Chapter 9

NOT to know vice at all, and keep true state, Is virtue and not fate: Next to that virtue, is to know vice well, And her black spite expel. Which to effect (since no breast is so sure, Or safe, but she’ll procure Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard Of thoughts to watch and ward At th’ eye and ear, the ports unto the mind, That no strange, or unkind Object arrive there, but the heart, our spy, Give knowledge instantly To wakeful reason, our affections’ king: Who, in th’ examining, Will quickly taste the treason, and commit Close, the close cause of it. ’Tis the securest policy we have, To make our sense our slave. But this true course is not embraced by many: By many! scarce by any. For either our affections do rebel, Or else the sentinel, That should ring ’larum to the heart, doth sleep: Or some great thought doth keep Back the intelligence, and falsely swears They’re base and idle fears Whereof the loyal conscience so complains. Thus, by these subtle trains, Do several passions invade the mind, And strike our reason blind: Of which usurping rank, some have thought love The first: as prone to move Most frequent tumults, horrors, and unrests, In our inflamèd breasts: But this doth from the cloud of error grow, Which thus we over-blow. The thing they here call love is blind desire, Armed with bow, shafts, and fire; Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born, Rough, swelling, like a storm; With whom who sails, rides on the surge of fear, And boils as if he were In a continual tempest. Now, true love No such effects doth prove; That is an essence far more gentle, fine, Pure, perfect, nay, divine; It is a golden chain let down from heaven, Whose links are bright and even; That falls like sleep on lovers, and combines The soft and sweetest minds In equal knots: this bears no brands, nor darts, To murder different hearts, But, in a calm and god-like unity, Preserves community. O, who is he that, in this peace, enjoys Th’ elixir of all joys? A form more fresh than are the Eden bowers, And lasting as her flowers; Richer than Time and, as Times’s virtue, rare; Sober as saddest care; A fixèd thought, an eye untaught to glance; Who, blest with such high chance, Would, at suggestion of a steep desire, Cast himself from the spire Of all his happiness? But soft: I hear Some vicious fool draw near, That cries, we dream, and swears there’s no such thing, As this chaste love we sing. Peace, Luxury! thou art like one of those Who, being at sea, suppose, Because they move, the continent doth so: No, Vice, we let thee know Though thy wild thoughts with sparrows’ wings do fly, Turtles can chastely die; And yet (in this t’ express ourselves more clear) We do not number here Such spirits as are only continent, Because lust’s means are spent; Or those who doubt the common mouth of fame, And for their place and name, Cannot so safely sin: their chastity Is mere necessity; Nor mean we those whom vows and conscience Have filled with abstinence: Though we acknowledge who can so abstain, Makes a most blessèd gain; He that for love of goodness hateth ill, Is more crown-worthy still Than he, which for sin’s penalty forbears: His heart sins, though he fears. But we propose a person like our Dove, Graced with a Phœnix’ love; A beauty of that clear and sparkling light, Would make a day of night, And turn the blackest sorrows to bright joys: Whose odorous breath destroys All taste of bitterness, and makes the air As sweet as she is fair. A body so harmoniously composed, As if natùre disclosed All her best symmetry in that one feature! O, so divine a creature Who could be false to? chiefly, when he knows How only she bestows The wealthy treasure of her love on him; Making his fortunes swim In the full flood of her admired perfection? What savage, brute affection, Would not be fearful to offend a dame Of this excelling frame? Much more a noble, and right generous mind, To virtuous moods inclined, That knows the weight of guilt: he will refrain From thoughts of such a strain, And to his sense object this sentence ever, “Man may securely sin, but safely never.”

AN ELEGY.

THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise, And yours, of whom I sing, be such As not the world can praise too much, Yet is ’t your virtue now I raise.

A virtue, like allay, so gone Throughout your form, as though that move, And draw, and conquer all men’s love, This subjects you to love of one,

Wherein you triumph yet: because ’Tis of yourself, and that you use The noblest freedom, not to choose Against or faith, or honour’s laws.

But who could less expect from you, In whom alone Love lives again? By whom he is restored to men; And kept, and bred, and brought up true?

His falling temples you have reared, The withered garlands ta’en away; His altars kept from the decay That envy wished, and nature feared;

And on them burns so chaste a flame, With so much loyalty’s expense, As Love, t’ acquit such excellence, Is gone himself into your name.

And you are he: the deity To whom all lovers are designed, That would their better objects find; Among which faithful troop am I;

Who, as an offering at your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light upon a love of mine;

Which, if it kindle not, but scant Appear, and that to shortest view, Yet give me leave t’ adore in you What I, in her, am grieved to want.

FOOTNOTES

{11} “So live with yourself that you do not know how ill yow mind is furnished.”

{12} Αυτοδίδακτος

{14} “A Puritan is a Heretical Hypocrite, in whom the conceit of his own perspicacity, by which he seems to himself to have observed certain errors in a few Church dogmas, has disturbed the balance of his mind, so that, excited vehemently by a sacred fury, he fights frenzied against civil authority, in the belief that he so pays obedience to God.”

{17a} Night gives counsel.

{17b} Plutarch in Life of Alexander. “Let it not be, O King, that you know these things better than I.”

