Nor, after, are to render an account) As if thy laft thou wert to make, Bufinefs must be dispatch'd, ere thou canst part, A hundred horfe and men to wait on thee, What an unwieldy man thou art! A journey, too, might go. Where honour, or where confcience, does not bind, Nor other law fhall shackle me; Slave to myself I will not be, Nor fhall my future actions be confin'd By my own prefent mind. Who by refolves and vows engag'd does stand Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his eftate, The bondman of the cloifter fo, Unhappy flave, and pupil to a bell, Which his hours-work, as well as hours, does tell! (In which he only hits the white Who joins true profit with the beft delight), Mine the Pindaric way I'll make; The matter fhall be grave, the numbers loose and free. In the fame tune it fhall not always chime, Nor fhall each day juft to his neighbour rhyme; A thousand liberties it fhall difpenfe, And yet fhall manage all without offence Or to the sweetness of the found, or greatness of the fenf:; Nor feek tranfitions to depart, Till the whole carcase he devour, And to fresh game flies cheerfully away; To kites, and meaner birds, he leaves the mangled prey. 1 II. OF N SOLITUDE. UNQUAM minus folus, quam cum folus," is now become a very vulgar faying. Every man, and almost every boy, for thefe feventeen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a moft eloquent and witty perfon, as well as the most wife, moft worthy, moft happy, and the greateft of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more fatisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by folitude than by company; and, to fhew that he spoke not this loosely or out of vanity, after he had made Rome miftrefs of almoft 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*, paffed the remainder of his glorious life no lefs gloriously. This house Seneca went to fee fo long after with great veneration; and, among other things, defcribes his baths to have been of fo mean a ftructure, that now, fays he, the bafeft of the people would despise them, and cry out, " Poor Scipio understood not how to live." What an au thority is here for the credit of retreat! and happy had it been for Hannibal, if adverfity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest profperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily faid by Monfieur de Montagne, "That ambition itself might teach us to love folitude; "there is nothing does fo much hate to have companions.' have its elbows free, it detefts to have company on either fide; but it delights above It is true, it loves to all things in a train behind, aye, and ufhers too before it. But the greatest part of men are fo far from the opinion of that noble Roman, that if they chance at any time to be without company, they are like a becalmed fhip; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to fleer withal. cal and contradictory in human nature, that men fhould love themselves above all the It is very fantaftireft of the world, and yet never endure to be with themfelves. When they are in love with a mistress, all other perfons are importunate and burthenfome to them. "vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens," they would live and die with her alone. "Tecum "Sic ego fecretis poffum bene vivere fylvis, Quà nulla humano fit via trit: pede. With thee for ever I in woods could rest, Thou from all fhades the darkness canft exclude, And from a defert banish folitude. And yet our dear felf is fo wearifome to us, that we can fcarcely fupport its conver fation for an hour together. This is fuch an odd temper of mind, as Catullus expresses towards one of his mistreffes, whom we may fuppofe to have been of a very unfociable humour: Odi, & amo: quare id faciam fortaffe requiris. "Nefcio; fed fieri fentio, & excrucior." I hate, and yet I love thee too; How can that be? I know not how; Only that fo it is I know; And feel with torment that 'tis fo. It is a deplorable condition, this, and drives a man fometimes to pitiful shifts, in feeking how to avoid himself. Seneca Epift. lxxxvi. † 4 Tibull. xiii. 9. De amore fuo, lxxxiii. 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 fet his heart much upon the world, though he have never fo much understanding; fo that folitude can be well fitted, and fit right, but upon a very few perfons. They muft have enough knowledge of the world to fee the vanity of it, and enough virtue to defpife all vanity; if the mind be poffeffed with any luft or paffions, 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 ftrip and bind, or murder us, when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat from men, and fall into the hands of devils. It is like the punishment of parricides among the Romans, to be fowed into a bag, with an ape, a dog, and a ferpent. The firft work therefore that a man muft do, to make himfelf capable of the good of folitude, is, the very eradication of all lufts; for how is it poffible for a man to enjoy himself, while his affections are tied to things without himself? In the fecond place, he muft learn the art and get the habit of thinking; for this too, no lefs than well-fpeaking, depends upon much practice; and cogitation is the thing which diftinguishes the folitude of a God from a wild beaft. Now, because the foul of man is not by its own nature or obfervation furnished with fufficient materials to work upon, it is neceffary for it to have continual recourse to learning and books for fresh supplies, fo that the folitary life will grow indigent, and be ready