And follow fate, which would too fast pursue: 5 In their sweet notes their happiness. But on their mother Nature lay their care: As none of all his subjects undergo? Hark, hark, the waters fall, fall, fall, And with a murmuring sound, Dash, dash upon the ground, To gentle slumbers call. VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS (Paraphrased) Creator Spirit, by whose aid 10 15 10 Plenteous of grace, descend from high, Rich in thy sevenfold energy! 15 Thou strength of his Almighty hand, Who dost the gift of tongues dispense, And when rebellious they are grown, Make us eternal truths receive; Immortal honour, endless fame; Eternal Paraclete, to thee. 20 25 30 35 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester 1647-1680 EPITAPH ON CHARLES II (1685) Here lies our sovereign lord the King, Who never said a foolish thing, John Evelyn 1620-1706 THE GREAT FIRE (From Evelyn's Diary, 1641-1697) Sept. 2, 1666. This fatal night about ten, began that deplorable fire near Fish street' in London. 3. I had public prayers at home. The fire 5 continuing, after dinner I took coach with my wife and son and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld the dismal spectacle, the whole City in dreadful flames near the water side; all the houses from the 5 10 Bridge, all Thames Street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed; and so returned exceeding astonished what would become of the rest. 1 The fire started in the house of the "King's Baker," in Pudding Lane, near New Fish-street-hill. In general terms, this was not far from the river, and between the Tower and London Bridge. semblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem; the ruins resembling the picture of Troy. London was, 5 but is no more! Thus I returned home. The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for ten miles round about, after a dreadful manner), when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season; I went on foot to the same place, and saw the whole south part of the city burning from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill (for it likewise kindled back against the wind as well as forward), Tower Street, Fen-church Street, Gracious 10 ling Street, now flaming, and most of it re Street, and so along to Baynard's Castle, and was now taking hold of St. Paul's Church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the Sept. 4. The burning still rages, and it was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple; all Fleet Street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Wat duced to ashes; the stones of Paul's flew like granados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse nor demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward. Nothing but the Almighty power of God was able to stop them, for vain was the help of man. 5. It crossed towards Whitehall; but oh, the confusion there was then at that Court! It pleased his Majesty to command me among the rest to look after the quenching of Fetter Lane end, to preserve if possible that part of Holborn whilst the rest of the gentlemen took their several posts, some at one part, some at another (for now they began to bestir themselves, and not till now, who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with their hands across) and began to consider that nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing up of so many houses as might make a wider gap than any had yet been made by the ordinary method of pulling them down with engines; this some stout seamen proposed early enough to have saved nearly the whole City, but this some tenacious and avaricious men, aldermen &c., would not permit, because their houses must have been of the first. It was therefore now commanded to be practised, and my concern being particularly for the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, near Smithfield, where I had my wounded and sick men, made me the more diligent to promote it; nor was my care for the Savoy less. people so astonished, that from the beginning, I 15 man was able to tread on them, and the know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save 20 even their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from 25 house to house and street to street, at great distances one from the other; for the heat with a long set of fair and warm weather had even ignited the air and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured after an 30 incredible manner houses, furniture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other, the carts, etc., carrying out to 35 the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had 40 not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration of it. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God 45 grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, 50 houses and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two 55 miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismal and reached upon computation near fifty-six miles ir length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a re It now pleased God by abating the wind, and by the industry of the people, when almost all was lost, infusing a new spirit into them, that the fury of it began sensibly to abate about noon, so as it came no farther than the Temple westward, nor than the entrance of Smithfield north; but continued all this day and night so impetuous toward Cripple-gate and the Tower as made us all despair; it also brake out again in the Temple, but the courage of the multitude persisting, and many houses being blown up, "For here we have no continuing city." Heb., xiii., 14. 