Part 4

I went, as you said, to _France_; where, instead of the churlish humour of a malcontent, or the unmanly dejection of a disgraced exile, I appeared with an ease and gaiety of mind, which made me welcome to the greatest men of that country. The ruling principle of my philosophy was, to make the best of every situation. And, as my fortune enabled me to do it, I lived with hospitality, and even splendour; and indulged myself in all the delights of an enlarged and elegant conversation.

Such were my amusements for some years; during which time, however, I preserved the notions of loyalty, which had occasioned my disgrace, and waited some happier turn of affairs, that might restore me with honour to my country. But when all hopes of this sort were at an end, and the government, after the various revolutions which are well known, seemed fixed and established in the person of one man, it was not allegiance, but obstinacy, to hold out any longer. I easily succeeded in my application to be recalled, and was even admitted to a share in the confidence of the PROTECTOR. This great man was not without a sensibility of true glory; and, for that reason, was even ambitious of the honour, which wit and genius are ever ready to confer on illustrious greatness. Every muse of that time distinguished, and was distinguished by, him. Mine had improved her voice and accent in a foreign country: and what nobler occasion to try her happiest strain than this, of immortalizing a Hero?

“Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And ev’ry conqueror creates a muse;”

as I then said in a panegyric, which my gratitude prompted me to present to him[28].

DR. MORE.

This panegyric, presented in verse, could hardly, I suppose, be suspected of flattery!

MR. WALLER.

I expected this; but the occasion, as I said, might have suggested a fairer interpretation. And why impute as a fault to me, what the reverend SPRAT, as well as DRYDEN, did not disdain to countenance by their examples? Besides, as an argument of the unsullied purity of intention, you might remember, methinks, that I asked no recompence, and accepted none, for the willing honours my muse paid him.

DR. MORE.

It must be a sordid muse indeed, that submits to a venal prostitution. And, to do your profession justice, it is not so much avarice, or even ambition, as a certain gentler passion, the vanity, shall I call it? of being well with the _great_, that is fatal to you poets.

MR. WALLER.

I can allow for the satire of this reproof, in a man of ancient and bookish manners. But, to shew my disinterestedness still more, you may recollect, if you please, that I embalmed his memory, when neither his favour nor his smile were to be apprehended.

DR. MORE.

In the short reign of his son.—But what then? you made amends for all, by the congratulation on the happy return of his present majesty. You know who it was that somebody complimented in these lines:

“He best can turn, enforce and soften things, To praise great conquerors, and flatter kings.”

MR. WALLER.

Was it for me to stem the torrent of a nation’s joys by a froward and unseasonable silence? Did not HORACE, who fought at _Philippi_, do as much for AUGUSTUS? And should I, who had suffered for his cause, not embrace the goodness, and salute the returning fortunes, of so gracious, so accomplished a master? His majesty himself, as I truly say of him, in the poem you object to me,

“with wisdom fraught, Not such as books, but such as practice, taught,”

did me the justice to understand my address after another manner. He, who had so often been forced by the necessities of his affairs to make compliances with the time, never resented it from me, a private man and a poet, that I had made some sacrifices of a like nature. All this might convince you of the great truth I meant to inculcate by this long recital, that not a sullen and inflexible _Sincerity_, but a fair and seasonable _accommodation of one’s self_, to the various exigencies of the times, is the golden virtue that ought to predominate in a man of life and business. All the rest, believe me, is the very cant of philosophy and unexperienced wisdom.

DR. MORE.

Wisdom—and must the sanctity of that name—

MR. WALLER.

Hear me, Sir—no exclamations against the evidence of plain fact. I have a right to expect another conduct from him, who is grown grey in the studies of moral science.

DR. MORE.

You learned another lesson in the school of FALKLAND, HYDE, and CHILLINGWORTH.

MR. WALLER.

Yes, one I was obliged to unlearn. But, since you remind me of that school, what was the effect of adhering pertinaciously to its false maxims? To what purpose were the lives of _two_ of them prodigally thrown away; and the honour, the wisdom, the talents of the _other_, still left to languish in banishment[29] and obscurity?

DR. MORE.

O! prophane not the glories of immortal, though successless virtue, with such reproaches.—Those adored names shall preach honour to future ages, and enthrone the majesty of virtue in the hearts of men, when wit and parts, and eloquence and poetry, have not a leaf of all their withered bays to recommend them.

MR. WALLER.

