Thefirst 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,O fortunatas 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 most men the capacity or appetite, and Fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility, of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, 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 proxima et quasi consanguinea sapientiæ, the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred to Philosophy. Varro 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 philosophy 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 antiquity, the dignity. The utility (I mean plainly 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 Rome to be made consuls and dictators, the reason of which I conceive 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 apprentices 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 commerce. If there were always two or three thousand youths, for seven or eight years bound to this 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 country 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 have; and almost all the other arts which are here practised are beholding to them for most of their materials. The innocence 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, all other trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, 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 deserve 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 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 perpetual 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 gathering 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;ipsiAgricolæ tacitum 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 ploughman, and a grazier; and if any man object that the second of these was 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 Ecclesiasticus 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 dispute, which is an art and which is a science, does not belong to the curiosity of us husbandmen), metaphysic, 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, carving, 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 virtuous, 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 ridiculous thing for a great company of men and women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred 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, though I dare not determine so far against so customary a part now of good breeding. And yet, who is there among our gentry that does not entertain a dancing master for his children as soon as they are able to walk? But did ever any father provide a tutor for his son to instruct him betimes in the nature and improvements of that land which he intended to leave him? That is at least a superfluity, and this a defect in our manner of education; 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 endowments, 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, and woods; fourthly, all parts of rural economy, which would contain the government of bees, swine, poultry, decoys, ponds, etc., and all that which Varro calls 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 Virgil’s Georgics, Pliny, Varro, 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. 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 shepherds.
Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine musasDucit,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.
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, preceded him, but I rather believe they were contemporaries), 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 obscurity of an oracle. Πλέν ἥμισυ παντός. The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this: his brother Perses had by corrupting some great men (Βασιλῆας Δωροφάγους, 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.
Νήπιοι, οὐδ’ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ᾕμισυ παντὸςΟὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχη τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μεγ’ ὔνειας,Κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ Βίον ἀνθρώποισι.
Unhappy they to whom God has not revealedBy a strong light which must their sense control,That half a great estate’s more than the whole.Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lieOf 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 sustained in the richest places, he was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of their ancestors; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, 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 Eumæus, who kept the hogs with wonderful respect, Δῖον ὔφυρβυν, the divine swine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to a husbandman Εμέιβετο Δῖος ἀγρώτης. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but Δῖος himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood the dignity of our calling. Among the Romans, we have in the first place our truly divine Virgil, who, though by the favour of Mæcenas and Augustus he might have been one of the chief men of Rome, 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 Georgics, 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 Æneas into his royal cottage, he makes him say this memorable compliment, greater than ever yet was spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our Whitehall.
Hæc,inquit,limina victorAlcides subiit,hæc illum Regia cepit,Aude,Hospes,contemnere opes,et te quoque dignumFinge Deo,rebusque veni 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 Mecænas to persuade 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 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 turpe,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 unskilful 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 confidence to translate them. I can only say that I 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.
O fortunatus nimium,etc.
A TRANSLATION OUT OF VIRGIL.
Ohhappy (if his happiness he knows)The country swain, on whom kind Heaven bestowsAt home all riches that wise Nature needs;Whom the just earth with easy plenty feeds.’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 dyedWith the dear poison of Assyrian pride:Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoilThe native use and sweetness of his oil.Instead of these, his calm and harmless life,Free from th’ 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 groundWith 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 shineSome streaks of love, both human and divine;From hence Astræa took her flight, and hereStill her last footsteps upon earth appear.’Tis true, the first desire which does controlAll 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 purgèd eyeThose wonders which to sense the gods deny;How in the moon such chance of shapes is foundThe moon, the changing world’s eternal bound.What shakes the solid earth, what strong diseaseDares 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 denyTo send forth spirits that raise a soul so high;In the next place, let woods and rivers beMy quiet, though unglorious, destiny.In life’s cool vale let my low scene be laid;Cover me, gods, with Tempe’s thickest shadeHappy the man, I grant, thrice happy heWho can through gross effects their causes see:Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs.Nor 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.They unconcerned from their safe distant seatBehold 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 Rome their steady course misguide,With all the lustre of her perishing pride.Them never yet did strife or avarice drawInto the noisy markets of the law,The camps of gownéd war, nor do they liveBy 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.Around the world in search of it they roam;It makes e’en their Antipodes their home.Meanwhile, the prudent husbandman is foundIn mutual duties striving with his ground;And half the year he care of that does takeThat half the year grateful returns does makeEach 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.When any rural holydays inviteHis 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 lengthTheir 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, Remus 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 raiseThe 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.Before those beasts which human life sustain,By men, unless to the gods’ use, were slain.
Beatus ille qui procul,etc.
