to warm the earth and the water, the trout is sick and lean, and
lousy, and unwholesome; for you shall in winter find him to have a big
head, and then to be lank, and thin, and lean; at which time many of
them have sticking on them sugs, or trout-lice, which is a kind of
worm, in shape like a clove or pin, with a big head, and sticks close
to him and sucks his moisture; those I think the trout breeds himself,
and never thrives till he frees himself from them, which is when warm
weather comes; and then, as he grows stronger, he gets from the dead,
still water, into the sharp streams, and the gravel, and there tubs
off these worms or lice; and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him
into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any
fly or minnow that comes near to him; and he especially loves the
May-fly, which is bred of the cod-worm or caddis; and these make the
trout bold and lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the
end of that month (May) than at any time of the year.
III
THE DEATH OF GEORGE HERBERT[63]
At the time of Mr. Duncon's leaving Mr. Herbert--which was about three
weeks before his death--his old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from
London to Bemerton, and never left him till he had seen him draw his
last breath, and closed his eyes on his death-bed. In this time of his
decay, he was often visited and prayed for by all the clergy that
lived near to him, especially by his friends the Bishop and Prebends
of the Cathedral Church in Salisbury; but by none more devoutly than
his wife, his three nieces--then a part of his family--and Mr.
Woodnot, who were the sad witnesses of his daily decay; to whom he
would often speak to this purpose:
"I now look back upon the pleasures of my life past, and see the
content I have taken in beauty, in wit, in music, and pleasant
conversation, are now all past by me like a dream, or as a shadow that
returns not, and are now all become dead to me, or I to them; and I
see, that as my father and generation hath done before me, so I also
shall now suddenly (with Job) make my bed also in the dark; and I
praise God I am prepared for it; and I praise Him that I am not to
learn patience now I stand in such need of it; and that I have
practised mortification, and endeavored to die daily, that I might not
die eternally; and my hope is, that I shall shortly leave this valley
of tears, and be free from all fevers and pain; and, which will be a
more happy condition, I shall be free from sin, and all the
temptations and anxieties that attend it: and this being past, I shall
dwell in the New Jerusalem; dwell there with men made perfect; dwell
where these eyes shall see my Master and Savior Jesus; and with Him
see my dear mother, and all my relations and friends. But I must die,
or not come to that happy place. And this is my content, that I am
going daily towards it: and that every day which I have lived, hath
taken a part of my appointed time from me; and that I shall live the
less time, for having lived this and the day past."
These, and the like expressions, which he uttered often, may be said
to be his enjoyment of Heaven before he enjoyed it. The Sunday before
his death, he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of
his instruments, took it into his hand and said,
My God, my God,
My music shall find Thee,
And every string
Shall have His attribute to sing.
and having tuned it, he played and sung:
The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King:
On Sundays Heaven's door stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife,
More plentiful than hope.
Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems, as the angels, and he,
and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven. Thus he continued meditating, and
praying, and rejoicing, till the day of his death; and on that day
said to Mr. Woodnot, "My dear friend, I am sorry I have nothing to
present to my merciful God but sin and misery; but the first is
pardoned, and a few hours will now put a period to the latter; for I
shall suddenly go hence, and be no more seen." Upon which expression
Mr. Woodnot took occasion to remember him of the reedifying Layton
Church, and his many acts of mercy. To which he made answer, saying,
"They be good works, if they be sprinkled with the blood of Christ,
and not otherwise."
After this discourse he became more restless, and his soul seemed to
be weary of her earthly tabernacle; and this uneasiness became so
visible, that his wife, his three nieces, and Mr. Woodnot, stood
constantly about his bed, beholding him with sorrow, and an
unwillingness to lose the sight of him, whom they could not hope to
see much longer. As they stood thus beholding him, his wife observed
him breathe faintly, and with much trouble, and observed him to fall
into a sudden agony; which so surprized her, that she fell into a
sudden passion, and required of him to know how he did. To which his
answer was, "that he had passed a conflict with his last enemy, and
had overcome him by the merits of his Master Jesus." After which
answer, he looked up, and saw his wife and nieces weeping to an
extremity, and charged them, if they loved him to withdraw into the
next room, and there pray every one alone for him; for nothing but
their lamentations could make his death uncomfortable. To which
request their sighs and tears would not suffer them to make any reply;
but they yielded him a sad obedience, leaving only with him Mr.
