reasonless defaming of the book, the method of his malice
hurries him to attempt the like against the author; not by
proofs and testimonies, but 'having no certain notice of me,'
as he professes, 'further than what he gathers from the
Animadversions,' blunders at me for the rest, and flings out
stray crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be
a serpent, suck from anything that I have written, but from
his own stuffed magazine and hoard of slanderous inventions,
over and above that which he converted to venom in the
drawing. To me, readers, it happens as a singular contentment;
and let it be to good men no light satisfaction, that the
slanderer here confesses he has 'no further notice of me than
his own conjecture.' Although it had been honest to have
inquired, before he uttered such infamous words, and I am
credibly informed he did inquire; but finding small comfort
from the intelligence which he received, whereon to ground the
falsities which he had provided, thought it his likeliest
course, under a pretended ignorance, to let drive at random,
lest he should lose his odd ends, which from some penurious
book of characters he had been culling out and would fain
apply. Not caring to burden me with those vices, whereof,
among whom my conversation hath been, I have been ever least
suspected; perhaps not without some subtlety to cast me into
envy, by bringing on me a necessity to enter into mine own
praises. In which argument I know every wise man is more
unwillingly drawn to speak, than the most repining ear can be
averse to hear.
Nevertheless, since I dare not wish to pass this life
unpersecuted of slanderous tongues, for God hath told us that
to be generally praised is woeful, I shall rely on his promise
to free the innocent from causeless aspersions: whereof
nothing sooner can assure me, than if I shall feel him now
assisting me in the just vindication of myself, which yet I
could defer, it being more meet, that to those other matters
of public debatement in this book I should give attendance
first, but that I fear it would but harm the truth for me to
reason in her behalf, so long as I should suffer my honest
estimation to lie unpurged from these insolent suspicions. And
if I shall be large, or unwonted in justifying myself to those
who know me not, for else it would be needless, let them
consider that a short slander will ofttimes reach further than
a long apology; and that he who will do justly to all men,
must begin from knowing how, if it so happen, to be not unjust
to himself. I must be thought, if this libeller (for now he
shows himself to be so) can find belief, after an inordinate
and riotous youth spent at the university, to have been at
length 'vomited out thence.' For which commodious lie, that he
may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for
it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with
all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect,
which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those
courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein
I spent some years: who, at my parting, after I had taken two
degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better
it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters
full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time,
and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection
towards me. Which being likewise propense to all such as were
for their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, I could
not wrong their judgments and upright intentions, so much as
to think I had that regard from them for other cause, than
that I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest and
laudable courses, of which they apprehended I had given good
proof. And to those ingenuous and friendly men, who were ever
the countenancers of virtuous and hopeful wits, I wish the
best and happiest thing that friends in absence wish one to
another.
As for the common approbation or dislike of that place, as now
it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself, or any other
the more for that, too simple and too credulous is the
confuter, if he think to obtain with me, or any right
discerner. Of small practice were that physician, who could
not judge by what both she and her sister hath of long time
vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her
stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is queasy.
She vomits now out of sickness; but ere it will be well with
her, she must vomit by strong physic. In the meantime, that
suburb sink, as this rude scavenger calls it, and more than
scurrilously taunts it with the plague, having a worse plague
in his middle entrail, that suburb wherein I dwell shall be in
my account a more honourable place than his university. Which
as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger
judgment, I never greatly admired, so now much less. But he
follows me to the city, still usurping and forging beyond his
book notice, which only _he_ affirms to have had; 'and where
my morning haunts are, he wisses not.' It is wonder that,
being so rare an alchymist of slander, he could not extract
that, as well as the university vomit, and the suburb sink
which his art could distil so cunningly; but because his
lembec fails him, to give him and envy the more vexation, I
will tell him.
Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not
sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast,
but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell
awake men to labour or to devotion; in summer as oft with the
bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good
authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be
weary, or memory have its full fraught: then, with useful and
generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness to
render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the
mind, to the cause of religion, and our country's liberty,
when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and
cover their stations, rather than to see the ruin of our
protestation, and the inforcement of a slavish life.
