linguist or critick. I have not only seen several countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself, as I behold in nimbler and conceited heads that never looked a degree beyond their nests. I know the names, and somewhat more, of all the constellations in my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner that could only name the pointers and the north star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country and of those about me; yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside. For indeed, heads of capacity and such as are not full with a handful or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not any thing. I cannot think that Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fisherman, or that Aristotle, who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often the reason of man too weak for S the works of nature, did ever drown himself upon the flux and reflux of Euripus. We do but learn to day, what our better advanced judgments will unteach to morrow; and Aristotle doth but instruct us as Plato did him, that is, to confute himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no rest in any; though our first studies and junior endeavours may style us peripateticks, stoicks, or academicks, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove at last almost all scepticks, and stand like Janus in the field of knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentick philosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of other men ; another more reserved, and drawn from experience, whereby I content mine own. Solomon, that complained of ignorance in the height of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits but discouraged my endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes made me shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge, it is but attending a little longer, and we shall enjoy that by instinct and infusion which we endeavour at here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit down in a modest ignorance, and rest contented with the natural bless ing of our own reasons, than buy the uncertain knowledge of this life with sweat and vexation which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary of our glorification. IX. I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who never marry twice; not that I disallow of second marriage; as neither in all cases of polygamy, which considering some times and the unequal number of both sexes, may be also necessary. The whole world was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman; man is the whole world, and the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there any thing that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful; I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is musick even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the musick of the spheres; for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church-musick. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer: there is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers. It is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick; thus some whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse ;* and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter.† I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses: I rejoice not at unwholesome springs, nor unseasonable winters; my prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire every thing in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me; I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities; where I do him no good methinks it is scarce honest gain, though I confess 'tis but the worthy salary of our well-intended en * Urbem Romam in principio reges habuere. In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse.-Pro Archio. |