... "You that have been
Ever at home, yet have all countries seen,
And like a compass keeping one foot still
Upon your centre, do your circle fill
Of general knowledge....
I wondered at the richness, but am lost
To see the workmanship so excel the cost!
To mark the excellent seasoning of your style,
And manly elocution! not one while
With horror rough, then rioting with wit,
But to the subject still the colors fit,
In sharpness of all search, wisdom choice,
Newness of sense, antiquity of voice!
I yield, I yield. The matter of your praise
Floods in upon me, and I cannot raise
A bank against it; nothing but the round
Large clasp of nature such a wit can bound."
One's pen cannot be better drawn across paper, than in transcribing
some of his wise and pithy sayings:--
"_Books._ 'Tis good to have translators, because they serve as a
comment, so far as the judgment of the man goes."
"Quoting of authors is most for matter of fact; and then I cite them as
I would produce a witness, sometimes for a free expression; and then I
give the author his due, and gain myself praise for reading him."
"Henry the Eighth made a law that all men might read the Scripture,
except servants; but no woman except ladies and gentlewomen who had
leisure and might ask somebody the meaning. The law was repealed in
Edward Sixth's days."
"Laymen have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such as
Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, etc. The text serves only to guess by; we
must satisfy ourselves fully out of the authors that lived about those
times."
"_Ceremony._ Ceremony keeps up all things. 'Tis like a penny glass to a
rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt,
the spirit lost."
"_Damnation._ To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be
cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him to save us."
"_Friends._ Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old
shoes, they were easiest to his feet."
"_Language._ Words must be fitted to a man's mouth. 'Twas well said of
the fellow that was to make a speech for my Lord Mayor: he desired to
take measure of his lordship's mouth."
"_Learning._ No man is wiser for his learning; it may administer matter
to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a
man."
"_Power._ Syllables govern the world."
"_Reason._ The reason of a thing is not to be inquired after till you
are sure the thing itself is so. We commonly are at 'What's the reason
of it?' before we are sure of the thing. 'Twas an excellent question of
my Lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe which
was Moses' or Noah's, and wondering at the strange shape and fashion of
it,--'But, Mr. Cotton,' says she, 'are you sure it is a shoe?'"
"_Religion._ Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet
slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet. So
every man has his religion. We differ about trimming."
"We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had
it in his mouth."