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holds not always: for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the sophy of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour is more than that of colour; and that of decent and gracious motion more than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first sight of life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions: the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces that, if you examine them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times more amiable: "pulchrorum autumnus pulcher;" for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly ngain, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine and vices blush.

ESSAY LI. OF STUDIES.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament is in discourse; and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but

that is a wisdom without them, and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man: and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: "Abeunt studia in mores;" nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises: bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and the like: so, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away, never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are "Cymini Sectores;" if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

In The Tatler, No. 267, December 23, 1710, Addison remarks:

"I was infinitely pleased to find among the works of this extraordinary man a prayer of his own composing, which for the elevation of thought, and greatness of expression, seem rather the devotion of an angel than of a man. His principal

fault seems to have been the excess of that virtue which covers a multitude of faults. This betrayed him to so great an indulgence towards his servants, who made a corrupt use of it, that it stripped him of all those riches and honours which a long series of merits had heaped upon him. But in this prayer, at the same time that we find him prostrating himself before the great mercy-seat,

and humbled under afflictions which at that time

lay heavy upon him, we see him supported by the sense of his integrity, his zeal, his devction, and his love to mankind; which give hin: a much higher figure in the minds of thinking nen than

JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND.

that greatness had done from which he was fallen. I shall beg leave to write down the prayer itself, with the title to it, as it was found amongst his lordship's papers, written in his own hand; not being able to furnish my readers with an entertainment more suitable to this solemn time."

A PRAYER, OR PSALM, MADE BY MY LORD BACON, CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND.

Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father; from my youth up my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter! Thou, O Lord, soundest and searchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou acknowledgest the upright of heart; thou judgest the hypocrite; thou ponderest men's thoughts and doings as in a balance; thou measurest their intentions as with a line; vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee.

Remember, O Lord! how thy servant hath walked before thee; remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assemblies, I have mourned for the divisions of thy church, I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary.

This vine which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain, and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes; I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men. If any have been my enemies, I thought not of them, neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. My creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens: but I have found thee in thy temples. Thousands have been my sins and ten thousands my transgressions, but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon thine altar.

O Lord, my strength! I have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. As thy favours have increased upon me, so have thy corrections: so as thou hast been always near me, O Lord! and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me; and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before thee. And now, when I thought most of peace and honour, thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me according to thy former loving kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child.

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Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sens? Earth, heaven, and all these are nothing to thy mercies. Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee that I am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put in a napkin, nor put it, as I ought, to exchangers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit: so I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for my Saviour's sake, and receive me unto thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways.

JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND

AND I. OF ENGLAND,

born 1566, died 1625. His best known publication is Dæmonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue divided into three Bookes, Edin., 1597, 4to.

"One remark I cannot avoid making: the king's speech is always supposed by Parliament to be the speech of the minister: how cruel would it have been on King James's ministers if that interpretation had prevailed in his reign! ... Bishop Montague translated all his majesty's works into Latin; a man of so much patience was well worthy of favour."

HORACE WALPOLE:

Royal and Noble Authors, Park's ed., i. 115–116,

120.

ON SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT.

The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise, (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only, moved of conscience, to press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed ir public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft; and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The other called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby, procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that profession. And to make this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue,

which I have divided into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and necromancy in special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and the third contains a discourse of all these kinds of spirits and spectres that appears and troubles persons: together with a conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one, that such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit: and therefore reason I, what kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite: but only to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon genus, leaving species and differentia to be comprehended therein. As, for example, speaking of the power of magicians in the first book and sixth chapter, I say that they can suddenly cause be brought unto them all kinds of dainty dishes by their familiar spirit; since as a thief he delights to steal, and as a spirit he can subtilly and suddenly enough transport the same. Now under this genus may be comprehended all particulars depending thereupon; such as the bringing wine out of a wall (as we have heard oft to have been practised) and such others; which particulars are sufficiently proved by the reasons of the general. Dæmonologie.

How WITCHES TRAVEL. Philomathes.-But by what way say they, or think ye it possible, they can come to these unlawful conventions?

