Part 6

[Footnote 31: Sugar is one of the chief products of the Canary Islands. These islands are supposed to be identical with those known to the ancients as the Fortunate Islands.]

[Footnote 32: The remark of Tacitus means that Seneca took profitable places of trust in such numbers that it was as if he had gathered them in with a net.]

[Footnote 33: The meaning is that Severus passed his youth, not only in errors, but that his youth was so full of them as to have been almost one of madness.]

[Footnote 34: Hermogenes, a native of Tarsus, lived in the second century A.D.]

[Footnote 35: Hortensius was a Roman orator of Cicero's time and an early rival of his. The remark here quoted from Tully (Cicero) means that Hortensius continued a line of action until it was not becoming.]

[Footnote 36: Livy's remark means that Scipio in old age was not equal to himself in his youth in the things he performed.]

[Footnote 37: Now written Cosmo, or Cosimo. He became duke in 1537.]

[Footnote 38: Pertinax, the Roman emperor, was murdered by the Pretorian Guards in 193 A.D. The guards were put to death by order of Septimius Severus, his successor.]

[Footnote 39: Henry was murdered by a monk named Clement, who was put to death for the crime.]

[Footnote 40: This refers to the refusal of Ulysses to wed a goddess, preferring his own wife, who was no longer young.]

[Footnote 41: The meaning is that no man is possest by curiosity unless some malevolence inspires him.]

[Footnote 42: Narses was the associate of Belisarius in command of the Roman army in Italy in 538-539, and greatly distinguished himself as the sole commander in later years.]

[Footnote 43: Agesilaus was a famous king of Sparta.]

[Footnote 44: Now commonly written Tamerlane, which stands for Timour the Lame, Timour being his real name.]

[Footnote 45: Adrian, now commonly called Hadrian, emperor of Rome, was born in 76, and died in 138.]

[Footnote 46: This saying has been translated "Envy keeps no holidays."]

[Footnote 47: Busbechius, scholar and diplomat of Flanders, was born in 1522 and died in 1592.]

[Footnote 48: The meaning is that one may be so good as to be good for nothing.]

[Footnote 49: Machiavelli, the famous author of "The Prince."]

[Footnote 50: The reference is to Timon of Athens, a real person, who is the subject of one of Shakespeare's plays.]

[Footnote 51: An early form of the word pruning, which once had a wider meaning than now.]

[Footnote 52: The meaning is that manners are deeply influenced by one's studies.]

[Footnote 53: Aulus Celsus, a Roman writer on medicine, who lived in the first half of the first century A.D.]

SHAKESPEARE

Born in 1564; died in 1616; married Anne Hathaway in 1582; went to London and became an actor in 1587; began to revise, or write, plays in 1589; bought "New Place" at Stratford in 1597; retired from the theater in 1610; his plays first collected in the Folio of 1623.

I

BRUTUS TO HIS COUNTRYMEN[54]

_Brutus._ Be patient till the last.

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear; believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Cæsar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Cæsar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is my answer: Not that I lov'd Cæsar less, but that I lov'd Rome more. Had you rather Cæsar were living and die all slaves, than that Cæsar were dead, to live all freemen? As Cæsar lov'd me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for reply.

_All._ None, Brutus, none.

_Brutus._ Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Cæsar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enroll'd in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offenses enforc'd, for which he suffered death.

--_Enter Antony (and others), with Cæsar's body._

Here comes his body, mourn'd by Mark Antony; who, tho he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart, that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.

II

SHYLOCK IN DEFENSE OF HIS RACE[55]

_Shylock._ There I have another bad match. A bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was us'd to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.

_Salarino._ Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for?

_Shylock._ To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

III

HAMLET TO THE PLAYERS[56]

_Hamlet._ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to see a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

_First Player._ I warrant your honor.

_Hamlet._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

_First Player._ I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.

_Hamlet._ O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too tho in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

[_Exeunt Players._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: From "Julius Cæsar," Act III, Sc. ii.]

[Footnote 55: From "The Merchant of Venice." Act III, Sc. ii.]

[Footnote 56: From "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," Act III, Sc. ii.]

BEN JONSON

Born in 1573; died in 1637; became a player in 1597; his first play, "Everyman in His Humor," performed at the Globe Theater in 1598, Shakespeare taking one of the parts; went to France in 1613 as tutor to a son of Raleigh; visited Drummond of Hawthornden in 1618; his library, one of the finest in England, burned about 1621; his works first collected in 1616; buried in Poet's Corner, Westminster, Abbey.

OF SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER WITS[57]

I remember the players that have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopt. _Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause"; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

In the difference of wits I have observed there are many notes; and it is a little maistry to know them, to discern what every nature, every disposition will bear; for before we sow our land we should plough it. There are no fewer forms of minds than of bodies amongst us. The variety is incredible, and therefore we must search. Some are fit to make divines, some poets, some lawyers, some physicians, some to be sent to the plow, and trades.