Woodnot and Mr. Bostock.
Immediately after they had left him, he said to Mr. Bostock, "Pray,
Sir, open that door, then look into that cabinet, in which you may
easily find my last will, and give it into my hand"; which being done,
Mr. Herbert delivered it into the hand of Mr. Woodnot, and said, "My
old friend, I here deliver you my last will, in which you will find
that I have made you my sole executor for the good of my wife and
nieces; and I desire you to show kindness to them, as they shall need
it; I do not desire you to be just; for I know you will be so for your
own sake: but I charge you, by the religion of our friendship, to be
careful of them." And having obtained Mr. Woodnot's promise to be so,
he said, "I am now ready to die." After which words, he said, "Lord,
forsake me not now my strength faileth me: but grant me mercy for the
merits of my Jesus. And now, Lord--Lord, now receive my soul." And
with those words he breathed forth his divine soul, without any
apparent disturbance, Mr. Woodnot and Mr. Bostock attending his last
breath, and closing his eyes.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 58: From Part I, Chap. I of "The Compleat Angler."]
[Footnote 59: Deucalion was a legendary king of Phythia in Thessaly.
According to the legend, a deluge having been sent by Zeus, Deucalion,
by advice of his father, built a wooden chest in which he and his wife
were saved, landing after nine days on Mt. Parnassus. By them the
human race, destroyed in the deluge, was renewed.]
[Footnote 60: A mythological person, son of Poseidon.]
[Footnote 61: From Chapter IV of "The Compleat Angler."]
[Footnote 62: The "Historia Vitæ et Mortis," published in 1623.]
[Footnote 63: Author of "The Temple; Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations," published in 1633, the year of Herbert's death.]
JAMES HOWELL
Born in 1595, died in 1666; best known as author of the
"Letters" (1645-1655); edited a French and English
dictionary; and compiled a polyglot dictionary.
I
THE BUCENTAUR CEREMONY IN VENICE[64]
These wishes come to you from Venice, a place where there is nothing
wanting that heart can wish; renowned Venice, the admired'st city in
the world, a city that all Europe is bound unto, for she is her
greatest rampart against that huge eastern tyrant, the Turk, by sea;
else, I believe, he had overrun all Christendom by this time. Against
him this city hath performed notable exploits, and not only against
him, but divers others: she hath restored emperors to their thrones,
and popes to their chairs, and with her galleys often preserved St.
Peter's bark from sinking: for which, by way of reward, one of his
successors espoused her to the sea, which marriage is solemnly renewed
every year in solemn procession by the Doge and all the Clarissimos,
and a gold ring cast into the sea out of the great galeasse, called
the Bucentoro,[65] wherein the first ceremony was performed by the
pope himself, above three hundred years since, and they say it is the
self-same vessel still, tho often put upon the careen and trimmed.
This made me think of that famous ship at Athens; nay, I fell upon an
abstracted notion in philosophy, and a speculation touching the body
of men, which being in perpetual flux, and a kind of succession of
decays, and consequently requiring, ever and anon, a restoration of
what it loseth of the virtue of the former aliment, and what was
converted after the third concoction into a blood and fleshy
substance, which, as in all other sublunary bodies that have internal
principles of heat, useth to transpire, breathe out, and waste away
through invisible pores, by exercise, motion, and sleep, to make room
still for a supply of new nurriture: I fell, I say, to consider
whether our bodies may be said to be of like condition with this
Bucentoro, which, tho it be reputed still the same vessel, yet I
believe there's not a foot of that timber remaining which it had upon
the first dock, having been, as they tell me, so often planked and
ribbed, caulked and pieced.
