And in your towns, that prospect gives delight, An humble roof, plain bed, and homely board, From off his back, or from his mouth the bit. T' avoid that weight, a greater burthen bear; The specious inconveniences, that wait The old Corycian yeoman pass'd his days; Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent [eye, A happier kingdom than I go to take ! (Th' Arcadian life has always shady been) So, gracious God! (if it may lawful be, THE COUNTRY LIFE. Lib. IV. Plantarum, BLEST be the man (and blest he is) whom e'er 3 The poet, as usual, expresses his own feeling: but he does more, he expresses it very classically. The allusion is to the ancient custom of wearing wreaths or garlands of flowers, on any occasion of joy and festivity. HURD And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole (recommend to mankind the search of that fe and entire to lie, licity, which you instruct them how to find and to enjoy. In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty. Or as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me that I might there Studiis florere ignobilis oti 4: (though I could wish that he had rather said, nobilis oti, when he spoke of his own.) But several accidents of my ill-fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish; and without that pleasantest work of human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am not yet arrived at my little Zoar. "O let me escape thither (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live." I do not look back yet; but I have been forced to stop, and make too many halts. You may wonder, sir, (for this seems a little too extravagant and pindarical for prose) what I mean by all this preface; it is to let you know, that though I have missed, like a chymist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with by the by; which is, that they have procured to me some part in your kindness and esteem; and thereby the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended to posterity, by the epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful book that has been written in that kinds, and which is to last as long as months and years. Among many other arts and excellencies, which you enjoy, I am glad to find this favourite of mine the most predominant; that you choose this for your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts for your concubines; though you know them, and beget sons upon them all (to which you are rich enough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of this seems to be designed by you to the main of the estate; you have taken most pleasure in it, and bestowed most charges upon its education: and I doubt not to see that book, which you are pleased to promise to the world, and of which you have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as accomplished, as any thing can be expected from an extraordinary wit, and no ordinary expenses, and a long experience. I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden; and yet no man, who makes his happiness more public, by a free communícation of the art and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to 4 Virg. Georg. iv. 564. 5 Mr. Evelyn's Kalendarium hortense; dedicated to Mr Cowley-The title explains the propriety of the compliment, that this book was to last as long as incnths and years. HURD. For God, the universal architect, "I had been as easy to erect A Louvre or Escurial, or a tower He wanted not the skill or power; O blessed shades! O gentle, cool retreat From all th' immoderate heat, The birds that dance from bough to bough, Are not from fears and cares more free Than we, who lie, or sit, or walk, below, And should by right be singers too. What prince's choir of music can excel That, which within this shade does dwell? To which we nothing pay or give; They, like all other poets, live Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains: 'Tis well if they become not prey: The whistling winds add their less artful strains. And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play; Nature does all this harmony bestow, But to our plants, art's music too, These are the spells, that to kind sleep invite, Which yet we moderately take; Who would not choose to be awake, While he 's encompast round with such delight, To th' ear, the nose, the touch, the taste, and sight! When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, When the great Hebrew king did almost strain The wondrous treasures of his wealth and brain, His royal southern guest to entertain; Though she on silver floors did tread, With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread, To hide the metal's poverty; Though she look'd up to roofs of gold, And rought around her could behold But silk and rich embroidery, And Babylonish tapestry, And wealthy Hiram's princely dye; Though Ophir's starry stones met every where her eye; Though she herself and her gay host were drest Nor does this happy place only dispense That salt of life, which does to all a relish give, She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth, When Epicurus to the world had taught, That pleasure was the chiefest good, (And was, perhaps, i' th' right, if rightly under His life he to his doctrine brought, [stood) And in a garden 's shade that sovereign pleasure sought: Whoever a true epicure would be, Than Nature's liberality, Yet still the fruits of earth we see But with no sense the garden does comply, The body's virtue, and the soul's good-fortune, health. The tree of life, when it in Eden stood, If, through the strong and beauteous fence And wholesome labours, and a quiet mind, They must not think here to assail Scarce any plant is growing here, bear. Let cities boast, that they provide For life the ornaments of pride; But 'tis the country and the field, That furnish it with staff and shield. Where does the wisdom and the power divine Than when we with attention look We all, like Moses, should espy Ev'n in a bush the radiant Deity. But we despise these his inferior ways (Though no less full of miracle and praise): Upon the flowers of Heaven we gaze; The stars of Earth no wonder in us raise, ? Matth. vi. 29. Though these perhaps do, more than they, Although no part of mighty Nature be We no-where Art do so triumphant see, As when it grafts or buds the tree: It over-rules, and is her master, here. It imitates her Maker's power divine, And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine : It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore The golden fruit, that worthy is He does the savage hawthorn teach That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit. Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk T' entice him to a throne again. "IfI, my friends" (said he) "should to you show All the delights which in these gardens grow, "Tis likelier much, that you should with me stay, Than 'tis, that you should carry me away: And trust me not, my friends, if every day, I walk not here with more delight, Than ever, after the most happy sight, In triumph to the Capitol I rode, To thank the gods, and to be thought myself, almost a god." VI. OF GREATNESS. SINCE we cannot attain to greatness "(says the sieur de Montagne)" let us have our revenge by railing at it:" this he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired it no more than I do, and had less reason; for he enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as allowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from the incommodities. If 1 were but in his condition, I should think it hard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be se questered from it, and made one of the principal officers of state. But the reader may think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was, nor ever shall be, put to the trial: I can therefore only make my protestation, If ever I more riches did desire I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for being so. Di bene fecerunt, inopis me quódque pusilli I confess, I love littleness almost in all things, A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it) it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a bona roba, nór, ás Homer uses to describe his beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the stateliness and largeness of her person; but, as Lucretius says, Parvola, pumilio,Xagirav μla, tota merum sal 9. Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder describes to this effect: "Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants, but huge, mas sy fellows; no plate or household-stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion: you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet: he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horseplums and pound-pears: he kept a concubine, that was a very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till at last he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which Messala said, was not his cognomen, but his cognomentum: when he deI claimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who alone opposed Xerxes's army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his arms, and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out, in a very loud voice; I rejoice, I rejoice.'-We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. 81 Sat. iv. 17. 1 Suasoriarum Liber. Xerxes 9 Lucr. iv. 1155. Suas. 11. (says he) is all mine own. He, who took away the sight of the sea, with the canvas veils of so many ships' "—and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burley way of nonsense. This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyperbolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not in some things, and to some degrees, Grandios. Is any thing more common, than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in, without one to lead them; and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room without a page or to two hold it up? I may safely say, that all the ostentation of our grandees is, just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this, but a spice of Grandio? how tedious would this be, if we were always bound to it! I do believe there is no king, who would not rather be deposed, than endure every day of his reign all the ceremonies of his coronation. 2 playing at dice; and that was the main fruit of Was it for this that Rome's best blood he spilt His new-created Deity, With nuts, and bounding-stones, and boys. But we must excuse her for this meagre enternotainment; she has not really wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine. Her guests must be contented sometimes with but slender cates, and The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from these majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, small disparagement to them) as it were for refuge to the most contemptible divertisements and meanest recreations of the vulgar, nay, even of chil-with the same cold meats served over and over dren. One of the most powerful and fortunate again, even till they become nauseous. princes of the world, of late, could find out no When delight so satisfactory, as the keeping of little and natural contentment does there remain, which you have pared away all the vanity, what solid singing birds, and hearing of them, and whistling may not be had with five hundred pounds a year? to them. What did the emperors of the whole Not so many servants or horses; but a few good world? If ever any men had the free and full ones, which will do all the business as well: not enjoyment of all human greatness (nay that would not suffice, for they would be gods too), veral meals all of them, which makes them both so many choice dishes at every meal; but at sethey certainly possessed it: and yet one of them, the more healthy, and the more pleasant; not so who styled himself lord and god of the earth, rich garments, nor so frequent changes; but as could not tell how to pass his whole day pleasantly, warm and as comely, and so frequent change too, without spending constantly two or three hours as is every jot as good for the master, though not in catching of flies, and killing them with a bod- for the taylor or valet de chambre: not such a kin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub 3. One stately palace, nor gilt rooms, or the costliest sorts of his predecessors, Nero, (who never put any of tapestry; but a convenient, brick house, with bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite) decent wainscot, and pretty forest-work hangings. could divert himself with no pastime more agree-Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will able, than to run about the streets all night in a dis-end with that which I love most in both conditions) guise, and abuse the women, and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them: this was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures. His chiefest in the day was, to sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage: he was prouder of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were, of their triumphs over nations: he did not at his death complain, that so mighty an emperor, and the last of all the Cæsarian race of deities, should be brought to so shameful and miserable an end; but only cried out, "Alas, what pi'y it is, that so excellent a musician should perish in this manner 4!" His uncle Claudius spent half his time at Louis XIII.-The Duke de Luynes, the Constable of France, is said to have gained the favour of this powerful and fortunate prince by training up singing birds for him. ANON. 3 Beelzebub signifies the lord of flies. CowLEY. -Qualis artifex pereo! Sueton. Nero. fountain or cascade-gardens; but herb, and flownot whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor er, and fruit gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear and wholesome, as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph, or the urn of a river-god. that former estate of life, do but consider the If, for all this, you Ike better the substance of inseparable accidents of both: servitude, disquiet, danger, and most commonly guilt, inherent in the one; in the other liberty, tranquillity, security, and innocence. And when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth which appeared to you, before, but a ridiculous paradox, that a low fortune is better guarded and attended than an high one. If, indeed, we look only upon the flourishing head of the tree, it ap, pears a most beautiful object, -sed quantum vertice ad auras Etherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. 5 Virg. Georg. ii. 291. |