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting. Some wits are swelling and high; others low and still; some hot and fiery; others cold and dull; one must have a bridle, the other a spur. There be some that are forward and bold; and these will do every little thing easily. I mean that is hard by and next them, which they will utter unretarded without any shame-facedness. These never perform much, but quickly. They are what they are on the sudden; they show presently like grain that, scattered on the top the ground, shoots up, but takes no root; has a yellow blade, but the ear empty. They are wits of good promise at first, but there is an _ingenistitium_; they stand still at sixteen, they get no higher. You have others that labor only to ostentation; and are ever more busy about the colors and surface of a work than in the matter and foundation, for that is hid, the other is seen.

Others that in composition are nothing but what is rough and broken. _Quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt._ And if it would come gently, they trouble it of purpose. They would not have it run without rubs, as if that style were more strong and manly that struck the ear with a kind of unevenness. These men err not by chance, but knowingly and willingly; they are like men that affect a fashion by themselves; have some singularity in a ruff, cloak, or hatband; or their beards specially cut to provoke beholders, and set a mark upon themselves. They would be reprehended while they are looked on. And this vice, one that is authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to them to be imitated; so that ofttimes the faults which he fell into, the others seek for. This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent.

Others there are that have no composition at all; but a kind of tuning and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes a sound. Women's poets they are called, as you have women's tailors.

"They write a verse as smooth, as soft as cream, In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream."

You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle finger. They are cream-bowl, or but puddle-deep.

Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in all papers; that write out of what they presently find or meet, without choice. By which means it happens that what they have discredited and impugned in one week, they have before or after extolled the same in another. Such are all the essayists, even their master Montaigne. These, in all they write, confess still what books they have read last, and therein their own folly so much that they bring it to the stake raw and undigested; not that the place did need it neither, but that they thought themselves furnished and would vent it....

It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out and are more eminent because all is sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body. The true artificer will not run away from Nature as he were afraid of her, or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And tho his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labor, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men, will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for that it is naught.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: From "Timber; or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter."]

IZAAK WALTON

Born in 1593, died in 1683; an ironmonger in London in 1618; his home in Fleet Street in 1624, and from 1628 to 1644 in Chancery Lane, where he had Dr. John Donne, whose life he wrote, for friend and neighbor; living at Clerkenwell in 1653, when he published "The Compleat Angler"; after the Restoration lived at Winchester and Salisbury; wrote lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.

I

THE ANTIQUITY OF ANGLING[58]

_Piscator_--O sir, doubt not that angling is an art: is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast. Doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry--men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, tho both may be heightened by discourse and practise; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.

_Venator_--Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long much to have you proceed, and in the order you propose.

_Piscator_--Then first, for the antiquity of angling, of which I shall not say much, but only this: some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's flood,[59] others, that Belus,[60] who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling; and some others say--for former times have had their disquisitions about the antiquity of it--that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity; others say that he left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious knowledge and those useful arts, which by God's appointment or allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's flood.

These, sir, have been the opinions of several men that have possibly endeavored to make angling more ancient than is needful, or may well be warranted; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you that angling is much more ancient than the Incarnation of our Savior: for in the prophet Amos, mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the book of Job, which was long before the days of Amos--for that book is said to be writ by Moses--mention is made also of fish-hooks, which must imply anglers in those times.

But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches; or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors (and yet I grant that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in any man, it is a double dignification of that person);--so if this antiquity of angling, which for my part I have not forced, shall, like an ancient family, be either an honor or an ornament to this virtuous art which I profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it, of which I shall say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I think it deserves.

And for that, I shall tell you that in ancient times a debate hath arisen, and it remains yet unresolved: whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or action?

Concerning which, some have endeavored to maintain their opinion of the first, by saying that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation, the more happy we are. And they say that God enjoys himself only by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like. And upon this ground, many cloisteral men of great learning and devotion prefer contemplation before action. And many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in their commentaries upon the words of our Savior to Martha (Luke x: 41, 42).

And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit, that prefer action to be the more excellent; as namely, experiments in physic, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man's life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country or do good to particular persons. And they say also that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and is a maintainer of human society; and for these, and other like reasons, to be preferred before contemplation.

Concerning which two opinions, I shall forbear to add a third by declaring my own; and rest myself contented in telling you, my very worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless art of angling.

And first I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found it to be a real truth--that the very sitting by the river's side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will invite an angler to it; and this seems to be maintained by the learned Peter Du Moulin, who in his discourse on the fulfilling of prophecies, observes that when God intended to reveal any future events or high notions to His prophets, He then carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the cares of the world, He might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation.

II

OF THE TROUT[61]

The trout is a fish highly valued both in this and foreign nations; he may be justly said, as the old poet said of wine, and we English say of venison, to be a generous fish: a fish that is so like the buck that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and goes out of season with the stag and buck. Gesner says his name is of German offspring, and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely, in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may justly contend with all fresh-water fish, as the mullet may with all sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste, and that being in right season, the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to him.