5 jealousy begets another. Wherefore, he raised them from their nest before they had hatched their fears; and, to put away those conceits, he persuaded them it was day-dawning when the moon rose, and instantly set on the town, and won it, being unwalled. In the market-place the Spaniards saluted them with a volley of shot; Drake returned their greeting with a flight of arrows, the best and 10 ancient English compliment, which drave their enemies away. Here Drake received a dangerous wound, though he valiantly concealed it a long time; knowing if his heart stooped, his men's would 15 fall, and loath to leave off the action, wherein if so bright an opportunity once setteth, it seldom riseth again. But at length his men forced him to return to his ship, that his wound might be 20 dressed; and this unhappy accident defeated the whole design. Thus victory sometimes slips through their fingers who have caught it in their hands. But his valor would not let him give 25 over the project as long as there was either life or warmth in it; and therefore, having received intelligence from the negroes called Symerons, of many mules'-lading of gold and silver, which 30 was to be brought from Panama, he, leaving competent numbers to man his ships, went on land with the rest, and bestowed himself in the woods by the way as they were to pass, and so inter- 35 cepted and carried away an infinite mass of gold. As for the silver, which was not portable over the mountains, they digged holes in the ground and hid it therein. 40 45 There want not those who love to beat down the price of every honorable action, though they themselves never mean to be chapmen. These cry up Drake's fortune herein to cry down his valor; as if this his performance were nothing, wherein a golden opportunity ran his head, with his long forelock, into Drake's hands beyond expectation. But, certainly, his resolution and unconquer- 50 able patience deserved much praise, to adventure on such a design, which had in it just no more probability than what was enough to keep it from being impossible. Yet I admire not so much at 55 all the treasure he took, as at the rich and deep mine of God's providence. Having now full freighted himself with wealth, and burnt at the House of Crosses above two hundred thousand pounds' worth of Spanish merchandise, he returned with honor and safety into England, and, some years after (December 13th, 1577) undertook that his famous voyage about the world, most accurately described by our English authors: and yet a word or two thereof will not be amiss. Setting forward from Plymouth, he bore up for Cabo-verd, where, near to the island of St. Jago, he took prisoner Nuno de Silva, an experienced Spanish pilot, whose direction he used in the coasts of Brazil and Magellan Straits, and afterwards safely landed him at Guatulco in New Spain. Hence they took their course to the Island of Brava; and hereabouts they met with those tempestuous winds whose only praise is, that they continue not an hour, in which time they change all the points of the compass. Here they had great plenty of rain, poured (not, as in other places, as it were out of sieves, but) as out of spouts, so that a butt of water falls down in a place; which, notwithstanding, is but a courteous injury in that hot climate far from land, and where otherwise fresh water cannot be provided. Then cutting the Line, they saw the face of that heaven which earth hideth from us, but therein only three stars of the first greatness, the rest few and small compared to our hemisphere; as if God, on purpose, had set up the best and biggest candles in that room wherein his civilest guests are entertained. Sailing the south of Brazil, he afterwards passed the Magellan Straits (August 20th, 1578) and then entered Mare Pacificum [the Pacific Ocean], came to the southernmost land at the height of 551⁄2 latitudes; thence directing his course northward, he pillaged many Spanish towns, and took rich prizes of high value in the kingdoms of Chili, Peru, and New Spain. Then, bending eastwards, he coasted China, and the Moluccas, where, by the king of Terrenate, a true gentleman Pagan, he was most honorably entertained. The king told them, they and he were all of one religion in this respect,- that they believed not in gods made of stocks and stones, as did the Portugals. He furnished them also with all necessaries that they wanted. their envious pride was above their covetousness, who of set purpose did blur the fair copy of his performance, because they would not take pains to write after I pass by his next West-Indian voyage (1585), wherein he took the cities of St. Jago, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St. Augustine in Florida; as also his service performed in 1588, wherein he, with many others, helped to the waning of that half-moon, which sought to govern all the motion of our sea. I haste to his last voyage. On January 9th following (1579), his ship, having a large wind and a smooth sea, ran aground on a dangerous shoal, and struck twice on it; knocking twice at the door of death, which, no doubt, 5 it. had opened the third time. Here they stuck, from eight o'clock at night till four the next afternoon, having ground too much, and yet too little to land on; and water too much, and yet too little 10 to sail in. Had God (who, as the wise man saith, holdeth