Epistemon.-There is the thing which I esteem their senses to be deluded in, and, though they lie not in confessing of it, because they think it to be true, yet not to be so in substance or effect, for they say, that by divers means they may convene either to the adoring of their master or to the putting in practice any service of his committed unto their charge: one way is natural, which is natural riding, going, or sailing, at what hour their master comes and advertises them. And this way may be easily believed. Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be true: which is by being carried by the force of the spirit which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea, swiftly, to the place where they are to meet; which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that as IIabakkuk was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready to imitate God, as well in that as in other things; which is much

more possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural meteor, to transport from one place to another a solid body, as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space that they may retain their breath; for if it were longer, their breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent and forcible manner, as, by example, if one fall off a small height, his life is but in peril according to the hard or soft lighting; but if one fall from a high and stay [steep] rock, his breath will be forcibly banished from the body before he can win [get] to the earth, as is oft seen by experience. And in this transporting they say themselves that they are invisible to any other, except amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before, speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting it strait together, that the beams of any other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same to see them? But the third way of their coming to their conventions is that wherein I think them deluded; for some of them saith that, being transformed in the likeness of a little beast or fowl, they will come and pierce through whatsoever honse or church, though all ordinary passages be closed, by whatsoever open the air may enter in at. And some saith that their bodies lying still, as in an ecstacy, their spirits will be ravished out of their bodies and carried to such places; and for verifying thereof will give evident tokens, as well by witnesses that have seen their body lying senseless in the mean time, as by naming persons whom with they met, and giving tokens what purpose was against them, whom otherwise they could not have known; for this form of journeying they affirm to use most when they are transported from one country to another.

Dæmonologie.

JOSEPH HALL, D.D., born at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 1574; became Bishop of Exeter, 1627; was translated to Norwich, 1641; and died 1656. His Works, now first collected, with some Account of his Life and Sufferings, written by himself, etc., new edition (by the Rev. Peter Hall), was published, Oxford, 1837-9, 12 vols. 8vo.

"A writer as distinguished in works of practition. his Contemplations, and indeed many of his His Art of Divine Meditacal piety was Hall. writings, remind us frequently of [Jeremy] Taylor. Both had equally pious and devotional ter

JOSEPH HALL.

pers; both were full of learning; both fertile of illustration; both may be said to have strong imagination and poetical genius, though Taylor let his predominate a little more. Taylor is also rather more subtle and argumentative: his copiousness has more real variety. Hall keeps more closely to his subject, dilates upon it sometimes more tediously, but more appositely. In his sermons there is some excess of quotation and farfetched illustration, but less than in those of Taylor. In some of their writings these two great divines resemble each other, on the whole, so much, that we might for a short time not discover which we were reading. I do not know that any third writer comes close to either."-HALLAM: Lit. Hist. of Europe.

ON THE HYPOCRITE.

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the superfluity of his usury he builds an
hospital, and harbours them whom his ex-
tortion hath spoiled: so when he makes
many beggars, he keeps some. He turneth
all gnats into camels, and cares not to undo
the world for a circumstance. Flesh on a
Friday is more abominable to him than his
neighbour's bed; he abhors more not to un-
the name of God.
cover at the name of Jesus than to swear by

When a rhymer reads his poem to him, he
begs a copy, and persuades the press. There
is nothing that he dislikes in presence,
that in absence he censures not.
He comes
to the sick bed of his step-mother and weeps,
when he secretly fears her recovery. He
greets his friend in the street with a clear
countenance, so fast a closure, that the other
thinks he reads his heart in his face; and
shakes hands with an indefinite invitation
of When will you come? and when his
back is turned, joys that he is so well rid of a
guest; yet if that guest visit him unfeared,
he counterfeits a smiling welcome, and ex-
cuses his cheer, when closely he frowns on
his wife for too much. He shows well, and
says well, and himself is the worst thing he
hath. In brief, he is the stranger's saint, the
neighbour's disease, the blot of goodness, a
rotten stick in a dark night, the poppy in a
cornfield, an ill-tempered candle with a great
snuff, that in going out smells ill; an angel
abroad, a devil at home; and worse when
an angel than when a devil.

ON THE BUSY-BODY.

An hypocrite is the worst kind of player, by so much that he acts the better part; which hath always two faces, ofttimes two hearts; that can compose his forehead to sadness and gravity, while he bids his heart be wanton and careless within, and, in the mean time, laughs within himself to think how smoothly he hath cozened the beholder. In whose silent face are written the characters of religion, which his tongue and gestures pronounce, but his hands recant. That hath a clear face and garment, with a foul soul; whose mouth belies his heart, and his fingers bely his mouth. Walking early up into the city, he turns into the great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee, worshipping that God which at home he cares not for, while his eye is fixed on some window or some passenger, and his heart knows not whither his lips go. He rises, and looking about with admiration, complains of our frozen charity, commends the His estate is too narrow for his mind; and, ancient. At church he will ever sit where therefore, he is fain to make himself room he may be seen best, and in the midst of the in other's affairs, yet ever in pretence of sermon pulls out his tables in haste, as if he love. No news can stir but by his door; feared to lose that note; when he writes neither can he know that which he must either his forgotten errand or nothing. Then not tell. What every man ventures in a he turns his Bible with a noise, to seek an Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he omitted quotation, and folds the leaf as if he knows to a hair. Whether Holland will had found it, and asks aloud the name of have peace he knows; and on what conthe preacher, and repeats it, whom he pub-ditions, and with what success. is familiar licly salutes, thanks, praises in an honest mouth. He can command tears when he speaks of his youth, indeed, because it is past, not because it was sinful; himself is now better, but the times are worse. All other sins he reckons up with detestation, while he loves and hides his darling in his bosom: all his speech returns to himself, and every concurrent draws in a story to his own praise. When he should give, he looks about him, and says, Who sees me? No alms nor prayers fall from him without a witness; belike lest God should deny that he hath received them; and when he hath done (lest the world should not know it), his own inouth is his trumpet to proclaim it. With