Happytime man whom bounteous gods allowWith his own hand paternal grounds to plough!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 vineHe 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 heStores 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.And when the season, rich as well as gay,All her autumnal bounty does display,How is he pleas’d th’ increasing use to seeOf 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 shadeBy 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 keepLike 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,He drives into a toil the foaming boar;Here flies the hawk to assault, and there the netTo intercept the travelling fowl is set;And all his malice, all his craft is shownIn 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 careAnd joyfully the work of life does share;Nor thinks herself too noble or too fineTo pin the sheepfold or to milk the kine;Who waits at door against her husband comeFrom 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 load the board.Not all the lustful shell-fish of the sea,Dressed by the wanton hand of luxury,Nor ortolans nor godwits nor the restOf costly names that glorify a feast,Are at the princely tables better cheerThan lamb and kid, lettuce and olives, here.
A Paraphrase upon Horace,IIBook,Satirevi.
Atthe 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 entertainA 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(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 meatWhich Jove himself, were he a mouse, would eat.And for a haut goust there was mixed with theseThe swerd of bacon, and the coat of cheese,The precious relics, which at harvest heHad gathered from the reapers’ luxury.“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 thoughtUpon the cakes and pies of London wrought.“Your bounty and civility,” said he,“Which I’m surprised in these rude parts to see,Show that the gods have given you a mindToo noble for the fate which here you find.Why should a soul, so virtuous and so great,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 partakeAll the great things that mortals happy make.”Alas, what virtue hath sufficient armsTo 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.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 some; the gentle courtier at the doorStops, 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 lightHad touched the pale meridies of the night,At last, the various supper being done,It happened that the company was goneInto a room remote, servants and all,To please their noble fancies with a ball.Our host leads forth his stranger, and does findAll fitted to the bounties of his mind.Still on the table half-filled dishes stood,And with delicious bits the floor was strewed;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 pieThey 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;With peace, let tares and acorns be my food.”
A Paraphrase upon the Eightieth Epistle of the First Book of Horace.
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 thouDost 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 retireFrom 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.Is there a place doth better helps supplyAgainst the wounds of winter’s cruelty?Is there an air that gentler does assuageThe 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?Does art through pipes a purer water bringThan that which nature strains into a spring?Can all your tapestries, or your pictures, showMore 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 delightWhich opens round the country to our sight.Men to the good, from which they rashly fly,Return at last, and their wild luxuryDoes but in vain with those true joys contendWhich 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 madeRidiculous and wretched by the trade,Than he who sells a solid good to buyThe 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 affordThan all the tumult of vain greatness bringsTo kings, or to the favourites of kings.The hornéd 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 reignBravely alone, as lord of all the plain:But never after could the rider getFrom 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.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 arightThat great, but secret, happiness to prize,That’s laid up in a little, for the wise:That is the best and easiest estateWhich 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,Chide 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.
Libr.4,Plantarum.
Blestbe the man (and blest he is) whom e’er(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 bestowsAll she can ask, when she luxurious grows.The specious inconveniences, that waitUpon 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 Abdolonymus spent:The ambassadors which the great emperor sentTo offer him a crown, with wonder foundThe reverend gardener hoeing of his ground;Unwillingly and slow, and discontent,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 forsakeA happier kingdom than I go to take.”Thus Aglaüs (a man unknown to men,But the gods knew, and therefore loved him then)Thus lived obscurely then without a name,Aglaüs, 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 I?”The god, who scorned to flatter man, replied,“Aglaüs happier is.” But Gyges cried,In a proud rage, “Who can that Aglaüs be?We have heard as yet of no such king as he.”And true it was, through the whole earth aroundNo king of such a name was to be found.“Is some old hero of that name alive,Who his high race does from the gods derive?Is it some mighty general that has doneWonders in fight, and god-like honours won?Is it some man of endless wealth?” said he;“None, none of these: who can this Aglaüs 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 Aglaüs, who monarchs’ envy drew,Whose happiness the gods stood witness to,This mighty Aglaüs 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.
To J.Evelyn,Esquire.
Ineverhad 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 conveniences 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 Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might therestudiis florere ignobilis otii, though I could wish that he had rather saidNobilis otiiwhen he spoke of his own. But several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed 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 afflictions and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with by-the-by, which is, that they have produced to me some part in your kindness and esteem; and thereby the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended 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 nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your 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 blessWith the full choice of thine own happiness;And happier yet, because thou’rt blessedWith 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 meetBoth 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,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 kindBy the Great Potter’s art refined,Could the Divine impression take,He thought it fit to place him whereA 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 plantBy 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.
III.
For God, the universal architect,’T had been as easy to erectA Louvre, or Escurial, or a towerThat 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 agreeWith 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, blessèd shades! Oh, gentle, cool retreatFrom all the immoderate heat,In which the frantic world does burn and sweat!This does the lion-star, Ambition’s rage;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 sing above in every tree,Are not from fears and cares more free,Than we who lie, or sit, or walk below,And should by right be singers too.What prince’s choir of music can excelThat which within this shade does dwell,To which we nothing pay or give—They, like all other poets, liveWithout 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;The lute itself, which once was green and mute,When Orpheus struck the inspirèd lute,The trees danced round, and understoodBy sympathy the voice of wood.
V.
