and ranks their dispositions into several forms. And tho it may seem
difficult for him in a great school to descend to all particulars, yet
experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar of boys' natures,
and reduce them all--saving some few exceptions--to these general
rules:
1. Those that are ingenious and industrious. The conjunction of two
such planets in a youth presage much good unto him. To such a lad a
frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death; yea, where their
master whips them once, shame whips them all the week after. Such
natures he useth with all gentleness.
2. Those that are ingenious and idle. These think with the hare in
the fable, that running with snails--so they count the rest of their
schoolfellows--they shall come soon enough to the post, tho sleeping a
good while before their starting. O! a good rod would finely take them
napping!
3. Those that are dull and diligent. Wines, the stronger they be, the
more lees they have when they are new. Many boys are muddy-headed till
they be clarified with age, and such afterward prove the best. Bristol
diamonds are both bright, and squared, and pointed by nature, and yet
are soft and worthless; whereas Orient ones in India are rough and
rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit
themselves afterward the jewels of the country, and therefore their
dulness at first is to be borne with, if they be diligent. That
schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself who beats nature in a boy
for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can
make their parts which are naturally sluggish rise one minute before
the hour nature hath appointed.
4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent also. Correction may
reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whetting in the world
can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it. Such
boys he consigneth over to other professions. Shipwrights and
boat-makers will choose those crooked pieces of timber which other
carpenters refuse. Those may make excellent merchants and mechanics
who will not serve for scholars.
He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them
rather in a circle than forward. He minces his precepts for children
to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his
scholars may go along with him.
He is and will be known to be an absolute monarch in his school. If
cockering mothers proffer him money to purchase their sons an
exemption from his rod--to live, as it were, in a peculiar, out of
their master's jurisdiction--with disdain he refuseth it, and scorns
the late custom in some places of commuting whipping into money, and
ransoming boys from the rod at a set price. If he hath a stubborn
youth, correction-proof, he debaseth not his authority by contesting
with him, but fairly, if he can, puts him away before his obstinacy
hath infected others.
He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. Many a schoolmaster
better answereth the name _paidotribes_ than _paidagogos_, rather
tearing his scholars' flesh with whipping than giving them good
education. No wonder if his scholars hate the Muses, being presented
unto them in the shapes of fiends and furies.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 87: From "The Holy and Profane State."]
[Footnote 88: Cooper's "Latin Dictionary" was first published in 1565
and was long a standard school-book in England. It received the
special patronage of Queen Elizabeth. Cooper was made Bishop of
Winchester in 1584.]
JEREMY TAYLOR
Baptized in 1618, died in 1667; son of a barber; educated at
Cambridge; chaplain to Charles I during the Civil War; after
the Restoration made Bishop of Down and Connor, and a member
of the Irish Privy Council; his "Holy Living" published in
1650, and "Holy Dying" in 1651.
THE BENEFITS OF ADVERSITY[89]
No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity--that man is
not tried whether he be good or bad: and God never crowns those
virtues which are only faculties and dispositions; but every act of
virtue is an ingredient into reward. And we see many children fairly
planted, whose parts of nature were never drest by art, nor called
from the furrows of their first possibilities by discipline and
institution, and they dwell forever in ignorance, and converse with
beasts; and yet if they had been drest and exercised, might have stood
at the chairs of princes, or spoken parables amongst the rulers of
cities. Our virtues are but in the seed when the grace of God comes
upon us first; but this grace must be thrown into broken furrows, and
must twice feel the cold and twice feel the heat, and be softened with
storms and showers, and then it will arise into fruitfulness and
harvests. And what is there in the world to distinguish virtues from
dishonors, or the valor of Cæsar from the softness of the Egyptian
eunuchs, or that can make anything rewardable but the labor and the
danger, the pain and the difficulty? Virtue could not be anything but
sensuality if it were the entertainment of our senses and fond
desires; and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans, if
feeding and great appetite and despising the severities of temperance
had been the work and proper employment of a wise man. But otherwise
do fathers and otherwise do mothers handle their children. These
soften them with kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap and
breast-milk of soft endearments; they rescue them from tutors and
snatch them from discipline; they desire to keep them fat and warm,
and their feet dry, and their bellies full: and then the children
govern, and cry, and prove fools and troublesome, so long as the
feminine republic does endure.
