Have therein highly interplac'd your name,
You may not run the least course of neglect.
For where not to observe, is to profane
Your dignity; how careful must you be,
To be yourself? and though you may to all
Shine fair aspects; yet must the virtuous gain
The best effects of your benignity.
Nor must your common graces cause to fall
The price of your esteem t'a lower rate,
Than doth befit the pitch of your estate.

Nor may you build on your sufficiency,
For in our strongest parts we are but weak;
Nor yet may over-much distrust the same,
Lest that you come to check it so thereby,
As silence may become worse than to speak:
Though silence women never ill became.

And none we see were ever overthrown By others' flatt'ry; more than by their own. For though we live amongst the tongues of praise, And troops of smoothing people, that collaud All that we do; yet 't is within our hearts Th' ambushment lies, that evermore betrays Our judgments, when ourselves be come t' applaud Our own ability, and our own parts.

So that we must not only fence this fort Of ours against all others' fraud, but most Against our own; whose danger is the most, Because we lie the nearest to do hurt, And soon'st deceive ourselves; and soon'st are lost By our best pow'rs, that do us most transport.

Such are your holy bounds, who must convey (If God so please) the honourable blood Of Clifford, and of Russel; led aright To many worthy stems, whose offspring may Look back with comfort, to have had that good To spring from such a branch that grew s' upright; Since nothing cheers the heart of greatness more Than th' ancestors' fair glory gone before.

ΤΟ

HENRY WRIOTHESLY,

EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON.

Non fert ullum ictum illæsa felicitas.

He who hath never war'd with misery,
Nor ever tugg'd with fortune and distress,
Hath had n'occasion, nor no field to try
The strength and forces of his worthiness.
Those parts of judgment which felicity
Keeps as conceal'd, affliction must express;
And only men show their abilities,
And what they are, in their extremities.

The world had never taken so full note

Of what thou art, had'st thou not been undone ;
And only thy affliction hath begot

More fame, than thy best fortunes could have done:
For ever by adversity are wrought
The greatest works of admiration ;
And all the fair examples of renown,
Out of distress and misery are grown.

Mutius the fire, the tortures Regulus,
Did make the miracles of faith and zeal;
Exile renown'd and grac'd Rutilius:
Imprisonment and poison did reveal

MUSOPHILUS:

CONTAINING

A GENERAL DEFENCE OF LEARNING.

TO THE

RIGHT WORTHY AND JUDICIOUS FAVOURER OF VIRTUE, MASTER FULKE GREVILL.

I Do not here upon this hum'rous stage
Bring my transformed verse, apparelled
With others' passions, or with others' rage;
With loves, with wounds, with factions furnished:
But here present thee, only modelled

In this poor frame, the form of mine own heart:
Where, to revive myself, my Muse is led
With motions of her own, t' act her own part,
Striving to make her now contemned art
As fair t' herself as possibly she can ;
Les, seeming of no force, of no desert,
She might repent the course that she began;
And, with these times of dissolution, fall
From goodness, virtue, glory, fame and all.

MUSOPHILUS.

PHILOCOSMUS.

FOND man, Musophilus, that thus dost spend
In an ungainful art thy dearest days,
Tiring thy wits, and toiling to no end,
But to attain that idle smoke of praise!
Now when this busy world cannot attend
Th' untimely music of neglected lays;
Other delights than these, other desires,
This wiser profit-seeking age requires.

MUSOPHILUS.

Friend Philocosmus, I confess indeed
I love this sacred art thou sett'st so light;
And though it never stand my life in stead,
It is enough it gives myself delight,
The whilst my unafflicted mind doth feed
On no unholy thoughts for benefit.

Be it, that my unseasonable song
Come out of time, that fault is in the time;
And I must not do virtue so much wrong,
As love her aught the worse for others' crime:
And yet I find some blessed spir'ts among,
That cherish me, and like and grace my rhime.

Again, that I do more in soul esteem,
Than all the gain of dust the world doth crave:
And if I may attain but to redeem
My name from dissolution and the grave,
I shall have done enough; and better deem
T' have liv'd to be, than to have dy'd to have.