3 Grenades; an explosive missile thrown by the hand. unnecessary trouble or incumbrance of life: so that whether they are to be reckoned among goods or evils is yet left in doubt. When I was young and in some idle company, it was proposed that every one should tell what their three wishes should be, if they were sure to be granted; some were very pleasant, and some very extravagant; mine were health, and peace, and fair weather; which, though out of the way among young men, yet perhaps might pass well enough among old: they are all of a strain, for health in the body is like peace in the State and serenity in the air: the sun, in our climate at least, has something pleasure, and, of all others, the most innocent. The poor inhabitants were dispersed about St. George's Fields, and Moorfields, as far as 15 so reviving, that a fair day is a kind of a sensual Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under miserable huts and hovels, many without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who from delicateness, riches, and easy accommodations in stately and 20 well furnished houses, were now reduced to extremest misery and poverty. In this calamitous condition I returned with a sad heart to my house, blessing and adoring the distinguishing mercy of God to me and mine 25 who in the midst of all this ruin was like Lot, in my little Zoar, safe and sound. Sir William Temple 1628-1698 OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE (From Miscellanea, 1679-1692) Peace is a public blessing, without which no man is safe in his fortunes, his liberty, or his life: neither innocence or laws are a guard or defence; no possessions are enjoyed but in danger or fear, which equally lose the pleasure and ease of all that fortune can give us. Health is the soul that animates all enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless, if not dead, without it: a man starves at the best and the greatest tables, makes faces at the noblest and most delicate wines, is poor and wretched in the midst of the greatest treasures and fortunes: with common diseases strength grows decrepit, 30 youth loses all vigour, and beauty all charms; music grows harsh, and conversation disagreeable; palaces are prisons, or of equal confinement, riches are useless, honour and attendance are cumbersome, and crowns themselves are 35 a burden: but, if diseases are painful and violent, they equal all conditions of life, make no difference between a Prince and a beggar; and a fit of the stone or the colic puts a King to the rack, and makes him as miserable as he can do the meanest, the worst, and most criminal of his subjects. Some writers, in casting up the goods most desirable in life, have given them this rank, health, beauty, and riches. Of the first I find no dispute, but to the two others much may be 40 said: for beauty is a good that makes others happy rather than one's self; and, how riches should claim so high a rank, I cannot tell, when so great, so wise, and so good a part of mankind have in all ages preferred poverty before them. 45 The Therapeuta1 and Ebionites2 among the Jews, the primitive monks and modern friars among Christians, so many Dervises among the Mahometans, the Brachmans among the Indians, and all the ancient philosophers; who, 50 renounce common nature, oppose common whatever else they differed in, agreed in this of despising riches, and at best esteeming them an The "little city" which was the refuge of Lot, when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. V. Gen., xix., 19–23. 1 A sect of Jewish ascetics in pre-christian and early Christian times. They were established chiefly in Egypt 55 and lived austere and solitary lives. 2 An early Christian sect, which became separated from the Church towards the end of the second century. 3 Dervishes. 'Brahmins, members of the sacerdotal caste among the Hindoos. To know that the passions or distempers of the mind make our lives unhappy, in spite of all accidents and favours of fortune, a man perhaps must be a philosopher; and requires much thought, and study, and deep reflections. To be a Stoic, and grow insensible of pain, as well as poverty or disgrace, one must be perhaps something more or less than a man, truth and constant experience. But there needs little learning or study, more than common thought and observation, to find out, that ill health loses not only the enjoyments of fortune, but the pleasures of sense, and even of imagination, and hinders the common operations both of body and mind from being easy and free. Let philosophers reason and differ about the chief good or happiness of man; let pains to discover the regions where it grows, the springs that feed it, the customs and methods by which it is best cultivated and preserved.. 5 [Temple here goes on to consider the various practices for the preservation of health, which have obtained in different times and countries, illustrating his remarks by personal anecdotes.]