Raptures and chimeras!——Rather judge of the sentiments of future ages, from the present. Where is the man, (I speak it without boasting,) that enjoys a fairer fame; who is better received in all places; who is more listened to in all companies; who reaps the fruits of a reasonable and practicable virtue in every return of honour, more unquestionably, than he whose life and principles your outrageous virtue leads you to undervalue so unworthily? And take it from me as an oracle, which long age and experience enable me to deliver with all assurance, “Whoever, in succeeding times, shall form himself on the plan here given shall meet with the safety, credit, applause, and, if he chuses, honour and fortune in the world, which may be promised indeed, but never will be obtained, by any other method.”

DR. MORE.

You have spoken. But hear me now, I conjure you, whilst a poor despised philosopher—

MR. WALLER.

O! I have marked the emotion this discourse of mine hath awakened in you. I have seen your impatience: I have watched your eyes when they sparkled defiance and contradiction to my argument. But your warmth makes you forget yourself. I gave a patient hearing to all your eloquence could suggest in this cause. I even favoured your zeal, and helped to blow up your enthusiasm. The rest fell to my turn; and besides, the evening, as you see, shuts in upon us. Let us escape, at least, from its dews, which, in this decline of the year, they say, are not the most wholesome, into a warm apartment within doors; and then I shall not be averse, especially when you have taken a few minutes to recollect yourself, to debate with you what further remains upon this argument[30].

DIALOGUE II.

ON RETIREMENT.

BETWEEN

MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY,

AND

THE REV. MR. THOMAS SPRAT.

DIALOGUE II.

ON RETIREMENT.

MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY—THE REV. MR. SPRAT.

TO THE EARL OF ST. ALBANS[31].

MY LORD,

The duty I owe your LORDSHIP, as well as my friendship for Mr. COWLEY, determined me to lose no time in executing the commission you was pleased to charge me with by Mr. D***. I went early the next morning to _Barn Elms_[32]; intending to pass the whole day with him, and to try if what I might be able to suggest on the occasion, together with the weight of your lordship’s advice, could not divert him from his strange project of _Retirement_. Your lordship, no doubt, as all his other friends, had observed his bias that way to be very strong; but who, that knew his great sense, could have thought of it its carrying him to so extravagant a resolution? For my own part, I suspected it so little, that, though he would often talk of retiring, and especially since your lordship’s favour to him[33], I considered it only as the usual language of poets, which they take up one after another, and love to indulge in, as what they suppose becomes their family and profession. It could never come into my thoughts, that one, who knew the world so well as Mr. COWLEY, and had lived so long in it, who had so fair hopes and so noble a patron, could seriously think of quitting the scene at his years, and all for so fantastic a purpose as that of growing old in the corner of a country village.

These, my lord, were my sentiments, when your friendly message alarmed me with the apprehension of there being more in the matter than I had suspected. Yet still I considered it only as a hasty thought, which a fit of the spleen, or of the muse it may be, had raised; and which the free remonstrance of a friend would easily disperse, or prevent at least from coming to any fixed and settled resolution. But how shall I express to your lordship the surprise I was in, to find that this resolution was not only taken, but rooted so deeply in him, that no arguments, nor even your lordship’s authority, could shake it? I have ever admired Mr. COWLEY, as a man of the happiest temper and truest judgment; but, to say the least, there was something so particular, I had almost said perverse, in what he had to allege for himself on this occasion, that I cannot think I acquit myself to your lordship, without laying before you the whole of this extraordinary conversation; and, as far as my recollection will serve, in the very words in which it passed betwixt us.

I went, as I told your lordship, pretty early to _Barn Elms_; but my friend had gotten the start of me by some hours. He was busying himself with some improvements of his garden, and the fields that lie about his house. The whole circuit of his domain was not so large, but that I presently came up with him. “My dear friend,” said he, embracing me, but with a look of some reserve and disgust, “and is it you then I have the happiness to see, at length, in my new settlement? Though I fled hither from the rest of the world, I had no design to get out of the reach of my friends. And, to be plain with you, I took it a little amiss from one whose entire affection I had reckoned upon, that he should leave me to myself for these two whole months, without discovering an inclination, either from friendship or curiosity, to know how this retirement agreed with me. What could induce my best friend to use me so unkindly?”

Surely, said I, you forget the suddenness of your flight, and the secresy with which the resolution was taken. We supposed you gone only for a few days, to see to the management of your affairs; and could not dream of your _rusticating_ thus long, at a time when the town and court are so busy; when the occasions of your friends and your own interests seemed to require your speedy return to us. However, continued I, it doth not displease me to find you so dissatisfied with this solitude. It looks as if the short experience, you have had of this recluse life, did not recommend it to you in the manner you expected. Retirement is a fine thing in imagination, and is apt to possess you poets with strange visions. But the charm is rarely lasting; and a short trial, I find, hath served to correct these fancies. You feel yourself born for society and the world, and, by your kind complaints of your friend, confess how unnatural it is to deny yourself the proper delights of a man, the delights of conversation.