{19a} “They were not our lords, but our leaders.”

{19b} “Much of it is left also for those who shall be hereafter.”

{19c} “No art is discovered at once and absolutely.”

{22} With a great belly. Comes de Schortenhien.

{23} “In all things I have a better wit and courage than good fortune.”

{24a} “The rich soil exhausts; but labour itself is an aid.”

{24b} “And the gesticulation is vile.”

{25a} “An end is to be looked for in every man, an animal most prompt to change.”

{25b} Arts are not shared among heirs.

{31a} “More loquacious than eloquent; words enough, but little wisdom.”—_Sallust_.

{31b} Repeated in the following Latin. “The best treasure is in that man’s tongue, and he has mighty thanks, who metes out each thing in a few words.”—_Hesiod_.

{31c} _Vid._ Zeuxidis pict. Serm. ad Megabizum.—_Plutarch_.

{32a} “While the unlearned is silent he may be accounted wise, for he has covered by his silence the diseases of his mind.”

{32b} Taciturnity.

{33a} “Hold your tongue above all things, after the example of the gods.”—_See_ Apuleius.

{33b} “Press down the lip with the finger.”—Juvenal.

{33c} Plautus.

{33d} Trinummus, Act 2, Scen. 4.

{34a} “It was the lodging of calamity.”—Mart. lib. 1, ep. 85.

{41} [“Ficta omnia celeriter tanquam flosculi decidunt, nec simulatum potest quidquam esse diuturnum.”—Cicero.]

{44a} Let a Punic sponge go with the book.—Mart. 1. iv. epig. 10.

{47a} He had to be repressed.

{49a} A wit-stand.

{49b} Martial. lib. xi. epig. 91. That fall over the rough ways and high rocks.

{59a} Sir Thomas More. Sir Thomas Wiat. Henry Earl of Surrey. Sir Thomas Chaloner. Sir Thomas Smith. Sir Thomas Eliot. Bishop Gardiner. Sir Nicolas Bacon, L.K. Sir Philip Sidney. Master Richard Hooker. Robert Earl of Essex. Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Henry Savile. Sir Edwin Sandys. Sir Thomas Egerton, L.C. Sir Francis Bacon, L.C.

{62a} “Which will secure a long age for the known writer.”—Horat. _de Art. Poetica_.

{66a} They have poison for their food, even for their dainty.

{74a} Haud infima ars in principe, ubi lenitas, ubi severitas—plus polleat in commune bonum callere.

{74b} _i.e._, Machiavell.

{81a} “Censure pardons the crows and vexes the doves.”—Juvenal.

{81b} “Does not spread his net for the hawk or the kite.”—Plautus.

{93} Parrhasius. Eupompus. Socrates. Parrhasius. Clito. Polygnotus. Aglaophon. Zeuxis. Parrhasius. Raphael de Urbino. Mich. Angelo Buonarotti. Titian. Antony de Correg. Sebast. de Venet. Julio Romano. Andrea Sartorio.

{94} Plin. lib. 35. c. 2, 5, 6, and 7. Vitruv. lib. 8 and 7.

{95} Horat. in “Arte Poet.”

{106a} Livy, Sallust, Sidney, Donne, Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Virgil, Ennius, Homer, Quintilian, Plautus, Terence.

{110a} The interpreter of gods and men.

{111a} Julius Cæsar. Of words, _see_ Hor. “De Art. Poet.;” Quintil. 1. 8, “Ludov. Vives,” pp. 6 and 7.

{111b} A prudent man conveys nothing rashly.

{114a} That jolt as they fall over the rough places and the rocks.

{116a} Directness enlightens, obliquity and circumlocution darken.

{117a} Ocean trembles as if indignant that you quit the land.

{117b} You might believe that the uprooted Cyclades were floating in.

{118a} Those armies of the people of Rome that might break through the heavens.—Cæsar. Comment. circa fin.

{124a} No one can speak rightly unless he apprehends wisely.

{133a} “Where the discussion of faults is general, no one is injured.”

{133b} “Gnaw tender little ears with biting truth.”—_Per Sat._ 1.

{133c} “The wish for remedy is always truer than the hope.”—_Livius_.

{136a} “Æneas dedicates these arms concerning the conquering Greeks.”—_Virg. Æn._ lib. 3.

{136b} “You buy everything, Castor; the time will come when you will sell everything.”—_Martial_, lib. 8, epig. 19.

{136c} “Cinna wishes to seem poor, and is poor.”

{136d} “Which is evident in every first song.”

{139a} “There is a god within us, and when he is stirred we grow warm; that spirit comes from heavenly realms.”

{146a} “If it were allowable for immortals to weep for mortals, the Muses would weep for the poet Nævius; since he is handed to the chamber of Orcus, they have forgotten how to speak Latin at Rome.”

{148a} “No one has judged poets less happily than he who wrote about them.”—_Senec. de Brev. Vit_, cap. 13, et epist. 88.

{149a} Heins, de Sat. 265.

{149b} Pag. 267.

{149c} Pag. 270. 271.

{149d} Pag. 273, _et seq._

{149e} Pag. in comm. 153, _et seq._

{160a} “And which jolt as they fall over the rough uneven road and high rocks.”—_Martial_, lib. xi. epig. 91.