressing the poet’s wish : 
 
 Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fired, 
 
 My soul is ravished and my brain inspired ; 
 
 Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear, 
 
 Would you your poet’s first petition hear : 
 
 Give me the ways of wandering stars to know ; 
 
 The depths of Heaven above, and Earth below ; 
 
 Teach me, &c. . . . 
 
 But if my heavy blood restrain the flight 
 Of my free soul aspiring to the height 
 Of Nature, and unclouded fields of light : 
 
 My next desire is, void of care and strife, 
 
 To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life. 
 
 A country cottage near a crystal flood, 
 
 A winding valley and a lofty wood ; 
 
 Some god conduct me to the sacred shades 
 Where bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids, 
 
 Or lift me high to Haemus hilly crown, 
 
 Or in the vales of Temp6 lay me down, 
 
 Or lead me to some solitary place, 
 
 And cover my retreat from human race. 
 
 Dryden’s translation . 
 
 H 50. Nam neque divitibus. Horace’s Epistles, I., 18. 
 
COWLEY S ESSAYS. 
 
 
 Page 58. Tanlcerwoman, “water-bearer, one who carried water from 
 
 the conduits.” 
 
 „ 60. Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander. Domitian is said to 
 have given a consulship to h s horse Incitatus. 
 
 „ 60. The glory of Cato and Aristides. See the parallel lives in 
 Plutarch. 
 
 64. 0 fortunatos nimium, &c. 
 knew their good. 
 
 „ 70. 
 Page 75. 
 
 75. 
 
 76. 
 
 80. 
 
 81. 
 
 92. 
 
 100 . 
 
 105. 
 
 Men all too happy, and they 
 
 Hinc atgue hinc. From Virgil’s iEneid, Book I. 
 
 Mr. Hartlib. ... if the gentleman he. yet alive. Samue . 
 Hartlib, a public -spirited man of a rich Polish family,, 
 came to England in 1640. He interested himself in educa- 
 tion and other subjects, as well as agriculture. In 1645 
 he edited a treatise of Flemish Agriculture that added 
 greatly to the knowledge of English farmers, and thereby 
 to the wealth of England. He spent a large fortune 
 among us for the public good. Cromwell recognised his. 
 services by a pension of £300 a year, which ceased at the 
 Restoration, and Hartlib then fell into such obscurity 
 that Cowley could not say whether he were alive or no. 
 
 Nescio qua, &c. Ovid. Epistles from Pontus. 
 
 Pariter, &c. Ovid’s Fasti, Book I. Referring to the happy 
 souls who first looked up to the stars, Ovid suggests that 
 in like manner they must have lifted their heads above 
 the vices and the jests of man. Cowley has here turned 
 “locis” into “jocis.” 
 
 Ut nos in Epistolis scribendis adjuvet. That he might help 
 us in writing letters. 
 
 Q'ui quid sit pulchrum, &c. Who tells more fully than 
 Chrysippus or Crantor what is fair what is foul, what 
 useful and what not. 
 
 Swerd of bacon, skin of bacon. First English sweard. So 
 green sward is green surface* covering. 
 
 The Country Life is a translation from Cowley’s own Latin 
 Poem on Plants. 
 
 Evelyn had dedicated to Cowley his Kalendarium Hortense. 
 
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 Jonson, Ben Discoveries made upon Men and 
 