These are the morning practices: proceed now to the afternoon;
'in playhouses,' he says, 'and the bordelloes.' Your
intelligence, unfaithful spy of Canaan? He gives in his
evidence, that 'there he hath traced me.' Take him at his
word, readers; but let him bring good sureties ere ye dismiss
him, that while he pretended to dog others, he did not turn in
for his own pleasure: for so much in effect he concludes
against himself, not contented to be caught in every other
gin, but he must be such a novice as to be still hampered in
his own hemp. In the Animadversions, saith he, I find the
mention of old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt
lotion; therefore, the animadverter haunts playhouses and
bordelloes; for if he did not, how could he speak of such
gear? Now that he may know what it is to be a child, and yet
to meddle with edged tools, I turn his antistrophon upon his
own head; the confuter knows that these things are the
furniture of playhouses and bordelloes, therefore, by the same
reason, 'the confuter himself hath been traced in those
places.' Was it such a dissolute speech, telling of some
politicians who were wont to eavesdrop in disguises, to say
they were often liable to a night-walking cudgeller, or the
emptying of a urinal? What if I had writ, as your friend the
author of the aforesaid mime, 'Mundus alter et idem,' to have
been ravished like some young Cephalus or Hylas, by a troop of
camping housewives in Viraginea, and that he was there forced
to swear himself an uxorious varlet; then after a long
servitude to have come into Aphrodisia, that pleasant country,
that gave such a sweet smell to his nostrils among the
shameless courtezans of Desvergonia? Surely he would have then
concluded me as constant at the bordello, as the galley-slave
at his oar.
But since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a
periwig, or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what
difficulty was there in that? when in the colleges so many of
the young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity,
have been seen so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning
their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of
Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds; prostituting the shame of
that ministry, which either they had, or were nigh having, to
the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and
mademoiselles. There, while they acted and overacted, among
other young scholars, I was a spectator; they thought
themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made
sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and,
to make up the Atticism, they were out, and I hissed. Judge
now whether so many good textmen were not sufficient to
instruct me of false beards and vizards, without more
expositors; and how can this confuter take the face to object
to me the seeing of that which his reverend prelates allow,
and incite their young disciples to act? For if it be unlawful
to sit and behold a mercenary comedian personating that which
is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much more blameful
is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by persons
either entered, or presently to enter, into the ministry; and
how much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!
But because as well by this upbraiding to me the bordelloes,
as by other suspicious glancings in his book, he would seem
privily to point me out to his readers, as one whose custom of
life were not honest, but licentious, I shall entreat to be
borne with, though I digress; and in a way not often trod,
acquaint ye with the sum of my thoughts in this matter,
through the course of my years and studies: although I am not
ignorant how hazardous it will be to do this under the nose of
the envious, as it were in skirmish to change the compact
order, and instead of outward actions, to bring inmost
thoughts into front. And I must tell ye, readers, that by this
sort of men I have been already bitten at; yet shall they not
for me know how slightly they are esteemed, unless they have
so much learning as to read what in Greek ἀπειροκαλία is,
which, together with envy, is the common disease of those
who censure books that are not for their reading. With me it
fares now, as with him whose outward garment hath been injured
and ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to
turn the inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the
same, or, as it is sometimes, much better? So if my name and
outward demeanour be not evident enough to defend me, I must
make trial if the discovery of my inmost thoughts can: wherein
of two purposes, both honest and both sincere, the one
perhaps I shall not miss; although I fail to gain belief with
others, of being such as my perpetual thoughts shall here
disclose me, I may yet not fail of success in persuading some
to be such really themselves, as they cannot believe me to be
more than what I feign.