But fathers--because they design to have their children wise and
valiant, apt for counsel or for arms--send them to severe governments,
and tie them to study, to hard labor, and afflictive contingencies.
They rejoice when the bold boy strikes a lion with his hunting-spear,
and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage.
Softness is for slaves and beasts, for minstrels and useless persons,
for such who can not ascend higher than the state of a fair ox or a
servant entertained for vainer offices; but the man that designs his
son for nobler employments--to honors and to triumphs, to consular
dignities and presidencies of councils--loves to see him pale with
study or panting with labor, hardened with suffrance or eminent by
dangers. And so God dresses us for heaven: he loves to see us
struggling with a disease, and resisting the devil, and contesting
against the weaknesses of nature, and against hope to believe in
hope--resigning ourselves to God's will, praying Him to choose for us,
and dying in all things but faith and its blest consequents; _ut ad
officium cum periculo sinus prompti_--and the danger and the
resistance shall endear the office. For so have I known the boisterous
north wind pass through the yielding air, which opened its bosom, and
appeased its violence by entertaining it with easy compliance in all
the region of its reception; but when the same breath of heaven hath
been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of
a wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the highest branches
stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 89: From the "Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying."]
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Born in 1618, died in 1667; son of a stationer; educated at
Cambridge and Oxford; identified himself with the Royalists;
fled with the Queen to France in 1646; returned to England
in 1656, settled afterward at Chertsey; highly esteemed in
his own day as a poet; his works first collected in 1668.
I
OF OBSCURITY[90]
What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all
envying or being envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of
ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two good
and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where
they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the ease of Æneas
and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and
streets of Carthage. Venus herself
A veil of thickened air around them cast,
That none might know, or see them, as they passed.
VIRG.1 _Æn._
The common story of Demosthenes's confession, that he had taken great
pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say, as he passed: "This is that
Demosthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I
myself have often met with that temptation to vanity, if it were any;
but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run
faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot.
Democritus[91] relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the
good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody
there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very
well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that
time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making, in one of
his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had
enjoyed together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement
to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the
most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so
long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and
yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men
more known or more generally celebrated.
If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we
set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our
life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a
wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight,
and pointed at, I can not comprehend the honor that lies in that;
whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor,
and the hangman more than the lord chief-justice of a city. Every
creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be anyways
extraordinary.
It was as often said: "This is that Bucephalus,"[92] or, "This is that
Incitatus,"[93] when they were led prancing through the streets, as,
"This is that Alexander," or, "This is that Domitian"; and truly, for
the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honorable beast
than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.
I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of
virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies,
but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter, cures the
diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is
reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides;
but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man
whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I can not say,
because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no
man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to
inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a
moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or
three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides,
who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbors that know him, and is
truly irreproachable by anybody; and so, after a healthful quiet life,
before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of
it than he came in--for I would not have him so much as cry in the
exit: this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this
_muta persona_, I take to have been more happy in his part than the
greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise; nay, even
than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had
not played his farce very well.
II
OF PROCRASTINATION[94]
I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself
from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little
rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly
inclined me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long
detained me. But, nevertheless, you say (which _but_ is _ærugo mera_,
a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon)--but you say you
would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a
while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an
estate as might accord me--according to the saying of that person,
whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another
man--_cum dignitate otium_. This were excellent advice to Joshua, who
could bid the sun stay too. But there's no fooling with life, when it
is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a
desperate after-game; 'tis a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes,
and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine.
There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man can
not attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by
cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus--who
was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, a bountiful
person--to recommend to him, who had made so many rich, one Pythocles,
a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too; "but I
entreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have
done to many less deserving persons; but in the most gentlemanly
manner of obliging him, which is, not to add anything to his estate,
but to take something from his desires."
The sum of this is, that for the certain hopes of some conveniences,
we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary;
especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may
otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered; nay,
farther yet, tho we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, tho
we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet when
the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious,
_le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_, the play is not worth the expense
of the candle; after having been long tossed in a tempest, if our
masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry
us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and
topgallants.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 90: From the "Essays."]
