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1. It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well furnished armoury. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many of them, built merely for uniformity, are without chimneys, and more without fires. Once a dunce void of learning but full of books flouted a libraryless scholar with these words: "Salve doctor sine libris." But the next day the scholar coming into this jeerer's study, crowded with books; "Salvete libri," saith he, "sine doctore."

2. Few books, well selected, are best. Yet, as a certain fool bought all the pictures that came out, because he might have his choice, such is the vain humour of many men in gathering of books: yet when they have done all, they miss their end, it being in the editions of authors as in the fashions of clothes, when a man thinks he hath gotten the latest and newest, presently another newer comes out.

3. Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of. Namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look through them; and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be ex

cused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.

4. The genius of the author is commonly discovered in the dedicatory epistle. Many place the purest grain in the mouth of the sack for chapmen to handle or buy: and from the dedication one may probably guess at the work, saving some rare and peculiar exceptions. Thus, when once a gentleman admired how so pithy, learned, and witty a dedication was matched to a flat, dull, foolish book; "In truth," said another, "they may be well matched together, for a profess they are nothing akin."

5. Proportion an hour's meditation to an hour's reading of a staple author. This makes a man master of his learning, and dispirits the book into the scholar. The King of Sweden never filed his men above six deep in one company, because he would not have them lie in useless clusters in his army, but so that every particular soldier might be drawn out into service.* Books that stand thin on the shelves, yet so as the owner of them can bring forth every one of them into use, are better than far greater libraries.

6. Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost. Arius Montanus, in printing the Hebrew Bible, commonly called the Bible of the King of Spain, much wasted himself, and was accused in the court of Rome for his good deed, and being cited thither, "Pro tantorum laborum præmio vix veniam impetravit."+ Likewise Christopher Plantin, by printing of his curious interlineary Bible, in Antwerp, through the unseasonable exactions of the king's officers, sunk and almost ruined his estate. And our worthy English knight, who set forth the golden-mouthed father in a silver print, was a loser by it.

7. Whereas foolish pamphlets prove most beneficial to the printers. When a French printer complained that he was utterly undone by printing a solid serious book of Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him recompense, made that his jesting scurrilous work, which repaired the printer's loss with advantage. Such books the world swarms too much with. When one had set out a witless pamphlet, writing finis at the end thereof, another wittily wrote beneath it:

"Nay, there thou liest, my friend,

In writing foolish books there is no end." And surely such scurrilous scandalous papers do more than conceivable mischief. First, their lusciousness puts many palates out of taste, that they can never after relish any solid and wholesome writers; secondly, they cast dirt on the faces of many innocent persons, which dried on by continuance of time can never after be washed off; thirdly, the pamphlets of this age may pass for records with the next, because publicly uncontrolled, and what we laugh at, our children

* Ward's Animadver. of War, sect. 17, lib. ii., cap. 5 + Thuanus, Obit. Vir. Doct., anno 1598, Idem, in eodem Oper., anno 1589.

may believe; fourthly, grant the things true they jeer at, yet this music is unlawful in any Christian church, to play upon the sins and miseries of others, the fitter object of the elegies than the satires of all truly religious.

But what do I speaking against multiplicity of books in this age, who trespass in this nature myself? What was a learned man's compliment, may serve for my confession and conclusion: "Multi mei similes hoc morbo laborant, ut cum scribere nesciant tamen a scribendo temperare non possint."

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OF MARRIAGE

Some men have too much decried marriage, as if she, the mother, were scarce worthy to wait on virginity her daughter, and as if it were an advancement for marriage to be preferred before fornication, and praise enough for her to be adjudged lawful. Give this holy estate her due, and then we shall find,

1. Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders in the hedge of the commonwealth. It is the policy of the Londoners, when they send a ship into the Levant or Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman adventuring somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are the deeper sharers in that state wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty.

2. It is the worst clandestine marriage when God is not invited to it. Wherefore beforehand beg His gracious assistance. Marriage shall prove no lottery to thee, when the hand of Providence chooseth for thee, who, if drawing a blank, can turn it into a prize, by sanctifying a bad wife unto thee.

3. Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married estate. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, öλos λаμπpòs, wholly clear, without clouds; yea, expect both wind and storms sometimes, which when blown over, the air is the clearer and wholesomer for it. Make account of certain cares and troubles which will attend thee. Remember the nightingales, which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones. Yet all the molestations of

• Erasmus, in Præfat., in 8 seriem 4 tomi Hieron, P. 408.

marriage are abundantly recompensed with other comforts which God bestoweth on them who make a wise choice of a wife, and observe the following rules:

4. Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends will have an end; whereas that which is founded in true virtue will always continue. Some hold it unhappy to be married with a diamond ring, perchance (if there be so much reason in their folly) because the diamond hinders the roundness of the ring, ending the infiniteness thereof, and seems to presage some termination in their love, which ought ever to endure, and so it will when it is founded in religion.