 Matter 169 
 
 Keats, John Endymion, and other Poems 91 
 
 Keble, John The Christian Year 52 
 
 Knowles, James SheridanThe Hunchback, and The Love 
 
 Chase 55 
 
 Landor, W. S Gebir, and Count Julian 64 
 
 Latimer, Bishop Sermons on the Card 7 
 
 Lessing Nathan the Wise 37 
 
 Lewis, M. G The Bravo of Venice 43 
 
 Lobo, Jerome Voyage to Abyssinia 92 
 
 Locke, John Of Civil Government, etc 207 
 
 Lodge, Thomas Rosalind 62 
 
 Lucian Trips to the Moon 71 
 
 Luther, Martin Table Talk 15 
 
 Lyttleton, Lord Dialogues of the Dead 190 
 
 Macaulay, Lord Warren Hastings 90 
 
 “ “ Francis Bacon 17 
 
 “ “ Lays of Ancient Rome 58 
 
 “ “ The Lari of Chatham 65 
 
 “ “ Burleigh and His Times, John 
 
 . Hampden, and Horace Walpole 161 
 
 Mackenzie, Henry The Man of Feeling 5 
 
 Malcolm, Sir John Sketches of Persia. Vol. 1 117 
 
 “ “ “ “ “ Vol. II 129 
 
ORDER KV NUMBERS, 
 
 5 
 
 Marco Polo Voyages and Travels 29 
 
 Maundeville, Sir J Voyages and Travels 10 
 
 Milton, John Earlier Poems 34 
 
 “ “ Areopagitica, Letter on Educa- 
 tion, Sonnets and Psalms 123 
 
 ** “ Paradise Lost 162 & 163 
 
 ** “ .Paradise Regained, and Samson 
 
 Agonistes 180 
 
 More, Sir Thomas Utopia.. 182 
 
 Moritz, C. P. ... Travels in England in 1782 46 
 
 Palgrave, F. T The Visions of England 193 
 
 Park, Mungo Travels in the Interior of Africa. 83 & 84 
 
 Parry, Capt. W. E Third Voyage for the Discovery 
 
 of a North-West Passage 183 
 
 Patmore, Coventry The Angel in the House 68 
 
 “ “ The Victories of Love 127 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love. . .Crotchet Castle 56 
 
 Pepys, Samuel Diary, 1660-1661 33 
 
 1662- 1663 42 
 
 1663- 1664 60 
 
 1664- 1665 74 
 
 Jan. to Oct., 1666 86 
 
 Nov. 1, 1666, to May 31, 
 
 1667 95 
 
 June to Oct., 1667 103 
 
 Oct., 1667, to March, 1668. 113 
 
 March 17 to Nov. 14, 1668. 121 
 
 From Nov., 1668, to May ) 
 
 31, 1669 (Concluding > 130 
 
 Vol. of Pepys’ Diary) ) 
 
 Petty, Sir William Essays on Mankind and Political 
 
 Arithmetic 145 
 
 Pinkerton, John Early Australian Voyages 40 
 
 Piozzi, Hester L Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, 
 
 LL. D 106 
 
 Plato Crito and Phaedo 126 
 
 Plutarch Lives of Alexander and Caesar 8 
 
 Alcibiades, Coriolanus, 
 
 etc h 6 
 
 Agesilaus, Pompey, and 
 
 Phocion 100 
 
 Cato the Younger, Agis, 
 
 etc.... 72 
 
 Demetrius, Mark An- 
 tony, etc 44 
 
 Dion, Brutus, Artax- 
 
 erxes, etc 140 
 
 Nicias, Crassus, Aratus, 
 
 etc 148 
 
 Numa, Sertorius, Eu- 
 
 menes 156 
 
 Pericles, Fabius Max- 
 imus, Demosthenes, and 
 Cicero 57 
 
6 
 
 ORDER Ef NEMRERS, 
 
 Plutarch 
 
 Pope, Alexander. 
 
 4 4 4 4 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter. . 
 Reeve, Mrs. Clara — 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter 
 
 4 4 4 4 
 
 Selden, John 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 Lives of Pyrrhus, Camillus, Pelop- 
 
 idas, and Marcellus .... 131 
 
 , “ Romulus, Cimon, Lucul- 
 
 lus, and Lycurgus 152 
 
 “ Solon, Publicola, etc 107 
 
 “ Timoleon, Paulus A£mil- 
 
 ius, Lysander, and Sylla 89 
 
 Earlier Poems 41 
 
 ,An Essay on Man, and Other 
 Poems 75 
 
 ,The Discovery of Guiana, etc 66 
 
 The Old English Baron 129 
 
 Seven Discourses on Art in 
 
 .The Lady of the Lake 
 
 , Marmion 
 
 Table Talk 
 
 All’s Well that Ends Well 
 
 , Antony and Cleopatra 
 
 A Midsummer Night’s Dream.... 
 
