though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect: Well then; I now do plainly see, This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, etc.20 And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from His Majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others," with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it: Thou, neither great at court nor in the war, Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; Which neglected verse does raise, etc.22 However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it à corps perdu, without making capitulations or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, "take thy ease": I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum. Nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have 20 From The Wish. 24 21 relative omitted. 22 COWLEY inserts two stanzas from one of his Pindaric Odes. now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. Nec vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos, Musa, libertas, otia, libri, Nor by me e'er shall you, You, of all names the sweetest and the best, As long as life itself forsakes not me. But this is a very pretty ejaculation. Because I have concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last.25 25 Here follow two poetical translations from MARTIAL, Epigrams, Book X. 47 and 96. XI. EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLAREN DON. (1608-1674.) ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. REFLECTIONS ON THE HAPPINESS WHICH WE MAY ENJOY IN AND FROM OURSELVES. [Written in 1669.] It was a very just reproach that Seneca charged the world with so many hundred years ago, and yet was not more the disease of that than of this age, that we wonder and complain of the pride and superciliousness of those who are in place and authority above us that we cannot get an admittance to them; that they are never at leisure that we may speak to them; when (says he) we are never vacant, never at leisure to speak to ourselves; "Audet quispiam de alterius superbia queri qui sibi ipse nunquam vacat?" and after all complaints and murmurs, the greatest and the proudest of them will be sometimes at leisure, may be sometimes spoken with; "aliquando respexit, tu non inspicere te unquam, non audire dignatus es", we can never get an audience of ourselves, never vouchsafe to confer together. We are diligent and curious enough to know other men; and it may be charitable enough to assist them, to inform their weakness by our instruction, and to reform their errors by our experience: and all this 1 Does any one dare to complain of the pride of another who is never at leisure for himself? - SENECA. 2 He sometimes paid attention (lit. looked back); you never deigned to look within, to listen to yourself. — SENECA, without giving one moment to look into our own, never make an inspection into ourselves, nor ask one of those questions of ourselves which we are ready to administer to others, and thereby imagine that we have a perfect knowledge of them. We live with other men, and to other men; neither with nor to ourselves. We may sometimes be at home, left to ourselves, when others are weary of us, and we are weary of being with them; but we do not dwell at home, have no commerce, no conversation with ourselves, nay, we keep spies about us that we may not have; and if we feel a suggestion, hear an importunate call from within, we divert it by company or quiet it with sleep; and when we wake, no man runs faster from an enemy than we do from ourselves, get to our friends that we may not be with ourselves. This is not only an epidemical disease that spreads everywhere, but effected and purchased at as great a price as most other of our diseases, with the expense of all our precious time; one moment of which we are not willing to bestow upon ourselves, though it would make the remainder of it more useful to us, and to others upon whom we prodigally consume it, without doing good to them or ourselves: whereas, if we would be conversant with ourselves, and as ingenuous and impartial in that conversation as we pretend to be with other men, we should find that we have very much of that at home by us, which we take wonderful unnecessary pains to get abroad; and that we have much of that in our own disposal, which we endeavour to obtain from others; and possess ourselves of that happiness from ourselves, whether it concerns our ambition or any other of our most exorbitant passions or affections, which more provoke and less satisfy by resorting to other men ; who are either not willing to gratify us or not able to comply with our desires; and the trouble and agony, which for the most part accompanies those disappointments, proceed merely from our not beginning with ourselves before we repair to others. It is not the purpose and end of this discourse, to raise such seraphical notions of the vanity and pleasures of this world, as if they were not worthy to be considered, or could have no relish with virtuous and pious men. They take very unprofitable pains, who endeavour to persuade men that they are obliged wholly to despise this world and all that is in it, even whilst they themselves live here: God hath not taken all that pains in forming and framing and furnishing and adorning this world, that they who were made by him to live in it should despise it; it will be enough if they do not love it so immoderately, to prefer it before Him who made it: nor shall we endeavour to extend the notions of the Stoic philosophers, and to stretch them farther by the help of Christian precepts, to the extinguishing all those affections and passions, which are and will always be inseparable from human nature; and which it were to be wished that many Christians could govern and suppress and regulate, as well as many of those heathen philosophers used to do. As long as the world lasts, and honour and virtue and industry have reputation in the world, there will be ambition and emulation and appetite in the best and most accomplished men who live in it; if there should not be, more barbarity and vice and wickedness would cover every nation of the world, than it yet suffers under. If wise and honest and virtuously-disposed men quit the field, and leave the world to the pillage, and the manners of it to the deformation of persons dedicated to rapine, luxury, and injustice, how savage must it grow in half an age! nor will the best princes be able to govern and preserve their subjects, if the best men be without ambition and desire to be employed and trusted by them. The end therefore of this speculation into ourselves, and conversation with ourselves, is that we may make our journey towards that which we do propose with the more success; that we may be discreet in proposing reasonable designs, and then pursue them by reasonable ways; foresee all the difficulties which are probable to fall out, so we may prevent or avoid them; since we may be sure to master and avoid them to a great degree by foreseeing them, and as sure to be confounded by them, if they fall upon us without foresight. In a word, it is not so to consult with ourselves, as to consult with nobody else; or to dispose us to prefer our own judgment before |