5. Neither choose all, nor not at all for beauty. A cried-up beauty makes more for her own praise than her husband's profit. They tell us of a floating island in Scotland: but sure no wise pilot will cast anchor there, lest the land swim away with his ship. So are they served, and justly enough, who only fasten their love on fading beauty, and both fail together.

6. Let there be no great disproportion in age. They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter. Nor is God's ordinance, but man's abusing thereof, taxed in this homely expression used by the apostle himself. If virginity, enforced above the parties' power, be termed by St Paul a "snare or halter,' ,"* marriage is no better when against one's will for private respects.

7. Let wealth in its due distance be regarded. There be two towns in the land of Liege, called Bovins and Dinant, the inhabitants whereof bear almost an incredible hatred one to another, and yet, notwithstanding, their children usually marry together; and the reason is, because there is none other good town or wealthy place near them. Thus parents for a little pelf often marry their children to those whose persons they hate; and thus union betwixt families is not made, but the breach rather widened the more.

This shall serve for a conclusion. A bachelor was saying, "Next to no wife, a good wife is best." "Nay," said a gentlewoman, "next to a good wife, no wife is the best." I wish to all married people the outward happiness which (anno 1605) happened to a couple in the city of Delph, in Holland,‡ living most lovingly together seventy-five years in wedlock, till the man being one hundred and three, the woman ninety-nine years of age, died within three hours each of other, and were buried in the same grave.

* Ουχ ἵνα βρόχον ὑμῖν ἐπιβάλω.-1 Cor. vii. 35 Phil. Com., lib. 2, cap. 1.

1 Thuan, de Obit. Vir. Doct., in eod. anno, p. 185.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.*

BORN 1618: DIED 1667.

OF SOLITUDE.

(From his Miscellaneous Essays.)

"NUNQUAM minus solus, quam cum solus," + is now become a very vulgar saying. Every man, and almost every boy, for these seventeen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a most eloquent and witty person, as well as the most wise, most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by solitude than by company; and, to show that he spoke not this loosely, or out of vanity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost the whole world, he retired himself from it by a voluntary exile, and at a private house in the middle of a wood near Linternum, passed the remainder of his glorious life no less gloriously. This house Seneca went to see so long after with great veneration; and, among other things, describes his baths to have been of so mean a structure, that now, says he, the basest of the people would despise them, and cry out, "Poor Scipio anderstood not how to live." What an authority is here for the credit of retreat! and happy had it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learned by Scipio from the highest prosperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said by Monsieur de Montaigne, "that ambition itself might teach us to love solitude; there is nothing does so much hate to have companions." It is true, it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have company on either side; but it delights, above all things, in a train behind, ay, and ushers too before it. But the greatest part of men are so far from the opinion of that noble Roman, that, if they chance at any time to be without company, they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very fantastical and contradictory in human nature, that men

* "Cowley's prose stamps him as a man of genius, and an improver of the English language."-Thomas Campbell.

"No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness."-Johnson.

should love themselves above all the rest of the
world, and yet never endure to be with them-
selves. When they are in love with a mistress,
all other persons are importunate and burden-
some to them. "Tecum vivere amem, tecum
obeam lubens," they would live and die with her
alone.

"Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere sylvis,
Qua nulla humano sit via trita pede.
Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atra
Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis."

With thee for ever I in woods could rest,
Where never human foot the ground has pressed.
Thou from all shades the darkness canst exclude,
And from a desert banish solitude.

And yet our dear self is so wearisome to us, that we can scarcely support its conversation for an hour together. This is such an odd temper of mind, as Catullus expresses towards one of his mistresses, whom we may suppose to have been of a very unsociable humour:

"Odi, et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio; sed fieri sentio, et excrucior."

I hate, and yet I love thee too;
How can that be? I know not how;
Only that so it is I know,

And feel with torment that 'tis so.

It is a deplorable condition this, and drives a man sometimes to pitiful shifts in seeking how to avoid himself.

The truth of the matter is, that neither he who is a fop in the world, is a fit man to be alone; nor he who has set his heart much upon the world, though he have never so much understanding; so that solitude can be well fitted and sit right, but upon a very few persons. They must have enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity; if the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had better be in a fair than in a wood alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick our pockets, in the midst of company; but, like robbers, they use to strip and bind, or murder us, when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat from men, and to fall into the hands of devils. It is like the punishment of parricides among the Romans, to be sewed into a bag, with an ape, a dog, and a serpent.

The first work, therefore, that a man must do, to make himself capable of the good of solitude,

"Never less alone than when alone;" a saying is, the very eradication of all lusts; for how is it genera ly ascribed to Cicero.

| possible for a man to enjoy himself while his

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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LANOI AMR TILBEN JENDATUNK

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