the winds in his fist,' Prov. xxx. 4) but opened his little finger, and let out the smallest blast, they had undoubtedly been cast away; 15 but there blew not any wind all the while. Then they, conceiving aright that the best way to lighten the ship was, first, to ease it of the burden of their sins by true repentance, humbled them- 20 selves, by fasting, under the hand of God. Afterwards they received the communion, dining on Christ in the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with him in heaven. Then they cast out 25 of their ship six great pieces of ordnance, threw overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think on it, with much sugar, and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea round 30 about. Then they betook themselves to their prayers, the best lever at such a dead lift indeed; and it pleased God, that the wind, formerly their mortal enemy, became their friend; which, changing 35 from the starboard to the larboard of the ship, and rising by degrees, cleared them off to the sea again,- for which they returned unfeigned thanks to Almighty God. Queen Elizabeth, in 1595, perceiving that the only way to make the Spaniard a cripple forever, was to cut his sinews of war in the West Indies, furnished Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins, with six of her own ships, besides twenty-one ships and barks of their own providing, containing in all two thousand five hundred men and boys, for some service on America. But, alas! this voyage was marred before begun. For, so great preparations being too big for a cover, the king of Spain knew of it, and sent a caraval of adviso to the West Indies; so that they had intelligence three weeks before the fleet set forth of England, either to fortify or remove their treasure; whereas, in other of Drake's voyages, not two of his own men knew whither he went; and managing such a design is like carrying a mine in war,- if it hath any vent, all is spoiled. Besides, Drake and Hawkins, being in joint commission, hindered each other. The latter took 40 himself to be inferior rather in success than skill; and the action was unlike to prosper when neither would follow, and both could not handsomely go abreast. It vexed old Hawkins, that his counsel was not followed, in present sailing to America, but that they spent time in vain in assaulting the Canaries; and the grief that his advice was slighted, say some, was the cause of his death. Others impute it to the sorrow he took for the taking of his bark called 'the Francis,' which five Spanish frigates had intercepted. But when the same heart hath two mortal wounds given it together, it is hard to say which of them killeth. By the Cape of Good Hope and west of Africa, he returned safe into England, and (November 3rd, 1580) landed at Plymouth (being almost the first of those that made a thorough light 45 through the world), having, in his whole voyage, though a curious searcher after the time, lost one day through the variation of several climates. He feasted the queen in his ship at Dartford, who 50 knighted him for his service. Yet it grieved him not a little, that some prime courtiers refused the gold he offered them, as gotten by piracy. Some of them would have been loath to have been 55 told, that they had aurum Tholosanum [gold of Spain] in their own purses. Some think, that they did it to show that Drake continued his course for Porto Rico; and, riding within the road, a shot from the Castle entered the steerage of the ship, took away the stool from under him as he sat at supper, wounded Sir Nicholas Clifford, and Brute Brown to death. Ah, dear Brute!' said Drake, 5 'I could grieve for thee, but now is no time for me to let down my spirits.' And, indeed, a soldier's most proper bemoaning a friend's death in war, is in revenging it. And, sure, as if grief had made the English furious, they soon after fired five Spanish ships of two hundred tons apiece, in despite of the Castle. America is not unfitly resembled to an hourglass, which hath a narrow neck 15 of land (suppose it the hole where the sand passeth), betwixt the parts thereof, ing them to smart, being beaten black and blue by the English, he learned to arm them at last, fortifying the most important of them to make them impregnable. Now began Sir Francis's discontent to feed upon him. He conceived, that expectation, a merciless usurer, computing each day since his departure, exacted an interest and return of honor and profit proportionable to his great preparations, and transcending his former achievements. He saw that all the good which he had done in this voyage, consisted in the evil he had done to the Spaniards afar off, whereof he could present but small visible fruits in England. These apprehensions, accompanying, if not causing, the disease of the flux, wrought his sudden death, January 28th, 1595. And sickness did not so much untie his clothes, as sorrow did rend at once the robe of his mortality asunder. He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it. Thus an extempore performance (scarce heard to be begun before we hear it is ended!) comes off with better applause, or miscarries with less disgrace, then a long-studied and openlypremeditated action. Besides, we see how great spirits, having mounted to the highest pitch of performance, afterwards strain and break