Short-breath'd mortality would yet extend
That span of life so far forth as it may,
And rob her fate; seek to beguile her end
Of some few ling'ring days of after-stay;
That all this little all might not descend
Into the dark a universal prey :

And give our labours yet this poor delight,
That when our days do end, they are not done;
And though we die, we shall not perish quite,
But live two lives where other have but one.

PHILOCOSMUS.

Silly desires of self-abusing man,
Striving to gain th' inheritance of air,
That having done the uttermost he can,
Leaves yet perhaps but beggary to his heir:
All that great purchase of the breath he wan,
Feeds not his race, or makes his house more fair.

And what art thou the better, thus to leave
A multitude of words to small effect;
Which other times may scorn, and so deceive
Thy promis'd name of what thou dost expect?
Besides, some vip'rous critic may bereave
Th' opinion of thy worth for some defect;

And get more reputation of his wit,

By but controlling of some word or sense, Than thou shalt honour for contriving it With all thy travail, care, and diligence, Being learning nowenough to contradict, And censure others with bold insolence.

Besides, so many so confus'dly sing,

Whose diverse discords have the music marr'd,
And in contempt that mystery doth bring,
That he must sing aloud that will be heard.
And the receiv'd opinion of the thing,
For some unhallow'd string that vilely jarr❜d,

Hath so unseason'd now the ears of men, That who doth touch the tenour of that vein, Is held but vain; and his unreckon❜d pen The title but of levity doth gain.

A poor light gain, to recompense their toil, That thought to get eternity the while!

And therefore leave the left and out-worn course

Of unregarded ways, and labour how
To fit the times with what is most in force;
Be new with men's affections that are new:
Strive not to run an idle counter-course,
Out from the scent of humours, men allow.

For, not discreetly to compose our parts
Unto the frame of men (which we must be)
Is to put off ourselves, and make our arts
Rebels to nature and society,
Whereby we come to bury our deserts
In th' obscure grave of singularity.

MUSOPHILUS.

Do not profane the work of doing well,
Seduced man, that can'st not look so high
From out that mist of earth, as thou can'st tell,
The ways of right which virtue doth descry;
That overlooks the base, contemptibly,
And low-laid follies of mortality.

Nor mete out truth and right-deserving praise
By that wrong measure of confusion,
The vulgar foot; that never takes his ways
By reason, but by imitation;

Rolling on with the rest, and never weighs

The course which he should go, but what is gone.

Well were it with mankind, if what the most
Did like were best: but ignorance will live

By others' square, as by example lost.

And man to man must th' hand of errour give,
That none can fall alone at their own cost;
And all because men judge not, but believe.

For what poor bounds have they, whom but th' earth bounds?

What is their end whereto their care attains;
When the thing got relieves not, but confounds;
Having but travail to succeed their pains?
What joy hath he of living, that propounds
Affliction but his end, and grief his gains?

Gath'ring, encroaching, wrestling, joining to,
Destroying, building, decking, furnishing,
Repairing, alt'ring, and so much ado,
To his soul's toil, and body's travailing :
And all this doth he, little knowing who
Fortune ordains to have th' inheriting.

And his fair house rais'd high in Envy's eye,
Whose pillars rear'd (perhaps) on blood and wrong,
The spoils and pillage of iniquity,
Who can assure it to continue long?

If rage spar'd not the walls of piety,

Shall the profanest piles of sin keep strong?

And that the rather since this short-liv'd race
Being fatally the sons but of one day,
That now with all their pow'r ply it apace,
To hold out with the greatest might they may,
Against confusion that hath all in chase,
To make of all an universal prey.

For now great Nature hath laid down at last
That mighty birth wherewith so long she went,
And over-went the times of ages past,
Here to lie in upon our soft content;
Where fruitful she hath multiply'd so fast,

That all she hath on these times seem'd t' have spent.

All that which might have many ages grac'd,
Is born in one, to make one cloy'd with all;
Where plenty hath impress'd a deep distaste
Of best and worst, and all in general;
That goodness seems goodness to have defac'd,
And virtue hath to virtue giv'n the fall.