[Footnote 91: Democritus was born about 460 B.C.and died about 857.
He was often known as "The Laughing Philosopher."]
[Footnote 92: The famous horse ridden by Alexander the Great.]
[Footnote 93: A horse ridden by the Roman Emperor Domitian.]
[Footnote 94: From the "Essays."]
GEORGE FOX
Born in 1624, died in 1691; founder of the Society of
Friends; son of a weaver, apprenticed to a shoemaker; became
an itinerant lay preacher at the age of 25, completing the
organization of the Society of Friends in 1669; made
missionary journeys to Scotland, Ireland, and West Indies,
Holland and North America (1671-72); frequently imprisoned
for infraction of the laws against Conventicles.
AN INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER CROMWELL[95]
After Captain Drury had lodged me at the Mermaid, over against the
Mews at Charing Cross, he went to give the Protector an account of me.
When he came to me again, he told me the Protector required that I
should promise not to take up a carnal sword or weapon against him or
the government, as it then was; and that I should write it in what
words I saw good, and set my hand to it. I said little in reply to
Captain Drury, but the next morning I was moved of the Lord to write a
paper to the Protector, by the name of Oliver Cromwell, wherein I did,
in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I did deny the wearing
or drawing of a "carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against
him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against
all violence, and against the works of darkness, and to turn people
from darkness to light; to bring them from the occasion of war and
fighting to the peaceable Gospel, and from being evil-doers, which the
magistrates' sword should be a terror to." When I had written what the
Lord had given me to write, I set my name to it, and gave it to
Captain Drury to hand to Oliver Cromwell, which he did. After some
time, Captain Drury brought me before the Protector himself at
Whitehall. It was in a morning, before he was drest; and one Harvey,
who had come a little among friends, but was disobedient, waited upon
him.
When I came in, I was moved to say: "Peace be in this house"; and I
exhorted him to keep in the fear of God, that he might receive wisdom
from Him; that by it he might be ordered, and with it might order all
things under his hand unto God's glory. I spoke much to him of truth;
and a great deal of discourse I had with him about religion, wherein
he carried himself very moderately. But he said we quarreled with the
priests, whom he called ministers. I told him, "I did not quarrel with
them, they quarreled with me and my friends. But, said I, if we own
the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, we can not hold up such
teachers, prophets, and shepherds, as the prophets, Christ, and the
apostles declared against; but we must declare against them by the
same power and spirit." Then I shewed him that the prophets, Christ,
and the apostles, declared freely, and declared against them that did
not declare freely; such as preached for filthy lucre, divined for
money, and preached for hire, and were covetous and greedy, like the
dumb dogs that could never have enough; and that they who have the
same spirit that Christ, and the prophets, and the apostles had, could
not but declare against all such now, as they did then. As I spoke, he
several times said it was very good, and it was truth. I told him:
"That all Christendom, so called, had the Scriptures, but they wanted
the power and spirit that those had who gave forth the Scriptures, and
that was the reason they were not in fellowship with the Son, nor with
the Father, nor with the Scriptures, nor one with another."
Many more words I had with him, but people coming in, I drew a little
back. As I was turning, he catched me by the hand, and with tears in
his eyes said: "Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an
hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other"; adding,
that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul. I told him,
if he did, he wronged his own soul, and admonished him to harken to
God's voice, that he might stand in His counsel, and obey it; and if
he did so, that would keep him from hardness of heart; but if he did
not hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. He said it was
true. Then I went out; and when Captain Drury came out after me, he
told me the lord Protector said I was at liberty, and might go whither
I would. Then I was brought into a great hall, where the Protector's
gentlemen were to dine. I asked them what they brought me thither for.
They said it was by the Protector's order, that I might dine with
them. I bid them let the Protector know I would not eat of his bread,
nor drink of his drink. When he heard this, he said: "Now I see there
is a people risen that I can not win, either with gifts, honors,
offices, or places; but all other sects and people I can." It was told
him again, "That we had forsook our own, and were not like to look for
such things from him."[96]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 95: From the "Journal."]
[Footnote 96: Just before Cromwell's death, Fox had another interview
with him of which he wrote: "The same day, taking boat, I went down
(_up_) to Kingston, and from thence to Hampton Court, to speak with
the Protector about the sufferings of friends. I met him riding into
Hampton Court Park; and before I came to him, as he rode at the head
of his life-guard, I saw and felt a waft (_whiff_) of death go forth
against him; and when I came to him he looked like a dead man. After I
had laid the sufferings of friends before him, and had warned him
according as I was moved to speak to him, he bade me come to his
house. So I returned to Kingston, and the next day went up to Hampton
Court to speak further with him. But when I came, Harvey, who was one
that waited on him, told me the doctors were not willing that I should
speak with him. So I passed away, and never saw him more."
Carlyle in his "Life and Letters of Cromwell," quoting this passage,
says: "His life, if thou knew it, has not been a merry thing for this
man, now or heretofore! I fancy he has been looking this long while to
give it up, whenever the Commander-in-chief required. To quit his
laborious sentry-post; honorably lay up his arms, and be gone to his
rest--all eternity to rest in, George! Was thy own life merry, for
example, in the hollow of the tree; clad permanently in leather? And
does kingly purple, and governing refractory worlds instead of
stitching coarse shoes, make it merrier? The waft of death is not
against him, I think--perhaps, against thee, and me, and others, O
George, when the Nell Gwynne defender and two centuries of
all-victorious cant have come in upon us!"]
JOHN BUNYAN
Baptized in 1628, died in 1688; son of a tinker, adopting
his father's trade; served two years in the Civil Wars;
joined a Non-Conformist body at Bedford about 1645, becoming
a traveling preacher in the midland counties; arrested in
1660 under statutes against Non-Conformists and spent
several years in jail, where he wrote part of his "Pilgrim's
Progress," published in 1678-1684; on being released from
prison was licensed to preach and remained pastor at Bedford
until he died.
I
A DREAM OF THE CELESTIAL CITY[97]
Now I saw in my dream that by this time the pilgrims were got over the
Enchanted Ground, and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air
was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it, they
solaced them there for the season. Yea, here they heard continually
the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the
earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In this country
the sun shineth night and day; wherefore it was beyond the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair;
neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle.
Here they were within sight of the city they were going to; also here
met them some of the inhabitants thereof: for in this land the
shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of
Heaven. In this land, also, the contract between the bride and
bridegroom was renewed; yea, here, "as the bridegroom rejoiceth over
the bride, so did their God rejoice over them." Here they had no want
of corn and wine; for in this place they met abundance of what they
had sought for in all their pilgrimage. Here they heard voices from
out of the city, loud voices, saying: "Say ye to the daughter of Zion,
behold thy salvation cometh! Behold, his reward is with him!" Here all
the inhabitants of the country called them "the holy people, the
redeemed of the Lord, sought out," etc.
Now, as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in
parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and
drawing nearer to the city yet, they had a more perfect view thereof:
it was built of pearls and precious stones, also the streets thereof
were paved with gold; so that, by reason of the natural glory of the
city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with
desire fell sick; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease:
wherefore here they lay by it a while, crying out, because of their
pangs: "If you see my Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love."
But being a little strengthened, and better able to bear their
sickness, they walked on their way, and came yet nearer and nearer,
where were orchards, vineyards, and gardens, and their gates opened
into the highway. Now, as they came up to these places, behold the
gardener stood in the way, to whom the pilgrims said: Whose goodly
vineyards and gardens are these? He answered: They are the King's, and
are planted here for his own delight, and also for the solace of
pilgrims: so the gardener had them into the vineyards and bid them
refresh themselves with dainties; he also shewed them there the King's
walks and arbors, where he delighted to be; and here they tarried and
slept.
Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked more in their sleep at this
time than ever they did in all their journey; and being in a muse
thereabout, the gardener said even to me: Wherefore musest thou at the
matter? It is the nature of the fruit of the grapes of these vineyards
to go down so sweetly, as to cause the lips of them that are asleep to
speak.