their credits in striving to go beyond it. Lastly, God oftentimes leaves the brightest men in an eclipse, to 35 show that they do but borrow their luster from his reflexion. We will not justify all the actions of any man, though of a tamer profession than a seacaptain, in whom civility is often counted preciseness. For the main, we say that this our captain was a religious man towards God and his houses (generally sparing churches where he came), chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of 45 his word, and merciful to those that were under him, hating nothing so much as idleness and therefore, lest his soul should rust in peace, at spare hours he brought fresh water to Plymouth. Careful he was for posterity (though men of his profession have as well an ebb of riot, as a float of fortune) and providently raised a worshipful family of his kindred. In a word: should those that speak against him fast till they fetch their bread where he did his, they would have a good stomach to eat it. Mexicana and Peruana. Now, the English had a design to march by land. over this Isthmus, from Porto Rico to 20 Panama, where the Spanish treasure was laid up. Sir Thomas Baskerville, general of the land-forces, undertook the service with seven hundred and fifty armed men. They marched through deep 25 ways, the Spaniards much annoying them with shot out of the woods. One fort in the passage they assaulted in vain, and heard two others were built to stop them, besides Panama itself. They had 30 so much of this breakfast they thought they should surfeit of a dinner and supper of the same. No hope of conquest, except with cloying the jaws of death, and thrusting men on the mouth of the cannon. Wherefore, fearing to find the proverb true, that gold may be bought too dear,' they returned to their ships. Drake afterwards fired Nombre de Dios, and many other petty towns (whose treasure the Spaniards had conveyed away), burning the empty casks, when their precious liquor was run out before, and then prepared for their returning home. 40 Great was the difference betwixt the Indian cities now, from what they were when Drake first haunted these coasts. At first, the Spaniards here were safe and secure, counting their treasure sufficient 50 to defend itself, the remoteness thereof being the greatest (almost only) resistance, and the fetching of it more than the fighting for it. Whilst the king of Spain guarded the head and heart of 55 his dominions in Europe, he left his long legs in America open to blows; till, find JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667) Mr. Saintsbury, whose praise of Browne's prose style is quoted above, says in another place that on the whole no one in English prose has so much command of the enchanter's wand as Jeremy Taylor'; and critical authority is, indeed, much divided as to the stylistic excellences of the two writers. Taylor's inferiority is more in thought than in expression, and he has the disadvantage of writing from the point of view of the theologian or cleric: Browne is a layman and has a touch of modern scepticism. Taylor was the son of a barber, spent many years at Cambridge and Oxford, became a clergyman and lost his rectory under the Commonwealth. He retired to Wales, and there composed The Liberty of Prophesying, a plea for toleration against Presbyterian bigotry (1647), Holy Living (1650), Holy Dying (1651), A Course of Sermons for all the Sundays of the Year (1651), and The Golden Grove, a manual of private devotion for young people (1655). THE FAITH AND PATIENCE OF (FROM A SERMON PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE) they never serve God, that 'dwell in the city of rejoicing?' They are like Dives, whose portion was in this life, 'who went in fine linen, and fared deliciously every 5 day: they, indeed, trample upon their briers and thorns, and suffer them not to grow in their houses; but the roots are in the ground, and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning. Thus, you see, it was prophesied, now see how it was performed; Christ was the captain of our sufferings, and he began. The state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings, not of temporal prosperities. This was foretold by the prophets: 'A fountain shall go out of the house of the 10 Lord et irrigabit torrentem spinarum (so it is in the Vulgar Latin), and it shall water the torrent of thorns,' that is, the state or time of the Gospel, which, like a torrent, shall carry all the world before it, 15 and, like a torrent, shall be fullest in ill weather; and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers, sharp afflictions, temporal infelicities, and persecution. This sense of the words is more 20 fully explained in the book of the prophet Isaiah. Upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up; how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoicing?' Which prophecy is the 25 same in the style of the prophets, that my text is in the style of the Apostles. The house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven, and there shall spring 30 to expect fair usages from God, and to He entered into the world with all the circumstances of poverty. He had a star to illustrate his birth; but a stable for his bedchamber, and a manger for his cradle. The angels sang hymns when he was born; but he was cold and