For emulation, that proud nurse of wit,
Scorning to stay below, or come behind,
Labours upon that narrow top to sit
Of sole perfection in the highest kind.
Envy and wonder looking after it,
Thrust likewise on the self-same bliss to find:

And so long striving till they can no more,
Do stuff the place, or others' hopes shut out;
Who doubting to o'ertake those gone before,
Give up their care, and cast no more about;
And so in scorn leave all as fore-possess'd,
And will be none, where they may not be best.

Ev'n like some empty creek, that long hath lain
Left or neglected of the river by,
Whose searching sides pleas'd with a wand'ring vein,
Finding some little way that close did lie,
Steal in at first; then other streams again
Second the first, then more than all supply;

Till all the mighty main hath borne at last
The glory of his chiefest pow'r that way,
Plying this new-found pleasant room so fast,
Till all be full, and all be at a stay;
And then about, and back again doth cast,
Leaving that full to fall another way:

So fares this hum'rous world, that evermore
Rapt with the current of a present course,
Runs into that which lay contemn'd before;
Then glutted, leaves the same, and falls t' a worse.
Now zeal holds all, no life but to adore;
Then cold in spir't, and faith is of no force.

Straight all that holy was unhallow'd lies,
The scatter'd carcasses of ruin'd vows;

Then truth is false, and now hath blindness eyes;
Then zeal trusts all, now scarcely what it knows:
That evermore to foolish or to wise,

It fatal is to be seduc'd with shows.

Sacred Religion! mother of form and fear!
How gorgeously sometimes dost thou sit deck'd!
What pompous vestures do we make thee wear,
What stately piles we prodigal erect!

How sweet perfum'd thou art; how shining clear!
How solemnly observ'd; with what respect!

Another time all plain, all quite thread-bare;
Thou must have all within, and nought without;
Sit poorly without light, disrob'd: no care
Of outward grace, t'amuse the poor devout;
Pow'rless, unfollow'd: scarcely men can spare
The necessary rites to set thee out.

Either truth, goodness, virtue are not still
The self-same which they are, and always one,
But alter to the project of our will;

Or we our actions make them wait upon,
Putting them in the liv'ry of our skill,
And cast them off again when we have done.

You, mighty lords, that with respected grace
Do at the stern of fair example stand,
And all the body of this populace
Guide with the turning of your hand;
Keep a right course; bear up from all disgrace;
Observe the point of glory to our land:

Hold up disgraced Knowledge from the ground;
Keep Virtue in request; give Worth her due:
Let not Neglect with barb'rous means confound
So fair a good, to bring in night a-new :
Be not, O be not accessary found

Unto her death, that must give life to you.

Where will you have your virtuous name safe laid?
In gorgeous tombs, in sacred cells secure?
Do you not see those prostrate heaps betray'd
Your fathers' bones, and could not keep them sure?
And will you trust deceitful stones fair laid,
And think they will be to your honour truer ?

No, no; unsparing Time will proudly send
A warrant unto Wrath, that with one frown
Will all these mock'ries of vain-glory rend,
And make them (as before) ungrac'd, unknown;
Poor idle honours, that can ill defend
Your memories, that cannot keep their own.

And whereto serve that wondrous trophy now
That on the goodly plain near Wilton stands?
That huge dumb heap, that cannot tell us how,
Nor what, nor whence it is; nor with whose hands,
Nor for whose glory, it was set to show
How much our pride mocks that of other lands.

Whereon when as the gazing passenger
Hath greedy look'd with admiration;

And fain would know his birth, and what he were;
How there erected; and how long agon:
Inquires and asks his fellow-traveller
What he hath heard, and his opinion:

And he knows nothing. Then he turns again,
And looks and sighs; and then admires afresh,
And in himself with sorrow doth complain
The misery of dark forgetfulness:
Angry with time that nothing should remain,
Our greatest wonders' wonder to express.

Then Ignorance, with fabulous discourse,
Robbing fair Art and Cunning of their right,
Tells how those stones were by the Devil's force
From Afric brought to Ireland in a night;
And thence to Britannie, by magic course,
From giants' hands redeem'd by Merlin's slight: