Ashby de la Zouch.
"_O wearisome Condition of Humanity_" (Vol. iii., p. 241.).--As no one
has hitherto appropriated these fine lines, as to the author of which
your correspondent inquires, I may mention that they are taken from the
"Chorus Sacerdotum," at the end of Lord Brook's _Mustapha_. (See his
Works, fol. 1633, p. 159.) The chorus is worth quoting entire:
"_O wearisome condition of humanity!
Borne under one Law, to another bound:
Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound:_
What meaneth Nature by these diverse Lawes?
Passion and reason self division cause.
Is it the mark or majesty of power
To make offences that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self defloure
To hate those Errors she herself doth give.
For how should Man think that he may not do
If Nature did not fail and punish too?
Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,
Only commands things difficult and hard,
Forbids us all things, which it knows is lust,
Makes easy pains, impossible reward.
_If Nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good._
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in good and still devotion,
To preach of Heaven's wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his Books."
I should like to see a collected edition of the works of the two noble
Grevilles, Fulke and Robert, Lords Brook; the first the friend of Sir
Philip Sidney, the second the honoured of Milton. The little treatise on
_Truth_ of the latter, which Wallis answered in his _Truth Tried_, is
amply sufficient to prove that he possessed powers of no common order.