I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the
opinion was, it might be soonest attained; and as the manner
is, was not unstudied in those authors which are most
commended. Whereof some were grave orators and historians,
whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was,
so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets,
whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing
sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found
most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for
their matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I
was so allured to read, that no recreation came to me better
welcome. For that it was then those years with me which are
excused, though they be least severe, I may be saved the
labour to remember ye. Whence having observed them to account
it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to
judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves
worthiest to love those high perfections, which under one or
other name they took to celebrate; I thought with myself by
every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be
false, that what emboldened them to this task, might with such
diligence as they used embolden me; and that what judgment,
wit, or elegance was my share, would herein best appear, and
best value itself, by how much more wisely, and with more love
of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent) the object
of not unlike praises. For albeit these thoughts to some will
seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a
third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of them now will
end in serious.
Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things
in this life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be
sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a
gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and
swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these
persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a
proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking
unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names
which before they had extolled; this effect it wrought with
me, from that time forward their art I still applauded, but
the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two
famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but
honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying
sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression. And long it
was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, _that he
who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter
in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is,
a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things;
not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous
cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the
practice of all that which is praiseworthy_. These reasonings,
together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest
haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was, or what I
might be, (which let envy call pride,) and lastly that
modesty, whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may
be excused to make some beseeming profession; all these
uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me
still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must
deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable and
unlawful prostitutions.
Next, (for hear me out now, readers,) that I may tell ye
whither my younger feet wandered; I betook me among those
lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the
deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from
hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in
the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense
of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the
honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then
I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the
defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of
themselves, had sworn. And if I found in the story afterward,
any of them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it
the same fault of the poet, as that which is attributed to
Homer, to have written indecent things of the gods. Only this
my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without
that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the
guilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir
him up both by his counsel and his arms, to secure and protect
the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these
books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness
and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine
indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have
heard, to the love and steadfast observation of that virtue
which abhors the society of bordelloes.
Thus, from the laureat fraternity of poets, riper years and
the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady
spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of
Plato, and his equal Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what
I learnt of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so,
whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand
to those who are worthy; (the rest are cheated with a thick
intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of
love's name, carries about;) and how the first and chiefest
office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those
happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue.
With such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth
your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a
still time, when there shall be no chiding; not in these
noises, the adversary, as ye know, barking at the door, or
searching for me at the bordelloes, where it may be he has
lost himself, and raps up without pity the sage and rheumatic
old prelatess with all her young Corinthian laity, to inquire
for such a one.
Last of all, not in time, but as perfection is last, that care
was ever had of me, with my earliest capacity, not to be
negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian religion:
this that I have hitherto related, hath been to show, that
though Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a
certain reservedness of natural disposition, and moral
discipline, learnt out of the noblest philosophy, was enough
to keep me in disdain of far less incontinences than this of
the bordello. But having had the doctrine of holy scripture
unfolding those chaste and high mysteries, with timeliest care
infused, that 'the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the
body;' thus also I argued to myself, that if unchastity in a
woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal
and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image
and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be
much more deflouring and dishonourable; in that he sins both
against his own body, which is the perfecter sex, and his own
glory, which is in the woman; and, that which is worst,
against the image and glory of God, which is in himself. Nor
did I slumber over that place expressing such high rewards of
ever accompanying the Lamb with those celestial songs to
others inapprehensible, but not to those who were not defiled
with women, which doubtless means fornication; for marriage
must not be called a defilement.
Thus large I have purposely been, that if I have been justly
taxed with this crime, it may come upon me, after all this my
confession, with a tenfold shame: but if I have hitherto
deserved no such opprobious word, or suspicion, I may hereby
engage myself now openly to the faithful observation of what I
have professed.
* * * * *
I had said, that because the Remonstrant was so much offended
with those who were tart against the prelates, sure he loved
toothless satires, which I took were as improper as a toothed
sleekstone. This champion from behind the arras cries out,
that those toothless satires were of the Remonstrant's making;
and arms himself here tooth and nail, and horn, to boot, to
supply the want of teeth, or rather of gums in the satires;
and for an onset tells me, that the simile of a sleekstone
'shows I can be as bold with a prelate as familiar with a
laundress.' But does it not argue rather the lascivious
promptness of his own fancy, who, from the harmless mention of
a sleekstone, could neigh out the remembrance of his old
conversation among the viragian trollops? For me, if he move
me, I shall claim his own oath, the oath _ex officio_, against
any priest or prelate in the kingdom, to have ever as much
hated such pranks as the best and chastest of them all. That
exception which I made against toothless satires, the confuter
hopes I had from the satirist, but is far deceived: neither
have I ever read the hobbling distich which he means.