to ftarve, without them; but if once we be thoroughly engaged in the love of letters, inflead of being wearied with the length of any day, we fhall only complain of the shortnefs of our whole life. "O vita, ftulto longa, fapienti brevis *!" O life, long to the fool, fhort to the wife! The first minifter of ftate has not fo much bulinefs in public, as a wife man has in private: if the one have little leifure to be alone, the other has lefs leifure to be in company; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature, under his confideration. There is no faying fhocks me fo much as that which I hear very often, "That a man does not know how to pass his time." It would have been but ill-fpoken by Methufalem in the nine hundred fixty-ninth year of his life; fo far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have caufe to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this, you will fay, is work only for the learned; others are not capable either of the employments or divertisements that arrive from letters. I know they are not; and therefore cannot much recommend folitude to a man totally illiterate. But, if any man be fo unlearned, as to want entertainment of the little intervals of ac cidental folitude, which frequently occur in almoft all conditions (except the very meanest of the people, who have bufinefs enough in the neceffary provifions for life), it is truly a great thame both to his parents and himfelf; for a very fmall portion of any ingeni ous art will stop up all thofe gaps of our time: either mufic, or painting, or defigning, or chemistry, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it ufefully and pleafantly; and, if he happen to fet his affections upon poetry (which I do not advife him too immoderately), that will over-do it; no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or bufinefs, which would abstract him from his beloved. O qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi "Siftat, & ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ †?" Hail, old patrician trees, fo great and good! And for their quiet nefts and plenteous food "O vita, mifero longa, felici brevis !!! + Virg. Georg. ii. 489. Hail, the poor Mufes' richeft manor-feat! Which all the happy gods fo love, That for you oft they quit their bright and great Metropolis above. Here Nature does a house for me erect, Nature, the wisest architect, Who thofe fond artifts does despise Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, A filver stream fhall roll his waters near, Gilt with the fun-beams here and there; Ah wretched and too folitary he, Who loves not his own company į He'll feel the weight of 't many a day, Unless he call in fin or vanity To help to bear 't away. Oh Solitude, first state of human-kind! As foon as two, alas! together join'd, Tho' God himself, through countless ages, thee Thee, facred Solitude, alone, Before the branchy head of number's tree Thou (tho' men think thine an unactive part) Thou the faint beams of reafon's fcattered light And fortify the ftrength, till thou doft bright Whilft this hard truth I teach, methinks, I fee Let but thy wicked men from out thee go Even thou, who doft thy millions boaft, "N III. OF OBSCURITY. AM neque divitibus contingunt gaudia folis; God made not pleafures only for the rich; Nor have thofe men without their share too liv'd, This feems a ftrange fentence, thus literally tranflated, and looks as if it were in vindication of the men of bufinefs (for who elfe can deceive the world?); whereas it is in commendation of those who live and die fo obfcurely, that the world takes no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving the world; and in another place uses the fame phrafe +, "-Secretum iter & fallentis femita vitæ." The fecret tracts of the deceiving life. It is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear up to that sense; and therefore Mr. Broom translates it very well Or from a life, led, as it were, by stealth. Yet we fay in our language, a thing deceives our fight, when it paffes before us unperceived; and we may say well enough, out of the fame author ‡, Sometimes with fleep, fometimes with wine, we strive But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as Quintilian fays §, "vitam fallere," to draw on ftill, and amufe, and deceive, our life, till it be advanced infenfibly to the fatal period, and fall into that pit which nature hath prepared for it. The meaning of all this is no more than that moft vulgar faying, "Bene qui latuit, bene vixit," He has lived well, who has lain well hidden; which, if it be a truth, the world (I will fwear) is fufficiently deceived: for my part, I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life is in incognito. What a brave privilege is it, to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful paftime, for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know any body. It was the cafe of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invifibly about the fields and ftreets of Carthage. Venus herself, A vail of thicken'd air around them caft, That none might know, or fee them, as they pafs'd || The common ftory of Demofthenes' confeffion, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman fay, as he paffed, "This is that Demofthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from fo folid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any); but am fo far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes 2 Sat. v. 114. $ Declam. de Apib. Hor. 1 Ep. xvii. 9, Hor. I Ep. xviii. 193. |