tain the evil doctrine wherewith you have infected the people. By a ready army, I mean arms, and money, and men enough, though not yet in pay, and put under officers, yet gathered together in one place or city, to be put under officers, armed, and paid on any sudden occasion; such as are the people of a great and populous town. Every great city is as a standing army, which if it be not under the sovereign's command, the people are miserable; if they be, they may be taught their duties in the Universities safely and easily, and be happy. I never read of any Christian king that was a tyrant, though the best of kings have been called so. Then for the morosity and peevishness you charge him with, all that know him familiarly, know it is a false accusation. But you mean, it may be, only towards those that argue against his opinion; but neither is that true. When vain and ignorant young scholars, unknown to him before, come to him on purpose to argue with him, and to extort applause for their foolish opinions; and, missing of their end, fall into indiscreet and uncivil expressions, and he then appear not very well contented: it is not his morosity, but their vanity that should be blamed. But what humour, if not morosity and peevishness, was that of yours, whom he never had injured, or seen, or heard of, to use toward him such insolent, injurious, and clownish words, as you did in your absurd Elenchus ? Was it not impatience of seeing any dissent from you in opinion? Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though when he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. Again, when you make his age a reproach to him, and show no cause that might impair the faculties of his mind, but only age, I admire how you saw not that you reproached all old men in the world as much as him, and warranted all young men, at a certain time, which they themselves shall define, to call you fool. Your dislike of old age, you have also otherwise sufficiently signified, in venturing so fairly as you have done to escape it. But that is no great matter to one that hath so many marks upon him of much greater reproaches. By Mr. Hobbes his calculation, that derives prudence from experience, and experience from age, you are a very young man; but by your own reckoning, you are older already than Methuselah. Lastly, who told you that he writ against Mr. Boyle, whom in his writing he never mentioned, and that it was, because Mr. Boyle was acquainted with you? I know the contrary. I have heard him wish it had been some person of lower condition, that had been the author of the doctrine which he opposed, and therefore opposed because it was false, and because his own could not otherwise be defended. But thus much I think is true, that he thought never the better of his judgment, for mistaking you for learned. This is all I thought fit to answer for him and his manners. The rest is of his geometry and philosophy, concerning which, I say only this, that there is too much in your book to be confuted; almost every line may be disproved, or ought to be reprehended. In sum, it is all error and railing, that is, stinking wind; such as a jade lets fly, when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done. I have considered you now, but will not again, whatsoever preferment any of your friends shall procure you. THE ANSWER TO THE PREFACE TO GONDIBERT. SIR, IF to commend your poem, I should only say, in general terms, that in the choice of your argument, the disposition of the parts, the maintenance of the characters of your persons, the dignity and vigour of your expression, you have performed all the parts of various experience, ready memory, clear judgment, swift and well-governed fancy: though it were enough for the truth, it were too little for the weight and credit of my testimony. For I lie open to two exceptions, one of an incompetent, the other of a corrupted witness. Incompetent, because I am not a poet; and corrupted with the honour done me by your preface. The former obliges me to say something, by the way, of the nature and differences of poesy. As philosophers have divided the universe, their subject, into three regions, celestial, aerial, and terrestial; so the poets, whose work it is, by imitating human life, in delightful and measured lines, to avert men from vice, and incline them to virtuous and honourable actions, have lodged themselves in the three regions of mankind, court, city, and country, correspondent, in some proportion, to those three regions of the world. For there is in princes, and men of conspicuous power, anciently |