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 keepA 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 smellWould not among roses and jasmine dwell,Rather than all his spirits choke,With exhalations of dirt and smoke,And all the uncleanness which does drownIn 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 taughtThat 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 holdAs many creatures as the Ark of old,That fiscal table, to which every dayAll countries did a constant tribute pay,Could nothing more delicious affordThan Nature’s liberality,Helped with a little art and industry,Allows the meanest gardener’s board.The wanton taste no fish or fowl can chooseFor which the grape or melon she would lose,Though all the inhabitants of sea and airBe listed in the glutton’s bill of fare;Yet still the fruits of earth we seePlaced 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 strainThe wondrous treasures of his wealth and brainHis royal southern guest to entertain,Though, she on silver floors did tread,With bright Assyrian carpets on them spreadTo hide the metal’s poverty;Though she looked up to roofs of gold,And nought around her could beholdBut silk and rich embroidery,And Babylonian tapestry,And wealthy Hiram’s princely dye:Though Ophir’s starry stones met everywhere her eye;Though she herself and her gay host were dressedWith all the shining glories of the East;When lavish art her costly work had done;The honour and the prize of braveryWas by the Garden from the Palace won;And every rose and lily there did standBetter 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 dispenseSuch 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 life, when it in Eden stood,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 fenceOf temperance and innocence,And wholesome labours and a quiet mind,Any diseases passage find,They must not think here to assailA land unarmèd, or without a guard;They must fight for it, and dispute it hard,Before they can prevail.Scarce any plant is growing hereWhich against death some weapon does not bear,Let cities boast that they provideFor life the ornaments of pride;But ’tis the country and the fieldThat furnish it with staff and shield.
IX.
Where does the wisdom and the power divineIn a more bright and sweet reflection shine?Where do we finer strokes and colours seeOf the Creator’s real poetry,Than when we with attention lookUpon the third day’s volume of the book?If we could open and intend our eye,We all like Moses should espyEven in a bush the radiant Deity.But we despise these his inferior waysThough 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 theyThe life of mankind sway.Although no part of mighty Nature beMore stored with beauty, power, and mystery,Yet to encourage human industry,God has so ordered that no other partSuch space and such dominion leaves for art.
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 appearTo 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 restoreTo its blest state of Paradise before:Who would not joy to see his conquering handO’er all the vegetable world command,And the wild giants of the wood receiveWhat laws he’s pleased to give?He bids the ill-natured crab produceThe gentler apple’s winy juice,The golden fruit that worthy is,Of Galatea’s purple kiss;He does the savage hawthorn teachTo bear the medlar and the pear;He bids the rustic plum to rearA 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 seeThat she’s a mother made, and blushes in her fruit.
XI.
Methinks I see great Diocletian walkIn the Salonian garden’s noble shade,Which by his own imperial hands was made:I see him smile, methinks, as he does talkWith the ambassadors, who come in vain,To entice him to a throne again.“If I, my friends,” said he, “should to you showAll the delights which in these gardens grow;’Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,Than ’tis that you should carry me away;And trust me not, my friends, if every dayI 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 a god.”
Sincewe 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 convinced 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 desireThan cleanliness and quiet do require;If e’er ambition did my fancy cheat,With any wish so mean as to be great,Continue, Heaven, still from me to removeThe 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 fortune, 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, Χαρίτων μία,tota merum sal.”
Where there is one man of this, I believe there 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 me, for I speak it without 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 a chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his cognomentum. When he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who also opposed Xerxes’ army of above three hundred 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 without 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 all this but spice ofgrandio? 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 disparagement to them), as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements and meanest recreations 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 satisfactory 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 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 chiefest 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 Cæsarian race of deities, should be brought to so shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, “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; that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the madnesses of Caligula’s delights, and the execrable 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 wantonness?
Was it for this, that Rome’s best blood he spilt,With so much falsehood, so much guilt?Was it for this that his ambition stroveTo equal Cæsar 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 entertainment; she has not really wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine; her guests must be 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 dine 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 convenient 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 cascade gardens, but herb and flower and fruit 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 consider the inseparable accidents of both: servitude, disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, inherent 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 ridiculous 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 aurasÆtherias,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. 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 otherwise, 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 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 Genus 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 contented 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 ascending 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 attempt of scaling Heaven in despite of the gods, and they cast Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, 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 absolute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the third, and almost touched the heaven which he affected; is believed to have died with grief and discontent 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. 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 Cæsar—you would wonder how Cæsar and I should be like one another in anything—and choose rather to be the first man of the village than second at Rome. 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 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.
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,Not 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.
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 oakAre but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke.Beauty and strength, and wit, and wealth, and powerHave 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.
III.
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 threadThe 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 scornThe meanest country cottages;His poppy grows among the corn.The halcyon sleep will never build his nestIn any stormy breast.’Tis not enough that he does findClouds 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 fearThe 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.
VII.
If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;God to their cares and fears will set no bound.What would content you? Who can tell?Ye fear so much to lose what you have gotAs 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.