a man of elevated virtue a tyrant, who, in the consciousness of the right intention and the assurance of the wise contrivance of his designs, will hold himself justified in being regardless of every thing but the accomplishment of them. He will forget all respect for the feelings and liberties of beings who are to be regarded as but a subordinate machinery, to be actuated or to be thrown aside when not actuated by the spring of his commanding spirit. J. FOSTER 292. APPREHENSION IN WRONGS. We make ourselves more injuries than are offered us; they many times pass for wrongs in our own thoughts, that were never meant so by the heart of him that speaketh. The apprehension of wrong hurts more than the sharpest part of the wrong done. So, by falsely making ourselves patients of wrong, we become the true and first actors. It is not good, in matters of discourtesy, to dive into a man's mind, beyond his own comment; nor to stir upon a doubtful indignity without it, unless we have proofs that carry weight and conviction with them. Words do sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart did neither hatch nor harbour. While we think to revenge an injury, we many times begin one; and after that repent our misconceptions. In things that may have a double sense, it is good to think the better was intended; so shall we still both keep our friends and quietness. O. FELLTHAM 293. CHARACTER OF EPAMINONDAS. So died Epaminondas, the worthiest man that ever was bred in that nation of Greece and hardly to be matched in any age or country; for he equalled all others in the several virtues, which in each of them were singular. His justice and sincerity, his temperance, wisdom and high magnanimity, were no way inferior to his military virtue; in every part whereof he so excelled, that he could not properly be called a wary, a valiant, a politic, a bountiful or an industrious and a provident captain. Neither was his private conversation unanswerable to those high parts which gave him praise abroad. For he was grave, and yet `very affable and courteous; resolute in public business, but in his own particular easy and of much mildness: a lover of his people, bearing with men's infirmities, witty and pleasant in speech, far from insolence, master of his own affections, and furnished with all qualities that might win and keep love. To these graces were added great ability of body, much eloquence and very deep knowledge in all parts of philosophy and learning, wherewith his mind being enlightened, rested not in the sweetness of contemplation but broke forth into such effects as gave unto Thebes, which had evermore been an underling, a dreadful reputation among all people adjoining and the highest command in Greece. SIR W. RALEGH 294. LORD CHATHAM. The venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind, and, more than all the rest, his fall from power, which like death canonizes and sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those who have betrayed him by their adulation insult him with their malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope without offence: one or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our unhappy species and surely a little too general, led him into measures which were greatly mischievous to himself, and for that reason, among others perhaps, fatal to his country -measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. E. BURKE 295. INVESTIGATION OF TRUTH. Our business is to find truth; the which even in matters of high importance, is not easily to be discovered; being as a vein of silver, encompassed with earth and mixed with dross, deeply laid in the obscurity of things, wrapt up false appearances, entangled with objections and per ed with debates; being therefore not readily discombe, especially by minds clouded with prejudices, lusts, passions, partial affections, appetites of honour and interest; whence to descry it requireth the most curious observation and solicitous circumspection that can be: together with great pains in the preparation and purgation of our minds toward the inquiry of it. I. BARROW 296. LEARNING COMPARED TO A RIVER. Learning is like a river, whose head being far in the land, is, at first rising, little and easily viewed; but, still as you go, it gapeth with a wider bank; not without pleasure and delightful winding; while it is on both sides set with trees and the beauties of various flowers. But still the further you follow it, the deeper and broader it is; till at last it inwaves itself in the unfathomed ocean: there you see more water, but no shore, -no end of that liquid fluid vastness. In many things we may sound Nature, in the shallows of her revelations. We may trace her to her second causes; but, beyond them, we meet with nothing but the puzzle of the soul and the dazzle of the mind's dim eyes. O. FELLTHAM 297. POSES. ALLEGED ABUSE OF POETRY TO MISCHIEVOUS PUR But what? shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious? Nay, truly, though I yield that poesy may not only be abused, but that, being abused, by reason of its sweet charming force it can do more hurt than any other army of words; yet shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse shall give reproach to the abused, that, contrariwise, it is a good reason, that, whatsoever being abused, doth most harm, being rightly used, (and upon the right use each thing receives its title) doth most good. Do we not see skill in physic, the best rampire1 to our often assaulted bodies,— being abused, turn poison-the most violent destroyer? Doth not knowledge of law, whose end is to even and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries? So that, as in their calling poets the fathers of lies they said nothing, so in this their argument of abuse they prove the commendation. SIR P. SIDNEY 298. THE RELATIVE PRETENSIONS OF THE POET AND THE HISTORIAN. Since, then, poetry is of all human learning the most ancient and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so 1 rampire] i. q. rampart. universal that no learned nation doth despise it, no barbarous nation is without it; since both Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of making; and that, indeed, that name of making is fit for it, considering that whereas all other arts retain themselves within their subject, and receive as it were their being from it,—the poet, only, bringeth his own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of the matter but maketh matter for conceit; since neither his description nor end containing any evil, the thing described cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach goodness and delight the learners of it; since in moral doctrine (the chief of all knowledge) he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well nigh comparable to the philosopher and for moving leaveth him behind; since the Holy Scripture hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it; since all its kinds are not only in their united forms but in their severed dissections fully commendable: I think, the laurel crown appointed for triumphant captains, doth worthily of all other learnings honour the poet's triumph. SIR P. SIDNEY 299. POETRY-ITS SUPERIORITY TO ALL OTHER ARTS. There is no art delivered to mankind, that hath not the works of nature for its principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chymeras, furies, and such like, so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely: her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. SIR P. SIDNEY 300. GIOVANNI DE' MEDICI'S SPEECH TO HIS SONS AT HIS DEATH. I suppose the time that God and nature allotted me at my birth is now expired. I die contented, leaving you rich and healthful and honourable (if you follow my footsteps and instruction), and indeed nothing makes my death so easy and quiet to me, as the thought that I have been so far from injuring or disobliging any person, that I have done them all the good offices that I was able: and the same course I recommend to you. For matter of office and government (if you would live happy and secure) my advice is, you accept what the laws and the people confer upon you; that will create you neither envy nor danger, for 'tis not what is given that makes men odious, but what is usurped; and you shall always find greater number of those who encroaching upon other people's interest ruin their own at last and in the mean time live in perpetual disquiet. With these arts, among so many factions and enemies, I have not only preserved but augmented my reputation in the city. If you follow my example, you may maintain and increase yours. But if neither my example nor persuasion can keep you from other ways, your ends will be no happier than several others who in my memory have destroyed both themselves and their families. Translated from N. MACHIAVELLI 301. NO MAN CAN BE GOOD TO ALL. I never yet knew any man so bad, but some have thought him honest, and afforded him love; nor ever any so good, but some have thought him evil and hated him. Few are so stigmatical as that they are not honest to some: and few, again, are so just, as that they seem not to some unequal; either the ignorance, the envy or the partiality of those that judge do constitute a various man. Nor can a man in himself always appear alike to all. In some, nature hath invested a disparity; in some, report hath foreblinded judgment: and in some, accident is the cause of disposing us to love or hate. Or, if not these, the variation of the bodies' humours; or, perhaps, not any of these. The soul is often led by secret motions and loves, she knows not why. Undiscovered influence pleases us now, with what we would sometimes contemn. I have come to the same man that hath now welcomed me with a free expression of love and courtesy, and another time hath left me unsaluted at all; yet, knowing him well, I have been certain of his sound affection; and have found this, not an |