Not so fast, interrupted he, if you please, in your conclusions about the nature of retirement. I never meant to give up my right in the affections of those few I call my friends. But what has this to do with the general purpose of retreating from the anxieties of business, the intrigues of policy, or the impertinencies of conversation? I have lived but too long in a ceaseless round of these follies. The best part of my time hath been spent _sub dio_. I have served in all weathers, and in all climates, but chiefly in the torrid zone of politics, where the passions of all men are on fire, and where such as have lived the longest, and are thought the happiest, are scarcely able to reconcile themselves to the sultry air of the place. But this warfare is now happily at an end. I have languished these many years for the shade. Thanks to my Lord ST. ALBANS, and another noble lord you know of, I have now gained it. And it is not a small matter, I assure you, shall force me out of this shelter.

Nothing is easier, said I, than for you men of wit to throw a ridicule upon any thing. It is but applying a quaint figure, or a well-turned sentence, and the business is done. But indeed, my best friend, it gives me pain to find you not so much diverting as deceiving yourself with this unseasonable ingenuity. So long as these sallies of fancy were employed only to enliven conversation, or furnish matter for an ode or an epigram, all was very well. But now that you seem disposed to _act_ upon them, you must excuse me if I take the matter a little more seriously. To deal plainly with you, I come to tell you my whole mind on this subject: and, to give what I have to say the greater consequence with you, I must not conceal from you, that I come commissioned by the excellent lord you honour so much, and have just now mentioned, to expostulate in the freest manner with you upon it.

We had continued walking all this time, and were now ascending a sort of natural terras. It led to a small thicket, in the entrance of which was a seat that commanded a pleasant view of the country and the river. Taking me up to it, “Well,” said he, “my good friend, since your purpose in coming hither is so kind, and my Lord ST. ALBANS himself doth me the honour to think my private concerns deserving his particular notice, it becomes me to receive your message with respect, and to debate the matter, since you press it so home upon me, with all possible calmness. But let us, if you please, sit down here. You will find it the most agreeable spot I have to treat you with; and the shade we have about us will not, I suppose, at this hour, be unwelcome.”

And now, turning himself to me, “Let me hear from you, what there is in my retreat to this place, which a wise man can have reason to censure, or which may deserve the disallowance of a friend. I know you come prepared with every argument which men of the world have at any time employed against retirement; and I know your ability to give to each its full force. But look upon this scene before you, and tell me what inducements I can possibly have to quit it for any thing you can promise me in exchange? Is there in that vast labyrinth, you call the world, where so many thousands lose themselves in endless wanderings and perplexities, any corner where the mind can recollect itself so perfectly, where it can attend to its own business, and pursue its proper interests so conveniently, as in this quiet and sequestered spot? Here the passions subside; or, if they continue to agitate, do not however transport the mind with those feverish and vexatious fervours, which distract us in public life. This is the seat of virtue and of reason; here I can fashion my life by the precepts of duty and conscience; and here I have leisure to make acquaintance, that acquaintance which elsewhere is so rarely made, with the ways and works of God.

Think again, my friend. Doth not the genius of the place seize you? Do you not perceive a certain serenity steal in upon you? Doth not the aspect of things around you, the very stillness of this retreat, infuse a content and satisfaction which the world knows nothing of? Tell me, in a word, is there not something like enchantment about us? Do you not find your desires more composed, your purposes more pure, your thoughts more elevated, and more active, since your entrance into this scene?”

He was proceeding in this strain, with an air of perfect enthusiasm, when I broke in upon him with asking, “Whether this was what he called _debating the matter calmly with me_. Surely,” said I, “this is poetry, or something still more extravagant. You cannot think I come prepared to encounter you in this way. I own myself no match for you at these weapons: which indeed are too fine for my handling, and very unsuitable to my purpose if they were not. The point is not which of us can say the handsomest things, but the truest, on either side of the question. It is, as you said, plain argument, and not rhetorical flourishes, much less poetical raptures, that must decide the matter in debate. Not but a great deal might be said on my side, and, it may be, with more colour of truth, had I the command of an eloquence proper to set it off.

I might ask, in my turn, “Where is mighty charm that draws you to this inglorious solitude, from the duties of business and conversation, from the proper end and employment of man? How comes it to pass, that this stillness of a country landscape, this uninstructing, though agreeable enough, scene of fields and waters, should have greater beauty in your eye, than _flourishing peopled towns_, the scenes of industry and art, of public wealth and happiness? Is not the _sublime countenance_ of man, so one of your acquaintance terms it, a more delightful object than any of these humble beauties that lie before us? And are not the human virtues, with all their train of lovely and beneficial effects in society, better worth contemplating, than the products of inanimate nature in the field or wood? Where should we seek for REASON, but in the minds of men tried and polished in the school of civil conversation? And where hath VIRTUE so much as a being out of the offices of social life? Look well into yourself, I might say: hath not indeed the proper genius of solitude affected you! Doth not I know not what of chagrin and discontent hang about you? Is there not a gloom upon your mind, which darkens your views of human nature, and damps those chearful thoughts and sprightly purposes, which friendship and society inspire?”

You see, Sir, were I but disposed, and as able as you are, to pursue this way of fancy and declamation, I might conjure up as many frightful forms in these retired walks, as you have delightful ones. And the enchantment in good hands would, I am persuaded, have more the appearance of reality. But this is not the way in which I take upon myself to contend with you. I would hear, if you please, what reasons, that deserve to be so called, could determine you to so strange, and, forgive me if at present I am forced to think it, so unreasonable a project, as that of devoting your health and years to this monastic retirement. I would lay before you the arguments, which, I presume, should move you to quit a hasty, perhaps an unweighted, resolution: so improper in itself, so alarming to all your friends, so injurious to your own interest, and, permit me to say, to the public. I would enforce all this with the mild persuasions of a friend; and with the wisdom, the authority of a great person, to whose opinion you owe a deference, and who deserves it too from the entire love and affection he bears you.”

My dearest friend, replied he, with an earnestness that awed, and a goodness that melted me, I am not to learn the affection which either you or my noble friend bear me. I have had too many proofs of it from both, to suffer me to doubt it. But why will you not allow me to judge of what is proper to constitute my own happiness? And why must I be denied the privilege of choosing for myself, in a matter where the different taste or humour of others makes them so unfit to prescribe to me? Yet I submit to these unequal terms; and if I cannot justify the choice I have made, even in the way of serious reason and argument, I promise to yield myself to your advice and authority. You have taken me perhaps a little unprepared and unfurnished for this conflict. I have not marshalled my forces in form, as you seem to have done; and it may be difficult, on the sudden, to methodize my thoughts in the manner you may possibly expect from me. But come, said he, I will do my best in this emergency. You will excuse the rapture which hurried me at setting out, beyond the bounds which your severer temper requires. The subject always fires me; and I find it difficult, in entering on this argument, to restrain those triumphant sallies, which had better have been reserved for the close of it.

Here he paused a little; and recollecting himself, “But first,” resumed he, “you will take notice, that I am not at all concerned in the general question, so much, and, I think, so vainly agitated, “_whether a life of retirement be preferable to one of action?_” I am not, I assure you, for unpeopling our cities, and sending their industrious and useful inhabitants into woods and cloisters. I acknowledge and admire the improvements of arts, the conveniencies of society, the policies of government[34]. I have no thought so mad or so silly, as that of wishing to see the tribes of mankind disbanded, their interests and connexions dissolved, and themselves turned loose into a single and solitary existence. I would not even wish to see our courts deserted of their homagers, though I cannot but be of opinion, that an airing now and then at their country houses, and that not with the view of diverting, but recollecting themselves, would prove as useful to their sense and virtue, as to their estates. But all this, as I said, is so far from coming into the scheme of my serious wishes, that it does not so much as enter into my thoughts. Let wealth, and power, and pleasure, be as eagerly sought after, as they ever will be: let thousands or millions assemble in vast towns, for the sake of pursuing their several ends, as it may chance, of profit, vanity, or amusement: All this is nothing to me, who pretend not to determine for other men, but to vindicate my own choice of this retirement.

As much as I have been involved in the engagements of business, I have not lived thus long without looking frequently, and sometimes attentively into myself. I maintain, then, that to a person so moulded as I am; of the _temper and turn of mind_, which Nature hath given me; of _the sort of talents_, with which education or genius hath furnished me; and, lastly, of the _circumstances_, in which fortune hath placed me; I say, to a person so charactered and so situated, RETIREMENT is not only his choice, but his duty; is not only what his inclination leads him to, but his judgement. And upon these grounds, if you will, I venture to undertake my own apology to you.”

Your proposal, said I, is fair, and I can have no objection to close with you upon these terms; only you must take care, my friend, that you do not mistake or misrepresent your own talents or character; a miscarriage, which, allow me to say, is not very rare from the partialities which an indulged humour, too easily taken for nature, is apt to create in us.

Or what, replied he, if this humour, as you call it, be so rooted as to become a _second_ nature? Can it, in the instance before us, be worth the pains of correcting?

I should think so, returned I, in your case. But let me first hear the judgement you form of yourself, before I trouble you with that which I and your other friends make of you.