1

supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the beauty, the perfection of his way of speaking, makes us lose the appetite for his plot. His fine expression, elegance, and quaintness, is everywhere taking; he is so pleasant throughout,

Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni;2

"Liquid, and like a crystal running stream;"

and does so possess the soul with his graces that we forget those of his fable. This very consideration carries me further; I observe that the best and most ancient poets have avoided the affectation and hunting after, not only of fantastic Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softest and most gentle touches, which are the ornaments of the poetry of succeeding times. And yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients, and that does not incomparably more admire the equal polish and the perpetual sweetness and flourishing beauty of Catullus's Epigrams than all the stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by the same reason that I gave before, as Martial says of himself: Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cujus locum materia successerat.8 "His subject was so fruitful that he had the less need for the exercise of his wit." The first, without being moved or putting themselves out at all, make themselves sufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, they need not tickle themselves. The others have need of foreign assistance; as they have the less wit, they must have the more body; they mount on horseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs. As in our balls, those mean fellows that teach to dance not being able to represent the port and dignity of our gentry, are fain to supply it with dangerous jumpings, and other strange motions and fantastic tricks. And the ladies are less put to it in dances where there are several coupées, changes, and quick motions of

Comparison betwixt Catullus and Martial.

1 Terence.

2 Horace, Epist. ii. 2, 120

3 Martial, Praf. lib. xxviii.

body, than in some others of a more quiet kind, where they are only to move a natural pace, and to represent their ordinary grace and port; and as I have often seen good merryandrews, who, in their own every-day clothes, and with their ordinary face, give us all the pleasure of their art, when their apprentices, not yet arrived to such perfection, are fain to meal their faces, put themselves into a ridiculous disguise, and make a hundred faces, to get us to laugh. This conception of mine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the Eneid with Orlando Furioso; we see the first on outspread wing, with lofty and sustained tween the flight, always following his point; the latter, Orlando Furioso fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as from branch to branch, not daring to trust his wings but in very short flights, and perching at every turn lest his breath and force should fail.

Excursusque breves tentat.1

"He tries short flights."

Comparison be

Eneid and the

of Ariosto.

These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that best please me.

Seneca.

As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and qualities; the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch (since he has been The characters of translated into French) and Seneca. Both of Plutarch and them have this great convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge I there seek is discoursed in some pieces that do not require any great trouble of reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of the first, and the Epistles of the latter, which are the best and most profitable of all their writings. 'Tis no great undertaking to take one of them in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no chain or dependence upon one another. These authors, for the most part, concur in all use1 Virg. Georg. iv. 1.

ful and true opinions; and there is this further parallel betwixt them, that fortune brought them into the world about the same age; they were both tutors to the Roman emperors; both sought out from foreign countries; both rich, and both powerful. Their instructions are the cream of philosophy, and delivered after a plain and pertinent manner. Plutarch

is more uniform and constant; Seneca more various and undulating. The last toiled, set himself, and bent his whole force to fortify virtue against frailty, fear, and vicious appetites. The other seems more to slight their power; he disdains to alter his pace, or stand upon his guard. Plutarch's opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to civil society; those of the other are Stoical and Epicurean, more remote from common use, but, in my opinion, more proper for private sanction and more firm. Seneca would seem to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperors of his time, but only seems; for I hold it for certain that he spake against his judgment when he condemns the generous action of those who assassinated Cæsar. Plutarch is frank throughout; Seneca abounds with brisk touches and sallies; Plutarch with things that heat and move you more; this contents and pays you better; he guides us, the other pushes us on. As to Cicero, those of his works that are most useful to my design are they that treat of philosophy, especially moral. But, boldly to confess the truth (for since one has stepped over the barriers of impudence there is no checking one's self), his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious; for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up the greatest part of his work; whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him (which is a great deal for me), and try to recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to. his purpose, and the reasons that should properly help to

Opinion of Cicero;

loose the knot I would untie. For me, who only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would have a man begin with the main proposition, and that wherein the force of the argument lies; I know well enough what death and pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble to anatomize them to me; I look for good and solid reasons at the first dash to instruct me how to stand the shock, and resist them; to which purpose neither grammatical subtleties, nor the ingenious contexture of words and arguments, are of any use at all. I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the doubt; his languish about his subjects, and delay our expectation. They are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design, right or wrong, to incline to favour his cause; to children and common people, to whom a man must say all he can, and try what effects his eloquence can produce. I would not have an author make it his business to render me attentive; or that he should cry out fifty times O yes, as the clerks and heralds do. The Romans, in their religious exercises, began with Hoc age; as we in ours do with Sursum corda, which are so many words lost to me; I come thither already fully prepared from my chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the meat raw, and, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, they tire and pall it. Will the license of the time excuse the sacrilegious boldness of my holding and of Plato's diathe dialoguisms of Plato himself to be also logues.

heavy, and too much stifling his matter; and my lamenting so much time lost by a man who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needless preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in this, that I see nothing in the beauty of his language. I would gener

ally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead to them. The two first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc age; they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they have, 'tis a substantial Hoc age, and that has a body by itself. I also delight in reading the Epistles to Atticus; not only because they contain a great deal of history and the affairs of his time; but much more because I therein discover much of his own private humour; for I have a singular curiosity (as I have said elsewhere) to pry into the souls, and the natural and true judgments, of the authors with whom I converse. A man may indeed judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor of themselves, by the writings they expose upon the theatre of the world. I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the treatise that Brutus writ upon virtue; for it is best learning the theory of those who best know the practice. But seeing the thing preached, and the preacher, are different things, I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch as in a book of his own. I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he had in his tent, with some particular friends of his, the night before a battle, than of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and of what he did in his closet and his chamber, than what he did in the public place and in the Senate. As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that (learning excepted), he had no great natural parts. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was, usually are; but given to ease, and had a mighty share of vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be published. 'Tis no great imperfection to make ill verses; but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of comparison; I believe it will never be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled his father in nothing but in

Character of

Cicero.

1 Plutarch and Seneca.