For this good hap I had from a careful education, to be inured
and seasoned betimes with the best and elegantest authors of
the learned tongues, and thereto brought an ear that could
measure a just cadence, and scan without articulating: rather
nice and humorous in what was tolerable, than patient to read
every drawling versifier. Whence lighting upon this title of
'toothless satires,' I will not conceal ye what I thought,
readers, that sure this must be some sucking satyr, who might
have done better to have used his coral, and made an end of
teething, ere he took upon him to wield a satire's whip. But
when I heard him talk of 'scouring the rusty swords of elvish
knights,' do not blame me if I changed my thought, and
concluded him some desperate cutler.
* * * * *
But now, readers, we have the port within sight; his last
section, which is no deep one, remains only to be forded, and
then the wished shore. And here first it pleases him much,
that he had descried me, as he conceives, to be unread in the
councils. Concerning which matter it will not be unnecessary
to shape him this answer: that some years I had spent in the
stories of those Greek and Roman exploits, wherein I found
many things both nobly done, and worthily spoken: when, coming
in the method of time to that age wherein the church had
obtained a Christian emperor, I so prepared myself, as being
now to read examples of wisdom and goodness among those who
were foremost in the church, not elsewhere to be paralleled;
but to the amazement of what I expected I found it all quite
contrary: excepting in some very few, nothing but ambition,
corruption, contention, combustion; insomuch that I could not
but love the historian, Socrates, who, in the proem to his
fifth book professes, 'he was fain to intermix affairs of
state; for that it would be else an extreme annoyance to hear,
in a continued discourse, the endless brabbles and
counterplottings of the bishops.'
Finding, therefore, the most of their actions in single to be
weak, and yet turbulent, full of strife and yet flat of
spirit; and the sum of their best council there collected, to
be most commonly in questions either trivial or vain, or else
of short and easy decision, without that great bustle which
they made; I concluded that if their single ambition and
ignorance was such, then certainly united in a council it
would be much more; and if the compendious recital of what
they there did was so tedious and unprofitable, then surely to
set out the whole extent of their tattle in a dozen volumes
would be a loss of time irrecoverable. Besides that which I
had read of St. Martin, who for his last sixteen years could
never be persuaded to be at any council of the bishops. And
Gregory Nazianzen betook him to the same resolution, affirming
to Procopius, 'that of any council or meeting of bishops he
never saw good end; nor any remedy thereby of evil in the
church, but rather an increase. For,' saith he, 'their
contentions and desire of lording no tongue is able to
express.'
I have not, therefore, I confess, read more of the councils,
save here and there; I should be sorry to have been such a
prodigal of my time; but, that which is better, I can assure
this confuter, I have read into them all. And if I want
anything yet I shall reply something toward that which in the
defence of Murena was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the
lawyer. 'If ye provoke me (for at no hand else will I
undertake such a frivolous labour) I will in three months be
an expert councilist.' For, be not deceived, readers, by men
that would overawe your ears with big names and huge tomes
that contradict and repeal one another, because they can cram
a margin with citations. Do but winnow their chaff from their
wheat, ye shall see their great heap shrink and wax thin, past
belief.
* * * * *
But this which comes next in view, I know not what good vein
or humour took him when he let drop into his paper; I that
was erewhile the ignorant, the loiterer, on the sudden by his
permission am now granted 'to know something.' And that 'such
a volley of expressions' he hath met withal, 'as he would
never desire to have them better clothed.' For me, readers,
although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained in those
rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted with
those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have
written in any learned tongue; yet true eloquence I find to be
none, but the serious and hearty love of truth: and that whose
mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know
good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the
knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak,
his words, (by what I can express,) like so many nimble and
airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well-ordered
files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.
_To Carlo Dati, Nobleman of Florence._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. X.)