cried, uneasy and unprovided. He lived long in the trade of a carpenter; he, by whom God made the world, had in his first years the business of a mean and ignoble trade. He did good wherever he went; and almost wherever he went, abused. He deserved heaven for his obedience, but found a cross in his way thither and if ever any man had reason was be dandled in the lap of ease, softness, and a prosperous fortune, he it was only that could deserve that, or anything that can be good. But after he had chosen to up briers in it: Judgment must begin there;' but how much more 'in the houses of the city of rejoicing?' how much more amongst them that are at ease in Sion,' that serve their desires, that satisfy their 35 live a life of virtue, of poverty, and laappetites, that are given over to their own heart's lust, that so serve themselves that bor, he entered into a state of death; whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world. And I shall choose to express this mystery in the words of Scripture. He died not by a single or a sudden death, but he was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world:' for he was massacred in Abel, saith St. Paulinus; he was tossed upon the waves of the sea in the person of Noah; it was he that went out of his country, when 10 Abraham was called from Charran, and wandered from his native soil; he was offered up in Isaac, persecuted in Jacob, betrayed in Joseph, blinded in Samson, affronted in Moses, sawed in Isaiah, 15 cast into the dungeon with Jeremiah: for all these were types of Christ suffering. And then his passion continued even after his resurrection. For it is and assaulted by the devil in the wilderness. His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory; but then also he entered into a cloud, and was told a sad story 5 what he was to suffer at Jerusalem. And upon Palm Sunday, when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, and was adorned with the acclamations of a king and a god, he wet the palms with his tears, sweeter than the drops of manna, or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon Mount Hermon; weeping, in the midst of this triumph, over obstinate, perishing, and malicious Jerusalem. For this Jesus was like the rainbow, which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise and establish a grace; he was half made of the glories of the light, and half of the was but half triumph and half sorrow: he was sent to tell of his Father's mercies, and that God intended to spare us; but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather. But I need not tell that Jesus, beloved of God, was a suffering person that which concerns this question most is that he made for us a covenant of sufferings: his doctrines were such as expressly, and by consequent, enjoin and suppose sufferings and a state of affliction; his very promises were sufferings; his beatitudes were sufferings; his rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him were only taken from sufferings in this life and the reward of sufferings hereafter. he that suffers in all his members; it is he 20 moisture of a cloud; in his best days he that endures the contradiction of all sinners'; it is he that is 'the lord of life,' and is crucified again, and put to open shame' in all the sufferings of his servants, and sins of rebels, and defi- 25 ances of apostates and renegadoes, and violence of tyrants, and injustice of usurpers, and the persecutions of his church. It is he that is stoned in St. Stephen, flayed in the person of St. 30 Bartholomew; he was roasted upon St. Laurence's gridiron, exposed to lions in St. Ignatius, burnt in St. Polycarp, frozen in the lake where stood forty martyrs of Cappadocia. Unigenitus 35 enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum,' said St. Hilary; 'the sacrament of Christ's death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the 40 sorrows of humanity.' All that Christ came for was, or was mingled with, sufferings; for all those little joys which God sent, either to recreate his person, or to illustrate his 45 office, were abated or attended with afflictions, God being more careful to establish in him the covenant of sufferings than to refresh his sorrows. Presently after the angels had finished their hallelu- 50 jahs, he was forced to fly to save his life; and the air became full of shrieks of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying babes. God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voice 55 from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of baptism, but he was delivered over to be tempted re For if we sum up the commandments of Christ, we shall find humility, mortification, self-denial, repentance, nouncing the world, mourning, taking up the cross, dying for him, patience and poverty, to stand in the chiefest rank of christian precepts, and in the direct order to heaven: He that will be my disciple, must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.' We must follow him that was crowned with thorns and sorrows, him that was drenched in Cedron, nailed upon the cross, that deserved all good, and suffered all evil: that is the sum of christian religion, as it distinguishes from all the religions in the world. To which we may add the express precept recorded by St. James; 'Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, |