do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the earthly sign of Scorpio. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn,5 and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not methinks thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it; for those noctambulos and night-walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

SECT. XII. We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life." "T is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles

therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep, was a merciful executioner: 't is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell1 in a colloquy with God:

The night is come, like to the day;
Depart not thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.

Keep still in my horizon; for to me
The sun makes not the day, but thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;

Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance;
Make my sleep a holy trance:

That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought.
And with as active vigour run

My course as doth the nimble sun.

Sleep is a death;-O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with thee.
And thus assur'd, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain
I do now wake to sleep again :

O come that hour, when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

SECT. XIII. The method I should use in distributive justice, I often observe3 in commutative; and keep a geometrical

1 and take my farewell &c.] Instead of these words, all the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "It is a fit time for devotion; I cannot therefore lay me down in my bed without an oration and without takVOL. II.

ing my farewell &c."-Ed.

2 often] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, also.-Ed.

3 distributive justice, &c.] "Justice, though it be but one entire virtue, yet is I

4

proportion in both, whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and supererogate in that common principle, "Do unto others as thou wouldst be done unto thyself." I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive ourselves urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of hellebore, as this. The opinions of theory, and positions of men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice. To that subterraneous idol, and God of the earth, I do confess I am an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love and honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and bountiful well wishes. But if the example of the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest charity, surely poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow occasion of charity

described in two kinds-one, named justice distributive, which is in distribution of honour, money, benefice, or other thing semblable: the other is called commutative, or by exchange." Sir T. Elyot, Gov. fol. 142.-Ed.

4 hellebore,] Said to be a specific against madness.-Ed.

5 there is no delirium, &c.] "Meaning there is nothing deserving the name of

delirium, when compared with the folly of avarice, &c."-Ed.

6 its prepared substance, &c.] Alluding to the aurum portabile, of which see Vulgar Errors, b. iii, c. 23.-Ed.

7 surely poor men &c.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "I can justly boast I am as charitable as some who have built hospitals, or erected cathedrals."-Ed.

from my own necessities, and supply the wants of others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest stratagem to take advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue, that, where they are defective in one circumstance, they may repay their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence and ability X to perform those good works to which [the Almighty]9 hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. "He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord:" there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a library of sermons. And indeed, if those sentences were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers. These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both: there is under these centoes and miserable outsides, those mutilate and semi bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without poverty take away the object of our charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of a christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.*

SECT. XIV.-Now, there is another part of charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange

"The poor ye shall have always with you."- MS. W.

8 myself:] Here all the MSS. and Edts. 1642 add, "when I am reduced to the last tester, I love to divide it with the poor."-Ed.

9 the Almighty] The words between brackets are inserted from MS. W. and Edts. 1642; the others read, he.-Ed.

1 centoes] Patched garments.-Ed.

2 both: there is under &c.] Instead of this sentence, all the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "both, the soul, being of the same alloy."-Ed.

66

3 not understanding only] Or rather not only not understanding."-Ed.

that we should place affection on that which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus. What we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not that part that we embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for that part which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the affections of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shews and dreams, without reality, truth, or constancy. For first there is a strong bond of affection between us and our parents; yet how easily dissolved? We betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a wife, and the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our image. This woman blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of posterity: where affection holds no steady mansion; they growing up in years, desire our ends; or, applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under (or, as Copernicus* will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambo in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon; "All is vanity and vexation of spirit;" there is no felicity in that the world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his

Who holds that the sun is the centre of the world."-MS. W.

4 loves] Edts. 1642 and 1643 read, lives.

All the MSS. and the later Edts. read, loves with which reading the foreign editions agree.

In this instance then it is clear that the translator detected an errour which had not only passed through the two surreptitious editions, but was repeated by the author in the first genuine edition. -Ed.

a who holds &c.] An opinion which Sir Thomas Browne would by no means adopt; as has already appeared, and will

be noticed again in another place.-Ed.

5 nor any crambo in that repeated verity &c.] Meaning that the sentiment expressed by Solomon is a truth which cannot be too often repeated.

Crambo is a play in rhyming, in which he that repeats a word that was said before forfeits something.-Crabb's Techn. Dict.

In all the MSS. and Edts. 1642 the words nor any crambo are wanting -Ed.

6 Aristotle, whilst &c.] Vid. Eudemior. 1. i, c. 8, et Metaphys. 1. i, c. 7. -M.