to him, ere it be concluded. No post can pass him without a question; and rather than he will lose the news, he rides back with him to appose [question] him of tidings; and then to the next man he meets he supplies the wants of his hasty intelligence, and makes up a perfect tale; wherewith he so haunteth the patient auditor, that, after many excuses, he is fain to endure rather the censures of his manners in running away, than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse. His speech is oft broken off with a succession of long parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion; and perhaps would effect it, if the other's ear were as unweariable as his

tongue. If he see but two men talk, and
read a letter in the street, he runs to them,
and asks if he may not be partner of that
secret relation; and if they deny it, he offers
to tell, since he may not hear, wonders;
and then falls upon the report of the Scot-
tish mine, or of the great fish taken
up at
Lynn, or of the freezing of the Thames:
and, after many thanks and dismissions, is
hardly intreated silence. He undertakes as
much as he performs little. This man will
thrust himself forward to be the guide of the
way he knows not; and calls at his neigh-
bour's window, and asks why his servants
are not at work. The market hath no com-
modity which he prizeth not, and which the
next table shall not hear recited. His
tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes,
carries firebrands, and is enough to set the
whole field of the world on a flame. Him-
self begins table-talk of his neighbour at
another's board, to whom he bears the first
news, and adjures him to conceal the re-
porter: whose choleric answer he returns
to his first host, enlarged with a second edi-
tion: so, as it uses to be done in the fight of
unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side
apart, and provokes them to an eager con-
flict. There can no act pass without his
comment; which is ever far-fetched, rash,
suspicious, dilatory. His ears are long, and
his eyes quick, but most of all to imperfec-
tions; which, as he easily sees, so he in-
creases with intermeddling.

Burton was the author of the famous ADatomy of Melancholy, Oxford, 1621, 4to.

"Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,' he said, was the only book that ever took him [Dr. Johnson] out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."-Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, year 1771.

"He composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree that nothing could make him laugh but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him iuto a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he, in the intervals of his vapours, was esteemed one of the most facetious companions in the university."-GRANGER: Biog. Hist. of England.

MELANCHOLY AND CONTEMPLATION. Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on, like a siren, a shooing-horn, or some sphinx, to this irrevocable gulf: a primary cause Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers; to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook-side; to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; "amabilis insania," and "mentis gratissimus error." A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholise, and build castles in the air; to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done. "Blanda guidem He harbours another man's servant; and ab initio," saith Lemnius, to conceive and amidst his entertainment, asks what fare is meditate of such pleasant things, sometimes, usual at home, what hours are kept, what present, past, or to come, as Rhasis speaks. talk passeth at their meals, what his mas- So delightsome these toys are at first, they ter's disposition is, what his government, could spend whole days and nights without what his guests; and when he hath, by sleep, even whole years alone in such contemcurious inquiries, extracted all the juice and plations and fantastical meditations, which spirit of hoped intelligence, turns him off are like unto dreams; and they will hardly whence he came, and works on a new. He be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt. hates constancy, as an earthen dulness, So pleasant their vain conceits are, that unfit for men of spirit; and loves to change they hinder their ordinary tasks and neceshis work and his place: neither yet can he sary business; they cannot address thembe so soon weary of any place, as every place selves to them, or almost to any study or is weary of him; for, as he sets himself on employment: these fantastical and bewitchwork, so others pay him with hatred; and ing thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urlook, how many masters he hath, so many gently, so continually set upon, creep in, enemies; neither is it possible that any insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and should not hate him, but who know him detain them; they cannot, I say, go about not. So then, he labours without thanks, their more necessary business, stave off or talks without credit, lives without love, dies extricate themselves, but are ever musing, without tears, without pity-save that some melancholising, and carried along as he say, 'It was pity he died no sooner.' (they say) that is led about an heath, with a puck in the night. They run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, or easily leave off winding and unwinding themselves, as so many

ROBERT BURTON

was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, 1576, clocks, and still pleasing their humours, unand died January 25, 1639-40.

til at last the scene is turned upon a sudden.

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