 As You Like It 
 
 Comedy of Errors 
 
 Coriolanus. . .. 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 Julius Caesar 
 
 King Henry IV. CPart I.). 
 
 “ (Part II.) 
 
 King Henry V 
 
 King Henry VI. (Part I.) 
 
 “ (Part II.) 
 
 “ “ (PartHI.) 
 
 King Henry VIII 
 
 King John 
 
 King Lear 
 
 King Richard II 
 
 King Richard III 
 
 Love’s Labor’s Lost. 
 
 Macbeth 
 
 Measure for Measure 
 
 Much Ado About Nothing 
 
 Othello. 
 
 Pericles 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 The Merchant of Venice 
 
 The Merry Wives of Windsor. . . . 
 
 The Taming of the Shrew 
 
 The Tempest 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona .. 
 
 The Winter’s Tale 
 
 Timon of Athens 
 
 Titus Andronicus. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida 
 
 .Twelfth Night 
 
 14 
 
 136 
 
 102 
 
 208 
 
 178 
 
 79 
 
 & 
 
 164 
 
 122 
 
 154 
 
 2 3 
 
 73 
 
 128 
 
 *34 
 
 142 
 
 189 
 
 192 
 
 96 
 
 no 
 
 125 
 
 196 
 
 181 
 
 39 
 
 205 
 116 
 160 
 
 206 
 
 150 
 
 3 ° 
 
 13 l 
 
 146 
 
 61 
 
 174 
 
 101 
 
 158A 
 
 202 
 
 170 
 
 199 
 
ORDER BY NUMBERS, 
 
 7 
 
 Shelley, Percy B The Banquet of Plato, and Other 
 
 Pieces 
 
 “ “ Prometheus Unbound, and Other 
 
 Pieces 
 
 Sheridan, R. B The Rivals, and The School for 
 
 Scandal 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip A Defense of Poesie 
 
 Silvio Pellico My Ten Years’ Imprisonment. . . . 
 
 Smith, Sydney Peter Plymley’s Letters, etc 
 
 Southey, Robert Colloquies on Society 
 
 “ “ The Curse of Kehama 
 
 “ “ Life of Nelson 
 
 Spenser, Edmund The Shepherd’s Calendar 
 
 “ Complaints 
 
 “ Daphnaida, and Other Poems. . . . 
 
 Steele and Addison Sir Roger de Coverley, and The 
 
 - Spectator’s Club 
 
 “ Isaac Bickerstaff 
 
 Steele, Richard Essays and Tales 
 
 Swift, Jonathan The Battle of the Books, etc 
 
 80 
 
 108 
 
 6 ■ 
 194 
 x 
 45 
 99 
 144 
 
 213 
 
 118 
 
 143 
 
 197 
 
 28 
 
 63 
 
 135 
 
 20 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy Holy Living (Vols. I. and II.) 155 & 157A 
 
 “ “ Holy Dying (Vols. I. and II.) 167 & 16S 
 
 Voltaire Letters on England 171 
 
 Walpole, Horace The Castle of Otranto 9 
 
 Walton, Isaac The Complete Angler 4 
 
 Waterton, Charles Wandering in South America ... . 53 
 
 White, Rev. G The Natural History of Selborne. 
 
 Vol. 1 67 
 
 “ The Natural History of Selborne. 
 
 Vol. II 70 
 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary Letters on Sweden, Norway, and 
 
 Denmark 188 
 
 Woolner, Thomas, R. A.. My Beautiful Lady 82 
 
 Wordsworth, William. . . .Selected Poems from 214 
 
 Xenophon 
 
 Young, Arthur, 
 
 Memorable Thoughts of Socrates. 158a 
 1 A Tour in Ireland, 1776-1779 76 
 
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