... them find it where they can, and place it where they please; but there is no mistake so gross, or opinion so impertinent (how common soever) as to think pleasures arise from what is without us, rather than from what is within; from the impression given us of objects, rather than from the disposition of the organs that receive them. The various effects of the same objects upon different persons, or upon the same persons at different times, make the contrary most 10 evident. Some distempers make things look yellow, others double what we see; the commonest alter our tastes and our smells, and the very foulness of ears changes sounds. The difference of tempers, as well as of age, may 15 have the same effect, by the many degrees of perfection or imperfection in our original tempers, as well as of strength or decay, from the differences of health and of years. From all which 'tis easy without being a great naturalist, 20 to conclude, that our perceptions are formed, and our imaginations raised upon them, in a very great measure, by the dispositions of the organs through which the several objects make their impressions; and that these vary accord- 25 After these, and for a time, nothing was so ing to the different frame and temper of the others; as the sound of the same breath passing through an oaten pipe, a flute, or a trumpet. But to leave philosophy, and return to health. Whatever is true in point of happiness depend- 30 ing upon the temper of the mind, 'tis certain that pleasures depend upon the temper of the body; and that, to enjoy them, a man must be well himself, as the vessel must be sound to have your wine sweet; for otherwise, let it be 35 never so pleasant and so generous, it loses the taste; and pour in never so much, it all turns sour, and were better let alone. Whoever will eat well, must have a stomach; who will relish the pleasure of drinks, must have his mouth in 40 taste; nay, to find any felicity, or take any pleasure in the greatest advantages of honour and fortune, a man must be in health. Who would not be covetous, and with reason, if this In the course of my life, I have often pleased or entertained myself with observing the various and fantastical changes of the diseases generally complained of, and of the remedies in common vogue, which were like birds of passage, very much seen or heard of at one season, and disappeared at another, and commonly succeeded by some of a very different kind. When I was very young, nothing was so much feared or talked of as rickets among children, and consumptions among young people of both sexes. After these the spleen' came in play, and grew a formal disease: then the scurvy, which was the general complaint, and both were thought to appear in many various guises. much talked of as the ferment of the blood, which passed for the cause of all sorts of ailments, that neither physicians nor patients knew well what to make of. And to all these succeeded vapours, which serve the same turn, and furnish occasion of complaint among persons whose bodies or minds ail something, but they know not what; and among the Chineses would pass for mists of the mind or fumes of the brain, rather than indispositions of any other parts. Yet these employ our physicians, perhaps more than other diseases, who are fain to humour such patients in their fancies of being ill, and to prescribe some remedies, for fear of losing their practice to others that pretend more skill in finding out the cause of diseases, or care in advising remedies, which neither they nor their patients find any effect of, besides some gains to one, and amusement to could be purchased with gold? who not ambi- 45 the other. This, I suppose, may have con tious, if it were at the command of power, or restored by honour? But alas! a white staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane; nor a blue ribband bind up a wound so well as a fillet: the glitter of gold or of 50 diamonds will but hurt sore eyes, instead of curing them; and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a crown than a common night-cap. If health be such a blessing, and the very 55 source of all pleasure, it may be worth the The sign of office given by the sovereign in Temple's time to the members of the Privy Council, as the Premier, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, etc. Part of the insignia of the order of the Garter. tributed much to the mode of going to the waters either cold or hot upon so many occasions, or else upon none besides that of entertainment, and which commonly may have no Temple, writing at the end of the 17th century, speaks as though this favorite complaint were then less prevalent, or less popular. If this were so its loss of the popular favor was only temporary, as the literature of the early 18th century is full of allusions to it as the fashionable disease. Lady Winchelsea published a Pindaric Ode entitled The Spleen, in 1701, and Matthew Green's poem on the same subject appeared in 1737. V. also Pope's Rape of the Lock, iv. 15, et seq. Like the spleen, a fashionable malady, real or pretended, of the latter 17th and early 18th centuries. It was associated with nervous depression of spirits and debility, and was apparently similar to what we call 'nervous prostration.' other