In like manner, our bodies may be said to be daily repaired by new
sustenance, which begets new blood, and consequently new spirits, new
humors, and, I may say, new flesh; the old, by continual deperdition
and insensible perspirations, evaporating still out of us, and giving
way to fresh; so that I make a question whether, by reason of these
perpetual reparations and accretions, the body of man may be said to
be the same numerical body in his old age that he had in his manhood,
or the same in his manhood that he had in his youth, the same in his
youth that he carried about with him in his childhood, or the same in
his childhood which he wore first in the womb. I make a doubt whether
I had the same identical, individually numerical body, when I carried
a calf-leather satchel to school in Hereford, as when I wore a
lambskin hood in Oxford; or whether I have the same mass of blood in
my veins, and the same flesh, now in Venice, which I carried about me
three years since, up and down London streets, having, in lieu of beer
and ale, drunk wine all this while, and fed upon different viands.
Now, the stomach is like a crucible, for it hath a chemical kind of
virtue to transmute one body into another, to transsubstantiate fish
and fruits into flesh within and about us; but tho it be questionable
whether I wear the same flesh which is fluxible, I am sure my hair is
not the same, for you may remember I went flaxen-haired out of
England, but you shall find me returned with a very dark brown, which
I impute not only to the heat and air of those hot countries I have
eat my bread in, but to the quality and difference of food: you will
say that hair is but an excrementitious thing, and makes not to this
purpose; moreover, methinks I hear thee say that this may be true only
in the blood and spirits, or such fluid parts, not in the solid and
heterogeneal parts.
But I will press no further at this time this philosophical notion,
which the sight of Bucentoro infused into me, for it hath already made
me exceed the bounds of a letter, and, I fear me, to trespass too much
upon your patience; I leave the further disquisition of this point to
your own contemplations, who are a far riper philosopher than I, and
have waded deeper into and drunk more of Aristotle's well. But to
conclude, tho it be doubtful whether I carry about me the same body or
no in all points that I had in England, I am well assured I bear still
the same mind, and therein I verify the old verse:
"Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt."
"The air, but not the mind, they change,
Who in outlandish countries range."
For, what alterations soever happen in this microcosm, in this little
world, this small bulk and body of mine, you may be confident that
nothing shall alter my affections, specially towards you, but that I
will persevere still the same--the very same.
II
THE CITY OF ROME IN 1621[66]
I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country; she
is called _Communis Patria_, for every one that is within the compass
of the Latin Church finds himself here, as it were, at home, and in
his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the
cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this
city; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to
preferments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit,
which is more valued and sought after here than anywhere.
But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills, I
meet her rather spreading upon a flat, having humbled herself, since
she was made a Christian, and descended from those hills to Campus
Martius; with Trastevere and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet
in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast
circuit she had in Claudius his time; for Vopiscus[67] writes she was
then of fifty miles' circumference, and she had five hundred thousand
free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six
to every family in women, children, and servants, came to three
millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that
number.
The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the
state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length, and
two hundred miles in breadth; it contains Ferrara, Bologna, Romagnia,
the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of
Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are
above fifty bishoprics; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and
the exarchate of Ravenna; he hath the town of Benevento in the kingdom
of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He
hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but, rather than offend
his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule,
and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for
a heriot or homage, or what you will call it; he pretends also to be
Lord-paramount of Sicily, Urbia, Parma, and Masseran; of Norway,
Ireland, and England, since King John did prostrate our crown at
Pandulfo his legate's feet.[68]
The state of the apostolic see here in Italy lieth 'twixt two seas,
the Adriatic and the Tyrrhene, and it runs through the midst of Italy,
which makes the pope powerful to do good or harm, and more capable
than any other to be an umpire or an enemy. His authority being mixed
'twixt temporal and spiritual, disperseth itself into so many members,
that a young man may grow old here before he can well understand the
form of government.
The consistory of cardinals meet but once a week, and once a week they
solemnly wait all upon the pope. I am told there are now in
Christendom but sixty-eight cardinals, whereof there are six cardinal
bishops, fifty-one cardinal priests, and eleven cardinal deacons. The
cardinal bishops attend and sit near the pope, when he celebrates any
festival; the cardinal priests assist him at mass; and the cardinal
deacons attire him. A cardinal is bade by a short breve or writ from
the pope in these words: "_Creamus te socium regibus, superiorem
ducibus, et fratrem nostrum._"[69] If a cardinal bishop should be
questioned for any offense, there must be twenty-four witnesses
produced against him. The Bishop of Ostia hath most privilege of any
other, for he consecrates and installs the pope, and goes always next
to him. All these cardinals have the repute of princes, and besides
other incomes, they have the annats of benefices to support their
greatness.