effect. And 'tis well if this be the worst of the frequent use of those waters, which, though commonly innocent, yet are sometimes dangerous, if the temper of the person or cause of the indisposition be unhappily mistaken, especially in people of age. As diseases have changed vogue, so have remedies in my time and observation. remember at one time the taking of tobacco, at I which feed the hopes of the patient, and the apothecary's gains, but leave nature to her course, who is the sovereign physician in most diseases, and leaves little for others to do, 5 further than to watch accidents; where they know no specific remedies, to prescribe diets; and, above all, to prevent disorders from the stomach, and take care that nature be not employed in the kitchen, when she should be another the drinking of warm beer, proved for 10 in the field to resist her enemy; and that she The universal remedies; then swallowing of pebblestones, in imitation of falconers curing hawks. One Doctor pretended to cure all heats and fevers, by drinking as much cold spring water as the patient could bear; at another time, 15 swallowing up a spoonful of powder of seabisket after meals was infallible for all indigestion, and so preventing diseases. Then coffee and tea began their successive reigns. infusion of powder of steel have had their 20 turns, and certain drops of several names and compositions; but none that I find have established their authority, either long or generally, by any constant and sensible successes of their reign, but have rather passed like a mode, which 25 every one is apt to follow, and finds the most convenient or graceful while it lasts; and begins to dislike in both those respects when it goes out of fashion. Thus men are apt to play with their healths 30 and their lives, as they do with their clothes; which may be the better excused, since both are so transitory, so subject to be spoiled with common use, to be torn by accidents, and at best to be so soon worn out. . . . I observed a 35 consult of physicians, in a fever of one of my near friends, perplexed to the last degree whether to let him blood or no, and not able to resolve, till the course of the disease had declared itself, and thereby determined them. 40 Another of my friends was so often let blood, by his first physician, that a second, who was sent for, questioned whether he would recover it: the first persisted the blood must be drawn till some good appeared; the other affirmed, that, 45 in such diseases, the whole mass was corrupted, but would purify again when the accident was past, like wine after a fermentation, which makes all in the vessel thick and foul for a season; but when that is past, grows clear again 50 of itself. So much is certain, that it depends a great deal upon the temper of the patient, the nature of the disease in its first causes, upon the skill and care of the physician to decide whether any of these violences upon nature are neces- 55 sary or no, and whether they are like to do good or harm. The rest of our common practice consists in various compositions of innocent ingredients, should not be weakened in her spirits and strength, when they are most necessary to support and relieve her. 'Tis true, physicians must be in danger of losing their credit with the vulgar, if they should often tell a patient he has no need of physic, and prescribe only rules of diet or common use; most people would think they had lost their fee: but the excellence of a physician's skill and care is discovered by resolving first whether it be best in the case to administer any physic or none, to trust to nature or to art; and the next, to give such prescriptions, as, if they do no good, may be sure to do no harm. In the midst of such uncertainties of health and of physic, for my own part, I have, in the general course of my life, and of many acute diseases, as well as some habitual, trusted to God Almighty, to nature, to temperance or abstinence, and the use of common remedies, either vulgarly known, and approved like proverbs by long observation and experience, either of my own, or such persons as have fallen in the way of my observation or inquiry. . . . The two great blessings of life are, in my opinion, health and good humour; and none contribute more to one another; without health, all will allow life to be but a burden; and the several conditions of fortune to be all wearisome, dull, or disagreeable, without good humour: nor does any seem to contribute towards the true happiness of life, but as it serves to increase that treasure, or to preserve it. Whatever other differences are commonly apprehended in the several conditions of fortune, none perhaps will be found so true or so great, as what is made by those two circumstances, so little regarded in the common course or pursuits of mortal men. Whether long life be a blessing or no, God Almighty only can determine, who alone knows what length it is like to run, and how 'tis like to be attended. Socrates used to say, that 'twas pleasant to grow old with good health and a good friend; and he might have reason. A man may be content to live while he is no trouble to himself or his friends; but, after that, 'tis hard if he be not content to die. I knew and esteemed a person abroad, who used to say, a |