For point of power, the pope is able to put 50,000 men in the field,
in case of necessity, besides his naval strength in galleys. We read
how Paul III sent Charles III twelve thousand foot and five hundred
horse. Pius V sent a greater aid to Charles IX; and for riches,
besides the temporal dominions he hath in all the countries before
named, the datany or dispatching of bulls, the triennial subsidies,
annats, and other ecclesiastical rights, mount to an unknown sum; and
it is a common saying here, that as long as the pope can finger a pen,
he can want no pence. Pius V, notwithstanding his expenses in
buildings, left four millions in the Castle of Saint Angelo in less
than five years; more, I believe, than this Gregory XV will, for he
hath many nephews; and better is it to be the pope's nephew, than to
be a favorite to any prince in Christendom.
Touching the temporal government of Rome, and oppidan affairs, there
is a pretor and some choice citizens, which sit in the Capitol. Among
other pieces of policy, there is a synagog of Jews permitted here--as
in other places of Italy--under the pope's nose, but they go with a
mark of distinction in their hats; they are tolerated for advantage of
commerce, wherein the Jews are wonderful dexterous--tho most of them
be only brokers and Lombardeers; and they are held to be here as the
cynic held women to be--_malum necessarium_....
Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of Rome past, when she
was in that flourish that St. Austin desired to see her in. She who
tamed the world, tamed herself at last, and falling under her own
weight, fell to be a prey to time; yet there is a providence seems to
have a care of her still; for tho her air be not so good, nor her
circumjacent soil so kindly as it was, yet she hath wherewith to keep
life and soul together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is
the sole cause of her peopling now; so that it may be said, when the
pope came to be her head, she was reduced to her first principles; for
as a shepherd was founder, so a shepherd is still governor and
preserver.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: From the "Familiar Letters," the date of this letter
being "Venice, 25th June, 1621."]
[Footnote 65: Now written Bucentaur, the state ship of the Venetian
republic. The ceremony of "espousing the sea" dates from the twelfth
century. The last of the Bucentaur ships of Venice was destroyed by
Napoleon in 1798. It was the third that had been built for Venice.]
[Footnote 66: From the "Familiar Letters."]
[Footnote 67: The historian who lived early in the fourth century
A.D.]
[Footnote 68: King John, in 1213, had made peace with the Pope (who
had deposed him) by consenting to hold his kingdom in fief for the
Pope and to pay to him an annual tribute of 1,000 marks.]
[Footnote 69: These words mean "We create thee companion to kings,
superior to dukes, and our brother."]
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Born in 1605, died in 1682; educated at Oxford, Padua and
Leyden; in 1633 made Doctor of Medicine; settled at Norwich
in 1637; knighted in 1671; his "Religio Medici" published in
1643; author of several other works.
I
OF CHARITY IN JUDGMENTS[70]
Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my
parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of
charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and
naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution
so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have
no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I
wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being
amongst them, make them my common viands, and I find they agree with
my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a
serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or
viper I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I
feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I
find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honor, love, and
embrace them in the same degree.
I was born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and
constellated unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a
garden; all places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in
England, everywhere, and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in
a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would
give me the lie if I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but
the devil; or so at least abhor anything but that we might come to
composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do
contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and
religion--the multitude: that numerous piece of monstrosity which,
taken asunder, seem men and the reasonable creatures of God, but
confused together, make but one great beast and a monstrosity more
prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of charity to call these fools;
it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by
Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe
so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include the base and
minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry, a
sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as
these; men in the same level with mechanics, tho their fortunes do
somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their
follies.
II
NOTHING STRICTLY IMMORTAL[71]
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember
our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short
smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us
or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our
delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.
A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a
transmigration of their souls--a good way to continue their memories,
while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but
act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the
fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their
last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night
of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one
particle of the public soul all things, which was no more than to
return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian
ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet
consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. But all was
vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which
Cambyses[72] or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is
become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for
balsams.
In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even
in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate
their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath
already varied the names contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in
Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in
the heavens, we find they are like the earth--durable in their main
bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new
stars, perspective begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander
about the sun, with Phaeton's favor, would make clear conviction.